It's part two in this year's Jiffy CSA (A Content Series on Agriculture).

And we're at Hawthorne Valley farm in Ghent, New York, on a day that experienced an "Emergency Heat Warning" declaration from the National Weather Service.

Every year, cows across the Hudson Valley skip, prance, spin, and leap into grassy pastures for the first time of the season.

At Hawthorne Valley in Ghent, New York, this event is a rite of spring.

To kick off my annual CSA series (A Content Series on Agriculture), I head to the cow laneway, standing out of the way and hoping Dolomite the bull doesn't run me over, to share the experience of watching cows sprint to fresh grass after an especially long winter in the Loafing Shed.

And to help us experience this more fully, Stacy Szymaszek reads from their poem, "Epilogue: Cow Parade," from their collection "Essay."

You can purchase "Essay" here: https://asterismbooks.com/product/essay-stacy-szymaszek

To learn more about the Hawthorne Valley dairy herd, visit: https://farm.hawthornevalley.org/our-dairy-herd/

Independence Day in America, the 250th anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence. I spent the morning riverside at Umpachene Falls with my friend Monique Tyndall.

Moniqe (Lynx Clan [maternal], Citizen of the Stockbridge-Munsee Band of Mohicans; We’zhinshte-Earth Clan [paternal], Umoⁿhoⁿ) is an Interdisciplinary Cultural Worker. These are her thoughts on "America at 250."

Come sit by the river with us.

While producing an upcoming series on agriculture, I'm sharing this special episode featuring local news and gossip from the Rough Notes newspaper of the 1800s, available through the New York State Newspapers Archive.

I'll be back to normal programming soon.

These news items are from the following issues:

This episode is sponsored by: Reuter's Life Syrup. Discovered by Old Nurse Bertrand, it purges the bowels. It purifies the blood. It invigorates the liver. It heals the kidneys. It strengthens the stomach. Old Nurse Bertrand used to give it away for free to crowds of people outside her house. And now I'm able to give it to you at a discounted price of 10% off your first order when you use code James Cave at checkout. You can find it at Allen Cady, Veterinary Surgeon, Member of the Pennsylvania College of Veterinary Surgeons, Malden Bridge, Columbia County, New York, while supplies last.

While I produce the next batch of new episodes for the feed, I want to re-share a previous episode that's become a listener favorite.

It's a trip to the ball field for the season-ender, double-header vintage base ball game between the Kingston Guards and the Ulster Nine.

If you want to join The Jiffy Book Club and get those Book Club Podcast Episodes, join here: bookclub.thejiffy.xyz

~ ~ Flashback to October, 2025 ~ ~

It’s a brisk October afternoon in Kingston, New York, for the final game of the Vintage Base Ball 2025 season between the Kingston Guards and the Ulster Nine.

We're at Herzog Field, beside the Catskill Mountain Railroad Station and the  Hannaford parking lot, to watch two teams play baseball by 1864 rules.

From “ballists” and “muffins” to hand-caught fly balls and gentlemanly arbitration, this episode dives into the language, spirit, and spectacle of vintage base ball culture.

We hear from:

We get to know about:

Music played:

"Take Me Out to the Ball Game" (1908) — Edward Meeker, Edison Records Digitized by the Internet Archive. Public Domain (U.S.).

Links & References:

The Kingston Guards are a nonprofit organization. Donations help fund their community outreach, education programs, and historical research. Visit their website to join, volunteer, or contribute.

Conan Plays Old Timey Baseball

Inside Conan: Kevin Dorff Revisits Old Timey Baseball

Support the show

"The Jiffy Audio Newsletter Podcast" is an audio documentary zine – the official podcast of The Jiffy – exploring the odd histories, cozy mysteries, and surprising characters of upstate New York. Each episode is an adventure, and new episodes drop every other week.

Subscribe, share, and take the scenic route with us.

Follow James on Instagram: @jamescave

Subscribe to the newsletter here.

This is part three of my three-part series on Frederic Church, on the life and legacies of Church, Thomas Cole, and the Hudson River School.

