Dustin Walsh does some e-reading (photo by Will Dendis)

Last week, the Saugerties Public Library began lending out six Kindle Paperwhite e-reading devices to its library patrons. The e-readers are loaned out for a two-week period, with the option to renew once for an additional two weeks. If demand is great, there’ll be a waiting list for them in the same way that popular books can be requested and wait-listed, with two of the devices to be set aside and made available on a first-come, first-served basis.

Sukrit Goswami says that this program has been something he’s planned to do ever since he became library director of the Saugerties Public Library in April of 2011.

Keeping the library up-to-date is important to the technology-oriented library director, who says that offering e-readers on loan is something every library should do. “We ought to provide the community with what they need and do not readily have access to,” he says, pointing out that libraries have always needed to evolve to other formats when they arose, such as when books became available on CD for the first time. While some patrons may have their own e-readers already, many don’t, and the program will allow those who have never used such a device to give it a try.

They come pre-loaded with 30 fiction and nonfiction titles, ranging from “The Great Gatsby” to recent releases by David Baldacci, Jodi Picoult, Deborah Harkness, Nicholas Sparks, J.K. Rowling and others. A full list of titles included is available at the library and on www.saugertiespubliclibrary.org/elibrary. Library staff can also download available titles to the e-readers on request.

After considering ordering a variety of e-reading devices, the library opted to streamline things and go with a single model, the Kindle Paperwhite, a recent release Amazon is touting for its high-resolution, glare-free screen. The device holds up to 1,100 books, and features extras like a built-in dictionary – just touch a word and get the definition.

The devices will be loaned out with a “crib sheet” to instruct borrowers on their use, and library staff has been trained and will be available to help patrons navigate the features. Erin Cassidy, technology librarian in Saugerties, has prepared an extensive FAQ tutorial on the library website that appears to answer virtually every question one could have about how to use the devices and how to download material. (From the home page, simply click on “ebooks.”)

Borrowers will be asked to sign an agreement verifying that staff has checked out the working order of the device and that all parts were present at the time of check-out. Borrowers must be at least 18 years old, a resident of the town of Saugerties, have a verified mailing address and a library record in good standing ($5 or less in fines).

The penalties for overdue e-readers will be $1 per day for two weeks, after which the full replacement cost (about $190, including case and adapter) will be applied to the patron’s record. The devices cannot be returned to the Book Drop or to another library.

When Goswami was library director of the Cohoes Public Library in the Albany region, just before coming to Saugerties, he made e-readers available to borrow there, loaning out several “Nook” devices to patrons. “I’m surprised more libraries haven’t taken the initiative yet,” he says. Similar programs are being offered in our area at libraries in Poughkeepsie, Highland, Pleasant Valley, Garrison and Coxsackie.

With the decrease in prices of the e-readers, says Goswami, the time is right to do this. The next step, he says, will be to offer e-readers for kids, pre-loaded with children’s material. The Kiwanis Club recently gave the library a $3,500 donation for children that will be utilized toward this purpose.

For more information, visit www.saugertiespubliclibrary.org or call 845-246-4317.

These books: take Sundays off

Why is the Saugerties Public Library closed on Sundays, we wondered – aren’t there a lot of people who’d like to visit the library over the weekend?

We asked the question of library director Sukrit Goswami, who said that they determined the hours that the library would stay open based on community surveys conducted earlier this year at the behest of the Library Board of Trustees.

“We are here to give the community what they ask for,” said Goswami, “and through these surveys they said that they’d like for us to extend the hours on more weeknights until 8 p.m. We had already been open until 8 p.m. on Mondays and Wednesdays, but there was a lot of interest in us staying open on Tuesdays and Thursdays until that time as well, so we did.”

When the surveys were conducted, said Goswami, they made an effort to poll not only the regular library patrons but those who are not habitual library visitors. The option that came in second place in the surveys, he said, was to extend the Saturday hours, but opening on Sunday wasn’t something that there was really any interest in at all.

“So if this is something that there is no demand for,” said Goswami, “there was no point for us to open on Sundays, when it was the extended evening hours that people were interested in.”

The Saugerties Public Library is open Monday through Thursday from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m., Friday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., and Saturday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. The library is closed on Sundays and holidays. For more information, visit www.saugertiespubliclibrary.org or call 246-4317.

“Tendrils” by Jeff Schiller

An afternoon in a local gallery can go a long way toward adding some color to bleak November days. Several new exhibits of art opened this week at Partition Street galleries in the village, and the Saugerties Performing Arts Factory is displaying the ongoing group show “Blue” through the end of the month. The Saugerties Public Library is home to several ongoing installations, as well, and is featuring an exhibit of journalistic and fine art photography by French photographer and now-Saugerties resident, Jacques Charlas. The library also has on display a very special photographic image taken by the Hubble Telescope, on loan for one year from NASA.

Marleau Gallery
“Nature Through the Looking Glass” opened this week at the Marleau Gallery. The show remains on view through Sunday, December 23. The exhibit of work by Roy Owsley is an unexpected juxtaposition of terrarium art [an entirely new category] and oil paintings on canvas.

First, the paintings. There are 12 large 48-inch-square canvases in Owsley’s “Bank Rock Bay” series, as well as nine 12-inch-square canvases on the same theme. All depict the same landscape under different weather conditions, times of day or frames of mind. Each is radically different in coloration and mood, however, so one wouldn’t necessarily recognize that it’s the same landscape at each painting’s heart. Using Van Gogh-like brush strokes laden with paint, Owsley captures his “Bank Rock Bay” subject matter in vibrant colorations that suggest the panorama of possibilities in nature.

The humble terrarium elevated to the status of fine art by Owsley works better than one might expect. Several groupings of small to medium sized glass globes filled with plants are hung artfully from the ceiling by ropes, while larger sitting terrariums of glass, about 14 inches in diameter, house mini diorama scenes depicting tiny figures engaged in activities like camping or sitting on the beach. The small figures, made even more miniscule in relation to the foliage surrounding them in their glass globes, are meant to make a statement, according to the artist, about our place as humans in relationship to the natural world we inhabit.

The Marleau Gallery is located at 99 Partition Street in the village. Gallery hours are Thursday-Saturday from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. and Sunday, 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. For more information, visit www.saugertiesartgallery.com or call 246-5006.

“Bank Rock Bay (Number 2)” by Roy Owsley

The Gallery at Saugerties Performing Arts Factory
The Gallery at Saugerties Performing Arts Factory (SPAF) continues its exhibition of “Blue” this month, in which 24 artists pay homage to the eponymous color and its complex cultural associations in a diverse showing of paintings, sculpture and mixed-media works. The exhibit is an exploration of the artistic potential and emotional resonance of the color, which is indeed the only element common to each work. “Blue” remains on exhibit through the end of the month.

The featured artists are: Isaac Abrams, Stuart Bigley, Sara Conca, Ford Crull, Ruth Edwy, Kari Feuer, Astrid Fitzgerald, Audrey Francis, Robert George, Julie Hedrick, Robert Hite, Anthony Krauss, Alex Kveton, Ramon Lascano, Jeesoo Lee, Luis Pagan, Shelley Parriott, Judith Peck, Roger Ricco, Bill Richards, Blake Richards, Nadine Robins, Susan Sommer, and Robin Tedesco.

The Gallery at the Saugerties Performing Arts Factory is located at 169 Ulster Avenue in Saugerties. Gallery hours are Wednesday-Friday 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. and Saturday-Sunday from 2 to 7 p.m. or by appointment. For more information, visit www.saugertiesperformingartsfactory.com.

Imogen Holloway Gallery
The Imogen Holloway Gallery is showing “Something Sacred” this month. The works on exhibit are meant to invoke the power of art as a focus for contemplation and spiritual reflection, and will remain on view through Sunday, November 25.

In the main room of the gallery are six acrylic on canvas (with mixed media) works by Ji Yong Kim interspersed with six encaustic on panel diptychs by Paul Rinaldi. The works are small, scaled to the size of the gallery walls. The paintings by Ji Yong Kim are all 12¼ inches by 14¾ inches in size, and the Rinaldi encaustics are approximately eight inches square, grouped in twos as diptychs to form works of around 8 by 16 or 17 inches.
Rinaldi’s encaustic works are deceptively simple and ultimately serene. At first glance, they appear edible, like small cakes with rolled fondant icing hanging on the wall, albeit cakes that one would only find in a bakery specializing in very austere offerings. The encaustic process involves raw pigments and beeswax fused to a support with heat, giving a characteristic waxy surface on the finished work that appears as if the color is embedded beneath. On these 12 variations on a theme grouped in twos, simple shapes appear partially visible beneath the waxy surface, partly obscured; the colors light, yet muted. On Rinaldi’s website, the artist states that he builds the works in layers, achieving the final effect by veiling strong color structures with translucent layers of wax.

According to gallery owner Diane Dwyer, Kim’s works reflect his interest in Asian Buddhist temples, specifically those found in Myanmar, where he grew up. He begins each painting with the shape of a stupa [a Buddhist shrine or pagoda that houses a relic or marks the location of an auspicious event] and then alters these shapes with paint, drawing materials and gold leaf, a material chosen for its historical association with spirituality.

In what Dwyer has dubbed the “East Wing” of the gallery (an even smaller section of the tiny gallery), are exhibited abstract oils on canvas by Stephen Niccolls of Kingston. The 14 inch by 11 inch “Escalator” depicts playful orange abstract figures in motion reminiscent of Keith Haring, while other works here are less figurative, abstracts involving interplay of interlocking textural shapes.

The gallery’s windows are devoted to an installation by Karen Schifano, red-tape framed sections of window meant to challenge perceptions of space.

The Imogen Holloway Gallery is located at 81 Partition St. in the village. Gallery hours are Thursday-Sunday 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. or by appointment. For more information, visit www.ihgallery.com, email diane@ihgallery.com, or call (347) 387-3212.

Exhibits at the Saugerties Public Library

The Saugerties Public Library is home to several ongoing art installations, including “Arch,” a welded-steel sculpture installed on the grounds by Saugerties-based artist Jeff Schiller, and “Tendrils,” a whimsical work installed in the reading porch off the original Carnegie Library reading room. “Tendrils” is currently receiving a facelift, being not immune to the effects of gravity, and is made of colorful plastic tubing, nylon, aluminum, steel and vinyl by artist Judy Thomas.

In addition, a five foot by 21-foot collaged mural originally created for “Images from Everyday Life,” an exhibit by local artist Brian Lynch previously on view at the library, remains on view on the walls of the ground floor outside the art gallery. Lynch’s work in the earlier exhibit was so compelling to visitors, says library board member Sally Colclough, that although that exhibition in the gallery ended, the collaged mural is staying for an indefinite time.

In the Art Gallery on the lower level and on a gallery wall upstairs are the journalistic and fine art photographs of Jacques Charlas, to remain on exhibit through the end of December. Charlas was born in Paris in 1949 and moved to the U.S. in his early twenties, living first in New York City and later in New Paltz before returning to France. After several other moves, Charlas is now a resident of Saugerties. The photographs on view document conditions of war in Latin America and Afghanistan, and the disappearance of Paris’ central market Les Halles. Charlas also exhibits fine art photographs from “Species,” a series he did of large color pictures of random objects that are revealed to be portraits of imaginary characters.

