Latest News
Squeeze and hold
Jul 09, 2025
Eugenia Vlahostathopulu of Clinton Corners donates blood during a Red Cross blood drive at the NorthEast-Millerton Library Annex on Saturday, July 5. A total of 19 people donated blood, five of whom were first time donors. Photo By Aly Morrissey
Jason Wagner of Millbrook and Jen McCreery, Adult Programs Coordinator at the Millbrook Library, set about hand-copying the document on Saturday, July 5, urging others to join them and do the same. The program will continue on Saturdays through July, between noon and 3 p.m.
Photo by Leila hawken
MILLBROOK — Engagement with the U.S. Constitution is the simple aim of a July program at The Millbrook Library, where each Saturday of the month library visitors can use the paper and pen provided to hand-copy the words of the historic document.
The first such session was held on Saturday, July 5, between noon and 3 p.m.The program will repeat each Saturday through July.
Leading the program is Jason Wagner, of Millbrook and the Bronx, who serves as Principal at Pelham Lab High School, a small public school in the Bronx.
An April article in the New Yorker magazine served as inspiration for the Millbrook Library’s program, Wagner said. He had read about a professional artist who had been the first to conceive of the idea and carry it out at the New York Public Library.
“She sparked it,” Wagner said. The goal is engagement to engender a knowledge of the Constitution.
“This is a really interesting way to dive deep into it. That’s why I’m writing in cursive,” said Jen McCreery, Adult Programs Coordinator for the library. She noted that the library is finding ways to both celebrate Independence Day, leading into next year’s observance of the 250th anniversary of the Revolution.
“This program is a good fit,” McCreery said.
Understanding the provisions of the Constitution is incredibly important, Wagner said.
“Our rights and responsibilities as citizens require constant vigilance, mandating that we understand the document,” Wagner added.
“People are aware of certain parts, but not aware of all of them,” McCreery said, noting that few have read it all the way through.
Interesting to see when reading or copying the document is the randomness of the capitalization and how spelling is not completely formalized. As an example, early on the word “choose” is spelled “chuse.”
Noting that the program serves children well as they handwrite the document, McCreery said that as interest grows, it might become an annual event in July.
Keep ReadingShow less
Sarah Gronningsater, a history professor at the University of Pennsylvania and author, lectured on the Quakers’ abolitionist history at the Nine Partners Meeting House in Millbrook on Sunday, June 29.
Photo by Charlie Greenberg
MILLBROOK — The interior of the unchanged Nine Partners Quaker Meeting House built in 1780 was the perfect setting for a talk on Quaker influence on the anti-slavery movement of the 18th and 19th centuries offered by the Millbrook Historical Society on Sunday, June 29. The talk was presented as the society’s first event in observance of next year’s celebration of the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
Featured speaker was Sarah Gronningsater, professor of history at the University of Pennsylvania and author of “The Rising Generation: Gradual Abolition, Black Legal Culture, and the Making of National Freedom,” published in 2024, by Penn Press.
Basing on exhaustive research that supported the book’s publication, Gronningsater’s talk was titled, “Quakers, Anti-slavery and the American Revolution,” focusing on the critical role of New York’s Quakers, particularly those of the Hudson Valley, in furthering the rise of the abolitionist movement before and after the American Revolution. The “Rising Generation” was a whole generation of freed children of enslaved parents who reached adulthood in time for the Civil War.
An audience of more than 50 settled onto the appropriately firm, solidly hard wooden Quaker benches for Gronningsater’s illustrated talk chronicling the generation that grew to shape the laws that would end the institution of slavery.
“Among the northern colonies, slavery was important to the economy,” Gronningsater explained, estimating a population of 20,000 slaves in early New York, second only to Pennsylvania. The Hudson River Valley was a powerhouse of commerce and influence.
The role of the Quakers, the Religious Society of Friends, has been underestimated. They firmly believed that slavery was wrong, although many Quakers, in reality, owned slaves. New York was not a Quaker colony, although it was a place of religious tolerance, Gronningsater explained.
What has proven to be a boon for researchers, Gronningsater observed, is the meticulous record-keeping of the Quakers who kept voluminous notes and wrote detailed minutes of every meeting.
“They write a lot,” said Gronningsater.
Quakers living within the Oblong territory between Connecticut and New York were activists in the New York City abolitionist movement.
