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Religious textile sculptures by John Brendan Guinan
"So It Goes,” the 2025 summer exhibition at the Wassaic Project opened on May 17 and runs through Sept. 13.
The show features work from 43 artists responding to cycles of horror and desensitization.
The title “So it goes” is a nod to Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five.In the book, the phrase appears every time death or tragedy is mentioned, acting as a resigned, almost numb acknowledgment of suffering. In this context, the show uses the phrase to highlight how people become emotionally desensitized to violence, crisis, and trauma. Through humor, ritual, protest, and reflection, the works challenge us to feel what we’ve learned to overlook.
Wassaic Project is at 37 Furnace Bank Road in Wassaic and is open Thursdays through Sundays all summer.
Gary Dodson had a close encounter with a snake on the Esopus Creek in early May. He was not inclined to inspect the creature more closely.
I took a few days off at the start of May to do a standard task and to do something new, in keeping with the theme of the 2025 fishing season, which by an astonishing coincidence is “Do Something New.”
The routine stuff was opening the house, assessing the mouse dropping situation, rearranging the DVDs into “regular” and “schlock,” and getting humiliated in my home river, the Esopus.
A new season hasn’t really started until I have cast numerous flies, picked with devilish cunning, to Esopus trout that could not possibly care less.
I did avoid the skunk, though. After four hours of flogging a wild rainbow decided to play, taking a brassie soft-hackle that Gary Dodson gave me.
I was also rewarded for my perseverance by the sight of Gary leaping about 18 feet in reverse after almost stepping on a snake curled up on a rock in the shallows. It was a move worthy of a 1970s kung fu movie.
Over the weekend I motored to an undisclosed location in the Catskills, to meet the members of a private fishing club I joined over the winter.
I did not ask directly how the members feel about publicity. I didn’t have to. They don’t like it.
So since the Catskill region is about 5800 square miles and contains six major rivers with innumerable tributaries, I think “the Catskills” is a suitably vague descriptor.
The first day we caravanned from spot to spot stocking trout and greeting the cooperating landowners.
One family put out an incredible spread for us, which was completely wasted on me as I had consumed a convenience store burrito earlier in the morning when I realized I was about to faint.
This was a grave tactical error which I will not repeat. However, it did come under the heading of trying something new.
And I didn’t faint.
The members were very welcoming and after the stocking we settled right into talking a lot of fishing guff. As guff goes I’d give it a B, but it was a small sample.
The next day we had a luncheon with the landowners, where I chatted with a fellow who is 90 and used to catch chubs and bake them in river clay in a streamside fire. He was about 10 when he did this. He said they were delicious. I privately doubted this, but I have learned over the years not to argue with 90 year old gents who allow me to clamber over their property to fish. So it’s official: Clay-baked chubs are a rare and refreshing treat. (This is something new, but I’m not going to try it.)
Over the years I have resisted joining fishing clubs, primarily because of the expense.
But this one I can afford.
It was an abrupt shift from the April steelhead adventure on the Salmon River in and around Pulaski, where I was introduced to plugging, drift boats and guides, and the new and uncomfortable experience of being a complete novice instead of an award-winning fly-fishing writer.
So I think that’s enough novelty for the 2025 season. And it’s only May.
The news feed
About a year ago, we dropped off some just published copies of The Millerton News for patrons at Irving Farm’s coffee shop on Main Street in Millerton. It was a Wednesday morning. The papers were fresh off the press, having been driven to The Lakeville Journal offices in Falls Village from Pittsfield, Massachusetts, where they are printed on the presses of The Berkshire Eagle.
Inside Irving Farm, a few papers were placed on tables for anyone to read. A few people reach out to glance at the paper, maybe even pull it closer to read some part of it, then return to their phone. Some will flip through pages, but only to return to their digital news source. Swipe. Swipe. And swipe.
The News, The Journal and The Eagle all thrive today because of readers who want to know what’s happening in their own local communities. Yet it’s a growing fact of life that news readers are turning more and more to digital sources for that news. According to a report this month from the Pew Research Center, while Americans continue to see value in local news, they also prefer news websites or social media to print newspapers — and by a wide margin. From 2018 to 2024, the preference of news websites or social media as Americans’ news sources grew from 37% to 48%. Print newspapers declined from 13% to 9%, and television dropped from 41% to 32%. Radio inched up from 8% to 9%.
The News and The Journal are as committed to providing a weekly print product. Our ‘Local Matters’ motto aligns with the Pew Research Center’s finding that the vast majority of Americans see local news as important to the community. In a recent poll, only 15% of respondents answered that local news was either ‘not too important’ or ‘not at all important.’
We also embrace a digital future with enthusiasm. We’ve upgraded our websites and continue a push to keep fresh posts coming on our social media pages. We strive to get news to you when it happens and where and when you want to read it.
