You never know what you’ll find when you start to clean out your attic. Maybe mouse-nibbled posters. Maybe stained andwrinkled tablecloths. Maybe discarded childhood toys. In my case, it was a neatly filed box of newspaper clips. Six years worth of Personally Speaking, the weekly column I wrote for the then New Paltz Times (actually The Herald in its first year) carefully organized from 2001 through 2006.
It isn’t often that you have a chance to look back not only on your own history, but on that of a community, yet this is what these columns provide. An opportunity to reflect on who contributes to a locality, both in participation and in representation. A slice of a particular time viewed through the lives of the citizens active within it.
In these 264 columns, there are educators and environmentalists. Business owners and medical professionals. Artists and community volunteers. Politicians of various stripes. Musicians and law enforcers. Visionaries and pragmatists. There are at least five married, or formerly married, couples who were featured separately over the years, as well as several siblings. There is the midwife who almost a decade later assisted in my grandson’s birth and the artist whose son is the father of that grandson. Years after these columns ran, the community connections remain.
Perhaps that is the point. It’s very easy, in challenging times, to dismiss the power of connection, of shared spaces and modest goals. Of working together to better where we all live. In looking over the words and histories of these people, who so generously expressed themselves, in many cases to a stranger, I can see there is still hope in humanity.
Obviously,none of this would have been possible without the support of a different community, that of the New Paltz Times. The columns would never have had their resonance without the sensitive photography of Lauren Thomas, and the idea wouldn’t have existed without the imagination of editor Deb Alexsa. The fact that Personally Speaking ran for six years is a credit to both of them. The opportunity to share these once again with the community is thanks both to the Elting Memorial Library and to Ulster Publishing, specifically Genia Wickwire.
In our launch of Personally Speaking, in February 2001, the editor’s note read that it was designed to profile “local residents and businesspeople who are involved in community, regional and national events and issues.” I think we were able to do that, and more.
“Personally Speaking: A Community Retrospective” will be on display at the Elting Memorial Library, 93 Main Street, New Paltz, during the month of March 2026. An opening reception will be held on Saturday, March 7 from 2 to 4 p.m.
Join the family! 
