Ken Musselman marks new chapter with farewell exhibition

Ken Mussleman with his paintings “Red Apple #2” and “Nine Servings Daily.”His show, “Time Passages,” opens Saturday, June 27, at Hunt Library in Falls Village.
L. Tomaino


Ken Mussleman with his paintings “Red Apple #2” and “Nine Servings Daily.”His show, “Time Passages,” opens Saturday, June 27, at Hunt Library in Falls Village.
Hunt Library in Falls Village will host a farewell show of the work of well-known local artist Ken Musselman, beginning with an opening reception on June 27 from 5 to 7 p.m. The show will run until July 31.
Musselman, a longtime resident of the Northwest Corner, recently moved to Woodbury, Connecticut, where he will begin a new phase of his life.
After the loss of his wife of 43 years, Cathy, three years ago, the prolific artist took a break from painting.
“I am finally getting back on my feet,” he said.“I am beginning to paint again.”
“Time Passages” is a collection of his paintings from past years. With this show, he said, he will be “getting rid of the old and starting new.” He intends to “move in a different direction,” which involves a monochromatic palette. “I am in a sepia mood right now,” he explained.
Musselman has long been known for his whimsical paintings. He recalled his first one, depicting deer ice skating, which was sold at P S Gallery in Litchfield.
He explained how he gets his ideas. “I sit and visualize things,” said Musselman. “I paint from my head.”
He is also known for local landscapes, still lifes and flowers. His wife was from East Canaan, and her family’s Ford Farm inspired many of his paintings.
Musselman, who always loved drawing, was studying to be an aviation structural mechanic in the Navy when he painted a mural in the mess hall. He recalled, “They told me, ‘You’re wasting your time being a mechanic.’” So he painted murals and created technical illustrations instead.
After the Navy, while living in Florida, an opportunity arose for a job as a graphic designer at Dotty Smith’s in Lakeville, a women’s fashion and jewelry company that closed in 2001. Musselman applied and moved to the region where his wife had grown up.
Later, he worked full time as a painter, with work in five galleries. He was in his studio “14 hours a day, seven days a week” to keep the galleries supplied.
“Time Passages” contains favorite Musselman themes, including cowscapes, local landscapes, still lifes, flowers and barns, on both large canvases and 4-by-4-inch canvases, in styles ranging from whimsical to realistic.
He is now semi-retired. Future plans include painting portraits inspired by family photos. “I’m not going to chase it anymore. I’ll let it come.”
Musselman is concentrating on a “leap of faith, a new chapter in life.”
For more information, visit huntlibrary.org/
art-wall/.
Graham Corrigan
As student enrollment declines across the region, local school districts are falling short of using the full amount of state Pre-K funding available to them. But local superintendents say the shortfall reflects fewer children enrolling — not money being left on the table.
A recent NY Focus analysis of State Education Department data compared New York districts’ Pre-K enrollment with the amount of Pre-K funding provided by the state. It found that most districts did not meet their maximum allotment.
During the 2024-25 school year, $1.2 billion was set aside for public pre-K statewide. By the end of the school year, roughly $170 million remained unspent. For the 2025-26 school year, the state estimates another $87 million will go unused.
Deficits exist across the state. In Northern Dutchess, Millbrook Central School District fell $156,600 short of its maximum state allocation, while Pine Plains was $64,801 below its cap.
Data for Webutuck Central School District was not immediately available. Earlier this year, Webutuck announced it would expand its Pre-K offerings to include 3 year olds in addition to 4 year olds.
Superintendents from Millbrook and Pine Plains say the disparity comes from a question of enrollment, rather than the funds allocation. “The state provides a per-pupil allocation of money,” said Millbrook Superintendent Caroline Hernandez-Pidala. “If you do not have enough students enrolled to encumber the total amount available to your school district, it is forfeited. You are not able to use it for other programming.”
