MILLBROOK — Among the food, vegetation, music, spices, soaps and causes at the Millbrook Farmers and Makers Market on Saturday, July 15, sat Abigail Thomas at the Merritt Bookstore tent, signing copies of her latest book “Still Life at Eighty: The Next Interesting Thing.”
Told from the hindsight of an 80-year-old atheist dog lover who is trying to come to terms with her age-related liabilities and her own mortality, Thomas’ book got great reviews. The Los Angeles Times said that it was “Writing that is true to the way the human mind works.” Elizabeth Gilbert stated that she “… would follow Thomas on any journey she ever takes,” and Stephen King affirmed, “Abigail Thomas is the Emily Dickinson of memoir.”
Thomas writes from her home in Woodstock, where she lives with her dogs. Written during COVID-19 when she was mostly alone and without the company of her four children, 12 grandchildren and one great-grandchild, the book discusses loss, and it’s not always pretty, but it is real. Each chapter is short—a little treasure unto itself.
Introduced by Merritt Bookstore owner Kira Wizner, Thomas was friendly, open and engaging as well as engaged in spite of the heat: She talked, but she also listened.
Nathan Miller
PINE PLAINS — A local EMS official is challenging Dutchess County’s emergency response data, arguing it undercounts volunteer responders who arrive on scene without ambulances.
Pine Plains Rescue Squad 2nd Lt. Nelson Zayas raised concerns during public comment at the Town Board’s regular meeting on Thursday, April 16, presenting local response time figures he said more accurately reflect the squad’s performance.
Zayas said county data on response times and non-response rates does not account for situations in which volunteer EMTs respond directly to a scene in their personal vehicles and begin providing care before an ambulance arrives — or instead of one.
“We have everything we need in our cars,” Zayas said, explaining that volunteers will sometimes go straight to the scene to avoid delays associated with first stopping at the firehouse to pick up an ambulance.
His comments follow recent reports on 2025 EMS response times and non-response rates across Dutchess County. According to county data, the Pine Plains Rescue Squad fails to respond to 25% of calls, and the average response time for the highest priority calls is 12 minutes, 52 seconds.
Zayas said Dutchess County data counts the ambulance that carries the patient as the responding agency. He repeatedly emphasized that fact, saying Pine Plains EMTs aren’t always missing calls but are instead providing assistance that isn’t reflected in the data.
As an example, Zayas described a call that occurred in January where a patient had fallen out of bed and needed help getting off the floor. Zayas said the Pine Plains ambulance was cancelled on route to the scene because a Pine Plains Hose Company member could provide the necessary assistance on the scene and an ambulance was not necessary.
That call counts as a non-response for the volunteer EMTs, Zayas said, despite the fact that the ambulance was on route to the scene.
The volunteer EMT also called attention to priority one response times. Priority one calls are the most life-threatening calls, which are associated with a standard response time of no more than nine minutes, Zayas said.
Zayas urged Town Board members to compare his statistics to county data. According to his data, the Pine Plains volunteer EMS squad had an average priority one response time of nine minutes and 23 seconds, nearly three minutes shorter than the average priority one response time reported in 2025’s fourth quarter data from Dutchess County.
He said the volunteer squad’s response times can sometimes be longer than ideal because of long trips or calls that come in at inopportune times. Zayas described a call that came in while the ambulance was dropping off a patient at Northern Dutchess Hospital in Rhinebeck, New York. He said that call registered a 17 minute and eight second response time that was unavoidable due to the long trip.
Pine Plains, Amenia, Dover, Stanford and Milan all rank among the lowest in the county for average high priority response times, according to the data. Average response times in North East, Amenia and the Village of Millerton at the end of 2025 were longer than in 2024. Millerton saw an overall increase in average response time of two minutes and 12 seconds.
At the end of 2024, Millerton’s average high priority response time was six minutes 57 seconds. That average had risen to nine minutes eight seconds by the end of 2025. Amenia’s average response time rose from 10 minutes seven seconds to 11 minutes six seconds over the same period. Pine Plains actually saw a decrease in average response time from 15 minutes 31 seconds to 12 minutes 52 seconds.
Officials in northeast Dutchess County communities have raised alarms about dramatic increases in EMS costs in recent years. North East’s contract with Empress — which recently bought Northern Dutchess Paramedics — rose 36% to $696,345 this year, forcing the town to exceed New York State’s tax levy increase limit to accommodate the greater expense.
Millerton News
MILLERTON — The future of an apartment building in downtown Millerton is facing more uncertainty after mortgage holders won a foreclosure judgment in Dutchess County Supreme Court last month.
