Highlands Current Audio Stories

But is it smarter to ask for the maximum hike?

While the Haldane school board debated on Tuesday (March 4) whether to take advantage of the full property-tax increase allowed by the state for 2025-26, the Garrison district said on Wednesday it would ask for 2.2 percent less.

In either case, voters will decide on May 20 whether to approve the budgets, which as of this week were $30.2 million at Haldane and $14.5 million at Garrison.

At Haldane, the budget proposed by interim Superintendent Carl Albano would translate to a 2.8 percent tax increase, the same approved last year. But the district's maximum allowable for 2025-26 under a complicated state tax-cap formula is 3.38 percent. If the district asked voters for the maximum, it would mean another $132,000 for the bottom line.

Albano said that he believes Haldane can go with the lower increase, especially after voters last year approved an increase of 6.95 percent over three years to pay for a $28.4 million capital project. "We are mindful that the community supported a pretty significant tax increase," he said. "Therefore, we are doing our best to be efficient with the operating budget."

In response, Trustee Ezra Clementson wondered if failing to take advantage of the full cap was shortsighted. "I want to make sure that what we're doing is not unduly causing a problem down the road," he said.

Clementson noted that failing to budget $132,000 for 2025-26 translates to a reduction of more than $600,000 over five years, a financial decision that the board could come to regret, especially with higher inflation.

"When you're short, you have to pierce the cap, which is not easy to do," said Clementson. Under state law, a district can raise taxes over the cap only if 60 percent of voters approve, rather than a simple majority.

"Our No. 1 role is to provide opportunities for children," said Clementson. "By making budgets that go to the cap, you're doing the most financially sound thing you can possibly do with regular majority votes."

Maggie Valentine, the vice president, said she was concerned about raising taxes on top of the capital spending. "There are so many people on fixed incomes," she said. "Not everybody has a dual income. There are people really stressed out about" the tax hike.

Like Clementson, Sean McNall and Michelle Kupper wondered about the long-term impact of not raising taxes to the max. Peggy Clements, the president, noted the district has not, during her 10-year tenure, ever proposed a budget under the cap, which New York State enacted in 2012.

Following the discussion, Albano said he would bring a more detailed spending plan with the maximum cap to the March 18 meeting. He said "there's a long list of things that we could do" with another $132,000, such as replacing fluorescent lights in classrooms with more-efficient LEDs.

The draft budget presented on Tuesday includes funding for a science-of-reading curriculum ($50,000); software to improve student outcomes ($10,000); a new pre-K program ($100,000); special education funding for out-of-district placements ($200,000); increased field trip spending ($20,000); a softball field dugout ($20,000); classroom air conditioners to comply with new state maximum temperature requirement ($30,000); auditorium stage and performing arts equipment ($30,000); and a transportation system analysis ($20,000).

The Haldane budget anticipates that the district will receive $4.4 million in expense-based state aid, a reduction of $161,000 from 2024-25, and an additional $58,000 in Foundation Aid.

Garrison district

At the Garrison school board meeting on Wednesday, Superintendent Greg Stowell proposed a budget that includes a 3.58 percent tax increase, or 2.2 percent less than the 5.78 percent cap set by the state for the district for 2025-26. Last year, Garrison raised taxes by 4.44 percent, the maximum.

The proposed 3.58 percent increase "is reflective of what we need, is respectful to the taxpayer and continues to promote the high...

Renews support for Cold Spring 'pause'

The Philipstown Town Board on Wednesday (Feb. 26), by a 4-1 vote, approved more than 100 comments on a draft environmental impact statement for the Hudson Highlands Fjord Trail and a letter renewing a request to pause construction of a boardwalk between Dockside and Little Stony Point parks.

In addition to an 18-page document containing its comments about the state's Draft Generic Environmental Impact Statement (DGEIS), the Town Board approved, by the same 4-1 vote, comments crafted by the Conservation Board in response to HHFT's proposal.

