The New Paltz High School student reported on November 17 to have a probable case of mumps has now recovered and returned to classes with a doctor’s note confirming that the student is no longer infectious, according to schools Superintendent Maria Rice.

There are no other affected students in the district.

The reports from NBCNewYork.com stating otherwise, published as recently as today, November 30, (with earlier reports picked up by other news outlets) are incorrect, said Rice, in stating that there were multiple student-athletes at the school with confirmed cases.

The case of mumps in the individual student affected was only officially confirmed by doctors this morning. School district officials were never contacted, Rice said, by any news agency that reported otherwise.

“They may have talked to somebody at the college that didn’t have all the facts, but they never talked to us,” she said.

The SUNY New Paltz website maintains a page devoted to the mumps outbreak at the college. As of November 30, there are 29 cases confirmed on campus. The website to visit for updated information about the university is https://www.newpaltz.edu/healthcenter/healthcenterupdates/.

The probable case at New Paltz High School was brought to the district’s attention on November 16. Because the student interacted with others in the high school, middle school and Duzine Elementary School, parents were notified there was a probable case of mumps and appropriate protocol was followed. The student affected had been immunized, but the vaccine is not 100 percent effective.

Tim Taylor of Huguenot Strength & Conditioning. (photo by Lauren Thomas)

A fitness space where you feel welcomed and wanted, challenged and supported. Sounds pretty good, doesn’t it? Huguenot Strength & Conditioning in New Paltz is a unique, self-made gym that offers just such an environment. Set up inside the nearly 1,500-square-foot fellowship hall at the Lutheran Church on South Manheim Boulevard, the fitness center is a joint venture started by a collective of like-minded individuals who all used to work out at CrossFit 299 in Highland before that business closed its doors. Wishing to continue their training in each other’s company but without a place to go, the idea for a self-run gym was born.

“The general idea is to build community through fitness and wellness,” says Tim Taylor, one of five board members who run Huguenot Strength & Conditioning. Three of the board members — Taylor, Joelle VonBiscoffshausen and Mena Crystal — are also coaches at the gym alongside April Taylor, Cody Weaver and Kristen Munoz. “We’re a community of friends and families who support and motivate each other.”

Initially the group thought they might form as a cooperative. As it turns out, they’re acting as a nonprofit instead, with all proceeds from membership fees going toward buying more equipment and paying the rent for their space. Huguenot Strength & Conditioning opened at the church in July and will be there at least through spring. And while they occasionally have to give the space up for a day so the church can conduct an event, it’s turned out to be a mutually beneficial relationship, Taylor says, with the fitness group helping cover the overhead of the church by renting the space and the group getting a spacious center for their gym with plenty of parking, right in the heart of the village. The group of fitness enthusiasts who use the space has grown from 15 or so members when they opened to upwards of 40 in just these past five months.

While not affiliated with the trademarked CrossFit franchise, they train using the same type of movements. Based on core strength and conditioning, classes are designed to optimize a person’s physical competence across ten areas of fitness: endurance, stamina, strength, power, speed, flexibility, coordination, agility, balance and accuracy. Most important to know is that the coach in every class can scale the movements up or down to match a person’s abilities.

The same routines can be applied whether the person working out is an athlete or a senior citizen simply looking to improve their fitness in general. The key is to adjust the load and intensity, Taylor says. “It’s variable functional movements, and what that means is limited machine work. It’s mostly body weight, barbell and other weighted implements. The important thing is to get moving.”

All the coaches at Huguenot Strength & Conditioning donate their time. “We do that because we want to see people get healthier. We all believe in regular intense exercise to support healthy lifestyles. The people who are here all want to be involved because they’ve seen changes in their own fitness and wellness.”

Mena Crystal is the newest coach at the gym. “It’s a nice community of people who come here,” she says. “It’s a very mixed demographic, from teenagers in high school to people in their 60s. The idea is to get people moving better so they can have a happier life. We just want to make fitness and wellness more accessible.”

Adult membership costs $100 per month for unlimited classes. Students pay $85. Taylor says they also plan to offer some classes on a sliding scale in the future so that ability to pay doesn’t keep anybody from not being able to work out there.

The first class is free. The only requirement is getting in touch with the group at least a day before plans to take the class so the coach can be notified they’ll have a new person whose fitness abilities or limitations will need to be assessed.

Training sessions focus on proper execution of all movements. To maximize results they suggest that training is done 2-3 days in a row, followed by one day of rest. This ensures proper progression and recovery.

Once someone decides to join, they are asked to take a foundation course of four sessions to learn the proper ways to squat and use their body when training. The cost for the foundation classes is $150, with membership for the remainder of the month included with that initial fee. After that, a person pays $100 a month for unlimited classes held five days a week (Monday through Friday) at 6 a.m., 10 a.m., 5:30 and 6:30 p.m. A Saturday class is held at 10 a.m.

Because the classes are so small, it’s much like having a personal trainer, says Crystal. “All of the coaches give a lot of personal attention. We’re focused on your movement and we’re constantly adjusting or correcting to keep everybody safe and working at their own ability. We have members with limitations or injuries, and we’re all able to modify their workouts to be something they are able to do. They don’t have to worry that they can’t keep up; we will change it for them, so they can still move and get something out of it.”

Future goals include growing the membership base and offering more class times and more specific training options. But for now, they say, they’ll keep it simple and get every member results, with the primary objective being strength, increased cardiovascular capacity and improved overall health and wellbeing.

More information is available at HuguenotStrengthandConditioning.com. Updates are posted on Facebook at “Huguenot Strength.”

(Courtesy of Dutch’s Spirits)

His real name was Arthur Flegenheimer, but history remembers him as Dutch Schultz: an infamous Bronx-born bootlegger and racketeer who made a fortune in the ’20s and ’30s. Among his investments was a distillery that he financed during the waning years of Prohibition, located out of sight underneath Harvest Homestead Farm in Pine Plains. Less than a mile from the town center, the farm concealed the underground operation from authorities long enough that thousands of gallons of illegal booze were produced there. Springhouses supplied water from underground aquifers, and a swimming pool served as a cooling reservoir.

When federal agents raided the place in October 1932, they found a vast network of interconnected concrete tunnels designed for quick exits, along with holding tanks and underground bunkers large enough to contain three trucks and a Lincoln sedan. The FBI destroyed all the equipment and supplies that had been used to make the moonshine – high-pressure boilers, 2,000-gallon stills, 15,000 gallons of mash and 10,000 pounds of sugar – and the distillery went dry.

Eighty-four years later, that Prohibition-era bootlegging business has become the inspiration for the Hudson Valley’s newest “farm-to-bottle” agritourism destination. Dutch’s Spirits at Harvest Homestead Farm opened to the public in July. A three-story, 12,000-square-foot Dutch barn has been built around the entrance to one of the original tunnels, which can be viewed inside on a tour. The barn houses a bar and tasting room on the main floor, featuring craft beverages made by more than 75 New York State-based producers, and a farm market on the top floor sells New York State artisanal food products: honeys, jams, syrups, sauces, pastas, grains and the like.

And a new distillery being built in the footprint of the original bunkhouse site is nearing completion. While it’s not currently operational, visitors can see all the equipment used in the distilling process. The original stills and boilers were destroyed in the 1932 FBI raid, but some peripheral things were left untouched, including air vents and bottle-holders. “Right now people can visit one very big bunker where the bulk of the operations were – big enough to hold 200 people – and look into the entrances to various tunnels throughout the property,” says company CEO Lydia Higginson. “For liability issues, I don’t believe we’ll ever be able to take people into the tunnels, but the bunker has been reinforced and is safe.”

Dutch’s Spirits at Harvest Homestead Farm opened to the public in July. A three-story, 12,000-square-foot Dutch barn has been built around the entrance to one of the original tunnels, which can be viewed inside on a tour. The barn houses a bar and tasting room on the main floor, featuring craft beverages made by more than 75 New York State-based producers, and a farm market on the top floor sells New York State artisanal food products: honeys, jams, syrups, sauces, pastas, grains and the like.

The farm’s owner at the time of the raid was a retired New York City policeman, which likely played a part in his not receiving any jail time for harboring Dutch’s distillery. He reverted the property back to its turkey-farm origins and then sold the land to a German group who ran an “old-age commune” at the site, which didn’t last. The property was then used as a guest house and retreat, later a slaughterhouse, and finally, in 1969, was purchased by Janet and Charles Adams.

The farm was in the Adams family since 1969. Alex’s grandfather, Charles, knew full well what was underground when he purchased the property with his wife, Janet. As a young man, Charles had worked at Harvest Homestead Farm during Prohibition as a “potato harvester” at the distillery.

The site was recently added to the New York State Archaeological Inventory as a “Bootleg Era Bunker Complex,” and the state Historic Preservation Office has included it on the New York and national Registers of Historic Places. Care has been taken to preserve the surrounding farm and wetlands, as well as the remains of the original distillery site.

The tunnels and bunkers under the Pine Plains farm were largely forgotten for decades after the raid that closed the distillery down, until 2008, when passage of state legislation made it feasible for farm breweries and distilleries to conduct artisanal beverage businesses. Friends Ariel Schlein and Alex Adams co-founded Dutch’s Spirits at Harvest Homestead Farm in 2010.

Dutch’s Spirits’ signature product is New York Sugar Wash Moonshine, a handcrafted tribute to Schultz’s hooch made in small batches with aroma notes of cut grass and butterscotch.

Dutch’s Spirits produces its own line of products. Currently they’re made at facilities elsewhere in the state, but the long-term plan is to become a self-sustaining farm specializing in small-batch artisanal handcrafted spirits made on-site using farm-sourced ingredients.

The variety of uniquely flavored cocktail bitters includes a blend called ProhiBitters, made with licorice, hibiscus, ginger root and coriander. Boomtown Bitters combines sarsaparilla and wintergreen. A do-it-yourself tonic kit allows making one’s own tonic water using all-natural ingredients, and the handcrafted peach brandy is made with state-grown peaches in traditional 19^th-century style. Each bottle is hand-labeled and numbered.

Dutch’s Spirits’ signature product is New York Sugar Wash Moonshine, a handcrafted tribute to Schultz’s hooch made in small batches with aroma notes of cut grass and butterscotch. The Sugar Wash Moonshine has been on the market for four years, selling well enough that it has been sold out lately, the demand for it surpassing the capability to produce it. “We’ll be ready to release it again,” says Higginson, “along with our bourbon [made with corn from the farm] that’s been aging for two years in barrels.”

Higginson, formerly a director and vice president of Dutchess Tourism, says that interest in visiting the historic site has already surpassed their expectations. On opening day, they expected perhaps 100 to 150 visitors, but 600 showed up. (Fortunately parking on the 400-acre site is not an issue.) She is currently in the process of refining and expanding the distillery tours. Next year, the cost will likely rise a bit; but for the time being, $1 buys the visitor a tour and three samples of craft beverages in the tasting room (the maximum allowed by law under their current licensing). All of the products sampled can be purchased in the storefront on-site.

Next spring, the plan is to open a café offering sandwiches and wraps, and a restaurant is planned for the future. The site will be open to visitors on weekends through the fall and winter (weather permitting).

Dutch’s Spirits at Harvest Homestead Farm, 98 Ryan Road, Pine Plains; (518) 398-1022, www.dutchsspirits.com. On Saturday, December 17, there will be Mid-Hudson Etsy Makers Pop-Up Boutique at Dutch’s Spirits from noon until 5 p.m.

Novella’s Banquet Hall in New Paltz has recently opened a restaurant called The Grille at Novella’s. Pictured from left to right are: general manager of The Grille Anne Marie Keenan, executive chef James Kane and general manager of Novella’s New Paltz Dawn Stewart-Harris. (photo by Lauren Thomas)

The banquet hall and “star-lit” lounge at Novella’s New Paltz have set the scene for many a special occasion since opening three years ago on Terwilliger Lane. But the times of our lives tend to be celebrated on weekends, and with the kitchen and all the space Novella’s has available weekdays, why not open a restaurant, too?

