Ask Olivebridge musician and Yiddish scholar Henry Sapoznik where to find a good pastrami on rye nearby, and he’s at a loss. “I’d probably have to bring it back,” he said, referring to New York City, where he grew up as the child of Holocaust survivors and where delicatessens like Katz’s and Pastrami Queen still […]
Essays & Profiles
Posted inEssays & Profiles
Shandaken
Finding His Way, One Sign at a Time
Kurt Boyer was lost. He’s quick to admit that now. It was 1987. Or maybe 1988. Time has a way of blurring itself, especially when things are going bad. Boyer had just finished a stint in the Navy. After spending high school in Saugerties, as he puts it, “being high all the time,” he thrived […]
Posted inEssays & Profiles
Overlook
V’s Next Act: Healing, Community, and Deepening Ties to the Mother
Walk into the kitchen of V, the playwright and activist author of “The Vagina Monologues,” and suddenly everything is pink, from the walls to the shades behind the cabinets and beside the sconces. “Everything in this house, every room was supposed to be some vaginal representation,” said V, formerly known as Eve Ensler, during a […]
Posted inEssays & Profiles
Saugerties
Who Goes There? Dayl Wise
In 1969, when the U.S. Army tapped 19-year-old Dayl Wise to become a non-commissioned officer, he took flak from trainers for lacking a “command voice.” Couldn’t the lanky, soft-spoken kid from Westchester act like a tough guy, say John Wayne? Instead, Wise kept a voice that he knew by heart. “The toughest person I know […]
Posted inEssays & Profiles
Olive
Indie Horror Icon Larry Fessenden on the Meaning of Monsters
It’s not everyday you find yourself smoking a joint with Jack Nicholson. Then again, Larry Fessenden—whose unsettling resemblance to the “The Shining” star elicits greetings of “Hey, Jack” when he goes to the liquor store—hasn’t lived an everyday life. So when he found himself in the East Village as a twenty-something actor, writer, and director, […]
Posted inCulture, Essays & Profiles
Time Under the Overlook
An essay by local poet Guy Reed, reflecting on life at the foot of Overlook Mountain.
Posted inCulture, Essays & Profiles
The Observer’s Notebook: Michael Schulman on the Oscars
New Woodstock homeowner and New Yorker staff writer Michael Schulman heads to the Oscars on March 2, chronicling Hollywood’s biggest night with a reporter’s eye.
Posted inCulture, Essays & Profiles
On Living and Dying
Jim Hanson, longtime Woodstock fire police captain, reflects on a life of gratitude, service, and not taking things too seriously.