The Eastwick Press Newspaper

Eastern Rensselaer County's Community Newspaper

New Lebanon

An Evening Of Jazz And Swing With The Limb Shakers At The New Lebanon Library

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Berkshire band The Limb Shakers will be performing at the New Lebanon Library on Friday, September 12, at 6:30 pm.  They will perform a program of old time jazz and swing music at this event, which is free and open to the public although donations for the performers are appreciated.

The Limb Shakers have played swing dances at Club Helsinki and given concerts throughout Western Massachusetts and New York. The band features Allen Livermore on saxophone, bassist Dan Broad and Pete Adams on pedal steel guitar.

Allen Livermore is a certified music teacher who has taught pre-school through college. As a saxophonist and drummer, he has performed at clubs, restaurants, resorts, colleges and arts spaces throughout New England and New York.

Dan Broad, one of the most sought after bassists in Western New England, has performed in nearly every state in the union as well as in Europe.

Pete Adams, renowned for his skill on steel guitar, has performed with Dooley Austen, Rushmore, Bobby Sweet and the Adams Brothers, among others.

For further information on this event, please call the Library at 518-794-8844. The public is welcome, and the event is free. The Library is located at 550 State Route 20, ¼ mile north of the yellow blinking light at the intersection of Routes 20/22.

Bogino Book Launch At The New Lebanon Library

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New Lebanon Library Director Jeannie Bogino will launch her debut novel – Rock Angel – at an event sponsored by Prashanti Press and hosted at the New Lebanon Library on September 13 at 6 pm. Bogino will introduce and read from her book as well as autograph copies. Light refreshments will be served.

Betsy Gitter, President of the New Lebanon Library’s Board of Trustees said, “All of us connected to the Library – patrons, trustees and volunteers – are so proud of Jeannie, who is not only a dynamic and imaginative Library Director but also a well respected book critic and an accomplished fiction writer. We look forward to celebrating the publication of her exciting new novel with her many admirers and friends in the Lebanon Valley community.”

Jeannie has already had a varied and successful writing career. She is a published author of short horror, fantasy, romance, memoir and gay fiction and is a regular contributor at Library Journal, where she was named 2011’s fiction reviewer of the year. She is widely regarded as an expert on zombie lit and horror films.

Jeannie has been director of the New Lebanon Library since 2007. Prior to that, she served as Reference Librarian at Southern Vermont College and Senior Assistant Librarian at the Berkshire Athenaeum. She lives in Hancock with partner Frank Kennedy, two lab mixes, a flock of chickens and several hives of honeybees.

Rock Angel, published by Prashanti Press and available as a paperback ($18) or ebook ($9.99) is set in the intoxicating world of the 1990s rock scene. The novel follows the meteoric rise of young, beautiful, heroin addicted Shan to guitar goddess stardom.

Early reviews of Rock Angel have been very positive. The Library Journal described the novel as “true music fiction, a soulful ballad that will interest readers of rock nonfiction titles . . .or drug-fueled fiction . . . ”

For more information, call 518-794-8844. The Library, at 550 State Route 20, is located ¼ mile north of the yellow blinking light at the intersection of Routes 20/22.

Old Chatham Union Cemetery Meeting

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The annual meeting of the Old Chatham Union Cemetery Corporation will be held on Saturday, September 20, at 2 pm in the Vedder Hall of the Malden Bridge Community Center located at 1087 Albany Turnpike, Malden Bridge. NY.

All lot owners, or their designated representative, of the Cemetery located on Shaker Museum Road are encouraged to attend. The agenda for the meeting will include a report of the Treasurer, general upkeep of the cemetery, election of officers and directors as well as any other business that may come before the Corporation.

The input of all lot owners will help make this truly your community cemetery and is much needed in the decision making process.  If you have any questions, feel free to contact President Elizabeth M. Hurley at 518-766-3815.

Behold!

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by Thaddeus Flint

On a damp morning last Thursday in the packed dining room of the Abode, the Sufi headquarters up behind Darrow School in New Lebanon, Josh Wood was starting a fire with two sticks and some tinder set on top of a kitchen chair. With a lot of work, a bit of smoke appeared and then there were sparks and then a wisp of fire. This was Behold! New Lebanon.

[Read more…] about Behold!