This week, The Grille at Novella’s debuted their new dinner menu. The restaurant will serve dinner Monday through Thursday beginning at 4 p.m., with a bar menu offered Friday and Saturday. If there are no events scheduled on the weekend, says manager Anne Marie Keenan, guests will be offered the full dinner menu on those evenings, as well.

The dining room seats up to 40 with guests welcome to eat in the lounge area, as well, which features a gas fireplace, high-top tables and those unique star-shaped lights over the bar.

“We’re leaning toward being a steakhouse,” says Keenan, noting that the feedback in town has been that “New Paltz needs a good steakhouse.” Ten-ounce Angus beef burgers ($12-$14) are decidedly upscale, served on a toasted brioche bun, and the dinner menu features a selection of steaks, from an eight-ounce filet mignon ($23) to a 16-ounce strip steak ($26) or steak frites ($18) served with caramelized onions.

They’re aiming for a feeling of “casual elegance,” Keenan says, “but we don’t want anyone to feel like they can’t come here and sit at the bar and have wings. We want people to feel comfortable.”

Executive Chef James Kane will be familiar to local diners who used to frequent Rock & Rye Tavern. Kane started his culinary career at Le Chambord in Hopewell Junction, working his way up from dishwasher in his teens to sous chef. After eleven years, he switched from French cuisine to Italian at Urban Zuppa in Yonkers, moving on eventually to the Towne Crier Café in Dutchess County and then Rock & Rye in New Paltz.

At The Grille at Novella’s, Kane says, the menu will be “a little bit upscale with some lower-priced fare, as well, to make everybody happy.” He enjoys making a dish his own by giving it a little twist, like his Truffled Mac & Cheese — $8 as an appetizer, $6 as a side dish — made with black truffle oil and artisanal cheeses. His Butternut Squash and Gala Apple Arancini appetizer ($8) consists of lightly breaded rice balls stuffed with the squash and apples, served with a maple crème fraiche.

A kids’ menu will be available soon, says Keenan. With The Grille at Novella’s being located right next door to the Hampton Inn, they plan to offer options that will please the families staying there as well as those driving through New Paltz on the Thruway.

But locals will be catered to, as well, with adults finding a signature drink menu that includes the Blood Orange Margarita ($9), made with DeKuyper blood orange liquor, tequila and lime juice in a sugar-rimmed glass, and the Green Tea ($9), made with Jameson, peach schnapps, sour mix and Sprite. A French Kiss ($12, citron vodka, Chambord and pineapple juice), Espresso Martini ($12, vodka, Kahlua and espresso) and a classic Manhattan and Cosmo are also on the list.

The Grille at Novella’s is owned by Larry Downey and Craig Gioia, the latter a part-owner of McGillicuddy’s, as well as a few places in Dutchess County. The business partners will continue to focus on the special events at Novella’s while developing the business for the restaurant. “Both will complement the other,” Gioia says, noting that Novella’s is the largest catering hall in the area, seating more than 250 in the banquet hall, and that’s not counting the patio capacity.

In terms of people knowing about the new restaurant, “We’re kind of tucked away back here, but that could be an advantage,” he adds. “We don’t have the hustle and bustle [of the village]. We’ll have a nice combination of people here; the locals mixing in with travelers, like what you see when you go on vacation or to New York City. And people-watching is half the fun, right?”

The Grille at Novella’s is located at 2 Terwilliger Lane, New Paltz.  More information is available by calling (845) 255-4481 or visit Novellasnp.com or “Novella’s New Paltz” on Facebook.

The Highland High School Interact Club spent last Wednesday evening volunteering to decorate Santa’s Workshop for Highland’s Light up the Hamlet celebration this coming Friday. (photo by Lauren Thomas

When an adult advisor says of a group of high school students, “These kids are going to change the world,” it’s easy to write that off as hyperbole. That is, until you meet said students, the members of Highland High School’s Interact Club. Energetic, compassionate and sincerely interested in community involvement, the aptly named club with 92 members — grown from just ten or so a few years ago — is basically a Rotary Club at the high school level.

There are more than 12,000 Interact Clubs chartered by Rotary International in 133 countries. Membership gives students the chance to make a real difference in other people’s lives while having fun themselves. Each club carries out service projects that help both local and global communities. Students develop leadership skills, interact with community leaders and make international connections.

The Highland Interact Club is sponsored by the Highland Rotary Club. Rotarian Kate Jonietz is liaison between the two groups, and Highland High School English teacher AnnMarie Meisel is co-advisor to the club alongside social studies teacher John Manganiello.

At the Highland Rotary’s meeting on November 9, Town of Lloyd Supervisor Paul Hansut presented the Town of Lloyd Community Pride Award to the Highland Interact Club for demonstrating a sense of caring and helping others. The community service performed by the students is especially important to the town at a time when budgetary constraints cut into the services it can provide, he noted.

The town’s Community Pride Award was established at the beginning of Hansut’s tenure as supervisor in 2012. It has been given out in past years to Eagle Scout Ryan Wood, community advocates Donna Deeprose and Rafael Diaz, seven-year-old Ryan Hanley — for helping to save his mom’s life — and retired community members James Morse and Nat Borsina, who, according to Jonietz, are always available to lend a hand for small acts of civic pride.

Highland Interact Club members volunteer to help at all town events, including Halloween in the Hamlet, SpringFest and the Rotary’s WinterFest. New Paltz Times recently caught up with the students as they were decorating the former bank building in the hamlet for this weekend’s fifth annual “Light Up the Hamlet” holiday celebration on Friday, December 9. Interact Club members will be elves at the event, handing out candy while assisting Santa in keeping it all running smoothly.

“I really enjoy seeing the smiles on the kids’ faces,” says Dean Riley, a junior at the high school and co-president of the Interact Club. “I just really enjoy being involved in my community. It’s all about doing good, but it brings me happiness and joy, too, and I appreciate how it gives me a connection to my community that I wouldn’t otherwise have.”

When asked which club activities he finds most rewarding, Riley is hard-pressed to name a favorite. “I like the interaction with seniors in the community: they have all the experience and the wisdom! It’s cool to talk to them and I enjoy seeing the same people and knowing their names from meeting them at past events.” The Interact Club makes annual visits to the Castle Point campus of the VA, and sponsors an annual senior citizen breakfast for the town.

Kirti Shenoy, a senior at Highland High School and co-president of the club along with Riley, says she joined Interact as a freshman, excited to learn that there was a club at the school with a charitable focus. A young woman who also volunteers training dogs for the blind, Shenoy says she loves helping people out and will miss the club when she graduates. She has been president or co-president since her sophomore year. Shenoy names the Senior Citizen Prom as one of her favorite events the club sponsors each year, as well as the Queen of Hearts Charity Ball in winter. “It’s a great way to see the entire student body all together at one time,” she says. “For a few hours, everyone is involved.”

Kaitlyn Poluzzi is a 12th grade student at Highland High School and vice-president of the club. “I grew up in a family that was always involved with our church and community in Clintondale, so when I came to Highland, I wanted to be involved here,” she says. Indicating the room around us, abuzz with teens decorating for the upcoming town event, Poluzzi notes, “It’s nice to see all these kids here on a school night just to benefit someone else.”

The activities the Interact Club sponsors “build relationships and rapport” within the community, she adds. “Kids are underestimated, sometimes, so it’s good, I think, to show that teens can be involved in positive things.”

Poluzzi’s career plan is to become an oncologist. She names the club’s annual visit to the Ronald McDonald House in Albany as her favorite Interact Club activity (also high on the list for Shenoy and Riley).

The students go up on a bus to spend the day at Ronald McDonald House, where parents with hospitalized children can receive comfort and care themselves while remaining close by while their child has surgery. “We clean the house and cook a meal for everyone,” explains Riley. “Then when the parents come back from being with their children at the hospital they have dinner waiting for them.”

The other officers in the Interact Club are sophomore Carlie Relyea, club secretary; senior Sam Considine, treasurer; and senior Alexa Langseder, media representative. The officers of the club are all in different grades at school, explains Poluzzi, so that each class is equally represented.

The students fundraise to benefit local and international causes in a number of ways, from selling t-shirts or tickets to events to obtaining donations from local businesses and sponsoring runs and walks, like the recent Alzheimer’s Walk held on Walkway Over the Hudson.

In past years, money was raised for the worldwide ShelterBox initiative, in which emergency shelter and supplies are literally dropped into a disaster site, and they raised $2,500 to rebuild a school in Nepal. This year’s global recipient of their efforts is the International Rescue Committee (IRC), a non-governmental organization that responds to humanitarian crisis and helps people to rebuild their lives, with a focus on education and empowering women.

Locally, the Highland Interact Club supports the BackPack Program that provides a weekend supply of nutritious food to 40 children who qualify for free and reduced-price lunches during the school week but would go hungry over the weekend without assistance. And when their high school classmates Jamie Carlson and Sara Pironi were diagnosed with cancer last year, the club raised funds to help their families meet expenses, including $1,800 raised at the Queen of Hearts ball for the SaraStrong Foundation. Although Sara Pironi, sadly, did pass away, her family intends to offer an annual scholarship to a community-minded teen in her name, to which the Interact Club plans to help raise funds for.

The Highland Interact Club began at the high school in 2009 under the initiative of then-student Alicia Utter, according to Jonietz. While successful at first, club membership then dwindled a bit until it took off again in the school year of 2011-12. (Shenoy points out that membership now is ten times what it was then, when she joined as a freshman.) Riley says he thinks the club has grown simply because the other students see them at events having fun. “And I know that I always try to spread the word about Interact,” he says. “I enjoy it so much I want other people to have this much fun.”

Hudson Valley Saxophone Orchestra after a recent rehearsal

The Hudson Valley Saxophone Orchestra (HVSO)’s fifth annual Christmas Concert on Saturday, December 17 will be preceded by a daylong “Winter Wonderland” event for musicians. Pros and students alike can try out instruments, learn some new techniques in a master class or pick up an early holiday gift for themselves from vendors that include D’Addario, Yanagisawa and Selmer. Prospective music majors can speak with reps from universities, and for those who participate in a midday rehearsal, the opportunity is there to join the HVSO onstage for “Joy to the World” at the end of the concert, when, tenor sax player Christopher Brellochs says, “We hope to have as many saxophonists as we can fit on that stage playing with us.”

The Christmas Concert will be unique this year in the inclusion of some non-holiday material. It will begin with an original composition by local composer Bob Shaut, performing the Hudson Valley-inspired Valley Views and Bridges with his combo Sax Life, made up of four saxophonists, bass and drums. The second half of the concert will feature holiday favorites by the Hudson Valley Saxophone Orchestra, concluding with the big saxophonist collaboration filling the stage for the finale.

The event will be held at Arlington High School in Lagrangeville. The Winter Wonderland will be conducted in the classrooms and halls around the auditorium from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., followed by the concert in the William J. Sweeney Performance Hall at 6:30 p.m. Admission costs $5 for the concert only, or $10 for the entire day.

The Hudson Valley Saxophone Orchestra, founded in 2012 by Charles W. Gray, was inspired in part by Sigurd Raschèr, a pioneer of the classical saxophone in the 1930s. Raschèr was European, but later moved to upstate New York, where he started large saxophone ensembles and made a practice of asking composers to write solo and orchestral works for the saxophone.

The HVSO is generally a ten-person ensemble, made up of professional musicians and music educators who teach in middle and high schools and colleges in the region. And while the uninitiated might think that an orchestra consisting entirely of saxophones would be all about the high energy, sampling the group’s music reveals that the sound is actually quite like a string orchestra: surprisingly delicate in parts and energetic in others.