And finally, on the topic of noteworthy photography, the Saugerties Public Library is one of a limited number of recipients nationwide to receive on loan a special photographic image taken by the Hubble Telescope. To celebrate the anniversary of Hubble’s launch in 1990, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) releases a limited amount of images taken by the telescope each year, for exhibition in places that might not normally have the budget for such a thing. The image recently mounted at the Saugerties Public Library will remain on view for one year.

The image is titled “The Tarantula Nebula, 30 Doradus.” The Doradus Constellation is 170,000 light-years away (a light-year is 5.87 trillion miles, by the way). The image on view depicts a dynamic interstellar cloud with a star cluster at its center, in which millions of new stars are forming very close together. The nebula also contains the closest old star to be observed exploding into a supernova. The Tarantula Nebula is the brightest part of a nearby irregular galaxy that orbits our own.

The Hubble Telescope orbits Earth, sending us hundreds of thousands of pictures which have proved invaluable in the advance of astronomy and science. The library is currently one of only two locations in the country hosting “The Tarantula Nebula, 30 Doradus.” For more information, visit www.hubblesite.org.

The library has additional resources to learn more about the Tarantula Nebula, including a map, a film clip that shows the Hubble Telescope zooming in on the Tarantula Nebula, and a list of books in the library catalog to learn more. For more information, visit www.saugertiespubliclibrary.org or call 246-4317. The Saugerties Public Library is located at 91 Washington Avenue in the village.

Lopez chats with a constituent in Catskill on election night. (photo by Will Dendis)

On Tuesday, Nov. 6, incumbent New York State Assemblyman Peter Lopez, 51, defeated Democratic challenger James Miller, earning a fourth two-year term. He will represent the newly formed 102nd Assembly District, comprised of Greene and Schoharie counties, parts of Otsego, Delaware, Columbia and Albany counties and Saugerties in Ulster County.

In January, 2013, Saugerties will be the site of the first in a series of Town Hall meetings Lopez will hold. “I’m a true believer in grassroots democracy,” he says, “and I do my job more effectively with the input and guidance that comes from the community.”

Lopez spoke about the areas of particular concern to him, which include assisting local storm victims in the immediate future, and strengthening the economy, job growth, family farms, education and alternative energy options in the long run.

What would you like to accomplish in the upcoming term?

We need to be proactive, to try to move issues of importance forward. Retrospectively, for the last year and a half, a lot of my time, understandably, has been focused on flood recovery, and we still have a significant amount of our community still struggling with that, including Saugerties. As a priority, we need to make sure that we give respectful, proper support to our neighbors who were hit, and some hit again, to do the best we can to rebuild homes and businesses.

FEMA is only part of the equation; a lot more goes into it, including insurance issues, stream stabilization issues and infrastructure. As we move forward, we still have a commitment to honor our neighbors, the distressed homeowners and families and businesses who are working to recover from flooding.

Beyond that, education is one of my priorities. We have extreme concerns about funding for our upstate and rural schools, and I’m very concerned about supporting quality affordable education. I have been and plan to continue to push for state support for mandate relief; fair funding for rural and upstate schools.

Do you think the state should do something to help reduce the local share of property taxes that go to schools?

Yes, they need to. And there are a couple of ways that they can do that. One is through direct aid, another is mandate relief. Also, schools want flexibility with finding ways to improve their cost effectiveness, and that might include using alternate energy, or greater freedom to share services and administration between schools and units of local government. There’s a lot that can be done and to the extent that we can loosen the reins, so to speak, that all works in favor of achieving what I call the twin goals of quality, affordable education.

Do you think the two percent tax cap is having a good or a bad effect?

It’s accomplishing its intent, but the job is only half done. About two years ago, we were meeting with the governor in small groups, and I was there with a number of my colleagues. The issue of the tax cap came up, and people said, “Why don’t you do the mandate relief first, because the two are often equated together, and they need to be.” The governor’s answer was, “Honestly? No one will come to the table [if we do].” The feeling was that if we talk about doing mandate relief [defraying costs the state dictates to the town, like pension contributions], and people aren’t feeling the reality of the recession and economic scarcity, they won’t want to talk about changing the way they do business.

The acknowledgement is that much of the services provided to our community rely on property taxes, and this state is infamous for having property taxes higher than many other states in the nation. The governor’s point was that we need to find a way to get it under control. So now the cap has been put in place, and many municipalities and schools are staying within the cap, but schools are burning through their reserves, and I don’t think they can continue this much longer before they have to go through another round of Draconian cutbacks, layoffs and loss of service.

So a couple of things have to happen: one, the state has to help counties and schools with mandate relief, because those mandates are driving the cost of local government and education. Two, we can help promote growth, because that also will have a positive effect on local tax bases, where we can encourage investments and new ratables that will help on the cap side. The job is only partway done with the cap.

Town of Saugerties Animal Control manager Marie Post, 88, was born in Mountain View, New Jersey but grew up in Jersey City. She first came to Saugerties as an 11-year-old, to attend the Jersey City Sunshine Camp held in the area. She went to the camp for about four years, and during that time met her future husband, Claude Post, a teenager who was working at the camp and whose ancestors go back to the founding of Saugerties. “He sent me a letter, and that’s how it all started,” she says.

They married 71 years ago, on the fourth of July, and raised five children in Saugerties. When Claude returned from serving in the army during World War II, he became a mechanic and opened the Ulster Avenue Garage while Marie stayed at home with the children until the youngest was old enough to go to school full-time. “We were just an average family,” Marie says.

She went to work at the school as a lunch monitor, but then heard about an opening at the Saugerties Animal Hospital. Post went to work there as a receptionist and veterinary assistant, then later moved over to South Peak Veterinary Hospital in Saugerties where she worked at the front desk for 19 years.

Her involvement with the Saugerties Animal Shelter began at age 67, when she was elected to the Town Board. The supervisor at the time suggested that with her background in veterinary work (and because she’d served on the board for the Ulster County SPCA), she should become the board’s liaison to the Animal Shelter, which had been in existence already for over 30 years at that point.

It was started, she says, as a way to comply with a state law that required every municipality to have a shelter for stray dogs on the loose that had to be picked up, and to have a dog warden. If a municipality didn’t open their own shelter, says Post, they could contract out with another that did. The town of Saugerties complied with the law by building a shelter out of concrete block on property they owned (the original building is still there, she says). “They put a few pens up, and that was the shelter.”

Today Marie is manager of Town of Saugerties Animal Control, which includes the animal shelter, and she manages the transfer station there as well. At age 88, she’s on call 24/7, and is the one who takes the calls in the middle of the night when a dog is on the loose and something has to be done. The shelter in Saugerties also takes care of the town of Woodstock, although they very seldom get dogs from there, she says. “I’m very proud of both the shelter and the transfer station, and of the people that work there,” says Post. “They deserve the credit. I don’t like to say ‘I,’ I like the word ‘we.’”

In addition to doing everything they can to get the animals adopted into families, the shelter maintains an animal emergency fund, and Post keeps a food pantry for pets, there, too. “If it comes down to someone choosing whether to buy soup for themselves or cans of dog or cat food for their pet, we want them to come here for the pet food. We don’t turn anyone away.”

Her life is interesting, she says, and there are happy stories, too. “You get a good feeling helping people,” she says. “We’re public servants – it’s really to help people, and that’s what we’re here for. And if we can’t help people, we can refer them to someone, so that they can get help of some kind. We do what we can.”

What do you think makes Saugerties unique, and what do you like about living here?

I don’t know where to start, because there’s so much to love and admire about Saugerties. I like the community spirit, and that’s never changed. It must be something in the water, or in the mountain air, because even the new people who move up here become community-minded. If anything, that spirit is stronger and better than ever.

When I came here as a young girl, Saugerties was very good to me. I was a stranger, and they were very kind. And look what we have to offer here: the Kiwanis, the Lions, the women’s auxiliaries, the fire companies, the Knights of Columbus, the Council of Churches Food Pantry, the Historical Society, the library; and all there to help people. Think of all those groups in one little town. I don’t know if people realize sometimes how much good these groups do. Saugerties people are pretty independent, but if someone here is struggling, they all take care of it, no matter what it is.

What quality do you most appreciate finding in other people?

Compassion. And I mean really caring for the little people. I’m strong for the little people, the ones that fall through the cracks.

Do you have any heroes?

Lincoln. Ever since I was a little child. . . and Martin Luther King. Because they both cared and had compassion. They cared for the little people. I can’t stand bigotry, and all that it stands for, and I can’t stand cruelty. I don’t mean the unintentional cruelty, but the person who is cruel verbally or physically, with animals or with people.

What character in history would you like to have dinner with?

I would have liked to talk with Martin Luther King. I would have liked to have listened to him. I admired him. Because of the civil rights, you see; I don’t know if I would have been as brave as some of those people. It took a lot of bravery to put themselves right up front like that.

What profession other than your own would you have wanted to attempt?

Law enforcement. I like law and order. Or maybe a surgical nurse, emergency nurse. . .I would still work for the animals, though.

What would you consider your perfect day off?

I’m on 24/7, so I don’t get many of those. I guess I did have a day off with my family, a couple of weeks ago, they took me to New York City and we spent the day together. We went to see “Phantom of the Opera” and then for dinner at an Italian restaurant across the street. I enjoyed that. So any day off with my family or a member of my family is wonderful. I’m very grateful, very blessed, really, to have a good family, a kind, loving family, and married 71 years.

Do you have a favorite motto or ‘words of wisdom’ that you live by?

Not really. . .I guess the old Biblical one, ‘Do unto others’. . .but everyone says that, don’t they? But it still stands.

What would you like St. Peter to say at the Pearly Gates?

I don’t know if I’d want him to say something so much, but I would just want him to open his arms, and give me a hug. I believe in hugs. It means a lot sometimes.

Food Pantry

“We’re always grateful for any donations, especially in these very hard times,” says Marilyn Richardson, manager of the Saugerties Area Council of Churches Food Pantry. The need for food assistance is there, she says, but donations are down because times are hard for so many right now, especially in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy.

To make a monetary donation, mail a check (made out to Saugerties Area Council of Churches Food Pantry) to P.O. Box 723, Saugerties, NY, 12477. Checks should not be mailed to the pantry’s physical address, as they do not receive mail there, says Richardson. Monetary donations enable the food pantry to purchase food from the Regional Food Bank of Northeastern New York, a nonprofit organization in Latham that buys surplus food and collects donations from the food industry to sell at wholesale prices to food pantries, who then distribute it to those in need.

Donations of canned goods and non-perishable food may be brought to the pantry during its hours of operation. The Food Pantry is open at 44 Livingston Street on Mondays and on Thursdays from 10 a.m. to noon on each of those days, and on Tuesday evenings from 7 to 8 p.m. In addition to non-perishable food items, toiletries such as toothpaste, shampoo and bathroom tissue are welcome.

The staff at the Food Pantry is all volunteer and unpaid (including Richardson). At this time, she says, they are not in need of any volunteers.

For more information, call 246-6885.

