Explore, Winter 2014

WINTER 2014

A Times Union PUBLICATION

THINGS TO DO. PLACES TO GO.

What’s happening in #SanFran?

travel by twitter want to feel like a local? use this!

plus travel · outdoors · the arts · events calendar · and more!

Lenox, MA DECEMBER 6–29

BERNSTEIN THEATRE

IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE: A LIVE RADIO PLAY adapted by JOE LANDRY from the screenplay by FRANCES GOODRICH, ALBERT HACKETT, FRANK CAPRA and JO SWERLING directed by JENNA WARE

FEB 14–MARCH 30 BERNSTEIN THEATRE

PRIVATE LIVES

by NOËL COWARD directed by TONY SIMOTES featuring DANA HARRISON and DAVID JOSEPH

70 Kemble Street, Lenox, MA · 413-637-3353

SHAKESPEARE.ORG Tony Simotes, Artistic Director

Three ways to enjoy the Park!

Publisher George Hearst III Editorial Janet Reynolds Executive Editor Brianna Snyder Associate Editor Genevieve Scarano Editorial Intern Design Tony Pallone Design Director Colleen Ingerto, Emily Jahn, Tyswan Stewart Designers

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contents in every issue 6 Calendar of Events » Winter 2013-2014 12 Our Backyard » Local gems to visit this season 24 Off the Beaten Path » Consider the classic ski slope 29 Just the Two of Us » New Haven, Conn.

34 Last Call » Suvir Saran: Why I love San Francisco

page 16 — PHOTO COURTESY MAGICSPACE ENTERTAINMENT

features MUSIC 14 Travelin’ Woman » Dar Williams talks songwriting and cities FOOD 16 Dinner Music » Alton Brown brings his culinary variety show to Schenectady TRAVEL 18 Travel by Twitter » Making a few lists before your trip can make you feel like a local, whatever your destination ART 20 Wendell Minor’s America » Flipping through history with a noted book illustrator OUTDOORS 32 A Peek at Peaked Mountain » Snowshoeing in the Siamese Ponds Wilderness can be the height of adventure

page 20 — PHOTO BY ©WENDELL MINOR

page 29

on the cover

— PHOTO BY MICHAEL MELFORD/VISITNEWHAVEN.COM

The Perfect Travel Companion » How Twitter can make your trip even better. Check it out on page 18.

— ILLUSTRATION BY TYSWAN STEWART

ONLINE EXTRA Want to go holiday crazy? Find lots of stuff to do in our holiday roundup, online only at timesunion.com/explore

page 32 — PHOTO BY SUE BIBEAU

timesunion.com/explore 5

calendar winter 2014 Music Classical Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception 125 Eagle St., Albany Saturday, April 5: Albany Pro Musica: Dvorak’s Stabat Mater.

7:30 p.m. A collaboration with the Albany Symphony Orchestra music director David Alan Miller.

This religious cantata by Czech composer Antonin Dvorak is based on the text of the Stabat Mater, which expresses great loss and grief.

Randall Ellis, oboe; Alan R. Kay, clarinet; Frank Morelli, bassoon; David Jolley, horn. “The Roaring Twenties Revisited”: works by Armstrong, Weill, Stravinsky, Hindemith, Nazareth/Abreu, Villa-Lobos, Gershwin/Wild.

Saturday, April 5: St. Petersburg String Quartet. 7 p.m. The Hildegard Medicus Memorial Concert Alla Aranovskaya, violin; Evgeny Zvonnikov, violin; Boris Vayner,

Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center 14 Castle St., Great Barrington, Mass. mahaiwe.org (413) 528-6415 Saturday, Dec. 21: The Miraculous Violin: An Evening with Vadim Gluzman & Angela Yoffe. 6 p.m. “Close Encounters With Music”: A holiday program featuring the music of Mozart, Stravinsky,

revolutionary approach to music and conducts some of his most famous pieces, including selections from Symphonies 5 and 7, the Fidelio and Leonore overtures.

Saturday, Feb. 8: Albany Symphony Orchestra: Bolero & Wagner. 7:30 p.m. Ravel’s Bolero is one of music’s most beloved pieces. Selections from Wagner’s powerful, historic opera Tristan and Isolde also performed.

Youth Chorale, directed by Rae Jean Teeter.

Sunday, Jan. 12: Schenectady Symphony Orchestra. 3 p.m.

An afternoon of arias and Broadway hits.

St. Paul’s Episcopal Church 21 Hackett Blvd., Albany (518) 463-2257 Saturday, Feb. 22: Albany Pro Musica: Serenade to Music. 7:30

Saturday, Feb. 8: East Coast Taiko Conference Performance. 8 p.m.

Friday, Feb. 14: Carnegie Hall Premieres. 8 p.m. Concert featuring Ensemble ACJW, fellows of The Academy — a program of Carnegie Hall, the Juilliard School, and the Weill Music Institute.

Sunday, March 2: Piano Concert

by John Kimura. 2 p.m.

Sunday, March 16: Concert: Burnt Hills Oratorio Society. 3 p.m.

College of Saint Rose The Massry Center for the Arts 1002 Madison Ave., Albany Monday, Dec. 9: Saint Rose Wind Ensemble Concert. 8 p.m.

Holiday concert by the Saint Rose Wind Ensemble.

Tuesday, Dec. 10: Music Industry Recording Ensemble Concert. 8 p.m. Concert by the students in the Saint Rose Music Industry program.

Sunday, Dec. 15: ESYO’s Wind Orchestra Concert. 3 p.m. Conducted by Dr. Robert Hansbrough.

Saturday, Feb. 22: Saint Rose Symphony Orchestra. 8 p.m.

Under the direction of Dr. David Bebe.

Sunday, Feb. 23: Saint Rose Jazz Ensemble. 2 p.m. An evening of jazz under the direction of Paul Evoskevich.

Saturday, March 15: Empire Baroque. 7:30 p.m. A concert

by Empire Baroque, an ensemble featuring Baroque period instruments, in celebration of the 300th birthday of C.P.E. Bach.

Saturday, April 5: A Classical Guitar Concert with Rovshan Mamedkuliev. 7:30 p.m.

Emma Willard School Kiggins Hall 285 Pawling Ave., Troy friendsofchambermusic.org (518) 273-8135 Saturday, Feb. 1: Parker Quartet.

7 p.m. Daniel Chong, violin Ying Xue, violin Jessica Bodner, viola Kee-Hyun Kim, cello Shostakovich: String Quartet No. 9 in E Flat Major, Op. 117; Adès: Arcadiana for String Quartet; Mendelssohn: String Quartet No. 3 in D Major, Op. 44, No. 1.

Friday, March 14: Windscape. 7 p.m. Tara Helen O’Connor, flute;

6 EXPLORE

THE FAB FAUX recreate the Beatles vibe at the Egg in Albany on Feb. 15. viola; Leonid Shukayev, cello; Shostakovich: String Quartet No. 8 in C minor, Op. 110; Tchaikovsky: String Quartet No. 1 in D Major, Op. 11; and more.

First Lutheran Church 181 Western Ave,, Albany firstlutheranalbany.org (518) 463-1326 Tuesday, Dec. 17: Albany Area Senior Orchestra Holiday Concert. 2 p.m. The program features pop tunes, classical selections and holiday favorites.

Refreshments following the concert. Ample free parking.

Tchaikovsky, Prokofiev Castelnuovo-Tedesco.

and

Palace Theatre 19 Clinton Ave., Albany palacealbany.com (518) 465-3334 Saturday, Jan. 11: Albany Symphony Orchestra: Andre Watts Plays Brahms. 7:30 p.m.

The pianist plays Brahms’ Second Piano Concerto — one of the composer’s most virtuosic, monumental works — along with a program that features works by Verdi, Strauss Jr., and more Sunday, Jan. 12: Albany Symphony Orchestra: Beethoven Back to the Future. 3 p.m.

Ludwig van Beethoven, perhaps the greatest composer of all time, bursts onto the Palace Theatre stage in a time machine! He explains his

Sunday, Feb. 9: Albany Symphony Orchestra: Uzu and Muzu from Kakaruzu. 3 p.m.

Based on a children’s story by the “Dr. Seuss of Israel,” Ephraim Sidon. Featuring percussionists Luke Rinderknecht and Haruka Fuji, full orchestra, and narrator Avner Dorman, it’s a thrilling, whimsical, funny story that teaches the importance of friendship, kindness, and forgiveness.

Proctors 432 State St., Schenectady proctors.org (518) 346-6204 Thursday, Dec. 12 - Monday, Dec. 16: 2013 Melodies of Christmas.

ESYO’s Youth Orchestra, led by Helen ChaPyo, performs with ESYO’s

p.m. Guest conductor Christine Howlett and the chorus perform the music of Vaughan Williams, Eleanor Daley, Samuel Barber, Eric Whitacre and others.

Skidmore College Arthur Zankel Music Center 815 N. Broadway, Saratoga Springs skidmore.edu/zankel (518) 580-5321 Tuesday, Dec. 10: Skidmore College Orchestra: “A Night in Old Vienna.” 8 p.m. Music by Franz Lehar and Johann Strauss Jr., featuring world renowned harmonica virtuoso JiaYi He. Wednesday, Dec. 11: A concert of world premieres by Skidmore student composers. 8 p.m.

Thursday, Jan. 30: Brazilian Guitar Quartet. 8 p.m.

— PROMOTIONAL PHOTO

Saturday, March 29: String Festival Ensemble Concert. 3 p.m.

Thursday, April 3: Skidmore Concert Band. 8 p.m.

Friday, March 28: Ying Quartet.

8 p.m.

Troy Savings Bank Music Hall 30 Second St., Troy troymusichall.org (518) 273-0038 Friday, Jan. 31: Albany Pro Musica: High School Choral Festival. 7:30 p.m. Six high school choirs and the Empire State Youth Orchestra Repertory Orchestra come together onstage.

Thursday, March 6: Imani Winds. 7:30 p.m. This Grammynominated quintet has taken a

unique path, carving out a distinct presence in the classical music world. The quintet regularly collaborates with artists ranging from Yo-Yo Ma to Wayne Shorter.

Sunday, March 30: Trio Solisti.

3 p.m. The founding ensemble of the Telluride Music Fest, the Solisti have been acclaimed guests at the Kennedy Center, Lincoln Center, Wolf Trap, and La Jolla’s Revelle series, and have numerous critically-lauded recordings.

Union College Memorial Chapel

807 Union St, Schenectady (518) 388-6000 Sunday, Dec. 22: Boston Camerata. 3 p.m. Celebrate the holidays with this wonderful program highlighting the French tradition of Christmas through the Medieval ages.

Sunday, Jan. 12: Jonathan Biss, piano. 3 p.m. Making his highly anticipated return to Union College’s Concert Series, pianist Jonathan Biss makes regular recital appearances at Carnegie Hall and performs with major orchestras around the world.

Friday, Jan. 17: Jupiter String Quartet. 8 p.m. As part of the Union College Concert Series’ 42nd International Festival of Chamber Music, this exciting young quartet makes its third appearance in the program highlighted by Schubert’s great masterwork of the genre.

Sunday, Feb. 9: ECCO — East Coast Chamber Orchestra. 3 p.m.

This conductor-less ensemble plays selections by Mozart, David Ludwig, Satie, Judd Greenstein, Gesualdo and Ravel/Joseph.

Sunday, Feb. 16: Stefan Jackiw, violin & Anna Polonsky, piano.

3 p.m. This young violinist has already preformed as soloist with the orchestras of Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, New York, and Philadelphia as major orchestras throughout the world.

Thursday, March 13: Shai Wosner, piano. 8 p.m. Making his series debut as part of the Union College Concert Series’ 42nd International Festival of Chamber Music, the Israeli-born pianist has performed with orchestras around the world from the Vienna Philharmonic to the Chicago Symphony.

Saturday, March 22: Artemis Quartet. 8 p.m. Appearing annually in Carnegie Hall, this German ensemble is considered to be one of the leading string quartets in the world today.

University at Albany UAlbany Performing Arts Center 1400 Washington Ave., Albany albany.edu/pac (518) 442-3997 Monday, Dec. 9: Twenty Drummers Drummin’. 7 p.m. The UAlbany Percussion Ensemble and the RPI Percussion Ensemble perform.

Sunday, Jan. 26: Repertory Orchestra and Repertory Percussion Ensemble. 3 p.m.

Repertory Orchestra will be conducted by David Beck. Repertory Percussion Ensemble will be conducted by Richard Albagli and John Antonio.

Sunday, Feb. 2: Hubbard Hall Opera Theatre in Carmen. 3 p.m.

This man’s life was just fine — nice girlfriend, stable military career — until he arrested Carmen, stunningly beautiful and terrifying all at once.

Fully costumed and staged, this condensed piano production, featuring mezzo-soprano Kara Cornell and pianist Michael Clement, is sung in French with supertitles.

Tuesday, Feb. 11: Carnival/ Carnaval — Music from the Americas. 7 p.m. Pianist Max Lifchitz marks Carnival celebrations performing dance inspired piano music by composers from the Caribbean, Brazil and the United States.

Monday, March 3: Albin Zak and the New Folk Chamber Players.

7 p.m. The singer-songwriter appears with violinist Hilary Cumming, cellist Petia Kassarova and pianist Victoria von Arx. Sunday, March 9: UniversityCommunity Symphony Orchestra. 3 p.m. A group of students, faculty and community musicians present symphonic favorites under the direction of conductor Christopher Neubert.

Monday, March 10: Festival of Contemporary Music. 7 p.m. The University Percussion Ensemble and the percussion ensembles of the Empire State Youth Orchestra perform.

Wednesday, March 12: University-Community Symphonic Band. 7 p.m. This large ensemble will perform in the round with the audience very close to the performers in an intimate theater setting.

Pop, Rock, Folk, Country and Jazz Calvin Theatre & Performing Arts Center 19 King St, Northampton, Mass. iheg.com (413) 584-1444 Saturday, Jan. 18: Get The Led Out — The American Led Zeppelin. 8 p.m.