“That’s because the saxophone is such a versatile instrument,” Christopher Brellochs says. “It can be used in a classical music setting, or a jazz or pop, contemporary, rock ‘n’ roll setting. You’ll find the saxophone in every style of music, and that’s because of the different sounds you can get out of it.”

People often don’t realize, he adds, that the saxophone was invented in the 1840s, “long before jazz was a glimmer in anyone’s eye.” It was intended to be an orchestral instrument, he says, to play alongside string instruments and outdoors in military bands, especially in France. “Adolf Sax, the inventor of the saxophone, taught at the Paris Conservatory in the 1860s, where he put together large saxophone ensembles. So an orchestra of all saxophones is not a strange idea in any way.”

The HVSO utilizes the contrabass saxophone – “just one sounds like the entire bass section of the orchestra,” says Brellochs – along with a bass sax, a baritone, tenor, alto and soprano saxophones, and finally the small sopranino, which supplies the sound that one might expect from the violin in a string orchestra.

“With these seven different kinds of saxophones, we get a spectrum of sound that people associate with an orchestra, but is presented to them in a unique way, with a certain brightness. And because the instruments are all from the same family, they blend together. There will be that exciting sound you expect from the saxophone, but you’re going to also hear those delicate sounds. And some of the excitement comes from that contrast between those two extremes.”

Workshops at the Winter Wonderland event will include a master class with saxophonist Joe Lovano. Geoff Vidal and Derrick James will offer jazz improv techniques, and Joe Giardullo will discuss the fine points of saxophone mouthpieces. Paul Cohen, a collector of rare saxophones, will bring some of his collection for a “show-and-tell,” including some unusual examples that Brellochs describes as looking “like they’re right out of a Dr. Seuss book.” Cohen’s collection is so good, he adds, “When the Metropolitan Museum of Art had a special exhibit on the saxophone a few years ago, they borrowed instruments from him.”

The musicians in the HVSO are unpaid, with all concert proceeds benefiting local causes. In past years, beneficiaries have included the orchestra’s music scholarship at Dutchess Community College. This year, proceeds will go to the family of HVSO founder Charles W. Gray, who had a massive stroke on September 15, the day before his 44^th birthday. Due to be released from the hospital on December 15 and working hard on physical therapy, Gray will join the orchestra he founded for a few of the holiday numbers at the end of the concert, if he’s able to play.

Gray has always been the force behind planning the group’s concerts, Brellochs says; and the fine details of the performance and the daytime event beforehand – inspired by a US Navy Band-sponsored saxophone symposium in which the group participated earlier this year in Virginia – were still very much in progress when he had the stroke. “But not letting the event happen was very quickly determined not to be an option,” Brellochs adds. He, along with other members of the ensemble, stepped up to fill in for Gray coordinating the event.

There is a “Charlie’s Angels” page established for Charlie Gray at www.youcaring.com/charliegray-697171. The compassionate crowdfunding site helps families pay the bills when there has been an unexpected emergency.

The snow date for the event is Sunday, December 18 (only in the event that the roads are impassable).

Hudson Valley Saxophone Orchestra’s Winter Wonderland, Saturday, December 17, 9 a.m.-4:30 p.m., Christmas concert, 6:30 p.m., $5/$10, Arlington High School, 1157 Route 55, Lagrangeville; http://hudsonvalleysaxophoneorchestra.com, www.facebook.com/hudsonvalleysaxophoneorchestra.

Christine Giangrasso and Shonda Merrill of the Highland Rotary Club handed out free hot cocoa at last Friday evening’s Light up the Hamlet event. (photo by Lauren Thomas)

The frigid temperatures last Friday night, December 9, did not deter a sizable crowd from turning out for the Town of Lloyd’s annual Light Up the Hamlet event. The streets of downtown Highland were blocked off to traffic, creating a safe enclave for the festivities to ensue.

The town square was pitch dark as the evening began, clusters of people huddled together around several fire pits awaiting the arrival of Santa. Soon enough, with a police escort’s flashing lights and siren and the fire truck he was riding in blaring its horn, Santa Claus came to town.

He climbed atop the fire truck, triumphant as a mountain climber reaching the top of the peak, waving to the assembled kids. Santa’s arrival was greeted by the sound of hundreds of high-pitched whistles given out beforehand to the kids in the crowd. Egged on by the Highland High School cheerleaders, Santa waved to the kids and with a swoop of his hand, lit up the hamlet, strings of lights and globe ornaments decorating the streets coming to life in a flash.

Santa then made his way to his makeshift quarters for the evening at Santa’s Workshop, located in the former bank on the corner of Main Street. The building had been decorated earlier in the week by the members of Highland High School’s Interact Club, who were now dressed as elves ready to assist the man in red. Kids lined up outside for the opportunity to come into the Workshop, where the high school students manning an old-fashioned red popcorn machine were turning out bags of free popcorn and blankets were spread on the floor for kids to sprawl on and watch a screening of the vintage ‘60s Rankin-Bass Rudolph special.

With the entrance of the first kids, Santa’s Workshop was soon a beehive of activity. “Welcome to the North Pole!” the kids heard from a charmingly-turned out Mrs. Claus, portrayed by Interact Club vice-president and HHS senior, Kaitlyn Poluzzi. Her authentic-looking garb as Mrs. Claus was borrowed from Minard’s Farm, where Poluzzi has a part-time job playing Mrs. Claus during the holiday season. This was the first time Mrs. Claus had been present at Light Up the Hamlet, she noted. By her side was elf Toby Meisel, enthusiastic about welcoming in the visitors.

One corner of the Workshop was devoted to a photo booth sponsored by the Boy Scouts. For a very nominal fee of $3, individuals or groups of people could pose for photos, with four shots included on a holiday-themed postcard.

Santa’s flight path and up-to-date weather conditions were posted on a wall and Santa himself sat in the corner, hearing the wishes of every child who waited in line to sit on his lap. The line extended a good way down the street outside, with the last of the line, once inside, marked by large sacks of reindeer feed.

Outside, musicians from the high school played instrumental versions of holiday favorites. The Lloyd Methodist Church across the street hosted their annual indoor craft fair and cookie walk, with vendors selling handcrafted goods, beauty products, jewelry and the like alongside the cookie sale, where a pound of homemade brownies and festively decorated cookies could be purchased for $9). The altar area of the church was given over to the Highland High School Concert Choir. Later in the evening, the Evergreen Chorus sang songs of the season in the town square.

Underground Coffee & Ales right in the heart of the hamlet offered a respite spot for cold visitors seeking refuge from the bitter temperatures outside, offering a spot for adults to imbibe a craft beer or glass of wine alongside their kids drinking hot chocolate. A few doors down, karate shihan Mike Skinner was in evidence in his brightly lit dojo working on karate moves with some of his students.

The event was sponsored by the Town of Lloyd Events/Beautification Committee, led by Kate Jonietz along with AnnMarie Meisel, Stephanie Fraino, Kate’s husband, Adolf Jonietz — who may or may not be Santa, just sayin’ — and Lauriann Marion, Natasha Gasparro, Christina DeMaio and Sally Bellacicco.

For the families not able to provide traditional holiday gifts for their kids, the Town of Lloyd Police Department is sponsoring its annual toy drive through Saturday, December 17. New and unwrapped toys may be dropped off at the town police station for distribution to families in need. A donation box is located 24/7 in the lobby. Additional donation drop boxes are at Town Hall, Vineyard Commons, Vigneto Café and Soshu Oyama karate dojo. Questions about Operation Christmas may be directed to either Lt. James Janso (jjanso@lloydpolice.com) or Sgt. Phillip Roloson (proloson@lloydpolice.com).

The 2015 Rockefeller Christmas tree was a 78-foot Norway Spruce from Gardiner

Last year, Gardiner made it into the national news spotlight when the 78-foot-tall, ten-ton Norway Spruce in the Asendorf family’s front yard on Route 44/55 was chosen to become the annual Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center in New York City. This year, a Norway Spruce from Oneonta was chosen for the honor. But residents of Gardiner will have a permanent reminder of the town’s place in holiday history in a wooden plaque mounted at Town Hall, created from the wood of the Asendorf tree by retired art teacher and Gardiner resident, Frank Benevento. Approximately 120 small wooden Christmas tree ornaments were also created from the remains of the great tree by Jane and George Czinkota’s Gardiner-based fabrication workspace, Czinkota Studios.

The wooden plaque was unveiled at Town Hall on Friday, December 16 in a small ceremony conducted by town Supervisor Marybeth Majestic, who read a poem to the assembled group that she’d written for the occasion. The plaque’s creator, Frank Benevento, has lived in Gardiner for six years since retiring from teaching art in Upper Saddle River, New Jersey. He is currently a director of the Roost Studios & Art Gallery in New Paltz, a 501 (c) (3) nonprofit community art space opened earlier this year.

Made from a plank cut from the 2015 Rockefeller Center tree, the plaque depicts a Christmas tree carved in relief, accented by wood-burned details representing tree branches and the figure of Prometheus, placed atop the tree in place of a star. The 18-foot-tall gilded bronze figure of Prometheus at Rockefeller Center is located on the plaza there, at the base of the annual Christmas tree, overlooking the skaters on the ice rink below since 1934.

The wooden plaque was unveiled at Town Hall on Friday, December 16 in a small ceremony conducted by town Supervisor Marybeth Majestic, who read a poem to the assembled group that she’d written for the occasion. (Photo by Lauren Thomas)

The first Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center was put up by construction workers in 1931 in the midst of the Great Depression. They decorated a 20-foot-tall Balsam Fir with homemade garlands made by their families. Photographs from the time show the men lining up by the tree to receive their paychecks on the muddy site that would become Rockefeller Center. Two years later, the tradition of an annual Christmas tree on the same spot as the workers’ tree was adopted.

Most of the wood from the Gardiner-grown Norway Spruce was donated to Habitat for Humanity after the holidays. Lumber from Rockefeller Center Christmas trees has been used to construct Habitat homes across the country, with 2016 marking the tenth year that the organization will be the beneficiary of milled wood from the tree. Nancy Puchalski and Al Asendorf, in whose yard the 2015 tree grew, said they were just in Newburgh last week to attend the unveiling of two homes there built for families in need with wood from their tree. Having grown up in Newburgh herself, Puchalski said, it was a very meaningful thing to participate in.

The Christmas tree ornaments made by Czinkota Studios were sold for $10 each, with proceeds divided 50/50 between the Friends of the Gardiner Library and the Gardiner Fire Department. The trees have sold out at this point, but more will be created after the holidays. More information is available by e-mailing Supervisor Majestic at tog@gmail.com or call Gardiner Town Hall at 255-9675, ext. 101.

A probable case of mumps in a New Paltz Middle School student was reported to the district on Tuesday, December 20, said schools Superintendent Maria Rice. “I immediately sent out a letter alerting parents in the middle school. And following our protocol, the student will not be allowed back to school until the doctor has cleared the student to return.”

Rice said she learned today, Wednesday, December 21 that the student affected had been immunized.

Last month the New Paltz Central School District had a confirmed case of mumps at the high school, but the student has since recovered and returned to classes with a doctor’s note confirming they were no longer infectious.

That student, too, had been immunized against the virus, but health officials say that even two doses of the MMR (mumps) vaccine are just 88 percent effective in preventing mumps, and the vaccine’s effectiveness can decrease over time. Adults born before 1957 are generally considered to be immune to mumps after one vaccination, but those born in 1957 or after that date — especially those who are students in a post-secondary educational institution, work in a health care facility or plan to travel internationally — are recommended to have a second dose.

The state and federal centers for disease control and prevention recommend a third dose of the MMR vaccine as a control measure for people in settings where people are in close contact with each other and there has been an official outbreak, which is defined by at least three cases of mumps in one location. The campus of SUNY New Paltz has had 69 confirmed or probable cases of mumps since October, with more under investigation.

Several other states have also reported college outbreaks over the past year.