Behold Half Price Tickets

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Behold! New Lebanon, the nation’s first living museum of contemporary rural American life,  is pleased to announce ½ price tickets to all residents of New Lebanon, Canaan and East Chatham. These tickets are available with valid ID at the Behold! ticket office on the grounds of the Shed Man.

Letter To The Editor – A Concoction?

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To the editor,

The newest concoction to drum up business in the Town of New Lebanon has emerged in the form of a museum of contemporary rural living. Selected business members of the community for whom I have had a long abiding, deep respect, many non-resident business owners, as well as regular homeowners, are preparing to demonstrate to tourists how contemporary rural living happens. Its title, Behold! New Lebanon implies that those who travel to see how we survive in the wilds of a rural town will be enlightened and leave in awe for how we could do it all without the benefits an urban lifestyle affords. Behold! It sounds like the Magic Kingdom.

Unfortunately, the creator of this museum, a recent permanent resident from New York City, failed to actually include the Town in the planning of something that is about the town! No letter was sent to residents asking for input, no survey was conducted to learn everyone’s talents and strengths and no presentation was made to the Town’s Planning Board, much less the Town Board. The latter was befuddled. They had never heard of this “Town project” designed to benefit the Town, when an official Behold! representative attended a Town Board meeting and asked them permission to allow oversight from Columbia County’s Economic Development Committee with financial donations from supporters, which includes Town Supervisor, Mike Benson.

In order to effectively project the concept of rural living, individuals will be stationed in their homes and businesses, prepared to prove rural living is the quintessential and fun way to get through life. Each presenter will be paid $100 each time they demonstrate contemporary rural living to tourists, as well as their equal, rural-living neighbors in town! Tourists will pay $25 for a day, $40 for a family for a day, and residents, who see their neighbors up close and personal every day for free, will be able to do the same thing attending Behold!, but will then pay a discounted ticket price of $12.50, along with an ID and proof of residency. A tour through the Hand Hollow Nature Conservancy, normally free by design, is also part of the rural museum, from 5:30 to 7:30 pm, Friday the 29. But, if you want to walk that trail at 5:25 pm, it will still be free!

How will these curious tourists, and even curiouser town residents, get to all those wonderful rural places? A tour bus, that grinds its gears, belches diesel smoke and breaks branches hanging over a narrow country back road, will ensure everyone who paid gets the true experience of rural living. I’ve got some bad news. Tour buses don’t promote rural lifestyles nor provide an adequate portrait of how to experience country living. Adding insult to injury, Behold!’s notion that residents of this town should even pay one nickel to see their neighbors perform normal everyday activities, is hubris at its best. Requiring residents to prove they live in this town indicates that the New York City mentality behind this project is compounded by the fact that those in charge of this project don’t know many lifetime residents, outside of their exclusive group.

Most residents, totally unaware of this affront that has descended upon us, must be living under a rock to not know about it, as Town Supervisor Benson bluntly stated, or not know this privately arranged group has decided, without any consideration of other’s opinions, that the Town needs to be redefined to fit what they want in a stereotyped image of cutesy, simple, country folk, a portrait the rest of us under a rock, finds outrageous and totally unacceptable. While a rock may keep us in the dark, it also protects us from damage.

Nineteen years ago the movie “Before and After” came to the area. I was one of a dozen extras chosen to be on site at Darrow School for a scene that took place in the winter. We were told to dress appropriately for a winter scene, which was not difficult to do. A costume assistant from California, in charge of our group, reacted with horror because our winter clothing was nothing she expected, or wanted. Her facial expression said it all, as she snorted that we didn’t dress right. Perhaps out of embarrassment no one said anything, except me as I bluntly explained to her that we dressed with whatever was available in our closets and with total disregard for fashion coordination. She angrily told us we should be wearing LL Bean. When I told her she had the wrong idea about us, she walked out and didn’t return for the rest of the day.

This project’s creator, who reminds me of that woman and her opinion of what we should be, went one step further with a deceptive statement to the local reporter, saying she had “asked the residents what they wanted.” Yet, reiterating, she never held a community meeting with the entire town to inquire what our desires were nor expressed true interest in the Town as a whole nor wrote a letter to us. No communication was made except through the former Business Association’s website, which, if you didn’t have time to read it in its entirety, meant you were out of luck and uninformed, as our trusty rock would insure.