Betsy Jacks spent 21 years as executive director of the Thomas Cole National Historic Site in Catskill, New York. Under Betsy's leadership, they restored Cole’s 1839 Old Studio, totally reconstructed Cole’s 1846 New Studio; they restored the interiors in the Main House (I have links below to a two videos on the James Cave Instagram Feed where Betsy walks us through what we're calling 'forensic interior design').

She oversaw the publication of over 30 books, mapped a hiking trail to the places that Cole painted, and opened their new all-season visitor center designed by architect Stephen Shadley.

Betsy retired in 2024 to finally give herself time to focus on her own art, and you can see the lineage of the Hudson River School in the ideas she presents, sometimes even reinterpreting the very same trees that Thomas Cole painted.

Cole was Church's mentor and teacher, and here we get to know him through Betsy's life and work -- and life after Cole.

"Glorious Country" is our first Jiffy Book Club selection. Sign up: https://bookclub.thejiffy.xyz

To learn more about Betsy's work, visit: https://www.betsyjacks.com

Related links:

"Variations on a Theme," a group show in the Gallery at Spencertown Academy: https://spencertownacademy.org/event/variations-on-a-theme/2026-04-10/

Apollo Pursuing Daphne: National Gallery of Art – https://www.nga.gov/educational-resources/greco-roman-origin-myths/apollo-pursuing-daphne

"This Old Vibe" featuring Betsy Jacks (Pt. 1): https://www.instagram.com/p/DAElf4HSsFR/

"This Old Vibe" featuring Betsy Jacks (Pt. 2): https://www.instagram.com/p/DAT7JF_S59M/

About the guest:

Betsy Jacks is a visual artist and writer who served as Executive Director of the Thomas Cole National Historic Site in Catskill, New York, from 2003 to 2024 — a tenure of more than two decades leading one of the Hudson Valley's most important cultural institutions. Before that, she was Director of Marketing at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Her paintings have been shown in New York City and across the Hudson Valley, and her writing has appeared in both academic and commercial publications. She holds degrees in Studio Art and Art History from Duke University and an MBA from the Kellogg School of Business at Northwestern University. She lives in the Hudson Valley with her family.

Subscribe:

Get the newsletter at thejiffy.xyz – photos, behind-the-scenes extras, interviews, and a monthly curated list of arts and sciences events across upstate New York.

Until next time, I'll see you over on the James Cave Instagram Feed.

This is part two of my three-part series on Frederic Church, recorded on the grounds of Olana on the occasion of his 200th birthday.

Victoria Johnson spent six years writing "Glorious Country: How The Artist Frederic Church Brought the World to America and America to the World", the first major biography of Church, climbing Andean volcanoes in his footsteps, riding camels into Petra, and working through tens of thousands of archival pages to bring him back to life.

The result is one of the best books of the year, and our first Jiffy Book Club selection.

We talked inside Cosy Cottage, where Church and his wife first lived when they moved to the farm that would become Olana.

It's an intimate place: It's where his family life began, and where it was devastated. From there we range wide: his apprenticeship under Thomas Cole, his South American expeditions inspired by Alexander von Humboldt, his rockstar moment with "The Heart of the Andes", his political paintings on the eve of the Civil War, and what it means that his most resonant work feels so current right now.

"Glorious Country" is our first Jiffy Book Club selection. Sign up: https://bookclub.thejiffy.xyz

To learn more about Victoria's work and to buy her book, visit: https://gloriouscountry.org

About the guest:

Victoria Johnson is a professor of urban policy and planning at Hunter College in New York City. She holds a doctorate in sociology from Columbia University and an undergraduate degree in philosophy from Yale. Her previous book, "American Eden: David Hosack, Botany, and Medicine in the Garden of the Early Republic", was a finalist for both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. "Glorious Country: How the Artist Frederic Church Brought the World to America and America to the World" is her third book and the first full biography ever written about Frederic Church, the nineteenth-century landscape painter whose work helped establish American art on the world stage.

Subscribe:

Get the newsletter at thejiffy.xyz – photos, behind-the-scenes extras, interviews, and a monthly curated list of arts and sciences events across upstate New York.

Until next time, I'll see you over on the James Cave Instagram Feed.

This year marks the 200th birthday of Frederic Church, the Hudson River School painter whose mountaintop home, Olana, helped shape how Americans imagined upstate New York.