Saturday, Jan. 25: Martin Sexton. 8 p.m. American singersongwriter and producer.

The Egg Empire State Plaza, Albany theegg.org Monday, Dec. 9: Bryan Adams.

8 p.m. Adams has sold over 65 million records and is famous for a host of hits, including “Cuts Like A Knife,” “Summer of ’69,” “Kids Wanna Rock,” “Can’t Stop This Thing We’ve Started.”

Saturday, Dec. 14 - Sunday, Dec. 15: Mountain Snow & Mistletoe. A down-home concert of holiday songs and stories with Christopher Shaw and Bridget Ball that features ”The Mountain Snow Orchestra” – fiddler John Kirk, guitarist Kevin McKrell, and percussionist Brian Melick.

Sunday, Dec. 15: The Wooten Brothers. 7:30 p.m. One of America’s favorite family bands, — featuring Victor on bass, Regi on guitar, Joseph on keyboards and Roy “Futureman” on percussion — reunite to perform their funky blend of R&B, hip-hop, jazz, rock and blues.

Friday, Dec. 27: John Pizzarelli Quartet. 8 p.m. Well-known as a world-class jazz guitarist and singer of standards, John Pizzarelli also puts his unique stamp on rock and pop classics as heard on his new recording Double Exposure. John will perform with his quartet featuring Martin Pizzarelli on doublebass, Tony Tedesco on drums and Larry Fuller on piano.

Sunday, Jan. 12: Trombone Shorty & Orleans Avenue. 7 p.m.

Using the musical hotbed of his native New Orleans as a starting point, Trombone Shorty and Orleans Avenue push the stylistic envelope with a genre-obliterating sound, a potent mélange of jazz, rock ‘n’ roll, soul, funk and hip hop that has taken the music world by storm.

Wednesday, Feb. 5: Guitar Passions. 7:30 p.m. Three master guitarists meet to perform an exquisite evening of classical, jazz

and Latin music. Classical guitarist Sharon Isbin is joined by the iconic jazz master Stanley Jordan and Brazil’s leading guitarist Romero Lubambo.

Friday, Feb. 7: Dar Williams. 8 p.m. Plainspoken, heartfelt and inspired, Dar Williams stands as one of the most prolific and endearing singer-songwriters in contemporary folk music.

Saturday, Feb. 8: The Bad Plus.

8 p.m. Bassist Reid Anderson, pianist Ethan Iverson and drummer David King bring their avant-garde populism that has put them at the forefront of the new instrumental music movement for the past 12 years. The band performs original music as well as reshaped songs in the pop, rock, country and classical idioms.

Sunday, Feb. 9: Ruthie Foster & Eric Bibb. 8 p.m. Longtime friends Ruthie Foster and Eric Bibb join forces to celebrate an evening of American roots music.

Saturday, Feb. 15: The Fab Faux.

7:30 p.m. The Fab Faux celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the arrival of the Beatles in New York, recreating the music on their classic studio albums, from unplugged acoustic to the most intricately produced arrangements.

Sunday, Feb. 16: Jane Monheit.

7:30 p.m. One of the day’s most romantic singers, Monheit will perform with her band, and the guitar virtuosos Frank Vignola & Vinny Raniolo to celebrate Valentine’s Day weekend with an evening of love songs — from jazz and pop standards to Brazilian and the Beatles.

Tueday, Feb. 25: Zappa Plays Zappa. 8 p.m. Dweezil Zappa performs the music of Frank Zappa.

Tuesday, March 4: Gaelic Storm.

7:30 p.m. One of the world’s foremost Celtic fusion groups.

Thursday, March 6: Paul Byrom.

7:30 p.m. Ireland’s premier young tenor.

Thursday, March 20: Keb Mo. 7:30 p.m. Spirited mix of goodtime country blues, soul, and pop.

Saturday, March 29: Regina Carter. 8 p.m. Carter is a violinist with a broad diversity of styles from jazz to classical and soul to African.

Iron Horse Music Hall 20 Center St., Northampton, Mass. iheg.com (413) 586-8686 Saturday, Dec. 14: The Commander Cody Band. 7 p.m.

The old Commander Cody himself is behind the piano, leading the musical mayhem and controlled chaos, and sporting his legendary antics and ability to spark up even the toughest crowds.

Friday, Dec. 20 - Saturday, Dec. 21: Dar Williams. 7 p.m.

The singer-songwriter is touring in support of her ninth album, In The Time of Gods.

Monday, Dec. 30: Enter The Haggis New Year’s Eve Extravaganza!. 7 p.m. Over the past three albums and five years, Toronto’s Celtic rock band has found itself at the center of a grassroots success story ever teetering on the brink of mainstream success.

Friday, Jan. 3 - Saturday, Jan. 4: Livingston Taylor. 7 p.m.

Taylor’s career as a professional musician has spanned over 30 years. He maintains a performance schedule of more than a hundred shows a year, delighting audiences with his unique brand of popular music, which includes mostly original repertory from his 13 albums.

Friday, Jan. 17 - Saturday, Jan. 18: Cheryl Wheeler. 7 p.m.

Folk singer/songwriter.

SINGER-SONGWRITER MARTIN SEXTON brings his acoustic folk-rock to the Calvin in Northampton, Mass., Jan. 25.

— PROMOTIONAL PHOTO

timesunion.com/explore 7

calendar winter 2014 Stage

Saturday, Feb. 15: Aztec TwoStep. 7 p.m. In 1972, Rex Fowler and Neal Shulman have spent a lifetime making music together.

Friday, March 14: Zoe Darrow And the Fiddleheads. 7 p.m.

Satuday, March 15: The Big Bad Bollocks. 7 p.m. Fueled

by Guinness and Bushmills, Northampton’s own Big Bad Bollocks have been endearing themselves to punks, rockers, mods and pub rockers alike since 1989.

Albany Civic Theater 235 Second Ave., Albany albanycivictheater.org Friday, Feb. 7 - Sunday, Feb. 23: Boeing Boeing by Marc Camoletti, directed by Adam M. Coons. Self-styled Parisian lothario Bernard has Italian, German, and American fiancees, each beautiful airline hostesses with frequent “layovers.” He keeps “one up, one down and one pending” until unexpected schedule changes bring all three to Paris and Bernard’s apartment at the same time.

The Linda WAMC’s Performing Arts Studio 339 Central Ave,, Albany wamcarts.org (518) 465-5233 Saturday, Jan. 11: Seth Glier and Antje Duvekot. 8 p.m. Songwriter, pianist and guitarist.

Saturday, March 29: The American Roots Series at the Linda Presents: Tim Eriksen and the Trio De Pumpkintown.

8 p.m. Founder of legendary New England folk-punk pioneers Cordelia’s Dad.

Old Songs at St. John’s Lutheran Church 142 Maple Ave,, Altamont oldsongs.org (518) 765-2815 Saturday, Dec. 14: Nowell Sing We Clear. 3 p.m. Christmas as it was known for centuries in Britain and North America and as it continues in many places to the present. The songs come from an age when the midwinter season was a time for joyous celebration and vigorous expression of older, perhaps pagan, religious ideas.

Palace Theatre 19 Clinton Ave., Albany palacealbany.com (518) 465-3334 Monday, Dec. 30: Moe. 8 p.m.

Jamband.

Proctors 432 State St., Schenectady proctors.org (518) 346-6204 Friday, Dec. 20: African Children’s Choir. 7 p.m. This Grammy-nominated group of singers has performed on American Idol, with Alicia Keys and for President George W. Bush.

Friday, Dec. 20 - Sunday, Dec. 22: Christmas with the Rat Pack. A talented cast and 15-piece orchestra will take you

8 EXPLORE

Capital Repertory Theater

THE UNIVERSITY OF ALBANY presents Gesel Mason in No Boundaries: Dancing the Visions of Contemporary Black Choreographers on Feb. 8. (Pictured is Mason’s Performance Projects in Women, Sex and Desire.) — PHOTO BY COLIN DANVILLE down memory lane with I’ll Be Home for Christmas, Baby It’s Cold Outside, Silent Night and many more. Las Vegas glitzy, this sensationally staged production will bring the music and lives of these three legends together again.

Key Hall at Proctors 436 State St, Schenectady (518) 881-4501 Sunday, Feb. 23: Albany Pro Musica: Serenade to Music. 3 p.m. Guest conductor Christine Howlett and the chorus perform the music of Vaughan Williams, Eleanor Daley, Samuel Barber, Eric Whitacre and others. Albany Pro Musica will be joined by the talented Albany High School Choir under the direction of former Pro Musica tenor Brendan Hoffman.

Times Union Center 51 S. Pearl St, Albany timesunioncenter-albany.com (518) 487-2000 Sunday, Dec. 15: Donny & Marie: Christmas in Albany. 6:30 p.m. The Osmond siblings reunite for a holiday celebration.

Troy Savings Bank Music Hall 30 Second St, Troy troymusichall.org (518) 273-0038 Thursday, Dec. 19: Rosanne Cash. 7:30 p.m. Cash’s country music draws on many genres, including folk, rock, pop, and blues. She will perform with her husband, Grammy-winning producer and guitarist John Leventhal. They’ll play her hits along with songs from The Essential Rosanne Cash, a personal collection of her favorite tracks spanning 30 years.

Saturday, Feb. 1: Kathy Mattea.

8 p.m. One of country music’s most distinctive and acclaimed artists, two-time Country Music Association Female Vocalist of the Year.

Sunday, March 16: Danu. 4 p.m.

Get ready for St. Patrick’s Day with Danu, one of the very best traditional Irish ensembles!

Saturday, April 5: Johnny Clegg. 8 p.m. One of South Africa’s most celebrated sons.

This singer, songwriter, dancer, anthropologist, and musical activist creates infectious crossover music, a vibrant blend of

Western pop and African Zulu rhythms.

Dance The Egg

Empire State Plaza, Albany theegg.org (518) 473-1845 Saturday, Dec. 21 - Saturday, Dec. 21: The Nutcracker. 1:30 p.m. The Albany Berkshire Ballet presents the holiday classic.

Saturday, Dec. 28: Savion Glover & Jack DeJohnette. 8 p.m. Tap dancer Savion Glover joins forces with jazz drummer Jack DeJohnette a performance of dance and music.

Proctors 432 State St, Schenectady proctors.org (518) 346-6204 Sunday, Dec. 8: Northeast Ballet’s Annual The Nutcracker.

2 p.m.

Skidmore College Dance Theater 815 N. Broadway, Saratoga Springs Monday, Dec.

9:

Dance

Performance. 7:30 p.m. Dance Performance Skidmore student dancers perform the classic national dance of India.

Friday, Dec. 13 - Sunday, Dec. 15: The Nutcracker.

Saratoga City Ballet presents Tchaikovsky’s famous ballet.

Friday, April 4 - Saturday, April 5: Skidmore Dance Students’ Senior Capstone Concert. Selected dance majors present their original choreography, performed by Skidmore student dancers.

University at Albany UAlbany Performing Arts Center 1400 Washington Ave., Albany albany.edu/pac (518) 442-3997 Saturday, Feb. 8: Gesel Mason in No Boundaries: Dancing the Visions of Contemporary Black Choreographers. 7:30 p.m.

Celebrating the depth and diversity of style and vision in the field of modern dance, these original solo works represent almost seven decades of choreographic vision by, for and about African-Americans.

111 N. Pearl St., Albany capitalrep.org (518) 445-7469 Sunday, Dec. 8 - Saturday, Dec. 21: A Christmas Carol. Charles Dickens’ holiday classic gets a new Patrick Barlow (The 39 Steps) adaptation, featuring five actors playing more than 20 characters.

Tuesday, Jan. 21 - Saturday, Feb. 15: The Mountaintop.

Taking place on April 3, 1968, this reimagining of events the night before the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr has the exhausted civil rights leader engaging in a conversation with a mysterious female stranger who arrives in his hotel room.

Saturday, Feb. 8: Harriet Tells It Like It Is. 11 a.m. Travel back in time and journey north on the Underground Railroad with Harriet Tubman in this special adaptation.

Friday, March 14 - Saturday, April 12: Gypsy: A Musical Fable.

Based on the memoirs of entertainer Gypsy Rose Lee, this great American musical follows Mama Rose’s efforts to make her children vaudeville stars, and the damaging fallout that those efforts leave behind on all her relationships.

Saturday, March 29: The Remarkable and Perplexing Case of Henry Hudson. 11 a.m.

Maggie Mancinelli-Cahill and Maureen Aumand’s take on the famed navigator and explorer who some see as a hero and some see as a villain.

Curtain Call Theatre 210 Old Loudon Road, Latham curtaincalltheatre.com (518) 877-7529 Sunday, Dec. 8 - Saturday, Dec. 28: Bermuda Avenue Triangle:

This holiday treat tells the tale of two widows set up in a Las Vegas retirement condo by their daughters. They think life has passed them by, until they both meet and fall in love with a charming swindler who helps them realize you’re never too old to do what you think you’re too old to do.

Friday, Jan. 10 - Saturday, Feb. 8: Good People. In David Lindsay-Abaire’s latest, a South Boston retail clerk loses her job and reaches out to her old boyfriend, a former Southie who made good as a doctor, but who has a secret she knows.

Friday, Feb. 21 - Saturday, March 22: Figaro. Charley Morey’s adaptation of the classic sequel to The Barber of Seville.

Friday, April 4 - Saturday, May 3: The Price. Two estranged middle-aged brothers reunite to battle over furniture and family memories when their father dies in Arthur Miller’s rarely staged 1968 drama.

Home Made Theater 19 Roosevelt Drive, Saratoga Springs homemadetheater.org Friday, Dec. 12 - Sunday, Dec. 22: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Roald Dahl’s children’s book and movie adaptation get a stage version.

Friday, Feb. 7 - Sunday, Feb. 23: Witness for the Prosecution.

In Agatha Christie’s courtroom mystery, Leonard Vole stands in the dock, accused of murder. His wife can prove his innocence but when she takes the stand she denies his alibi. Can he escape the hangman’s noose?

