
A photo of the newest Chestnut Market, located in Marlboro, aChestnut Market opened at the former Cousin’s Mini Market on Route 22 in Wassaic at the end 2019. Photo submitted
WASSAIC — For 20 years, the former Cousin’s Mini Market operated as a family affair out of 3997 Route 22 in Wassaic under the loving care of owners Tony “Pepperoni” Robustelli and his wife, Vicky.
Though Cousin’s Mini Market has not been owned or operated by the pair for a number of years (its well-known name has remained on the business sign under new ownership during the past few business operations that have opened up in that location), the Robustellis have remained involved as the property owners. They’ve been leasing the building to people trying to make a go of the gas station and mini market, and are pleased to now see that it is once again family-oriented business, with the nearing of the one-year mark of the Jamal family’s Chestnut Market operating out of the space.
The Robustelli’s history
Since his first store opened in Amenia in 1977, Tony Robustelli’s business has gone by many names and moved through many locations in northeastern Dutchess County. Before Four Brothers came to town, Cousin’s Pizzeria, Robustelli’s first business, was the town’s first pizzeria. It was after that opened that Robustelli said he took a real interest in the community — he’s been active ever since, serving on the Amenia Planning Board and on the Dutchess County Department of Planning and Development Wastewater Committee as well as on the town’s Wastewater Committee and Master Plan Committee.
Robustelli later moved his business to Dover Plains, known as Cousin’s Pizza, then to Millerton, where he opened a restaurant version of his business before setting up Cousin’s Mini Market in Wassaic, in 1988. He also opened Cousin’s Cafe in Wingdale; the cafe is still up and running to this day.
Operating off of Route 22 for 20 years, Robustelli said his business had a lot of help from the Wassaic Developmental Disabilities Services Offices (DDSO) center and the local hospital before both organizations closed their doors. From there, he said they tried to develop more of a transit trade and to become a destination; it was around that point that the Harlem Valley Rail Trail came to town.
As business took off in Wassaic, Cousin’s Mini Market began serving bakery items as well as pizza and ice cream; at one point, the business even had mini golf and batting cages.
Soon, Robustelli established a customer base, mentored many “first-time jobbers” and had a thriving business with help from various family member, including Vicky and their children, his brother, Gino, his cousin, Frankie, and his nieces and nephews. Robustelli said his children learned a lot on the job.
“They really got educated with work ethic, savings, being on time, talking to different kinds of people, talking to different kinds of employees, workers,” Robustelli said. “You learn a lot from that kind of retail. You know, retail is details so you really have to be on it.”
The story behind Chestnut Market
Meanwhile, the Jamal family started their family-owned and operated company, Chestnut Market, in 1989. Based out of New Paltz, the company is owned by Jamal brothers: Sal, Mickey, Sam and Cal, and is now one of the largest convenience store chains in the Hudson Valley. The second generation of Jamal family members began working in the company 15 years ago, including Sal’s sons Faheem, Farris and Naseem Jamal and their cousins AJ and Sharif Jamal.
Among the company’s priorities, Faheem Jamal said Chestnut Market values customer service over everything. Additionally, he said they are known for their cleanliness and their ability to get the products their communities want. Now operating convenience stores in Patterson and Hyde Park and six locations in Poughkeepsie, as well as Danbury and Bethel, Conn., Chestnut Market is currently in the process of rebranding its stores from regular Mobil and Shell markets to a unified brand as Chestnut Market.
It officially began operating out of the former Cousin’s Mini Market space at the end of 2019.
“We are very exited to be working with the Robustelli family and expand our footprint not only in Wassaic but also in the Hudson Valley,” Jamal said. “We’re thrilled to take over somewhat of a legacy store from Tony and his family and we’re hoping to continue the food service operation that he’s built up over the years.”
Jamal said his father personally became good friends with Tony, who he said trusts their family with the name and location.
“These guys are good stewards,” Robustelli said. “They have almost 400 Mobils and they’re family-oriented too. That’s nice… even though they’re a big corporation, they’re a small family.”
Priding themselves on customer service, Jamal said Chestnut Market cares about its customers and staff. Whenever they go into a community to operate a store, he said they hire staff locally as they want to be known as a local, family-owned business and have people to interact with the locals. Chestnut Market also takes pride in its community outreach and its work in organizing community educational support programs.
Each year, the company organizes fundraisers for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, including a Pumpkin Pin-Up in October and an annual fishing tournament in June. Jamal remarked that this year’s Pumpkin Pin-Up raised nearly $100,000.
