Category Archives: Uncategorized

Olana Educates and Entertains

The Olana State Historic Site, the fabulous mansion and estate constructed by 19th-century landscape artist Frederic Edwin Church (1826-1900), is more than well worth the drive up the Thruway, or the Taconic State Parkway, or whatever road you choose to take to get there. Guided tours of the mansion are available. Or you can choose simply to walk the miles of trails that take you through this incredible landscape (bring your lunch; there are plenty of places to stop and enjoy it). Or you may want to take advantage of the amazing variety of events organized at Olana, including the informative lectures given by experts in their various fields.

Dr. David Schuyler chats with audience members after his lecture.

Dr. David P. Schuyler gave one such lecture recently, on the Sanctified Landscape (be sure to check out his book by the same title!). A professor of American Studies at Franklin & Marshall College and a native of Newburgh, New York, Dr. Schuyler spoke compellingly about historical memory and the need for “tangible remains of the past” to keep those memories alive. He certainly brought General George Washington to life in an incomparably vivid fashion, especially the Washington of the final months of the Revolutionary War who lived in the Hasbroucks’ House in Newburgh and traveled down to the Last Encampment of the colonial troops near what is now Vails Gate.

From history to geology–an upcoming event will feature a talk by well-known local geologist Dr. Robert Titus. Olana is easily reached off the Taconic Parkway and from Exit 21 off I-87. Check out Olana’s website where you can also sign up to receive emailed updates–and if you visit before the end of October, absolutely do not miss the stunning photography exhibit by Peter Aaron, Olana’s Dynamic Landscape, in the Coachman’s House.

Tours of the mansion were booked solid on this gorgeous late summer day.

Visitors enjoy the view of the Hudson River and the Catskills from Olana’s great lawn.

Sara J. Griffen, President of the Olana Partnership, greets visitors arriving for Dr. Schuyler’s lecture.

Rosendale Farmers Market Offers Fresh Goodness

There is nothing like a farmers market for an opportunity to buy fresh, local food and to chat with the folks who grow or make it. Sometimes I deliberately set out to visit one of these markets, such as when the Cold Spring market opened for the season in its new location at Boscobel (see my blog post for May 19); at other times, I happen upon one by chance while driving and exploring Hudson Valley roads. This was the case recently while I was driving Route 32 south from Kingston. There on the right side of the road, set up at the local Recreation Center, was the Rosendale Farmers Market.

I met and purchased from vendors that were new to me (those carrots in the photo were a fresh, crisp treat!) as well as from one that I know well from their weekend setups at the Thruway rest areas–Grey Mouse Farms from up the road near Saugerties, selling the freeze-dried veggies for which they are famous.

If you’re in the area, please stop by and visit the Rosendale Farm Market! It is open each Sunday from 9 am to 2 pm, rain or shine, from June through October. In the Rec Center lot along Route 32, you can’t miss it. Help your local food producers and help and treat yourself by buying their fresh products.

A NOTE: I am selling some beautiful photo prints in white double mats exclusively on my Etsy site. Some of them are of Hudson Valley scenes. Please click here and have a look!

Huguenot Street and Treats from the Tea Room

The DuBois Fort Visitor Center is open for business.

Historic Huguenot Street in New Paltz repays a visit at any time of year. The light is different, the flowers and foliage change–it’s even nice with snow (remember that white stuff?). Right now it’s open for the season. You can go on a guide-led tour of the

A Window onto the Huguenot World

buildings or just pop into the Visitor Center and enjoy the exhibits there. Currently there’s an exhibit titled Through the Lens: A Nineteenth Century Photographic Journey, which of course I found fascinating.

A weekend in mid-July brought some extra treats: the Visitor Center was selling baked goods from the Village Tea Room, with all proceeds benefitting the ongoing fine work at Historic Huguenot Street. So you got to enjoy some tasty muffins and brownies, along with an excellent cup of coffee, and know that your money was helping New Paltz’s jewel attraction.

Curious to learn more about the origin of these baked goodies, I returned the following weekend to visit the Village Tea Room. This Bake Shop and Restaurant offers, of course, the baked goods that you can buy to take out, but it also has indoor and outdoor sit-down service offering quite a varied and interesting menu. As a Swedophile, I made a mental note to return one day with a

The Village Tea Room’s cozy indoor restaurant

friend to order the gravlax open-face sandwich.

The Village Tea Room Bake Shop and Restaurant is located at 10 Plattekill Avenue, just off Route 299 in central New Paltz. They are open every day except Monday. Why not pay a visit the next time you’re in town?