Superintendent Dr. Brian Timm of Pine Plains ran into the same problem. “When the initial amount for Pine Plains was given to us, it was based on a projected enrollment of 47 students,” he said. “But when our students actually enrolled, we had 35 students. So what the state is saying is, ‘Here’s the amount if all your students were to enroll, but we’re only going to pay you for the amount that actually shows up.’”
Changes are on the horizon. The state budget passed last month raised the per-pupil reimbursement for pre-K from $5,400 to $10,000.
While that won’t affect enrollment, it will free up local school dollars previously used to support Pre-K. Millbrook and Pine Plains spent $181,989 and $221,739, respectively, from local funds to fund Pre-K.
Pre-K and child care have been a central component of Gov. Kathy Hochul’s 2026-27 budget. The state has earmarked $4.5 billion for the programs, a $1.7 billion increase in funding. Hochul has set a goal of achieving universal Pre-K by the 2028-29 school year.
Nathan Miller
Volunteer firefighters work to extinguish the last remnants of a blaze that destroyed a third-story porch atop a four-unit apartment building located at 5 Broadway St. in Amenia near Fudgy's Ice Cream Shop on Monday, July 13, at about 4 p.m.
AMENIA — A house fire erupted on the third floor of an apartment building at 5 Broadway St. near Fudgy's Ice Cream shop just after 3 p.m. on Monday, July 13.
No one was injured and no one was taken to the hospital in the blaze that erupted on the third floor of a four-unit apartment building.
A dispatch call alerting Amenia's Empress ambulance, the Amenia Fire Co. and the Wassaic Fire Co. to smoke in the building went out over the radio around 3:15 p.m.

Medics confirmed the presence of a fire upon arriving on the scene, triggering a mutual aid response that brought fire crews from Millerton, Dover, Millbrook and Sharon, Connecticut, to the scene.
Amenia Fire Chief Chris Howard said he was awaiting the Dutchess County fire investigator around 4:30 p.m. and the cause of the fire had yet to be determined.
Fire crews battled the blaze for about an hour before the fire was extinguished. The fire damaged a protruding section of the roof in the rear of the building above the two-story back patio.
Once the fire was extinguished, firefighters could be seen crossing Broadway to visit Fudgy's for ice cream to help beat the heat of the fire and the summer sun.

Millerton News
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D.H. Callahan
Cheers! The Revolutionary Whisky Series at Ten Mile Distillery, each named for a significant battle of the American Revolution, celebrates America at 250.
In December 2024, the U.S. Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau officially established the Standard of Identity for American Single Malt Whisky. It was the first new classification in more than half a century, creating new possibilities for American distillers. One of the distilleries taking advantage of this new landscape is Wassaic’s Tenmile Distillery. It is well positioned to make history because Tenmile has always honored traditional whiskey-making practices.
Single malts are often associated with Scotch whisky. Perhaps that’s why, years before the new standard was adopted, Tenmile hired Shane Fraser, a Scottish master distiller with 30 years of experience at some of Scotland’s most prestigious distilleries. Fraser began designing the distillery from the ground up. Alongside owner and general manager Joel LeVangia, he emphasized time-honored traditions, favoring hands-on craftsmanship over the increasingly automated methods used by larger producers. When it comes to making the best whisky possible, Tenmile believes in learning from the past. That philosophy extends beyond the distilling process.

In late 2025, in anticipation of the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the distillery introduced its Revolutionary Whisky Series. The collection features 57 unique expressions, each with its own combination of barrel types and aging periods, and each named for a significant battle of the American Revolution.
LeVangia sees the series not only as something collectible — a hallmark of the international craft distilling world — but also as an opportunity to educate. Most Americans learn about the Revolution in high school U.S. history classes, but LeVangia wanted to go beyond familiar stories such as Washington crossing the Delaware or the famous command to wait until soldiers could see “the whites of their eyes.” Each bottle helps tell a deeper story.
