This Month’s Featured Articles…

What does an animal make of a pandemic? On various early morning bike rides this spring, I’ve startled foxes and bears as they saunter along our unusually quiet country roads, no doubt pleased that our iron horses have yielded such amiable byways to them. My stealthy approach catches them unaware, and they immediately scurry for the nearest culvert, but their nonchalance on the blacktop is refreshing. I return home to transform into a whirling dervish for the next eight hours, toiling like Sysyphus after an [...]

Unlike any time in our recent memory, the crisis that has befallen populations around the world has forced large scale governmental institutions to lay bare the true value of public health and safety. Emergencies, natural disasters, and traumatic events throughout history have often brought out the best and worst in society and the COVID-19 pandemic has been no exception. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the heart of the human spirit has persevered in places where community outreach is part of the very fabric of society. Local leaders and [...]

Millerton, NY’s North East Community Center (NECC) has become accustomed to providing community support on a whim. Established in the winter of 1988 at the urging of Wendy Curtis and Sam Busselle, through the passing of a town statute, its original purpose was to respond to the lack of social support services for Village of Millerton and the Town of North East residents, who reside far from county services out of Poughkeepsie, NY. As happens in many small towns around the world, events of even [...]

Mindful eating for me as a child meant focused attention on the present moment but to a different end. With seven hungry kids sitting around the dinner table, we were mindful of eating as quickly as we could. The first one done got the last pork chop, or burger, or baked potato. I still carry this propensity to wolf down my food even though there are many fewer mouths to compete against in my family and I can have all the pork chops I want. [...]

What is the secret of the American farmer? What belies the charming pastoral agricultural spirit that has seemingly infiltrated nearly every aspect of small town life? The columns of mowed pasture that line the fields and meadows of the Hudson Valley, Berkshires and Northwest Connecticut and the mild-mannered hay bale obelisks that dot the landscape along our many country roads come with their own generational legacies. From the immigrant dairy farmer, who traveled west in search of a new beginning and thus endured wartime uncertainty [...]