Portfolio: Phyllis Galembo
Galembo’s latest work presents large-scale color prints of the masquerade, a centuries-old costumed ceremony she witnessed in the African nations of Benin, Burkina Faso, and Nigeria.
View From the Top
Editor's JournalIn New York State, these yellow signs are as common in the suburbs as minivans. The wording on them reads like some macabre poem: PESTICIDE APPLICATION/ DO NOT ENTER/ DO NOT REMOVE/ SIGN FOR 24 HOURS. |
Esteemed ReaderEach of us individually is but a part of a being on a scale so vast as to be incomprehensible. |
Featured ContributorsAugust’s featured contributors. |
Local Luminary: Megan WhildenIn the two years Megan Whilden’s been Pittsfield’s culture czar, the Colonial Theater has opened and the Barrington Stage Company moved to town. |
Local LuminaryAn interview with Ann Davis, a leading light of the community. |
Editor's Note: Enter the Wau WauBefore the final chorus had settled across the packed house at Bard’s Spiegeltent on that balmy July evening, the Sisters had stripped (each other) to their underwear in an acrobatic burlesque that was part Pilobolus, part hilarity, part Scores, part blasphemy. |
Featured Contributors: AugustFeatured contributors for August. |
Department of CorrectionsJim Reardon’s letter to the editor about June’s “Better Blooms” article. |
News & Politics
While You Were Sleeping—AugustThe gist of what you may have missed. |
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Beinhart's Body Politic: Marketplace of IdeasIn the marketplace of ideas the power of big money is kicking ass and rationality is down for the count. |
Dirty Little SecretsThe trip was an “extraordinary rendition,” the transfer of a terror suspect to a foreign country for interrogation—and sometimes torture, human rights activists charge—outside of any legal process. |
Horoscopes
HoroscopesYou’re holding in your hands vital information about what it means to be stuck, and you’re on the threshold of discovering how you and the people closest to you can get brilliantly unstuck. |
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Planet Waves: Which Way is Reality?They proposed that the bodies of climate change victims, who they said now number about 150,000 a year, could be rendered into a burnable product, particularly as combustion of fossil fuels sped up ecological disasters. |
Where's Your Data?After more than $50 million spent on testing and cleaning so far, the question is whether students will be exposed to that contamination, and, if so, how it will affect them. |
Whole Living
Being FertileDon’t let an infertility diagnosis steal your ability to create life. Instead, discover the most creative, whole, healthy person you can be—and you may well make a baby in the process. |
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The Serendipity of a Bean SaladI was struck. There it stood, like a signpost: the abundant flow of creative energy. Loud and clear it spoke. “The creative process uses every opportunity to create.” |
Peaceful Heart, Warrior SpiritDan Millman, former world-champion athlete, university coach, martial arts instructor, and college professor is perhaps best known for his multimillion-selling autobiographical novel, Way of the Peaceful Warrior. |
Arts & Culture
Sketches of MonetNo artist epitomizes Impressionism more than Claude Monet. His famous paintings of Paris and the Normandy coast are among painting’s purest celebrations of color and light. |
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Portfolio: Phyllis GalemboGalembo’s latest work presents large-scale color prints of the masquerade, a centuries-old costumed ceremony she witnessed in the African nations of Benin, Burkina Faso, and Nigeria. |
Dutch TreatmentRegicide, fratricide, filicide: The Medea myth is a bloody affair. |
Disarmed By JazzA world-class player herself, McPartland’s musician’s point of view and calm demeanor easily disarms guests, who play and talk in a manner that would be unlikely in a different setting. |
Dancing to a Different DrummerHis attitude toward dance as an expression of music is a no-no to most European post-moderns, whose emphasis is on conceptual movement over passionate musicality. |
Field of DreamsOmi’s newest exhibit, “Bivouac,” turns the concept of art in nature on its head. |
Days of PlaysNot long after winning her Pulitzer, Parks undertook a project that is bringing her subversive and quirky humor right to the leafy hills of western Massachusetts. |
Masked AngelSince 1984, Angel’s reverb-laden sound has found its home with six-string kings Los Straitjackets, a quartet whose members, for reasons that remain mysterious, wear Mexican wrestling masks when they perform. |
Lucid Dreaming“Bivouac” takes a witty, somewhat arch approach to art, inventiveness, and imagined survivalism, while “Paths: Real and Imagined” gravitates toward an archetypal/metaphorical reading of its stated theme. |
Blinded by FrankenscienceThe idea for “Mothers of Invention” began in 2002, after Laura Poe read an article about GMO food “and the crazy, crazy things going on.” |
The Writing on the WallAs a postwar phenomenon, graffiti parallels the rise of street toughs and gangs. Its present form began in the late sixties, and became known as part of hip hop culture by the mid ‘70s. |
Outside the BoxA round-up of unique Hudson Valley cultural outings. |
Portfolio: Sarah MecklemSarah Greer Mecklem is an artist whose life and career have always been intricately intertwined with the history and—more importantly—the experience of the Hudson Valley. |
Shared EnchantmentOn August 24 and 25 from 7 to 11pm (raindate August 26), Arm-of-the-Sea will present its seventh annual “Esopus Creek Puppet Suite” at Tina Chorvas Waterfront Park in Saugerties. |
Conversation of the BirdsPerhaps science doesn’t take the topic seriously, but David Rothenberg has devoted his career to listening to nature in a musical way. |
Cassandra in a Party DressMartha Beall Mitchell was known for her coruscating gift of gab. But her unbridled Southern charm barely camouflaged a sly intelligence that was neither expected nor tolerated in Washington wives. |
Books
The Gospel According to PinkwaterDaniel Pinkwater’s voice—instantly recognizable to NPR listeners—resonates down the stairwell as he appears, a Hitchcockian silhouette dressed in top-to-toe black with a dusting of pet hair. |
