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Otherworldly: The Five Points Band secret is out
When I ask, “What’s the significance of Five Points?” A demonic smile creeps over Robin’s face and there’s no stopping him until it’s over… In the early 19th century the five points of Manhattan met at...
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When the Turnau Opera Players reigned in Woodstock
Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro — (receiving a standing ovation!) left to right: Yehudi Wyner, Carolyn Chrisman, Spiro Malas, Lucille Sulem, Nancy Wyner. The Byrdcliffe Theater, that small, remarkably...
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Darkness Doesn’t Die
(Photo by Tad Wise) Tales of olde Woodstock are awash with witches. Interference from these quarters were more vexing than life-threatening, making the earliest and most infamous of horrors reported...
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Robert Burke Warren talks Buddy Holly, Uncle Rock and The Dumb Waiter
Robert Burke Warren and Clay Tyson in The Dumb Waiter. Robert Burke Warren is a married, working dad who makes a solid living (I wish…maybe “works steadily”) as rock star for the sandbox set as Uncle...
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Fletcher show recalls the paintings and the life of Julio De Diego
Julio De Diego, Landscape, c. 1940, Oil on board Over the course of an epic life Julio De Diego, one of the more flamboyant Woodstock characters of any era, supported himself as a costume, scenery and...
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Hinchey edges into retirement
It’s easy to forget that after 38 years of uninterrupted public service — to the state, to what used to be the 22nd Congressional District here in New York, to the nation he so loves, and as a friend...
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Forbidden Fruits: Paw’s Tastiest Winterfest
Performing Arts of Woodstock [PAW] will be 50 next season. At the moment that feels like 49 consecutive miracles in a row. Despite a solid string of very strong shows, lousy logistics dog the company,...
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J.R.R. Tolkien and the Ballantines
J. R. R. Tolkien with Betty and Ian Ballantine. Two weeks ago the first installment of Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit was sliced out of first place at theaters by The Chain Saw Massacre, and thus the...
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Hitting things for a living: Eric Parker
Eric Parker (photo by Dion Ogust) Many people in this world brag and shouldn’t. Others never brag though we sometimes wish they would. Case in point: The late Larry Hoppen once berated Eric Parker, who...
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Lives of the painters: Andrew Dasburg
Andrew Dasburg, Charles Rosen and George Bellows. (Historical Society of Woodstock Archives) From the start Andrew Dasburg was the ring-leader of “The Rock City Radicals,” that group, including Konrad...
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‘…without passion there is nothing.’
William Pachner at age 98. In a corner of what was then the Austro-Hungarian Empire, a five year old Jewish boy blinds himself in the left eye with a kitchen knife while sharpening a pencil. The...
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Richard Ballantine
Richard Ballantine, author, publisher, human power advocate and “cyclist guru” to the world, died peacefully at a hospice center in London on the twenty ninth of May, with Sherry, his wife of 39 years...
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Parallel lines: A letter from Taos
Taos in late May. (photo by Tad Wise) In 1898 Taos, New Mexico was a very small village attached to one of the larger surviving Pueblos in the U.S. That summer a couple of landscape painters were...
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Land Conservancy honors Hinchey
The Woodstock Land Conservancy’s second annual “Vernal Fling,” held at the ever-remarkable Maverick Concert Hall Saturday, May 12, paid special tribute to Congressman Maurice Hinchey’s never-flagging...
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The Fletcher Gallery turns 20
Tom Fletcher in his gallery. (Dion Ogust) If you love fresh bread befriend your local baker. On a certain level that’s the relationship Tom Fletcher and his gallery represent for me and people like me...
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Otherworldly: The Five Points Band secret is out
When I ask, “What’s the significance of Five Points?” A demonic smile creeps over Robin’s face and there’s no stopping him until it’s over… In the early 19th century the five points of Manhattan met at...
View ArticleClik here to view.
When the Turnau Opera Players reigned in Woodstock
Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro — (receiving a standing ovation!) left to right: Yehudi Wyner, Carolyn Chrisman, Spiro Malas, Lucille Sulem, Nancy Wyner. The Byrdcliffe Theater, that small, remarkably...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Darkness Doesn’t Die
(Photo by Tad Wise) Tales of olde Woodstock are awash with witches. Interference from these quarters were more vexing than life-threatening, making the earliest and most infamous of horrors reported...
View ArticleClik here to view.
A Man For All Seasons: Kevin Sweeney is dead at 83
Kevin Sweeney Kevin Sweeney hitch-hiked to Woodstock when he was 19 years old, 64 years ago. His death last Wednesday at his home on Baumgarten Road ended a self-made man’s extraordinary run as...
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Pele the conqueror!
Pele deLappe, by her father, Wes deLappe Part I During much of the last century it wasn’t so rare a thing for an extraordinary talent to pass through town, crystallizing a moment in art. Such work soon...
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