Statewide, there have been 147 confirmed or probable cases of mumps reported so far this year, compared with 24 cases in all of 2015. The highest mumps case count in recent years was in 2010, when 663 cases were reported, most of which were related to a large outbreak in downstate New York. Most of the cases this year have been associated with outbreaks on college campuses.

Mumps is caused by a respiratory virus. Symptoms include painful swelling of the salivary glands near the ears and under the jaw, which can occur on one or both sides of the face. The swelling may be associated with other non-specific symptoms such as fever, headache, muscle aches, fatigue and decreased appetite.

The virus is spread through direct contact with the saliva of an infected person, which can happen through coughing, sneezing, sharing a drinking glass or kissing. The incubation period for mumps is from 16-18 days, but can go up to 25.

The SUNY New Paltz website maintains a page devoted to the mumps outbreak at the college at https://www.newpaltz.edu/healthcenter/healthcenterupdates/.

Rachel Pitt prepares to light her family’s menorah at the Hanukkah party at the Jewish Congregation of New Paltz last Sunday. (photos by Lauren Thomas)

“We’re making America ‘grate’ again,” said Alan Kraus, longtime “latke-teer” for the Jewish Congregation of New Paltz’s annual Hanukkah celebration held last Sunday. Latkes made from grated potatoes, eggs, garlic powder and matzo meal are a highlight of the event, with hundreds of the tasty potato pancakes coming out of the kosher kitchen at the congregation’s community center to be devoured quickly, accompanied by a dollop of applesauce or sour cream. The traditional holiday treat is offered in addition to a number of dishes and desserts brought in by congregation members to share potluck-style.

The event had the feeling of a family dinner — albeit a very large family — warm and festive and welcoming. Honors as patriarch of this family would have to go to Rabbi Bill Strongin, whose booming voice and sense of humor kept the celebration rolling.

The party was held almost a week early, with the first day of Hanukkah this year falling on December 24. Families who had brought in their menorahs from home to light the candles together were reminded that this would be a symbolic lighting. Rabbi Bill presided over the ceremony, explaining for anybody who needed clarification the proper procedure.

“It’s not possible for a Rabbi to do anything without teaching something,” he noted, adding that the menorah has been the symbol of the Jewish people for more than 3,000 years and is the emblem of the modern state of Israel, likening the symbolism to that of the bald eagle to an American.

The shamash (“helper” or “servant”) candle is lit first, followed by the blessings. The shamash is then used on each successive night of Hanukkah to light the remaining eight candles. Since Hebrew is read right to left, Strongin explained, the candles are lit right to left, as well. But a more complicated explanation of the meaning of menorahs was left for another time, as the enticing prospect of sharing the potluck and all those latkes awaited.

The members of Kehillat Ahavat Achim who made the crispy potato treats stood out at the party in their matching t-shirts, which depict a flaming frying pan on the back of the shirt accompanied by the legend, “Frying by the heat of our pans.” This year the latke-teers included Alan Kraus, Jeff Goldman, Artie Raphael, David Cohen, Spencer Rohrlick, Gayle Shankman, Ron Simon and Seth McKee, who spent the afternoon frying up the latkes, with not a one left over.

A convivial dining together was followed by a group sing-along led by the Chai Notes. A Judaica shop was open in the lobby with many styles of menorah available and options for gift-giving, and kids gathered together in one end of the room to play non-traditional and traditional games, including dreidel, organized by a committee of the congregation’s Hebrew School. There were tables to make crafts, and one young woman even offered fellow party-goers “tattoos” drawn carefully on the backs of hands.

The Jewish Congregation of New Paltz was founded in 1964, with worship open to all who wish to attend. Regular services are held on Friday evenings at 6 p.m. at the shul at 8 Church Street.

This group of “latke-teers” got up early on Sunday morning to prepare hundreds of latkes for the Hanukkah party at the Jewish Congregation of New Paltz. Pictured left to right are: Jeff Goldman, Gayle Shankman. Artie Raphael, Ron Simon, Alan Kraus, Seth McKee, David Cohen and Spencer Rohrlick.

Playing the donut game at the Hanukkah party at the Jewish Congregation of New Paltz last Sunday afternoon.

The chorus performs at last Sunday’s Hanukkah Party at the Jewish Congregation of New Paltz.

School district superintendents Deborah Haab in Highland and Maria Rice in New Paltz continue to be faced with the challenges wrought by implementation of the Common Core standards and the controversial mandated assessment tests that many students have opted out of. Budgeting under the two percent tax cap limitation is a delicate matter, balancing the needs of the students with the financial burden on taxpayers while lobbying legislators to get school funding restored to former levels. And both superintendents have capital projects in the works to improve and repair the aged facilities in their respective districts, with the work slated to be in progress for years to come.

The year 2016 saw a case of mumps confirmed at the high school in New Paltz with a probable case of mumps now at the middle school, following on the heels of a mumps epidemic at the college. The Highland district is dealing with air quality issues in their buildings and too-high quantities of lead were found in the drinking water. But along with the trials and tribulations comes the good stuff, the achievements of students and the satisfaction of sending them on their way to — hopefully — rewarding and satisfying lives as adults.

Superintendents Rice and Haab both recently spoke with New Paltz Times to discuss what the year 2016 brought to their respective districts and where they believe the challenges for 2017 lie.

New Paltz Central School District Superintendent Maria Rice. (photos by Lauren Thomas)

Maria Rice

Maria Rice has been superintendent of the New Paltz Central School District since 2004. Her current contract, approved in 2013, extends her tenure through June 30, 2018.

What is the main issue facing your district next year?

The ongoing issue we face is having teacher and principal evaluations connected to student achievement on the New York State assessments. We have had a significant percentage of our students refuse to take the state tests, and therefore have data that is not helpful for programmatic decision-making, let alone getting an accurate evaluation score for staff. And the teachers in New Paltz are so much more than a score; they are professionals whose focus is on student learning as well as the social, emotional and developmental aspects of each student.

What specific plans do you have to address this issue?

We will continue to observe our teachers to ensure that quality instruction is taking place, monitor both academic and non-academic indicators from a variety of other sources, rather than state assessments, and hold ourselves accountable based on how true we are to our district’s core intelligence and the evidence of goal achievement, as stated in the district’s annual State of the District report.

How is the capital project progressing?

It will be an exciting challenge beginning the next school year at the middle school with the capital project work that begins in the summer of 2017 scheduled for completion by December 2018. It will be a balancing act, as we will have students in the building as the contractors are constructing the new addition to the building. Once the addition is completed, students will move to those classrooms while the renovation work on the infrastructure is completed in the other parts of the existing building. Our key focus will be ensuring the safety of the students and staff during construction while maintaining quality educational experiences for students, so that learning is not interrupted.

Looking back at 2016, what do you see as your district’s major accomplishments?

Last year was a most challenging year due to the tragic death of one of our students. I believe the way in which our staff and community pulled together to support the youth in our schools was amazing. I don’t know if that’s considered an accomplishment, but it is noteworthy.

Seven contracts were negotiated and settled during the last school year, with the eighth settled in August. This is quite an accomplishment.

Also, working with the Board of Education to begin the conversation and subsequent goal-setting for looking at non-academic success indicators. We pride ourselves on focusing on “the whole child,” and it was time that we began to identify what that means and what metrics might be used to see if we are successfully fulfilling this aspect of our district’s educational program. I’m very proud of the fact that our students have empowered themselves to speak up on subjects that are important to them. I receive e-mails and telephone calls from students about a variety of issues, but one of the proudest moments is when a student has the confidence to stand up in a public meeting and address the board and me about a subject that is near and dear to them. That, to me, is an indicator of success… that we are really teaching our students to be responsible, ethical, contributing and participating members of our community.

Is there anything you would have done differently this past year?

The “start time” initiative was — and is — an important priority for the Board of Education. The research is pretty clear that a number of factors lead to chronic sleep loss in our older students, including biological changes in their circadian rhythms, social factors and academic demands. I believe the research, or I wouldn’t have worked with Barbara Clinton, the high school principal, almost a decade ago to change the start times for secondary students by a half hour.

After reaching out to the stakeholders, the start time for the high school was changed from 7:30 a.m. to 8 a.m., the latest start time in the county. Providing that changing the start time doesn’t negatively impact opportunities for students, I’m still open to the concept. Last year the administrative team presented one possible scenario of how later start times might be implemented. If I were to change anything, I would have met with staff in each building prior to the administrative team presentation to discuss the research, to make it clear why the board wanted to explore later start times for secondary students.

What else is the district working on for next year?

We are committed to addressing institutional racism through professional development and holding ourselves accountable for not just acknowledging our own biases, but being able to recognize racism when we see it. Racism will not cease to exist until white people recognize it and refuse to accept it.

We are going to create a racial equity curriculum in grades K-12 to be integrated into our social studies and/or English language arts curriculum. This project will begin in January 2017 and continue into next year and beyond. We want to do this right, so we have representatives from each of the elementary grade levels and grade level or departments at the secondary level. These representatives will be instrumental in beginning the work on the curriculum and ensuring there is alignment with the standards as well as a K-12 continuum. These representatives are responsible for going back to those they represent, where the curriculum work will either be designed or edited. We want all teachers responsible for teaching the material to have a voice in its development. As the curriculum is completed, we will pilot it, review and revise as needed.

Highland Central School District Superintendent Deborah Haab.

Deborah Haab

Deborah Haab has been superintendent in the Highland Central School District since March of 2009. Last year the Board of Education approved a three-year extension of her contract through June of 2019.

What are the main issues facing your district next year?

Operating within the tax cap continues to be challenging. In the early years of the most recent recession, Highland reduced program offerings along with reductions made in other areas. We would like to restore programs, as well as introduce new offerings to our students, but it is very difficult to do so when the tax cap is actually less than two percent. We are sensitive to increasing the tax burden on our community and continue to strive for a balance that meets the needs of our students and our community.

What specifically will you do to address that?

Over the last few years, we have successfully lobbied for additional funding from our state senator and assemblyman. Although the Gap Elimination Adjustment no longer exists, an appropriate level of state funding for public education continues to be problematic. We will continue our lobbying efforts for additional funding as well as for a state aid formula that decreases reliance on property taxes.

Is there anything you would have done differently this past year?

We continue to look for more ways to communicate with the Highland community, and for ways to increase community engagement with the school district.

How is the capital project progressing?

After a lengthy approval process, we are excited that the building project work is underway. Site work at all three buildings commenced over the summer, and we’re preparing to bid another phase of the project in January and February. That work includes secure vestibules, security cameras and new communication systems and is scheduled to begin in the late spring and summer.

Looking back at 2016, what do you see as your district’s major accomplishments?

We are proud of the work that our staff continues to do integrating technology as part of their instructional strategies. We are also excited about implementing the Teachers’ College Readers’ Workshop program in our elementary school. This program is designed to cultivate independent readers at an early age, which will support greater success in all of their subsequent coursework.

Other points of pride include the dramatic changes our middle school instructional staff have made to their teaching methods, especially in math and science. Flipped learning is being widely used in math, reshaping the classroom from a lecture-environment to one where deep-level thinking and learning is thriving. The new model provides students with the ability to move at their own pace, and gives teachers more flexibility to meet students’ individual learning needs.

In science, students are flourishing with inquiry-based learning. In grade six science, one teacher has removed traditional desks from the classroom, replacing them with open space to conduct experiments. She has replaced traditional school tools with various science kits that allow students to “learn by doing.” Students are engaged and excited.

We are also very proud to have received a second year of grant funding for our new Introduction to Mid-Eastern Culture course. Last year, the district received one of only 23 grants nationwide awarded as part of the Teachers of Critical Languages Program (implemented by the American Councils for International Education and funded by the U.S. Dept. of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs). The second year of funding provides all grade six students with the opportunity to take the class and creates an additional path of study for current grade seven students who want to continue their learning in that area.