Palace Theatre 19 Clinton Ave., Albany palacealbany.com (518) 465-3334 Friday, Feb. 14: Green Day’s American Idiot. 8 p.m. Based on Green Day’s groundbreaking rock opera of the same name, this daring new musical tells the story of three lifelong friends, forced to choose between their dreams and the safety of suburbia, and features the smash hits “Boulevard of Broken Dreams,” “Holiday” and “21 Guns.”

Proctors 432 State St, Schenectady proctors.org (518) 346-6204 Thursday, Dec. 12 - Sunday, Dec. 15: White Christmas. 7:30 p.m. Veterans Bob Wallace and

Phil Davis have a successful song-and-dance act after World War II. With romance in mind, the two follow a duo of beautiful singing sisters in route to their Christmas show at a Vermont lodge, which just happens to be owned by Bob and Phil’s former army commander.

Wednesday, Jan. 15 - Sunday, Jan. 19: War Horse. As World War I begins, Joey, young Albert’s beloved horse, is sold to the cavalry and shipped from England to France. He’s soon caught up in enemy fire, and fate takes him on an extraordinary journey, serving on both sides before finding himself alone in no man’s land. But Albert cannot forget Joey and, still not old enough to enlist, he embarks on a treacherous mission to find him and bring him home.

Tuesday, Feb. 18 - Sunday, Feb. 23: Sister Act. This is the story of Deloris Van Cartier, a wannabe diva whose life takes a surprising turn when she witnesses a crime and the cops hide her in the last place anyone would think to look — a convent.

Tuesday, March 11 - Sunday, March 16: The Book Of Mormon.

From South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone comes this Tony Award-winning religious satire.

Sand Lake Center for the Arts 2880 State Hwy. 43, Averill Park slca-ctp.org (518) 674-2007 Friday, Jan. 24 - Sunday, Feb. 2: Almost Maine. Comic tales of love and loss, illuminated by the magical glow of Northern Lights.

Friday, March 21 - Sunday, March 30: Fiddler on the Roof.

Set in 1905 in a small Jewish village in Russia, Joseph Stein’s classic tells the story of dairyman Tevye and his attempts to preserve his family’s traditions in a changing world.

Friday, Jan. 24 - Sunday, Feb. 2: Sherlock Holmes: The Final Adventure. A new adaptation of the classic detective tale.

Sunday, March 23 - Sunday, March 30: The Understudy.

Theresa Rebeck’s comedy revolves around a woman running the understudy rehearsal of a play where the two understudies are her exfiance and a movie star trying to go legit in the theater.

Shakespeare & Company Elayne P. Bernstein Theatre 70 Kemble St, Lenox, Mass. shakespeare.org Sunday, Dec. 8 - Sunday, Dec. 29: It’s a Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play. Inspired by Frank Capra’s classic 1946 film, George Bailey’s small-town wish of never having been born comes to life in old-fashioned radio style.

Friday, Feb. 14 - Sunday, March 30: Private Lives. 7 p.m.

In Noel Coward’s sparkling comedy, a divorced couple happens to honeymoon with their new spouses in adjoining hotel rooms in the South of France, and the sparks fly.

Tina Packer Playhouse 70 Kemble St, Lenox, Mass.

(413) 637-3353 Friday, Dec. 13 - Saturday, Dec. 14: Julius Caesar. 7 p.m.

Shakespeare’s great political drama about the conspiracy surrounding the assassination of the Roman emperor.

SLOC Musical Theatre (Schenectady Light Opera Company) 427 Franklin St, Schenectady sloctheater.org (877) 350-7378 Sunday, Dec. 8 - Sunday, Dec. 15: You’re a Good Man Charlie Brown. The story of the play itself is told through a series of vignettes that mimic the fourpanel format used by the original cartoon strip, Friday, Feb. 7 - Sunday, Feb. 16: Caroline, or Change. In this multi-genre musical, Caroline is a black maid for a Jewish family in Louisiana during the time of John F. Kennedy’s assassination.

Friday, March 21 - Sunday, March 30: The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. The show centers on a fictional spelling bee set in a geographically ambiguous Putnam Valley Middle School. Six quirky adolescents compete in the Bee, run by three equally-quirky grown-ups.

Steamer 10 Theatre

500 Western Ave,, Albany timesunion.memlink.com (518) 438-5503 Friday, Feb. 14 - Sunday, Feb. 16: Arms and the Man. Theater Voices presents George Bernard Shaw’s classic comedy set during the Serbo-Bulgarian War.

Theatre Institute at Sage Schacht Fine Arts Center 5 Division St, Troy sage.edu/theatre (518) 244-2248 Sunday, Dec. 8 - Sunday, Dec. 15: The Secret Garden. Orphaned in India, 11-year-old Mary Lennox returns to Yorkshire to live with her reclusive uncle Archibald and his invalid son Colin. The estate’s many wonders include a magic garden that beckons the children with haunting melodies and the “Dreamers,” spirits from Mary’s past who guide her through her new life.

Thursday, Feb. 20 - Sunday, March 2: In the Next Room (or The Vibrator Play). Sarah Ruhl’s play concerns the early history of the vibrator, when doctors used it as a clinical device to bring women to orgasm as treatment for “hysteria.”

University at Albany UAlbany Performing Arts Center 1400 Washington Ave,, Albany albany.edu/pac (518) 442-3997 Wednesday, Feb. 12: Black Boy. 7:30 p.m. American Place Theatre presents a verbatim adaptation of the first half of the classic American autobiographical work. Premiered in 2005 at the Kennedy Center, the show dramatizes Richard Wright’s

journey from childhood innocence to adulthood in the Jim Crow South. Tarantino Smith plays upwards of 15 characters from this epic novel whose issues still resonate today’.

Thursday, April 3: Everywoman.

7:30 p.m. Should a woman’s life stop just because she’s giving birth? Time and space collide in WAM Theatre’s staged reading of Carolyn Yalkut’s one-act play that debates global as well as personal catastrophe in women’s lives everywhere.

Comedy Palace Theatre 19 Clinton Ave., Albany palacealbany.com (518) 465-3334 Thursday, Dec. 12: Trailer Park Boys. 8 p.m. Ricky, Julian and Bubbles are back with a brandnew live show, but this time they are not alone — Mr. Lahey and Randy will be there in all their drunken glory.

Friday, Dec. 13: Brian Regan.

8 p.m. Regan has distinguished himself as one of the premier comedians in the country.

Thursday, Feb. 20: Rodney Carrington. 7 p.m. Carrington is a multitalented comedian, actor and writer. Rodney has recorded eight major record label comedy albums selling over 3 million copies.

THE TRAILER PARK BOYS bring their rowdy comedy to the Palace Theater in Albany on Dec. 12.

— PROMOTIONAL PHOTO

Schenectady Civic Playhouse 12 S. Church St, Schenectady civicplayers.org (518) 382-2081 Sunday, Dec. 8 - Sunday, Dec. 15: The Santaland Diaries. Joe Mantello adapted David Sedaris’ essay about an unemployed actor auditioning for the part of Crumpet the Elf at Macy’s during the holiday crunch.

timesunion.com/explore 9

calendar winter 2014 Proctors 432 State St, Schenectady proctors.org (518) 346-6204 Tuesday, Dec. 31: The First Night of Funny. 8 p.m. Four headlining comics help you say goodbye to 2013.

Troy Savings Bank Music Hall 30 Second St, Troy troymusichall.org (518) 273-0038 Thursday, Jan. 16: Sinbad. 8 p.m. Actor and comedian Sinbad tells stories, finding the humor in the embarrassing tribulations of day-by-day life.

Fairs, Festivals & Family Fun Athens Cultural Center

Friday, March 21: Disney Live!

Mickey’s Music Festival. 4 and 7 p.m. Mickey Mouse and his band of friends, Minnie Mouse, Donald Duck and Goofy, will be performing in a music mash-up of mega proportions.

Palace Theatre 19 Clinton Ave., Albany palacealbany.com (518) 465-3334 Friday, Jan. 31 - Sunday, Feb. 2: Sesame Street Live: Elmo Makes Music. 6:30 p.m. When the new music teacher’s instruments go missing, Elmo, Abby Cadabby, Big Bird, and more come to the rescue and discover instruments they never knew existed. Children learn that everyone can make and enjoy beautiful music together Saturday, March 22: Disney Live! Mickey’s Music Festival.

1 p.m. Mickey Mouse and his band of friends, Minnie Mouse, Donald Duck and Goofy, will be performing in a music mash-up of mega proportions.

Saratoga Springs City Center

24 Second St., Athens Saturday, Dec. 14: Athens Holiday Victorian Stroll. 1 p.m.

A community-wide free family event featuring horse-drawn trolley rides, ice sculpture demonstrations, historic building tours, carolers, puppeteer, photos with Santa, face painting, Hudson Valley Bells concert, Coxsackie-Athens Community Band’s Holiday Concert, art exhibition and sale, craft sale, vintage photos with Victorian costumes, music, refreshments, fire dancers, tree lighting and much more.

522 Broadway, Saratoga Springs Friday, Feb. 14 - Sunday, Feb. 16: Flurry Festival. The Flurry is a folk festival of traditional dancing and music.

Downtown Saratoga

Schenectady County Historical Society

Broadway, Saratoga Springs saratoga-arts.org/firstnight Tuesday, Dec. 31: First Night Saratoga. 5:30 p.m. Saratoga Arts brings over 70 regional and touring performing groups to over thirty venues throughout Historic Downtown Saratoga Springs for this evening of live music, dance, comedy and other performances.

Glens Falls Civic Center 1 Civic Center Plaza, Glens Falls glensfallscc.com (518) 798-0366 Wednesday, Jan. 29: Sesame Street Live: Elmo Makes Music.

The beloved characters from the PBS classic come to life on stage.

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Saratoga Springs Public Library 49 Henry St., Saratoga Springs sspl.org Sunday, Dec. 22: Family Holiday Show with Seth and the Moody Melix. 2 p.m. The show features traditional holiday music (with a twist), along with the original music of “Seth and the moody Melix.”

32 Washington Ave., Schenectady schist.org (518) 374-0263 Sunday, Dec. 8 - Monday, Dec. 16: Festival of Trees. Visit beautifully decorated trees in the YWCA and the Schenectady County Historical Society.

Times Union Center 51 S. Pearl St, Albany timesunioncenter-albany.com (518) 487-2000 Wednesday, Dec. 18 - Sunday, Dec. 22: Disney On Ice: 100 Years Of Magic. Your favorite Disney characters and stories brought to life with the artistry

of ice skating to create an unforgettable family experience.

Words & Ideas College of Saint Rose Events and Athletics Center 420 Western Ave., Albany strose.edu (800) 637-8556 Thursday, Jan. 30: “Frequency North” — The Visiting Writers Reading Series. 7:30 p.m.

“Frequency North” kicks off 2014 with Boston Poetry Slam Team Jade Sylvan. Sylvan’s most recent book, Kissing Oscar Wilde, was published this year by Write Bloody Press.

Thursday, April 3: “Frequency North” — Jonah Winter and Sharon Mesmer. 7:30 p.m. Poet/ biographer/illustrator Jonah Winter and poet/author Sharon Mesmer. Winter is the author of two poetry volumes and more than 30 books for children and adults about baseball players, avant-garde artists, jazz musicians, exotic dancers, presidents and more. Mesmer’s recent poetry collections include The Virgin Formica, and her fiction collections include In Ordinary Time and The Empty Quarter.

Museums Albany Institute of History & Art 125 Washington Ave,, Albany albanyinstitute.org (518) 463-4478 Through Sunday, June 8: The Mystery of the Albany Mummies.

The largest exhibition on ancient Egypt ever presented in New York’s Capital Region.

Art and artifacts from around the world and advanced medical technologies help unravel the mystery of the Albany Mummies. Topics include: From Cairo to Albany, Preparing for the Afterlife, Ankhefenmut and His World, and Egyptomania.

There are also interactive stations, special programs, an international lecture series, and an Ancient Egyptian Shop.

Sunday, Dec. 15: Albany Institute Lecture and Book Signing: From Kristallnacht to Watergate: Memoirs of a

Newspaperman. Join legendary newspaperman and Albany Times Union editor-at-large Harry Rosenfeld as he recounts a few of the most compelling moments of his life, from his childhood in Hitler’s Berlin to his years at the Washington Post, and answers questions about the historic events he has witnessed.

Bennington Center for the Arts 44 Gypsy Lane, Bennington, Vt. benningtoncenterforthearts.org (802) 442-7158 Through Sunday, Dec. 22: Small Works Show. 11 x 14 and smaller Figurative, landscapes, cityscapes, wildlife and stilllifes by nationally recognized artists make up the show.

Through Sunday, Dec. 22: American Artists Abroad.

American artists share their work in this beautiful world tour. We get to see famous monuments as well as quiet moments through the eyes of these talented painters and sculptors.

Brookside Museum 6 Charlton St, Ballston Spa brooksidemuseum.org (518) 885-4000 Through Tuesday, Jan. 7: Here Comes the Bride. Features historic wedding gowns, invitations, marriage certificates,

photographs, and other wedding items from Brookside’s collection of historic artifacts from Saratoga County.

Fenimore Art Museum 5798 Route 80, Cooperstown fenimoreartmuseum.org/ fenimore/visit/experience (607) 547-1400 Through Sunday, Dec. 29: Watercolors by Susan Fenimore Cooper Weil. Evocative watercolor landscapes record Weil’s lifelong love of nature and the outdoors. At first glance, her images seem to be straightforward representations of barns, houses, and rolling hills.

Underlying them is a complexity and mystery that bring these works to life. They make an emotional statement about the importance of the land to Weil, the importance of preserving the rural way of life.

Mass MoCA 87 Marshall St, North Adams, Mass. massmoca.org (413) 662-2111 Through Monday, Jan. 20: Life’s Work: Tom Phillips and Johnny Carrera.

Through Monday, Dec. 30: Anselm Keifer. In a major new collaboration with the Hall Art Foundation, the keystone of which is a large and long-term

exhibition of sculpture and paintings by Anselm Kiefer, MASS MoCA opens a 10,000 square-foot building at MASS MoCA specially re-purposed by the Hall Art Foundation and devoted to the art of Anselm Kiefer.