Board Member Judy Farrell, who said she does not support delaying or pausing the Dockside-to-Little-Stony Point segment, cast the lone "no" votes. Completion of the southern end would boost accessibility to the riverfront and there are "a lot of people in the community who have been waiting a long time" for the trail, she said.

"Of course there are going to be problems with this project, but I think we can work them out as it progresses," Farrell said.

The HHFT plan comprises a 7.5-mile trail between Cold Spring and Beacon, with a segment containing a boardwalk elevated over the river between Dockside and Little Stony Point. It also includes a bridge over the Metro-North tracks north of the Breakneck tunnel, new platforms at the Breakneck train station, expanded parking and the redevelopment of Dutchess Manor into a visitor's center.

State parks, which is the lead agency for the project, released the 700-page draft in December and set a deadline of Tuesday (March 4) for public comments.

A consultant with Tim Miller Associates, which reviewed the DGEIS for Philipstown, on Feb. 19 shared some of its concerns, which largely mirror those expressed by elected officials in Cold Spring and Nelsonville. (Update: The full document was released by the town on Monday, March 3.)

Primarily, the DGEIS is "lacking in details," said Steven Marino, a senior environmental planner with the firm. For example, he said the document does not sufficiently address increased traffic as the Fjord Trail draws more visitors or the dispersal of sediment when more than 400 concrete pilings are installed in the Hudson River for the section between Dockside and Little Stony Point.

Marino also said that HHFT's conclusions about the boardwalk's impact on riverviews along Fair Street and Route 9D between Breakneck and Cold Spring "don't seem to tell the whole story" and need more analysis. He said there are questions about whether the width of the walkway will accommodate pedestrians, bicyclists and other users traveling in both directions at the same time.

"It is our feeling that, in some ways, the presented DGEIS is too lacking in details or so interested in moving the project forward that some aspects of the plan, especially the potential impacts on community character, congestion and quality-of-life issues are overlooked or downplayed," he said on Feb. 19.

On Feb. 26, Van Tassel read a letter the Town Board approved sending with the comments. It reiterates the town's stance that the southern segment should end at Little Stony Point. The town also requested that HHFT pay for emergency services along the trail and calls for a two-year "purpose pause" after the phases north of Breakneck are completed to assess their effect on reducing congestion and traffic.

"If the train station and Breakneck work, if Dutchess Manor works, we come back to the table and say, 'Let's see how we can bring the trail to Dockside in a reduced version, in a full version,'" he said.

Applicants could receive up to $125K for dwelling units

Beacon and seven other municipalities in Dutchess County have been awarded $6 million from a state program to help low- and moderate-income residents construct or upgrade accessory dwelling units.

Applications for the funding from Plus One ADU should be available later this year, after the Poughkeepsie nonprofit that will administer the program locally finalizes contracts with the state and municipalities.

Single-family homeowners who qualify will be able to apply for up to $125,000 per project. The other Dutchess municipalities awarded this funding are the towns of Amenia, North East, Pine Plains, Poughkeepsie, Stanford, Union Vale and the Village of Rhinebeck.

On Wednesday (Feb. 26), City Administrator Chris White said he was unsure whether the state or the nonprofit, Hudson River Housing, would evaluate applications. The city's role will be to promote the program, he said.

The $6 million award, announced Feb. 14, is part of the third round of funding for the Plus One program; the state allocated $85 million in the 2022-23 budget. Applicants who receive funding will be required to confirm for 10 years or longer that the ADU is being used as housing and not short-term rentals, with site visits every two years.

Gov. Kathy Hochul has supported ADUs as a relatively easy way to create affordable housing. They are often used to house an older relative but can provide income if used as long-term rentals.

The City Council on Monday began a discussion of ways to further simplify Beacon's ADU approval process. In 2022, the council approved zoning-code amendments to streamline the lengthy Planning Board review that had been required for ADUs, but permits have been issued for only four units since then. Twenty-nine were approved in the three decades after the city began allowing ADUs in 1989.

