Shop, oil paint on paper, 18’’ x 24’’ by Sean Sullivan.

Sean Sullivan’s paintings, sculptures and installations don’t resemble artworks so much as artifacts. They are excavated not so much from specific time periods as from memory and the collective unconscious. American myths and popular culture have been his theme; but now, in his latest show, “In Our Recreation,” which just opened at Sawkille Co., a gallery and showroom of handmade furniture located in Rhinebeck, he has embarked into new terrain. The streets, storefronts and hotels in his graphic-looking paintings are foreign, evocative of some Latin country.

The abstract color series titled Vacation smolders with the hot reds and oranges and cool greens and tropical blues of the South; indeed, the two large pieces, Yo Trabajo sin Reposos (I work to rest) and Yo Reposo sin Trabajo (I rest to work), each of which spells out the words in large spidery letters amid the wash of deep color, refer to a track on Buena Vista Social Club. “I’ve never been to Cuba, but I can imagine the scenery and the monuments and the vegetation,” Sullivan said, noting that music was a major inspiration for the new work.

Sullivan’s walls, windows, boxes and machine-like forms, in their linear precision, could have been conjured at some Bauhaus studio, while the patina of accidental marks – like the scratches on a record, and details such as clapboards, a striped awning, a comb, suitcase handle and crucifix – convey warmth, suggesting the folk tradition of worn things passed down over time. Although the black-and-white paintings look graphic, the medium is actually oil stick, which he makes at his day job at R&F Handmade Paints in Kingston and uses as a printing material, smearing it over newsprint and then transferring the image onto another sheet by tracing out a design on the back using a Bic pen and ruler. Curves are made by tracing the edge of a record or coffee can. The most mundane subject matter – including matches, an icebox, an open suitcase framing a folded shirt and comb, and his mother’s kitchen sink on Long Island, which got destroyed by Sandy – is translated into this language of straight lines, which makes the objects or scenes seem strangely disembodied.

In one sense, the images are flat designs on a page, like a blueprint, diagram or sign: cryptic, objective systems of communication that suggest much more than is seen. But they also can be read as narrative representations. The tilted lines of their isometric perspective, reminiscent of traditional Japanese prints, suggests receding rooms and alleyways; space is also indicated in the patterns of shadows and reflections.

Within the severe strictures of his medium, Sullivan wrings out subtleties of tones and a delicacy of touch reminiscent of Giorgio Morandi’s etchings. His masterful, off-kilter compositions have the cadence of a salsa tune. They speak of absence, suspense and stopped time, of anticipation and reminiscence, of the emotions that pervade an empty street baking in the sun in some foreign country. As always, Sullivan taps into spirit worlds. By eschewing painterly brushmarks and depicting the generic, he makes himself as anonymous as a folk painter. Indeed, the theme of “recreation” talks “about family and earning a living,” he said. “It’s also about rejuvenation”: themes to which any working stiff can relate.

That sensibility of folk art and Modernism is echoed in the “farmhouse modern” style of the stools, tables, chairs and sculpture also displayed in the showroom, which, with its scrubbed wooden floor, beamed ceiling and plain white walls, strikes one as a three-dimensional extension of the drawings. Crafted by Jonah Meyer in a manufacturing loft in Kingston, the furniture pieces, which utilize Northeastern hardwoods, draw from the Shakers, Modernist masters like Eames and the mid-century designs of the Scandinavians: “the best of the best,” as Meyer put it.

Meyer, who attended the Rhode Island School of Design before settling down in the Catskills, sells his pieces primarily in New York City and San Francisco and was recently featured in Martha Stewart Living. Sullivan’s art and Meyer’s furniture are perfect complements to each other, so head over to Rhinebeck for this exhibition of soulful art and exquisite craft.

“In Our Recreation,” Sawkille Co., 31 West Market Street, Rhinebeck; (845) 876-2228, http://sawkille.com. For more info about Sullivan’s work: http://www.ssullivan.tumblr.com

Hold on with your dominant hand, squeeze your thighs, relax your upper body and use your free hand for balance. And that, my friends, is how to ride a mechanical bull.

You can store this bit of trivia away in the back of your mind in the event that you’re ever a contestant on Jeopardy, but it may also serve you well in the near future if you go to Western Night at the Knights of Columbus Hall in Saugerties on Saturday, May 25. The event will be replete with professional deejays playing music to line-dance by, Western-style food, drink specials at the cash bar and a rollicking mechanical bull to ride. Festivities go on from 8 p.m. “until the cows come home.”

Admission is limited to the first 250 people (age 21 and over) at the door with $10 to plunk down. Rides on the mechanical bull cost $5 per ride, or $20 for unlimited rides all night. The Columbiettes, the auxiliary branch of the Knights of Columbus, will provide Western-themed food, available for purchase at nominal prices, and a prize will be given out to the Best-Dressed Couple in Western-style garb.

It’s planned as a good time for a good cause: The proceeds raised at Western Night will help with some much-needed repairs and upgrades to the aging Knights of Columbus Hall, says Will Myers, deputy grand knight of the organization. “Most of our fundraisers are for designated recipients – our veterans, the homeless or any number of domestic programs – but this one is for us.” Repairs to the roof were recently done, along with replacing the carpeting in the ballroom, he says; but more work and upgrades are needed in order to continue to carry out the organization’s mission of helping other charitable organizations and causes.

This is the first Western Night that the group has held. Myers says that he’s hoping it’ll be something that people will want to see a repeat of in the future, and that all the elements for that to happen are there. “We have a huge Council that accommodates a lot of people, and a lot of dancing, and we’re just expecting it to be a really good time.” Drinks at the Knights of Columbus bar are “notoriously underpriced,” he adds, “and we think it’ll be fun just to watch people try to stay on the mechanical bull, even if they don’t ride it themselves.”

And if you don’t last long on the mechanical bull, don’t feel bad: Keep in mind that pro riders on a real bull are required to stay on for just eight seconds.

Western Night, Saturday, May 25, 8 p.m., $10, Knights of Columbus Hall, 19 Barclay Street, Saugerties; (845) 246-2490, www.saugertieskofc.org.

Woodstock is the world’s most famous small town, forever associated with the 1960s counterculture and for more than 100 years a magnet for musicians, artists, writers and other creative types. A few noteworthy names and faces, such as Albert Grossman, grace the pages of Local Legends of Woodstock, a new book by town historian Richard Heppner and resident Janine Fallon-Mower, published this May by Arcadia Books. However, most of the 100-plus personages portrayed in the book, all of whom are deceased, are just plain folks – folks, however, who cared deeply about the town: people like Mescal Hornbeck, a nurse who as a senior citizen ran for the Town Board and volunteered for Meals on Wheels and many other local nonprofit organizations; or Bert VanKleeck, caretaker at Byrdcliffe for nearly 50 years; or Elbert Varney, the banker who provided mortgages and car loans to residents in the 1950s; or Clarence Snyder, alias Clancy the Cop. “Everyone remembers Clancy,” said Heppner.

The book “is full of individual stories of the people who came together over the years to build a community. I see it as more sociological than historical. It reminds me of the old Deanie’s restaurant, where you could go most every night and find a cross-section of the town, from people like Lee Marvin, who’s in the book, to the local plumber, who’s also in the book.”

The biggest challenge in writing this was narrowing down the subjects from a list of some 1,000 people, he added. The availability of a photo was part of the requirement, given the pictorial format of Arcadia Books. “Time was of the essence to locate the photographs,” said Fallon-Mower. “Everyone’s moved away or died, and pictures have been thrown out or are so far back in the closet they’re hard to find.”

Digging up images that showed a person well-known in the community in a different, more intimate context was part of the fun, she added. For example, Marge Harder, the town clerk and a Republican, “a very powerful, very knowledgeable person who was the go-to woman in the 1940s, ‘50s and ‘60s,” is shown with her aunt, Florence Peper, at the stove in their kitchen. Clancy the Cop is depicted at the Library Fair. “It’s a casual shot and the only picture we have of him,” said Fallon-Mower.

She noted that the book includes some sad stories of people who died before their time, such as Robin DeLisio, an active proponent of planning and zoning, who died in a car crash in the 1980s, and Sam Shirah, an advocate for peace and the Constitution who was involved in the town’s 1976 bicentennial and was murdered by an irate husband. Fallon-Mower said that Heppner’s research uncovered Shirah’s hitherto-unknown involvement in the Civil Rights movement and the Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union.