Through Monday, Dec. 30: Guillaume Leblon: Under My Shoe.

First solo exhibition of Parisbased sculptor Leblon’s work in a U.S. museum. Selection of works made over the last decade, in addition to two major new projects created for MASS MoCA. Through Monday, April 7: Jason Middlebrook. Explores the complex relationship between man and nature.

New York State Museum 264 Madison Ave,, Albany nysm.nysed.gov (518) 474-5877 Through Tuesday, Dec. 31: Russel Wright: The Nature of Design. Explores the work and philosophy of renowned industrial designer Russel Wright, whose former home in the Hudson Valley — Manitoga — is now a national historic landmark. The exhibition focuses on one of Wright’s most pervasive preoccupations, which also has much relevance today: the relationship of humankind with the natural world.

ON DEC. 8, head to Troy for the 31st Annual Victorian Stroll for food, fun and shopping.

— PHOTO BY LUANNE M. FERRIS / TIMES UNION

Through Tuesday, Dec. 31: 60 from the ’60s. Sixty prints from the 1960s by 10 of the most significant photographers from that eventful decade, offering a dynamic look at photography of the era. An exhibition organized

by George Eastman House.

Through Sunday, Feb. 23: Weather Event. Focuses on Charles E. Burchfield’s depictions of the weather south of Lake Erie, where the artist lived for most of his life. Individual weather events are examined through both an artistic and scientific lens.

Nov. 9 - March 23. Sanford Gifford’s Civil War. Chronicles the wartime experience of New York State native and renowned Hudson River School painter Sanford Robinson Gifford, who served during the war with the 7th Regiment, New York State Militia. The exhibit will feature three of Gifford’s paintings from the collection of the New York State Military Museum in Saratoga Springs, as well as artifacts and images from the New York State Museum and New York State Library.

Nov. 16 - March 5. Building a Collection: An Exhibit Celebrating E. Martin Wunsch and His Passion for Celebrating New York State Decorative Arts West Corridor. The Wunsch Collection consists of over 700 pieces of furniture, paintings, silver, ceramics, and folk art crafted primarily between 1700 and 1900.

Dec. 12 - March 9. 60 from the 60s. Features 60 prints from the 1960s by 10 of the most significant photographers from that eventful decade, offering a dynamic look at photography of the era. Many of photographers were just beginning to create a name for themselves in the 1960s, and some were established artists then in the midst of successful careers. The featured artists are Harry Callahan, Benedict J. Fernandez, Hollis Frampton, Betty Hahn, Robert Heinecken, Mary Ellen Mark, Roger Mertin, Arnold Newman, Aaron Siskind, and Garry Winogrand.

Skidmore College The Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery 815 N. Broadway, Saratoga Springs Through Sunday, Dec. 29: Classless Society. Classless Society explores class today

lecture, 7 p.m., Friday, Feb. 7, Saint Joseph Hall Auditorium, 985 Madison Ave., Albany.

Opalka Gallery 140 New Scotland Ave., Albany sage.edu/opalka (518) 292-7742 Through Sunday, Dec. 15: An Armory Show Michael Oatman and Kenneth Ragsdale. A talk and installation walkthrough with Ken Ragsdale and Michael Oatman will begin at 6:30 p.m., accompanied by an installation process video by Kelly Jones and Jacqueline Lynch and the exhibition catalogue release.

Through Sunday, March 2: The Sage Colleges Art and Design Faculty Show. Opening reception: Feb. 7.

Skidmore College Schick Art Gallery

THE ESTHER MASSRY GALLERY in Albany presents A Strange Place We Call Home: Patti Smith and Other Things, featuring photographs by Judy Linn. Starts Jan. 26.

— PHOTO BY JUDY LINN from various social and economic perspectives, including the potential (or lack thereof) for class mobility, the different ways that class is signaled and understood, and the increasing hollowing out of the middleclass stratum.

Through Sunday, Dec. 29: Andy Warhol: I’ll Be Your Mirror. This group of polaroid portraits and prints by legendary American pop artist Andy Warhol (1928— 1987) includes a selection of photographs Warhol took during the 1970s and 1980s as well as portrait silkscreens of artist Joseph Beuys and actor Jane Fonda from the early 1980s.

Through Sunday, Dec. 29: Opener 25: Hildur Asgeirsdottir Jonsson. Exploring the overlap between painting and weaving, Jonsson creates shimmering paintings on woven silk thread inspired by a range of sources, including the unique geology and landscape of her native Iceland.

Through Sunday, June 15: Tang Museum Exhibition: Alumni Invitational 4. This exhibition celebrates the vibrant creative energy of four Skidmore

graduates that span 50 years and a diverse range of mediums.

University Art Museum University at Albany, 1400 Washington Ave., Albany albany.edu/museum Through Saturday, Dec. 14: Kate Gilmore: A Tisket, A Tasket and Suzanne McClelland: Furtive Gesture_CEDEpart2. Videos and installations feature Gilmore’s performative pieces about overcoming challenges and McClelland’s examinations of language and gestures.

Waterford Museum

2 Museum Lane, Waterford (518) 238-0809 or waterfordmuseum.com Through Saturday, March 1: The Waters Keep Rising: Scrapbook of the 1913 Flood.

Williams College Williams College Museum of Art 15 Lawrence Hall Drive, Williamstown, Mass. wcma.org (413) 597-2429 Through Sunday, Dec. 22: Early Anselm Kiefer: Selections from

the Hall Collection and Kiefer Studio. Early Anselm Kiefer includes important and rarely seen artist books, woodcuts, watercolors, and small-scale oil paintings drawn from the Hall Collection, in addition to key books from the artist’s studio.

This focused survey is being held alongside Anselm Kiefer, a long-term installation of sculpture and paintings.

Galleries Colonie Town Library 629 Albany Shaker Road, Albany (518) 458-9274 Through Monday, Dec. 30: 2013 — Holiday Show & Sale Colonie Art League. Artists of the Colonie Art League present 100+ paintings plus many

small original works for exhibit and sale.

Esther Massry Gallery Massry Center for the Arts The College of Saint Rose 1002 Madison Ave., Albany strose.edu/gallery (518) 485-3902 Sunday, Jan. 26 – Friday, Feb. 28: A Strange Place We Call Home: Patti Smith and Other Things. Photographs by Judy Linn. Focused on the 1970s, Judy Linn’s silver halide and digital ink jet prints of Detroit’s adjoining suburbs reveal a city in decline and life in a racially segregated community. Also featured are photographs of American singer-songwriter-poet Patti Smith and friends, before rock stardom, from Linn’s book, Patti Smith 1969 to 1976, published in 2011

by Abrams Image, NY. Book signing, 4:30 p.m. Friday, Feb. 7; reception 5-7 p.m. Friday, Feb. 7;

815 N. Broadway, Saratoga Springs Through Sunday, Dec. 15: Charcoal!. Invitational exhibition of two- and three-dimensional works in charcoal by 12 contemporary artists. The works represent a wide range of styles and subject matter, from moody interiors and atmospheric skyscapes to linear abstractions and figurative pieces that suggest mysterious but compelling narratives.

Through Friday, March 14: Skidmore Student Exhibition.

A guest juror will select from among works completed in 2013

by Skidmore students working in a wide range of media, including original ceramics, communication design, drawing and painting, electronic media, fiber arts, metals, photography, printmaking, and sculpture.

Through Friday, May 2: Graphic Advocacy: International Posters for the Digital Age, 2001-2012.

Curated by Elizabeth Resnick, Massachusetts College of Art and Design.

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Listings compiled by the News & Information Services Department staff: Shannon Fromma, CJ Lais, Jennifer Patterson, Azra Haqqie and Bebe Nyquist. Calendars are compiled about six weeks before delivery, which is the first Sunday of April, June, September and December.

To view a complete list of events, or to submit a listing, go to events.timesunion.com. For more information, call 454-5420.

timesunion.com/explore 11

our backyard

five places to celebrate winter

PHOTO BY PAUL BUCKOWSKI / TIMES UNION ARCHIVES

winter’s best five

by genevieve scarano

1Empire State Plaza Ice Rink

It’s an old standby, but we can’t get enough (free!) ice skating at the Empire State Plaza skating rink. Open till 8 p.m. every day through March, this is activity for lovebirds as well as happy, energetic kids and grownups. Look for the snackbar and affordable skate rentals.

OPEN: Every day from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m., November 23-March 3 ADMISSION: Free to skate; skate rentals: $3 per child/$4 for adults CONTACT: 518-474-2418, albany.com

Light 2 Schenectady Opera Company

Alongside titans like Proctors and the Palace Theater, the Capital Region is home to many smaller theater groups and companies. The Schenectady Light Opera Company is one such group: Founded in 1926, SLOC got its start with concerts and short operettas, then moved to Gilbert and Sullivan and musical theater.

This season, check out You’re A Good Man, Charlie Brown (Dec. 6-15), Caroline, or Change (Feb. 7-16)

12 EXPLORE

and The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee (March 21-30).

OPEN: Check schedule for showtimes ADMISSION: $18-28 CONTACT: 877-350-7378, sloctheater.org

3

The Linda WAMC’s Performing Arts Center

The Linda is a great place for independent local art, theater and music. It’s here you’ll find upcoming artists, standup comedy, and short plays. This winter, check out the West Point Band’s Jazz Knights and Grammy-winning folk-pop singer/songwriter Seth Glier, performing with Antje Duvekot, who makes pretty folk songs as well as drawings.

OPEN: Events vary this winter; call or visit website for more information ADMISSION: Varies CONTACT: 518-465-5233, wamcarts.org

4

Capital Holiday Lights in the Park

If you haven’t taken a walk or drive through this

regional fav in Washington Park, you haven’t really experienced the holidays. Besides the over-the-top holiday light display, check out the Washington Park Lakehouse for activities and refreshments for the family. All proceeds benefit PAL’s (Albany Police Athletic League) youth programs.

OPEN: Nov. 29-Jan. 3.

ADMISSION: Free for pedestrians, $15 per passenger vehicle CONTACT: 518-435-0392, albanycapitalholidaylights.com

5

Saratoga Automobile Museum

You don’t have to be a car buff to enjoy the Saratoga Automobile Museum. Exhibits cover the history of automobiles, racing artifacts and even an Andy Warhol “art car” installation, which is a big deal.

OPEN: December to February hours are Wednesday - Sunday 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. (See website for other times of year.)

ADMISSION: $8.50 for adults, $6 for students 17+ with ID, $6 for senior adults, 65+ and active military, $4 for children ages 6-16, free for children under 6 CONTACT: 518-587-1935, saratogaautomuseum.org E

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from our hands to yours making pottery locally for 65 years

design inspiration a destination home store

bennington, vt open every day 800.205.8033 benningtonpotters.com

see your dishes being made play house in our store

music

travelin’ woman

dar williams talks songwriting and cities

by michael hamad » photo courtesy of the artist

M

ost of us, it’s fair to say, have a sheltered sense of the life of a traveling musician.

On the one hand, we imagine it to be isolating; it’s lonely being away from family and friends. Then again, we imagine it’s pure gold for songwriters, that the experiences you encounter, the people you meet on the road lend inspiration.

Dar Williams, who performs at the Egg in Albany on Feb. 7, certainly knows the ins and outs of road life. The activist/musician has been traveling and performing since the early ’90s, criss-crossing the country after releasing her first full album, The Honesty Room, for Razor & Tie, her longtime label. Once part of the burgeoning, influential Lilith Fair scene, Williams has traveled and recorded with legendary singer-songwriters Joan Baez, Loudon Wainwright and the Indigo Girls. Last year, she released In the Time of Gods, an album of songs pairing relevant social and cultural issues to Greek myths she grew up reading.

“It is what it is, and it’s what I’m used to, so there’s no question about it,” Williams says, speaking about the touring life from a stop in Edmonton, Alberta. “It’s really just, ‘What do I do with that?’ I don’t really have the luxury of loneliness at this time, because there’s so much to do. … It’s either:

14 EXPLORE

find things that inspire me, do something with the things that inspire me, or engage myself with one of the 16 writing projects that I need to be doing right now.”

Those projects are seemingly endless. Williams blogs about the environmental impacts of the loss of bees for the Huffington Post, and now needs to write up a new report on the subject. She’s teaching more, doing more. She’s a busy mother and wife. “The challenge is to keep getting out and seeing new things, which I have been doing,” she says.

On her current tour, which took her to the Pacific coast and north to Canada before bringing her back East, Williams was familiar with most of the towns and venues. When she arrives at, say, the Egg, she retains a sense memory of what went down the last time she played here. Those memories affect subsequent visits, often in pedestrian ways. “I always remember when there’s a great sound system, which there is [at the Egg],” she says. “And I remember some people were experiencing a speed bump about seeing shows at the Egg, when they were more used to doing the church folk show. But every time I’ve been back — it was 14 years ago, I think, the first time I played there — people have gotten more accustomed to it. The parking’s really easy.”

Williams remembers the bad stuff too: a nasty backstage manager (not at the Egg), a bad sound system, horrible parking, lame restaurants, and so on. On tour, Williams shakes up her setlist depending where she is, tweaking it according to what’s going on

around her. She maintains a hyper-local awareness; she can’t imagine playing in Albany, for example, without doing “The Hudson,� a song from her 2005 album My Better Self. (Which also means she’ll leave out another song that sounds like “The Hudson.�) If it’s not a regional choice of songs, it might be political: venues or towns closely aligned to certain causes or historical events. “There’s probably a core of about 15 songs, at least half of which will make it into the show somehow,� Williams says, “but everything else is up for grabs.�

She estimates she’s written about 100 songs. Another 10 or so are covers. “Some of those songs are doing really well in the archives. They’re happily situated there. Then there are about 40-50 songs that are in regular rotation, that don’t require I pull something really wild out of my hat.�

Williams isn’t terribly prolific; she tries to write keepers, and that requires time. Often it’s a slow-go; when she teaches songwriting, she encourages her students to search for the right line or chord change, to wait for it. “I always thought it was OK to take my time to finish things the way they needed to be finished. But it does drive me a little crazy.â€? The payoff comes after you’ve sung a song 500 times: “You realize you’re glad you didn’t settle for the throwaway line‌ It’s kind of one of these weird, magical coincidences. Sometimes the line that drives you most crazy is meant to be replaced with the ‘aha’ moment.â€?