"We are not seeing the uptake of ADUs that was maybe thought [would happen] when these regulations were originally developed," said Natalie Quinn, the city's planning consultant. "I think there was a thought that it would be hugely popular and there would be one on every other lot." Because of the low participation, many municipalities are trying to make approvals easier, she said.

Monday's meeting gave council members the opportunity to weigh in on several questions about regulations and ways to simplify them. The council seemed inclined to allow ADUs on any lot with a single-family structure. Currently, accessory units are not allowed in the Linkage or Fishkill Creek Development zones, among other areas.

Council members appeared OK with keeping a requirement that the property owner must live in the primary structure or the ADU. They agreed to lower the minimum accessory apartment size from 200 square feet to match the state building code, which is 150 square feet. The city's current maximum is 1,000 square feet.

The council also seemed to agree that some applications - for example, those for ADUs above a certain size or requiring a new structure rather than a renovation - should require Planning Board review.

Council members leaned toward eliminating the requirement of one parking space per unit but said that, if an application must go to the Planning Board, a parking requirement should be considered. Finally, they agreed to continue requiring a $750 application fee and $3,000 escrow payment for Planning Board applications to cover the time of city attorneys and planning and engineering consultants.

Despite those restrictions, by streamlining the process so that the building inspector can review and approve most applications, "you're removing the application fee, the escrow and engineering fees" for applicants, noted City Attorney Nick Ward-Willis. "That's where you're getting your most significant savings."

Ward-Willis said he would bring a draft law to the next council workshop on March 10. If the council approves, it would schedule a public hearing for feedback before voting.

East Mai...

Local environmental groups react to freezes and rollbacks

In a whirlwind of executive orders on his first day in office, newly re-elected President Donald Trump ordered that the U.S. drop out of the international Paris Climate Agreement, end subsidies for electric vehicles, halt approval of new wind farms, block the enforcement of environmental justice laws, shut down the American Climate Corps and to reconsider whether the greenhouse gases that drive climate change are pollutants, settled science for over a century.

"The failure of a lot of people was believing that Trump's campaign rhetoric was more exaggerated than what his actions would be," said David Toman, executive director at Hudson River Sloop Clearwater. "Nobody in the country should assume differently anymore."

Officials at Clearwater, Scenic Hudson and Riverkeeper - three major environmental nonprofits based in the Hudson Valley - said they knew from Trump's first term support for fossil-fuel energy and his promises and affiliations on the campaign trail, that a second term would be difficult for the environmental movement.

There was also concern about Project 2025, which many felt provided an outline for what a second Trump administration would undertake, said Pete Lopez of Scenic Hudson, a former regional director for the Environmental Protection Agency. An online project called Project 2025 Tracker estimates that a third of the plan's objectives have been enacted since Trump returned to the White House on Jan. 20, including eliminating the EPA Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights.

Local environmental groups were prepared to see regulatory rollbacks. But funding freezes and layoffs - Trump said in a cabinet meeting on Feb. 26 that EPA staffing will be cut by 65 percent over the next month, although the White House said he meant to say the budget would be cut by 65 percent - had led them to reconsider what they will be able to accomplish.

"This all just feels really reckless," said Tracy Brown, the executive director of Riverkeeper. Her organization had finally started to get federal funding for an ongoing project to remove the thousands of abandoned dams that litter Hudson River tributaries, hampering fish migration and water quality. "These are expensive to remove," she said. Thanks to a $3.8 million grant from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, Riverkeeper has begun work on the removal of a dam in Quassaick Creek in Newburgh.

But with this type of grant, the government doesn't provide the money up front. Instead, groups pay for the work and are reimbursed. Brown said they heard the funds were frozen, and then that they weren't. "We won't know for sure until we submit our next round of expenses," she said.

Riverkeeper's annual operating budget is $5 million. Doing $3.8 million worth of work, and not being paid for it, would be disastrous. "This starts to create a real risk for groups," she said.