The Well Thrift Shop

A mission of the Saugerties Area Council of Churches, The Well Thrift Shop is located at 80/84 Partition Street. The store offers clothing, toys, books and small household items. There is a “free” side for those in need and a “selling” side, (thus the two addresses), with prices kept very low, says Karen Wurzel, chairman of the board of The Well Thrift Shop, so that those who don’t have much can afford to buy something without feeling like they’re taking a handout. “Some people come here just because they like a bargain,” she says, “and others tell us it’s the only place they can afford to shop.”

Donations are accepted Monday through Friday from 9 to 11 a.m. at the “selling” side of the store (it’s marked on the door). Wurzel requests that donations be “used but usable” items; clean, gently-used seasonal clothing and small household items, children’s toys, games and books. No textbooks, furniture or electronics.

All the proceeds after expenses from sales of the items goes back into the community, to a wide and varied range of good causes, including the Saugerties Boys & Girls Club, the Saugerties Food Pantry, God Given Bread (a food assistance program of Atonement Lutheran Church), Head Start, WGHQ Happy Christmas Fund, the skating park, post-prom parties for the high school, winter coats for those affected by recent storms and emergency one-time care for individuals in need.

All staff of The Well are unpaid volunteers, including Wurzel.

The free and the selling sides of the Well Thrift Shop are open to the public on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday from noon to 4 p.m. and Saturday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. The free side is also open on Monday through Friday from 9 to 11 a.m., during the time that donations are accepted and sorted. For more information, call 246-5811, 246-6575 or 246-2062.

Saugerties Animal Shelter

The shelter for dogs and cats in Saugerties is located at the Transfer Station on Route 212. Town of Saugerties Animal Control manager Marie Post says that they welcome donations of clean blankets and towels as well as bleach and cleaning supplies, all of which can be brought directly to the shelter during its hours of operation Tuesday through Friday from 8 to 11:30 a.m. and Saturday 9:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.

In addition, twice a year, in May and October (usually on the third Saturday of the month), the shelter holds a yard sale, with all proceeds benefitting the shelter, so people can help by donating items for the yard sale. They do have a secure place to store items, says Post, and are taking donations now to be ready for the spring sale. Especially desirable are costume jewelry, vintage Christmas ornaments, glassware, and “jumble boxes” of nuts and bolts for the do-it-yourselfer to pick through. People can also help the shelter by going to the yard sale and buying. The proceeds go toward everything the shelter does and for all of the improvements to the facilities, for which no taxpayer money is ever used, says Post.

Those wishing to volunteer their time may stop by the shelter and pick up an application. Some volunteers sign up to walk the dogs, says Post, while others do tasks like the recent painting of the dog room floor at the shelter. Other volunteers foster kittens, a valuable service because of the great number of cats who need a home and the lack of places to take them.

Post also runs a pet food pantry. Donations of dog and cat food may be brought to the shelter or left at Town Hall. Sometimes it comes down to people having to choose between feeding themselves and feeding their pets, says Post, and she’d like them to feed themselves and come to the shelter for the pet food. Like the food pantry for people, nobody is turned away or asked to prove need. For more information, call Post at 246-6211 or email cpost@hvc.rr.com.

Kelly Myers (Dion Ogust)

A divided town board

For most of the first decade of the new millennium, the town board was a quiet place. The knock-down, drag-out fights of the past were replaced with officious administration. Unanimous votes were so common that the Republican chairman eventually began keeping a tally of consecutive 5-0 votes than ran into the hundreds. That all changed this year, when supervisor Greg Helsmoortel departed and was replaced by Kelly Myers, a Republican who had previously served on the village board. Myers got off to a rocky start when, during post-election budget discussions 2011, she suggested the supervisor should receive a $15,000 raise. When her term began, she frequently found herself on the opposite side of issues from councilmen Bruce Leighton and Fred Costello. Divided votes became commonplace. She was criticized for holding lengthy executive sessions after campaigning for transparency. Myers has been more hands-on with certain aspects of the job, like payroll, which led to the criticism that she was incurring late fees by spending too much time reviewing paperwork. She stood alone in opposition to a deal with developer Steve Aaron on back taxes, arguing that the town could get more if it went to court, with rest of the town board urging her to sign the agreement. Most recently, some on the board say it’s the supervisor’s fault the town didn’t include social services charges in the town budget.

Supporters point to the supervisor’s continued fight against tax breaks for developers as a case of promises kept: they correctly point out that local officials tend to assume any large project is entitled to pay a fraction of the taxes everyone else pays, and are willing to take settlements for much less than face value to stay out of court. They also say the fact that the long-time Helsmoortel supporters on the board are at odds with Myers is to be expected. She can’t be expected to administer things as smoothly as her predecessor, they say. Saugerties Times had hoped to include a lengthy interview in this issue with the supervisor reflecting on the highs and lows of her first year in office, but she wasn’t available.

Myers will have most of 2013 to make the case for reelection. The Conservative Party nomination will be crucial: Myers beat out Helsmoortel for it in 2011, and if Helsmoortel had got it that year and received the same number of votes on that line Myers did, he would have been reelected. In the closing months of 2011, current School Board President and former Conservative Party Chairman George Heidcamp began publicly attacking Myers for her handling of the budget process, which resulted in a tax cap busting 6 percent tax increase. If Heidcamp still holds sway in that party, and the opposition nominates someone the caucus can stomach, Myers could be in trouble. (If George were here, he’d be sure to point out that his letters about the supervisor were written as a private citizen not as the board president. We think it’s implied that a public official can express opinions—particularly about issues with no connection to their office—that won’t be taken as official policy statements. We inform readers of the officeholder’s title only as a frame of reference.)

Hinchey’s retirement, Gibson’s election

The year began with the announcement that favorite son Maurice Hinchey, our representative in Congress for the last 20 years and in the state Assembly for 18 years before that, would not seek reelection. That fact colored all his public appearances over the year, with many goodbyes. Many longtime supporters doubted Mo’s successor could possibly combine his strident environmental advocacy, anti-war stance, pugnacious style and earmark efficacy. If told then, in January, that 11 months later we’d decisively elect a Republican who signed Grover Norquist’s tax pledge, they wouldn’t have believed it. But thanks to redistricting and effective moderate positioning (as well as a limp and petulant campaign by Democrat Julian Schreibman), Republican Chris Gibson became our new representative, our vote in the interminable negotiations of taxes, spending and debt. After voting for the first Paul Ryan budget and its huge cuts to domestic spending, Gibson was one of few Republicans to vote against it the following year; he said because it contained too much defense spending, more cynical observers said because he was positioning himself to run in a more Democratic district the following year. After the election, Gibson said because he’d be representing a new district, his “no new taxes” pledge was void. Regardless of whether the argument will hold up in Grover Norquist’s court, it indicates Gibson wants to compromise; he’s not an ideologue. That’s been comforting for local moderates, but cold comfort for local progressives who, in Hinchey’s attacks on fracking and foreign wars and vigorous defense of entitlement spending, had someone they could really cheer for.

Affordable housing

The issue that arguably decided the supervisor election in 2011 continued to draw the most forceful and motivated opposition in 2012. Affordable housing, in the form of subsidized apartments of around 50 units, has been proposed in three locations in Saugerties in recent years. Just a few weeks ago, a 55-unit project that combines workforce and senior housing was approved. Other projects in Glasco and Barclay Heights have languished; though opposition has been strident, the reason seems to be a lack of state funding, not protest.

It’s not clear how many Saugertiesians oppose affordable housing. When it’s proposed for their neighborhood, dozens of homeowners usually come out in force to oppose it. Savvy opponents try to find problems in the site plan or raise safety concerns, such as fire truck access. You can’t oppose a project because it will change the makeup of a neighborhood from placid single-family homes to a more transient housing complex with more noise and inevitably more visits from police, or because it will cost the community in services (chiefly school costs) while receiving tax breaks (which most any large project gets nowadays).

In 2011, the most effective argument against a project in Glasco supported by then-supervisor Greg Helsmoortel was also the most spurious. Residents of not just the neighborhood around the proposed site on Route 32 but the entire town were outraged when the assistant superintendent estimated the project would cost the town over half a million dollars. He got the number by multiplying the estimated number of school-age children by the per-pupil cost (around $13,000). The superintendent quickly moved to correct the record, explaining that not every new student costs $13,000 – actually, it’s likely the students would be spread equally over the grade levels, and no new staff would be required, and costs would be negligible. But it was too late; that number appeared repeatedly in attacks on Helsmoortel and the project for months afterward.

The guaranteed tax breaks for large new projects, even as the taxes for established businesses and residents increase every year, was the main source of opposition in 2012. Commercial or industrial projects don’t face the same issue because they promise to employ local residents. Residential projects, on paper, take more than they give back when they receive generous tax breaks.

But regardless of the opposition, project approval is a technical, not a political matter. The Planning Board is charged with reviewing project applications and testing them against the zoning code. If the building has the right kind of use for the zone it’s proposed for (industrial, various types of residential), it orders studies on the impact the project will have on the environment, traffic patterns and water runoff, ensures the design will match surrounding buildings, makes sure the sign isn’t gaudy and the building is a certain distance from the road, and might ask for trees to screen it. But the applicant for a large project is always very professional, and takes care of these issues without being told. So if the community decides it wants to stop large residential apartment complexes, it will have to change its zoning law—and that was the discussion in the waning months of 2012, as a committee tasked with rewriting the town’s master plan (which informs the zoning laws) held a public hearing. Most who spoke pointed to growth in rentals in the village: they now account for 56 percent of all occupied housing there, up from 52 percent 10 years ago. That’s too much, they say; the heart and soul of their vision of Saugerties matches the American Dream of homeownership, which carries with it attendant virtues of pride in appearance and civic engagement

Diamond Mills

After a busy year of construction, and over four years after the community first learned of HITS president Tom Struzzieri’s plans, Diamond Mills officially opened in the center of the village in January 2012. The hotel, restaurant and convention center seemed to represent the positive effect HITS has had on the local economy: like the horse shows, most of its patrons hail from a well-heeled international subculture with no intrinsic connection to Saugerties or the Hudson Valley; and just as the HITS crowd helped the downtown recover by patronizing local boutiques, antique shops and restaurants, Diamond Mills, with its location right next to the shops, inaugurated a year of unprecedented activity in the village. It’s impossible to know just how much credit the horse shows and Diamond Mills deserve for revitalizing the village. But one thing is clear: the Partition Street of 2012 was a far more vibrant place than the Partition Street of the late ’90s, when the loss of IBM led to vacant storefronts. While other places in Northern Ulster County are still suffering the effects of IBM’s departure, Saugerties has largely recovered. The influx of money hasn’t changed the local character so much as its allowed local businesses to be solvent, and that’s the reason Saugerties is doing so well: it’s unique and alive.