The first published Black poet in the colonies was Jupiter Hammon, living on Long Island and published in 1761. The abolitionist movement had begun in 1760, continuing into the 1770s. Different elements within society were pushing for abolition during the pre-Revolution years.
Quakers began by encouraging their Quaker brothers to free their slaves. As that happened, Quakers next emphasized education of emancipated children of slaves, providing them with school learning.
Following the Revolutionary War, the Constitutional Convention in 1787 was marked by a call to abolish slavery, ultimately unsuccessful.
In 1799, New York passed an Act for the Abolition of Slavery where New York freed the children of slaves, but not the adults.
“Children were born into a different social structure,” Gronningsater said, leading to what could be termed “The Rising Generation.”
In 1827, after a ten-year campaign, New York passed a law to free all enslaved people in the state.
A lively question and answer period followed the talk, evidencing that the questions were emanating from people who knew their history well.
During welcoming remarks, Millbrook Historical Society President Robert McHugh had noted that the series of two meeting house talks are supported by a grant from Dutchess County.
The second meeting house talk of the summer will invite expert Carl Lounsbury of the College of William and Mary and Colonial Williamsburg to speak on the architecture of the Nine Partners Quaker Meeting House. Expert in colonial architecture, Lounsbury will compare the unchanged Nine Partners meeting house, novel architecture in its time, with the architecture of other houses of worship in New York and New England.
The second talk, free and open to the public, is scheduled for Sunday, July 27, at 2 p.m.
For those who want to look in on the Nine Partners Meeting House, McHugh announced that the historic site will be open through the summer until November on the first Sunday of each month, from 12 noon until 4 p.m.
Keep ReadingShow less
An autonomous mower will soon be mowing the grass at Millerton’s baseball diamond.
Photo by Nathan Miller
MILLERTON – The Village of Millerton has been awarded two state grants totaling $15,000 to replace landscaping equipment lost in the February fire at the Highway and Water Department building, thanks to the efforts of the joint Climate Smart task force of North East and Millerton.
Instead of gas-powered tools, Millerton will cut emissions — and grass — with a new fleet of mostly STIHL-brand electric tools. The commercial-grade equipment is quieter, cleaner and most are powered by interchangeable lithium-ion batteries, Climate Smart Task Force Coordinator Kathy Chow said.
“It’s actually a silver lining of the fire,” Chow said. “The Highway Department didn’t even have a rake left. This gave us a chance to start with a clean slate.”
The grants come from the Clean Energy Communities program, an initiative of the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority. Funded through a tax on electric bills, the program rewards municipalities for completing energy-saving actions. Chow compared the system to earning scout badges — towns rack up points for verified sustainability steps, then become eligible for grants.
For example, Millerton earned 800 points for achieving Climate Smart Community certification. Chow added that six recent “high-impact” actions, including installing the EV charging station on Century Boulevard last July and converting streetlights to LED in January, helped qualify the village for funding.
Climate Smart task force member Andrew Stayman described the new tools as a full suite of battery-powered gear — from chainsaws to blowers and trimmers — all running on interchangeable batteries for streamlined use and charging.
The broader goal is to phase out polluting two- and four-cycle engines in favor of cleaner, quieter electric alternatives. “Two-cycle engines, just by definition, are inefficient and far away from being green,” says Stayman.
One standout purchase is an autonomous electric mower, which will use satellite guidance and a smartphone app to trim the baseball field at Eddie Collins Park. According to Stayman, the mower is expected to cut a quarter-inch of grass each day and return to its charging station near the field. Though some liken it to a Roomba, Stayman, who is known to handle the technical aspects of most initiatives, said, “It’s more like a precision farming tractor than a robot vacuum.”
Chow said the switch to electric landscaping tools is part of a larger shift toward energy efficiency in local government and communities. While the equipment is an investment, she said the long-term benefits are clear — lower emissions, reduced maintenance and less noise for nearby residents. “It sort of feels like a win-win,” she said.
While individual climate actions can be hard to quantify, Stayman believes in their collective power.
“Grassroots efforts have always fueled larger movements,” he said. “It doesn’t make a difference when just one person does it, but when more and more people make small changes, the impact adds up.”
While there is no official expected arrival time for the equipment, the Climate Smart Task Force hopes to receive the new fleet of landscaping tools by August.
Keep ReadingShow less
loading