Toman decided the risk was too great for Clearwater, which abandoned its efforts to secure federal grants to pay for maintenance that the Coast Guard requires on its eponymous sloop every five to seven years.

Lopez said that Scenic Hudson is trying to figure out what promised funds it still has access to. One project in jeopardy is the connection of the Westchester RiverWalk to the Tarrytown MTA station.

There's also indirect funding. Much of Clearwater's revenue comes from schools that book educational sails. The group is only now pulling itself out of a tailspin caused by schools canceling trips after the 2008 financial crisis and the pandemic. Trump has said he plans to block any federal funding to schools that have vaccine mandates and to eliminate the Department of Education. Toman and others fear that could create funding squeezes that eliminate student excursions.

Lopez said that Scenic Hudson is structured so that none of its employee salaries are dependent on federal grants. The same can't be said for the agencies it works with. ...

Officials envision replica of lost structure

As her finger slowly moved over each face in a 65-year-old photo of 10 children inside a classroom, Maryanne Cavaccini began reeling off names.

Her cousin Joanie, Evelyn, Marie, Billy, Peter, Lenny. She named three more before stopping at a little girl in a print dress, a second grader. "Yeah, that's me," she said.

Memories, photos, news clippings and an empty lot are all that remain of the Little Red Schoolhouse, which stood for 129 years at Route 9D and Red Schoolhouse Road in Fishkill, just north of Beacon. At the time it closed in 1959, when its veteran teacher retired, the one-room structure held seven grades - "pre-first" to six. Students continued their education in the Beacon school district.

The building was torn down in 1971, but there is talk of building a replica - if anyone can figure out who owns the property. A title search by the state in 1977 failed to identify the owner, but the Town of Fishkill has renewed the effort so it can preserve the site for visitors. "The more attractions we have, the more we can celebrate our history," said Town Supervisor Ozzy Albra.

The school's history began with its construction in 1830 on property owned by the Verplanck family, large landholders who also donated the property for Stony Kill Farm, which sits across Route 9D. Elizabeth Travis, a Glenham native and Beacon High School graduate , was the teacher for 47 years, from 1912 until it closed in 1959. With children in seven grades occupying one room, Travis called one class at a time to a front bench. "When she was doing a lesson with one grade, we had to be quiet and do our studies," said Cavaccini, then known as Maryanne Greggo.

Cavaccini entered as a kindergarten student in 1956, when the Little Red Schoolhouse may have been the only remaining one-room school in Dutchess County. Her brother Frank also attended the school, which drew students from Baxtertown, Red Schoolhouse and Stony Kill roads, as well as Route 9D.

On Tuesday (Feb. 25), Cavaccini recalled the DeSoto that her teacher drove, the potbelly stove that provided heat and a swing students hung to fling themselves into a pond. One newspaper report credited Travis with saving the structure from a fire by organizing a bucket brigade of students armed with water from a stream.

A truck filled with candy once overturned outside the school, spilling its contents and drawing students outside, said Cavaccini. "We were screaming, 'We got the candy,' " she said. "The teacher came out screaming, 'You can't do that.' Well, we did it."

When the school closed, Cavaccini was about to enter the third grade. She transferred to South Avenue Elementary and later graduated from Beacon High School. Her career included stops in the San Francisco area and jobs at Central Hudson, the Stewart Air National Guard Base and the Castle Point VA Medical Center.

Five years after the schoolhouse was demolished, Elizabeth Travis attended a ceremony marking the installation of a sign made by students at Glenham Elementary School in Fishkill, which is part of the Beacon district. She died in 1984 at Highland Hospital in Beacon.

Last week, a photo posted on Facebook showed students standing outside the school. It drew nearly 100 comments, including from Cavaccini and people whose parents or other relatives attended. Someone remembered their family buying strawberries in the summer from Travis, who ran a farm with her husband. Many of the commenters denounced the decision 54 years ago to demolish the school.

"That could have been a historical building," said Cavaccini.

The Landisi siblings are hoops standouts for Beacon.

Their mom was among the best ever to play for Haldane.