Town Hall naming controversy

The Saugerties Town Hall is now officially the Col. Roger Donlon Town Hall – and after the controversy of the past few months, no one will ever forget it. The final decision to name the hall after Donlon, a Saugerties native and Medal of Honor winner, came after months of controversy following an earlier vote by the Town Board to name the building in honor of Greg Helsmoortel, Saugerties town supervisor from 1999-2011. Reached for comment, Donlon said he’d already been honored enough (his name graces the auditorium in the village hall and a park at the American Legion), but supporters pointed to a forgotten 2001 vote to name the town hall on High Street after Donlon. Politics was a factor, too. Helsmoortel had just stood for reelection a few months earlier and lost, and those opposed to his positions also led the fight against the naming. (Though the board’s April vote was unanimous.)

Supporters said Helsmoortel was integral to the town hall effort, which consolidated several offices under one roof, and deserved to have the building bear his name.

“It took someone with the strength of character to stand up and serve this community, to locate the town hall there and to make the tough decision,” said Councilman Fred Costello at the time.

In the end, the building was named for Donlon, and Helsmoortel’s name was given to the new wing, which includes the police and planning departments.

Once a year, for 10 years now, the artists of the annual Saugerties Artists Studio Tour have welcomed the community into their studios on the second weekend of August. Visitors have the opportunity to experience the artists’ work in the environment it was made in and to meet the person who made it.

The tour has grown in size and scope every year, from 11 artists in 2002 to around 40 in recent years. Altogether, some 85 artists have been involved over the last decade, says artist Barbara Bravo, tour coordinator.

Artistic fellowship has become a fixture of the summer season in Saugerties, but what about the rest of the year? Many of the artists want to maintain a year-round presence in the community. To that end, 21 of the tour artists have mounted a group exhibition of their work at the Saugerties Public Library. The exhibit will remain on view through March 31.

Each artist in the show is represented by a single work executed in a variety of media. There are watercolors, oils on canvas, pencil drawings, altered photos, mixed media and assemblage pieces, linocuts and sculptural works. The participating artists are Anita Barbour, Loel Barr, Ana Bergen, Barbara Bravo, Allen Bryan, Michael Ciccone, Steve Crohn, Angela Gaffney-Smith, Alex Kveton, Polly M. Law, Ulf Loven, Brian Lynch, Hugh Morris, Ze’ev Willy Neumann, Gus Pedersen, Ellen Perantoni, Susan Sammis Goldson, Jeffrey Schiller, Prue See, Viorica Stan and Carol Zaloom.

It’s not the first time the artists of the Saugerties Artists Studio Tour have exhibited together. Last year there were four separate exhibits mounted in association with the tour: “Neighbor to Neighbor” at the Arts Society of Kingston (ASK) in July; “Ten,” last August at the Kiersted House, just prior to the tour weekend; an opening reception at Opus 40 the night before the first day of the tour with an exhibit mounted through September; and a tenth anniversary exhibit that remained on view through September on the walls of Café Mezzaluna.

Those four exhibits were all held around the time of the tour, however: the show at the library is the first time that members of the group have exhibited together during the winter, and Bravo says they’ll be looking for more opportunities like this to bring year-round recognition of the artists of Saugerties.

And the artists are a real community, says Bravo. “We genuinely like each other,” she says, laughing. According to Bravo, many of the artists have bonded with one another, and even help each other out with creative solutions, like the barn-wood frame that Gus Pedersen made for her tile work in the show and her assist with the ceramic leaf insert on his “Intarsied Door” panel of knotty pine.

A well-attended opening reception for the exhibit was held at the library on Saturday, Jan. 5, with many of the participating artists present. Supervisor Kelly Myers and her husband Will also attended the opening, where Myers confirmed to Bravo that she and the Town Board will once again contribute financially to backing the studio tour this summer, continuing the tradition established by former Town Supervisor Greg Helsmoortel, who supported the Saugerties Artists Studio Tour from its beginning, Bravo says. The financing comes from the town’s economic development/tourism funds.

The backing of the Town Board is a deserved recognition, says Bravo, as the studio tour gets the word out about Saugerties and brings culture to the community, and “makes it a very welcoming place.” The tour also receives marketing support from a New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA) grant, administered by the Dutchess County Arts Council; the tour being one of a limited number of applicants from both Dutchess and Ulster counties to receive the grant, says Bravo, and the fourth year they will receive the award.

The show at the library is the first of four exhibitions of work by local artists that will be featured there this year. Each exhibit will remain on view for three months. The next show will be of paintings and metal wall reliefs by Jim McElrath, on display from April through June.

Exhibits at the library are presented in conjunction with the Art & Exhibits Committee of the Saugerties Public Library. The committee was created by former library board member Steve Crohn, not long after he was elected to the Saugerties Public Library Board of Trustees in 2006, at which time he also arranged for the appraisal and restoration of art works owned by the library.

The purpose of the Art & Exhibits Committee, he says, is to enrich the experience of library patrons and to increase exposure of local and regional artists, and to increase community appreciation of the arts through presenting a variety of exhibitions by artists in the visual arts as well as exhibits of an educational and/or historical significance.

Although he is no longer on the library board, Crohn is still a member of the Art & Exhibits Committee, and he’s a participating artist on the Saugerties Artists Studio Tour. Crohn says he would like to see more recognition of the library as a public art gallery for both the library’s holdings and revolving exhibits. Now that the committee at the library has scheduled two years of upcoming exhibits, he says, they’re able to be listed with the Art Along the Hudson organization, a popular marketing tool that brings awareness about cultural events to visitors to the Hudson Valley. Crohn also serves as curator of works on display at Town Hall, which he hopes to see blossom into another viable exhibition space in Saugerties.

This year’s Saugerties Artists Studio Tour will be held on Saturday and Sunday, August 10 and 11, with an opening reception at Opus 40 on Friday, August 9. For more information, visit www.saugertiesarttour.com or http://www.facebook.com/pages/Saugerties-Artists-Studio-Tour/162929647859.

Susan Bolitzer and Virginia Luppino

When someone drove up Susan Bolitzer’s driveway back in 1999 to hand her a flyer about a piece of land coming up for auction, she probably could not have imagined the changes it would make in her life in the years to come. By 2003, she’d helped to form the Esopus Creek Conservancy (ECC) and was instrumental in saving the land from development and preserving it as a natural ecosystem for all to enjoy.

Now known as the Esopus Bend Nature Preserve, its 161 acres offer hiking trails, guided nature walks, birding field trips, butterfly walks, animal tracking events and kayak and canoe tours of the preserve’s shoreline. In 2011, the ECC collaborated with Scenic Hudson and the Dominican Sisters of Sparkill to add the nearby 192-acre Falling Waters Preserve under its umbrella of protection, effectively doubling the amount of land they now conserve.

On Jan. 1, Bolitzer stepped down as president of the board of the ECC after 10 years of service. Board member Virginia Luppino has replaced her as president; mentored and guided, she says, by Bolitzer, who is not leaving the ECC completely, but will remain as its vice-president.

The Esopus Creek Conservancy consists of eight board members in total who run the organization with the help of volunteers from the community. The ECC also saw a changing of the guard on Jan. 1 with the induction of new board members Jason Novak, Sue Rosenberg and Roland Carito, who joined existing board members Kate Shuter, Spider Barbour and Leeanne Thornton, the only other original member of the ECC board besides Bolitzer.

The decision to step down as president was made, Bolitzer says, in order to spend more time with her husband, daughter and grandchildren. In addition to that, she says, it’s good for an organization to have someone else take the reins after ten years; someone who has a different set of interests and talents, and can broaden the scope of the organization.

“Virginia is a multi-talented person,” says Bolitzer. “She’s very easy to work with and sees solutions quickly to some issues I was stuck on. I’m very happy to support her in whatever she wants to do.” Luppino came up with the idea for last year’s popular and successful fundraiser “Art Esopus,” says Bolitzer, in which 100 works of art based on the Esopus Creek were donated by artists to be sold at $100 each, the proceeds benefitting the works of the conservancy. Bolitzer adds that Luppino also had note cards printed up featuring the top 12 works (as voted on at the event) to further raise funds for the ECC.

“Virginia has also developed a strong rapport with the Land Trust Alliance, whom we have worked with from the very beginning of our organization,” says Bolitzer, “and that means a real continuation and indication of how we’re going to grow.” The Land Trust Alliance is a national organization that promotes land conservation and assists land trusts all over the country in various ways, giving grants and helping land trusts develop their organizations.

Bolitzer says that she doesn’t anticipate carrying a heavy work load with the ECC as vice-president, but intends to continue working on the ongoing project to eradicate the water chestnut plants that have been choking the waters in the region. They’ve learned more about the science involved in it, and she believes they are better equipped this year to make some headway on getting rid of the plants – eventually – once and for all. “It’s going to take a number of years, but if we don’t start, the whole cove will fill in.”

The plants are “extremely talented,” she says, reproducing themselves with amazing rapidity, but they’ve learned that the plant is an annual; if they get in early before the plant becomes too developed, and can just cut off its top, it won’t come back again. “There will be seeds that come up again for a while from the bottom [of the water], but that plant is finished,” says Bolitzer. Last year the mild winter contributed to early and rapid growth of the water chestnuts, making them too developed for the lake mower [a device that basically chews up the plants] to be as effective as it could have been.

The plants are a problem all along the Hudson River, where traditionally people have tried pulling them out by hand, Bolitzer says, eventually giving up after finding out how tough and time consuming the process is and how much debris has to be carted away. “But with what we’ve learned, we hope we’ve started something that other people will do, too,” she says.

Most of us have probably held jobs where at times it felt like we were doing the work of two people. For Marilyn Richardson, manager of the Saugerties Area Council of Churches Food Pantry these past 20 years, it turns out she’s been doing the work of five.

That’s how many people will be on the new food pantry committee at the Council of Churches, dividing up 75 percent of the responsibilities that up to now have been all Richardson’s. She will continue to manage the facility and will supervise the committee members once they’re in place, when certain responsibilities like ordering and inventory will be put in their hands, under her watchful eye. “The pantry has grown to such a point that one person cannot do it all,” says Richardson. “I’ve just kept putting more on myself, doing it and getting along, but as I get older, it’s a lot to keep up. I’m getting physically tired.” She says that she welcomes having the help, and wouldn’t have just walked away from it in any case. “I have a responsibility and I’ve had a passion for it for 20 years. You just can’t walk away from that.”

The restructuring is in the early phases at this point, she says, pointing out that they’ve only had one meeting so far and the committee isn’t fully formed yet. “It’s more important to draw attention to the pantry,” says Richardson, “where we feed 500 people a month.” Demand for pantry services remains high.

Monetary donations enable the food pantry to purchase food from the Regional Food Bank of Northeastern New York, a nonprofit organization in Latham that buys surplus food and collects donations from the food industry to sell at wholesale prices to food pantries, who then distribute it to those in need. Every year, the Regional Food Bank allocates over 25 million pounds of food to over 1,000 different agencies across 23 counties of New York State.

“The average cost per year we spend at the Latham food bank is over $30,000,” Richardson says.

State grants and grant partners like Markertek, Shop Rite and the Ulster County Sheriff’s Association offset half the cost, but the other half has to come from donations made by local businesses, individuals and schools.