The demand that the rest of the town pay to view our neighbors living indicates that this project is about making money not about building Town morale or embracing the Town as a whole. The ridiculous fear and mistrust that the rest of us would sneak into the exhibits of our neighbors without proper ID would be laughable if it weren’t insulting. Requiring proof of residency from us, then demanding money from those not included in a “town” project intended to affect all of us, does not bring us closer together but divides us more than anything ever has. Behold! is sadly unaware of the deep poverty that exists in our Town or the class, and income divisions. New Lebanon is not about status or money or who you know at the top of the social ladder. Yet this project, intended to promote the community, and should include all classes and incomes, is really for the benefit of those who have contributed financially or invested their demonstration time to it.

It remains a tragedy that most of our Town residents are unaware they have been stolen and sold off because someone has decided that after 200 years, we suddenly need to be re-defined. Behold!’s creator misses the point that a tour bus won’t promote rural living but rather stink up and disrupt the peace and tranquility of our neighborhoods. We don’t want that on a country road. It has no place on a country road. The rest of us were not asked, but now the creator’s definition of “rural living” will include it, without consideration for its impact on us. The rest of the Town doesn’t count, and it should.

Three years ago, when I was New Lebanon’s Supervisor, Behold!’s creator asked me why I thought the Town liked me, a question shocking alone in its audacity. While I was stunned at the arrogance of the question, I see now why she wanted to know. It seems, like three quarters of the Town, with my 57 years living here, I don’t fit the criteria for what she wishes to promote as the rural image, which – exactly like the woman from California in “Before and After” – is what she desires to recreate from an urban newcomer’s perspective.

Rural living doesn’t mean specially selected people showing their wares to strangers or fast moving tour buses on back roads. Rural living means peace and quiet, free from all of that, especially diesel buses flying past your house, belching up the air and adding a noise which belongs in a city. Behold!, and all that it entails, has no right to define what we are as a whole, put words in our mouths or decide what is important and what is not. Collectively as a real town, we do. The entire Town should be embraced and promoted without regard to class or income. Her world really isn’t our world, and she needs to stop trying to make it so. In the online flyer, it is stated so definitively that we know it is summer here when the Shaker Mountain Barbeque opens. In truth, we really know it is summer in New Lebanon when the fragrant, brilliant colors of dozens of flowers bloom, vegetables are planted, fields are furrowed with real fertilizer for crops, daylight lasts until 8 pm, crickets chirp, fireflies twinkle and the red wing blackbirds, Baltimore orioles and finches return to the fields with their melodious tunes. That is summer, while the Shaker Mountain Barbeque is just another good place to eat in New Lebanon.

Sincerely,

Meg Robertson

former New Lebanon Supervisor

New Lebanon Country Market Extends Season

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submitted by Tistrya Hamilton

The New Lebanon Country Market at Windswept Farm is pleased to announce that it will be extending its season into October. We have had such an amazing season this year that there has been an overwhelming request for the market to continue past the end of September. We have decided to keep the market going through the month of October in a slightly scaled back version. Although we will lose some of our vegetable vendors in October, we will be bringing on a new fruit vendor for the month of September and October. Most of our fabulous vendors will continue with us right on through the end of October!

Book Signing

On September 28 we will feature a special book signing by Jeanne Bogino, author of Rock Angel. Make sure to come and purchase your signed copy fresh off the press!

September Produce

In the month of September, our produce vendors will feature corn, fresh flowers, squash, potatoes, garlic, onions, peppers, tomatoes, beans, collard greens, kale, spinach, lettuce, radishes, apples, blueberries, peaches, plums and much more. We will continue to have our pasture raised beef, pork and chicken, jams and pies, baked goods, free range eggs, garlic and specialty salts, fresh brewed beer, hickory syrup, New Lebanon baloney and BBQ sauce, handmade body care products and, of course, our delicious hot foods from Jem’s Thai Cuisine and Lakota BBQ.

We hope to see you on Sunday from 10 am to 2 pm for some great live music, kids arts and crafts, kids bounce house and play area, delicious food and free family fun. Enjoy all of this while supporting your local farmers and artisans and filling your fridge with delicious, fresh, good clean food.

Entertainment Calendar

• August 31 – Kevin Jones – www.ibandkj.com.

• September 7 – Podunk Throwbacks – www.podunkthrowbacks.com

• September 14 – The Peters Brothers

• September 21 – Dan Masterson – www.danmastersonmusic.com

• September 28 – The Package and a special book signing by Jeanne Bogino, author of Rock Angel.

