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.
Graham Corrigan
New York State Senator Michelle Hinchey buys two books from Oblong Books in Millerton on Thursday, April 23, after inducting the business into the state Historic Business Preservation Registry.
MILLERTON — Fifty-one years after Dick Hermans and Holly Nelson opened Oblong Books, the Millerton bookstore has been recognized as part of New York State history.
Following a nomination from state Sen. Michelle Hinchey, Oblong Books was added to the New York State Historic Business Preservation Registry. Hermans and his daughter and co-owner, Suzanna Hermans, celebrated the designation Thursday alongside Hinchey, North East Town Supervisor Christopher Kennan and Kathy Moser, acting commissioner of the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation.
Hermans and Nelson opened Oblong Books in 1975 after graduating from college, finding a home for their bookstore at 32 Main St. Multiple relocations and more than 200 employees later, the business remains a fixture in Millerton.
“We’ve been through thick and thin,” said Dick Hermans. “I think we’ve been successful because we stay involved in the community.”
Employees of Oblong Books and local Town of North East and Village of Millerton officials gathered with State Senator Michell Hinchey on Thursday, April 23, to honor the bookstore’s placement on the New York State Historic Business Preservation Registry.Photo Provided
The designation honors New York businesses that have operated for at least 50 years. Oblong is the first business from Millerton to receive the honor. “Oblong has stood the test of time, even in the age of e-commerce,” Hinchey said. “It has remained authentically true to its mission of human connection.”
In 2001, Hermans opened a second store in Rhinebeck. Hermans’ daughter Suzanna started working at Oblong shortly thereafter, helping the store navigate the newly-imperiled physical market.
“We thought that was going to be the death knell of books,” she said, “but it turns out a physical book is actually a perfect object. You can share it with a friend, or you can keep it for 50 years.”
The bookstore is known not only for its literary inventory, but also for author events, music selections and children’s toys.
The owners’ commitment to community also extends to the nonprofit world: since 2023, Oblong has partnered with the Beacon Prison Books project to provide free books to incarcerated individuals in the region.
E-books are now available on Oblong’s website, too. But the space has largely remained the same, with its weathered wooden floorboards and cozy nooks. There’s a section for music and records upstairs, and Oblong Jr. downstairs for younger readers and toy connoisseurs.
Next time visitors stop by, they will see something new: a window decal bearing the New York State Historic Business Preservation Registry logo.
Nathan Miller
A group of gardeners and community members hear Maryanne Snow-Pitts explain proper care for newly-planted tree saplings near the Harlem Valley Rail Trail in Wassaic after Snow-Pitts planted two serviceberry trees in celebration of Arbor Day on Friday, April 24.
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Leila Hawken
AMENIA — The proposed workforce housing subdivision on Route 22 is awaiting feedback from the Amenia Fire Company after developers added more water tanks to plans for the property.
Planning Board members discussed other outstanding questions involving the Cascade Creek workforce housing subdivision at their regular meeting on Wednesday, April 22, continuing a conservation subdivision process that began nearly a year ago.
Board engineer John Andrews said that once the conservation analysis step is approved by the board, the next step will be the preliminary subdivision approval process that will likely need a public hearing. When that preliminary approval is granted by the board, then the developer, Hudson River Housing, will be able to begin the application process for final subdivision approval, which can involve another public hearing.
The next step in the present process, outlined by board attorney Cassandra Britton, is for the developer to submit to fire department officials the completed, agreed-upon package defining fire suppression plans, including water holding tanks, and a traffic study to measure estimated numbers of daily trips to be generated by the development.
The developer is working through the state Department of Transportation to develop more traffic studies. The planning board indicated that such studies must be completed before May 15, while schools are in session. Previous traffic density studies were done in June.
Summarizing the overall project, Peter Sanders of Rennia Engineering, representing the developer, said that Cascade Creek would consist of 28 lots on 24 acres, including two conservation parcels, arranged along a single 24-foot-wide road. Current drawings show two road cuts off of Route 22 to service a one-way subdivision road, although discussion continues on whether a single two-way entrance would be better.
Sanders recalled that the planning board had visited the site on Wednesday, March 11, and had developed additional comments based on that visit, resulting in plan adjustments.