For the second year in a row, Highland High School was recognized by the Washington Post on its America’s Most Challenging High Schools list, a designation that comes from the high level of participation the school has in Advanced Placement (AP) courses. This designation represents the commitment of our faculty and administration to student achievement and the school’s approach to giving all students opportunities to succeed. The high school was also recognized this year in Newsweek‘s “Beating the Odds” list, which seeks to identify schools that do an excellent job of preparing their students for college while also overcoming the obstacles posed by students at an economic disadvantage.

The high school also supports several experiences for students to compete against their peers in a larger arena. A dozen students in the Model United Nations Club travelled to Montreal to participate in a conference, where one of our students, Kirti Shenoy, was recognized as an honorable mention delegate. A group of 15 Model U.N. students also travelled to Bard College for competition, where three of our students were recognized: Sai Golkunda as an outstanding delegate; Cola Wilk, honorable mention; and Sam Considine for verbal commendation. I could not be prouder of the accomplishments of these students and their teachers for the success they achieved this past year while representing our school and community in several competitions.

And sometimes giving students the opportunity to excel means providing them with an alternate educational environment for half of the school day to gain career training at the Ulster BOCES Career & Technical Center. Two Highland students from the BOCES culinary program were part of a five-member team that placed first among more than 115 high school competitors from across New York State in the prestigious 2016 ProStart competition. The Highland students, Dante Fauci and Karina Rendon, and their teammates, moved on to represent New York State in the National ProStart competition this summer.

We are also very fortunate to have strong partners in our community who are committed to increasing students’ opportunities. I am very proud of our Highland Education Foundation and Highland Music Boosters — relatively new organizations that have achieved much success in their efforts to support the students in the district — as well as the continued strength and devotion of the PTAs in each of the school buildings, who provide enrichment and other opportunities for our students.

The nonprofit Southlands Foundation on Route 9 in Rhinebeck operates primarily as an equestrian center, but it opens its nearly 200 acres of trails to the public for hiking, cross-country skiing, snowshoeing and birdwatching for free, seven days a week from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.

The nonprofit Southlands Foundation on Route 9 in Rhinebeck operates primarily as an equestrian center. Horses are boarded there, and classic dressage is taught at the School of Horsemanship. The riding school provides summer and afterschool programs and holiday camps for youth, along with opportunities to participate in horse shows and specialized clinics taught by internationally recognized instructors. Less-known is the fact that it has nearly 200 acres of trails for hiking, cross-country skiing, snowshoeing and birdwatching, open to the public seven days a week from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. There is no cost to visit the site, but donations to help maintain the trails are welcome.

The property overlooks the Hudson River, with trails that go through many open fields. Several rare species of birds nest on the site, according to executive director and riding instructor Allison King. The Foundation does at least two guided walks on the property per year. A winter walk may yet happen, she says; but a spring walk when the birds begin migrating is a definite. Details will be posted on the Facebook page and website when that happens.

In the meantime, individuals are welcome to visit on their own, with signage and maps for visitors a project in the works. Parking is available in the main lot, with the only request from Southlands being that visitors check in and check out at the office, so that they know when there are people on the property.

Any gear needed to snowshoe or cross-country ski must be brought in by visitors for themselves. No motorized vehicles are permitted, but dogs are welcome as long as they are kept on a leash. The latter is very important, says King, given the number of horses that live on the property.

The complex offers quite a few amenities for the riding enthusiast, including a large heated indoor arena and two large outdoor arenas, along with a climate-controlled spectator viewing room.

Horse rentals for the day-rider are not available. To schedule a private introductory riding lesson or a pony ride for children, King recommends that visitors call ahead by at least three days to set that up – perhaps more for a weekend.

Deborah Dows opened her riding school at Southlands Farm in the late 1930s. An avid horsewoman, her aim was to teach people of all ages to respect and love the land and its animals. (The Southlands Collection | the Starr Library in Rhinebeck)

King teaches riding to students at all levels of experience, with her youngest regular student age 7 and her oldest 76. She is one of six teachers at the site. “We’re very happy that we are the oldest, longest-standing riding school in the Hudson Valley,” she says. “We were founded in the 1930s by Deborah Dows, who had the forethought to protect the land to keep it open, and to create a nonprofit organization to reach out to people who want to learn horsemanship, but may or may not have the finances to own their own horse.”

Most of the land at Southlands is protected by an easement from Scenic Hudson and will never be developed. The history of the property spans 300 years, dating back to the original king’s grant to the Livingston and Beekman families, from whom Southlands founder Deborah Dows was descended. When she passed away in 1994 at age 79, it was the end of eight generations of continuous family ownership of the property.

The Dows family had an impact on local history. They were distantly related to the Roosevelts, with FDR arranging for Deborah’s brother, Olin, to paint the murals at the Rhinebeck Post Office in 1940 (reputedly after another distant cousin, Daisy Suckley, put the bug in his ear to do so). And Thomas Wolfe wrote seven chapters of Look Homeward, Angel while living in the guesthouse of the family estate, Fox Hollow, in the summer of 1927.

Deborah Dows and her two siblings inherited Fox Hollow when their father, Tracy Dows, died in 1937. He had built the home in 1909 upon acquiring 1,000 acres of land with his marriage to Alice Dows, a well-off descendant of Margaret Beekman Livingston. When the estate was broken up at his death, Alice got another piece of family property, the Beekman Arms, and the children got equal shares in Fox Hollow, which was then sold to Vincent Astor (the son of John Jacob Astor, who went down with the Titanic).

With her share of the proceeds, Deborah Dows bought back 200 acres of the “south land” on the property from Astor for her Southlands Farm. (Alice sold the Beekman Arms to a consortium of investors in Rhinebeck for $35,000 and moved in with her son Olin at Glenburn, a home inherited from her side of the family.)

Deborah Dows opened her riding school at Southlands Farm in the late 1930s. An avid horsewoman, her aim was to teach people of all ages to respect and love the land and its animals. By all accounts, she was a larger-than-life character, eccentric and colorful, remembered by those who knew her as a lively personality and a stern taskmaster, who was nevertheless extremely supportive of her students: tough love, as it were.

In Lessons from Southlands: A Portrait of Deborah Dows, a short film made by Kathryn Windley, Dows is characterized as someone who came from wealth and position, but who had no patience for social pretensions. “That was one of the things that made her so free,” remembers one man. “She was just eccentric enough to do things that other people wouldn’t do, and go places other people wouldn’t go.”

Another former student said that the six-foot-tall Dows “had a tremendous elegance and presence about her,” despite being most often seen around the barn wearing moth-eaten sweaters and trousers with holes in them. Dows traveled the world over the course of her lifetime – “sleeping in haystacks and palaces” – and is said to have associated with general George Patton when he was still a major, and to have done a stint at the renowned Spanish Riding School in Vienna (where Patton famously rescued the Lipizzaner stallions from the Nazis in World War II).

Brutally honest though she could be, Dows was demanding because “she knew you could do better,” according to a longtime student. “She built your character from the inside out. And there was never a time when you couldn’t talk to her about anything.” Always one to look out for the underdog, Dows was “very kind to anyone underprivileged or who just needed some help.”

Over time, many of the children and grandchildren of the original students came to Southlands to learn to ride, too, and learn the lessons about the land and nature that Dows sought to pass on. “She taught us a lot – and not just about riding – and it’s carried over into our everyday lives.”

Before she died, Dows arranged for the easement on the property, in order to preserve the land and what it had meant to so many. “What was here was what she wanted to leave, and she wanted it to continue,” said a former student. “She wanted to leave everything as it was, as much as she could.”

The main house on the property that Dows built in the 1930s, modeled on a German farmhouse that she’d seen in her youth, was lost to fire on the morning of October 31, 2011. King explains that when the power came back on after a big snowstorm, faults in the electrical wiring caused the fire. There was no loss of life or injury to the people and animals on the property, but much of the personal effects of Deborah Dows are now gone.

Southlands Foundation, 5771 Route 9, Rhinebeck; (845) 876-4862, www.southlands.org. 

Randy Nogueira is the general manager at the new Hampton Inn by Hilton hotel which recently opened in New Paltz. (photo by Lauren Thomas)

“It’s been an uphill battle for us, but we’re excited to be here,” says Randy Nogueira, general manager of the new Hampton Inn by Hilton that recently opened at 4 South Putt Corners Road in New Paltz. “We want to be a part of the local community, and we want the community to be a part of us.”

Hampton Inns in general are all about reflecting the character of the towns they’re in, he adds, but that philosophy is being attended to perhaps even more than usual in New Paltz. In their efforts to be a good neighbor, they’ve even cleaned up the cemetery located adjacent to the hotel — clearing out five feet of overgrown weeds and having a mason fix the walls — to preserve that part of New Paltz history.

The hotel décor features photographs of local sights, and the 24/7 snack bar behind the front desk carries items produced locally. “We encourage our guests to frequent the local shops and restaurants, and we visit those ourselves so we know where to send people,” says Nogueira. “We’re also interested in hearing from any of the restaurants that do local deliveries, because sometimes businesspeople staying in a hotel don’t want to go out again after working all day and they’d rather eat here.”

The main floor features a large, open communal space with plenty of tables and chairs to dine at. There’s also a television and a breakfast bar at the far end where guests are served a complimentary breakfast buffet from 6-10 a.m. The Hampton Inn does not have its own full service restaurant, but it is located next door to Novella’s catering facility, with their restaurant, The Grille at Novella’s, and it’s not far from the village with all of its restaurants.

Located a mile north of the SUNY New Paltz campus, the hotel opened on December 19. The three-story structure with 86 rooms has many energy efficient features, including rotational air vents that filter fresh air throughout the building, thermostats on Wi-Fi so the front desk can close off heat to empty rooms and a water filtration system located underground that separates rainwater and melting snow into a separate well to be used for gardening and landscaping purposes. All of the light fixtures inside the building as well as the outside parking lights use energy efficient LED bulbs. The saltwater heated swimming pool, too, off the lobby, has efficiency features and uses a minimal amount of chlorine for sterilization.

“We care about the environment, and we want to go above and beyond with that,” says Nogueira. “Everything has been designed to make it as eco-friendly as possible. We know that’s what New Paltz wants from us. We’re big on recycling, too, and don’t want to waste anything.”

Even the leftover food from the breakfast buffet goes to the staff so it doesn’t get thrown out.

The Hampton Inn by Hilton offers visitors a mid-range option for hotel stays that has not been available in New Paltz before. They’re a family-friendly operation, says Nogueira, that will cater to the families that come to town to visit their children attending SUNY New Paltz, as well as tourists attending the various events held in the region. The college has guest speakers and lecturers, too, who travel to make presentations at the campus who will now more easily find local accommodations.

The lobby is equipped with a gas fireplace, adding a welcome bit of warmth on a recent visit after a snowstorm. The main floor has a 24/7 fitness center with all the gym equipment most people would expect — treadmills, bicycles and lifting equipment  — and visitors can get headphones to watch the televisions while working out.

Down the hall is a conference room that seats 92; it can be rented out for small private parties, as well. There is also a small boardroom with a long table seating 12 that contains up-to-date audio/visual equipment and a quiet “business center” available 24/7 with several computers where guests can shut the door and go online to work peacefully.

Guest rooms offer free Wi-Fi along with a 46-inch HD television, microwave, mini-refrigerator and coffeemaker. There are handicapped accessible rooms with roll-in showers and hearing-accessible rooms are also available.

Future initiatives include offering bicycles for guest use and working with local food kitchens and pantries. “Part of Hampton Inn’s drive to be a part of the communities they’re in is giving back,” says Nogueira. “Reaching out and helping others in need, when needed. We have one campaign where we save all the unused bars of soap and beauty products to ship to an organization that recycles them and distributes them free to third world countries.”