Margaretville Stages a Comeback

You have to say this for the intrepid people of the Western Catskills: When first Hurricane Irene and then the October snowstorm struck the area like a one-two punch in 2011, they weren’t content to sit around wallowing in self-pity, waiting for folks from the outside to come in and rescue them from the devastation. No, they immediately set to work organizing their own relief efforts, collecting food, clothes, and money, and working with whatever agencies were in place to assist.

What a difference a few short weeks make. When I visited on Easter Sunday, April 8, the Freshtown Supermarket, which had been completely inundated with water so that even the CVS right next to it completely collapsed and left a gaping hole, had not yet reopened. The Cheese Barrel, a popular restaurant and food store, had relocated to temporary premises in the old Galli-Curci Theater across Main Street; the owners were hoping to be back in their original home by Memorial Day Weekend or in early June at the latest. And in Arkville to the east, the Delaware and Ulster tourist railroad was still busy reconstructing in hopes of being open in time for the summer season.

Fast forward to mid-June and here’s what I found. The Freshtown Supermarket, looking all bright and new, reopened on May 23! The Cheese Barrel is indeed back in its original home. And the Delaware and Ulster tourist railroad is back in business, taking people for rides along the historic railway tracks on Saturdays and Sundays.

The CVS, which relocated to new premises following the complete collapse of their original building next to Freshtown after Hurricane Irene, is still in those premises. Whether they intend to stay there or to rebuild on the original site, I don’t know; perhaps someone reading this blog can tell me.

This report wouldn’t be complete without a big thank-you as well for New York State’s Governor Andrew Cuomo for being right in the thick of things, visiting these devastated sites and galvanizing all the agencies to do everything possible, ASAP, to help these brave and resourceful people to help themselves. Kudos to the people of Margaretville and Arkville and to Governor Cuomo. And did I mention that the main bridge into picturesque little Phoenicia is now reopened?

Captain Hot Dog Offers a Memorable Dining Experience on Route 28

If you’re driving on Route 28 in Ulster County between, say, Mt. Tremper and Phoenicia, and are hungry for a tasty little lunch or snack, you can’t do better than Captain Hot Dog in the rest area at Mt. Pleasant. You’ll get an authentic Sabrett’s hot dog with your choice of at least half a dozen fixins’–everything from the usual mustard and ketchup to authentic New York-style onion sauce. And of course, drinks and the usual “sides” such as potato chips. But best of all, you’ll have the great pleasure of meeting proprietor Captain Tom.

Captain Tom is a genuine people person. Having worked that spot for fifteen years, he has an impressive array of regular customers and a Canon point-and-shoot camera with which he takes photographs of them to save in his albums. When I pulled into the crowded rest area on Sunday and ordered my hot dog with mustard and relish (“That’s a must-rel,” he explained), I explained about my blog and asked if I might take his photograph. He posed gladly–and then asked if he could get a photo with the two of us. Fetching the little Canon from his car, he handed it to a friend standing nearby–clearly a long-time customer–and asked him to take the photo. That very evening, the photo was in my email Inbox.

Then Captain Tom showed me his current album–photos of customers from 2012. “Your photo will be in there,” he promised. He knew which customers had recently passed away, pointed out one couple that had recently married, and mentioned that he keeps a special album with photos of deceased customers.

That particular stretch of Route 28 isn’t exactly bursting with dining opportunities–I had joined the road at the junction with Route 212 at Mt. Tremper and was headed west to Margaretville–and so to come upon Captain Tom who loves his work and takes such a genuine personal interest in the customers he meets was a double blessing and an unusual one.

Hungry for a hot dog on Route 28? The Captain Hot Dog stand is on the north (westbound) side of Route 28 at the Mt. Pleasant Rest Area. It’s well sign-posted from both directions. Captain Tom’s business card invites you to “Join us for lunch on the Esopus stream.” You’ll be glad you did.

Hunter Hosts Stunning Art Exhibit by Driscoll and Lavery

I’ve followed Northern Catskills photographer Francis X. Driscoll’s work for years and so thought I had an idea of what to expect when I drove up to Hunter to view an exhibit on which he collaborated with folk artist Michael D. Lavery. Was I ever wrong. Fran Driscoll’s work, always stunning at the best of times, was, here framed by Lavery’s woodwork creations, simply mindboggling. Actually, it’s inaccurate to call this an exhibit of Driscoll’s photos in frames made by Lavery. What the pair have done is to merge their creative vision so that each piece forms an artistic whole, Lavery’s frames being fashioned to form an extension and enhancement of Driscoll’s photos.

