Pia Öste-Alexander’s artistic life
Pia Öste-Alexander, artist, activist, matriarch, and proud Woodstocker, died in her Wittenberg home after a brief illness on New Year’s Day at the age of 86.
All posts by Tad Wise
Woodstock’s munificent Christmas impostors
Although it sometimes seems Woodstock has ridden the coat-tails of what didn’t happen here more than what did, the town has indeed been graced with several geniuses, two of whom endured allegations of “imposter!” and taught the world much through such endurance.
Woodstock Thanksgiving
Whether you head off to Woodstock’s big community center Thanksgiving or go to friends’ and/or family’s private tables, be sure to raise a glass to Levon and the other fallen heroes. Be sure to invite those still living. And don’t forget the chestnuts!
Performing Arts of Woodstock play tells true story of Alan Turing
Breaking the Code is the most audacious — if modest — production in PAW’s illustrious history.
Woodstock’s Dean Shambach passes on
With the death of Dean Schambach October 25 Woodstock lost its Cyrano de Bergerac, its Don Quixote — a man of talents and ambitions so vast their full achievement became ‘The Impossible Dream.’
The ghost of Billy Batson: Memories of a one-time Woodstock musical legend
The guy had a vision. He came from somewhere twisted. Or maybe he came from somewhere that wasn’t twisted, and so perceived more clearly what the rest of us preferred to see as straight.
The Story of Father Francis, Part two
Father Francis radically changed the spiritual life of Woodstock more than any Christian clergyman before or since.
Time collector — Lenny Kislin passes
Lenny Kislin — beloved Woodstocker whose puppy dog eyes launched a million smiles — finally proved that personal prophecy of doom which couldn’t lose, though in proving it we lost him…at 4 a.m. Tuesday September 12 to kidney failure. He was 71 years old.
The Story of Father Francis, Part One
The clergyman, who presided over the Church on the Mount atop Meads Mountain from the 1930s until 1979, who enchanted Woodstockers, married many and guided the spiritual needs of an unruly community, said his great turning point was assisting Clarence Darrow in defending a high school teacher arrested for teaching evolution in “The Scopes Monkey Trail.”
The lineage and the future of Woodstock’s Church on the Mount
Shock surrounding the sudden death of Father John (AKA Jack Nelson), Vicar of Woodstock’s legendary Church of the Holy Transformation of Christ-on-the- Mount, has left the fate of this landmark institution in serious question.