The hotel has provided approximately 35 local jobs, according to Nogueira, with most of the employees based in the New Paltz area. “Everyone on our staff was handpicked for a reason, chosen for their character, and they will bring that to our guests, and make sure they always leave happy. They also all have that drive to be part of the community, and want to be involved with reaching out and helping. We haven’t had the chance yet, but we’re looking forward to working with everybody.”

Photographer Nora Scarlett in the Shawangunks.

Walking in the woods one day near her house outside New Paltz, Nora Scarlett noticed a tree that appeared to be “kissing” a boulder. Intrigued by the sight, she returned home for her 4×5 view camera, studio tripod and accessories. Coming back to capture the unexpected alignment of forms on film was not an unusual impulse for a professional photographer, but little might even she have imagined that it would ultimately lead her to a decade-long odyssey through the Shawangunk Mountains, focusing her lens on the unusual, improbable and just plain amazing tree trunks she found growing in the rocky environs. The images Scarlett created have recently been published in her first book, “Trunks of the Gunks” (Black Dome Press, 2016).

Already an avid hiker, rock climber, skier and outdoors enthusiast when she began the series in 2005, Scarlett writes in the book’s preface, “I now had a new, compelling reason to lace up my shoes and don a pack. I hiked extensively around Mohonk Preserve and Minnewaska State Park on a quest… I looked for [trees with] wacky formations, humorous characteristics, improbable locations, surprising shapes and other wondrous growths.”

The bedrock of the Ridge creates growing conditions for its trees that inspired Scarlett. “In those hundreds of hours hiking the Gunks, I became awed at how life perseveres despite formidable handicaps, how it adapts to adversity and how it succeeds in astonishing ways,” she writes. “Tiny seedlings emerge from small cracks in rock, sprouting a handful of needles or tender leaves, knowing only to keep trying to grow. Enormous hemlocks hang off ledges, improbably rooted to something, looking as if they shouldn’t be upright, and yet … there they are. Roots protrude out of the ground in a preposterous manner, and I stand there in amazement and wonder how they got that way.”

Scarlett has lived in the New Paltz area since 1998, moving up with her family from the city after more than 20 years as a successful commercial photographer with her own studio there. The list of big-name clients she’s worked with is an arm long — it includes American Express, The Gap and Kodak — and she’s won numerous industry awards for her work, including a Clio.

Cedar Drive Fungus from Nora Scarlett’s “Trunks in the Gunks” book. (photo by Nora Scarlett)

Having taken up rock climbing along the way at a gym in the city, it seems inevitable that when looking for a quieter lifestyle Scarlett ended up in New Paltz. These days she spends part of each year in Utah, as well, still open to commercial work “if the right project comes along” but more interested in pursuing her personal projects.

Among those, Scarlett says she has always had a penchant for producing work unified by a theme. “I don’t like to take pictures for no reason,” she says. “I like to have a framework.”

The first series she did was called “The Scarlett Letters,” a whimsical approach to illustrating the letters of the alphabet. She undertook the project in the mid-1980s to advertise her work to prospective clients. A later series depicted the numbers one through ten as filtered through her sensibility, with yet another series based on pairs of two.

Most of Scarlett’s work has been done in a studio environment. She says that she usually thinks in terms of “making” photographs as opposed to “taking” them; starting from nothing and purposefully adding all the elements: light, objects, background and foreground. “I enjoy the craft of creating photographs,” she says. Scarlett frequently makes simple props for her work and has even grown plants from seed to use in a miniature set, “because I wanted that newly sprouted look.”

But shooting in nature is something different.

To capture the images in “Trunks of the Gunks,” the photographer frequently found herself “wriggling through brush, balanced on a boulder or perched precariously on a steep, muddy embankment searching for the best composition,” she writes in the book. (Early on she gave up the view camera in favor of a DSLR to improve her maneuverability, she notes.) “I was out in the humid, buggy steam bath of summer and in the chilly fall drizzle. I tromped in snowshoes in the cold sparkle of winter and waded through flooded bogs in spring. Nature was not always kind during these forays. Once, as I struggled through branches to the base of a pitch pine, I was attacked and stung repeatedly by ground wasps, even as I fled the area.”

And while a photographer can manipulate natural forms to great effect — Andy Goldsworthy being a prime example of that — Scarlett says that she photographed what she found. The only time she interfered with nature was removing a fallen branch from the scene, for example, or tweaking the placement of a leaf that got in the way of the tree roots she really wanted to photograph.

She spends a great deal of time with the images after shooting them, using computer software to optimize them, deepening a shadow here, highlighting an edge there to separate it from the background. “I do spend a lot of time studying the images, staring at them, thinking about it and then changing them a little bit more. It’s subtle; you don’t really see it, but it’s there. Often, the first 95 percent is established pretty fast, but it’s the last five percent that takes seemingly forever. But it’s this last step that ends up distinguishing the image.”

At the same time, “All the magic in the world can’t make something out of nothing,” Scarlett says. “If the bones of the image are good, you can help it along, but you have to have something to start with and then fine-tune it. Anyone can shoot the film; it’s getting the light right that’s the hard part. And for some of these images, I went back many times because the light wasn’t right.”

Scarlett grew up in Palo Alto, California, discovering photography in high school there. While attending UC Berkeley in the early ‘70s, she worked as a photojournalist for the campus press and became hooked. After moving to New York City in 1976, she learned her craft in the studios of several well respected photographers, including a stint as a print spotter for Irving Penn, a job she describes as a humble endeavor sitting in a corner examining a print for minute imperfections, trying to distinguish whether a spot was a flaw or intended to be part of the finished product.

Inspired by large format cameras and studio lighting, Scarlett developed her own talents creating still life photographs. Certain qualities emerged that still define her work, she says: a bold use of color and light, elegant yet sometimes quirky compositions, a fascination with making ordinary objects beautiful and developing concepts that result in a series of images.

Whether she’ll continue to photograph the “Trunks of the Gunks” now that the book has been published is “a good question,” she says. “At first it seemed [the project] was never going to end. I carried my camera with me everywhere I went. But now I started a series on fungus – that’s my next thing –  and I have an idea about clouds. But you never know… there could be a second edition someday.”

The hardcover edition of “Trunks of the Gunks” is priced at $30. It runs 112 pages and features 97 full-color photographs in 9.25-by-9.25-inch format, with a foreword by Dr. Paul C. Huth of Mohonk Preserve’s Daniel Smiley Research Center. The book is available at local retailers in the New Paltz area, including Rock and Snow, Inquiring Minds Bookstore, Handmade and More, Barner Books, Dedrick’s gift shop, the Mohonk Preserve visitor’s center and the Mohonk Mountain House gift shop. It may also be ordered from “that rather large online place that begins with the letter ‘a,’” as Scarlett puts it, and directly from her website, where images from her various series may be viewed. More information is available at norascarlett.com.

Post-election, many writers and artists have been doing a lot of thinking about how best to move forward in what feels like a strange new world.

“Like most other people I know, I was in kind of a state of shock in mid-November, going around in depressed disbelief,” says Nina Shengold, Chronogram books editor and founder of Word Café, a gathering place for Hudson Valley writers and readers. “What is the writer’s role in an administration that you don’t agree with? That you may be frightened by? And how do we support each other, and how do we support people who are at risk?”

“Hudson Valley Writers Resist: Louder Together for Free Expression” will bring a collective of writers and musicians to the Bearsville Theater in Woodstock on Sunday, January 15 – the birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr., a few days before the inauguration – to celebrate the power of words, compassion, equal rights, free speech, social justice and environmental issues. There will be three hour-long sets of words and music beginning at 2 p.m., with attendees welcome to come for one set or all three.

Admission is free, but goodwill donations will be gratefully accepted by the three organizations designated as beneficiaries for the day: Riverkeeper, Planned Parenthood of the Mid-Hudson Valley and the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU). Each will have tables in the lobby staffed by representatives. The NYCLU will also receive the proceeds raised through the sale of signed books donated by local authors and Woodstock’s Golden Notebook. Additional funds for the organizations will also be donated from portraits done in the theater lobby by photographer Franco Vogt and illustrator Will Lytle.

Nina Shengold will host one set, with the others led by Ida Hakkila of The Heavy Light Show on Radio Woodstock and Kate Hymes of Wallkill Valley Writers. Each set will be dedicated to one of the beneficiary organizations and include a combination of individual readers, a group presentation and live music, according to Shengold, one of the event organizers. “I’ve organized a lot of author events over the years, and this is the first time everybody I asked to participate said yes, and said yes immediately,” she says. “There’s clearly an urge to get together and speak out.”

The event came together fast, Shengold notes, and is one of at least 60 similar events being held internationally on the same day. “As I understand it, the idea of doing something as a collective raising of voices started out as a national initiative, and then some American writers living abroad and people concerned in Europe and elsewhere, who felt that they wanted to become part of the fabric, got involved. And certainly, the way America will be changing will affect people all over the world.”

Featured writers include Emily Barton, Jon Bowermaster, Cheryl Clarke, Cornelius Eady, Amitava Kumar, Elizabeth Lesser, Gretchen Primack, Edwin Sanchez, Sparrow, Abigail Thomas, Mark Wunderlich and Sunil Yapa. “The writers who are coming are amazing,” says Shengold. “They’re poets, they’re nonfiction writers, they’re novelists…they’re all people who are good readers as well as good writers.” Group presentations will be offered by writers from the TMI Project, Woodstock Bookfest and TheWeeklings.com. There will also be performances by Connor Kennedy, Mikhail Horowitz & Gilles Malkine, Simi Stone & David Baron and Robert Burke Warren.

The bar will be open in the lobby of the Bearsville Theater, and refreshments in some form will likely be available. The theater donated the space for the event, which is co-sponsored by PEN America.

Upstate Films and Oblong Books are co-presenting a “Fiction into Film” series that will offer the opportunity to debate that age-old question: “Which was better, the book or the movie?”

Upstate Films in Rhinebeck will host a film screening of Our Man in Havana (1960) on Sunday, January 15 at 12:30 p.m. Those planning to attend are invited to read the book on which the film is based (available at Oblong Books) beforehand, sign up for Oblong’s book group, then stay after the screening for a book-versus-movie discussion.

Participation in the book discussion is free; the movie screening will require the purchase of a ticket. Admission costs $10 for adults, $8 for seniors and students and $6 for members of Upstate Films and kids under age 16. Tickets to the film are available on the day-of at the box office, by cash or check only. Those wishing to participate in the book group must preregister at www.oblongbooks.com.

The novel Our Man in Havana (1958), written by British author Graham Greene, makes fun of intelligence services, especially the British MI6, and their willingness to believe reports from their local informants. The book predates the Cuban Missile Crisis, but certain aspects of the plot – notably the parts involving missile installations – appear to anticipate the events of 1962.

It was adapted into a film of the same name in 1960, directed by Carol Reed, starring Sir Alec Guinness as Jim Wormold, Noel Coward as Hawthorne, Jo Morrow as Milly, Maureen O’Hara as Beatrice Severn and Ernie Kovacs as Captain Segura. Graham Greene wrote the screenplay. The cast also features Burl Ives and Sir Ralph Richardson. The film runs one hour and 55 minutes.

The humorous plot follows the misadventures of a vacuum cleaner salesman who finds himself becoming an agent in the British Secret Service. Jim Wormold (Guinness) is an expatriate Englishman living in pre-revolutionary Havana with his teenage daughter Milly (Jo Morrow). He owns a vacuum cleaner shop, but isn’t very successful; so when a British intelligence agent (Noel Coward) who’s looking for information on Cuban affairs recruits Jim to act as a spy, he accepts. With no experience in espionage and no useful knowledge to pass along, he turns in reports on the Cuban revolution that are copied from public documents, “hires” additional agents who don’t exist and presents blueprints of secret weapons that are actually schematics of his carpet sweepers.