Collectively, the book reflects the shifts in the community over time. “Woodstock has gone through several invasions: by artists, the Counterculture and second-homeowners,” said Heppner. “As new people come into town, the new stories blend with the old, changing the old people’s stories and lives. The community is a living thing. It’s a blend of people coming together,” surmounting political divisions, he said.

Both authors have previously written books, but this is their first collaboration. Heppner focused on researching the Historical Society archives, old newspapers, the Internet and other written sources, while Fallon-Mower mostly spoke to relatives, friends and other associates of the subjects. At their first book-signing earlier this month, the response was overwhelmingly positive. “It’s a warm and fuzzy feeling people are getting, seeing the pictures of people they remember but had otherwise forgotten about,” said Fallon-Mower, who also works as a registered nurse. As a pictorial record, Local Legends of Woodstock beautifully complements the written histories of the town by Alf Evers and other historians, she added.

Richard Heppner and Janine Fallon-Mower will be doing a second book-signing for Local Legends of Woodstock (Arcadia Publishing, $21.99) at the Golden Notebook on May 25 at 6 p.m. A selection of photographs from the book is on display at the Woodstock Historical Society, located on Lower Comeau Drive, which opens in June. Visit http://historicalsocietyofwoodstock.org for more information.

Local Legends of Woodstock book-signing, Saturday, May 25, 6 p.m., Golden Notebook, 29 Tinker Street, Woodstock; http://historicalsocietyofwoodstock.org.

If you want to spend part of Memorial Day weekend honoring those fallen in military service in some way, but haven’t been all that keen on the sorts of interventionist wars that America has been waging in recent memory, you could hardly do better than to head over to Hyde Park. This weekend, the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum and the Home of Franklin D. Roosevelt National Historic Site always offer a topnotch array of historical programs harking back to what folks sometimes refer to as the Good War.

The weekend kicks off in a spirit of Forties-style fun with a reasonable facsimile of the USO Shows that were put on to entertain American troops serving around the globe during World War II. This year’s tenth annual USO Show will feature two hours of family-friendly entertainment including live Big Band music, comedy and juggling, historic newsreels and more. If the spirit moves you and your wardrobe permits, dress appropriately for the era (where did I put my snood?) and come prepared to jitterbug. The joint starts jumpin’ at 7 p.m. on Friday, May 24 in the Henry A. Wallace Center, and there is a $5-per-person suggested donation.

Also at the Wallace Center, the Roosevelt Library will present a weekend of historic military displays all day Saturday and Sunday, May 25 and 26. Collections of military uniforms, prop weapons and insignia from 1917 to the present day will be on view, and reenactors in battle dress will be on hand to share their expertise about military history. Customized dog tags will be available for purchase, and period military vehicles will be on display in the Library parking lot. Admission is free for this event.

On Memorial Day itself, Monday, May 27 at 1:30 p.m., the weekend activities end on an appropriately somber note as the National Park Service hosts a graveside memorial service in the Rose Garden at the Home of FDR National Historic Site. Hyde Park resident John Golden will be the guest speaker, and various community organizations will present wreaths in honor of President Roosevelt. Admission is also free for this event.

If things look a little different around the FDR compound this weekend, it’s because the big renovation project that has been going on for the past three years is just about completed: the first renovation of the Library building since it opened in 1941, with the exception of the two wings added for the Eleanor Roosevelt collection in 1972. This latest project was intended to bring the Library’s archives and museum up to the National Archives’ standards for the preservation of historic collections, while carefully preserving the building’s historic appearance.

The Roosevelt Library’s new permanent museum exhibits will tell the story of the Roosevelt presidency beginning in the depths of the Great Depression and continuing through the New Deal and World War II, with an emphasis on both Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt’s relationship with the American people. They will include rarely seen artifacts, immersive audiovisual theaters billed as Fireside Chat Environments, a recreation of FDR’s secret White House Map Room and special interactives on topics like “Japanese-American Internment,” “FDR and the Holocaust,” “FDR’s Health” and “Did the New Deal Really Work?”

The National Archives and Records Administration will formally open the Library’s new state-of-the-art permanent museum exhibits on June 30. Museum visitors will be able to see the exhibits between 2 and 8 p.m. at regular admission fees. A by-invitation-only private Rededication Ceremony, scheduled for 11 a.m. on June 30, will be webcast live at www.fdrlibrary.marist.edu.

USO Show, Friday, May 24, 7 p.m., $5, military displays, Saturday/Sunday, May 25/26, free, Henry A. Wallace Center, FDR Presidential Library; Graveside Service, Monday, May 27, 1:30 p.m., free, Rose Garden, Home of FDR National Historic Site, 4079 Albany Post Road/Route 9, Hyde Park; www.fdrlibrary.marist.edu.

(Catskill Mountain Artisan Guild)

Even an institution as long-established (32 years) and consistently well-attended as the Woodstock/New Paltz Art & Crafts Fair needs to keep thinking up ways to reach new audiences. Up-and-coming generations may not yet have the purchasing power of middle-aged fairgoers, but it’s never too soon to start getting them into the habit of attending (and spending). And how does one engage the interest of a generation that has grown up on computer and video gaming? Why, with more interactivity, of course!

That’s probably why the folks at Quail Hollow Events have decided to spotlight hands-on demonstrations at this year’s Memorial Day weekend event at the Ulster County Fairgrounds. Live demos of how artisans do their work have long been a staple of the Crafts Fair, but this time there are going to be lots more opportunities for visitors to try their hand at crafts that intrigue them. The Catskill Mountain Artisans’ Guild will be in charge of the demonstration tent, and it’s promising workshops both for kids and for adults pretty much all day long, for all three days of the Fair. Here’s the lineup:

Saturday, May 25:
10 a.m. – Adults: Weaving with Tabitha Gilmore-Barnes; Kids: Nature Crafts with Eva Fox
12 noon – Adults: Recycled Wearables with Eva Fox; Kids: Weaving with Tabitha Gilmore-Barnes
2 p.m. – Adults: Wood-Turning with George Olsen; Kids: Stone-Painting with Becky Nielsen

Sunday, May 26:
10 a.m. – Adults: Dyeing Techniques with Nat Thomas; Kids: Felting with Jill Cline
12 noon – Adults: Frame Art with JoAnn Chmielowski; Kids: Collage with Nat Thomas
2 p.m. – Adults: Fused Glass with Barbara English; Kids: Paper-Marbling with Val Wells

Monday, May 27:
10 a.m. – Adults: Metalworking with Cathie Shultis; Kids: Wooden Toymaking with John Knapp
12 noon – Adults: Woodworking with John Knapp; Kids: Weaving Rainbow Paper Crowns with Lisa Scalf
2 p.m. – Adults: Spinning with Karen Lloyd; Kids: Papier-Mâché with Cathie Shultis

Says Quail Hollow co-director Scott Rubinstein, “The Catskill Mountain Artisans’ Guild, of Margaretville, New York, is one of the most successful guild stores in the Northeast. They screen their artists and craftspeople very carefully. The gallery/store is laid out elegantly, with the artists themselves manning the store. It’s a great honor to have them on board for the fairs, and we are confident this is just the beginning of an exciting venue for our shows.”

If moving among hundreds of clever craftspeople and their wares always makes you fantasize about being able to do this sort of thing yourself, here’s your chance to give several different crafts a try. But if your ideal day at this semiannual event is all about buying beautiful objects, or just drooling over beautiful objects that you wish you could afford, fear not: There will be, as always, plenty going on to keep you happy. As always, there will be live music and plenty of food vendors for when you’re ready to get off your feet for a while.

The Fair opens at 10 a.m. all three days and stays open until 6 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday but closes at 4 p.m. on Memorial Day itself. The Ulster County Fairgrounds are located at 249 Libertyville Road, on the west bank of the Wallkill River, just a couple of miles outside of downtown New Paltz, and have a smashing view of the Gunks. Since Main Street/Route 299 and the Carmine Liberta Bridge tend to get badly clogged with traffic on Crafts Fair weekends, take a tip from the locals and come around the long way, accessing Libertyville Road from Route 44/55 in Gardiner. Parking is ample and free.

The price of admission is $8 for adults, $7 for seniors and free for children under age 12. If you’re willing to give the Quail Hollow folks your e-mail address for their mailing list, you can get a coupon good for a $1 discount – along with lots more info about the Fair – at www.quailhollow.com.

