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The Architecture of Joseph Urban: Mar-a-Lago & The New School

January 19, 2025 by Jaap Harskamp Leave a Comment

Joseph Urban may be a somewhat forgotten figure in America’s annals of culture, but during his lifetime he enjoyed an almost legendary reputation.

An all-round creative talent, Urban was a prolific Gilded Age illustrator, set designer, and architect of private dwellings, theaters, and a university building in the city of New York. His Gingerbread Castle was built for a fairy tale themed amusement park in Hamburg, New Jersey. [Read more…] about The Architecture of Joseph Urban: Mar-a-Lago & The New School

Poetry: Retrospect

June 17, 2023 by Neil Shaw 2 Comments

Retrospect

Life is a poem that just doesn’t rhyme,
A fleeting moment, a fragment of time,
A vision, an action, a memory gone by,
A race through the days, a flash in the sky.

It’s really odd, you can’t go backwards,
Yet instant replay is right there in your mind,
So you live it again, review all the details,
But there is no way you can change what you find.

Poetry: Southern Adirondacks

June 10, 2023 by Edward Zahniser 2 Comments

Southern Adirondacks

The hard-surface road on Edwards Hill
gives out just before you reach the cabin
‘Mateskared,” which our father, Howard,
named with the first syllables of we four
childrens’ names in birth order: Mathias,
Esther, Karen, and Edward. This in 1946.
I barely made the cut, being born in late
1945. In fact, I would miss our first-ever
summer there, being but months old
and left in the care of dear aunts who
lived in Washington, D.C., not far from
our family home in suburban Maryland. [Read more…] about Poetry: Southern Adirondacks

Cabin Pantry Discovery

May 27, 2023 by Edward Zahniser Leave a Comment

Cabin Pantry Discovery

On first opening the cabin for summer,
on a pantry shelf sits a mustard jar
amidst ubiquitous mouse droppings.

Mice are so sly that we do not deny
their being at coining speech—here,
say: homonyms of spices and species.

The Real Marvelous Mrs. Maisel

May 22, 2023 by John Conway 1 Comment

It seems as if a number of those who chose to celebrate April as National Humor Month last month by taking in this columnist’s presentation of “Laughter is the Best Medicine: The Borscht Belt and American Comedy” at the Ethelbert Crawford Public Library in Monticello got more than they were expecting. [Read more…] about The Real Marvelous Mrs. Maisel

Poetry: Diminishing Returns

May 20, 2023 by Lawrence Venturato Leave a Comment

Diminishing Returns

Being close
Is often good enough
Beyond a certain point
Chasing perfection
Is a fool’s errand
Yielding seriously
Diminishing returns

Poetry: Hopelessly Lost

April 29, 2023 by Lawrence Venturato Leave a Comment

Hopelessly Lost

I was advised it
Would be tricky
Getting there
But I was sure
I knew the way
So I tossed the map
And in no time flat
Found myself
Hopelessly lost

Poetry: Be Careful Casting About

April 15, 2023 by Edward Zahniser 2 Comments

Be Careful Casting About

If you come across a beaver pond
where six otters swim and frolic—
at least that’s how it may look to us
—don’t hope to catch strings of trout,
which are tops on those otters’ menu,
otters who are in their element here
where you, when the trout don’t feed,
might as well be on an urban street,
trying to hail a cab with your best
Royal Coachman artificial fly, whose
hook’s barb is trimmed off because
urban lawyers are avaricious folk.
And who knows what bystander’s
eyelid you might sink your barbed
hook into—and should you hook
an eyeball, you might as well cast
yourself and all of your heirs on
the mercy of the court system.

Poetry: Free Will – and Write Yours Soon

April 8, 2023 by Edward Zahniser 2 Comments

Free Will—and Write Yours Soon

Reductionists limit our every action
to serial impersonal events. Our genes
get transcribed, receptors get bound
to neurotransmitters, fibers in our
muscles contract, and the latest random
shooter pulls his or her gun’s trigger.

But Congress will not outlaw assault rifles,
because campaign contributions are the law,
no matter how it reads in the dusty books.
But there’s hope, as the late poet Paul Grant
wrote: “amo, amas, amat. Close your eyes
and a million years will pass fleetingly
in whom nothing dies.”

Poetry: Transition

April 1, 2023 by Neil Shaw Leave a Comment

Transition

The sand is sifting, time’s moving on,
A tear drops from the Dolphin’s eye,
A flower wilts, a tall tree tumbles,
The weakened Eagle can no longer fly.

Forlorn Elk keep sniffing the earth,
But no green pasture are they able to find,
A flock of Turkeys wander the fields,
But foul fumes and pollutants make them dizzy and blind.

Man pushes buttons to know what to do,
Instructions come forth in their mechanical way,
The voice speaks up clearly and he follows suit,
A cog in the wheel, controlled day after day.

But is this the way it was meant to be,
Sacrificing our souls due to weakness and greed,
Losing our essence, giving up on ourselves,
Become a new form of man, spawned by electronic seed.

Poetry: Legacy Poem

March 18, 2023 by Edward Zahniser Leave a Comment

Legacy Poem

Someone must think this through,
to ward off our short-sightedness
daily pounding us into the ground
like so many disquieting habits
we recognize in ourselves but
somehow can do so little about —
or so we think, because habituated
inside our non-existent cell block
we carefully crafted for ourselves
mostly out of nothing but thought
forms and knee-jerk reactions, or
what is our legacy to the future?

