How often have you heard the phrase “sick of winter” lately? It’s a phrase on many lips. As the frigid, single-digit temperatures and biting wind of recent days finally are giving way to the feeling-utterly-balmy 40s and the beginnings of melt – the inexorable winding into spring – take a long look and walk through […]
Entries Tagged as 'Hudson Valley'
Going Dutch at Kingston’s Wiltwyck Inn
October 22nd, 2010 · 6 Comments · Beyond Gotham
Call it Old Europe and the Dutch colonies meet the early 20th century. The Wiltwyck Inn is a petite building, by no means grand. This two-and-a-half story structure, tucked among plenty of historic buildings in the Uptown Stockade neighborhood of Kingston, conjures up faraway places and times long ago, thanks to its personality and out-of-the-ordinary, […]
Tags: architecture·historic preservation·Hudson Valley·landmarks·women
The Trotters at Goshen’s Post Office
September 10th, 2010 · 10 Comments · Beyond Gotham
In today’s world, Georgina Klitgaard’s painting might have sparked carping and a slew of talk-radio rant that it was wasteful government spending. In the late 1930s in the town of Goshen, N.Y., however, it absolutely delighted many of the town’s citizens. All over the United States we have public art remaining today that is courtesy […]
Tags: art·Hudson Valley·women
Encountering the “Three-Legged Buddha”
August 19th, 2010 · 11 Comments · Beyond Gotham
Like the Tibetan Buddhist tradition that it evokes, Zhang Huan’s “Three-Legged Buddha” is an artwork of mystery and complexity. It captures life, death, and rebirth. The enormous sculpture is strong and muscular, yet fragile; seemingly dominated yet defiant. Is the key figure within it collapsing, or is it arising? These are the qualities and questions […]
A Date With the Blossoms In New Paltz
April 21st, 2010 · 6 Comments · Beyond Gotham
Imagine that you were walking in a city park, on a campus, or along a street, and suddenly you see that someone has set up a dozen original paintings of Claude Monet. The masterpieces are before your eyes. Along your path, you see “Impression, Sunrise,” “Winter At Giverny,” and “The Water-Lily Pond,” among many others. […]
Summer Day’s Meditation at the Ashokan
August 25th, 2009 · 4 Comments · Beyond Gotham
It’s the very essence of calm, a still surface of blue-silver water reflecting billowy cumulus clouds above. Large shafts of light pour down through the clouds at angles on the shoreline, creating swaths of light-green trees in the middle of darker pines and bejeweled light on the water. On a 90-degree humid day, I can […]
Kingston Point’s Varied Lives
June 10th, 2009 · 11 Comments · Beyond Gotham
Sometimes, surprising beauty lies behind a nondescript gate. At the end of a long street in Kingston, N.Y., and behind a wrought iron gate, lies a sparkling little park. It’s situated on the Hudson River near where the Rondout Creek flows into the wide river, so that water seems to surround the park. It has […]
A Winter Walk at the Ashokan Reservoir
February 9th, 2009 · 8 Comments · Beyond Gotham
Seasons come to our bodies much like they do to trees and mountains, lakes and bays. Each individually has its own rhythm and signs of changing, adapting, and flowing from one season to the next, until the momentum of so many heralds the new season en masse. Beckoned by the brilliant sunshine, predictions of temperatures […]
Tags: Catskills·Hudson Valley·nature
A Walk: The Purple Heart Hall of Honor
November 17th, 2008 · 9 Comments · Beyond Gotham
Frank Emberson was wounded on Dec. 21, 1944, while fighting in Luxembourg during World War II. But when the bullet passed through his arm, a packet of family photos in Emberson’s breast pocket deflected it from hitting the Army soldier’s chest, thus saving his life. The story itself is moving, but seeing the small envelope […]
Tags: Hudson Valley·museums