Donations of canned goods and non-perishable food may be brought to the pantry during its hours of operation. The Food Pantry is open at 44 Livingston Street two days a week, on Mondays and on Thursdays from 10 a.m. to noon on each of those days, and on Tuesday evenings from 7 to 8 p.m. In addition to non-perishable food items, toiletries such as toothpaste, shampoo and bathroom tissue are always welcome. To make a monetary donation, mail a check (made out to Saugerties Area Council of Churches Food Pantry) to P.O. Box 723, Saugerties, NY, 12477. Checks should not be mailed to the pantry’s physical address. For more information, call 246-6885.

‘There’s no other thing like it anywhere else in the world, but it takes maintenance’

Last September, a stone wall collapsed on the southwest side of the quarry at Opus 40. It was the first such incident in the over-70-year history of the site. At the time, the collapse was believed to be the result of water pressure from heavy rainfall that occurred earlier that evening. As it turns out, it seems that all that water was just the final straw in an inevitable process wrought by time and Mother Nature.

Opus 40 was built with mortarless dry key stonemasonry techniques intended to allow water to run through the structures, says grounds consultant Lee Walker. But according to a recent engineer’s report, those “internal voids” that allow water and small rock and soil particles to pass through, “over time, can fill and restrict the flow of water through the wall, causing the water to be trapped.”

“In other words,” says Walker, “they’re saying [Opus 40] is destined to fail, no matter how long it stands. Not because of the way Harvey built it, but because of what it is.”

And based on that engineer’s report, Walker says, an insurance claim to pay for restoration of the collapsed wall was denied.

So where does it go from here? Fixing the collapsed wall will be a big expense, he says. And several other places on the site in need of shoring up have been identified, too. “It’s not just fixing this wall; it’s what to do to make sure it doesn’t happen again. And that all takes money.”

Paying the piper

Opus 40 board member Brigid Walsh says that as unfortunate as it is that the insurance claim was denied, it does serve as a lesson about Opus 40 and landscape art in general. “It’s constantly subject to the elements, and will always need a lot of care.”

They’re hoping that the community will help preserve the future of Opus 40 by donating to a fundraising campaign to bring in expert stonemasons to repair the collapsed wall and prevent future damage to the site.

The first phase, says Walsh, is to raise $50,000. “We need this funding urgently just to start the work,” she says. The goal is to raise the funds by the end of April so work can be completed by the traditional Memorial Day opening. Otherwise the opening will be delayed.

Donations can be made at www.opus40.org and through the soon-to-be-launched campaign on crowdfunding site IndieGogo.com. Donations at certain levels will be rewarded there with extras like hats or t-shirts, Walsh says, and private stonemasonry workshops.

Expert help

The work at Opus 40 will be done in partnership with The Stone Foundation of New Mexico, stonework preservationists dedicated to perpetuating the craft. Founding member Tomas Lipps and local mason Timothy Smith will oversee the rotation of stonemasons who will come into Saugerties for a week at a time to restore Opus 40. The masons will volunteer their time, says Walsh, but the funds raised will go to pay for their travel expenses and putting them up while they’re here. In addition, the fundraising campaign will cover the cost of materials and any equipment necessary to supplement Harvey Fite’s original tools, which will be used to as great an extent as possible in the restoration work.

“The people at The Stone Foundation are passionate about making sure this gets done in the same way that Harvey did it in the first place,” says Walsh. “They’re excited about the opportunity to educate people as well, so we want to coordinate with some educational institutions to bring students in to watch them while they do the work.”

The documentary team Impact Productions, who’ve purchased the rights to Harvey Fite’s life story, will capture the restoration process on film, to be available for people to view when they visit Opus 40 in the future, says Walsh. “We’re going to walk away from this with so much more understanding of what Harvey did. You’ll be able to go there and learn about it on a level that up until this point hasn’t been possible.”

Maintenance

Phase Two of the fundraising process will be to raise another $50,000 to maintain Opus 40 after the initial repairs have been made. “We don’t want to be in a position any more where we’re fixing damage,” says Walsh. “We want to be in a position where we can raise funds so we can do preventative work. Hopefully our community will rally around this, to understand how important this is not only to Saugerties and tourism but to Ulster County and the state of New York.

“Up to now, there have been no better caretakers for Opus 40 than Pat and Tad [Richards, co-directors], because they’re family and they get it; they understand the legacy and have been able to tell the stories about how everything came about. But as far as the technical aspects of what it takes to maintain something like this, we need help. There’s no other thing like it anywhere else in the world, but it takes maintenance.”

“Waterman” by Catherine Sebastian.

This past week saw the opening of “I Have a Place in Mind” at Imogen Holloway Gallery on Partition St., with work by Nina Katchadourian, Bobby Davidson, Michel Alhadeff-Jones and Keiko Sono. As the title of the exhibit suggests, each of the artists represented has a distinct take on concepts of time and place.

This is the first time that gallery owner Diane Dwyer has turned over the curatorial reins since opening last May. Guest curator Michael Hanchett Hanson, who teaches creativity and cognition at Columbia University, says the works on exhibit explore the way photography and video, often used to document places and events, can also influence the way we construct our ideas of places, and how conceptual transformations through art broaden those ideas.

Nina Katchadourian is an artist of international reputation who grew up in California. The two large C-prints (chromogenic color prints) displayed here are photographs of road maps she has dissected (her word) from paper maps, cutting up the entire roadway system of a place and reforming it into a dimensional metaphor of the place. For example: “Austria,” known as the “heart of Europe,” in the shape of a human heart and “Head of Spain,” the freeway network of Spain reformed to resemble the head of a bull.

Brooklyn-based artist Bobby Davidson is represented in two 20 by 24 inch photographs that use images of water to represent imagination in the movement from consciousness to sleep. Then in a sequence of five small digitally fabricated works on paper, from a series called “US Letter,” we see barely-there imagery of ordinary city sights, like a hot-dog stand or an escalator, printed in matte ink on a backing of almost flesh-toned coloration. Inspired by a literary passage about 9/11 in Don DeLillo’s Falling Man, the barely discernible images are rendered oddly moving, evoking the swirling clouds of debris that obscured everything in sight that day.

Social theorist and Columbia professor Michel Alhadeff-Jones shows two videos that explore unconscious movement. Watching O’Keeffe is a 12-minute loop of video that captures images of a crowd of museum-goers at a Georgia O’Keeffe exhibit. Because we only see them from the knees down, it’s their movement our eyes are drawn to; that shifting of weight and circling of the room as each painting is observed. It’s a slow dance of sorts as people move their bodies while their thoughts are elsewhere, preoccupied with what they’re looking at. Alhadeff-Jones also exhibits two six by 19 inch photographs, “Escape #2” and “Escape #3,” that depict his wife, a dancer, in a moment of movement caught in time.

Keiko Sono contributed two versions of “Suspended Carbon,” one a 13 by 14 inch work and the other a large window installation, along with a video of the work in progress. The “candle soot” works are made in a manner that suggests the ephemeral effects of time, as Sono holds delicate paper over a burning candle just long enough to capture the soot in patterns on it without the paper catching fire. Sono is the owner of Flick Book Studio in Saugerties, which teaches stop-motion animation techniques, and she’s done a number of site-specific installations that explore concepts of time.

“I Have a Place in Mind” is on view through Sunday, April 28. The Imogen Holloway Gallery is located at 81 Partition St.

Across the street, the Partition Street Wine Shop at 102 Partition St. has a selection of landscape photographs by Woodstock-based photographer Deena Feinberg on the walls at the back of the shop. While displays there are periodically rotated, co-owner Suzanne Balsamo emphasizes that it’s not an actual gallery: they don’t sell the work or represent the artist, and if someone wants to purchase a work on display they need to contact the artist directly. It’s more of an informal thing, she says, displaying the work of artist friends.

“Landscape Observations” also deals with matters of time. Feinberg says the images represent “a series of moments that I documented over the last year as a way of tracing my memories of these places and times.” The exhibit is on view through June 3.

Elsewhere the Saugerties Public Library has mounted the second of its quarterly art exhibits with colorful paintings and abstracted metal wall reliefs by Jim McElrath of Saugerties. Curated by Steve Crohn, head of the library’s Arts & Exhibits committee, the show’s opening reception is Saturday, April 20. The Saugerties Public Library is located at 91 Washington Ave. Crohn also curates artwork for Town Hall, with landscape photographs by Susan Goldson and watercolors by Anita Barbour currently on view in the courtroom and adjacent hallways.

New World Home Cooking is exhibiting large pigmented photographic prints on canvas by Catherine Sebastian, sculpturally-influenced hand-pulled prints by Alex Kveton (if you’ve seen his sculpture there’s no mistaking the hand at work here) and a number of assemblage wall sculptures by Lenny Kislin, who organized the exhibit. Time seems to have been on his mind, as well, as the large constructions feature a clock face prominently. In one, “Racing Against Time,” two women hold an enormous egg between them as they stand in front of a (biological) clock. Kislin will put together future shows at New World to rotate about every six weeks or so. An opening reception for this one is planned for Saturday, April 27 from 3–5 p.m. New World Home Cooking is located on Rte. 212 between Woodstock and Saugerties. For more information, call (845) 679-8117.

(Photo by Dion Ogust)

Parents of third through eighth grade students in Saugerties have been warned by state education officials that the new, tougher standardized testing their kids began undergoing this week is going to result in low test scores and that parents should expect poor results from their children. “What kind of message is that sending to our kids?” wondered a group of concerned teachers and parents at a meeting of Saugerties PACE (Parents Actively Committed to Education) at the Frank D. Greco Senior Center on Market St. Monday night.

“The new benchmark is failure,” said one teacher. “It’s not right.” He places the blame not on the local school district but on the Legislature in Albany, saying “it has allowed this inappropriate system to flourish.”

The newly mandated high-stakes tests in math and English align with the Common Core standards and are intended to raise the academic levels in schools nationwide. But, these parents and educators ask, at what cost to their children? At the PACE meeting, one parent after another said they were troubled by the focus on preparation for the tests, saying that it seems “all-consuming” and “relentless,” and puts undue stress on their kids. One teacher after the next said they don’t believe that the tests accurately measure the students’ knowledge, or take into account individual learning styles.

Elise Hunt is a teacher in Kingston who works with seventh and eighth grade ESL students. “The big hypocrisy of this for us,” she said, “is that we’re constantly being trained to teach to the individual needs of a student. We spend all our time and energy doing that, and then at the end of the year, they all sit down to the same exact test.”

And then there’s the cost of testing for already financially-strapped school districts: the money being put into the tests can be put to better use elsewhere, said parents.

Much of the conversation at the PACE forum centered around whether students can simply opt out of taking the tests entirely, and if they do, what effect that will have on their futures and their teachers’ evaluations. According to many parents and teachers present, there’s a lot of conflicting information and misinformation swirling about regarding the issue.

Students have been told, they say, that it’s illegal to opt out. They’ve been told that if they don’t take the test it will influence their future placement in honors level studies and even determine college admissions. Wrong, they say — on all counts. One person who spoke at the meeting said they were told that teachers’ evaluations are no longer going to be tied to standardized testing, so it should not be an issue for an individual teacher if they have a student who opts out of taking the tests (some parents told of their kids being chastised by teachers who didn’t want the child’s poor performance on the tests to reflect upon them).

