Thank you!
Your support is sustaining the future of local news in our communities.
events

Annual picnic draws 150 senior citizens to Stissing Mountain High School

PINE PLAINS — Dutchess County’s Office for the Aging helped get seniors out of the house for the 34th year in a row through the organization’s annual picnic, providing seniors a chance to socialize and discuss programs available to help them prosper.
The OFA hosted a picnic on Friday, July 24, at Stissing Mountain High School in Pine Plains for seniors residing in Pine Plains, North East, Stanford and Washington. About 150 local seniors attended the picnic. The event was previously scheduled for July 15 but was postponed due to excessive heat.

At the picnic, seniors were provided lunch from Trio Community Meals while local musician Bob Martinson played songs ranging from “Sweet Caroline” by Neil Diamond to Frank Sinatra’s “New York, New York.” Tables lined the tent with resources and information geared toward seniors, such as their government representatives, the Dutchess County District Attorney’s office and the Mid Hudson Regional Hospital Stroke Center. The Medical Reserve Corps also provided free blood pressure screenings and medication disposal.

Approximately 20% of the population in Dutchess County is over the age of 65. The Office for the Aging, run by director Todd Tancredi, seeks to support this large group by creating programs and raising awareness for issues that face this population, such as loneliness, mobility and cognitive decline.

“The whole intent is just socializing more than anything. The idea is for them to see old friends and make new ones,” Tancredi said. “That’s the name of the game, keep them from being isolated and alone and depressed, and then it just spirals down from there.”

County Executive Sue Serino is also very involved with the OFA and previously served as chair of the Aging Committee in the New York State Senate. “My son always teases me because Serino and Senior have the same letters,” Serino said. “He says it was my destiny.”

Serino also presented the town of Stanford a microgrant for $6,000, allowing them to become a Purple Heart Town to honor the town’s veterans with signage, flags and plaques. There will be a dedication ceremony on Nov. 11.

The OFA provides many programs similar to the picnics with the goal of supporting the elderly. The organization recently launched a partnership with SilverShield which allows seniors to call, text or email the program to assess the possibility of a scam. They also partner with Go-Go Grandparent in order to provide rides for seniors who cannot drive so they can live independently at no additional cost.

“I want to make sure they know that we’re here,” Tancredi said. “We’re gonna help them as they get older, through their senior years.”

Jacquelyn Drain
events

Latest News

The Millerton News - October 22, 2026

The Millerton News - October 22, 2026

Download directly

Cornwall Historical Society celebrates Connecticut’s Black patriots

Cornwall Historical Society celebrates Connecticut’s Black patriots

On Saturday, Oct. 24, at the Cornwall Historical Society, author and genealogist John Mills will breathe new life into the stories of some of Connecticut’s more underappreciated patriots. The reason these heroes were forgotten? They were Black.

At a time when white colonists were fighting for their own liberty and political independence, many Black men who fought alongside them remained enslaved. Some risked their lives only to return to bondage. Though enslaved people were promised freedom from both sides of the Revolutionary War in exchange for their service, Great Britain, too, was still deeply dependent on slavery. For Black people in America, the war presented both extraordinary risks and uncertain paths to the freedom that white colonists were demanding for themselves.

Keep ReadingShow less
education

A sanctuary for second chances

A sanctuary for second chances

Stephanie Saetta runs Charlie Chicken Bones, a sanctuary in Salisbury.

Madi Long
You only get one or two of these soul connection dogs, so I do this in his honor.
— Stephanie Saetta

Stephanie Saetta has spent much of her life caring for others. A physician at White Plains Hospital, she has another calling at home in Salisbury — one that has four legs and a wagging tail. She runs Charlie Chicken Bone Sanctuary, a nonprofit dog rescue that brings dogs from overcrowded pounds and the streets of Texas to foster homes in northwestern Connecticut, where they can begin again.

The sanctuary is named for Charlie, the dog who taught her how special a bond between a person and rescue animal can be.

Keep ReadingShow less
our community
google preferred source

Want more of our stories on Google? Click here to make us a Preferred Source.

Big ideas come to Lenox for inaugural field festival

Big ideas come to Lenox for inaugural field festival

Hunter Runnette, founder and board chair of field, has spent years fostering arts and cultural programming in the Berkshires.

Provided

What do joy, gardening, artificial intelligence, the American experiment and the creative process have in common? Quite a lot, as it turns out, at least when some of the world’s most compelling thinkers get together to talk about them.

From Friday, Oct. 23, through Sunday, Oct. 25, Lenox, Massachusetts, will host the inaugural field festival, a three-day gathering of writers, artists, scholars and cultural figures at Shakespeare & Company. Billed as a festival of ideas, entertainment, learning and discovery, field brings together an impressive roster of voices to explore everything from the deeply personal to the profoundly political.

Keep ReadingShow less
community

The Pink House AM is serving up community

The Pink House AM is serving up community

Mare Rubin and Maggie Levine of the Pink House AM.

Madi Long

It all started with a yoga class. Mare Rubin was working on her second act after leaving the Upper West Side, where she’d raised a family and worked in corporate marketing. Newly empty nesters, she and her husband decided to move to the wilds of northwestern Connecticut, where they had spent 15 years as weekenders, to see what life in the woods had in store for them.

Rubin started teaching yoga classes at the Union in West Cornwall, a space designated by the town of Cornwall as a community hub with couches, Wi-Fi, occasional events and a growing yoga class schedule. She was adjusting well but missed one important thing about city life: a casual coffee shop.

Keep ReadingShow less
business

Sons of Astro are musicians, friends and bandmates — in that order

Sons of Astro are musicians, friends and bandmates — in that order

The Sons of Astro will be at the Common Pub in Housatonic on Oct. 24 and the 2nd Home Lounge in Winsted on Nov. 14.

Provided

No matter where they are in the world, musicians seem to find other musicians. There’s a shared language, a shared experience of being on stage and performing, and a shared enthusiasm for making those melodies by themselves or together. Such is the case with Norfolk and Brooklyn-based cosmic Americana band Sons of Astro.

That magnetic musicians’ bond drew Brooklyn-based singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Mike Cobb into the orbit of singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Matt Statler. The two neighbors took to each other right away and were soon playing open mics together. As an ethics professor at NYU’s Stern School of Business, Statler made the case that if he sat in for Cobb’s set and Cobb sat in for Statler’s, they could play together and double their stage time. Clearly, these men wanted to make as much music as possible. That became a little harder when Cobb and his family moved up to Norfolk, Connecticut.

Keep ReadingShow less
concerts
google preferred source

Want more of our stories on Google? Click here to make us a Preferred Source.