Local Luminary: Jeff Cohen
Jeff Cohen is a writer, lecturer, and media critic who founded the media watchdog group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting in 1986.
Film: Breaking Up
_Breaking Up_ is a short film about unrequited love and bad cell phone reception, shot on location in Kingston, by Jeff Burns and the IAC film collective.
Screen Scene
The premier screening of Racing Daylight, a slice of magic realism filmed in Ulster County and starring David Strathairn, anchors a summer film series by The Woodstock Film Festival.
Loaded Chamber
Famed songwriter and pianist Dave Frishberg is probably best known for 1973’s “I’m Just a Bill,” the first song he wrote for the TV show “Schoolhouse Rock.”
Peak Performances
Ensconced in a natural amphitheater framed by the Catskill Mountains, the festival’s two stages will again feature an accomplished, eclectic array of artists, including Gov’t Mule.
The Celts Are Coming
More than one-third of Americans descend from Celtic roots, tracing their ancestry back to one of the eight Celtic nations: Scotland, Ireland, Wales, Cornwall, the Isle of Man, Brittany, Asturias, or Galicia.
Sharp Shocked Show
1988’s _Short, Sharp, Shocked_, featured a controversial cover photo of the Michelle Shocked in the chokehold of a San Francisco Police officer.
Big Screen Berkshires
The second annual Berkshire International Film Festival will screen 50 movies at a number of venues in Great Barrington May 17 through May 20.
May Horoscopes
Your fear may finally be pushing you someplace you need to be, making you aware of something you need to be aware of.
From Blacksburg to New Paltz
How much money would we spend to prevent a catastrophe like the one that happened at Virginia Tech last month?
Inner Vision: Don’t Get Mad, Get Wise
In numerous studies, anger has been found to have a wholly detrimental effect on our physical well-being.
Your Body Speaks Your Mind
You are in charge of your own attitudes and feelings, of the way you treat yourself and your world, but you cannot determine the outcome of every circumstance, just as you do not make the sun rise or set.
Household Harmony
By using subtle design techniques, feng shui can create environments that stimulate positive energy and increase prosperity and good health.
Take It Outside
It’s the perfect time to think about extending your living space beyond the four walls of your home with an outdoor room.
Poem: Last Call
Then the old man is off down the alley, his knife dreaming in the bed of his coat,
Poem: Old School
These same scratchings on the chalkboard each day, Forcing your mind and guiding your way
Poem: Poet Cowboy
Walt Whitman laying at the bottom of a box. Face down. The poet cowboy surpassing the hold of technology.
Poem: 7. Green
You’re in a place, in a place I’m not sure, maybe a tree a certain tree.
Poem: We Have All Been There
Don’t act so superior, we have all been there, the festering anxiety, the sudden break-up, the “let’s still be friends” routine,
Short Takes for May
These five new releases offer sustenance to heart, mind, and body, including John Cuneo’s romp through the lowest of chakras.
Book Review: Bloodthirsty
Former sitcom and ad writer Marshall Karp blasted holes through Hollywood hypocrisy in his 2006 debut, _The Rabbit Factory_. Now the Woodstock mystery maven brings his comical cops back for another round in _Bloodthirsty_.
Book Review: A Worldly Country
If it’s loveliness you want, here, take some, hissed the black fairy. Waiting for the string quartet, on the corner, denatured I wondered what the heck.
Book Review: The Second Coming of Mavala Shikongo
Just reissued in paperback, this tale of American volunteer Larry Kaplanski’s time spent in a godforsaken place where “even the baboons feel sorry for us,” is told in a picaresque manner well suited to the 21st-century attention span.
Graphic Novel Galaxy
Graphic novels have increasingly opened to women as well, with notable nonfiction titles including Marjane Satrapi’s Iranian-girlhood portrait _Persepolis_ and Alison Bechdel’s familial tragicomedy _Fun Home_.
CD Review: All the Tired Horses
Mojave 3 meets the Cocteau Twins with a dude up front.
CD Review: Tugging at the Infinite
Rock ’n’ rollers have their own version of the American Dream: to quit their day jobs and write that symphony they’ve always wanted to write. Last year keyboardist Neil Alexander finally did so.
CD Review: Holland, Thompson, & Tooch
I doubt if anyone is better at making the kind of simple yet eloquent life statements that multi-instrumentalist John Martucci does with the folk-jazzy “Gratitude” and the sing-along, feel-good closer “Keep on Chippin’.”
Black Dirt Blowout
It’s 2007 and there’s a war on. If you’re a teen or twenty-something with a brain, what do you want, The Cranberries?
Parting Shot: April Warren
“Ten Words,” a dual exhibition featuring April Warren and Eileen Brand, will be shown at the Main Street Bistro in New Paltz through June 6.
Portfolio: Cannon Hersey
If the world is to be saved, it’s people like Cannon Hersey who will spearhead the effort.
Art of Business: Show Business
Since 1979, the Bardavon has been operated as a performance venue by the nonprofit corporation Bardavon 1869 Opera House, Inc. “We’re very proud of what we do here,” says Silva. “It’s hard, though. Ninety percent [of it] boils down to fundraising.”
Stephanie Says
There’s nothing cozy or calm about _Stephanie Daley_, which examines the fear and ambivalence that can haunt even the most wanted pregnancy.
Raw Food Recipes
Recipes for Raw Kale Salad and Raw “Fettucine” Pomodoro, courtesy of Roni Shapiro.
You’ve Got Kale!
Supposing you want to try making raw food. You’ll need a blender. Devotees swear by the Vita-Mix. It’s the Harley-Davidson of blenders—goes forward, reverse, and vroom, vroom, vroom. You can crush ice, coffee beans, and probably beer cans with it.
The Rise & Fall of America’s Political Right
There is no real name for the movement that took over America six years ago and continues run it. That’s part of the reason for its success. Its very vagueness makes it hard to attack. In actuality, it is not a single entity.
Whose Lie Is It, Anyway?
When Karl Rove talks about protecting “ballot integrity,” that is shorthand for disenfranchising Democratic Party voters.
While You Were Sleeping
Vonnegut was described in a FOX News obit as an “irrelevant” writer of “left-wing screeds” known for “his unique brand of despondent leftism.”
Editor’s Note
It’s time again for my annual sermonizing on the benefits of the bicycle as a salubrious form of alternative transit.
Esteemed Reader
I stopped his swing and we looked in the direction of the sound. There, silhouetted against the darkening evening sky, was the outline of the long-beaked bird on a high tree branch. The bird’s knock-knock-knock resounded in the calm of dusk.
On the Cover: The Human
This month’s cover image, _The Human_, is an underwater portrait of Italian surfer Nicolo Violati diving through a wave in the Maldives.The photo is part of a recent series by the artist created around, inside, and over the element of water.
