Whether you’re looking for new or used, rare or a classic, the Hudson Valley Book Trail has it all. The book trail, which is made up of only independent bookstores, runs from Peekskill up to Hudson. While we only highlight six stops here, the trail has 17 in seven Hudson Valley counties. Just minutes away from each stop are other activities like unique restaurants, other shopping or even the Hudson River Skywalk.
The plan, for now, is to find another location close to the Ulster Ave. store. That shouldn’t be too hard: There are plenty of vacant commercial spaces for lease.
A true Renaissance man, Evers’ first big success as an author was in the field of children’s books, illustrated by his wife, Helen Bryant Baker. Together they published some 50 of them over a 23-year period, which came to an end in the early 1950s with the advent of the mass-produced (and much cheaper) Little Golden Books. By then Evers, who first moved to Woodstock in 1931, had begun writing articles on historical subjects on a regular basis for local newspapers and the New York Folklore Society, which eventually caught the attention of Ellin Roberts, a senior editor at Doubleday. It was she who recruited him to write a comprehensive history of the Catskills. It ended up taking him nine years, but the legwork paid off: The book is still considered the go-to source on its subject.
Flash back 45 years to a stretch class in the Dancing Theater, the studio space above Handmade & More in New Paltz that former owner Ann Rodman used to make available to the Arts Community’s dance and fitness instructors, under the auspices of Brenda Bufalino, before the second floor became a clothing boutique. It was worth sacrificing the luxury of sleeping in on a Sunday morning to practice those yoga, ballet and Feldenkrais postures for 90 minutes in exchange for the reward of feeling a week’s worth of stress drain away before brunchtime.
“Folks are encouraged to read, listen, or watch—and they are also welcomed to just show up and be part of the conversation,” said an organizer. “There’s no test, no requirements, other than a sincere desire to be engaged in the work of antiracism.”
In his stunning new memoir The Trouble with Kim: On Transcending Despair and Approaching Joy, the New Paltz writer, musician, and restaurateur Seth David Branitz goes deep into a troubled personal past. It is the story of a wildly dysfunctional New York City family from the 1970s through the end of the century, a family mired in poverty, violence, mental illness, and deepening cycles of futility and struggle. From these antecedents, the youngest child traces his own descent into addiction and inexpressible despair and longing, describing a circuitous route toward — not to — redemption, stability, forgiveness and something like happiness.
If you’re in a bunker, with limited light and few possessions, and the world outside feels threatening, why not turn to the written page, that world between two ends, the jumping-off place: the plunge into page one?
Surprisingly, it turns out that the operative word here is not so much “fixed” or “free” as “fun.” Repair Cafés are interactive social events, designed to heal divisions in communities as much as to fix beloved-but-broken possessions.
Printed in hardcover format, Ledge Lake Leaf Labyrinth includes 188 full-color photographs on 168 pages.
This choice of book is in many ways perfect for the time and circumstances in which we find ourselves.