
Rock doc: Steve Weinman’s Shawangunk trail guide
Twenty years ago, when Dr. Steve Weinman wrote his 68-page non-profit pocket book A Rock with a View: Hiking, Biking and Skiing The Shawangunk Mountains, he had no idea that the trail guide would sell…
Richie Havens memorial at Woodstock Festival site
We had tickets, but WNEW-FM’s Scott Muni was saying that there were already 20,000 people there. This was on Wednesday. The Woodstock Music and Arts Fair up in Bethel was to begin…
Lauding the mischievous mage of Main Street at MannyFest
There is Manny’s, as in Manny’s Art Supply store on New Paltz’s main drag. And there is Marilyn Golgoski, the proprietress of the said Manny’s. And there is Manny himself: one Manny “Buddha”…
King Lear at Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival
Poor King Lear. He’s fading fast and simply wants to divide the kingdom into three parts, with each going to his three daughters, Goneril (the oldest), Regan (the middle child) and his youngest,…

Taking Stock: documentary of Magnum co-founder this Sunday
When dealing with the “iconic” photographs of Magnum’s Dennis Stock, it is best to remember – quoting Stock from Hanna Sawka’s no-nonsense, straight-ahead film portrait of the artist – that “Every picture should…
Floyd Patterson II stars in Paul Robeson at SUNY-New Paltz
When I was teaching for Marist College in the New York State prison system in the early 1980s, it was Black History Month, and I asked my black students what they knew about…

Bob Draffen retrospective
I hadn’t seen Bob Draffen in close to 20 years when I ran into his wife Ann at a show in High Falls of works by the late Jan Sawka. Draffen, Sawka and…

Jan Sawka’s big visions writ small
Polish-born High Falls artist Jan Sawka liked to think big: big ideas, big projects. Big as in the sets for the Grateful Dead’s 25th anniversary tour in the 1980s. Big as in a…