Jen Moran Landisi, 48, oversees Beacon's Catholic Youth Organization (CYO) basketball program, which has 200 players in kindergarten through the eighth grade. Otherwise, she is probably watching her daughter, Reilly, and her son, Ryan, play for Beacon High School. The girls' and boys' teams compete on Monday (March 3) in the first round of the state tournament.

Jen knows a bit about being a standout. By the time she graduated from Haldane High School in 1994, she had set a scoring record with 1,776 points that held for 14 years until Brittany Shields scored 1,945. (Reilly has 1,293 points for Beacon; she is also an All-State soccer player who will compete this fall for SUNY Oneonta.)

Described as a "whirlwind of hustle" when she was inducted into the Haldane Athletic Hall of Fame in 2017, Jen led the Blue Devils to three state Final Fours. Her teams went 97-15. She began playing for the varsity in eighth grade, was named first-team All-State as a senior and went on to score nearly 1,000 points for St. Thomas Aquinas College in Sparkill.

"I remember the gym [at Haldane] was always full - that's not always the case for girls' games," Jen recalled. She said a running joke at the time was that the best time for burglars in Cold Spring was during state finals weekend, when the entire village decamped to Glens Falls. "It was the community support I remember most," she says, "and having a really great coach."

That was Ken Thomas, who, she said, "knew the game, made us love it and didn't put up with much." She and her teammates were inspired by the 1989 girls' team, which won the school's first state title. (Haldane also won in 1996, 1998, 2000 and 2008.) "We wanted to do just as well," Jen said. Young fans also helped motivate the team. "Win or lose, they'd ask for our autographs," she said.

Jen began playing at age 5 in the Philipstown Recreation League, with her mom and dad as coaches. "I don't know if I had a choice, with them coaching," she said. "But there was no question I loved it."

Her children also began playing at an early age in the Beacon CYO program. "I loved it right away," says Reilly, 18. "I always wanted to go practice, looked forward to games and my best friends were on the team."

While Reilly feels ball handling and playmaking are her strengths, she needs to "pull up and shoot more, instead of always driving to the basket." The Bulldogs enter the tournament at 15-5, with a 12-game winning streak that included a win at previously undefeated Pine Bush after losing to the same team by 20 points earlier in the season.

Reilly said she especially appreciates rival games, such as the Battle of the Tunnel series against Haldane. "That game is always fun," she said. "There's a larger than usual crowd, and if we win, we get a big trophy!"

She was diplomatic regarding whether she or her younger brother, a junior center who averages nine points and 5.5 rebounds for the 16-4 boys' team, is the better player. "We play different positions," she said.

Ryan also started basketball in Beacon's CYO, during the first grade, and also loved the game immediately. "It's fast-paced, so it can't really get boring, plus I've been playing with the same group of kids since I was little," he said. "It's fun when you have a team that's good and knows how to play together."

He said Beacon's biggest rival is New Paltz, which beat them 73-66 early in the season. New Paltz was also the opponent in the game he remembers most after 2½ years on the varsity, in the state tournament when the Bulldogs won despite having one of their best players out sick.

He concedes his sister is probably the better ballplayer. "I'm just bigger," he said, with a smile.

Mom said she squirms a bit when watching her kids play. "I'm a nervous wreck because they're my babies!" she said. "I just want them to do well, for themselves."

Editor's Note: Born in South Carolina, Daniel Pruitt attended school in Brockway, Beacon and Glenham before graduating from Beacon High School in 1965 and earning degrees from SUNY Stony Brook and The New School for Social Research in New York City. Retired from IBM, he lives in Dunedin, Florida.

Below are excerpts from an article that Pruitt researched and wrote in response to our five-part series on the history of Black people in the Highlands, Always Present, Never Seen, published in 2022. Pruitt felt the series could have included more about local Black history from 1850 to 1930. "I felt a personal need to connect the present, which I knew, with the past, which I did not," he wrote. "This past history was never present and never seen as such over my lifetime."