The parents are worried about the stress placed on their children in taking the tests, but are perhaps even more concerned about the stress that would be placed on them should they elect to opt out; an act of civil disobedience that, as was pointed out by more than one person, is difficult enough for an adult to do but nearly impossible for a child to take upon themselves.

Beth Humphrey is the parent of two children, a sixth grader at Mt. Marion Elementary School and a 10th grader at the high school, and she’s employed as a museum educator who works with several of the school districts in the area. She says the goal of the PACE group is to hold public conversations free of the agendas and constraints that the Board of Education and PTA meetings have to operate within.

“The PTA is a national organization with a lot of members and they have very specific guidelines for how they can advocate for kids,” Humphrey said. “We also really wanted to be specific to what Saugerties is concerned about. We’re happy to have the Board of Education listen, and if listening to us influences them, great. But we’re trying to keep the conversation as broad as possible. We don’t intend to endorse candidates [for the School Board].”

The topic for the evening was determined by a recent PACE meeting, she said, where they generated a list of concerns, and the new tests were the number one priority. Future meetings will focus on whatever parents are actively concerned about at that time. “It may be nutrition in the schools another time,” said Humphrey. “We’re driven by what the parents are concerned about, and right now it’s the testing.”

Attendance at the monthly forums has generally numbered between 25–50 people, Humphrey said. She pointed out the diversity of the group, noting that among the more than 30 attendees present on this night were the Town Supervisor Kelly Myers and Board of Education members Bob Thomann, George Heidcamp, Thomas Ham and Bob Davies. An eloquent young student attended with her parents and spoke out about the testing from the child’s perspective, and several of the people in attendance had children who were grown and long out of the school district system, but who came to lend their support to the others.

“We all have concerns about the quality of education and being able to talk about it,” Humphrey said. To that end, she has set up a Facebook page for the group (Saugerties PACE) on which anyone can re-post material put out on the subject in order that the conversation remain active and so that parents and teachers have a place to go to share and acquire information in between PACE meetings.

Organizers also supplied contact information and form letters for parents who wish to write letters of protest about the testing to members of the New York State Board of Regents (regents.nysed.gov/members/), State Sen. Cecilia Tkaczyk (nysenate.gov), New York State Assemblyman Pete Lopez (assembly.state.ny.us) and Gov. Andrew Cuomo (governor.ny.gov/contact/).

A march on Albany is also in the works for Saturday, June 8.

A date for the next meeting of PACE has not yet been set. The next meeting of the Board of Education will be Wednesday, April 24, at which time they’ll hear from a Government Relations committee they’ve set up in order to discuss the ways in which the local community can make their opinions heard in Albany with regard to future testing.

(Photo by Alen Fetahi)

This December will mark 35 years since Peggy Schwartz and former business partner Mary Federoff opened up the wine and spirits shop in the CVS plaza. Back in 1978, the shopping center was just being built when the two women found themselves driving up the Thruway together one evening with their husbands, one a CPA and the other an attorney. The two men had been involved in researching the potential sale of a liquor store for a client, says Schwartz, “and in the back of their minds, they’d been thinking about buying a liquor store themselves. But at that time, people in New York State who held professional licenses couldn’t get a liquor license.”

But in one of those instances where a simple act can change the course of one’s life, the couples driving up the Thruway decided to exit at Saugerties to have dinner. When the two men saw the plaza going up and the vacancies available there, light bulbs went on.

Fast forward, says Schwartz, “and the two women who barely knew each other became best friends and partners” in Town & Country Liquors, despite misgivings about going into the business. “I had just had a baby and Mary had a child. I didn’t drink, I didn’t know anything about retail, and I said no at first.”

She and Mary are still best friends, Schwartz says, but her former business partner now owns another store in the area. These days Schwartz captains the ship herself, with an able staff whom she credits with keeping her social media presence active. “It’s a constantly evolving thing,” she says.

Brooklyn born-and-raised Schwartz has lived in Ulster County since 1972, when the original plan to buy a vacation home in Hunter with her ex-husband ended up becoming a fulltime move for them from Queens to Stone Ridge instead. Schwartz worked for New York City’s Parks, Recreation & Cultural Affairs administration at the time, commuting to the city for that until deciding to work locally in her husband’s office in Kingston. Then in 1978 came the store.

How did a woman who didn’t even drink take on a wine and spirit shop? In the beginning, Schwartz says, the partners had a mentor in an acquaintance of her husband’s who was a salesman for a liquor company. “He basically came in and set the store up for us, and did all the ordering at first. Little by little, though, Mary and I started learning. We took wine classes and travelled to California a few times, and we educated ourselves.” Schwartz says that wasn’t as easy then without the Internet.

In time, Federoff had another child, and Schwartz says that the two women liked to say, “’between us we have three children,’ because we ran the business so we could work around that. We managed to be home when the kids got off the school bus.” After both marriages broke up in 1993, they really buckled down and got serious about the business, she says.

Schwartz lives in Port Ewen but spends most of her time in Saugerties. Or to paraphrase her friend Mery Rosado of Cafe Mezzaluna, Schwartz says she “sleeps in Port Ewen but lives in Saugerties.” She is co-chair of the Saugerties Area Chamber of Commerce and is involved with the local women’s networking group Alliance of Women Entrepreneurs (AWE). In her early days in business, she says, first as a young mother with a child and then as a struggling newly-divorced woman, she wasn’t able to be very involved in community affairs. “Then I realized that for your own sake you have to get involved, and you have to give back to the community. We have people who have been our customers forever, and I’m so appreciative of the fact that people come here and that I’ve managed to survive,” Schwartz says. “You gotta give back a little.”

She says she’s made a lot of friends through the Chamber of Commerce and sees so many people who “make Saugerties the best it can be. Keeping the local character, not letting it become a run-of-the-mill town; it’s the small-town feeling and the camaraderie of people that care that you see here.”

That caring was exemplified for her when the shop caught fire two years ago during the holiday season. “The amount of people that showed up to help, and how they all even knew about it, I don’t know,” says Schwartz. The sprinkler system that put out the fire caused major flooding, dissolving cardboard boxes holding bottles of wine and spirits to the point they collapsed. “Broken glass was everywhere,” says Schwartz. “It was a frightening scene — cold, and dark and wet. We weren’t allowed to open until all power was restored and every bit of water was cleaned out.”

The building inspector thought it would take weeks to reopen, she says, but thanks to all the people who showed up to help, they were back in business by 3 p.m. that afternoon. It was the day before New Year’s Eve, too, one of the busiest days of the year for a wine and spirits shop. “Even the relatives of our employees came in to help. It was really that feeling that out of adversity, this is what family does, this is what neighbors do — it was really touching.”

The topper: Schwartz’s daughter Lacey’s boyfriend Antonio Delgado had already planned on proposing marriage to Lacey on that New Year’s Eve. Although cleaning up after fire and flood wasn’t in the original plans, the couple came up from Brooklyn to help and stayed over. The proposal came off on time, juxtaposing the traumatic events for Schwartz with promise for the future. Now Schwartz is awaiting the arrival of her first grandchildren, a set of identical twins.

The former wine novice now says she thinks that everyone should have a glass of wine with dinner every night. “But that doesn’t mean a person should have to spend a lot of money on it,” Schwartz says. “Our claim to fame, I think, is that we have a constantly changing selection of wines that are really interesting and flavorful but very affordable, too.”

On the horizon are some wine dinners in collaboration with local restaurants planned and Schwartz says she’d like to start a wine club. They’ve also been working on getting more information out to customers by email, but Schwartz says that while she sees the benefits, “I really don’t want my business to be all about emailing. I like the personal. I get the convenience of it, but we have people that come and just want to chat, and I want to chat with them. We’re a small town, and I like the one-on-one.”

(ESI Photography)

As the HITS-on-the-Hudson show grounds were being made ready for the start of another season of hunter/jumper horse shows earlier this week, the first of the boots-and-britches clad equestrians who come to Saugerties every spring and summer have been spotted in the village.

They’re a familiar sight to locals, as they’ve been coming here for ten years now to participate in the nine-week season that draws, on average, more than 3,000 horses, 4,500 horsemen and women and 2,500 spectators to the region. The economic impact of their arrival is estimated at $50 million. That includes spending on food, lodging, living expenses and tourism.

And the visitors are receiving a warm welcome from folks in town, according to Eric Thompson, a rider and trainer. He and his wife Emily are making Saugerties their home base this summer for the third consecutive year. “We actually just had lunch in town, and we got a very nice reception at the deli we went to for a sandwich, and at Lucky Chocolates,” he said. “People were very friendly and asked us all kinds of questions about the horse shows. They seem very excited to have everyone back.”

The Thompsons consider themselves “officially gypsies,” dividing their time between the horse shows in their winter base in Wellington, Florida (West Palm Beach) and those in Saugerties during the summer. When the weather becomes too hot in Florida, they go north, and in September, make the return trip. “It’s not the most conventional way of life, but we find that the horses are able to be kept at their peak performance when they’re in the right weather conditions,” he said.

And while Florida has its conveniences, “it’s a little shy on character,” Thompson said. “Coming to Saugerties is wonderful for us; it’s just a lovely town, and this time of year it’s gorgeous, too, when everything is so green.” Some of the neighboring communities offer similar amenities, he said, but Saugerties appeals to him “because of its authenticity; there’s just a little more ‘realness’ here.”

The couple operate their business, Stella Farm, from the stables at the HITS show grounds. They currently have 11 horses stabled there, Thompson said. “We have horses at every level. At the entry level classes you’re really just acclimating the horses to the show ring; everything that is new to a horse can be perceived as a potential threat to them, so you have to take it very, very slowly. Then we have horses that are 10 and 11 years old that are sort of at the peak of their show career doing some of the top classes like the Grand Prix and the Hunter Prix.”

Thompson rides the horses in the competitions, as does wife Emily and assistant Lindsay Bailey, who also helps out with the management of the horses and the daily training. The Thompsons partner with a horse breeder in Montreal to purchase their horses; an unusual arrangement, he said, because most of the horses bred for hunter/jumper competition come from old bloodlines in Holland and Germany and are imported here from Europe. Emily Thompson is an entrepreneur, as well, with her own line of equestrian clothing sold through tack shops and online. Some of the vendors at the show grounds in Saugerties will be carrying her products, Thompson said.

‘We’ve gotten very at home here’

Trainer Ronnie Beard also winters in Wellington, Fl., the location of his farm Wyndmont, Inc. and the site of one of the largest circuit of horse shows in the country. (The Wellington shows are not connected with HITS, Inc., who operate their own winter competitions in Ocala, Florida.)

“Agriculture, manufactures, commerce and navigation, the four pillars of our prosperity, are the most thriving when left most free to individual enterprise.”

-Thomas Jefferson

If Thomas Jefferson were alive today and living in the Hudson Valley, he’d be on the forefront of the farm-to-table movement. He’d be gratified by the emphasis these days on eating locally-produced foods and strengthening our regional farms because he wanted America to be a self-sustaining republic capable of producing its own products on its own land. He wouldn’t be so happy to learn many farmers here don’t own their own land and are scraping out a living only through a combination of creativity and perseverance.