Poem: The Last to Know

March 4, 2023 by Lawrence Venturato Leave a Comment

The Last to Know

Like a sudden slap
It was a rude revelation
When I learned
A private matter
Had gone viral
Leaving me
The last to know

Adirondack Non-Winter Poem

February 11, 2023 by Edward Zahniser 3 Comments

Adirondack Non-Winter Poem

I admit to never having witnessed winter
in the Adirondacks. My major excuses are
how we mid-southerly flatlanders don’t
know how to drive in deep snow—the
drive from our otherwise year-round
Maryland home is a solid 10-hour trip
even in favorable summer conditions.

Not to mention how our four-room cabin
has zero, zip, zilch insulation. And our sole
heat source is a stone fireplace, that might
well supply more unwanted heat to global
warming than to fuel our cabin’s comfort.

Besides which, I have zero levitation skills
and no useful experience on snowshoes,
which, I am told are necessary in winter—
not to mention skis, which have frankly
only ever managed to stir up fright in me,
especially now with my new artificial joints.

Poetry: Mention It, Don’t Insist

February 4, 2023 by Lawrence Venturato 1 Comment

Mention It, Don’t Insist

These words of wisdom
Respect boundaries
Keep friendships
Defuse enemies
And are more likely
To give you what you want
Mention it, don’t insist

Lawrence Venturato has authored numerous literary works of public interest.

Dutch Old Masters in New York City

January 11, 2023 by Editorial Staff 1 Comment

The month of January sees a focus on work by Dutch Old Masters in New York City, featuring art presentations at Master Drawings NY and the Winter Show, an exhibition and auction at Sotheby’s Masters Week 2023, and Dutch works showcases at Christie’s. Featured events include: [Read more…] about Dutch Old Masters in New York City

Music and Politics in the Early United States

December 21, 2022 by Dr. Liz Covart Leave a Comment

What was music like in Early America? How did different early Americans — Native Americans, African Americans, and White Americans — integrate and use music in their daily lives? This episode of Ben Franklin’s World is the fourth of a 5-episode series about music in Early America.

The exploration continues with music and politics in the early United States. Billy Coleman, an Assistant Teaching Professor of History at the University of Missouri and author of the book Harnessing Harmony: Music, Power, and Politics in the United States, 1788-1865 (UNC Press, 2020), joins Liz Covart to investigate the role music played in early American politics. [Read more…] about Music and Politics in the Early United States

William Henry Arlt’s Painting ‘Flowers’ Being Conserved

December 15, 2022 by Editorial Staff 1 Comment

The Historical Society of Woodstock‘s goal of conserving works in need of care in its fine art collection received a boost this month when the Historical Society was awarded a grant of $2,750 to conserve an important floral still life on paper by William Henry Arlt (1868-1952).

The grant, from New York State Council on the Arts and the Greater Hudson Heritage Network’s Conservation Grant Program, will be used to conserve the gouache which dates from 1949. [Read more…] about William Henry Arlt’s Painting ‘Flowers’ Being Conserved

Poetry: Self-Portrait in a Placid Beaver Pond

December 10, 2022 by Edward Zahniser Leave a Comment

Self-Portrait in a Placid Beaver Pond

As reflection would have it, the air still,
the pond surface at certain angles like
woodlands opposite. Or at other angles
mirroring sky, and close-on to the angler,
like a woodlands studio reflection caught
of him or her as a portrait-taker might
be headless beneath their black cloth,
the angler at a loss, seeing only through
his or her camera lens, if at all, he or
she being one and the same against
a background of woodlands but not seen
by the camera, now focused far out onto
the grassy pond, more a meadow with
tall vegetation, broad-leaved, almost
up to your waist and a pond no longer,
but stream channel through tall grasses,
the water surface more of the sky, just
now a near-cloudless Adirondack blue.
It is the kind of sky you hope to wake to
back in your cabin, remembering when
all the children were young and could
be rambunctious all day, whether in
or out of the cabin—rain the disrupter
of mature human calm going back, all
the way back, to cave dwellers, no doubt,
despite how caves tend to be few here
and small, this being a function of our
bedrock’s granitic, not erosive, nature,
unlike limestone, say, and made more
vulnerable now by our acidic rains
as erosive agent belched into the skies,
then distributed by winds even far onto
those few now innocent of acidification.
Flat-out, the pond surface’s reflections
distort nothing, short of winds’ rippling
them, or insects’ slight surface stirrings
often stopped dead by a trout’s harvesting
perpetrators of such distortions from below,
one supposes like a vacuum cleaner, if we
could see the actual distorting of air, not
just its effects on whatever nearby may
succumb to its force, difficult to visualize
as the result of the breathing strength
implicit in those trout often caught here,
ten-inchers being trophies in this pond.

Music in British North America

December 7, 2022 by Dr. Liz Covart Leave a Comment

What was music like in Early America? How did different early Americans — Native Americans, African Americans, and White Americans — integrate and use music in their daily lives? This episode of Ben Franklin’s World is the second of a 5-episode series about music in Early America.

The exploration continues with Anglo-American music in British North America. Liz’s guest is David Hildebrand is a musicologist and an expert on early American music. [Read more…] about Music in British North America

Poetry: A Chance

December 3, 2022 by Neil Shaw 2 Comments

A Chance

The world today is overwhelming,
Was it this way back in the past?
Things keep changing every second,
Is it too much to want them to last?
The very essence of man is being lost,
Do we want to be electronically controlled?
With our numbers increasing like colonies of ants,
Will individuality become stories untold?
The earth was so rich, magnificence was there,
Is it possible we just couldn’t see?
It seems there’s still a chance to turn things around,
But, sadly, doesn’t seem likely to be.

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