To kick off a three-part series for Frederic Church 200, James starts where Church did – outside the house itself, on Earth Day, looking out at the same view Church called "the center of the world."

Then he drives north to the Albany Institute of History & Art, which holds 72 letters between Church and his close friend, the Albany sculptor Erastus Dow Palmer. Curator Diane Shewchuk is in what she calls the "panic phase" of building an exhibition around those letters, because "Your Friend, Frederic E. Church" opens June 6.

Thank goodness she spared time to walk us through how she writes, organizes, and builds an exhibition of this scale.

Our conversation moves through Palmer's ink-stained desk, Church's six-page travelogues from Beirut and Petra, a painting made for a child who died at two, and a very helpful freight elevator.

Also: Big shout out to index cards.

Featured Guest:

Diane Shewchuk – Chief Curator and Director of Curatorial Affairs at the Albany Institute of History & Art

"Your Friend, Frederic E. Church" – On view at the Albany Institute of History & Art from June 6 through October 12, 2026. Opening reception: June 5

Full programming calendar: albanyinstitute.org

This episode was produced in partnership with the Albany Institute of History & Art. Special thanks to Diane Shewchuk and Marisa Espe.

Subscribe:

Get the newsletter at thejiffy.xyz — photos, behind-the-scenes extras, interviews, and a monthly curated list of arts and sciences events across upstate New York.

Until next time, I'll see you over on the James Cave Instagram Feed.

In this first episode of season two (!!) I'm taking an overdue look the concept of an "upstate" New York. What is it? Where is it? Can I go to it? And who is it for?

We start at Ward's Point, the southernmost point in New York, and look northward, and then we hit the road.

And along the way, I talk with Poughkeepsie's Harvey Flad, Albany's Bennett Liebman, Oneonta's Wendy Lascell and Bryan Collins, and Kingston's Brian K. Mahoney, because I needed the combined wisdom of Vassar College, SUNY Oneonta, the Government Law Center at the Albany Law School, and all of Chronogram Media to, hopefully, finally answer the question: Where does upstate begin?

It's a road trip up and down the Empire State.

Here's the map Wendy uses in her project with students.

Support the show: www.thejiffy.xyz/upgrade

"The Jiffy Audio Newsletter Podcast" is an audio documentary zine – the official podcast of The Jiffy – exploring the odd histories, cozy mysteries, and surprising characters of upstate New York. Each episode is an adventure, and new episodes drop every other week.

Follow James on Instagram: @jamescave

Subscribe to the newsletter here: www.thejiffy.xyz

The podcast is still on a bit of a hiatus while I produce "Little Pod" (a limited series with Olivia Muenter).

I'll be back with new episodes here soon, but in the meantime, I'm re-sharing this episode about Pinkster Festival – a Black cultural celebration with Dutch colonial roots – which was revived for the first time in more than 200 years last year.

Pinkster began as a Dutch Christian holiday but evolved into a vital gathering for enslaved and free Black New Yorkers in the 18th and 19th centuries. This episode follows the festival’s modern-day return, in partnership with the African American Archive of Columbia County and local organizations working to reconnect descendants, reanimate memory, and reclaim a once-forgotten holiday.

You’ll hear from festival organizers, historians, community members, and King Charley, as they honor ancestors through the libations ceremony and explore the unique shape of slavery in the Northeast.

We also reflect on what it means to hold this celebration just steps from the historic Persons of Color Cemetery, and how genealogy and place are being used to build one of the largest known Black family trees in New York State.

If you found this episode interesting, text it to someone who might like to hear it! Word of mouth really helps this show grow.

And if you'd like to hear my earlier episode with the Archive where we visited the Jan Van Hoesen-Charles Marriott House, you can find that here.

To learn more about the African American Archive of Columbia County, visit them at: https://www.afamarchivecc.org

You can hear "Little Pod" wherever you find podcasts.

Support the show

"The Jiffy Audio Newsletter Podcast" is an audio documentary zine – the official podcast of The Jiffy – exploring the odd histories, cozy mysteries, and surprising characters of upstate New York. Each episode is an adventure, and new episodes drop every other week.

Subscribe, share, and take the scenic route with us.

Follow James on Instagram: @jamescave

Subscribe to the newsletter here.