Charles Noble is one such farmer. His Movable Beast Farm is literally that: a herd of 74 cattle that he and wife Francesca move from one grazing ground in the Rondout Valley to another. Land is expensive — too expensive to farm. “Its price reflects its value to someone who’s coming up from New York City who wants a second home,” said Noble.

In order to deal with that challenge, he said, “we work with about 10 different landowners and move our cows from property to property.” In addition to running his grass-fed beef business, Noble is a board member of the Rondout Valley Growers Association. A number of young people are interested in going into farming, he said, “but until we can make it economically viable, it’s not going to be sustainable. A lot of the farmers are only able to farm because either they or their spouse has a second job to subsidize the farm.”

Local farmer Joe Aiello doesn’t own his own land, either. Aiello said he always wanted to farm, like his father before him and his grandfather, too, who immigrated from Naples, Italy in 1912 and became a farmer on Staten Island, but for a long time it just didn’t seem a practical profession to go into. Eventually, however, Aiello bartered for land and started Mangia Bene Farm in Glasco, which he operates with his wife Laura.

It hasn’t been easy. “The books on farming tell you how they started and where they’re at, but they never tell you about the in between part,” he said. “They never tell you about the hundred times a week you think, ‘this is crazy, I’d be better off going to get a job at Lowe’s.’

Aiello and Noble spoke at a panel discussion in Saugerties last week on the topic of re-visioning local food production. A day of drenching rain didn’t discourage several dozen people from coming to the Saugerties Performing Arts Factory that evening to talk about ways in which the local community can support its regional farmers and even learn how to feed itself through growing food in a community or home garden. They talked about World War II-era “victory gardens,” which eased the pressure on the public food supply and boosted civic morale as well, giving home gardeners a feeling of personal empowerment.

The panel discussion was hosted by Sustainable Saugerties Transition Town, the local chapter of an international group dedicated to making communities self-sustaining. “All of us are in this together,” said Larry Ulfik, a member of the regional organization overseeing the local group. “We want to be a resource people can come to, that they can rely on.”

With the strengthening of the local food system a common goal, the group is partnering with the Saugerties Farmers Market. “Keeping farmers in farming benefits all of us, not just the individual farmer or farm property owner,” said Judith Spektor, co-founder and director of the market. One way to support local farming, she said, is for people to come to the market every week. “Make shopping there a habit. The bottom line is, if we don’t have enough customers there won’t be a market.”

Aiello credited the Saugerties Farmers Market, where Mangia Bene Farms is a mainstay, with enabling him to make a living for his family, but said, “it has to continue to grow. Buying farm-to-table keeps what we do viable and it makes it possible for us to continue doing it.”

Kathy Gordon maintains a space at the Farmers Market, but said she has ambiguous feelings about what she called “the two-tier system” of all farmers markets; “one for the wealthy and one for everyone else. We have wonderful, organic, fresh locally-grown food available through farmers markets for those who can afford it and a horrible food system that most Americans have to suffer through.”

A woman in the audience disagreed. “I think the wealthy shop at Sam’s Club just like everybody else,” she said. “I don’t think it’s just a matter of resources: it’s the way people use their resources.”

Joe Aiello agreed: it’s about priorities. He noted that while some may consider the $4 he charges for a dozen eggs to be too expensive, there are those who pay two and a half times that for a pack of cigarettes. “And eventually it’ll kill ‘em,” he added. “It’s a choice.” He referenced his heritage, saying that Italians have a cultural mindset that no matter what their income level, they want the best meats and vegetables. “It’s a kind of attitude and way of thinking that we don’t have here,” he said. “When that starts to change, people will make certain choices in order to have those foods. The system wasn’t created by those of us who run a farm. I’m just trying to grow excellent food and make a living.”

While acknowledging that the organizers of the Saugerties Farmers Market do hear the complaint that prices are too high there, Judith Spektor said that at peak of season, prices are actually better at the market, and while it may be true that there are price differences in some instances, there is so much value added buying at the Farmers Market that the consumer has to factor in all they’re getting when they choose to spend their money there. “We see farm food from local farms as a different product than what you would get in an ordinary grocery store or big box store,” said Spektor. “It’s about extraordinary taste, and freshness, and it’s about nutrition. It’s about knowing where our food comes from, and the trust there. You can talk directly to the farmer and ask questions and get answers. It’s about the environmental concerns: you’re decreasing the transport of goods from across country. It’s also about genetic diversity and land stewardship.”

(Photo by Dion Ogust)

Late in the day on a Sunday afternoon, sunlight streams through the stained-glass windows of the First Baptist Church on Partition Street in Saugerties. The congregants gathering in its glow are members of the Monte de Oración Christian church, the first church in Saugerties to offer bilingual services in Spanish and English.

“Raise your hand if you’re joyful,” says Aldy Perez, an ordained minister filling in for the regular pastor (who also happens to be her husband), Reverend Jose Manuel Perez. Aldy usually takes a supporting role in the services, but on this day she commands the center of the altar while her husband is away guest-preaching at a friend’s church in Connecticut.

The First Baptist reverberates with sound and energy as native Venezuelan Pastora Aldy and daughters, Gabriella, 18, and Angely, 13, sing faith-based songs in Spanish, amplified by microphones, to the accompaniment of much hand-clapping. Two congregants join the mother and daughters on the altar to sing and offer praise, backed by two men playing electric guitar and drums in the loft overhead. The musicians continue to play throughout the service, in fact, accompanying the preaching as well as the songs.

The service is conducted in Spanish by Aldy and translated into English by Gabriella, who performs that task each week, usually with her father officiating. Young Angely, like her mother, also takes a special role on this day, standing in as guest preacher for her father, delivering the sermon in English with her sister translating it into Spanish.

The congregants sit or stand as they like, many standing and swaying with eyes closed and one arm raised fervently in praise. There’s a continual flow to the service, without any stops and starts between song and prayer. Most of the parishioners are young families with several small children, who roam freely throughout the service but without being disruptive; the atmosphere is more akin to a festive family get-together than a formal church service. (In contrast to the way that some churches ask their members to turn and shake the hands of the congregants sitting near them, Monte de Oración encourages its members to approach every single person there to greet them, which they do with enthusiasm and warmth.)

About halfway through the service, the children in attendance are invited to go downstairs with their teacher to play and to be taught Bible studies and learn songs in both Spanish and English. The church sponsors a youth group every Thursday as well, presided over by the pastor’s daughters Gabriella and Angely along with Linda Lopez’s 16-year-old daughter. When the services are over, all converge downstairs for a shared dinner prepared by one of the congregants, at a cost of $5 per dinner to help defray the expense of keeping the church going.

El principio

You can chart the ethnic profile of Saugerties by looking at its churches and when they were founded; first came the Dutch, English and Germans with their attendant Protestant denominations, then the Irish and Italians who built the town’s two Catholic churches. Though the new church doesn’t have its own building, it represents the first significant change in the town’s demography since the Italians settled Glasco.

Church member Linda Lopez says that the Monte de Oración (“mountain of prayer”) was first formed by pastor Jose Manuel Perez about 15 years ago in Kingston, where the church met in different locations without having a permanent home.

When Perez relocated his family to Saugerties, the church moved as well. “We started here having the services in my home, across the street from the First Baptist, in January of 2011,” says Lopez. “We were looking to get a Baptist or Methodist church in Saugerties that we could give a donation to, to be able to have services, and sent a letter to the pastor of First Baptist. In April he called us.” The first service in their new home was held on Mother’s Day in May of 2012, says Lopez, adding that while they had just a few members in the beginning, they now have around 40 parishioners.

Monte de Oración is growing in size, says Lopez, in no small part because of its pastor. “I was not a church-going person until I lost my son five years ago,” she says. Devastated and seeking comfort, she tried out “every church there is,” she says, until finding Monte de Oración and Reverend Perez. “This was the pastor who made me feel the Lord,” she says. “I became a completely different person with the help of my pastor.”

The services are non-denominational Christian. According to Lopez, about a third of the church members don’t speak any English, but are bettering their English language skills through the church services, because they hear the words spoken in Spanish followed directly by the English translation, which allows them to make the connections and learn the new language.

“It is very meaningful to have a Spanish service in Saugerties,” says Lopez. She was born and raised in Kingston and has lived in Saugerties for 25 years with her husband Nick, who is originally from El Salvador. “There are many, many Spanish people in Saugerties now,” she says, “but when I met my husband 25 years ago, there were very few.” Saugerties is drawing in the Hispanic population, she believes, because it’s so similar to the small county towns and villages in the places that area Hispanics came from.

“In my opinion, I think a lot of them come to Saugerties because it’s such a great, friendly hometown,” Lopez says. “It’s such a wonderful, homey place. I’ve been to El Salvador many times to visit my husband’s family, and Saugerties is like a little farm town from there. It’s country life, it’s quiet, everybody knows each other, everybody tries to help each other, and they’re friendly. And the schools in Saugerties help the Hispanic kids so much, especially with the Head Start program.”

The bilingual services reflect not only the growing number of Hispanic residents in Saugerties, but the growing number of Hispanic-owned businesses in the town and village, says Lopez, pointing out that Tango Café and Starway Cafe/Pizza Star are both owned by Argentineans, and Main Street Restaurant is co-owned by a native of El Salvador.

The bilingual services are an important addition to the entire community, she says. “It’s about bringing the Lord to everyone; anyone is invited to come and enjoy. Our doors are open.”

Services are held at the First Baptist Church in Saugerties every Sunday afternoon at 3:30 p.m. and Tuesday evenings at 7:30 p.m.

(Photo by Cornelia Seckel)

While recent reports of persistent salary inequality between men and women reveal much progress is still to be made in the workplace, another batch of stats show amazing strides by women in another area: entrepreneurship. One study by American Express showed a 59 percent increase in American businesses owned by women in the last 15 years, with the 8.6 million women-owned businesses generating $1.3 trillion annually and 16 percent of U.S. jobs. And a new report by The Guardian Life Small Business Research Institute projects women-owned small businesses will create one-third of all new jobs over the next five years.

So in this climate of expansion for women in business, is there still a need in this day and age for businesswomen to get together in women-only networking groups to support each other?

Posing that question at the Alliance of Women Entrepreneurs (AWE) meeting held Wednesday, June 12 in Saugerties brought forth talk of the “old boy’s club” that still exists to some degree and a perception by some women of not being fully treated as a professional peer by some of their male counterparts. That none of the women who answered the question wanted to be directly quoted on the subject indicates that women in business still face specific challenges men do not.

AWE was formed in Saugerties several years ago when Key Bank asked branch manager Tiffany Sperl to establish a local networking group for women in business as part of their Key4Women program. (Key Bank is known for being very proactive in their support of businesswomen, and they walk the talk: they boast the only female CEO of a top 20 bank.)

Sperl brought the idea to Saugerties resident Cornelia Seckel, co-founder and publisher of Art Times, and to Mery Rosado, owner and proprietor of Café Mezzaluna and The Village Inn. Coincidentally, Seckel and Rosado had been talking about forming just such a group, so the three women pooled their ideas and created an alliance.

The group is not affiliated with other similarly-named organizations, and in fact, Rosado says that one of the things the members most enjoy about it is its informality. There are no dues paid and no requirement or expectation to attend every meeting.