Sam Waterston
On June 7 at 3 p.m., the Triplex Cinema in Great Barrington will host a benefit screening of “The Killing Fields,” Roland Joffé’s 1984 drama about the Khmer Rouge and the two journalists, Cambodian Dith Pran and New York Times correspondent Sydney Schanberg, whose story carried the weight of a nation’s tragedy.
The film, which earned three Academy Awards and seven nominations — including one for Best Actor for Sam Waterston — will be followed by a rare conversation between Waterston and his longtime collaborator and acclaimed television and theater director Matthew Penn.
“This came out of the blue,” Waterston said of the Triplex invitation, “but I love the town, I love this area. We raised our kids here in the Northwest Corner and it’s been good for them and good for us.”
Waterston hasn’t seen the film in decades but its impact has always remained present.
“It was a major event in my life at the time,” Waterston said of filming “The Killing Fields,” “and it had a big influence on me and my life ever after.” He remembers the shoot vividly. “My adrenaline was running high and the part of Sydney Schanberg was so complicated, so interesting.”
Waterston lobbied for the role of the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist for years, tracing his early interest to a serendipitous connection while filming in England. Even before Joffé’s production was greenlit, he had his sights set on playing the role. “I knew I wanted the part for years even before it was a movie that was being produced.”
What followed was not just critical acclaim, but also a political awakening. “The film gave all of us an intimate acquaintance with refugees, what it is to be a refugee, how the world forgets them and what a terrible crime that is.”
In Boston, at a press stop for the film, two women asked Waterston a pointed question: now that he knew what he knew, what was he going to do about it? “I said, ‘Well, you know, I’m an actor, so I thought I’d go on acting.’ And they said, ‘No, that’s not what you need to do. You need to join Refugees International.’” And join he did, serving on the organization’s board for 25 years.
Both Schanberg and Dith Pran, whose life the film also chronicles, were “cooperative and helpful … in a million ways,” Waterston said. Upon first meeting Pran, Waterston recalled, “He came up to me, made a fist, and pounded on my chest really hard and said, ‘You must understand that Sydney is very strong here.’ He was trying to plant something in me.”
There were more tender gestures, too. Schanberg used the New York Times wire to relay that Waterston’s wife had just given birth while he was filming in Thailand, adding to the personal and emotional connection to the production.
Though “The Killing Fields” is a historical document, its truths still resonate deeply today. “Corruption is a real thing,” Waterston warned. “Journalism is an absolutely essential part of our democracy that is as under siege today as it was then. It’s different now but it’s the same thing of ‘Don’t tell the stories we don’t want heard.’ Without journalists, we are dust in the wind.” Waterston added, “Democracy is built on the consent of the governed but the other thing it’s built on is participation of the governed and without full participation, democracy really doesn’t stand much of a chance. It’s kind of a dead man walking.”
When asked what he hopes the audience will take away from the screening, Waterston didn’t hesitate. “This is the story that puts the victims of war at the center of the story and breaks your heart. I think that does people a world of good to have their hearts broken about something that’s true. So, I hope that’s what the impact will be now.”
Tickets for the benefit screening are available at www.thetriplex.org. Proceeds support Triplex Cinema, a nonprofit home for film and community programming in the Berkshires.
Scott Reinhard, graphic designer, cartographer, former Graphics Editor at the New York Times, took time out from setting up his show “Here, Here, Here, Here- Maps as Art” to explain his process of working.Here he explains one of the “Heres”, the Hunt Library’s location on earth (the orange dot below his hand).
Map lovers know that as well as providing the vital functions of location and guidance, maps can also be works of art.With an exhibition titled “Here, Here, Here, Here — Maps as Art,” Scott Reinhard, graphic designer and cartographer, shows this to be true. The exhibition opens on June 7 at the David M. Hunt Library at 63 Main St., Falls Village, and will be the first solo exhibition for Reinhard.
Reinhard explained how he came to be a mapmaker. “Mapping as a part of my career was somewhat unexpected.I took an introduction to geographic information systems (GIS), the technological side of mapmaking, when I was in graduate school for graphic design at North Carolina State.GIS opened up a whole new world, new tools, and data as a medium to play with.”
He added, “When I moved to New York City, I continued that exploration of cartography, and my work eventually caught the attention of the New York Times, where I went to work as a Graphics Editor, making maps and data visualizations for a number of years.”At the New York Times, his work contributed to a number of Pulitzer Prize winning efforts.
In his work, Reinhard takes complex data and turns it into intriguing visualizations the viewer can begin to comprehend immediately and will want to continue to look into and explore more deeply.
One method Reinhard uses combines historic United States Geological survey maps with “current elevation data (height above sea level for a point on earth) to create 3-D looking maps, combining old and new,” he explained.