Woodstock/New Paltz Art & Crafts Fair, Saturday/Sunday, May 25/26, 10 a.m.-6 p.m., Monday, May 27, 10 a.m.-4 p.m., $8/$7, Ulster County Fairgrounds, 249 Libertyville Road, New Paltz; www.quailhollow.com.

Among the most beloved and iconic of American songwriters, but also among the most idiosyncratic and eccentric, Bob Dylan is a tough cover. The temptation to do “that voice” is irresistibly strong; in fact, you could argue that “that voice” is not simply a matter of inflection and delivery, but that it is programmed into the very metrics and melodies of his songs – in which case, you don’t really have a choice; “that voice” does you!

Of course, generalizing about Dylan is moot until you specify which Dylan: the New York City folkie? the Band cohort? the Christian? the croaky old man? On Sunday, May 26 at the Bearsville Theater, a flotilla of rock royalty will raid the Dylan songbook in what should be a fascinating festival of creative interpretation. The Soundout Bob Dylan Birthday Celebration Concert benefits the Woodstock Day School.

The show is hosted by Happy Traum and features Marco Benevento, Tracy Bonham, Don Byron, Larry Campbell and Teresa Williams, Dave Dreiwitz, Donald Fagen, Aaron Freeman, Amy Helm, Connor Kennedy, Graham Parker, Jerry Marotta, Tim Moore, A. C. Newman, Jane Scarpantoni, Jim Weider, Tim Sutton, Doug Yoel and Peter Dougan & the WDS Advanced Ensemble. More guests will be announced.

Tickets for the Woodstock Day School Soundout – Bob Dylan Birthday Celebration are available online at www.radiowoodstock.com or by phone at (845) 679-7600. Ticket prices are $100 for Golden Circle, $40 for reserved seating, $25 for general admission (standing). The Bearsville Theater is located at 291 Tinker Street in Woodstock.

The late Ludwig Montesa of New Paltz.

A celebration to honor the life of New Paltz resident Ludwig Montesa will take place this Saturday, May 25 with music and art performances scheduled throughout the day at various local venues. Montesa, 34, was a legendary Main Street character who held a special place in the hearts of many New Paltz residents – particularly college students and Millennials. He passed away at home on April 7, following an epileptic seizure. Since then, there has been an outpouring of grief, including an impromptu shrine to honor Ludwig on Main Street and several rock shows.

Montesa was particularly known among artists, poets and musicians in town because he attended nearly every local open-mic night to sing showtunes, perform karaoke and make people smile.

Ludwig Day will start with a memorial service from noon until 2 p.m. in Hasbrouck Park. Cabaloosa, the Cafeteria coffeehouse, the Bakery, Rhino Records, Oasis Café, the Water Street Market, Bacchus Restaurant & Bar and Snug Harbor will host live music after 2 p.m. in his honor. Bands playing include Breakfast in Fur, NCM, Humble Boy Club, the Johnny Monster Band, Ratboy, Bad Princess, SnowBear, It’s Not Night: It’s Space, Black Mesa and many more. At 9 p.m., the Water Street Market will screen a special slideshow documenting Ludwig’s impact on New Paltz. Tee-shirts, buttons and a commemorative Ludwig ’zine will be available at Sacred.

All proceeds will be donated to the Montesa family, in part to help defray the funeral expenses. For more information, visit www.facebook.com/events/523569667681351/?fref=ts.

What glad news that Babe the Blue Ox is back together, playing out and releasing new music. The Brooklyn-born art/alt-rock trio (now a quartet) introduced its jarring, witty and impassioned avant-rock sound with a trio of releases on Homestead, a reputable indie label, in the early ‘90s. These led to a major-label deal with RCA and a pair of releases in ’96 and ’98, right around the time that Steve Albini was setting us all straight in his famous essay “The Problem with Music” (later cribbed, or at least sampled liberally, by Courtney Love).

While I do not know the bumpy details of Babe’s major-label ride, it is not hard to imagine that it involved an Albinian complement of deceptions, disappointments and business-as-usual betrayals. What we do know is that Babe the Blue Ox’s worthy RCA albums didn’t register much at the register, and one of the most adventurous, original and entertaining bands to arise from the alt-rock milieu (and certainly one of the most “New York” of them all) didn’t make the turn at the millennium. What glad news that they are back.

If Indescribable were a record label, Babe might have been its flagship act. But always we must try. To start, let’s locate the turf from which the band originates and departs. From Seattle’s flannel army to the Pixies, from Primus to the Posies, from Bob Mould’s Sugar to the Lemonheads to Sonic Youth, alt-rock described a marriage between dissonance and disturbance on one hand and pop melody and pop values on the other. In this regard, Babe the Blue Ox was very much a band of its time. In its sound, you will hear the unmistakable earmarks of the alt-rock age: the extreme, upsetting dynamics; the crunchy core strength; the detuned riffage; the sublimated funk (and metal); and the occasional, big, Grail-quest choruses.

But Babe was quicker, trickier, wittier and just more artsy fun than so many of its dour, dark and terminally serious decademates – those who would envelop you in their cathartic feedback and assail you with their minor seconds and their harrowing tales of glorified addiction. Babe’s agitations and abstractions were a disturbance of a finer sort: Beefheartian in their scratchy, otherworldly precision, hip and weird in a way that was heir to Talking Heads, Television and Père Ubu more than Zep and Sabbath.

But art was not enough. A female-majority trio then and a gender-stalemate foursome now, Babe loves lavish pop and unbridled emotionality every bit as much as skittish, attention-deficient art-rock. Its members bristled, I recall, at the chronic Primus comparisons that they were served in their shared heyday. They were tight-lipped about their real influences, conceding only that they all revered the Minutemen. (And Babe does sound something like D. Boon & Co., as arranged by Alban Berg and fronted by Steve and Edie.)

They wore their campy, bleeding hearts on their sleeves and were never content with weird for weird’s sake. They wanted to make you cry and laugh as well as to dance some kind of polyrhythmic, postmodern red-ant jitterbug (driven by drummer Hanna Fox’s surgically spastic grooves). Babe’s four full-length releases and one EP in the ‘90s document this ambitious quest for a place where soaring, rhapsodic heartsong might be set – organically, unpretentiously – amidst a tic-driven quantum chaos.

Babe the Blue Ox’s principal songwriters, guitarist Tim Thomas and bassist Rose Thomson, have all the extremes covered. The deep-voiced and grizzled Thomas writes frequently about middle-class hypocrisy and myopia, exposed in cutting observations and devilishly good spot characterizations. The sweet-voiced Thomson favors alien, sometimes turbulent art songs of spiraling introspection. Then they sing together: moments of genuine and gutsy emotional lift.

2013’s Guilty is an off-the-cuff, easygoing return to form after a 15-year hiatus. Recorded locally and produced/engineered by a couple of local urban refugee heavies in Daniel Littleton and Chris Edwards, respectively, Guilty really drives home the point that roots are roots and that you can, and should, go home again, whether it is Sir Paul playing some skiffle on the ukulele or Babe the Blue Ox relaxing on the porch with some…angular, restless, mathy, neurotic guitar rock. The glove just fits.

Perhaps you have never heard of Babe the Blue Ox, like a couple of thousand other important major-label bands that no one ever hears about: the five of six that fail to turn a profit, the five of six whose hands end up tied in the fool’s and Faustian bargain that Albini described. I might not have heard of them, had I not had a chance to meet them and split a show with them in the mid-‘90s.

The first time I saw them was at home, at Cabaloosa in New Paltz. It was a blistering, arresting performance. They went from “who?” to “best live band ever?” in a couple of songs. Early in their set, I was approached by George Schaaff, the guitarist of the legendary ‘90s New Paltz band Silence. He yelled into my ear, “Who the &%^$ are these guys?” “Babe the Blue Ox,” I screamed.  “They’re my favorite band ever,” yelled George. “I know,” screamed I.

That’s the way it was with Babe. If it was right for you, you knew it instantly and for life. Seldom have I seen so naturally appealing a live band: tighter than tight, but spontaneous and sensual, possessed of an unforced rock theatricality and a camaraderie, a togetherness that just glowed among the three of them. That – all the vicissitudes of the music business being as they may – is why this reunion is no wonder at all; just very, very welcome.

Babe the Blue Ox headlines the In the Pines Music Festival at the University Settlement Camp in Beacon on Saturday, May 25; other performers include Knock Yourself Out, Monski, the Stephen Clair Trio and Higher Animals.