Williams recalled working on a line for the song “End of the Summer,� from the 1997 album of the same name (her third for Razor & Tie), during a five-hour road trip, in between playing the radio and trying not to fall asleep. “All I wrote was, ‘It’s the end of the summer when you hang the flowers up to dry,� she says. “It’s a metaphor for when it’s time to turn an experience into a memory, when you aren’t quite ready for it and that’s it — out of hours of driving, I wrote one line. And I thought: ‘That’s a good day.’�

Now reaching the end of the touring cycle behind In The Time of Gods, questions about the next release are inescapable. Williams plans to return to the studio in the spring, with a new release planned for autumn. Songs from her first decade, she says, revolved around relationships with authority, power, autonomy, divinity and so on. But her latest compositions revolve around relationships between people. “I usually can’t tell if there’s a theme to an album until way after I’ve done it,� Williams says. “But I’m just in a place right now where I’m recognizing that these towns that are evolving around me — I’ve been in over 10 new places, some of which are the first time these concert venues have existed — are picking up steam.� Their growth, she says, comes not because of ideology or power structure, but rather because residents talk to each other at the farmers market or while waiting to pick up their kids from school. “The transformation comes from the culture of just hanging out in conversation.�

It would make a great book, and Williams is working on that. What started as a 3,000-word think-piece grew to 8,000 words, and now Williams said she’s looking for a publisher, one equipped to deal with the quirks of a touring musician.

A touring musician who spends a great deal of time talking with sociologists and city planners. “It seems like there are all these building blocks that I see in cities that go from nothing, resigned, to hopeful, to very happening,â€? Williams says. “It’s influenced my songwriting. ‌ I’m really interested in these smaller relationships. ... In general, I’d say this country is on a really, really good curve.â€?

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DAR WILLIAMS, Feb. 7, 8 p.m., at The Egg, Albany. Tickets are $28. Call (518) 473-1845 or visit theegg.org.

Come Explore Bennington Vermont this Winter!

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Works by Clifford Adams Bayard Arthur Gibbes Burton George Loftus Noyes April 12 through June 17

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entertainment

dinner music A

alton brown brings his culinary variety show to schenectady

by john adamian photo courtesy magicspace entertainment

lton Brown is a little like the They Might Be Giants of food television. Basically he’s got culinary geek chic down to an art. Or maybe a science. To make another musical comparison farther back in MTV history, Brown — the bespectacled boyish host and commentator from Iron Chef America, author of numerous books, and host of his own shows — is maybe more like Thomas Dolby of “She Blinded Me With Science” fame. Brown, perhaps more so than any other food TV celebrity, often deploys science — chemistry and physics as well as plant and animal biology — to explain the mechanics of cooking and flavor.

Brown, who is bringing his Alton Brown Live! Edible Inevitable Tour to Schenectady in February, answered some questions from EXPLORE not long ago, from Palm Desert, Calif., where he was preparing to start his tour.

Food television has launched or enhanced the careers of many celebrity chefs — think Nigella Lawson, Rachael Ray and Mario Batali. Reality TV cooking competitions have transformed high-stress kitchen scenarios into successful primetime series.

But what could be the most unexpected permutation of the food-centric entertainment trend is the age of traveling culinary variety shows. The popularity of ABC’s The Chew — which features Batali and other food celebrities — has demonstrated that not only will American TV viewers eat up shows with accessible cooking instructions, but they’ll also tune in to programs where people merely talk about food. And now Brown’s show, following in the footsteps of Eric Ripert and Anthony Bourdain, who have turned a night of kitchen-centric repartee into a kind of theater, is the newest in line of culinary stand-up and performance. Upping the ante a little, Brown will be singing and playing songs about cooking and eating as part of the deal.

“It’s a culinary variety show complete with strange food demos of unusual size, puppets, and live food songs,” says Brown. “I sing and play guitars and might break out a saxophone before the night is over.”

For many of us, food is for eating. It’s not necessarily entertaining to watch people make it when we don’t get to enjoy it. But Brown is like the famous sportscaster Red Barber in that he takes something people wish to experience with one sense — fans want to see a ballgame, and

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food fanatics long to taste the stuff chefs make — and transforms it into a verbal experience. That’s not easy. Particularly with food. (If you’ve ever tried to describe crunchiness or saltiness without repeating yourself, you know what I mean.) Brown, who’s a master of conveying the sense of bustle in a hectic kitch-

2013-2014 SEASON

urtain Call T H E A T R E

ALTON BROWN LIVE! THE EDIBLE INEVITABLE TOUR, Thursday, Feb. 13, 8 p.m. at Proctors, 432 State St., Schenectady. Tickets are $20-$125. Call (518) 346-6204 or visit proctors.org. en, or of explaining what a technique such as searing does to a piece of meat, points to the difficulty of “describing heat” as one of his recurring challenges.

But Brown, who got his start in music videos (he did one for R.E.M.!) and cinematography, is a multimedia kind of guy, and so the cross-platform logic of his career makes sense. He’s that rare guy who can seem super smart and funny, and who can still make things approachable for regular folks. He’s tasted a lot of food over the years, and cooked a lot too. On Iron Chef America, Brown has hovered over chefs taking unusual ingredients and working against the clock.

He’s seen all kinds of crazy techniques. He’s seen expert chefs blow it. He’s seen perfect pieces of fish botched by strained attempts at fanciness. And Brown is a reliable voice of reason. If he spies someone making questionable use of yucca root, for instance, he’ll let the viewers know.

When asked about the mistakes that even world-class chefs make, Brown says that sometimes culinary wizards can undermine all their creativity by using “not enough salt.” And he’s not a big fan of “inedible garnishes” either. Despite his scientific bent, Brown is also a champion of the straight-ahead and simple in the kitchen. I asked him what food or cooking trend he thought was most overrated and he said “sous vide” (the popular technique of cooking meats using vacuum-sealed bags in carefully calibrated warm-water baths to insure even temperatures). “Hands down,” says Brown.

Having hosted shows about food, written books about cooking, and traveled the country eating all kinds of deliciousness, Brown has a pretty good sense of what kind of culinary obsessions are popping up and taking hold around America. And says the locavore ethos is not going away.

“The local trend is the biggest movement in the U.S., culinary-wise,” says Brown. “I also think more and more people are going to be going out of their way to take culinary classes specific to particular foods and cuisines.”

But if you’re just getting started on your culinary education — if you don’t know sous vide from V-8 juice, and if you don’t have much interest in skinning small critters — Brown still has some tips for the humble cook at home who just wants to improve his or her game a bit.

“Learn to cook eggs,” he says. “Everything else will come into place. Oh, and learn to season, meaning learn when and how to salt your food during cooking.”

Brown assured us that he cooks “darn tasty stuff” for his family at home, but he also said that the standard items you’ll find in his refrigerator are “always: hummus, clarified butter, lard and tonic water.” That’s a list that conjures some peculiar combinations.

Adding to the mad-scientist/southern-gentleman image that Brown often conveys, he says that his all-time favorite cookbook is “The 1962 edition of The Joy of Cooking … because it’s got diagrams of how to skin a squirrel.”

Whether Brown’s fans can expect any squirrel-skinning at his show is doubtful, but perhaps a song about it. At any rate, he’s promised some extreme food experimentation as part of the show, and those in the front rows will be given ponchos to protect them from any of the mess that might be flying.

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twitter making a few lists before your trip can make you feel like a local, whatever your destination by john adamian » illustration by tyswan stewart

18 EXPLORE

Then you can begin assembling and curating your list. If you’re going to Chicago, say, try typing in something like “Chicago guide” in the search field and seeing what you discover. That will get you @TimeOutChicago, @redeyechicago, @chicagomusic, @chicagomag and a bunch more. To add any of those feeds to your list, just click on the little silhouette next to the “follow” button, and select “add or remove from lists.” And you’re on your way.

If you’re keen to check out live music and entertainment, you’re off to a good start. Say you want to scope out Chicago galleries in a blitz weekend of art-viewing, type in “Chicago galleries” and you’ll get @ChiGaleryNews (Chicago

PARIS PHOTO: THOMAS LAUNOIS/FOTOLIA.

T

ravel has changed — it’s been rewired, really — just like almost everything else in the digital era. The Internet and the advent of bargain ticket sites basically put an end to the era of the travel agent. The smartphone has made it possible not only to snap pictures and video pretty much all the time, of course, and also to find your way in a strange city or consult websites and blogs with insights and tips from seasoned explorers and locals, but now, with Twitter, travelers can get minute-by-minute updates about what’s happening in just about any city, with a crew of ground-level experts.

All it takes is a few minutes poking around on Twitter before your trip — or even once you’re there, if you’re a poor planner. You can assemble a special “list” specifically for your trip, and while you’re away you can follow a stream of inthe-know tweeters who’ll keep you plugged in to real-time events, specials, mini festivals, tasting menus, wine dinners, ticket deals, impromptu art openings, author readings, free screenings or last-minute theater bargains.

My wife and I learned about the pleasures of traveling with Twitter this summer when we took a trip to London. It was our first time there, and we knew there would be tons to do. We didn’t want to miss anything just because we didn’t know it was happening. So I made a London list on Twitter a few weeks before our trip, as we were trying to zero in on what we might do.

If you’re new to Twitter, just set up an account, go to your profile page and click on “Lists;” then select “Create List.” You’ll need to name your list, and Twitter will ask you to describe the list, in case other people want to check it out, too. (You can choose to keep your list private, but remember, this is just a collection of already-public posts by others on Twitter.)

Gallery News), a feed that’s packed with openings, expos, fairs, festivals and last chances to catch exhibits.

The same is true for gastronomic travelers and food events. If you want to know about new and cool restaurants, hip cocktail bars, a spot to grab late-night tapas, awesome but out-of-the-way Mexican restaurants, and food trucks, you might start with @Chicago_Gourmet, where you’ll find info about truffle-tasting menus or craft-beer festivals, for instance.

Now, Chicago is a world-class city, of course, and visitors are naturally going to be able to find just about anything there. But what about smaller burgs? If you’re going down south, you might find a Twitter stream like @exploregeorgia, that will give a flood of statewide tweets for the Peach State. To bore down deeper, just click on who they follow, or who follows them, and you might find individual boosters or hyper-caffeinated locals who seem to know everything. In Connecticut, for example, you might find the stream of someone like @CTGirlAboutTOwn, which is loaded with music and arts info.

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n our London trip, the London-centric Twitter feed made us feel as if we could pretend we were old pros at exploring the city — an illusion all travelers wish to cultivate. But beyond the sense of comfort and being-pluggedin, we discovered events we just wouldn’t have known about, things that were totally up our alley, such as the walking tour of Pre-Raphaelite South London, which started at one of designer William Morris’s old houses and also included lots of points of interest to English lit buffs, with spots pertaining to medieval pilgrimage routes such as those in The Canterbury Tales.

Some studies suggest that part of the joy we get from travel and vacations is in the anticipatory pleasure in thinking about our future trips before we even leave town. That’s why it’s been suggested that the longer in advance we can book and plan our trips not only helps us get a good rate on flights and hotels, but it also increases our thrills because we spend more time in the lead-up to the big vacation.

Consider the making of your travel-specific Twitter list to be a way you can start capitalizing on the relaxing dividends of vacation before you ever actually pack a suitcase.

Oh, and if you’re one of those people who are just too busy (or lazy?) to even think about poking around on social media in advance of a vacation that you can barely plan for to begin with, consider this: Twitter has pre-made lists — assembled by others just like you, travelers and locals alike — that you can just subscribe to with next to zero effort.

For instance, if you’ve got a trip to Los Angeles, you can go to @timeoutla’s Twitter page and select “lists.” The publication has assembled a Twitter list of feeds and updates from Time Out’s 101 Things to Do In L.A. list. Any tweet on that list is from a venue or event that Time Out has already given its thumbs-up, in a way. You’ll have plenty to keep you busy.

One other perk of jumping into Twitter lists before you travel, as with all things social-media, is that Twitter is a self-promotional universe, and so all of those informational sites and publications want nothing more than to have greater numbers of followers and to be included on lists like the one you would be assembling. And Twitter seems to sanction and encourage communication among total strangers, so you might find the creator of the Twitter feed announcing, say, the best beer gardens in St. Paul, to be thanking you for following them and following you in return. And pretty soon you’ll have a network of local insider followers that you could even direct message (use good sense) and ask for specific pointers and tips. It’s like having an army of travel agents. E

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art WENDELL MINOR, “LOOK TO THE STARS ,” 2009. COVER ILLUSTRATION FOR “LOOK TO THE STARS” BY BUZZ ALDRIN, G.P. PUTNAM’S SONS, THE PENGUIN GROUP. WATERCOLOR AND GOUACHE ON PAPER. NEW BRITAIN MUSEUM OF AMERICAN ART

wendell minor’s america flipping through history with a noted book illustrator

by alan bisbort

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or half a century, roughly from the 1920s to the 1970s, Norman Rockwell was America’s artist. Not America’s best artist or America’s leading artist, necessarily, but the artist whose images most defined who we collectively were or hoped we were as a nation. Wendell Minor, of Washington, Conn., may be Rockwell’s heir apparent. Though working primarily in the fields of book illustration and children’s literature, Minor’s gentle but consistent, persistent and even insistent vision portrays the spirit of this place called America.

It is fitting, then, that the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Mass., now features a six-month exhibition called Wendell Minor’s America: 25 Years of

20 EXPLORE

Children’s Book Art. Wendell Minor’s America is the one we would like to think we live inside.