The Pew report notes that most people say local journalists are “in touch” with their communities and perform well at “reporting the news accurately.” In fact, roughly two out of three readers surveyed said local news was being reported accurately, that the most important stories and issues were being covered, that journalists were transparent about their reporting and were keeping an eye on local political leaders.
A relatively small percentage of consumers of local news — 15% — reported that they paid for local news in the past year, and 63% believe that local news outlets are doing well or “somewhat well” financially, even though thousands of newspapers have folded over the past two decades.
We remain a thriving local news source because of the support of our readers, advertisers and donors. Even as readers’ relationship with the delivery of news changes — long gone is the ubiquitous youngster on a bicycle tossing papers on your doorstep — we celebrate the fact that readers see value in what we deliver.
And we are optimistic about the future. This summer, The Lakeville Journal and The Millertion News will sponsor eight journalism interns from high schools and colleges. Demand for these paid positions has steadily grown, and is another indication that local news — in print or online —is here to stay. So keep that phone charged.
Trump administration vs. Harvard
In a battle that may take years to play out fully, Harvard, the nation’s oldest university is standing up to punitive demands by the Trump administration that it says threaten to destroy its whole reason for being. In so doing, Harvard has become an unlikely hero.
In early April, the Trump administration sent Harvard a letter containing a long list of demands that they said, if unmet, would result in the withdrawal of billions of dollars of federal funding promised for a large assortment of projects mostly in scientific and medical research. After careful consideration, Harvard’s president, Dr. Alan Garber representing Harvard’s governing body, the Harvard Corporation, wrote the Trump administration a polite but strong letter refusing these demands. Along with countless cheers from academics and others from all across the country, a furious Trump quickly announced that he would have the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) terminate Harvard’s tax exempt status (not realizing that for the IRS to do so at the President’s direction would be strictly illegal). These retaliatory moves would be a devastating financial blow to what had always been one of the most financially secure universities in the country.
Although Harvard has been cheered on by educational institutions and individuals all over the country, no other university has dared to take a position along with Harvard in strongly defying Trump’s extremely overbearing demands. The only other Ivy League university to take a public stance is Columbia who acquiesced to nearly all the administration’s demands several weeks earlier.
The administration has placed much of its case for punishing Harvard on exaggerated claims that the University was guilty of antisemitism. But the only documented antisemitism that the administration has cited exists at an individual not an institutional level.
As Jonathan Chait wrote in a recent issue of The Atlantic “The Republicans use of antisemitism as a justification to extend political control over universities has nothing to do with protecting Jews and everything to do with undermining liberal democracy.”
Trump did receive an Ivy League bachelor’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania but he nurses a grudge against most elite universities, thinking them more politically “liberal” than he would wish.
Trump did receive an Ivy League bachelor’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania but he nurses a grudge against most elite universities thinking them more politically “liberal” than he would wish. The controls he has wanted to place on Harvard, especially the college (politics is less active in manyof the graduate schools) are more closely related to college life and teaching. Most of the research grants, in medicine and the sciences are miles away from academic or political controversy.
The Trump administration’s list of demands that Harvard essentially relinquish control of its hiring of personnel including professors, student admissions, and many other matters was so offensively presented that even administration officials tried to “walk it back” by saying that it was just a preliminary draft. But Harvard’s president wrote back a very polite but firm letter refusing the terms of the demands and saying that he considered several (if not all) of them to not only be crippling but unconstitutional.
A May 6 letter from the Secretary of Education, Linda McMahon to Dr. Garber was even more negative and insulting than the earlier one from the administration and it stated that unless Harvard made many changes that the administration demanded there would be no more federal money going to the university whatsoever.
It doesn’t stop. On May 16 the Trump administration announced a series of investigations including one by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission into whether Harvard had discriminated against “white, Asian, male or heterosexual applicants. . .”Several other such investigations have begun.
Meanwhile, what about all the other colleges and universities that were quick to congratulate Harvard for its courage in standing up to the Trump administration’s unreasonable demands? Where are they now, especially other Ivy League universities that the administration has issued more hate-filled rhetoric and nasty threats to?All of the Ivy League schools except for Dartmouth and Yale have been threatened by Trump; now other colleges such as Haverford are being attacked by the House Education Committee and its leading interrogator Rep. Elise Stefanik (whose brutal questioning last year was considered by many to be responsible for the resignations of the then presidents of Harvard, Penn, and Columbia).
What’s next for Harvard? The future looks troubled. Few think Harvard’s tax-free status will be successfully challenged but the various grants may be stifled just by delaying them. Harvard’s endowment is mostly in encumbered accounts and cannot be easily drawn upon like a checking account.Whatever happens Harvard is likely to have a few very difficult years ahead.
Architect and landscape designer (and Harvard graduate) Mac Gordon lives in Lakeville.