In the Pines Music Festival with Babe the Blue Ox, Saturday, May 25, $10 advance/$15 day of show, University Settlement Camp, 724 Wolcott Avenue, Beacon; http://local845.com.

(Photo by Dion Ogust)

Only our individual faith in freedom can keep us free.
– President Dwight D. Eisenhower

Memorial Day commemorations

The first Memorial Day was declared on May 5, 1868 by general John Logan of the Grand Army of the Republic, an organization of Civil War veterans: “Let us, then, at the time appointed gather around their sacred remains and garland the passionless mounds above them with the choicest flowers of spring-time; let us raise above them the dear old flag they saved from dishonor; let us in this solemn presence renew our pledges to aid and assist those whom they have left among us, a sacred charge upon a nation’s gratitude, the soldier’s and sailor’s widow and orphan.”

Honoring Memorial Day here in the Hudson Valley is an opportunity for our families to acknowledge our gratitude for the service of our country’s women and men who sacrificed their lives in the line of duty, as well as to appreciate how very local some of that history is. One small gesture is to participate in the National Moment of Remembrance, observed by one minute of silence at 3 p.m. on Memorial Day. Here’s a roundup of Memorial Day and other history-related activities taking place this weekend.

First Person Tours at Washington’s Headquarters in Newburgh

Congratulations goes out to the City of Newburgh, New York State’s first Purple Heart City, designating it as part of the Purple Heart Trail, a “symbolic and honorary system of roads, highways, bridges and other monuments that give tribute to the men and women who have been awarded the Purple Heart medal.” That’s pretty cool, because in 1782, commander-in-chief George Washington issued the first Badge of Military Merit, the predecessor to the Purple Heart, right in Newburgh.

Beginning this weekend, the Washington’s Headquarters State Historic Site runs First Person Tours, with an interpreter portraying a person of the past through the historic headquarters. The featured characters are Antoinette Corwin, a Newburgh preservationist, on Saturday, May 25 at 1 p.m. and on Sunday, June 9 at 2 p.m.; and John H. Martin, superintendent of Washington’s Headquarters on Saturday, May 25 at 3 p.m., Sunday, May 26th at 2 p.m. and on Saturday, June 1 at 1 and 3 p.m. The special event fee for each tour is $5 per person, and advance tickets are strongly recommended.

Washington’s Headquarters is located at 84 Liberty Street in Newburgh. For reservations or more information, call (845) 562-1195 or visit www.facebook.com/washingtonsheadquarters.

Graveside ceremony at New Windsor Cantonment

1782 was also the year that Washington declared a ceasefire in the War of Independence, and he issued the orders from the nearby New Windsor Cantonment. On Monday, May 27 at 2 p.m., join the New Windsor Cantonment State Historic Site to “Honor Our Nation’s Fallen Soldiers.” Continental soldiers perform an 18th-century graveside mourning ceremony, followed by music with Linda Russell, who “performs the songs that inspired and comforted the American people when our nation was at war.”

The New Windsor Cantonment is located at 374 Temple Hill Road, or Route 300, in New Windsor. For more information, call (845) 561-1765 or visit http://nysparks.com. To learn more about the musician, visit www.lindarussellmusic.com.

Vets get in free at Hudson River Maritime Museum

A little further upriver, the Hudson River Maritime Museum “is the only museum in New York State exclusively preserving the maritime history of the Hudson River, its tributaries and the industries that developed around it.” On Memorial Day, veterans receive free admission to the Museum; and active-duty military and their families always get in free with military ID, since the Museum is part of the Blue Star Museum program. On Tuesday, May 28, the celebrated John J. Harvey historic fireboat, which was called back into service during the September 11 attacks, is on display at the Museum.

The Hudson River Maritime Museum is located at 50 Rondout Landing in Kingston. For more information, call (845) 338-0071 or visit www.hrmm.org. To learn more about the John J. Harvey, visit www.fireboat.org.

Catskill Mountain Railroad reopens for the season

Memorial Day weekend means that the Catskill Mountain Railroad is open for the season, and it’s celebrating its 30th anniversary. Witness the ribbon-cutting ceremony on Saturday, May 25 at 1 p.m., and riders will receive a free commemorative pin while supplies last.

The Railroad is usually open just on Saturdays, so take advantage of its extended schedule on Memorial Day weekend. Trains depart the Kingston Westbrook Station on the hour from 1 to 4 p.m. The Kingston City Limited is a slow, short ride, but it’s one way to experience how travel used to be. Admission is $6 for adults, $4 for children aged 2 to 11 years and free for children under age 2.

The Kingston Westbrook Station is located at 149 Aaron Court in Kingston. For more information about the Kingston Shuttle or the Mount Tremper station, call (845) 688-7400 or visit http://catskillmtrailroad.com.

(Dominik Bartsch)

A new Einstein biography has just been released. Despite the great man’s justified celebrity, many misconceptions are repeated.

Take his ideas about religion. Some claim that Einstein believed in a personal God. Others insist that he was an atheist. But read his words, and it’s clear that he did not subscribe to a personal God (e.g., one who hears prayers), despite his famous line attacking quantum theory: “God does not play dice.” He also said, “Subtle is the Lord, but malicious He is not.”

Nonetheless, it’s pretty clear that he sometimes used the word God to mean the underlying smartness of Nature. He believed that the laws of the cosmos are fashioned intelligently, not randomly or dumbly, and found it wondrous that they’re potentially fathomable to our minds.

Spiritually speaking, his most consistent conviction revolved around the issue of personal free will. Einstein disbelieved in its existence. He frequently quoted 19th-century philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer – a self-proclaimed Buddhist – that “a man can do as he wills, but he cannot will as he wills.” In other words, our choices simply pop into our minds on their own. Our brain works autonomously, like the liver or kidneys. We do not control it. Einstein said that not putting stock in personal responsibility helped him forgive people.

In our control-oriented culture, Einstein’s view cannot even be called unpopular; it’s more like unheard-of. Society strongly affirms personal responsibility. Thus, biographers tend to omit this and instead stick to well-worn, deity-based religious discussions when it comes to Einstein.

His major accomplishments are often similarly misunderstood. (Charlie Chaplin told him, “They cheer me because they all understand me. They cheer you because no one understands you.”) Both his 1905 “Special” Theory of Relativity and his 1915 “General” one are breakthroughs largely because they showed that time, distance and mass have no absolute values, but change according to the observer, with the alterations dictated by environmental factors like one’s speed or the strength of the local gravity.

That a watch’s ticking of one second would take a much longer time in a different environment was huge. Einstein showed that, while light’s speed is always constant in the emptiness of space, almost nothing else is. This becomes more and more wondrously bizarre and non-intuitive the more one understands it.

Instead, most folks equate Relativity with Einstein’s most famous equation: E = mc². This too was groundbreaking, because it showed that, as we like to say in Woodstock, all is one. Matter and energy are two sides of the same coin. Any object, even a cigarette butt, is simply stored energy. His equation revealed exactly how one can convert to the other, as we famously saw on August 6, 1945 over Hiroshima.

E = mc² is easy to understand if you’re not a mathophobe. E is energy, expressed in ergs; “m” is an object’s weight in grams; “c” is the speed of light expressed in centimeters per second. Before you do anything else, you have to square this number. Now, light famously travels at a rate of 186,282.4 miles per second, which converts to 30,000,000,000.0 centimeters per second. Multiply this by itself, and you find that one gram of matter will convert to 900,000,000,000,000,000,000.0 ergs of energy. The equation can thus be written as E = m X 900,000,000,000,000,000,000.

If the object being converted weighs one gram (1/28th of an ounce), like a dollar bill or a paper clip, the energy it contains, if released, could light a 100-watt bulb for 30,000 years. The energy in a dollar bill could keep all of Woodstock’s lights burning for a year.

Ploughed field at Greig Farm in Red Hook. (photo by Dion Ogust)

I was back in Texas for a funeral. The cemetery is out on what I call “the old home place,” the family farm. My cousin Neil farms it, but it is mostly raw land now. We talked about farming: what he is putting in and why, what he thinks he will get out of it.

Most of the farms in his area are big, 500 to 2,000 acres, and isolated from major urban areas. An acre is about the size of a football field if you cut out both end zones. When I asked him why farms in his area are so big, he had an answer: “Small farmers can hardly make it out in the rural areas as truck farmers. Way back when, they could; but we were just feeding the local area or maybe the state. Now we are feeding the world.” Farms are big because farming has become big business.