The exhibit is titled “Keepin’ It Greene”–a play on words, because it’s about their native Greene County as well as about preservation.

Let me quote from the official write-up:

“Francis X. Driscoll, whose landscape photographs of the Catskill Region are widely recognized and loved, and Michael  Lavery, folk artist in the lively, animated Tramp Art genre, have come together as friends and fellow artists to share with us their inventive and thought-provoking expressions created as a direct result of their involvement with experiences before, during and after Hurricane Irene.

“Driscoll and Lavery, both full-time residents of Greene County, were deeply affected by the hurricane and its aftermath. As they traveled separately from town to town surveying the devastation and lending a hand wherever needed, each was struck by the spontaneous appearance of the cooperative efforts of family, friends and strangers that quietly and modestly infilled a certain inner order and peace they found prevailing in the midst of the mindless destruction surrounding the area.”

One of the artworks has been donated to the State of New York and will go to hang in the permanent collection at the State Capitol. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has recently announced the revival of the beloved “I Love NY” slogan to promote tourism for the state; whether the acceptance of this particular Driscoll/Lavery masterpiece is purely coincidental or is connected with the renewed accent on “I Love NY,” I don’t know. You’ll see what I mean when you visit the exhibit.

“Keepin’ It Greene” is at Kaaterskill Fine Arts, Route 23A (Main Street) in Hunter. Gallery hours are 10 am – 5 pm (Thurs.-Sat.) and 10 am – 3.30 pm (Sun.). The last day of the exhibit was to have been Sunday June 3, but I understand that it’s being held over for another week, until June 10. If you love the Catskills, beautiful photography, exquisitely carved woodwork, and want to be bowled over by a display in which each individual piece combines the photography and the woodwork in ways you never could have imagined, don’t miss this show.

St. Anastasia’s Church in Harriman Celebrates Memorial Day

All over the Hudson Valley, Memorial Weekend was filled with parades, religious services, wreathe-layings, and other celebrations honoring the brave soldiers who have served and given their lives in the U.S. Armed Forces. A long-standing tradition in Harriman, Orange County, has been an outdoor Mass on Memorial Day, along with honor guard, the reading of the names of those who have fallen, and the laying of a wreathe at the memorial in Harriman’s village square.

The weather this year, though very hot, allowed for the service to be held outdoors. All the key players were new: it was the first year for St. Anastasia’s pastor Fr. Michael Keane, music director Anthony Daino, and parish secretary Jean Marie Weinberg, whose awesome organizational skills brought everything and everyone together. Here are some photos from the event.

New patriots: The Daino twins wave their flags while Mom looks on.

Fr. Michael Keane gives Commuinion to a parishioner.

Fr. Eder Tamara, Fr. Michael Keane, and Deacon Brian O’Neill hold up the gifts.

The Knights of Columbus form a guard of honor.

Music director Anthony Daino leads the singing while Fr. Michael Keane and Deacon Brian O’Neill join in.

The names of the honored war dead from Harriman are read out.

Cold Spring Farmers’ Market Opens in Boscobel

Farm Market 1Locavores in Putnam and Upper Westchester Counties (as well as some of us from across the Hudson River) are flocking to the Cold Spring Farmers’ Market’s new spring/summer outdoor home at the historic Boscobel Restoration. The market made its debut at Boscobel on May 12 after having spent the colder months at the indoor site in Philipstown and after the unavailability of the previous outdoor location made a move necessary.

Regular patrons of the Cold Spring Farmers’ Market will find their favorite vendors,Farm Market 2 selling fruit and veggies,cheese, honey and other bee products, bread and a tempting variety of other savory and sweet baked goods, local wines, and much more. Vendors come on a rotation basis, so that you may find that the offerings differ slightly from week to week. (For example, my favorite yogurt concession from Ronnybrook Farms wasn’t there when I visited today.)

Farm Market 3Also on hand is a cheerful volunteer from Boscobel itself, to answer questions for those who have never visited this magnificent site. As an extra gesture of goodwill, Boscobel is offering free entry to its grounds on Saturdays (tours of the mansion will cost the usual fee), so that you can combine your shopping with a walk on the beautifully landscaped grounds or even a hike on the Frances Stevens Reese Woodland Trail. In fact, why not buy some bread and cheese, or a quiche or mini-pizza, or a freshly baked fruit pie at the market, and enjoy them at Boscobel’s picnic area?

The Cold Spring Farmers’ Market is open at Boscobel, just south of Cold Spring on the west side of Route 9D, from 8.30 am to 1.30 pm through November 17. Come and enjoy this beautiful, scenic site and, at the same time, support the local farmers by buying their healthful, fresh and tasty produce.