Study The Constitution At The New Lebanon Library

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Constitution enthusiast Paul Engel will conduct a biweekly discussion group focusing on the study of the American Constitution at the New Lebanon Library beginning on Monday, September 8, at 7 pm. Interested participants should bring their questions and be ready to share their opinions. This group is free and open to the public.

Along with the Constitution, Paul Engel has studied the Federalist Papers, the Anti-Federalist Papers and numerous books and articles on the topic. His plan is to focus on the actual words of the Constitution and, in doing so, to help build a better understanding of what founded this country. “I see the group as a modern day version of the tavern discussion,” he explained. “All points of view are welcome.”

Paul Engel is a self-proclaimed professional computer geek and has been one for thirty years. He also moderates an online forum devoted to constitutional study. He lives in New Lebanon with his wife and daughter.

For further information event, please call the New Lebanon Library at 518-794-8844. The Library is located at 550 State Route 20, ¼ mile north of the yellow blinking light at the intersection of Routes 20/22.

Darrow School Opens 83rd Year

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Darrow School is celebrating the start of its 83rd school year by welcoming 110 students to its scenic mountainside campus. Eighty percent of the students are boarders and 20 percent are day students. The school is welcoming its largest ninth grade class in years, with 20 individuals. Students come from Colorado, Connecticut, Georgia, Illinois, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia and Vermont. Approximately 28  percent are international students representing nine countries, including the Bahamas, China, Jamaica, Japan, Ghana, Nigeria, Russia, Taiwan and Turkey. The first full day of classes is Tuesday, September 2.

This a diverse group of students with a wide spectrum of interests, talents and abilities, and it is also incredibly strong academically. The faculty is excited about helping these scholars reach their maximum potential.

Darrow has a rolling admissions policy and offers mid-year enrollment on a limited basis. The school will host four Open House sessions in the coming months, providing an ideal opportunity for prospective families to tour the scenic campus, sit in on classes, and meet teachers and students. Open House sessions will be held on Monday, October 13, Tuesday, November 11, Monday, January 19, and Monday, February 16. The Admissions Office also offers individual tours and visits throughout the year. Interested applicants should call 518-794-6000 or visit www.darrowschool.org.

To learn more about Darrow School or apply online, visit www.darrowschool.org.

Jeanne Bogino Publishes Debut Novel

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A hot, hard driving story set in an intoxicating world of sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll, Rock Angel is the first novel by author Jeanne Bogino. Shan is young, beautiful, talented and addicted to heroin in Rock Angel, a novel that follows her meteoric rise to guitar goddess stardom in the 90s. She is discovered in New York by a handsome, arrogant musical genius named Quinn, and sparks fly between them when he hires her as lead guitarist of his band. Although Quinn is accustomed to bedding a different groupie every night, he can’t ignore his deepening feelings for his new band mate.

From gritty Greenwich Village clubs to L.A.’s Troubadour, gigging and touring the country to the cover of Rolling Stone, Rock Angel is infused with the passionate music and intense sexual chemistry of Shan and Quinn. Shan must work out her personal demons and learn to trust Quinn enough to love him but still remain true to the music that has always been her salvation.

As an author of short horror, fantasy, romance, memoir and gay fiction, Jeanne has found her calling as an up and comer in the new adult market.

Blurbs

Set in the intoxicating world of 1990s rock ‘n’ roll, Jeanne Bogino’s debut adult novel, Rock Angel, is “true music fiction, a soulful ballad that will interest readers of rock nonfiction titles… or drug-fueled fiction.” – Library Journal.

“Bogino portrays an authentic landscape of what it’s like to be in a rock band in the early 90s. Shan and Quinn both read as fully realized, flawed characters.” – Kirkus Reviews 

“In a show business tale filled with ego clashes, sexual tension, drug addiction, dreams of success and nightmares of stardom, the rarefied world of ambitious musicians is rendered with a relentlessly keen eye and ear.” – Music Connection Magazine

Local author Jeanne Bogino is available for interviews. She will also be doing a few local events to which the public is invited:

• a launch party at the New Lebanon Library on September 13;

• a book signing at Barnes & Noble, Pittsfield, MA, on September 16, and

• a book signing at Water Street Books, Williamstown, MA, on September 21.