The Hudson Valley on both sides of the river is awash in small farms, some 5,300. Dutchess County contains some 650 farms, Ulster about 500. By some estimates the total acreage is over 659,000 acres in the Valley area; yet farms and acreage are declining. The average Hudson Valley farm is estimated to be about 150 acres, with some as small as a couple of acres and some as big as 2,000 acres. Farmers have cattle, ducks, chickens, goats, sheep and a wide variety of crops: vegetables, corn, lettuces, berries and of course apples. Dairy farming and apple production are still the kings in the Valley.

If farming is such big business – if farms are getting bigger, yet we are losing farms – why do we have so many small farms, and what are they doing? Whom does the Hudson Valley feed, and how do they do it? I decided to investigate.

For my investigation I spoke to Cornell, studied material from the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements, read reports from Glynwood and the Farm Bureau; but mostly I talked to farmers. I purposely eliminated the apple-growers so I could concentrate on small operations. I visited ten small operations, and spoke to more. I wanted to know what they were doing, how are they surviving, what innovations are occurring, what are the big challenges and what does the future hold. What I found out could supply more than I can put into one article. All in all, the state of agriculture in the Hudson Valley is quite healthy.

What is a farm?

Farms are businesses that use land to produce a marketable product that the farmer can sell at a profit. The farm business is a low-margin business. After taxes, a farmer, if he or she has done everything perfectly, will take home six cents on every dollar. Should anything go wrong, that margin is wiped out. Six cents on a dollar does not leave much room for error.

The state of New York once stated that farms had to be a minimum of ten acres and generate a minimum of $10,000. Now it is one acre and $1,000, yet we still see farms go under.

Challenges

The challenges are well-known: weather, crop failure, pests. It truly is a gamble, and it is tough to find financing. Money drives everything, including land acquisition.

Some farmers, like Ray McEnroe, were born into a family who farmed. His farm was already established, but he still had to purchase it from his parents. Without the advantage of family-owned property, he told me, it would be impossible to start today.

He is right: Farms now sell at an average of $17,000 per acre. With a 100-acre farm, the investment in land only is $1,700,000. A ten-acre farm costs $170,000. This does not include the buildings, operating capital, machinery, seed or feed. How many banks will fund a $170,000 mortgage, plus another $100,000, on a business that might not make it one year? That is why much of the land formerly used for agriculture is now being developed for residential use, with subdivisions and “estates” replacing the farm.

In addition to the financing issue, some current small farms are pieces of former large farms that the current operator has revived and put back into production. That is no easy proposition, financially and practically. Jay Armour at Four Winds in Gardiner said that when he and his wife Polly bought their farm – a former dairy farm that was no longer producing – they needed to begin from scratch, weeding and working just to get the land into plantable condition. Ten years later, they now have a 24-acre farm, with four acres growing vegetables organically.

Another challenge that farmers face is the retail market. Retail markets are driven by consumers. Consumers will only pay for things within a small range. Consumers will buy broccoli at $1.69 per pound but not at $4, asparagus at $1.99 per pound but not $5. So at $2 per pound to the consumer, a retailer needs to make some profit, and will buy it from a distributor for, say, $1.75 per pound. A distributor will purchase it from a wholesaler at $1.25 per pound, and a wholesaler from the farmer at 75 cents per pound. This price difference from farmer to consumer is called the retail spread, and a farmer selling produce gets a percentage of the spread. Sometimes it is as little as 20 percent. Often it is not profitable for a small farmer to sell to a distributor, as the purchase price is under his production price and he cannot grow enough to make it profitable: an economy-of-scale problem.

Lee turning one of his compost bins.

You’d think, this time of year, that all I’d be doing is sowing seeds and transplanting small and large plants. I am. But I’m also turning compost piles, getting ready to use that “black gold” this autumn. Why now? So the stuff has time to mellow and to make space for new compost piles that will be built from now through autumn.

Here’s my compost routine: All summer and into autumn I fill empty compost bins with hay, wood shavings, horse manure, weeds, kitchen waste and old garden plants, along with some sprinklings of soil, limestone, soybean meal (if extra nitrogen is needed) and sufficient water to moisten the ingredients. When a bin is full – which means loaded up about five feet high – it gets covered with a sheet of EPDM rubber roofing material to keep excess moisture out and to seal in whatever moisture is within. A numbered label on each pile gets recorded to remind me when the pile was completed, what went in and, with the help of a two-foot-long thermometer, how much heat, if any, was generated.

Fast forward to today: I’m flipping over the contents of two compost bins, one completed last July and the other last August, into empty adjacent bins. Turning over the contents lets me see how the compost has fared over the past ten months; some piles might still be a bit raw, others are just about finished and ready for use. No matter; I don’t need any compost yet.

No rule says that compost piles have to be turned at all. I do it because I like to see what has been going on, and so I can make slight adjustments as needed. Sometimes a little more water is needed. Turning the pile also gives me the opportunity to break up any clumps of material and render the finished pile more uniform.

One of the piles that I turned this spring had so much undecomposed hay in it that I sprinkled on some soybean meal as I turned it. Even that wasn’t 100 percent necessary; the high-nitrogen soybean meal just speeds decomposition. Leave any organic materials (that is, something that is or was living) piled together long enough, with a bit of moisture, and it will definitely turn to compost. As my bumper sticker reads: “Compost happens.”

One more reason for turning and organizing all of last year’s compost piles is to make space for growing melons and squashes. My vegetable garden is very intensively planted, with three-foot-wide beds packed tight with one or more vegetables growing together or in sequence, perhaps even trained skyward to get more out of the space. The long, sprawling vines of melons and squashes don’t fit into this scheme of things.

The compost bins – four-foot-by-four-foot-by-three-to-four-foot-high cubes – are perfect for these vines. Three or four plants poked into the rich compost through holes made in the rubber roofing can sprawl to their hearts’ content, spreading out to cover the tops of the bins and then, if they like, draping down to the ground – even creeping along the ground if that’s their whim.

Melons and squashes thrive in rich soil, and my plants’ roots couldn’t find themselves in a richer soil than the pure compost within the bins. Plenty of water is needed to plump up the fruits; the compost clings to enough water so that watering is hardly necessary.

The only melon that does not get planted on a compost bin is watermelon. But even watermelon doesn’t go in the garden. It goes onto a pile of wood chips or leaves that I had dumped here last autumn and winter.

In contrast to the muskmelons, honeydews and cantaloupes, all which bear a few fruits and then give up the ship, watermelon vines just keep bearing and bearing until stopped by frost or short days. I’ll need to get into the compost bins before frost and short days; muskmelons, honeydews and cantaloupes will be gone and out of the way, but watermelon would not.

Also, watermelons don’t demand a rich soil. “Soil” that’s either partially decomposed leaves or wood chips is poor in nutrients, to say the least – so poor that when I plant in the leaf or wood chip pile, I scoop out a generous hole and fill it with compost to get the plant off to a good start. During the growing season, I’ll occasionally dose the watermelon plants with some soluble fertilizer.

All kinds of melons thrive in heat, in the air and in the ground. Freshly turned compost and old leaves or wood chips aren’t static. They are decomposing and, in doing so, generating some heat – all of which makes for good crops of good-tasting melons.

I’ll be holding a Plant Sale on Sunday, May 19 from 9 to 11 a.m. The sale will be small, but of choice plants. For more information or a list of plants, contact me at (845) 255-0417 or garden@leereich.com.

Any gardening questions? E-mail them to me at garden@leereich.com and I’ll try answering them directly or in this column. Come visit my garden at www.leereich.blogspot.com. For more on local homes and gardens, go to Ulster Publishing’s homehudsonvalley.com.

(Robert Hite)

The sharecropper shacks that dotted the flat agricultural landscape of Tidewater Virginia in Robert Hite’s youth, and the metal-roofed sheds that he saw on his travels throughout Latin America, providing shelter for the poor from tropical downpours, are the “building” blocks of Robert Hite’s art. In paintings, wall reliefs and sculptures both miniaturized and full-scale, he populates an alternate reality with renderings of these ephemeral structures that turn them into characters in their own right.