Farm Market 4Farm Market 5

All Roads in Catskill Lead to Thomas Cole

Unless visiting Cedar Grove, the Thomas Cole National Historic Site, my drives to Catskill have usually taken me through the town en route to somewhere else–usually over the Rip van Winkle Bridge to Olana or some other Columbia County destination. Deciding last Sunday to stop and check out Catskill’s Main Street, I discovered a visual treat of colorful old homes and stores, such as the Catskill Country Store pictured here. Topographically, the Main Street of Catskill is interesting in that it is crisscrossed by alleyways that, on one side, lead up a hill to a more residential part of town and, on the other side, take you downhill to what I later discovered, when checking a map, is the waterfront of Catskill Creek. The very raw weather that day was not conducive to undertaking my usual curiosity detours, but I did take one, and a fortuitous one it was, because I then discovered St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, where Thomas Cole was an active parishioner. This photo shows one of the beautiful windows in the church, which stands on a hill overlooking the town and the Catskill Mountains in the distance.

OK, I must confess: The ultimate purpose of this visit to Catskill was Thomas Cole-related. I was headed to a lecture at Cedar Grove. But first I stopped at the local cemetery to visit Cole’s grave, armed with a map given me by Marie Spano on my last visit to Cedar Grove. Cole and his wife, Maria Bartow, and other family members are buried there, all together. On Cole’s grave is engraved “The Lord is my shepherd,” and after his religious conversion he did indeed live by those words from Psalm 23.

The lecture being given last Sunday was the second of the four Sunday Salons for this season. Kevin Sharp, who has an amazing reputation as a gallery museum and director and curator of groundbreaking exhibitions all over the country, spoke about how Cole drew inspiration from such English Romantic poets as Coleridge and Byron for his later work. Like many first-rate artists, Cole sometimes rebelled against the idea of depicting scenes from poetry in order to please clients and instead probed further to uncover and interpret the poem’s deeper meaning. As a photographer I could well relate to the discussion of documentation vs. interpretation and so I was glad to be able to purchase Kevin Sharp’s book Poetic Journey, which includes a relevant article.

The next Sunday Salon at Cedar Grove will be a particularly exciting one. Did you know that Thomas Cole now has an exhibition at the Louvre in Paris? Dr. Katherine Bourguignon, the curator of “New Frontier: Thomas Cole and the Birth of Landscape Painting in America,” will be speaking about the exhibition on Sunday March 11. If you are interested in Thomas Cole, the Hudson River School, or nineteenth-century landscape painting in general, please consider attending this unique event. You can visit the Thomas Cole National Historic Site’s website for further information including directions and to sign up for emails reminding you of future events.

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Please visit my website where you can see my gallery of photos of the Hudson Valley and the Catskills. My Print of the Month, which is of a favorite nature site in Rhode Island, is available for purchase at a special price until February 29.

Beacon Bounces Back

Once an important strategic point in the Revolutionary War—both town and mountain got its name from the signals lit atop the mountain to warn the Continental Army of approaching British troops—the city of Beacon now thrives as a center for the arts.

The city’s fortunes haven’t always been so upbeat.  “Urban renewal” caused the demolition of important historic buildings in the 1960s. During the following decade, the closing of many factories due to economic decline precipitated an economic downturn that lasted until the late 1990s.

Enter the artists and their visions.  The arrival of Dia:Beacon, the largest museum of contemporary art in the country, in what had been a Nabisco cracker box factory generated both an artistic and a commercial renaissance in this Dutchess County city. Residents of artistic enclaves downstate began relocating to Beacon. A variety of art galleries followed in Dia:Beacon’s wake, including Fovea, the Van Brunt Gallery, and Hudson Beach Glass. Hudson Beach Glass, founded by well-known glass artist John Gilvey with three partners, is located in a renovated former firehouse, itself a work of art. Just as the city of Hudson, some sixty miles north, arose from the doldrums to refashion itself as a destination for antiques aficionados, so Beacon has been transformed into a mecca for the arts.

Friendly cafés and restaurants cater to visitors and residents alike. Those interested in history and hiking have their choices of historic homesteads and hiking trails, including hikes up Mt. Beacon itself.

On the opposite side of the river in Newburgh, a statue of General Washington looks across and surveys Beacon and its mountain. Could he ever have envisioned the future history of this amazing city?

For my recent photograph uploads to my Hudson Valley Gallery, please visit my website. Thank you!