After consultation with fire officials, a tentative plan calls for the installation of two 30,000-gallon water storage tanks on site, though final approval from the fire company is still required.
Also, one of the lots that would have abutted Route 22 was moved to the interior of the subdivision, with more vegetation to be planted throughout to provide screening.
Responding to board concerns about wanting to promote diversity in home design, Sanders said that various flexible components will add variety, including garages, porches, decks and a variety of exterior paint colors. He added that the variables will become clearer during the design approval phase when the site plan drawings are presented.
Important to the planning board and to member Ken Topolsky in particular is an ongoing debate with the developer over whether local residents could benefit from a preferential system for selection to be able to purchase the homes in the development.
“I will continue to push on this,” Topolsky said. “What we need to do is serve residents of Amenia.” His research has shown that preferential systems are in place in some communities, leading him to reason that they are allowed.
Representatives of Hudson River Housing have maintained that such systems are not allowed.
Discussion is expected to continue at the next planning board meeting scheduled for Wednesday, May 13.
Natalia Zukerman
Tremaine Gallery exhibit ‘Vulnerable Earth’ explores climate change in the High Arctic.
“Vulnerable Earth,” on view through June 14 at the Tremaine Gallery at Hotchkiss, brings together artists who have traveled to one of the most remote regions on Earth and returned with work shaped by first-hand experience of a fragile, rapidly shifting planet, inviting viewers to sit with the tension between awe and loss, beauty and vulnerability.
Curated by Greg Lock, director of the Photography, Film and Related Media program at The Hotchkiss School, the exhibition centers on participants in The Arctic Circle, an expeditionary residency that sends artists and scientists into the High Arctic aboard a research vessel twice a year. The result is a show documenting their lived experience and what it means to stand in a place where climate change is not theoretical but visible, immediate and accelerating.
That shared experience — weeks spent together navigating the waters around the Svalbard Archipelago —forms the connective tissue of the exhibition. Artists work across video, photography, performance and digital media, but what binds them is proximity: to the landscape, to one another and to the evidence of environmental change.
“The residency is fantastic,” Lock said. “You fly into the most northerly airport on the planet, get on a ship with a bunch of artists and then sail around the archipelago and find a bay or a glacier, get into little rubber boats and go to shore. There are three guides with rifles … and they form a triangle around us to protect us from polar bears, and then you’re just there.”
That immediacy — of risk, of beauty, of isolation — is evident in the work on view. “Everyone is concerned with the environmental shifts that are occurring, and you’re witnessing it out there,” Lock said. “We were cleaning the beach one day and there’s so much trash on this beach in the middle of nowhere … because there’s plastic in the sea. We are witnessing these things firsthand.”
Lock’s own contributions underscore how quickly the landscape is changing. In one piece, two photographs are mounted on a glacier-shaped metal stand. “I went to photograph the glacier, and we were sailing around and because of the map, we knew we were at the glacier, but we couldn’t see it,” he said. Dense fog, created by warming air meeting cold ground, obscured what should have been unmistakable. Only later, in post-production, did the glacier emerge. “In Photoshop, I could extract the glacier, but to the naked eye, it was no longer visible.”
Other changes are even more stark. Lock recalled the reaction of the ship’s captain comparing current conditions to his charts. “His ‘up to date’ map showed that the glacier was 8 kilometers between one side and the other, but we parked at one side, sailed and moored on the other side and it was 1.4 kilometers,” Lock said. “So, it’s just like bam. It’s happening so fast.”
There is a sense of urgency in these images, but the collection also is a testament to process and to the community that forms in such extreme conditions. “There’s quite a nice network of artists who are pretty tight,” Lock said. “We were on a ship together in tight quarters for three weeks, so we got to know each other really well. And I found connections across the work with my own practice.”
Mindful of the environmental stakes embedded in the work itself, Lock made decisions aimed at reducing impact when curating the exhibition. “A lot of this work I printed with their permission to cut down on my carbon footprint,” he said.
And yet, for all its focus on fragility and loss, the Arctic exerts a pull. “It was funny, I’ve been twice,” Lock said. “When I left the last time, I was like, oh, I don’t know if I need to go back. And then I got back, and all I wanted to do was go back.”