For the show at Hunt Library Reinhard said, “I knew that I wanted to incorporate the place into the show itself. A place can be many things.The exhibition portrays the exact spot visitors are from four vantage points: the solar system, the earth, the Northwest Corner, and the library itself.” Hence the name, “Here, Here, Here, Here.”
He continued, “The largest installation, the Northwest Corner, is a mosaic of high-resolution color prints and hand-printed cyanotypes — one of the earliest forms of photography. They use elevation data to portray the landscape in a variety of ways, from highly abstract to the highly detailed.”
This sixteen-foot-wide installation covers the area of Millerton to Barkhamsted Reservoir and from North Canaan down to Cornwall for a total of about 445 square miles.
For subjects, he chooses places he’s visited and feels deeply connected to, like the Northwest Corner.“This show is a thank you to the community for the richness that it has brought to my life. I love it here,” he said.
The opening reception for the show is on June 7 from 5 to 7 p.m. On Thursday, June 12, Reinhard will give a talk about his work from 5:30 to 7 p.m. at the library.“Here, Here, Here, Here” will be on display until July 3.
Scott Reinhard’s 16-foot-wide piece of the Northwest Corner is laid out on the floor prior to being hung for the show. L. Tomaino
The marquee at Goshen Players for “A Goodnight Kiss.”
"A Goodnight Kiss,” premiering June 6 at Goshen Players Playhouse, is a dramatization of real Civil War-era love letters. Written by award-winning playwright Cinzi Lavin and directed by regional theater veteran Kathleen Kelly — both Litchfield County residents — it serves to reminds us that while wars are waged by nations, it is the people who live through them, their lives forever changed.
At the center of “A Goodnight Kiss” is the relationship between Sarah Jane “Jennie” Wadhams, a college student in New Britain, and Sergeant Major Frederick Lucas, a young soldier stationed in Alexandria. Lavin discovered the story of the letters by the couple in a 2002 book by Ernest B. Barker called “Fred and Jennie: A Civil War Story.” Lavin, who holds a certificate in applied history from the University of London and has performed at the White House, read all 90 letters the couple exchanged between 1863 and 1867. “It was like falling into another time,” she recalled. “You hear the dialect, the moral concerns, the humor. Jennie once said someone ‘must think she’s some pumpkins.’ I had to keep that.”
Cinzi LavinAnna Zuckerman-Vdovenko
While staying true to the historical narrative, Lavin and Kelly took pains to adapt with sensitivity, editing outdated language, softening harsh racial terms, and trimming some of the religious fervor of the original texts for modern ears. “We didn’t want to rewrite history,” said Lavin, “but we did need to present some things so that it translated.”
The result is a story of two young people navigating distance, war, and the slowness of the mail. It’s also about community, duty, and the Connecticut town of Goshen itself where Fred and Jennie lived, wrote, and now lay interned. It’s fitting, then, that the Goshen Players opened their doors to this production.
“They’ve been wonderful,” said Kelly. “It’s a story from Goshen, and now it’s being told in Goshen. I think audiences will really appreciate that. It’ll be so interesting to see their reactions as ancestors.”
Kelly’s direction brings a collaborative, actor-driven energy to the stage. “I always say the only good playwright is a dead one,” she laughed. “But Cinzi? Thank God she’s not. She’s a dream.” Lavin, in turn, credits her theatrical background for that flexibility. “Both of our background as actors really helped us connect and then the cast came in with ideas and heart and it became something so much bigger.”
Kathleen KellyProvided
Starring David Macharelli and Olivia Wadsworth as Fred and Jennie, with a supporting cast including Robert Kwalick as Narrator, John Fabiani as Jennie’s father, Joel Osborne as Fred’s fellow solider, Harmony Tanguay and Roni Gelrmino as a gossiping villagers, the play layers historical narration with humor, heartbreak, and a surprising amount of warmth. “There’s a lot of humanity here,” Kelly said. “And a little gossip. The Goshen women definitely bring that.”
Adding texture is a curated selection of Stephen Foster songs arranged by Lavin which the U.S. Library of Congress included in its national “Song of America” archive. And for history buffs, Sunday’s 3 p.m. performance will include a talkback with historians Peter Vermilyea, Carolyn Ivanoff, Kevin Johnson, and Natalie Belanger, whose insights will ground the drama in even deeper context.
“Theater is the one place, even more than television and film, where you can really deal with difficult topics,” said Kelly. “You go into a theater, and you are changed.”
“A Goodnight Kiss” will be performed at Goshen Players Playhouse, 2 North St., Goshen, June 6 to 8. For tickets and more info, visit: goshenplayer.booktix.com
Village Trustees hear call to adopt law to limit local cooperation with ICE