Still, a consistency of support for each other is there. That, along with the camaraderie and the opportunity to network with other businesswomen in similar situations, were the most cited reasons for attending heard at the June 12 meeting. The basic premise laid out by the group is: “We gather to share ideas, problem solve, socialize, network and get suggestions and advice from other women in business.”

They meet at a different location mid-week once a month, often the home of one of the members, who provides dinner for which each attendee chips in $10 to cover the cost. An additional $3–5 is requested of those who drink wine with their dinner. Socializing and networking at dinner is followed by a loosely-organized meeting, at which any member can stand up and make an announcement, ask for advice with a business problem or offer a topic for discussion. Seckel says they initially tried to conduct their meetings using something along the lines of “Robert’s Rules of Order” for efficiency, but the group abandoned that when it became clear that keeping things informal worked better.

Sometimes a guest speaker is invited to the meeting, as was the case in April when Jan Waller, an authority on LinkedIn, spoke to the group about how to use the professional networking site to grow their businesses. Seckel says the use of Facebook for business purposes is also encouraged within the group.

At other times, members will offer a demonstration of their talents or share their skills. At one gathering a member demonstrated yoga, and when two fitness trainers sat in on a meeting they gave the group some health-related tips. In September, the meeting is planned as a small health fair, with presentations by members in health-related fields, including Aubrey Zambrella, a self-employed massage therapist and Marilyn MacClellan, whose business provides a thermal breast imaging service that screens for potential cancer.

Giving and receiving business referrals is one of the benefits of attending a women’s networking group, and Seckel says they’re in the process of creating a database of member information so they can support each other’s businesses. While the meeting on June 12 brought out about 25 women, the emailing list in total of those who attend AWE meetings on at least an occasional basis numbers about three times that, and several of the women present were first-time participants who are potentially future members.

A wide range of professions was represented in the group at the recent meeting. There were two bed-and-breakfast owners, Christine Clark of the Clark House in Palenville and Jacquie Wolf, whose Harmony House bed and breakfast was the host for the meeting. Peggy Schwartz, owner and operator of Town & Country Liquors, who was recently named Businessperson of the Year by the Saugerties Area Chamber of Commerce, is a regular core member, as is Barbara Gill, proprietor of Valley Courier and Delivery Service in Kingston. Other attendees included two jewelry-artisans, a graphic designer, a freelance journalist, an aesthetician, a bookkeeper and tax preparer, a real estate attorney and three dentists.

Zambrella said she likes the problem-solving part of the meeting.

“Even if it doesn’t pertain to my business exactly, it still helps to hear how someone else is working through a problem,” she said.

Real estate attorney Holly Strutt has been coming to meetings for the past year, and credits the group with helping her solidify her business plans when she moved up full-time from the city.

Marilyn MacClellan, who offers the thermal breast imaging service, said that attending the meetings made her move to the area from Virginia much easier, and allowed her to meet people at a time when she didn’t yet know anyone in the region. “The group is awesome,” she said. “They’re local women who know the area, they’re well-established, and it’s a great support system with no strings attached.”

The next Alliance of Women Entrepreneurs meeting will be held Tuesday, July 9. New members are welcome. For more information about attending an A.W.E. meeting, contact Jacquie Wolf at harmonyhousebb@aol.com.

Sukrit Goswami: Philly-bound (photo by Nicole Delawder)

The Saugerties Public Library is in search of a new director. Sukrit Goswami, who most recently held that position, has resigned, telling Saugerties Times that he’s accepted a new position as executive director at a library consortium near Philadelphia. Staff librarian Tiffany Lydecker will act as interim director in Saugerties until a permanent director is hired.

“We’re definitely keen on finding someone who is good with community outreach,” says Mary Leahy, president of the Library Board. Saugerties is a community with a spirit of volunteerism, she adds, and the board is looking for a director who can make the most of that. “We’re looking for somebody who can connect with other groups in the community, the schools and service organizations, and work together. We’d like our director to be someone who’ll be actively involved in the Chamber of Commerce and attend events, and meet the community where they are.”

Leahy says that Goswami’s contribution as director was his focus on technology, like the program he initiated to lend out e-readers to library patrons. She says the staff deserves a lot of credit for that as well, in achieving the training necessary to educate library patrons on the use of the devices. “The staff are all excellent at their individual jobs,” says Leahy.

Goswami says he’s proud of initiating the e-reader lending program in Saugerties and increasing the operating hours for the library, which allowed more people in the community to take advantage of its services. Under his leadership, he says, the programming offered at the library was tripled “and in some cases quadrupled” during the last two years, and adds that the library’s History Room digitization project he worked on is now being used as a prototype for the entire 66-library system.

A methodical process

Applications for the library director position will be accepted through the end of July or until the position is filled. According to Leahy, the process of hiring a new director is a slow one, with much “dotting of i’s and crossing of t’s” to consider before making a final decision. It will likely be September or October before the new director is appointed, she says, and even then, whomever is appointed will serve in a probationary capacity until they pass the civil service exam for Library Director I and score within the top three slots.

Preferred qualities for a director candidate include “at least one year of experience in an administrative capacity and demonstrated ability in budget management, community outreach, progressive programming, library technology and equipment and facilities maintenance.”

The hiring decision is up to the Saugerties Public Library Board of Trustees, who work closely with the library director in deciding on the vision of the library and how it should function within the community, setting its operating policies and overseeing management of the budget.

The library’s attorney will be consulted during the hiring process to ensure that all regulations are followed, says Leahy. The candidates will be interviewed and assessed by a personnel committee headed up by Library Board member Cynthia Saporito, one of three new trustees elected last fall. Saporito is senior vice president and C.O.O. of Sawyer Savings Bank, with experience in personnel management. The committee will also survey the library staff to ask what they’d like to see in the new director. “We’ll probably have a library staff member on the hiring committee, too,” Leahy adds. The committee will make their hiring recommendation to the rest of the board, who will then vote on whether to appoint the committee’s choice.

In the meantime

Acting interim director Tiffany Lydecker, already responsible for generating the programming for adults offered at the library, says she hasn’t decided yet whether to apply for the permanent position as director. At this point, Lydecker says, everyone at the library is concentrating on business as usual. “Our staff is working hard and making sure nothing is forgotten, and that our patrons have all the opportunities they always have.”

Leahy says that the Board of Trustees is looking forward to interviewing director candidates and seeing what their ideas are. “We’re looking forward to a fresh new start with new leadership.”

Artist Brian Lynch’s contribution to the “Bridges” show

Opening receptions were held on Saturday, July 13 for two new art exhibits in the village. “Dowsing with Scissors” at the Saugerties Public Library explores the cutout collage works of Elin Menzies. The Kiersted House is hosting “Bridges,” a group show encompassing that theme with one piece each by 26 of the 36 artists who will open their studios to the public in August for the annual Saugerties Artists Studio Tour.

Dowsing is the art of finding hidden things. An ancient practice dating back thousands of years, it usually involves the use of a rod or forked stick to locate water sources or mineral deposits. The premise is that all things possess an energy force, and the vibrations from that force can be perceived by a skilled dowser with a divining rod.

Artist Elin Menzies does her dowsing with scissors. She says that as she cuts into paper to create the forms for her collages, she doesn’t put much conscious thought into what form the cutouts will take. “Sometimes it feels like I’m dowsing or channeling with scissors as a tool,” she says. “If I see a form in paper, I take the scissors and cut it free.” If a shape appears that she likes, she creates a narrative for it and works it into a collage of cut papers and fabrics. Menzies says that sometimes she’s not sure at first what “world” should be created for her cutout forms, and she’ll tape them to her studio wall until she sees where they should go. Some of those cutouts stay on the studio wall for years.

Menzies’s artistic influences include growing up with a mother who loved to draw. As a very young child, she thought her mother’s drawings came from the pencil itself. When she took up that pencil herself, she was surprised that images didn’t just flow out from it on their own. One could see a parallel in Menzies’s approach to her work today, perhaps, as an extension of that early notion, in her conception of the forms she cuts out as being independent of her ego.

There also seems to be an expression of something being set free in many of the compositions. A number of the collages depict figures who seem to be releasing something into the air, while in others, they’re flying, or galloping away. The collages have a Matisse-like spirit, with that same exuberance and playfully sophisticated use of amorphous organic forms, but it’s a more narrative sensibility at work here.

She constructs a world for her cutouts by blending personal stories with the lives of fantasy characters from her imagination, like the series of “Baby Gazers” inhabiting fanciful worlds with narwhales or the mermaid-like figures swimming in “The MerKids and Their Moms.”

The textures and colors in Menzies’ collages are varied and interesting to look at. She utilizes velvet and brocade fabrics as well as textured, painted and printed papers, and hints of her earlier work as a painter show up in small details and color juxtapositions.

The exhibit remains on view through the end of September at the Saugerties Public Library at 91 Washington Ave. For more information, visit www.saugertiespubliclibrary.org.

The 11th annual Saugerties Artists Studio Tour will be Aug. 10-11. Leading up to that weekend, several events have been planned to stimulate interest and give the public a taste of what they’ll find in the individual studios, including “ArtSites in the Village,” with art by participating tour artists placed in the windows of local village businesses, and “Art Lovers’ Weekend,” in which five B&Bs are hosting “Meet the Artist” gatherings.

Over at the Kiersted House, the newly-mounted exhibit “Bridges” finds the titular theme interpreted by tour artists in ways literal and symbolic. The exhibitors were welcome to construe a bridge as a physical structure or as something “encompassing a point of convergence or separation, spanning places, ideas and time.”

The opening reception Saturday brought out a large and convivial crowd of artists and their friends and families. Though the art was inside, the heat and humidity that evening drove most to congregate on the relatively cooler lawn outside.

Tour organizer Barbara Bravo says she welcomes the opportunity to work within a theme, because it allows her to explore something she might not have otherwise. Her contribution to the exhibit at the Kiersted is “Fond Memories of Brooklyn,” a handmade glazed relief clay tile.

Among the artists treating the theme in a more literal manner are Carol Zaloom, whose distinctive graphic style is displayed in the linocut “Red Bridge,” and Robert George, who contributed a striking “Brooklyn Bridge” in oil on canvas with strong linear qualities. More symbolic interpretations of the theme are found in works like Polly Law’s “What the Tide Brings,” a bricolage assemblage work with painted metal figures embellished with buttons and feathers, and painter Yvette Lewis’s abstract oil on canvas, “Entrance.”

“Bridges” remains on view at the Kiersted House through Sunday, Aug. 11 with gallery hours from 1–4 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays. After that, the exhibit will move to Café Mezzaluna, 626 Route 212 from Sept. 1 through Oct. 31. Opus 40 will host a separate exhibit featuring tour artists Aug. 9 through Sept. 8, with an opening reception Friday, Aug. 9 from 5–7 p.m. (the night before tour weekend), giving tour-goers one last chance to check out which artist studios they’d like to visit. Descriptive tour maps are available now in many locations around town, including Smith Hardware in the village and at the Visitors Center kiosk off the Thruway exit.

For more information, visit www.saugertiesarttour.com.