To bring those stories to life, Tenmile has gone the extra — dare they say, 11th — mile. Tom Bouldin, Ph.D., serves as the distillery’s historian. He consults on the series, helping LeVangia and Fraser connect each expression to an appropriate battle of the American Revolution. He also leads Tenmile’s lecture series. While some of Bouldin’s talks explore the history of popular music, his primary focus is the battles of the American Revolution.
With each new release, Tenmile hosts an intimate evening of history and whisky tasting. Centered on Bouldin’s meticulously researched lectures, the events often spark broader conversations about the battles, the people who fought them and what those events still mean today. It’s a style of promotion rarely seen today. Although the distillery and its grounds are stunning, these gatherings are not designed as Instagram photo opportunities. Instead, they bring together a small group of people eager to learn from the past while tasting something new.
That is what the Revolutionary Whisky Series — and Tenmile Distillery as a whole — is all about: learning from history while forging its own.
D.H. Callahan
Belinda Sinclair
Sinclair’s show explores the ways women have been practicing forms of magic for centuries, and there is plenty of history to tell.
Belinda Sinclair is the kind of magician who impresses people who don’t like magic. Her tricks are mind-boggling. Her stories are captivating. And if she picks you to write your name on a card, get ready to be wowed. Repeat attendees of her shows, of which there are many, take almost as much delight in watching new jaws drop as they do in seeing an illusion reach its astonishing conclusion.
Since the summer of 2025, Sinclair has been baffling local audiences at the Hughes Memorial Library in West Cornwall, but her magical run comes to a close at the end of August.
For 45 years, Sinclair, a New York City native, has been hosting small, intimate performances in the “Conjuring Room,” her Victorian parlor in Hell’s Kitchen. It’s a place made for magic, with built-in surprises designed to disorient. But the Hughes Library doesn’t have the same potential to perplex. The room is, as the name suggests, a library, with shelves packed tightly with old books. Some of those books, stocked by Sinclair herself, dive into the history of women and magic. That particular topic is the organizing principle of her show.
Today, we live in a world with large-scale magic productions from household names like David Blaine. Penn & Teller and Criss Angel had widely popular television series, while performers like magician and comedian Justin Willman have found audiences on Netflix. David Copperfield, the most commercially successful magician in history, only recently had his 25-year Las Vegas residency cancelled, after allegations connected to the Jeffrey Epstein investigation resurfaced. But very few women, arguably none, have reached the highest levels of fame in the magic world.
Sinclair’s show explores the ways women have been practicing forms of magic for centuries, and there is plenty of history to tell. Her head is simply full of historical anecdotes and interpretations. She seems to know everything there is to know about magic and how, over the centuries, it has been feared and misunderstood.
It’s knowledge she acquired through decades in the world of magic. Sinclair got her start by accident. After graduating from New York City’s High School of Performing Arts, she was hired to entertain a long business conference as a clown. Despite having no clowning experience, she did so well that she was hired for a party on the spot where she was expected to perform magic. She didn’t know a single trick. So she headed to Tannen’s, the legendary Manhattan magic shop that is still open to this day, and asked them to teach her.
She was so captivated by the first trick she learned that she soon began illustrating the shop’s newsletter, the “Trickune.” Soon, she had worked her way into the world of magic. But her trajectory seemed limited. Women in magic were, and frequently still are, relegated to the role of “lovely assistant,” and Sinclair was no exception. She played along, laughing at the bad jokes and flirting with the right men, all the while knowing she could perform better than most of them.
Soon, she stopped playing along. She started developing her own routines. She became increasingly proficient with a deck of cards. She practiced and practiced and practiced. Eventually, the magic establishment took notice of this young magician with the audacity to be a woman.
As her reputation grew, so did the challenges she faced. Breaking into the inner circles of magic is no easy task, but Sinclair knew that if she wanted to be taken seriously, she needed to impress the people at the top. The Magic Circle, a prestigious British society whose members have included Penn & Teller, Stephen Fry and King Charles III, evaluates prospective members through a rigorous performance examination that includes required tricks. Sinclair earned a perfect score of 100 out of 100, proving not only that a woman could perform magic, but that she could perform it as well, if not better, than anyone.