The 100-year-old apartment building at 7-9 Main St., situated between Mad Rose Gallery and the Harney Tea Shop, must now be sold at a foreclosure auction by the end of June after a court order handed down on March 27.
The court order finds that GVKGNE Inc., a business operated by Chris Rrapi of Monroe, New York, defaulted on a loan of more than $400,000 in 2023. Lending firm Toorak Capital Partners, which took control of the mortgage from the original lender FM Home Loans LLC in 2021, filed for foreclosure in December 2023.
March’s foreclosure order comes on the heels of a furnace malfunction in January that forced tenants out of their homes. The building has remained vacant ever since, with the exterior doors still bearing signs warning people to stay out of the building by order of the village’s building inspector.
Now the empty building will be sold as-is at auction, though the date has yet to be determined.
Rrapi purchased the building in 2021, after the prior owner, Charles Lilley, died. The building was configured with 12 units, but Rrapi later learned that was twice the number permitted under prior approvals.
Rrapi, who said earlier this year that his intention had always been to upgrade the property, encountered his first obstacle when attempting to get approval for renovations to the aging building in 2024. Village officials told him the property was permitted to contain only six residential units.
It’s unclear from public documents when the building was configured with 12 units.
The property owner then went back and forth with the village’s Zoning Board of Appeals until 2025. Zoning board members rejected a bid for a nine-unit configuration coupled with a request that parking requirements be waived.
Those proceedings coincided with the foreclosure suit.
Zoning board members asserted that parking constraints in downtown Millerton informed their decision to reject Rrapi’s requests. The property has no onsite parking and street parking is limited on Main Street. Village zoning rules require space for 1.5 parking spaces per residential unit.
Kathy Herald-Marlowe
We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard… John F. Kennedy 1962
Artemis II lifted off April 1, 2026, from a spectator-packed Kennedy Space Center with millions more Americans glued to any visual source with real-time coverage of the first moon travel since 1972 – a 50-year hiatus.Those watching felt the same excitement, comradery as was experienced with the rise of Neil Armstrong fulfilling Kennedy’s challenge – walking on the moon within the decade. Hordes of watching children planned their Astronaut costumes for this fall’s Halloween. American ingenuity, innovation, success made the nation beam with pride then and now.
The sweetness of being an American was intense – being connected with most all other Americans – moments of massive achievement and true accomplishment. National sweetness – collaborative pride.Here is a diverse set of highly skilled astronauts:two American men – one white, one black - an American white woman, and a Canadian white male.NASA sent a highly DEI crew on its supreme mission with historic success – to the moon and back. The crew was an exuberant team.Their public comments were heartfelt for their crew, for their nation, for their planet– summed up by astronaut Christina Koch “Earth you are a Crew!”
In Lake Placid, NY,1980, an Olympics Miracle on Ice was brought home by 20 young American college hockey players defeating the highly professional, non-professional Soviets who had hither to owned the ice. Another prime instance of Americans – in unity - bolted to any communications device available to follow exquisite, fully-absorbing action.Anyone alive at the time can tell you where they were, what they were doing during this hockey match – regardless if they had ever before or since watched hockey.I was on a plane traveling from Houston to NYC, the Olympic commentors broadcasting on the plane’s speaker, every passenger riveted as the US team, surprisingly leading 4-3, in the final seconds of the game shut the Soviets out of a tying goal. Then, the famed “Do you believe in miracles? YES”.
American Sweetness – common pleasure – joint delight – extreme pride. We have in decades past enjoyed national delight – been bound by our sense of unity, our sense of being together joined for security, for extraordinary innovation, for massive wins, for marvelous accomplishment, for sweet celebration.We’ve not enough American sweetness in the past few years – rather trumped out with sharp, vigorous conflict, one side versus another, one party, one color despising another. Our previous sweet days/years were WOT – With Out Trump.
Currently a “non-war”, a major violent military clash with Iran has brought the nation stark, biting bitterness – the bitterness of soldiers killed, of costs in our nation skyrocketing, the President’s blatant screaming of war crime rhetoric, the use of religion in reporting national endeavors, the blasphemy of Trump depicted as Christ posted online in our secular state, the US at war with its faithful allies of 70 years, the negative battle with the Pope over theological matters, Orban throw out with other Hungarian trash.
