Kids’ Almanac (8/16-8/23)
Sesame Street Live! | See Extreme Ballet Showcase in Tivoli for free | Grahamsville Little World’s Fair | Free sails in Hudson
Columns
Kingston After Dark: Blood and whiskey
This scorching month will fittingly see the release of In the Shadow of the Mountain, the latest album from hot coal-juggling hillbilly punks Red Neckromancer. They’ll perform at The Anchor Saturday, Aug. 18.
An ode to Pete Seeger
Music lives in the ether now. We can have it anywhere. We need never lose anything again. Still, place matters. Being together, singing and dancing together, the same dirt on all our shoes — it matters. I’m sure Pete would agree.
Kids’ Almanac (8/9-8/16)
Mohonk Preserve offers Ulster County residents a free month of membership | Family Fly-Fishing Class | The Great Hudson River Estuary Fish Count | Rosendale Theatre presents Truth!
Time to act on health care
There’s a proposed law, the New York Health Act, that would create a single-payer health program in the state, and make healthcare free at the point of service for all New Yorkers. In the long-term, this would save us billions. The prospect of passing the taxes needed to pull it off, which would fall heavily on the state’s wealthiest households, seems radical, but not unimaginable.
Kingston After Dark: A very goth August
Brooklyn’s Charming Disaster is a musical duo formed in 2012 by Ellia Bisker and Jeff Morris. Though colorfully describing themselves to me as Siamese twins, a two-headed octopus or a binary star system, the band fall short of conveying a true sense of their vertiginous and quirky Gothic Americana. To truly understand the band, you need to hear their recent album Cautionary Tales or see them live at Rough Draft Bar & Books on Wednesday, Aug. 8.
#MeToo comes to town
Thoughts on the allegations against astrologer Eric Francis, who lost jobs with Chronogram, Radio Kingston and the Omega Institute after several women came forward with stories of his sexually inappropriate behavior.
Kids’ Almanac (8/2-8/9)
Tour or sail on the Kalmar Nyckel; Arm-of-the-Sea Theater talks about dirt at Vassar; See dance debut at Clermont; Go to Pirate School at Unison
The gemstone rainbow: Look for the Magnificent Six
Want to see it for yourself? It’s easy, if you can get to a place with an unobstructed sweep of sky to the west, south and southeast, like the Walkway over the Hudson.
Creature comforts
State wildlife expert Richard Thomas found that a woodchuck could (and does) chuck around 35 cubic feet of dirt in the course of digging a burrow. If a woodchuck could chuck wood, Thomas estimated, it would chuck an amount equivalent to the weight of the dirt, or 700 pounds, which is a big pile.