We printed an earlier installment in August. Both are excerpted from his book, Lost and Found: Beacon's Black Community 1850-1930, which will be published in June.

I grew up in Brockway, a company town for a brickyard that didn't roll out its first products until 1888, 50 years late to the brickmaking party in the Hudson Valley. Edwin Brockway earned his reputation for brick manufacturing in Haverstraw; his purchase of William Mortimer's country seat in 1886 in Fishkill was supposedly for retirement, but his sons pushed him to open another brickyard.

Likely inspired by what Homer Ramsdell was doing with the excavation, landfill and physical plant construction at Denning's Point, Brockway built a peninsula on 48 acres of Hudson River surface, using New York City garbage as landfill, and topped it with clay pits, brick machines, kilns and drying yards.

He likely filled his workforce with seasonal Black sharecroppers and tenant farmers from North Carolina and Virginia. After brickmaking became year-round, he coaxed those workers to work year-round. He limited their interaction with the white residents of Fishkill Landing (which was combined in 1913 with Matteawan to create Beacon) by building a village to house and tend to their basic needs (school, store, post office).

Today, nothing remains of Brockway except the railway trestle that once brought excavated clay drawn by a small locomotive (we called it a "dinky") into the brickyard. Brockway's beginning was secretive, its existence plantation-like and its end by bankruptcy a loss for owner and worker alike.

My parents came to Beacon in 1946 to work at the Castle Point VA hospital. My dad's parents, losing the family home in Spartanburg, South Carolina, to a suspicious fire, joined them shortly after. Brockway provided not only Black jobs but Black housing in those duplexes with small areas to garden for the industrious. Pregnant with me, my mom went back to her home in Helena, South Carolina, in 1947 for my midwife birth and first months of life.

When my family arrived, Brockway was full of chamber pots and outhouses where toilets were flushed - not often enough - with lye. Water was gathered by the pail from a pipe protruding from a hill and drank at home from dippers. The main road turned to dirt as it snaked down from Route 9D. Clothes were washed in tubs and hung on lines, leaving them with a pinkish tint from the brick dust. Saturday night baths were taken outside in galvanized tubs, heated with kettle water; showers were taken in the rain with a bar of soap.

On my first day of kindergarten, my dad gave me a Mickey Mouse watch that, under no circumstances, was I to take off my wrist. He told me I would be late for school once Mickey's big hand got to the 12 (I was not yet able to tell time). After a playmate asked whether the watch was waterproof, I found myself sticking my arm in the bucket that caught water at the spring that afternoon. Mickey was not waterproof.

The school in Brockway was not a one-room schoolhouse, although I thought so for most of my life. There were three rooms manned by three teachers at an earlier time. When I attended, there was only one room in use, overseen by Mrs. Sarah Taylor, fu...

Mild winters spell trouble for iceboating

John Sperr, 75, doesn't need scientific reports to understand how climate change has affected iceboating on the Hudson River.

"This year we've gone out seven or eight times," says Sperr. In the "good years" - three to four decades ago - he would sail 35 to 40 times per winter. "I could depend on the pond in my backyard freezing by Dec. 9, but as time went on that was no longer true. We rarely get a good season of ice."

The Rhinebeck resident began iceboating in 1982, "a particularly spectacular year on the Hudson," he recalls. "We could sail on 26 miles of ice from Hyde Park to Germantown," in Columbia County.

When the ice is good, the experience is amazing, he says. "You have to be smart, making your own decisions about how to get from point A to B. You have the wind in your hair, you hear the clickety-clack as you move along, you're having a good time with friends, enjoying the beauty of the river."

There has been good ice this season near Athens, in Greene County, in the western channel around a small island off the City of Hudson, across the river. The U.S. Coast Guard breaks the ice in the eastern channel.

The mile-wide Orange Lake, northwest of Newburgh, is another popular site. It freezes more consistently than the Hudson, Sperr says. Tivoli Bay in Dutchess County was an iceboating center, although not in recent years.