Hite’s most recent project, titled “Imagined Histories,” is a series of photographs of his fanciful architectural models temporarily relocated to new real-world settings such as the shores of the Hudson River or in local swamps. Dislocation, displacement and social justice are the underlying themes of his work, he says. If it is true that in our dreams, a house is a symbol of the “larger self,” then a hut thrown together from found materials to create the most basic of shelters speaks volumes about the larger questions of what it means to live in the Third World, to struggle daily with poverty, to have little control over where one may dwell, to be forced to flee again and again before the juggernauts of history.

A one-man show opening this Saturday, May 18 at the Wired Gallery in High Falls collects many of Hite’s recent works, including paintings, sculptures and photographs, with an emphasis on the “Imagined Histories” series. “It is an absolute honor for this young gallery that just turned one to host its first solo exhibition with Robert Hite,” says Wired Gallery director Sevan Melikyan. “The selected works, many of which are new, promise to leave a deep impact on anyone’s sense and imagination.”

Complementing the Hite show will be a display on the Gallery’s Dedication Wall of photographs by the artist’s Esopus neighbor, Jeffrey Lewis. Lewis is a survivor of a rare and life-threatening brain condition called Rasmussen’s encephalitis, which required him to have a hemispherectomy at age 4. “Throughout his life, Jeffrey has been an inspiration to many people,” says Hite. “His grace, warmth and humor make him a pleasant young man to know. This past winter, as I holed up in my warm house on some of the most unpleasant weather days, I would see pictures that he took while bundled up and out on his various walk routes. That passion for his needed walks and picture-taking has inspired me.”

An artist’s reception from 5 to 7 p.m., catered by the Big Cheese in Rosendale, will officially launch the exhibit, which will stay up through June 30. Hite will give a gallery talk on Saturday, June 1 at 4 p.m. Located at 1415 Route 213, the Wired Gallery is open Saturdays and Sundays from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. and by appointment. For more information call (682) 564-5613 or visit www.thewiredgallery.com.

“Imagined Histories” by Robert Hite, opening Saturday, May 18, 5-7 p.m., up through June 30, Wired Gallery, 1415 Route 213, High Falls; (682) 564-5613, www.thewiredgallery.com

Artist Nancy Azara (photo by Francesco Capponi)

The nonprofit Woodstock Byrdcliffe Guild is sponsoring a series of artist studio tours this spring and summer. The first event on Saturday, May 18 will bring visitors into the studio of painter Eva van Rijn from 1 to 3 p.m. and the studios of sculptor Nancy Azara and painter Darla Bjork from 3:30 to 5:30 p.m. Tickets cost $50, which include light refreshments at the studios, and proceeds benefit the programs and exhibitions of the Woodstock Byrdcliffe Guild, of which Azara is head of the exhibition committee and sits on the Board of Directors.

“It’s a very nice, congenial way to share your work and your studio with people,” says Azara. “At galleries, you don’t have an insight into how the work was made or how it interrelates to other work by the artist. You need to have that insight sometimes to understand the work, and studio tours are a way to do that.”

People are sometimes a bit intimidated by visiting an artist’s studio, Azara adds, but says that she, like other artists who do this, enjoys the opportunity to have a dialogue with visitors about what she does. “Everyone is welcome,” she says, “so if you’re curious, just come.”

The first stop on the tour will be the studio of Eva van Rijn, who was born in Den Hague, Holland in 1936 and emigrated to the US with her parents during World War II. Van Rijn’s family settled in Woodstock, and during a break from college she attended the Academia de Belle Arte in Florence, Italy, where her mother had been a student before her. She married painter/sculptor Edward Chavez and continued to live in Woodstock, where daughter Maia, now also an artist, was born.

Influenced by family vacations spent camping in the west, the landscape there became the inspiration for her artwork. In 2006, she collaborated with her daughter to create “Red Canyons/Blue Space,” an exhibition of paintings and drawings featuring work from their collective road trips. Now with her partner, fisherman Richard Strain, she travels to some of the world’s last unspoiled places where photography and quick plein air paintings provide the sources for landscape and wildlife paintings done in the studio. Eva van Rijn is also a director of the Woodstock School of Art. To see examples of her work, visit www.evavanrijn.com.

Nancy Azara’s studio, in a large barn behind her house (the same property holds another barn that houses Darla Bjork’s studio), will hold her carved-wood sculptures enlivened with paint, metal leaf and encaustic techniques, along with mixed-media wall hangings, rubbings and collages. Azara says that her work is about time in relation to memory and personal history. She has exhibited widely in New York City and throughout the country and abroad, and was a founder of the New York Feminist Art Institute in 1979. Azara is the author of Spirit Taking Form: Making a Spiritual Practice of Making Art (Red Wheel/Weiser) and she has been a visiting artist in the US, Europe and India, most recently at the Bogliasco Foundation in Genoa, Italy and at Chikraneketan in South India. To see examples of her work, visit www.nancyazara.com.

Painter Darla Bjork has exhibited in the US and Europe and is also a psychiatrist who has had a private practice in New York City for many years. Her work has evolved from abstract portraits that reflected people with whom she worked in mental institutions to abstract landscapes influenced by her childhood in rural Minnesota and the view of the Catskill Mountains from her studio in Woodstock. Her recent “Fire Series” are encaustic works that reflect on the transformative nature of fire through a thick layering of paint and wax. To see examples of her work, visit www.darlabjork.com.

Subsequent artist studio tours sponsored by the Woodstock Byrdcliffe Guild will include a July 20 event with visits to the studios of Matt Bua, Portia Munson and Jared Handelsman, followed by dinner at the private home and garden of the Handelsmans. “Art and Food Duo” on July 20 will take place from 3 to 9 p.m., which includes three studio visits and dinner for $125. On August 10, the final tour will feature the studios of Joan Snyder and Jenny Nelson from 1:30 to 5:30 p.m.

Woodstock Byrdcliffe Guild artist studio tour, Saturday, May 18, 1-5:30 p.m., $50; www.woodstockguild.org/studiotour.html.

(Jim Fossett)

Sensory experiences, by their very nature, are hard to put into words. And some things are harder to explain than others.

Take a Cave Dogs performance, for example. The genre-busting Bloomington-based troupe of interdisciplinary artists, writers and performers presents a live experience to its audience, but it’s not traditional theater. Shadow and video projections play on a screen and from behind it, evoking the dreamlike qualities of experimental film, but it’s not about watching a movie. A soundtrack layered with music and sampled sounds is part of the experience, as is storytelling and dialogue, but they’re not the entire point.

Nor is it really performance art, although it meshes elements of the visual arts with live performance, and the audience is offered an aspect of the human experience on which to contemplate. It even involves puppetry, but not in an “Ernie-and-Bert” sense – rather, in the nature of a prop turned animated or given human characteristics. And it’s suitable for children to watch, but it’s not meant for any specific age group. “Adults will take something different away from the experience than children will,” says Cave Dogs co-founder Suzanne Stokes, “but it’s captivating enough to keep kids’ attention.”

“It envelops the audience in a physical way,” she says. “Most of the people who come to our shows say that they really feel like they’ve never seen anything like this before.”

The Cave Dogs will bring their latest production, Sure-Minded Uncertainties, to BSP Lounge in Uptown Kingston on Friday, May 17 at 7:30 p.m. and Saturday, May 18 at 2 p.m. The underlying theme is humanity’s complex relationship to nature and our stewardship of it, “or not,” says Stokes. “It’s a series of short stories told from multiple perspectives that interconnect with each other, but it’s not an in-your-face statement. It’s more about presenting different ways of thinking about science, expansion, technology, curiosity; the good, the bad and the in-between, without taking a stance. People can take away what they will from it.”

“This version of the production should probably be called Sure-Minded Uncertainties Remixed,” says Stokes, because it has undergone changes since the original version traveled to festivals in Sweden and Denmark last summer and in the fall to New Orleans. The shows are in flux all the time, she says, with parts added to them and changed – due to the necessities involved in traveling with a production, and also because of feedback that the troupe receives at performances. “It’s been an eye-opener, going to these festivals,” Stokes says. “It changes what we do.” The production will travel this summer to the Fringe Festival in New York City, and then on to Boston and possibly back to New Orleans.

The Cave Dogs blend of traditional storytelling and shadow puppet theater with the contemporary artforms of film and computer-generated animation began in 1991, when then-recent SUNY-New Paltz grad Stokes put together a show based on her MFA grad work Shadow. Her degrees are in metalsmithing, but her work evolved from making wearable jewelry to making tiny figures that she projected as shadows with a soundtrack: “Nothing like it is now, but that started it,” she says. Husband Jim Fossett, a photographer and videographer, got involved and Cave Dogs was formed, with Ted Conway, Douglas Keller, Adam Mastropaolo and Maria Jansdotter-Farr comprising the rest of the collective today. The members of the troupe work collaboratively, with each contributing in a number of ways, including making props and writing the storylines, which Stokes credits Jansdotter-Farr with “pulling together at the end.”