The Tremaine Gallery is located on the Hotchkiss campus at 11 Interlaken Road, Lakeville. Gallery hours are Tuesday - Saturday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. and Sunday, 12 noon to 4 p.m.
Kerri-Lee Mayland
Joan Osofsky and Sharon Marston
Joan Osofsky is closing the doors on Hammertown, one of the region’s most beloved home furnishings and lifestyle destinations, after 40 years, but she is not calling it an ending.
“I put my baby to bed,” she said, describing the decision with clarity and calm. “It felt like the right time.”
At 80, Osofsky is stepping away from the business she built into an institution. Yet her attention is not fixed on what she is leaving behind but on what she calls “Beyond Hammertown,” a phase shaped not by legacy but by intention and possibility.
“Not defined by what I created, but by what I choose next,” she said.
Founded in a barn in Pine Plains in 1985, Hammertown grew into a singular brand with locations in Rhinebeck and Great Barrington, known for its warm, layered aesthetic that blended European and American antiques with rustic textures and modern simplicity. Often credited with helping to define a “modern country” sensibility, the store drew a devoted following from across the region and beyond. But for Osofsky, its success was never a solo effort.
“Hammertown was never just my story,” she said. “It was built alongside my family and colleagues, whose support and talent made everything possible.”
That sense of collaboration traces back to her earlier life as a teacher in New Jersey and Rhode Island. While raising her children in the late 1960s and ’70s, she launched a patchwork quilting business, selling work in shops in New York City and the Berkshires. She went on to work with friends on The Sweet Life Chocolate Engagement Calendar, published in the early 1980s and sold nationally, and led a PTA quilting project that still hangs in her children’s former elementary school.
Those early experiences of building a home, raising a family and creating by hand became the foundation of Hammertown. Even now, that instinct remains unchanged.
“I still love knitting for babies and making scarves for friends,” she said.
As news of the closing spread, Osofsky said she felt both the weight of the decision and the depth of the community it touched.
“I felt its weight and its love when I announced Hammertown was closing,” she said.
Still, her focus returns to what lies ahead. She describes this next phase as open, undefined and deeply personal — a shift away from building a business toward following curiosity wherever it leads. Writing, travel and creative exploration are all part of that vision, along with revisiting ideas once set aside.
Among them is a book she once considered publishing traditionally. Now, she is rethinking that path, reflecting a broader change in how she approaches creativity. No longer tied to a store or a brand but “just for the joy of it,” she said.
That shift also makes room for other parts of her life, including time with her granddaughter, cooking, learning to garden and spending time in France.
“I’ll be at Trade Secrets helping my dear friend Sharon from Marston House,” she said of the annual garden event in May benefiting Project SAGE. “She lives in France most of the year, and I visit her frequently — we shop the markets, share life and walk the French countryside. This has become an important part of my life.”
Other constants remain. Tennis, she said, has long provided not only recreation but connection. She hopes to spend more time on the court, possibly even competitively, while continuing her work with the Northeast Community Center and the Little Guild. These commitments she describes as deeply meaningful and essential to what comes next.
“That has meant a great deal to me beyond Hammertown.”
As she prepares for the transition, Osofsky speaks less about loss than about clarity — a desire for space, a readiness for quiet and the ability to move forward on her own terms. She describes this next phase as rooted in authenticity and an “imperfectly perfect life,” acknowledging that it carries both release and uncertainty.
“I’ll let go, but I’m not sure where I’m being led, and that is OK,” she said.
A year from now, she expects people might see a shift in her — someone lighter, less burdened.
“Still deeply connected to creative beauty,” she said, “just less tied to outcomes and more open to surprise.”
Though many have framed Hammertown’s closing in terms of legacy, Osofsky resists that perspective. For her, the present moment feels far more alive.
“Legacy is something you come to understand later,” she said. “Possibility is something you feel in the present.”
What she hopes people carry forward is not just a memory but a feeling of something less tangible.
“I hope people don’t just remember Hammertown,” she said. “I hope they feel it — that sense of warmth and comfort, like walking into a place that felt like home.”
She sees Beyond Hammertown not as retirement but as the beginning of something new and intentional. There is still more to try, more to learn, more to become. It just might be her most personal design yet.
“And that, more than anything,” she said, “feels right.”
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