This Month’s Featured Articles…

It is the season of giving. When we think collectively about this time of year, it can be hard not to conjure up visions of the holidays that have been baked into our modern DNA through tradition and commercialization. That is not to say those two elements are necessarily nefarious, visions of Rockwell family dinners, and the familiar hum of classic holiday songs are senses we have all come to know and love. At the heart of our annual sentimental adoration of the holiday season [...]

We are, at the core, a nostalgic lot. Through pandemics, wars and recessions, we have remained a culture that revels in traditions and ceremonies. We find some sort of resolution in repeating the symbolic dances of the end of the year. Pumpkins carved at Halloween perched on the porch as trick or treaters appear in ill-fitting polyester costumes to beg for tons of candy. Turkeys roasted in abundance on Thanksgiving (accompanied by pies made from the pumpkins that survived Halloween) as we gather together. Poet [...]

It is once again the time of year when, in addition to the general merriment that comes with the holiday season, people across the nation collectively take stock of what they have and what they feel grateful to have attained. While we amass friends and family and take in the barrage of music and classic movies, perhaps this year especially, we reflect on many of those folks who still struggle with maintaining essential needs for their families. Despite the not-so-subtle cynicism many possess for the [...]

What is left to be said about the past year that has not already been learned, experienced, and shared? In the intervening months that sluggishly married 2020 with its successor, many facets of society experienced seed changes. From personal health to social interactions, the kind of daily life that seemed to have cemented itself into our collective consciousness has changed for the foreseeable future. However, despite our uncanny ability to adapt over time, and while we celebrate the arrival of vaccines and the return of [...]

There is a theme that seems to run through the constant reinvention of The Stissing Center in Pine Plains, NY. “Gift.” Kodak used the tag line “The gift that keeps on giving” for years in its promotion of cameras and film.  The Stissing Center could rightly request secondary use. Originally created as “Memorial Hall” in 1914 as a gift from philanthropist Mary Ellen Lapham Saunders who presented the building to the town in honor of her maternal grandparents with whom she had lived in Pine [...]