Grammy Award-winning Dean Jones of Tillson, known locally as part of family-friendly musical group Dog on Fleas, created the soundtrack for Sure-minded Uncertainties, as he has for every Cave Dogs production since the beginning, says Stokes. That body of work includes Archaeology of a Storm (2008), Ferrous City (2002), How to Build a Raft (1998), Emily’s Circus (1994), Sustenance (1993), Fall of Perception (1992) and Shadows of Doubt and Other Precarious Truths (1991).

Stokes and Fossett also teach in the Art Department at SUNY-New Paltz, where their students sometimes make contributions to Cave Dogs productions. “There’s six of us who perform and rehearse weekly, but there’s probably about 30 to 50 people who put into the creative part in different ways,” says Stokes. “They might be part of the soundtrack, or give us an image to work with. They might make a prop or do some video, or edit, or come up with choreography or costume design; there’s so many ways people contribute.”

The audience is always invited backstage at Cave Dogs performances, Stokes says, and many people do come back and look at props and try to figure out how things are done. “Some of the effects get explained by what they see,” she says, “and some don’t. But it’s a really nice, informal way for them to see what we’re up to, and we get to hear their feedback in a very relaxed and informal manner.”

For more information about Cave Dogs, visit www.cavedogs.org.

Sure-Minded Uncertainties, Cave Dogs, Friday, May 17, 7:30 p.m., Saturday, May 18, 2 p.m., $12, BSP Lounge, 323 Wall Street, Kingston; (845) 481-5158, www.bsplounge.com.

Hoboken’s Bern & the Brights kick off their crisp, bracing EP Work with “Slave Driver,” a track that, almost in sequence, introduces all the components of their multi-genre but coherent sound. Dub lasers, spy guitars and an uppity, ska-inflected verse give way to a pure, hooky guitar pop chorus that neither Big Star nor the Attractions would be ashamed of. And so it goes over the next six tracks: sweet, discretely layered guitar-jangle over skewered spawn-of-Radiohead and New Wave beats that invariably straighten out just in time for a legitimately big chorus.

The band is fronted by two singer/songwriters who are clearly on the same page, though sometimes in different books. Bernadette Malavarca (the “Bern” in the band, one assumes, and the lead guitarist throughout) seems a few iotas more prone to blues, soul and roots gesture (very subtly so – this is a pop band through and through); Catherine McGown’s songs incline a couple of degrees more toward crunchy modern guitar pop and alt/rock. In truth, you’ll need a credit sheet really to know the difference – at first, at least.

Work doesn’t let down for a minute. The hyperkinetic rhythm section Shawn Fafara (bass) and Jose UlloaRea (drums) handles the sharp corners and multiple groove and genre changes of these songs with verve and total command. And perhaps the EP’s most stunning feat is its three-dimensional guitar arrangements: detailed, contrapuntal, wildly diverse in timbre but always lucid and spacious. This is a mature, radio-ready recording, and one imagines that it rocks live.

Let’s find out: Bern & the Brights return to Market Market in Rosendale on Saturday, May 18 at 10 p.m. Market Market is located at 1 Madeline Lane in Rosendale. Call (845) 658-3164 or visit www.marketmarketcafe.com for more information. For more on Bern & the Brights, check out www.bernandthebrights.com.

Man Man

I can’t believe I have finally grown tired of detecting and celebrating the influence of Tom Waits in modern music. But, 28 years after Rain Dogs changed my life irreversibly and for the better, I have. I tell you I am done invoking his holy name in all my “dancing about architecture,” this weekly exercise in frustration and futility that is trying to describe music.

It took a while for the Waits influence to ascend. In the height of the alt/rock ‘90s, maybe you could say that you heard a touch of that Waits thing in the weirdness of Primus or the Pixies, or, more overtly, in the debut album of a sadly obscure New York alt/rock band called Skeleton Key. But now it is on. Waits is in rock ‘n’ roll’s water supply, like the Beatles, like Bowie, like Dylan, Prince and the Velvet Underground. He has inspired scores of bands who don’t even know that they are inspired by him, because they are getting it secondhand or third- – just as a generation of songwriters got its Beatles from Elliot Smith.

And it is not just Waits the writer and singer, his barking, myth-mad persona and its gobs of redemptive sentimentality. It is everything about those records, Rain Dogs (1985) all the way to Bad as Me (2011), every last gesture: the sexy, stinging dissonance of Mark Ribot’s guitar; the marimba-driven “bone machine” rhythm beds; the boozy slop and languor of Waits’ nylon-string guitar and piano-playing; the trashy, primitive drumming; the groove lexicon that is both retro/ethnic and utterly alien; the Alan Lomax field-recording production values. It’s all iconic now. It’s what “real” sounds like.

Looks like I am going to need more precise and granular reference points to use whenever I encounter noirish and mad early rock ‘n’ roll, haunted circus and cabaret, post-beatnik surreality, garbage-can torch songs and damaged bossas, waltzes and tangos. But when I find it all in one place – as I do in the kinetic, exciting music of the band Man Man – I know that I must intone the Waits name at least once more.

So Man Man sounds a bit like Tom Waits. At the very least, Man Man’s highly original sound probably couldn’t have existed without the radical break from status quo and from sanity that was Waits’s music in the ‘80s and after. I bet that they’re tired of hearing it; I know that I’m tired of saying it.

The Philadelphia-based Man Man’s fourth and most recent release, 2011’s Life Fantastic, is an ecstatic and virile specimen of dark party music, all carnival chromaticism, sublimated rumbas and cha-chas and an off-kilter, spooked approach to rocking that might be called “Munsterism.” Man Man’s core sound is a teeth-clacking groove engine of mallet percussion, piano, twang and herky-jerk drumming. Flourishes of louche Prohibition swing and occult theremin-ism dance on the fringes. At times, the sound (and the lyrics) tends toward the homicidal; more often, they’re just insane.

It’s a delightfully dense and detailed album, thoroughly orchestrated without ever losing a sense of wild, Dionysian abandon. And one thing that you know for sure – without question, no further evidence required – is that this is a kickass live band. You can hear it in the propulsive, ever-forward energy and the organic assurance of the feel and the timbral palette. Sure enough, Man Man’s shows are legend on the Bonnaroo circuit and in clubland generally: a cathartic, theatrical-but-not-entirely-comic live workout routine with really good songs to boot. And it actually doesn’t sound all that much like Tom Waits.

Better see for yourself. Man Man takes the stage at the BSP Lounge in Kingston on Friday, May 24, headlining a truly excellent bill that includes the shimmery guitar rock of Washington, DC’s Paperhaus and New Paltz’s gifted psychedelic folk/rock up-and-comers Breakfast in Fur. A limited number of tickets will be available at the door on a first-come, first-served basis for $12, with the doors opening at 8:30 p.m.

(Photo by Dion Ogust)

A child of five would understand this. Send someone to fetch a child of five.
– Groucho Marx

Sil & Eliza Reynolds, poet Bobbi Katz speak at Inquiring Minds

I’ve been checking out the website and blog of local mother/daughter duo Sil and Eliza Reynolds, and I’m appreciating their grounded, honest and inspiring sharings about the mother/daughter relationship, which they describe as an energizing and nurturing dynamic: “We know that mothers and daughters share, and mutually want, a bond for life – one that can in fact remain positive and grow stronger with each passing year.”

The interviews on the blog are interesting, too, including this insight from developmental psychologist and author Gordon Neufeld: “Parents are looking for emancipation in today’s world. We get so tired of our responsibilities that we confuse our children’s dependence upon others with independence.”

The Reynolds’ style feels open, supportive and inviting – not dogmatic, like other parenting resources can be. I’m looking forward to reading their new book, Mothering and Daughtering: Keeping Your Bond Strong through the Teen Years, which I’ll pick up at this weekend’s reading. On Friday, May 17 at 7 p.m. at Inquiring Minds Bookstore in New Paltz, Sil and Eliza Reynolds will be joined by Nan Gatewood Satter, who will facilitate a lively discussion.