Here or — depending on your outlook — there in that America trains still blast plumes of steam, kids run in pastures (unplugged from electronic devices), the nation still has great leaders to whom we look for guidance and inspiration, and the natural world is treated with respect if not reverence. These are, Minor says, “The better angels of our nature … I don’t think that’s Pollyannaish. It’s true.”

Just a quick look of the nearly 40 children’s books that Minor has illustrated is a testament to an America with great natural beauty and abundant resources but also a history as heroic as it is tragic. Minor’s subjects are as solid as the

rural Illinois heartland where he put down his boyhood roots: Abraham Lincoln, Henry David Thoreau, John James Audubon, Amelia Earhart, Rachel Carson and Sitting Bull, not to mention two collaborations with his friend Buzz Aldrin, the second man to walk on the moon.

In addition to writing and illustrating biographies, Minor has also used his art to extol the majesty of America’s rich natural wonders, in books about Yosemite, the Mojave Desert, the Grand Canyon, the Everglades, the Arctic regions and, most recently, the virgin forests of redwoods and sequoias in the Pacific Northwest. He is, in fact, collaborating with Steve Sillett and Marie Antoine, experts on “upper story ecology” who have, he says, “climbed every tall tree known and even got married in the trees.” Minor is dedicating his book on sequoias to the couple as “protectors of old growth forests” and “true unsung heroes.”

In short, Minor does not just create “pretty pictures.” He makes it clear about the need to protect these natural treasures, or lose them forever. One of his favorite quotations is from da Vinci: “Nature is the best teacher.”

In the handsome 144-page catalog that accompanies the Rockwell exhibition, children’s literature historian Leonard Marcus writes, “One can usually tell when an illustrator has relied on file photographs and other secondhand sources for pictorial information. Not Minor, for whom illustration is an act of total immersion. The result of his fastidious effort is art that yields a palpable sense of being in the presence of precious, wonderful things.”

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land speaking. Minor loved the wide-open American landscape and had made several painting expeditions, on his own dime, throughout the Southwest. But Siebert’s poem unlocked a door somewhere inside him, offering him a new framework around which to paint.

“I suddenly realized I could be a fine artist and do these children’s books too,” Minor says. “I think of myself primarily as a fine artist who has established a foothold in children’s literature. I could gain a wider audience in books than in a gallery. I now think of my books as little mobile art galleries. Because I was that kid stuck out in the hinterlands bereft of visual stimulation and art, I know how a book can deliver that thing we all hunger for. I hear from mothers now who say, ‘That was my favorite book when I was a kid, and now it’s my son’s favorite book’.”

Among the more recent work that will be on view at the Rockwell Museum are a number of original illustrations from the biography of Edward Hopper on which he collaborated with Robert Burleigh (Edward Hopper Paints His World).

Hopper had as profound an influence on Minor in his early professional career as Rockwell had had when he was a boy.

“I lived in New York City for 23 years, 18 of them (1973-1991) in Greenwich Village near where Hopper lived and worked. Every time I went out for a walk, I saw a Hopper. ‘Nighthawks’ -- everybody thinks that this night café existed as Hopper painted it. They think it was a place at 7th Avenue and Greenwich Avenue. Sure, that was a place he was aware of, but he also brought in the ‘prow’ of the Flatiron Building. He always claimed he hated illustration but learning it gave him the ability to assemble images from diverse sources, which is an illustrator’s way of working. For some reason, I identified with him in his way of synthesizing and simplifying. Hopper said he always just wanted to paint sunshine on the side of a house. He disparaged the modern art movements. He’s proven to me that staying the course really does pay off in the end. And it may

he connection between Wendell Minor and Norman Rockwell is not just a convenient “hook” for this major Minor exhibition. Rockwell was a lifeline to him as a boy.

“Growing up in Illinois, we didn’t have much reading material in the house beyond Field and Stream magazine and the Bible,” says Minor, whose parents were both raised on farms. “I’d run down to the drugstore just to look at the covers of magazines, always watching out for the ones done by Norman Rockwell. I remember one in particular, called ‘Breaking Home Ties’ that I » WENDELL MINOR’S AMERICA, Nov. 9, 2013 through May 26, 2014 at the Norman Rockwell saw when I was about 10. It pictured a family Museum, 9 Massachusetts 183, Stockbridge, Mass. Call (413) 298-4100 or visit nrm.org. sending their son off on a bus to college. And I had a distinct feeling even at that age that I was going to go away. I didn’t take a bus — my father drove me to O’Hare Airport — but it was the same feeling of breaking home ties.”

Minor did, in fact, go away. After graduating from Ringling School of Art and Design in Sarasota, he moved to New York City and found work within the publishing industry. Working out of a Greenwich Village studio, he became a much sought-out artist within New York publishing circles for his illustrations on books by the likes of David McCullough, Pat Conroy and Fannie Flagg. Eventually, he would illustrate the book jackets for nearly 2,000 publications. Even so, he itched for something new.

“I was contemplating getting out of the book business completely and just concentrating on doing work for galleries,” recalls Minor. “This was eight years before I did my first children’s book.”

But then he got a phone call about a manuscript for a book called Mojave, the text of WENDELL MINOR, “I AM GOING TO TELL YOU A STORY,” 1995. ILLUSTRATION FOR “EVERGLADES” BY which was a poem by Diane Siebert about the JEAN CRAIGHEAD GEORGE, HARPERCOLLINS PUBLISHERS. WATERCOLOR AND GOUACHE ON PAPER.

timesunion.com/explore 21

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Every Picture Tells A Story!

Julie © Wendell Minor. Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George, (HarperCollins, 1974)

Wendell Minor

Stockbridge Mainstreet at Christmas (Home for Christmas) detail, Norman Rockwell, 1967. Norman Rockwell Museum Collections. ©NRFA

The Enchanted Wood, © Ruth Sanderson. The Enchanted Wood by Ruth Sanderson. (Golden Wood Studio, 1999)

Norman Rockwell

nrm.org • open year round • Stockbridge, MA • 413-298-4100

Ruth Sanderson

art not even pay off in your lifetime.”

While living in New York, Minor taught for years at the School of Visual Arts.

“I tell my students to look at their career as an arc; the arc is far more important than the various things that come up along the way. I can’t tell you how many biographies I’ve read that all drive home this same theme — how to maintain an honest voice.”

Minor is humbled by the exhibition at the Rockwell Museum. “It’s a great honor to show at a place that houses the collections and work of one of my childhood heroes,” he says. “This show means a tremendous amount to me as a milestone, taking stock of where I’ve been and where I still hope to go. It’s an unusual privilege while one is alive to have a retrospective of this size.”

Still, he’s a bit taken aback by the event. “It took a bit of chutzpah to name the show Wendell Minor’s America,” he says with a laugh. “I still have one foot stuck in an Illinois cornfield. I don’t forget my roots. Those early days of childhood development have a disproportionate importance on the arc of a whole life.

You never forget them no matter how old you get.

A longtime member of the Rockwell Museum board of trustees, Minor has been working for years to expand the museum’s Center for American Visual Studies into the largest repository of American narrative art in the world. “I’m trying to

expand the visual America and send it along,” he explains. “I am the last generation with a relationship to people like Rockwell. Everything beyond me will have to be anecdotal. I want to get it right.”

The fact that his most direct audience is primarily children — from tots to young adults — only underscores the importance of his mission, at least in his eyes. “It’s simple, really,” he says. “I adhere to that core belief of bringing American history and nature to the next generation. I understand that the number one priority with my art, or art in general, is communication with the audience.”

He fears that children are being cut off from nature and from experiences unmediated by electronic devices. “There’s a slow reawakening of consciousness, I think, because it’s really no coincidence that a technological overload has led to an epidemic of ADD. And giving drugs to kids to treat this is a misuse of what a child is all about, which is energy, imagination and sometimes getting into mischief. Look at the biographies. So many accomplished people were troubled children. Every child is unique and that should be applauded.”

At 70, Minor does not plan on slowing down. “There are so few of us doing this anymore. It’s a lonely pursuit but it’s the path I’ve chosen and I haven’t deviated from it. The trend of the minute has never tempted Minor. My mantra is ‘stay the course,’ look to the long run.”

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WENDELL MINOR, “ABRAHAM LINCOLN COMES HOME,” 2008. COVER ILLUSTRATION FOR “ABRAHAM LINCOLN COMES HOME” BY ROBERT BURLEIGH, HENRY HOLT AND CO. WATERCOLOR, GOUACHE AND PENCIL ON PAPER. NORMAN ROCKWELL MUSEUM COLLECTION.

timesunion.com/explore 23

off the beaten path

oldschool ski spots by stacey morris

J

PHOTO BY CINDY SCHULTZ / TIMES UNION ARCHIVE

looking for a different skiing experience? consider a classic ski slope

eremy Davis remembers vividly the day his quest began for a more authentic skiing experience. It was in 1991 on a family ski vacation in New Hampshire that the teenager came upon an abandoned ski area called Mt. Whittier.

“It was fascinating to me that such a large mountain still had the base lodge, gondola, all the old remnants of a ski center,” says the Massachusetts native.

Davis went to college in Vermont, where his love of skiing intensified, as did his intrigue with lost ski areas. In 2000, he founded the New England Lost Ski Areas Project, a nonprofit group dedicated to preserving shuttered ski areas. The project’s website (nelsap.org) estimates there are upward of 600 lost ski centers in the New England region.

But Davis remains an avid skier, not merely a ski historian, and he’s equally passionate about the thriving number of smaller, “classic” ski centers that exist in the tri-state region. “We have sections on the site for each state for open ski areas, to let visitors know of classic ski experiences that still exist,” says the

24 EXPLORE

MAPLE SKI RIDGE

Saratoga Springs resident. “I also promote them on our discussion forum on Snowjournal.com and on our Facebook page, facebook.com/lostskiareas.

“I want to make sure existing classic ski centers don’t become lost, says Davis, who is senior meteorologist for Weather Routing Inc. in Glens Falls and on-air meteorologist for LOOK TV. “There’s a huge number of skiers who love these little places and want them to stick around, and many are a short drive from Albany,” he continues. “They have fond memories. They may have met their spouses there, or skied there after school. It’s Americana, similar to those who like drivein movies or old diners.”

Hallmarks of mom-and-pop-style ski centers include a family- and community-oriented atmosphere, more affordable lift tickets and season passes, and a more homespun feel to the facilities. Some are even staffed by volunteers, funded by donations, and transport skiers up the slopes via rope tows powered by off-the-shelf motors.

Queensbury resident Danny Lombardo is a fan of family-owned ski centers

such as West Mountain and Hickory Ski Center because of their reasonable prices. “The ski industry has gotten overpriced to the point of absurdity,” he says.

“You could fly to Europe for what it costs to take a family of four skiing for the weekend.”

“Almost every classic ski center has some kind of lodge, but with an authentic feel, not cookie-cutter. Sometimes it’s just an older building with a big fireplace,” says Davis. “They all serve food, but it’s not the $15 cheeseburger, and you won’t see huge, slope-side homes.”

He adds that most have lifts, but they’re usually a lower-tech variety. “Chair lifts at smaller centers don’t have the high-speed detachable quad chairlifts as they do at Gore or Whiteface, but the smaller centers don’t need them. They’re not as big and it doesn’t take as long to get to the top,” he says. “Some smaller centers have modernized their lifts. Royal Mountain replaced their chair lift within the last decade, and Willard recently added a chair lift.”

He says that most classic ski centers rent ski equipment and offer other activities such as snowboarding and tubing. “Lift tickets at a large resort are typically over $60 for weekends, sometimes a bit lower on weekdays,” says Davis.

“Medium-sized areas in New York and New England typically charge $40-$60 for a ticket, depending on day of the week. Smaller areas like Royal or Willard are usually under $40. Some small areas like Dynamite Hill in Chestertown are run by volunteers, though non-residents can ski there, too.”

Davis says there are even smaller, private ski areas such as Ski Venture in Glenville (skiventure.org) that charge a fee for seasonal membership. Donna Gagnon, a native of Corinth, plans on opening a private, affordably-priced ski area this winter at her Prinpaw Preserve retreat center on Potash Mountain in Lake Luzerne (downloadyourzen.com). “There aren’t a lot of places that offer diverse mountain trail skiing in the area,” says Gagnon. “This place is so peaceful; it’s my zen. And I want others to enjoy it too.”

Clifton Park residents Betty and Alex Ma and their family routinely ski the resorts of Vermont, but can often be found on the slopes of Willard Mountain in Greenwich. “The price of a lift ticket for a couple at a fancy mountain resort is close to what one can get for a season ticket at Willard,” says Betty, whose son

OAK MOUNTAIN PHOTO BY STEVE JACOBS / TIMES UNION ARCHIVE

HICKORY SKI CENTER PHOTO BY JEREMY DAVIS

Classic Ski Areas Near the Capital District Blandford Ski Area in Blandford, Mass.

41 2nd Division Road Blandford, Mass.

(413) 848-2860 skiblandford.org

Otis Ridge (Berkshires) 159 Monterey Road Otis, Mass.

(413) 269-4445 otisridge.com

Cochran’s Ski Area in Richmond, Vt. 910 Cochran Road Richmond, Vt. (802) 434-2479 cochranskiarea.com

Plattekill Mountain in Roxbury (Catskills) 469 Plattekill Road (607) 326-3500 plattekill.com

Dynamite Hill in Chestertown Dynamite Hill Road (off Route 8) nelsap.org/ny/dynamite.html

Royal Mountain in Caroga Lake 3072 Route 10 (518) 835-6445 royalmountain.com

Hickory Ski Center in Warrensburg 43 Hickory Hill Road (518) 623-5754 hickoryskicenter.com

Schroon Lake Ski Center in Schroon Lake Hoffman Road nelsap.org/ny/schroonlakeskicenter

Maple Ski Ridge in Schenectady 2725 Mariaville Road (518) 381-4700 mapleskiridge.com

West Mountain in Queensbury 59 West Mountain Road (518) 793-6606 skiwestmountain.com

McCauley Mountain Ski Area in Old Forge 300 McCauley Mountain Road (315) 369-3225 mccauleyny.com

Willard Mountain in Greenwich 77 Intervale Road (518) 692-7337 willardmountain.com

Oak Mountain Ski Center in Speculator 141 Novosel Way (518) 548-3606 oakmountainski.com

For more listings, visit Jeremy Davis’ snowjournal.com blog. For more information on classic ski centers in the region, visit nelsap.org, facebook.com/ lostskiareas, nyskiblog.com and saratogaskier.blogspot.com.

timesunion.com/explore 25

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off the beaten path Harrison is a competitive racer. “We do go to fancier places but the friendly people, hometown feel, and economics keep us coming back to Willard.”

