This Month’s Featured Articles…

When I take a left turn onto Maple Street, I am admittedly unsuspecting. I’ve seen dazzling pictures of the glorious mansion where Jorge and Eileen Yajure operate The Pines, and I’m confident these photos capture the beauty of the place quite accurately. But the residences and businesses I pass by on my drive through Pine Plains are what I’m used to seeing, so I am in awe when I pull into the driveway of the grounds. Tucked away in the trees, the mansion sits resolutely, [...]

The Pine Plains Central School District offers an expansive list of extracurricular activities in both of the elementary schools, as well as in the junior/senior high school. Dr. Brian Timm, the superintendent for the Pine Plains Central School District told me that the school community recently defined their mission and vision statements. The mission statement reads, “We develop the whole child to be a lifelong learner and a productive member of the global community,” while the vision statement reads, “We are a district of choice [...]

For four years now, the Stissing Mountain Fire Tower in Pine Plains, NY, has unfurled a brilliantly striking American flag on September 11 in honor of the tragedy that occurred 22 years ago. In anticipation of its fifth commemoration, I spoke with Matt Zick and Joe Schmidt, who explain how this observance began and what it means to the community today. How it all began Inspiration first struck for this event when Matt Zick noticed a huge American flag at a friend’s party and considered [...]

Social media platforms are a dime a dozen in today’s world. New ones rise and fall but there is one certain app that continues to grow and grow in popularity: TikTok. Since its release in 2018 the social media platform has grown to a usership of over one billion which puts it at number five on the most-used social media platforms beating out Twitter, Snapchat, and Reddit among others. The app is a diverse place of artistic, culinary, educational, and entertainment endeavors in addition to [...]

You may not know this, but among the many observances and holidays in the month of August, there are two celebrations perfect for all the romance lovers out there. When I discovered that August is dubbed not only Romance Awareness Month, but also Read-A-Romance Month, I immediately thought about the recent uptick in the popularity and sheer quantity of romance novels out there. Whether this rise can be attributed to TikTok or to a general shift in perceptions of the genre, it is undoubtedly relevant [...]