Iceboats date to the 17th century in the Netherlands and the Gulf of Riga between Latvia and Estonia, where they transported goods before becoming popular as pleasure craft that Europeans dubbed "ice yachts." In the 18th century, Dutch settlers along the Hudson added runners to their boats, enabling winter transport of goods and people over the ice. In 1790, Oliver Booth of Poughkeepsie added runners to a wooden box and a rudder to create what many consider the prototype for recreational ice boats.

The Poughkeepsie Ice Yacht Club, founded in 1861, was the first of its kind in the U.S. Within five years, a local newspaper reported there were more than 100 ice yachts on the Hudson, with clubs from Newburgh to Albany. In 1885, after a dispute, members of the Poughkeepsie group left to form the Hudson River Ice Yacht Club. Its first commodore was John Roosevelt, an uncle of future President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

John Roosevelt and his Hyde Park neighbor, Archibald Rogers, were among the nation's best iceboat builders and captains. Two of their boats, Icicle and Jack Frost, won the sport's most prestigious competition, the Ice Yacht Challenge Pennant of America, nine times between them after The Phantom, sailing out of the New Hamburg Ice Yacht Club, took home the 30-foot silk banner in the inaugural race in 1881.

The years 1880 to 1910 are considered the golden age of Hudson River iceboating. During that era, even in a moderate breeze, iceboats sped along at speeds of 70 mph, outracing trains on the riverfront tracks. For a brief period, iceboats were the fastest vehicles in the world. By 1908 the Hudson River Ice Yacht Club had 52 yachts, including The Hawk, owned by the club's vice commodore, FDR.

The wooden boats gave way in the 1920s to streamlined craft developed in the Midwest around the Great Lakes. In the early 1960s, the club enjoyed a resurgence led by Ray Ruge, a Cornwall resident who rescued old boats. Today, the club has about 30 yachts, including Spider (Sperr's 26-footer) and the Jack Frost, which has 800 feet of sail. Its body has been rebuilt but the cockpit is original. (Its companion, Icicle, is owned by the Hudson River Maritime Museum in Kingston.)

During one outing on the Jack Frost, on the river in Columbia County, "the wind came up suddenly and threw the two guys out of the cockpit" onto the ice, Sperr says. The men scrambled back aboard and yelled to Sperr and others in nearby boats to join them; they needed more weight.

"Four of us jumped on," he says. They turned the boat downwind, "accelerated through a broad reach, the runner plank ...

Artists and musician team up for BAU show

There's plenty of cross-pollination behind the scenes at the Poetry of Place exhibit scheduled to open March 8 with a reception at the Beacon Artist Union (BAU) Gallery.

Next month will be mixed-media artist and BAU member Karen Allen's turn to display in the showcase gallery visible from the street, and she invited Jenn Wiggs, who lives in Missouri, to share the space.

"Jenn said that she always wanted a show in New York, so I found one," says Allen, who resides in Westchester County.

Allen discovered Wiggs' work online during the pandemic, and they gelled. During regular virtual visits, they discuss approach, technique and philosophy.

Another of Allen's partnerships will also be on display - with vibraphonist Chris Dingman. They met in October at an Ossining art fair after Dingman paused to study one of Allen's pieces. "I saw him ponder it for a while and then circle around it like a shark," Allen says.

For their collaboration, she lends the musician a piece of her art and "I connect with it and visualize the energy," says Dingman, who lives in Nyack. He improvises tones, splices them together and drenches the mix in effects, resulting in experimental ambient sounds.

Dingman will perform at the gallery during the opening reception with a hip-high vibraphone, a cross between a piano and a percussion instrument. His 4- to 6-minute compositions will be accessible through QR codes.

The Dingman track responding to Allen's "Shadow Hamadryade" stacks layers of cascading notes over a propulsive rhythm. Intertwining drone tones and a prominent hum compete for attention. After the emergence of a throbbing vocal, the song builds to a crescendo.