“For those starting out, the ski experience can be intimidating,” says Davis. “These smaller centers can really help people ease into skiing in a nonthreatening, family friendly atmosphere.”

But the classic ski centers aren’t just for beginners. Mike Rogge, a senior correspondent for POWDER magazine, grew up near the Adirondacks and regularly skied Hickory Ski Center in Warrensburg.

“I’ll always remember my first time skiing there and how a fresh storm made for some of the most underrated terrain in New York State,” he says. “Even today, after traveling the world for POWDER, the memories of that day serve as my example of pure, unadulterated skiing.”

Rogge says that the financial stigma often associated with skiing keeps many would-be ski lovers from trying it in the first place. “Good, small ski areas are about skiing first, whereas the larger ones tend to look for lucrative real estate deals and turning their ski area into a four-season tourist destination. At POWDER, we call them ‘Little Areas That Rock,’ because they offer an experience that reminds us about all that is beautiful in skiing: being outside with good people and having the time of your life.”

Davis agrees. “Skiing is exhilarating — and it makes you look forward to winter. There’s nothing better than being at the top of a sunny mountain in January and zooming down the slopes,” says Davis. “It’s really a great sport, and there are ways of getting around the high cost of it. Going to a classic ski center is a great way.”

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WILLARD MOUNTAIN PHOTO BY JEREMY DAVIS

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just the two of us

a lovely weekend with a drama queen getting away to new haven, conn.

LIGHTHOUSE POINT PARK PHOTO BY BARBARA MALMBERG/ VISITNEWHAVEN.COM

by alan bisbort

N

ew Haven, Connecticut, is a real drama queen, and this is a good thing. With two renowned regional stages (Long Wharf Theatre, Yale Repertory Theatre), one make-or-break national showcase (The Shubert) plus a major school of drama at Yale University, this city of 125,000 independent-minded souls serves drama for breakfast, lunch and dinner — the perfect backdrop to a romantic weekend, no?

Just ponder some of the people who have walked these sidewalks and stages before your arrival in the Elm City (the elms are gone now, but not the future stars): thespians such as Meryl Streep, Paul Newman, Julie Harris, John Turturro, Stacey Keach, Frances McDormand and Paul Giamatti (whose father, Bart, was Yale University’s president) and playwrights John Guare, Wendy Wasserstein, A.R. Gurney and Thornton Wilder.

The best seat in New Haven’s house, figuratively speaking, is The Study at Yale, located in a beautifully restored building at the heart of Chapel Street. In addition to large and stylish rooms in a lovely and historic neighborhood, The Study is intelligently appointed (think: prep, Yale, classy, smart), with rotating exhibitions of art on its lobby’s naturally-lit walls, a handsome library filled floor-to-ceiling with books by Yale authors and “visiting dignitaries,” a lounge where you can relax in casually elegant style and an on-site top-shelf restaurant (The Heirloom — more below). What could you possibly want for an encore, other than the fact that it’s within walking distance of every single thing mentioned below.

Theatrics will be the theme of this weekend — comedy, farce, mystery but no tragedy please — with the idea of taking in a play or performance at any or all of the city’s many venues. Equally dramatic in scope and content, two world-

class art museums are just one block down Chapel Street, making impulsive forays into civilized tourism as much a must-do as a can’t-avoid. To paraphrase the great Dionysian philosopher George Clinton, free your mind and your body will follow.

F

rom the time it opened in 1914, the Shubert Theater was the place to roadtest new stage productions (especially musicals) before deciding whether to bring them to Broadway. Among the shows that got their debut on the Shubert stage were Oklahoma!, Carousel, South Pacific, The King and I, The Sound of Music, and A Streetcar Named Desire.

Not far behind the Shubert in national prestige is Long Wharf Theatre, which has earned a reputation for innovative and interesting productions. From Nov. 27 to Dec. 22, they are staging the Pulitzer-winning play Fences by August Wilson, the story of a Negro League baseball player who, unlike Jackie Robinson, did not get to break the color line. Just as well-regarded is Yale Repertory Theatre, located in a beautifully converted church practically across the street from The Study at Yale.

New Haven is also steeped in history. When its 250 original settlers under the leadership of Theophilus “But My Friends Call Me Theo” Eaton, Edward Hopkins and the Reverend John Davenport arrived from London in 1638, they, literally, sought a new haven from the old religious wars of Europe, still reeling from the fallout of the Reformation. Nonetheless, they started a different sort of religious war when they set up New Haven “plantation” as a theocracy even more strict in its Biblical guidance than the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The irony here — besides the fact that, today, New Haven is arguably the most liberal

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just the two of us and progressive city in Connecticut — is that the Connecticut Colony was established because its founding settlers had chafed under the restrictions of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. This meant, of course, that when Connecticut Colony was officially created by the Fundamental Orders of 1639, New Haven’s pious founding fathers and scolding church ladies were the odd men out because they wouldn’t relinquish their insistence that “church members onely shall chuse” the civil leaders.

As Connecticut’s one-time lieutenant governor and Renaissance man Odell Shepard (he won a Pulitzer Prize) put it in Connecticut: Past and Present (1939): “For more than twenty years the two colonies, New Haven and Connecticut, remained almost as independent of each other as two separate kingdoms.” Apparently to placate the raw feelings of the Elm City, over the next 172 years, the “united” colony had two capitals, Hartford and New Haven, in which the General Assembly met alternately. As stated, drama queens.

That tradition of apartness still lives in the decidedly independent spirit of this city whose median age is, roughly, 30 (that’s young for the aging state of Connecticut). The pre-Connecticut history lives on at the New Haven Colony Historical Society while the prehistoric era lives on at the Peabody Museum of Natural History (yes, ample evidence confirms dinosaurs once roamed Con-

SHUBERT THEATRE PHOTO BY STEVE BLAZO

if you go…

Visit Here LONG WHARF THEATRE 222 Sargent Dr. 203-787-4282 · longwharf.org YALE REPERTORY THEATRE 1120 Chapel St. 203-432-1234 · yalerep.org YALE CABARET 217 Park St. 203-432-1566 · yalecabaret.org SHUBERT THEATER 247 College St. 203-624-1825 · shubert.com BEINECKE RARE BOOK AND MANUSCRIPT LIBRARY 121 Wall St. 203-432-2977 beinecke.library.yale.edu Since you are headed to Yale campus for a walking tour, you can’t miss the Beinecke, which is smack in the middle of it.

YALE CENTER FOR BRITISH ART 1080 Chapel St. britishart.yale.edu Created through a gift of philanthropist and Yale alumnus Paul Mellon

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with a building designed by the brilliant Louis I. Kahn, this is the only museum in America exclusively devoted to the art of Great Britain.

YALE UNIVERSITY ART GALLERY 1111 Chapel St. 203-432-0600 · artgallery.yale.edu Exceptional temporary shows abound here, such as (until March 9, 2014, Red Grooms: Larger Than Life and Still Life: 1970s Photorealism) but the real lure is the permanent collections, dating back thousands of years and brilliantly showcased in naturally lit galleries.

PEABODY MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY 170 Whitney Ave. 203-432-3775 · peabody.yale.edu NEW HAVEN MUSEUM (aka New Haven Colony Historical Society) 114 Whitney Ave. 203-562-4183 · newhavenmuseum.org GROVE STREET CEMETERY 227 Grove St. grovestreetcemetery.org At the heart of Yale campus, Grove Street Cemetery was America’s first chartered burial ground, created when a yellow fever epidemic made

burials on the city green impossible.

Here lie the mortal remains of Eli Whitney, Noah Webster, Roger Sherman, Lyman Beecher, Charles Goodyear and our old friend Theophilus Eaton, among other eminences.

Eat Here THE HEIRLOOM AT THE STUDY AT YALE 1157 Chapel St. 203-503-3919 · studyatyale.com The chef is proud of the “ingredientdriven” menu at the Heirloom, which means that its entrees change with the seasons. The wine selection here is among the finest in the city, as are the cocktails. This also means, of course, that you will have the finest room service offerings in New Haven, if you choose never to leave the suite. Sweet.

ZINC 964 Chapel St. 203-624-0507 · zincfood.com Its front windows looking out on New Haven Green, Zinc has quickly moved to the forefront of New Haven’s dining scene for its “farmto-table” philosophy, relying on local

food and innovative preparations and presentations. It’s a popular place and crowded on weekends.

PAD THAI 1170 Chapel St. 203-562-0322 · padthai-newhaven.com There are so many Thai restaurants in a three-block range of The Study at Yale that it may be hard to choose.

From personal experience, this one has proven time and again to serve wonderfully prepared food with exceptionally friendly service.

TANDOOR 1226 Chapel Street 203-776-6620 · newhaventandoor.com The same can be said about Indian restaurants within easy reach of The Study. This is another longtime favorite, tried and true, with the added appeal that its dining room is located inside a shiny metallic diner. It’s a great and fun place to grab lunch.

BASTA 1006 Chapel St. 203-772-1715 · bastatrattoria.com An intimate place to dine specializing in “classic Italian tradition.” They go the extra mile to serve only organic foods,

NEW HAVEN GREEN PHOTO BY MICHAEL MELFORD/VISITNEWHAVEN.COM

necticut). Further distinction: New Haven was America’s first planned city, built around nine central squares all intersecting at the central green.

Within a few blocks from historic New Haven Green — named one of the top 10 most beautiful public spaces in America — couples can find everything to guarantee a perfect weekend getaway for just you two. The green is still the best place to begin a walking tour. Here you will find three historic 17th-century places of worship, the most interesting of which is Center Church on the Green, whose underground crypt, with tombstones dating to 1687, is open to visitors but not new customers. To admire these treasures, start at College and Chapel streets, the southwestern corner of the city green (renamed Bishop Tutu Corner), and fan out in any direction. Yale University campus is just a shout away and two of the state’s most consistently interesting art museums are within two blocks, the Yale Center for British Art (1080 Chapel St.) and the Yale University Art Gallery (Chapel and York streets), fresh from one of the most successful expansion projects enjoyed by any American museum. And then there is the architecture that you can love despite itself, like Paul Rudolph’s much maligned, hilariously dysfunctional Yale Art and Architecture Building (180 York St.) or the marbleized flying saucer known as the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library (121 Wall St.).

Shopping opportunities, for once, are enjoyably free of any hint of a mall in

including meat (free-range) and fish (wild, line-caught), handmade Italian cheeses and wines from family-owned Italian vineyards. Because Basta is small, call well ahead for reservations.

CLAIRE’S CORNER COPIA Corner of Chapel and College Streets 203-562-3888 · clairescornercopia.com Claire LaPia has, literally, written the book on vegetarian cuisine; several books, in fact, since this landmark eatery opened in 1975. This offers the full New Haven experience and is a must-visit for lunch.

Finally, New Haven is in the history books for two other culinary distinctions: inventing the pizza and the hamburger. The purveyors of these staples are still around, and seem to be must-visits for tourists.

If you are so inclined, though it will require a car, they are: FRANK PEPE’S PIZZERIA 157-163 Wooster St. 203-865-7602 · pepespizzeria.com LOUIS’ LUNCH: THE BIRTHPLACE OF THE HAMBURGER SANDWICH 261-263 Crown St. 203-562-5507 · louislunch.com

Shop Here PETER INDORF JEWELERS 1022 Chapel St. 203-776-4833 · peterindorf.com DEREK SIMPSON, GOLDSMITH 1094 Chapel St. 203-787-2498 · theshopsatyale.com

Stay Here THE STUDY AT YALE 1157 Chapel St. 203-503-3900 · studyatyale.com OMNI NEW HAVEN HOTEL 155 Temple St. 203-772-6664 · omnihotels.com Large corporate-chain hotel with some luxury appointments, the Omni’s two appeals are its close proximity to The Shubert and the New Haven City Green, and its price (approximately $50-$100 less than a similar room at The Study at Yale).

the heart of the city. Unique and non-name-brand merchandise far outnumbers the ticky tack. The romantically inclined might want to wander down to Peter Indorf Jewelers (1022 Chapel St.) and Derek Simpson, Goldsmith (1094 Chapel St.), conveniently located within an impulsive visit from The Study at Yale. The shop at the British Art Center is one of the best of its kind anywhere. one of the most tastefully-selected in New Haven.

Starbucked out? Despite the presence of this national chain in the heart of Chapel Street, and the gargantuan, ill-advised Panera next door to it, the city has far too many independent coffee shops to list here. A personal fave is Yankee Doodle, at 258 Elm St., which is featured in Bill Griffith’s Zippy comic strips. The really remarkable point is that the same thing can be said for the city’s tea shops (another personal fave is the Irish tea room at the back of Celtica). Willoughby’s Coffee & Tea (258 Church St.) combines the best of both worlds and is a magnet for all walks of life, not just Yalies. Carnivored out? Claire’s (1000 Chapel St.) does as much with vegetarian fare as Picasso did with paint.

Naturally, with all this culture, and a major university next door, there’s a night life to match, from Irish pubs (The Playwright, 144 Temple St.) and friendly saloons (Salty Dog, 29 Center St.) to dance clubs (Oracle, 212 Crown St.), martini bars (Diesel Lounge, 944 State St.) and alternative music venues (Café Nine, at 250 State St., and Toad’s Place, York Street). But if you’re here for a romantic weekend, just the two of you might conclude, wisely, that the most romantic place is the Heirloom lounge back at The Study.

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YALE UNIVERSITY ART GALLERY PHOTO BY ELIZABETH FELICELLA

outdoors THIS STORY originally appeared in Adirondack Explorer magazine.