(Photo by Dion Ogust)

In the effort to ensure its middle and high school students get eight to nine hours of sleep every night, maximizing their academic potential and keeping them in good health, the New Paltz Central School District is exploring the possibility of making changes to the school day schedule. Potential changes include starting the elementary school day earlier and starting the middle and high school days later.

The district’s proposal is based on medical research, with the Board of Education citing studies from the American Academy of Pediatrics to back up its argument.

At the district’s recent regular Board of Education meeting on Wednesday, January 4, a presentation was given by Dr. David Blaiklock, senior research director of K12 Insight, an independent research firm hired by the district to conduct a survey of New Paltz parents, staff and high school students. The survey (along with a later follow-up questionnaire offered to parents) was administered in order to gather feedback about how the factions involved view the potential impacts of changing school start and end times.

Some of the challenges cited include transportation factors (buses, drivers and budget), child care demands, parental work schedules, student commitment to employers, reductions in evening time for homework and family, scheduling for before-school and after-school activities (both school-sponsored and independent) and coordination with external organizations and facilities.

The survey was developed by K12 Insight after focus groups representing a sampling of parents, staff and students met in the fall of 2016 to discuss the matter. Insights gleaned during those meetings were used to develop the questions on the survey, which was approved by schools Superintendent Maria Rice before being offered to all parents, staff and students. Blaiklock’s presentation of the highlights of the survey data at the January 4 New Paltz BOE meeting was the first time board members and administrators had heard the results.

Overall, the data shows mixed opinions among parents and staff members about whether or not the school times should change, with staff members responding to the proposed changes less positively on the whole. High school students supported a later school start time, but all of the factions involved expressed some concern about the impact the changes would make at the end of the school day.

The benefits to students with later middle and high school start times were listed as decreased stress, increased wakefulness and attentiveness during first period and time to eat breakfast before school.

The survey was open from November 29 to December 15. Thirty-seven percent of parents responded, with 55 percent responding to the additional follow-up questionnaire. Thirty-eight percent of the staff responded and 66 percent of the students. The participation rate was considered good for parents, but less than what they usually have from staff and students when doing similar studies, Blaiklock said. Participation, on average, usually runs at approximately 50 percent for staff and 75-80 percent for students.

Students’ health and sleep and their academic performance received the highest and second-highest weighted scores from parents, staff members and students as the most important factors to consider when reviewing the school schedule. Timing of after-school activities had the third-highest weighted score at the middle and high school levels and the sixth highest score at the elementary level.

The current start times were selected with the most frequency when parents, staff and students were asked to select the ideal start times for elementary, middle and high schools. The exception was Duzine Elementary School staff, who selected 9:15 a.m. as the ideal start time with greater frequency than the current start time of 9:25 a.m.

At least 38 percent of participating parents, staff and students indicated a change in school end times would have a negative impact on students’ after-school activities. Forty-nine percent of participating parents indicated a change in school start and end times would have a positive impact on students’ general health and well-being, but 50 percent indicated the change would have a negative impact on students’ ability to spend time with family. Seventy-one percent of high school students agreed or strongly agreed that a later school start time would have a positive impact on their sleep.

The Board of Education will now use the data to contemplate their course of action, considering community feedback, research and other factors over the next few months before deciding whether to make the change in school start and end times next year.

But the problem with the data compiled through the surveys, according to BOE member Steven Greenfield, is that the questions posed were more about perceptions than “actionable” information he felt he could use to determine whether changing the school start time will allow students to get more sleep. For example, he said, he needs to know more than what percentage of high school students goes to bed at 10, 10:30 or 11 p.m. and what percentage gets up for school at 6, 6:30 or 7 a.m., because there is no way of knowing from those numbers what an individual student’s actual sleep time is.

Board member Michael O’Donnell pointed out that that the problem with asking survey participants about their reactions to changing to an undefined “later” start time means that some might be interpreting “later” as half an hour while others might be thinking of an hour. “There are a recommended number of hours of sleep per night that a student should get, and basically I’d like to know, ‘how many of our students don’t get that.’”

Blaiklock said in response that with some more time, they could go back to the data they compiled and get the board that information. (With the initial survey having cost the district $25,000, a woman in the audience was overheard to say, ‘yes, but at what cost.’)

Blaiklock told the board and administrators that according to the results of the survey, if they could find a way to push back the start time of the school day without impacting the end time, that would be their ideal solution. To gain the extra time in the middle of the day would likely mean taking it from the lunch break and/or time allotted between classes.

The full 60-slide presentation of the survey results may be viewed in its entirety on the district website at newpaltz.k12.ny.us.

Nineteen month-old Eliora Navarro-McKay of High Falls (photos by Lauren Thomas)

The annual WinterFest celebration returned to Highland last Saturday, January 14, offering family-friendly reasons to get out and brave the cold. Temperatures were seasonal but there was no snow, which may be why the parking lot filled up so fast and many visitors found themselves parking up and down New Paltz Road.

The festival’s “Best of Fest” Chili Cook-Off is reason enough to go. Seventeen local eateries, including some new entrants, donated several gallons of chili each to be dished out from slowcookers stationed under the Hudson Valley Rail Trail Pavilion. The pots of savory stew were manned by volunteers, mainly members of Highland Rotary Club. Two-ounce cups of chili could be purchased with tickets that cost 50 cents each, with a “try-them-all” ticket available for $8. Tickets could also be exchanged for hot dogs or cups of hot coffee and cocoa.

The tasting, as usual, was done “blind,” with even the volunteers dishing out the samples unaware of which eatery’s chili they were serving. Tasters were invited to vote for their favorite out of the many varieties available, which included mild, spicy and vegetarian options.

The restaurants from Highland, New Paltz and other nearby areas that participated in the competition were Bagels & Bites, El Paso, Gateway Diner, Main Street Bistro, The Gilded Otter, Mahoney’s, On A Roll Deli, P&G’s, Pavesi’s, Perch, Sal’s, The Cake Artist, The Would, The Sandwich Shop, Three Guys, Underground Coffee & Ales and Wagon Wheels Deli.

Coming out on top with first place honors was Sal’s Place (pot number 28 for those who were wondering). On A Roll Deli (pot 21) took second place, with Wagon Wheels Deli (pot 29) placing third in the people’s choice.

If unlimited chili tasting wasn’t enough to entice, WinterFest also offered tractor-pulled hay wagon rides up and down the Rail Trail — courtesy of Dave DuBois of DuBois Farms — a fire pit to roast marshmallows over, a kids’ activity tent sponsored by Lowe’s — who supplied the materials and assistance to help kids create small wooden toys — lawn games organized by Boy Scout troops 70 and 193 and a karaoke machine, the perennial favorite of teenage girls. Members of the Highland High School Interact Club (a junior version of Rotary Club) were on hand to assist with parking and other organizational details.

The circa 1915 caboose next to the pavilion was open to visitors, too. WinterFest is one of the few times people can go inside and check it out. (The 1926 N5 caboose at 75 Haviland Road, where Walkway Over the Hudson terminates at the entrance to Highland, has been converted into an information kiosk and equipped with exhibits on local railroad-related history. It’s open to the public on weekends, spring through fall.)

As many as 1,000 people come to WinterFest every year, with the small town appeal of the event drawing families who want to get out in the winter chill and enjoy some time together without having to travel far or spend a lot of money. The crowd included teens in groups, couples, families with little ones and even some solo chili-chowing-down by athletic-gear-garbed runners accompanied by dogs wearing coats.

WinterFest is one of a number of events sponsored by the Hudson Valley Rail Trail Association (HVRTA) throughout the year, with all proceeds from the event benefitting the maintenance of the Rail Trail and improvements to it.

The HVRTA meets on the third Tuesday of each month. Meetings are open to the public, held at Town of Lloyd Town Hall. New members are always welcome, since many of the board members have been active in the association since its beginnings and more helping hands will always be essential as the Rail Trail expands in the coming years.

Next on the horizon is expansion of the Highland trail from its current terminus at Tony Williams Park to the intersection of New Paltz Road and Route 299 (by Lowe’s). Eventually, the plan is to connect with the Wallkill Rail Trail and beyond, creating an extensive Ulster County Trail Network.

More information about the Hudson Valley Rail Trail Association is available at www.hudsonvalleyrailtrail.net and on their Facebook page, which lists the pot numbers associated with each restaurant for those who enjoyed a particular chili at WinterFest and wish to know where to go to purchase it again.

Austin and Mason Riggio play broomball

Jillian Brennie, Jonna Watkins and Gisselle Ojeda sing karaoke style for the crowd

Katelyn Idelfonso and Tyler Kluge of Marlboro

Anton and Alyse Peterle of New Paltz with Alyse’s parents Barbara and Shelly Brooks

SUNY Ulster Management Professor Al Ragucci partnered with Dr. Ana Colenci of FATEC San Carlos in San Carlos, Brazil. They both taught a Principles of Management class where teams from each class worked together on projects via skype, Facebook and other applications. Dr. Colenci visited the SUNY Ulster campus on January 9 to receive a certificate from Ulster’s new president for her contributions to the project. Left to right are: SUNY Ulster Vice President for Academic Affairs Kevin Stoner, Professor of Management Dr. William Sheldon, Instructional Technologist Hope Windle, Management Professor Al Ragucci, Dr. Ana Teresa Colenci Trevelin, SUNY Ulster President Dr. Alan Roberts, Dr. Anita Bleffert-Schmidt of the college’s business and management department and Chris Seubert Director of International Travel. (photo by Lauren Thomas)

“Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things,” wrote Mark Twain, “cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.” He was writing about travel in general, but his words apply equally to the time-honored practice of broadening one’s mind through studying abroad. But stepping away from one’s daily obligations for any length of time — not to mention the prohibitive costs of pursuing such opportunities — means that most community college students will never have that chance to experience another culture up close. Here in Ulster County, however, the Cooperative Online International Learning (COIL) program at SUNY Ulster Community College offers students a global learning experience without ever having to leave home.

Students enrolled in a COIL class collaborate with students attending a university in another country, each guided by their respective professor. The students study each other’s culture, then work together on a project, communicating through Skype, Facebook and other apps. The classwork culminates in a presentation from both groups at the end of the semester.

The (COIL) program at SUNY Ulster “opens up the possibilities for our students,” says Alfred Ragucci, adjunct professor of business at the school. “The best part about it is when students get frustrated, because of language differences and time differences; because that’s what they’ll experience when they’re working in business and they’re dealing with people overseas. The frustrations and problems are actually the learning experience.” In working outside of their comfort zone in a situation where they have to figure out how to communicate effectively with their team members to get a project done, he adds, the students are getting an experience in the global economy.

The COIL model involves instructors working together to generate a shared syllabus based on academic coursework, emphasizing experiential and collaborative learning. Ragucci, for example, partnered with Brazilian professor Ana Colenci to teach principles of business management, with six groups of students divided between the two countries. Three groups developed a product to market in Brazil with the other three working on a product to sell in the United States. The American students who were marketing in Brazil asked the Brazilian students their views of the product’s possibilities, and those students did the same with the Americans. In order to decide what product to offer, the students studied the other country’s culture, demography, government, politics and economy.

“Dr. Colenci  and I created the class like an organization,” Ragucci says. “We tried to make it as realistic as possible. We met once a week by Skype. We had team leaders and a CEO, with she and I chairmen of the board. When problems inevitably arise, they go through the chain of command. The team leaders deal with it first and if that doesn’t work, it goes to the CEO, and if that doesn’t work, then she and I communicate and see if we can work out the problem.”

Colenci , a professor at Fatec São Carlos, Brazil, visited the SUNY Ulster campus on Monday, January 9 to receive a certificate of recognition for her contributions to the COIL program.