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Book Review: A Portrait of PiaPia’s story is eminently accessible to young teens. The characters and their dilemmas are drawn with loving detail and the book’s lack of simple resolutions rings of real life. |
Book Reviews: Way of Water and Welcome to Camden FallsFate, often enough, arrives as a beanball. Down you go, a crumple in the dirt. Then, through the pain and vapors, you see a hissing curveball coming your way. That’s when life gets interesting. |
Summer Reading Round-up for KidsSusan Krawitz and Nina Shengold offer their picks for picture books, poetry, and young adult titles. |
Beauty and Fashion Supplement
Saving FaceThere are alternatives for those seeking a more holistic approach to facial rejuvenation and want to forgo the dramatic change a scalpel promises for a more natural and subtle improvement. |
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Eco Style“Organic clothing is not just about Birkenstocks and long skirts anymore,” says Joanna Black of Hip-E-Living in Woodstock. |
Education Supplement
Music TogetherMusic has become something we consume rather than something we create. The truth is that making music and exploring movement is for everyone. |
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Conformity or Cooties?I hope that in the future, the public school system will try harder to cater to students’ individual needs, so that they don’t have to wait until high school to appreciate their talents. |
Music
Old As the HillsPart of a burgeoning scene of new, tradition-conscious American acoustic artists, The Hunger Mountain Boys bypass the ill turns country has made in recent times. |
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CD Review: HuDostHuDost has a folk quality yet is quite post-modern; the band offers new takes on ancient words and melodies, cross-cultural hybrid transcendental chill-out music with an edge. |
CD Review: The Last ConspiratorsTim Livingston is back with The Last Conspirators, a quartet that brings a welcome, Information Age crunch to the tough, melodic sounds of late ’70s/early ’80s Brit-punk. |
CD Review: Super 400Hailing from that hotbed of rock bands, Poestenkill, New York, long-time Capital area favorite Super 400 has a dazzling new release, 3 and the Beast. |
Nightlife HighlightsRoger Houston’s nightlife picks for August. |
Back to the FutureThis is TONTO, which, at a height of five feet and occupying 300 square feet, is the world’s largest analog synthesizer and the very one played by Stevie Wonder. |
CD Review: Artie TraumArtie Traum’s all-star local band—Levin, drummer Gary Burke, pianist Warren Bernhardt and special guests like John Sebastian —lead us on an invigorating tour of Americana. |
CD Review: Dead UnicornDead Unicorn tears through the material with a gleeful malevolence reminiscent of early Killing Joke. |
CD Review: Samuel ClaiborneSamuel Claiborne has certainly had no shortage of pain and spiritual trials from which to draw for the sparse, fathomless, and profoundly moving solo piano improvisations in The Annunciation. |
Community Notebook
Rural ElectrificationNot only could biogas contribute to our ever-growing demand for electricity, but it might also preserve the rural landscape and the farming way of life. |
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Spraypaint WarriorsThey are street artists, whose illicit artwork graces buildings, billboards, and street signs across the region. They intentionally paint on private property and challenge the concept of public art. |
The Possible DreamRichard Rothbard and his wife, Joanna, who is also an artist, manage American Art Marketing out of their rustic home in the Orange County town of Slate Hill. |
Ellenville AwakensAccording to those people who are keeping Ellenville’s blood pumping, it’s time to find a new way to try and wake their village up. And the Ellenville Area Arts Alliance, or EA3, is hoping to be the solution. |
Food & Drink
Flight to ParisLike something on the Rue Saint Marc in Paris, Brix is decked out in dark woods, a handcrafted zinc bar, Old World-style paintings on the walls, and cozy tables with burgundy linens. |
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Mediterranean OasisThe beauty and distinctiveness of Serevan lies in its historical charm and architectural finesse—living, breathing entities that have been gently cultivated by an Armenian from Tehran, chef and proprietor Serge Madikians. |
Parting Shot
Parting Shot: Sitting BullWhen Sitting Bull drew Self-Portrait in Battle in 1874, two years before the Battle of Little Bighorn, he drew himself not only as he was, but also how he saw himself spiritually. |
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Parting Shot: Norm MagnussonNorm Magnusson’s mock historical markers will be installed in Ridgefield, Connecticut for the exhibition, “On This Site Stood,” through August 12. |
On the Cover
Silver SunIf the photographs for which Eve Sonneman is best known can be seen as a kind of visual phenomenology, her oils are forays into the sensual pleasures of light and color. |
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On the CoverJessica Houston traveled to the Greek island of Paros in 1992 to study writing—and instead began an affair with art that has enraptured her since. |
Poetry
Poem: A Perfect MatchShe smirked unpleasantly at the irony of the situation. We are just pawns in this important decision of our lives. |
Poem: Lullaby for Letting GoFalse because it was conjured by A two-year-old mind, Straining to have One Defining Moment By which to live her life. |
Poem: RepeatHe has the brightest eyes. That’s what people say when I show them pictures. You should see them when they’re closed, I think. |
Poem: No OneI talk to no one When no one is here |
Poem: On Yet Another Birthdayeach year when i take it out of its velvet-lined box to play and replay my father’s message |
Poem: Arson BaptismBurn me fresh. |
Poem: In the Second WorldLucas isinUruguaywithhisgirlfriend,trying hishandatwriting andsays hehasathousandnewideaseachmorning |
Poem: No More BeesI want to stick my head into a patch of daffodils and do whatever the bees do to pollinate the earth. |
Poem: LunchJust the other side of the fence, a yard cat hides In the ditch along side the dirt road and paws The tall grass. |