For information, go to adirondackexplorer.org.

a peek at

peaked mountain story and photos by susan bibeau

I

’m embarrassed to admit this, but I lived in the Adirondacks for close to fifteen years without owning a pair of snowshoes. My husband and I have been such avid skiers that I never considered giving any other mode of winter trekking a try.

“Why snowshoe when you can ski?” was always my pretzel-logic excuse. In a moment of clarity, I finally came to my senses and purchased a pair.

I am now kicking myself for not doing so sooner.

I’ve spent the last few weeks getting comfortable with my new deck-clad feet by climbing, descending and bushwhacking all over the local hill near my home in Saranac Lake. We’ve had some fresh snow overnight so I’m feeling like it’s time to branch out and try a real hike.

It’s still snowing when I set off with my friend and frequent hiking buddy, Michelle Hannon. Since we both spend a good amount of time in and around the High Peaks, we decide that a change of scenery would be nice. We opt for Peaked Mountain on the northeastern edge of the Siamese Ponds Wilderness. The

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Adirondack Mountain Club’s Central Region guidebook describes it as a moderate hike of 7.2 miles round-trip. Sounds perfect!

As we fish-tail into the semi-plowed parking area at the trailhead, it occurs to me that there might actually be such a thing as too much snow. We have been hit with one storm after another in recent weeks, and if my driveway is any indication, it’s going to be deep out in the woods. I offer a silent prayer that someone has broken trail; if not, it’s going to be a long day.

The Peaked Mountain trail begins on the north end of Thirteenth Lake not far from Garnet Hill Lodge, a cross-country skiing center. The trail starts out on the western side and winds through a series of birch glades that hug the shore. Looking down the length of the lake I see that the entire shoreline is ringed with birch. Not surprisingly, there is plenty of evidence of beaver activity. One large tree is chewed more than halfway through and looks like it’s defying the laws of gravity. “Someone has a project to finish when spring comes.” Michelle observes.

After a short distance, the trail climbs away from the shore, and we soon find ourselves on a ridge about 60 feet above the lake. A glance at the map shows

snowshoeing in the siamese ponds wilderness can be the height of adventure

that we are hiking along the base of Little Thirteenth Lake Mountain. In places, large cliffs rise beside the trail, some with enormous ice formations as big as cars. We stop to take photos.

“I wonder why this is called Thirteenth Lake?” I ask. “I didn’t notice an Eleventh or Twelfth Lake on the map.”

“Maybe it’s unlucky!”

“Yikes, I hope not!”

After our outing, we learn that the lake lies within a region once identified as Thirteenth Township. In any event, we do enjoy good luck on our hike, as a previous visitor has indeed packed down the trail. The track is just wide enough for our snowshoes, with the snow on the sides about three feet high. When I step off the trail to take a photo, I sink up to my thigh in fresh powder.

Just under a mile in, the trail turns west and begins a gradual climb along Peaked Mountain Brook. There is so much snow cover that the only evidence of the brook is a subtle depression in the landscape.

Steep ridges rise on either side of us. I wonder if we’re traveling between two eskers. (An esker is a long finger of land formed by glacial deposits.) I check the topo lines on the map, but I’m unsure if that’s what these are. As I’m pondering this Michelle spots an enormous erratic — a large boulder deposited by a glacier. This one is more than 30 feet high.

As we continue up the trail we see six or seven equally big blocks. The heavy snow cover makes them stand out against the landscape, giving the appearance of a sculpture garden.

“It’s like glacier art.” Michelle says. Soon after, we come to a trail on the left that isn’t on our map. A sign indicates that it leads to Hour Pond. We decide to stop here for a quick snack and some water.

One reason I enjoy hiking with Michelle is that she loves to bake and she always packs delicious treats. Today she’s brought homemade granola bars with chocolate, biscuits with ham, and banana gorp cookies. As we munch, the sun begins to peek through the clouds. It’s been snowing and overcast for what seems like weeks, so this is a welcome change. We both turn like morning glories to face the rays.

“It’s amazing how much you miss the sun when you haven’t seen it in a while,” I say.

“I can actually feel the vitamin D!” Michelle replies.

Refreshed from our sunny break, we resume our trek. It’s not long before we reach a marshy clearing that offers our first view of the summit of Peaked Mountain. As we approach Peaked Mountain Pond, which lies below the summit, we pass through three wetlands in all, each more scenic than the last. We stop and take some photos. It’s obvious how Peaked got its name: it looks like a perfect pyramid of rock poking above the trees.

“Wow, it looks windy up there,” I remark.

As we round a bend and begin to climb the final hill to the pond, we hear a roaring sound. When we arrive at the height of land, we are blasted by howling wind and blowing snow. The temperature when we left the car was 20 degrees.

Now it feels as if it’s in the single digits. We struggle to pull our hoods over our heads. The wind has obliterated the path, leaving us somewhat disoriented. I spot a trail marker on a tree ahead, and we hustle across the outlet of the pond and into the brush.

The sparse trees on the shoreline don’t provide much shelter from the whipping gale, but we find a big spruce and hunker down to regroup. It appears that

Directions FROM THE NORTH: Take I-87 (the Northway) to Exit 26 (Pottersville). Follow the Gore Mountain signs to Olmstedville, 7.7 miles from the Northway. Turn left onto NY 28N and go 5.2 miles to NY 28 in North Creek. Turn right and go 5.1 miles to Thirteenth Lake Road (County Route 78). Turn left and go 3.5 miles to a fork. Bear right and go to the parking area.

FROM THE SOUTH: Take I-87 to Exit 23 (Warrensburg). Follow US 9 for 4.0 miles to NY 28. Turn right and go 10.5 miles to Thirteenth Lake Road, then follow directions above.

the packed trail stopped at the pond. The snow in the woods has been sculpted into big drifts by the wind, and I have to stomp around to clear a place for us to stand. I am up to my mid-thigh in places, even with my snowshoes. The other troubling development is that we can’t find any more trail markers. We retreat to the last one we saw and scan the landscape in all directions. As it turns out, the trail leading from here to the summit is unmarked, according to our map.

The prospect of breaking trail through deep snow without markers, coupled with the wind and dropping temperature, gives us pause. We weigh the pros and cons and decide it’s probably wise to turn around.

According to the guidebook, the trail from the pond to the summit is 0.6 miles and gains 669 feet in elevation. It is described as rugged and very steep in places. The summit has extremely fine views in all directions. Too bad we won’t get to see for ourselves today.

As we make our way back through the marsh we get a final glimpse of the rocky peak. “I feel like it’s mocking us.” Michelle says.

“It hasn’t seen the last of us; we’ll be back.”

On our way back along the brook we are once again sheltered from the wind.

Now I feel a little sheepish for bailing out. We decide that the point of the trip was to have fun and spend some time enjoying the snowy woods. Like the old adage says, “Sometimes the journey is the destination.” Since the mountain is not going anywhere, we vow to come back in the warmer months and give it another go. As long as Michelle brings baked goodies, this seems like a fine idea to me.

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last call

suvir saran » why i love san francisco by stacey morris » photo by tyler murphy

W

ashington County resident Suvir Saran’s status as celebrity chef and cookbook author means he routinely travels the country for book-signings and lectures, but he’s most at home on the 20-plus acres of bucolic farmland he shares with partner Charlie Burd, a family of alpacas, sundry honking geese, and a dotedupon flock of heritage chickens. The farm is actually the star of Saran’s latest work, Masala Farm, which may be the first cookbook to glorify farm-to-table eating through the Technicolor palate of Indian cuisine. Interspersed with recipes of Braised Kid Shanks with Lentils and Black-Eyed Pea Curry are seasonal anecdotes of life on the farm.

Prior to moving upstate, the New Delhi native lived in Manhattan for more than a decade and once owned the acclaimed Devi restaurant in the Flatiron District. Now, his sights are set on opening a new Indian-themed restaurant in San Francisco. Whether it’s a business or pleasure trip, the star of Bravo’s Top Chef Masters season 3 says that one of his favorite places has long been California’s City by the Bay, from the day he first laid eyes on the Golden Gate Bridge.

“My first trip to San Francisco was at age 16 when I visited my grandparents who lived in the marina, very close to the bay. We would take long walks every morning and enjoy the weather, exercise and conversations,” he recalls. “I love the setting of this sweet, small city and the beauty that surrounds it. From the homes and parks, to the streets and the easy-on-the-eyes look of the people. But what I love most of all about San Francisco is its intimate size.

“I find it an easy city to experience in a fulfilling way, without having to spend too many days there. Nothing is ever too far in San Francisco, especially if you come from Manhattan or New Delhi or similarly big metropolises. It is accessible beyond belief,” says Saran, who visits at least six times a year.

“It’s a city with a unique size and density. In no other city in the country can you walk a few short blocks and experience such a plethora of cultures and cuisines — enhanced by the locally produced food and wine. All this paired with a breathtaking natural landscape make this 7-mile-by-7-mile city one of the most unique on the planet.”

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BEST PLACE FOR DIM SUM Yank Sing 101 Spear St. (415) 781-1111 · yanksing.com Vegetarian snap peas and a huge array of steamed, fried, and baked hors d’oeuvre-sized dumplings make this a regular stop for Saran.

BRUNCH WITH A VIEW Sam’s Anchor Cafe 27 Main St. Tiburon, Calif.

(415) 435-4527 · samscafe.com “Brunch is a way of life in San Francisco,” says Saran. “There are so many hot spots: Zazie, Nopa, Park Tavern, Bar Agricole, and Foreign Cinema.

Liverpool Lil’s has Bloody Marys with

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shots of vitamin B12. But for a great view, go to Sam’s Anchor Cafe.”

EXOTIC MEXICAN Tacolicious 2031 Chestnut St. (415) 346-1966 · tacolicious.com Saran loves stopping by for imaginative fare such as Fried Local Rock Cod Tacos with Cabbage and Tangy Crema, and house-made lemon sorbet with a shot of tequila.

ICE CREAM FROM HEAVEN Ici Ice Cream 2948 College Ave. Berkeley, Calif.

(510) 665-6054 · ici-icecream.com Saran swoons for the handmade ice

cream made from organic milk and eggs in flavors ranging from Rose and Brandied Cherry to Creme Fraiche Hazelnut Crunch and Earl Grey. Even the cones and toppings are organic and homemade.

FRESH PRODUCE Ferry Plaza Farmers Market 1 Ferry Building (415) 291-3276 ferrybuildingmarketplace.com Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays “Does any other city have Napa, Sonoma, Petaluma, and other diverse growing communities right there?” says Saran. “In addition to wonderful farmers markets, there’s the iconic Chez Panisse, as well as some incredible newer restaurants dedicated to serving locally sourced food.”

SERIOUS COFFEE BEANS Ritual Coffee Roasters 1026 Valencia St. (415) 641-1011 · ritualroasters.com Saran stops by whenever he wants an aromatic pick-me-up in the form of a Breve or Macchiato.

SAN FRANCISCO HISTORY The San Francisco Cable Car Museum 1201 Mason St. (415) 474-1887 · cablecarmuseum.org “Cable cars add to the ambiance and are a testament to the rich history of San Francisco, but are impractical — I leave the riding to the tourists. This is a very interesting museum, and it’s free,” says Saran.

H HOLIDAY OLIDAY C CELEBRATIONS ELEBRATION NS S FOR THE WHOLE FAMILY

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he “People with the Right Connections”

at Yankee Trails World Travel have your ticket to America’s Favorite Holiday Show! Thrill your family with a trip to see the Radio City Christmas Spectacular, starring The Rockettes. Shows are selling out fast, book now!

Luncheon Specials include lunch at Planet Hollywood!

DATE

DAY

SHOW TIME

12/9 12/10 12/11 12/12 12/13 12/14 12/16 12/17 12/30

Mon. . . . . 2:00pm . . . . . . $130. . . . . .$135 Tue. . . . . 2:00pm . . . . . . $130. . . . . .$135 Wed. . . . . 2:00pm . . . . . . $130. . . . . .$135 Thu. . . . . .2:00pm . . . . . . $119. . . . . .$124 Fri. . . . . . .1:00pm . . . . . . $119. . . . . .$124 Sat. . . . . . 11:30am . . . . . . $169. . . . . .$174 Mon. . . . . .2:00pm . . . . . . $109. . . . . . $114 Tue. . . . . .2:00pm . . . . . . $109. . . . . . $114 Mon. . . . . .2:00pm . . . . . . $119. . . . . .$124

SAVE 5 $

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FOR KIDS 4 & UP

LLocal ocal B Bus us R Ride ide a and nd S Show how with Loads of Holiday Cheer!

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ack for a second season, join Santa, Mrs. Claus and their elves in a quest to save Christmas! Ride the double-decker bus to Santa’s Workshop where kids will decorate their very own Santa hat and have their photo taken with Santa himself. But be on the lookout for Jack Frost ... he’s up to no good! He’s looking for Santa’s magical hat and he won’t stop until he has it.

Hop on board Santa’s Magical Express where we warm Ebenezer Scrooge’s heart and dance with Frosty the Snowman during Yankee Trails World Travels’ theatrical motorcoach presentation of “Hats Off To Santa”. Take a leisurely ride through town as we sing and search for clues as to where Jack Frost has taken Santa’s magical hat, stopping for milk and cookies along the way!

Fridays: Dec. 13, 20 Saturdays: Dec. 14, 21 Sundays: Dec. 15, 22

Friday Show Times: 5:30, 7:30pm Sat. Show Times: 4:30, 5:30, 6:30, 7:30pm Sun. Show Times: 4:30, 5:30, 6:30, 7:30pm INTERNET

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Children 12 & Under . . $20 . . . . . . $25 Adults. . . . . . . . . . . . . . $25 . . . . . . $30

INCLUDES: FREE Photo with Santa • Santa Hat Decorating • 90 Minute “Hats Off To Santa” Show and Ride • Milk & Cookies onboard

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All tours subject to availability. Cancellation insurance is highly recommended and available at an additional cost.

518.286.2400 • www.yankeetrails.com

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