Twelve COIL classes in a variety of disciplines were offered in the fall semester at SUNY Ulster — more than at any other community college in the state — and Ulster was the first of the SUNY community colleges to participate in the COIL program. In the ten years the program has been in place, there have been 44 collaborations between the school and eleven countries: Belarus, Brazil, Canada, Greece, Italy, Japan, Lebanon, Mexico, The Netherlands, Scotland and South Africa. So far, 627 students at SUNY Ulster have participated in the COIL program with 238 involved in an academic travel program.

Participating in COIL classes often spurs the desire in students to travel and learn foreign languages, says Hope Windle, who heads the instructional design office at SUNY Ulster, specializing in creating learning opportunities through the COIL program. “It’s opening up the concept of what they can do that they didn’t even think about before, which is really heartwarming.” The students get to learn about the culture of a place in much more tangible ways than they’d have the opportunity for otherwise, she says, and they often tell her afterward that they come away from COIL coursework with a very different — and improved — perception of the country they collaborated with.

Many of the SUNY students who traveled to Mexico with their design class, for example, she says, were astonished to learn about the rich history of art in that country. Another COIL group included several students here who were vets of Iraqi conflicts, who were reluctant to participate with a group of students in Lebanon until they realized how much more they had in common than they had differences. “One of our students was a volunteer firefighter, and one of theirs was working for Syrian refugees. And one of our students was looking at women’s rights and the situation there for women gave him more empathy. So with every project, there sort of blooms a new recognition of a different facet of why doing international studies is so important.”

COIL classes have included studies in communications, genetics, design and fine art. For Christopher Seubert’s second-year portfolio development class, his art students partnered with a cultural competency course in Japan. The class focus was on communication, he says, with the Japanese students already possessing good English-speaking skills but benefitting from developing their cultural understanding of the U.S. “That was one thing the American students were able to critique and work with them on,” he says. As for his students, “the better they can communicate with others, the stronger work they can develop. We came together over some common topics and subject matters, and were able to develop a presentation and present to one another.”

In many cases, the rural students of Ulster County find themselves relating to urban students in places like Amsterdam and Beirut, Windle says, which adds another dimension to the learning experience. Professor Ragucci says that in his business management courses, he has frequently heard from his Ulster County students that they’ve only traveled as far as New York City, and even then, just a time or two. So COIL studies, he says, are “an eye-opening experience.”

The projects that the groups of students collaborate on do sometimes fail in the original intention. “But even when the project falls flat,” says Ragucci, “the students still get a lot out of the learning experience.” Windle agrees, noting a COIL collaboration with a school in Belarus, when the American students were unable to get an entrepreneurial project off the ground due to restrictive government regulations there and difficulties relating to the students, who read and wrote in Cyrillic. “That was a total eye-opener to them. But even though they weren’t able to do the project, the students still got an understanding of different governments and different ways people do things.”

For faculty members who participate in COIL programs, it offers opportunities for team teaching, professional development, intercultural competency and travel and language incentives. Thirty-three Ulster faculty members have participated in the COIL program up to this date, with nine going on to involvement with the school’s academic travel program.

This summer there will be a COIL program with students from Mexico, Brazil and The Netherlands working with Ulster students on a business entrepreneurial challenge, says Windle. The session begins in June and the students will meet face-to-face from July 3-17. The course will be taught by SUNY Ulster’s Mindy Kole and two professors from The Netherlands.

The COIL program has received $24,000 to date in grants. “We’re fortunate in that the president and vice president of this school understand the importance of this for our students,” says Windle. “There’s also a push nationally – specifically in SUNY – to look at diversity and do something about it. Intercultural competence is one of those buzzwords right now, and COIL is a great combination of applied learning and intercultural competence. It’s ticking all the boxes for our students to engage in something that is hands-on and something that’s intercultural.”

More information about the COIL program is available at coil.suny.edu.

Kristie Benel (photo by Lauren Thomas)

Regina Moerikofer has been homeschooling her eleven-year-old daughter at the middle school level in New Paltz. Under the district’s 2009 policies, homeschooled children are allowed to participate in extracurricular clubs and activities held at the school when classes are over for the day. Last year, Moerikofer’s daughter, Kristie Benel, joined the drama club and participated as a member of the ensemble in the middle school’s production of The Little Mermaid. But after Kristie auditioned for the ensemble in the school’s current production of The Lion King, she was told during callbacks that she is no longer welcome because she is a homeschooler. The family was informed that because this year’s production is so complicated, it will require rehearsal for the ensemble during school hours when Kristie is not allowed to be on campus. But Moerikofer says that since the school is holding some of the ensemble rehearsals after school, and the district could make accommodations for the homeschooled kids if they wanted to, she believes their response has been one of discrimination and exclusion.

Seventh grader Kristie Benel stood before the New Paltz Central School District Board of Education at their regular meeting on Wednesday, January 4 to plead her case in a calm and composed manner. Her mother later said that Benel wrote her own remarks.

“I am a seventh-grade home schooler, but I’m still part of the school district,” she told the board. “I also take part in many afterschool extracurricular activities. Last year I was in the drama club. I was in the ensemble of the middle school production of The Little Mermaid. It was a great experience. It gave me the chance to be with my friends, and I also made some new ones. I love seeing the smiling faces of the crowd after each performance, and it made me feel like I was part of the school community. I was really excited to be part of this year’s Lion King, and I went to the auditions, just like last year, and when it was time for callbacks, I got a phone call that I was not allowed to be part of the play because I’m a homeschooler. This made me extremely sad, because there were no real reasons given. I just wanted to be in the ensemble. My friends who are in it again this year told me that the ensemble [rehearsals] take place after school, which is when I’m allowed to be there. I don’t understand why homeschoolers like myself are not allowed to be part of the ensemble. So I’m asking you if you could do anything to make it possible for homeschoolers like myself to be able to be part of the ensemble of the middle school’s drama club. Thank you for your time and your consideration.”

Asked to comment on the matter, schools Superintendent Maria Rice said last week that Benel had been “inadvertently allowed to participate” last year, and was the only homeschooled child to have been in the production. “The reason this child was in the play last year was by an error, because there were so many children, her name got included. I just found that out today. But it worked out, because they didn’t do any daytime practices last year. So it was kind of okay with the board’s policy.”

While parents in the U.S. have the Constitutional right to educate their children at home, equal access to extracurricular activities at the public school is a state-granted privilege for homeschooled children. In New York State, the rules of access are left up to the individual school district’s board of education, each of which determines its own policy. A homeschooler seeking to participate in a particular activity must contact his or her local school superintendent to ask for the privilege or make a presentation before the local school board for either a waiver or the adoption of an equal access policy.

The New Paltz Board of Education considered granting a waiver to Benel to allow her to participate, said Rice, but decided against it.

Rice said she was told that there are somewhere in the neighborhood of 180 students in the play’s ensemble, a number large enough to require breaking the students into groups and holding lunchtime rehearsals that Benel is unable to attend. “The board took this very seriously, and talked about it and went back and forth, but with this many students involved and being halfway through the rehearsal schedule at this point, they felt opening it to one homeschooled student was opening it to many, and felt it was too late in the process.”

No other accommodations could be made, Rice added, because there are only two teachers directing the production and they are “stretched too thin.”

Will the district consider altering its policy for the next school year? “No,” said Rice. “The board wants to stick with their policy and they’re going to review it to make sure it’s perfectly clear. If it isn’t, they’re going to clarify it so that no other child gets their hopes up.”

Homeschooled students, said Rice, “are very welcome to any extracurricular club that meets after school. Of course by law they’re not allowed to participate in any interscholastic activities. But one way the homeschooled student could be part of the play is by joining the art club. They’re making props, scenery and costumes right now and that’s their way of participating in the play. And that’s what the district has offered. It’s already been offered to this child, and I’ve asked Dr. Wiesenthal [the middle school principal] to call the parent and remind her that this is going on now and she can participate this way.”

“This is news to me,” said Regina Moerikofer. “That’s the first I’ve heard of that. And it strikes me as a little rude to say ‘You’re not allowed to be on stage, but you can come and help decorate the stage,’ when the thing Kristie really wants is to be part of the ensemble, and have the whole experience of being on stage, with the singing and music and all that.”

Moerikofer said she understands that her daughter is not allowed on school property until after school hours, but she believes accommodations for homeschooled children could be made so they could attend afterschool rehearsals. According to students who are friends of her daughter, she said, the school is holding rehearsals for the ensemble after school as well as midday. “And I saw it myself at the school today,” she added. “Kristie is a member of the Reflections Club [the kids produce a literary magazine of poetry and observations] after school, and we saw the ensemble rehearsing.”

Moerikofer said she was told by Principal Wiesenthal that students can’t have three unexcused absences from rehearsals and continue to participate in the play, so with the daytime rehearsals, Kristie would miss too much if only participating after school. “But even if she missed one rehearsal,” Moerikofer said, “I don’t think it would be such an issue; the other kids would help her catch up. I told him, ‘this isn’t a Broadway show.’”

At least four or five other homeschooling parents that she knows of, said Moerikofer, have expressed interest in their children joining the drama club. “It’s not just our family. And if the school was really open to letting homeschoolers in, it’s easy enough to organize it so that the homeschoolers rehearse after school. Take the ones at lunchtime that are at the school, and let the homeschoolers come after school.”

As to how her daughter was able to participate in the drama production last year, Moerikofer said that she was told by Principal Wiesenthal at that time that the drama club was open to her daughter. “I specifically asked him, ‘what can she be a part of,’ and he said ‘the drama club.’ That’s why she was in it, and there was not a problem. Miss Holmes [Mary Holmes, a teacher at the school who directs the annual production] found out at one point that Kristie was a homeschooler and said to me, ‘she can’t be in this,’ but I told her, ‘Richard Wiesenthal said she can,’ and Miss Holmes got real quiet. And Kristie stayed.”

A request for comment to Dr. Wiesenthal went unanswered.

There were nearly 100 students in last year’s ensemble of The Little Mermaid, according to Mary Holmes. The students were divided into three groups, each rehearsing in a different location in the school under supervision of two teachers and a parent.

Holmes told this reporter then that “all of the students who auditioned for the play are eligible for the ensemble, as long as they commit to the rehearsal schedule.” And with almost one-third of the school’s students involved in the production in one way or another, she added, the annual play draws more student participation across the boundaries of sixth through eighth grade than does any other school activity. “And it’s really nice seeing them work together, seeing the eighth graders interacting with sixth graders. Between the cast and all the stage crew, it’s a real community-building opportunity.”

Moerikofer says she believes the school district does not really want homeschooled children to be part of that community. “What really bugs me,” she said, “is that we are a part of the New Paltz School District. We are paying taxes — a lot of taxes — and it’s not like we’re some independent group; we are a part of this school district. We have to file reports, quarterly reports and year-end, they’re checking those reports, and it’s not like we’re not doing our jobs.”

Moerikofer said she doesn’t understand how a school district that takes pride in inclusivity can exclude the homeschooled kids from an activity that so many children want to take part in. “This district is always talking about bullying and inclusivity, but they should think how it makes these kids feel when they’re kicked out like this. You go into the schools and everywhere you look there are signs reminding kids to think before they act, and to be an example to others. Then they treat these kids like they don’t care.”

Moerikofer said she stands by her view that the exclusion is being done deliberately to keep homeschooled children apart from the school. “I think it’s being done on purpose. I don’t know if it’s a matter of pride — if they’re so proud of that school play they want it to be only for the kids in school, and think, ‘why should kids from outside be on that stage’ — and that’s just my feeling, but that’s what I believe.

“They say they want to be so open and inclusive, and they even make bathrooms for transgender students; and that’s fine, but why one group and not the other? They want to be so sure that nobody is hurt, but they know the homeschoolers are interested in this and I think it would be such an easy fix. I think they found a little way to shut homeschoolers out, and that’s why I think it’s discrimination.”

She’s proud of her daughter for the way she stood up and spoke to the Board of Education, Moerikofer said, citing it as a good experience for her daughter and a learning experience. “Although I don’t know if the lesson she got was a good one.” ++