Bitterness, corruption of Trump & sons raking in billions from cryptocurrency, Middle Eastern real estate deals all driving the net worth of their family from $2.5 Billion in 2024 to $10 Billion in 2026. Crime, corruption, lucrative deals with countries, billionaires, corporations are the trademark of Trump – a powerful force set to destroy a nation once lauded not for perfection of behavior but for leadership for liberty, for freedom. The United States, America, our nation unassailed as a pinnacle of performance, of altruism accompanied, of course, with righteous anger for loose bands of ugly Americans stuffed with greed and self-indulgence- taking and taking. The era since 2016 is WT – With Trump – he, Trump, an albatross of atrocities, promoter of hatred and division, role model of what-not-to-be, example supreme of who-to-scrub-his-mouth-out-with-soap.
Lincoln lead our nation, perhaps the most revered of our Presidents, warning the nation: “If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide”.We ought listen to Lincoln.We the People, owners of the Constitution, owners of our government must be authors of democracy and decency – all is in our hands.
Kathy Herald-Marlowe lives in Sharon.
Want more of our stories on Google? Click here to make us a Preferred Source.
Millerton News
SALISBURY — William “Billy” Taylor Mitchell died on Feb. 21, 2026, following a four-month fight against complications caused by an automobile accident. Billy will always be a beloved and darling father and husband, and an honest and true friend to hundreds within a wide community he created and held onto in his lifetime. Billy is cherished for his values, devotion, curiosity in others, independent thinking, taste in music, and booming laugh.
Preceded in death by his parents, Sheila Wells, 1992 and Donald Mitchell, 1996, Billy is survived by his wife of 37 years, Cornelia Jane (née Reeder) and his three children, Haley, Cornelia (Nellie), and William Gilbert (Gib) Mitchell. The middle child between siblings Fritz and Elizabeth Mitchell, Billy has always been a devoted brother through weekly phone calls and visits to their homes in Vermont and Colorado. The entire family will profoundly miss Billy’s indelible presence in every part of every day - his joie de vivre, his sense of humor, the twinkling of his eyes, and his genuine, joyous smile.
Billy was born on Dec. 22, 1960 in New York, New York. Every day thereafter was a symphony of phones ringing, skates scraping, ice cubes clinking, music playing, fires blazing, racquets swinging, and oars plunking.
Growing up in Bedford New York,Billy was curious and active. He attended The Harvey School in Katonah, New York from grades seven to nine. He played soccer, hockey, and lacrosse and was granted the Ballard Drama Award in 1976for his role as Nick Bottom in William Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”--a designation he boasted about for decades. He joined the 1979 class of The Choate School in Wallingford, Connecticut, where he continued to excel in athletics. Billy earned a BS in Economics from Ohio Wesleyan in 1983. At each of these schools Billy was most known for the friends he made and held close for the rest of his life. He amassed a network that stretched far and yet never thinned; a quantity that never compromised quality. His impromptu catch-up phone calls will be missed by many.
In 1984, Billy started as a cold-caller at Smith Barney, which was later acquired by Morgan Stanley. Over his career, he advanced to be a Financial Advisor and Vice President. Throughout his tenure, Billy imbued his personality into his work. His dedication to his clients was steadfast and he counted many of them as close friends.
Billy returned to Bedford in 1992, to the house where he was raised, just beyond the treasured 500-year-old Bedford Oak, with his wife and growing family to call it home forever. He once again played hockey in the rink at The Harvey School, this time as a Bedford Bear. There, and on Aspetong Pond, he taught his children a love of skating.
Billy could not be contained by four walls and a roof; he preferred the open air. He loved to row his Adirondack guide boat up and down the lower lake of Mt. Riga in Salisbury. If there was a breeze, he’d happily rig up the sunfish. He used to tinker with his bright red 1958 MGA convertible for hours just to take it for a spin. He dedicated every vacation and spare weekend to bringing his family skiing, camping, hiking, swimming, biking, and sharing his favorite places and pastimes with his family.
Together he and Cornelia threw countless parties–and pre-parties, and after parties, and impassioned New York Rangers watch parties. The doors of their home were always open to visitors. Any vehicle that ascended the gravel driveway–USPS drivers, old friends from out of town, or neighbors saying hi–could count on Billy bursting out the door to greet them.
Billy masterfully threw himself into the adventures and duties of Bedford Village Chowder & Marching Club, where he was a 21-year volunteer raising and allocating funds for local youth organizations. No project was beyond his ambition or beneath his humility. In remembrance of his decades of service, Chowder & Marching has established a scholarship in Billy’s name which will be granted to a student at Fox Lane High School.
