What’s happening

This week’s newspaper is filled with information that is vital for anyone who calls eastern Dutchess County home. Our reporters have been out on the scene writing up accounts of meetings, reporting on projects that are planned in coming days and those that are farther out. They also have been attending events that the residents have enjoyed in these last few weeks of summer, and writing about them. Our reporters tell the stories in words and pictures that fill our pages every week. It is the living history of our villages and towns.

We also realize, too, that we live in a world in which the average person checks their phone every 12 minutes. The result of all of our personalized searches can be that we become interested in a certain set of things. Getting a reader’s attention has to be worth their time. We strive to make the newspaper worth your time and we’re committed to the belief that it’s vital for residents of the village, the town of North East and the surrounding towns to know about the happenings in their backyards.

Last Thursday, the Eddie Collins Memorial Park Revitalization Committee presented plans for phase two of Millerton’s community park. (See story here.) Phase one was completed in 2022. The next phase, which includes plans for a swimming pool that was favored by residents in a 2016 survey, has a scheduled completion date of 2025. The timing of the project depends on the work on a planned sewer system that will extend to the park.

Both these projects — phase two of the park and the village wastewater project — are on the front burner of civic interest. They will determine much about the quality of life in the community. This summer the Webutuck Little League returned to play on the field at the park. At last Thursday’s meeting, the attendees listened as the speakers discussed the pool plans, and the air was filled with the attending sounds of basketball players on the new Eddie Collins courts and children in the refurbished playground.

Plans are afoot to bring a Dollar General store to Millerton that would include a produce section and parking for 40 cars. It would be located just east of the Talk of the Town Deli on Route 44. That would be big news for a town without a grocery store.

News can come in small bites, too. A stretch of sidewalk on Maple Avenue is slated for construction. A summer concert series wraps up in Amenia.  Pine Plains volunteers build a new trail on Stissing Mountain from Thompson Pond to the fire tower.  These are just a few of the stories in this week’s edition. Our reporters are on the lookout for what’s happening, what’s coming and writing about it for our readers.

Latest News

Amenia invites community input on parks and recreation
Amenia Town Hall on Route 22.
Photo by Nathan Miller

AMENIA — Community members are invited to answer the question "How do you play?" at a community engagement session at Amenia Town Hall on Saturday, March 14, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.

Town officials are creating a Parks and Recreation Master Plan to guide improvements to parks, programs and recreational areas. A similar engagement session was held in June 2025 supporting the goal of updating the town’s Comprehensive Plan.

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Pine Plains unveils first phase of major sidewalk repair project

Pine Plains Councilwoman Jeanine Sisco displays a photograph of flashing lights used to alert drivers to pedestrians in crosswalks in Millerton during a public forum at Pine Plains Town Hall on Tuesday, March 3. Sisco outlined plans to repair sidewalks and install two new crosswalks in downtown Pine Plains as a first phase in sidewalk repairs across the town.

Photo by Nathan Miller

PINE PLAINS — Town Board members unveiled plans for sidewalk renovations in downtown Pine Plains as they prepare to apply for a federal grant to fund the first phase of the project.

Councilwoman Jeanine Sisco described the first phase of the sidewalk project at a public forum at Pine Plains Town Hall on Tuesday, March 3.

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Living art takes center stage in the Berkshires

Contemporary chamber musicians, HUB, performing at The Clark.

D.H. Callahan

Northwestern Massachusetts may sometimes feel remote, but last weekend it felt like the center of the contemporary art world.

Within 15 miles of each other, MASS MoCA in North Adams and the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown showcased not only their renowned historic collections, but an impressive range of living artists pushing boundaries in technology, identity and sound.

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Persistently amplifying women’s voices

Francesca Donner, founder and editor of The Persistent. Subscribe at thepersistent.com.

Aly Morrissey

Francesca Donner pours a cup of tea in the cozy library of Troutbeck’s Manor House in Amenia, likely a habit she picked up during her formative years in the United Kingdom. Flanked by old books and a roaring fire, Donner feels at home in the quiet room, where she spends much of her time working as founder, editor and CEO of The Persistent, a journalism platform created to amplify women’s voices.

Although her parents are American and she spent her earliest years in New York City and Litchfield County — even attending Washington Montessori School as a preschooler — Donner moved to England at around five years old and completed most of her education there. Her accent still bears the imprint of what she describes as a traditional English schooling.

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Jarrett Porter on the enduring power of Schubert’s ‘Winterreise’
Baritone Jarrett Porter to perform Schubert’s “Winterreise”
Tim Gersten

On March 7, Berkshire Opera Festival will bring “Winterreise” to Studio E at Tanglewood’s Linde Center for Music and Learning, with baritone Jarrett Porter and BOF Artistic Director and pianist Brian Garman performing Franz Schubert’s haunting 24-song setting of poems by Wilhelm Müller.

A rejected lover. A frozen landscape. A mind unraveling in real time. Nearly 200 years after its premiere, “Winterreise” remains unnervingly current in its psychological portrait of isolation, heartbreak and existential drift.

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