Another piece of music is inspired by Allen's "Third Eye of Hook Mountain," which augments the vaguely discernible features of the Nyack landmark with an underbelly of what could be a river of darkness or primordial layering. As Dingman's tones unfold, dynamics swell, notes seem to play at random intervals and an electronic, Morse Code-like tone chimes.

Allen's artistic vision began with a realistic bent: landscapes, figuratives and still lifes. But after meeting Wiggs, she dug into her feelings and "let the spirit take control." According to her website, Allen follows "visual intuitions" and explores a "poetic vision" to convey moods, rather than objects, as she turns toward abstraction. With that approach, "it's easy to start getting into a canvas or montage," she says. "The hard part is knowing when it's done."

Some abstract artists are averse to interpreting their work. Others say they want only to know how a piece makes viewers feel - ask at your peril if that cloudy figure in the corner is a bird.

For Wiggs, "if someone tells me they see a squirrel and I recognize the squirrel, I'm painting it out," says Wiggs. "Everyone wants to know the meaning behind an edgy piece of art or music. The question is often the answer because sometimes words fail us, and it's just about how we respond emotionally."

A joint opening reception for Poetry of Place; Translucent Hues, by Eileen Sackman; and a member group show is scheduled for 6 to 8 p.m. on March 8 at the BAU Gallery, 506 Main St. The exhibits continue through April 6. BAU Gallery is open Saturday and Sunday, noon to 6 p.m., and by appointment. See baugallery.org.

Former engineer pursues passion for wood

John Lee warns about the messiness of his garage-based woodworking shop, where the floor is covered with sawdust and shavings. On an upstairs table lies a copy of The Intelligent Hand, by a British furniture designer - the February selection from a woodworking book club.

Less than two years ago, employed as a software engineer, Lee says he reached a point when he couldn't stop thinking about woodworking. In 2023, the Philipstown resident left his job to found Bevel-Up Woodworks (bevelupwoodworks.com), which last year was named the best new local business by the Cold Spring Chamber of Commerce.

"I didn't want to wake up 30 years later wishing I had at least tried," he says. "I also wanted more contact with the community and to spend more time with my daughter, which I couldn't do with a two-hour commute into the city."

Bevel-Up satiates Lee's passion for using his hands, turning North American hardwoods like cherry, maple and oak into furniture and household objects. His first-year projects ranged from pencil boxes to a wall cabinet to an 8½-foot-long dining table and seating for an outdoor classroom at Haldane.

The transition began years before it happened, when Lee started watching YouTube videos created by Ishitani Furniture, a Japanese company that shows its craftspeople transforming boards into benches, chairs and tables.

When Lee's wife, a physician, began working at Vassar Brothers Medical Center in Poughkeepsie, the family decided to relocate from Manhattan. Notably, a house in Garrison they toured before buying their Philipstown home in 2018 had a barn with a furniture-making shop. "I had no idea what any of the machines were, but I saw the models the owner had made," he says. "When we moved here, I started doing [projects] around the house."

His first commission at Bevel-Up was a garden bench for his daughter's pre-K school, the Little Friends Learning Loft in the City of Newburgh. After Lee began building a dining table, other requests came in, including one for the octagonal seating area for an outdoor classroom at Haldane.

Lee collaborated with his neighbor, woodworker Dan Upham of WoodSuit, on the project, a commission from the family of Lori Isler, a 1981 Haldane graduate who taught in the district for 30 years before she died of cancer in 2018.

In addition to furniture, Lee has constructed picture frames, including tiny ones for an artist whose oil paintings are as small as 1-inch squares. "Some people know exactly what they want, and they're looking for a fabrication partner," he says. "Some people don't know, and they're coming to me because they're looking for a design partner and a sounding board."

With a few commissions completed, Lee says he is still figuring out the types of furniture that buyers want. He would like to sell at craft fairs, where people can see examples of his work rather than just photos.

The move to woodworking has not been easy but was worth it, said Lee. "For me, taking something from an idea to completion does it," he says. "I live for that moment."