With a signature fondness and reliability, Billy served on the Board of the Pound Ridge Tennis Club, preparing and maintaining the integrity of the 7 har-tru tennis courts. Much of the club’s bucolic grounds are thanks to Billy’s care and love of the club. Billy and CJ enjoyed countless hours of tennis and platform tennis as partners, opponents, and with many dear friends.
In the months that followed the devastating car accident, Billy fought ferociously against his injuries. During that period he was surrounded by his beloved wife, children, siblings, and many devoted friends. We are all so grateful to the nurses, doctors, healthcare professionals, and hospital staff who aided him in his battle and held us in the hardest moments. Their consistent care and Billy’s stubborn tenacity afforded us more precious time with him. All the love and joy that he put into the world came back around and he spent his final months immersed in it.
A celebration of life will be held at The Harvey School on the lower field beside Evarts Rink on Saturday, May 9th, 2026 at 2:00pm. All friends of Billy’s are welcome; and anyone who had the pleasure of meeting him knew quickly that they were a friend.
Any donations can be made to the Bedford Village Chowder & Marching Club to support the Billy Mitchell Scholarship Fund.
Millerton News
NORTH CANAAN — George H. Wheeler, a longtime educator and beloved member of the North Canaan community, passed away on April 18, 2026, age 80, from Parkinson’s Disease.
George was born the son of Ralph and Alberta Wheeler, and grew up on the family dairy farm in Temple, New Hampshire, where the Wheeler family had worked the land for generations. That early life — rooted in the rhythms of agriculture, animals, and hard work — would quietly shape everything that followed. He graduated from Wilton High School in 1964, where he played on the state champion soccer team. After high school, he went on to earn a Bachelor of Science in Animal Science from the University of New Hampshire in 1968, where he also participated in ROTC. He later earned two Master’s degrees, in Education and in Animal Science, and in 1985 received a Certificate of Advanced Graduate Studies from Virginia Tech.
George began his teaching career in Weare, New Hampshire, before joining the Vocational Agriculture Department at Housatonic Valley Regional High School (HVRHS) in Falls Village. From 1970 until his retirement, George left an indelible mark on the school, its students, and the wider community he served with such steadfast dedication. He modernized and expanded the agricultural curriculum, championed the development of the Life Skills program, and introduced the Young Farmers program. He would serve as Chair of both the Vocational Agriculture Department and later as Practical Arts Chairman. He was President of the Faculty Association, and, later, a member of the Connecticut State Advisory Board of Agriculture Education.
Among his most cherished roles at Housatonic was his decades-long service as faculty advisor to the local FFA chapter — a commitment he approached not merely as a duty but as a calling. He gave freely of his time outside the classroom, making farm visits and supporting FFA activities. For many years he oversaw the chapter’s beloved annual Christmas Tree stand, a tradition that brought students and community together each holiday season. He was also the proud advisor to the state champion Parliamentary Procedure team, and played a pivotal role in the launch of the school’s new vocational center.
Beyond the classroom, George was a pillar of North Canaan civic life. He served as President of the Exchange Club and as a member of the North Canaan Wetlands Commission. His personal passions were many: he was a skilled skier and longtime instructor at Butternut Basin in nearby Great Barrington, Massachusetts, an avid golfer, and a deeply loyal fan of the UConn Women’s Basketball team.
But by any measure, the great love of George’s life was Catherine Quinn Wheeler — his wife of 58 years and his high school sweetheart. Their life together, built on a foundation of shared history, mutual devotion, and a home filled with family, was his greatest source of pride and joy.
George is survived by his beloved wife, Catherine, of North Canaan; his son Michael Wheeler and his wife Sheila, of Pittsfield, Massachusetts, and their daughters Julia and Elizabeth; his son Kevin Wheeler and his wife Amy, of Barnard, Vermont, and their son Liam and daughter Hannah; and his sister, Alice Wheeler, and her husband Bob Thompson, of Milford, New Hampshire.
He was predeceased by his parents, Ralph and Alberta Wheeler; his brother David Wheeler, in 1963; and his sister Sarah Wheeler, in 1978.
Calling hours will be held at Newkirk-Palmer Funeral Home on Saturday, May 2, at 4–6 p.m. A celebration of George’s life will be held at Housatonic Valley Regional High School on Sunday, May 3, at 2 p.m. and is open to the community.
In lieu of flowers, donations may be made in George’s name to the Housatonic Valley Regional High School FFA Chapter, in care of Newkirk-Palmer Funeral Home, on 118 Main St. Canaan, CT.
Millerton News
Want more of our stories on Google? Click here to make us a Preferred Source.
Want more of our stories on Google? Click here to make us a Preferred Source.
