This Month’s Featured Articles…

Consider the following exchange I had with “Joe,” the owner of an unnamed inn in the western Adirondacks: It was roughly 9am, and I was waiting for Joe’s wife, who served as hostess, waitress, chef, and (remarkably, still) a charming bartender, to put the finishing touches on the meat lover’s omelet that I had ordered nigh on an hour earlier. It happened to be Joe’s birthday, a coincidence he downplayed by pointing out that he was still “working,” an evident euphemism for ensconcing himself at [...]

Mark Twain is credited with the pronouncement that “Golf is a good walk spoiled.” Truth is that the judgement was first rendered 38 years after Twain’s death … but the presumption continues. True or not, the balance to that invective might well be that Art Omi in Ghent, NY, is “A great walk made amazing.” Monumental sculptures that delight and engage The evolved concept of literary agent and entrepreneur Francis Greenburger, the 120-acre reserve is a series of winding trails, gentle streams, and an explosion [...]

“Home is a place not only of strong affections,” Harriet Beeche Stowe once said. “But of entire unreserved.” The famous sentiment has since encompassed the entirety of the nation’s romantic ambitions for home ownership. It is not only a place we value as a “dressing room” for the outside world, home has also come to represent our individual legacies, generational birthmarks, and youthful ambition – a physical representation of how we see ourselves. In rural America, home ownership has become an especially important way of [...]

What was your family doing 100 years ago? That’s four or five generations back. Past your parents, your grandparents, your great-grandparents, and on to your great-great grandparents. Think about it. How far back do your family stories go? If you’re the average person who knows something about two or three generations back, that’s significant. Now imagine that your family has been doing what it does for 100 years – or more – and imagine if that occupation is farming the land. Clearly, century farms and [...]

There is a lot to be said about the terms “routine” and “tradition” after the collective experience of 2020. For over a century, generations of local families have fastened themselves to the tradition of attending the Dutchess County Fair so much so that the annual event has ingrained itself as a cultural routine throughout the Hudson Valley. Each year, as August draws to a close and summer enters its twilight, locals find solace in the possibility of enjoying one final taste of the season’s nectar [...]