As remarkable as her skills are, there’s a lot more to Sinclair than magic. She’s a ceramicist, hypnotherapist, author, game creator, actor and coder. But perhaps most importantly, she’s a teacher.
Sinclair thrives on helping others navigate through whatever obstacles life throws their way. For a time, that meant helping military veterans with PTSD transition to civilian life. She teaches children how to code so they can build their own websites. She works with unhoused children, using magic to boost their confidence. But if she has her way, the most important lesson she can teach is that with the right amount of work and determination, anyone — and especially little girls — can do the impossible.
Richard Feiner And Annette Stover
Renée Fleming, Andris Nelsons and Thomas Hampson.
On Friday, July 17 at 8 p.m. in the Koussevitzky Music Shed at Tanglewood, two of the greatest American voices of their generation, soprano Renée Fleming and baritone Thomas Hampson, join Music Director Andris Nelsons and the Boston Symphony Orchestra in a performance of excerpts from John Adams’ groundbreaking opera “Nixon in China.” The piece, performed earlier this year in Boston and at Carnegie Hall in New York City, is a highlight of a program that also includes “Meditations on Grace” (2024) by BSO Composer Chair Carlos Simon, and the melodic and technically demanding Violin Concerto by Samuel Barber.
Fleming is internationally celebrated for her vocal and dramatic artistry, as well as for her advocacy for the powerful impact of the creative arts in health. Hampson has long been recognized as one of the most innovative musicians of our time and has received countless international honors for his singular artistry and cultural leadership. Both performed in “Nixon in China” earlier this year at the Paris Opera under the baton of Kent Nagano.
Adams’ “Three Scenes from Nixon in China” is a suite taken from the opera and prepared especially for the BSO performances with Fleming and Hampson in the roles of Pat and Richard Nixon. The suite includes Act I, Scene I, in which the Nixons arrive in Beijing; Pat Nixon’s “This is prophetic” aria from Act II, Scene I; and Nixon’s speech followed by a chorus of toasts and cheers (“Gam bei!”) in Act I, Scene III.
The full opera premiered in 1987 and has become one of the most celebrated works of contemporary American music. As The New Yorker wrote, “Not since ‘Porgy and Bess’ has an American opera won such universal acclaim as ‘Nixon in China.’”
The libretto is based on Nixon’s groundbreaking February 1972 visit to reestablish diplomatic ties with the People’s Republic of China. The production was controversial at the time: an opera about a recent American president whose resignation was still vivid in the country’s memory. Created by a first-time opera composer, a poet new to opera (Alice Goodman) and a young avant-garde director (Peter Sellars), the piece defied expectations of what a contemporary opera could be.
Yet “Nixon in China” has proved to be something far more than a provocation; it has been hailed as helping to revitalize American opera. It uses realistic scenarios based on recent historical events to make direct statements about big social questions, especially the status of women in history and society. It is also credited with helping to create the subgenre of the “headline opera,” works that refract the mythology of recent real-life events and personalities through the lens of operatic music, words and staging.
Adams’ score is a dazzling fusion of rhythmic vitality and luminous choral textures with the psychological intricacy of character drama. It reflects the composer’s ongoing search, as he has put it, to find “the sacred in the everyday.” The result is a distinctive kind of music theater that transforms historical and contemporary narratives into modern parables in order to explore the tension between public facade and private reckoning, and between human motive and moral choice.
This Tanglewood concert promises to be a highlight of the summer’s music season. It is part of the BSO’s E Pluribus Unum festival, a multiyear celebration that shines a spotlight on American music to explore the country’s history and ideals and to raise critical questions on topics that shape our collective experience.
For more information and to purchase tickets, visit bso.org.

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