Local author Bobbi Katz’s poetry is clear, direct, whimsical and delightful. I enjoy this bit from Katz’s book, Pocket Poems: “With a poem in your pocket/and a pocket in your pants/you can rock with new rhythms./You can skip. You can dance.”

Katz loves “the very taste of words” and will be reading from her book Pocket Poems twice this weekend: at Inquiring Minds in New Paltz on Saturday, May 18 at 4 p.m. and in Saugerties on Sunday, May 19 at 3 p.m.

These author events are free and open to the public of all ages. Inquiring Minds Bookstore has two locations: 6 Church Street in New Paltz, (845) 255-8300, and 65 Partition Street in Saugerties, (845) 246-5775; and online at www.inquiringbooks.com. To learn more about the authors and the books, visit www.motheringanddaughtering.com and www.bobbikatz.com.

Illustrator G. Brian Karas at Staatsburg Library

You’ve seen the work of local award-winning author and illustrator G. Brian Karas in countless children’s books, but how does he choose the stories in the first place? “I know I get hooked into a manuscript when I draw my breath in because someone has written something so honest and beautiful, or has captured a feeling on such a visceral level. Of course, all of the books I choose to work on have elements of what I like in particular: funny, likable (or unlikable) characters, interesting places, situations that ring true.”

Here’s an example of a line that does just that, from the book Neville that Karas illustrated, written by Phantom Tollbooth author Norton Juster: “Nobody had asked [Neville] about moving. They’d just told him. ‘You’ll love it,’ they’d said. That’s what they always said when they knew he wouldn’t love something.”

On Thursday, May 23 at 6:30 p.m. at the Staatsburg Library, Karas will discuss what it is like to be an author and illustrator and do some illustrations and demonstrations. His favorite medium to work in? “Pencil. It’s the tool I use to start visualizing with, when I have to see the idea that’s going around in my head. I also finish many of my pictures with pencil. Pencil can be an expressive single stroke or light, subtle quivery lines or deep and bottomless dense shading. It’s the single tool I can use to go to all of those places.”

Karas’ presentation is free and open to the public of all ages. The Staatsburg Library is located at 70 Old Post Road in Staatsburgh. For more information, call (845) 889-4683 or visit www.staatsburglibrary.org. To learn more about the author/illustrator, visit www.gbriankaras.com.

Jazz Exploration program at Bethel Woods

As Bix Beiderbecke said, “One thing I like about jazz, kid, is that I don’t know what’s going to happen next. Do you?” If your family loves jazz, or you would like to introduce this wonderful genre of improvised music to them, check out the Jazz Exploration program at Bethel Woods this weekend.

On Sunday, May 19 at 12:30 p.m., participants can learn about the history of jazz, hearing stories behind some of the songs and comparing rhythms and sounds with a hands-on art activity inspired by painter Piet Mondrian’s jazz-influenced work. A performance of jazz will follow at 2 p.m.

This event is free and open to all ages, but tickets are required. Bethel Woods is located at 200 Hurd Road in Bethel. For tickets or more information, call (845) 295-2521 or visit www.bethelwoodscenter.org.

Homeschool orchestra Muset performs in Lake Katrine

Another musical event worth noting this week is the performance by Muset, our area homeschool orchestra. This all-ages concert takes place on Wednesday, May 22 at 6:30 p.m. in the Fountain of Life Church building at 71 Old Kings Highway in Lake Katrine. Smaller ensembles as well as the full orchestra will perform.

Admission to the concert is free, but donations are always welcomed. For more information about the concert or to inquire about joining this group in the fall, e-mail muset@earthlink.net.

The Nora Ephron film Julie & Julia, which starred Meryl Streep as famed TV chef Julia Child, was partially based on a book called My Life in France that was co-written by Child and her great-nephew, Alex Prud’homme. One day during lunch with his Aunt Julia, a conversation about bottled water propelled Prud’homme along another creative path: one that led to an intensive three-year investigation of water issues. The journalist found himself 600 feet beneath Manhattan exploring New York City’s new Water Tunnel No. 3 and traveling to Las Vegas, New Orleans, California and Alaska in pursuit of evidence for his contention that fresh water is the defining resource of the 21st century.

The result was a book titled The Ripple Effect: The Fate of Fresh Water in the 21st Century. If you’ve ever speculated that a day is coming when the peoples of this planet will be warring over fresh water for drinking and for growing crops, rather than over oil, you won’t want to miss Prud’homme’s upcoming talk at the Beacon Institute for Rivers and Estuaries. The event will take place on Thursday, May 16 at 7 p.m. at the Institute’s Center for Environmental Innovation and Education, located at 199 Dennings Avenue in Beacon. Admission is free and open to the public, but advance online registration is requested at http://events.r20.constantcontact.com/register/event?oeidk=a07e729q3byf96a9ae9.

Prud’homme remains convinced that positive outcomes are achievable even after his immersion in realities like water scarcity, political corruption, inefficiency, our crumbling water infrastructure and climate change. “We’re on the verge of a great period of innovation and opportunity; however, we need to be intentional,” says the author. “The Dutch have an environmentally friendly system which provides protection from a once-in-a-10,000-year storm. Singapore is probably the most efficient user of water. But the success of water programs in countries like Holland and Singapore is less about technology and more about policy, funding and most importantly about public education.”

The book The Ripple Effect has gone on to inspire a documentary film titled Last Call at the Oasis, which was developed, financed and executive-produced by the company responsible for An Inconvenient Truth and Food, Inc. The Beacon Institute will host a screening of Last Call at the Oasis on Thursday, June 20. For more information about both of these events, please call (845) 838-1600 or visit www.bire.org/events.

The Ripple Effect with Alex Prud’homme, Thursday, May 16, 7 p.m., free, Beacon Institute for Rivers and Estuaries, Center for Environmental Innovation and Education, 199 Dennings Avenue, Beacon; (845) 838-1600, www.bire.org.

(Photo by Dion Ogust)

The Woodstock Film Festival won’t be back in town until October, but in the meantime it’s gearing up for the 14th annual event this fall with a fundraising “Taste of Woodstock” on Wednesday, May 22 from 6 to 9 p.m. All proceeds benefit the Woodstock Film Festival and the Hudson Valley Film Commission, who are in the midst of a capital campaign to raise funds to transform the film center at 13 Rock City Road to make the Festival more easily accessible to visitors.

Taste of Woodstock is the inaugural event of what may become an annual tradition. Participants who purchase tickets receive a wristband enabling them to stroll around town and try samples of cuisine at over 20 participating area restaurants and other venues that will host edibles from the restaurants that are too far to walk to.

Tickets cost $50 if purchased before Friday, May 10 or $70 advance purchase after that date, available online at www.woodstockfilmfestival.com. Tickets on the day of the event will cost $80.

The routes to follow will be marked on the map received at the start of the event at the 13 Rock City Road film office. Event organizer and Film Festival Board member Laurel Andretta says that there’ll be a wine- and beer-tasting there, and then people can follow the routes laid out to sample appetizer-size portions from restaurateurs and businesses that include Bread Alone, Blue Mountain Bistro, Oriole9, Cucina, Garden Café on the Green, New World Home Cooking, Yum Yum Noodle Bar, Mountain Gate Indian Restaurant, the Red Onion, Little Apple, Woodstock Wines & Liquors, Sunfrost Farms, Joshua’s Café, Sunflower Natural Foods Market, Catskill Mountain Pizza, Corner Cupboard, Giovanni’s Pizza Grill and Landau Grill.

Radio Woodstock 100.1 WDST will play music all evening in the Village Green, and water will be provided by the Binnewater Ice Company. Beer will be donated by Keegan Ales, and all of the participating venues are donating the food, says Andretta. As an added incentive to hit all the participating spots, those who do so will vote at the end of the evening for their favorites, and will be entered into a raffle to win two tickets to each of the parties held Thursday through Saturday nights during the Woodstock Film Festival in October.

The funds raised will help the Woodstock Film Festival continue to premiere exceptional films, host emerging and established professionals in the movie industry and create stimulating, innovative programming year-round. Proceeds will enable necessary renovations to the film office, where they can now hold workshops, meetings, casting calls and have a box office open year-round for merchandise.

Taste of Woodstock, Wednesday, May 22, 6-9 p.m., $50-$80,Woodstock Film Festival and Hudson Valley Film Commission office, 13 Rock City Road, Woodstock; (845) 810-0131, www.woodstockfilmfestival.com.