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NECC Teen Program staff Katie Cariello and Erin Chirevas volunteer at the Food Pantry.
NECC
NECC Teen Program staff Katie Cariello and Erin Chirevas volunteer at the Food Pantry.
MILLERTON — On the last day of business of the year 2023, the North East Community Center (NECC) officially accepted a gift: the old Millerton Elementary School.
“It’s a fabulous opportunity,” said Christine Sergent, director of the NECC. The Community Center has been looking for a new home for years now, said Sergent, but it’s proved a difficult undertaking:
“It had to tick certain boxes, had to be in the village, walking distance, all of those kinds of things. And that’s just very difficult to identify here in Millerton. It just really didn’t exist. And then, poof, all of a sudden, there it was.”
NECC has been looking seriously for new properties — that is, running due diligence on various options — only in the last year or so, said Sergent.
“We had to do a lot of infrastructure development in the organization to strengthen ourselves financially and programmatically and staffing-wise and so forth, to get us to the point where we felt stable enough to take on what is going to be a big lift for us.” A big project like this, she said, “can pull you off course if you’re not careful.”
The building in question has more or less been on NECC’s radar as a possibility for the last 10 years, said Sergent. Then last spring, the building went on the market for $995,000.
NECC strongly considered it. However, after months of due diligence, the organization decided that the added costs of bringing the building up to code made the sticker price untenable; at a meeting with the board last October, the group officially closed down the possibility of buying the school.
“And then all of the sudden we got a phone call,” said Sergent: Morgan Coy and Richard Lanka of Particles Elementary LLC wanted to donate the Millerton Elementary School property to the NECC.
Growth at NECC
NECC has tripled in size in just the last three years. In the years before that, it had doubled in size. Finding a way to get all of its programs in one place will be challenging, said Sergent, but it’s also key to NECC’s ability to serve the community.
“To get us all into one location is really beneficial to our community, because we have so many different resources,” she said. “It helps for people to come in and have access transportation, but also access food and our childcare and so forth.
“But that’s now over 40 staff to have to bring together and all the programs, and all the things that come with it — the supplies, materials, things that need to be stored, you know, the kitchen to go with the child care center, all of that stuff into one location is quite a lot more than what it may have been 10 years ago when we were a staff of seven or eight.”
Getting all of the programs in one building will also, long-term, improve the organization’s economic health. NECC is currently spread out over four locations — “five if you include the programming we do at the school,” said Sergent — three of which NECC is renting.
“We’re paying in excess of $150,000 to $180,000 for these different locations. And that’s a sizable cost to us every year,” said Sergent.
Another important intention in having a new home is the ability to welcome anyone on any day. Before COVID-19, NECC was open to the public; anyone could walk in off the street seeking services or support. But the pandemic put an end to that kind of accessibility when the office went remote, said Sergent.
The pandemic also demanded another major change: NECC opened a food pantry. This is the reason that the main offices never fully reopened after the pandemic: the space that was once a reception area is now food pantry storage.
Next Steps
Irene Banning, chair of the board of the NECC, said: “Now comes a whole process where we really have to look at: Do we fit? Does it work? What do we need to do in order to make it, workable? And, can we raise the money?
“So there is a step by step process going to happen over time, at after which point we will know whether this will be our new home or not.”
With regard to the building, Banning said that the next step will be talking to experts who can help determine what requirements they’ll have to meet. The building was last used in 2012 or 2013, said Sergent, so NECC expects that there will be work required to bring it up to code, especially with regard to energy consumption requirements.
The building was worked on recently by Particles Inc. — “They worked hard during COVID to turn it into a boutique hotel,” said Sergent — so NECC believes that the roof, and utilities like electric and plumbing, are in a fairly good state.
In the coming days, NECC will also be exploring what will be required of it for zoning reviews — whether or not the intended use of the property conforms to zoning regulations, etc — and planning reviews with regards to the physical structures and land use requirements.
“[We’ll be meeting with] professionals who can tell us, you’re going to have to meet those requirements, but not those,” said Banning, and “what level of intervention is necessary in building,” so that ultimately they can “make determinations about cost and time. And those are crucial inputs into a decision-making process.”
Maxon Mills in Wassaic hosted a majority of the events of the local Upstate Art Weekend events in the community.
WASSAIC — Art enthusiasts from all over the country flocked to the Catskill Mountains and Hudson Valley to participate in Upstate Art Weekend, which ran from July 18 to July 21.
The event, which “celebrates the cultural vibrancy of Upstate New York”, included 145 different locations where visitors could enjoy and interact with art.
On Saturday, July 20, The Wassaic Project hosted numerous community events. Will Hutnick, the director of artistic programming, said “We’ve been a part of it since the beginning, this is the fifth year of UPAW.”
Most of the action was based at Maxon Mills, the seven-floor grain mill located in the heart of Wassaic. On exhibit was work from 30 artists, 18 of whom were past residents of The Wassaic Project. “Artists can come and do a residency here, meaning they live and work with one another for a couple months at a time,” Hutnick stated.
The first floor held work by Petra Szilagyi, who uses dirt and linseed oil to construct images of paranormal concepts, most of which include bats. They reflected that a recent trip to a fifth sense competition in Vietnam was the influence behind the exhibit.
Across the floor was Tiffany Smith’s interactive installation which incorporated plants and wicker chairs, all of which were objects associated with her Carribean upbringing. “The room being filled with plants is symbolic of hurricane prep which often included bringing the plants from outside into the house,” Smith said.
As visitors made their way up the narrow wooden stairs, music could be heard from behind the walls. The echoing music was Daniel Shieh’s installation, entitled Mother’s Anthem, which played a recording of the American Anthem in 30 languages. The languages ranged from Spanish and Italian to Navajo and Bengali.
Each floor was filled with artwork of all mediums, including painting, fibers, collage and photography. Rachel Bussières, who switched her concentration after watching the 2017 solar eclipse, uses varying light sources to produce lumen prints. During the wildfires, she recounted that she “made a new exposure each day to capture the changing air quality”.
Luciana Abait also incorporates the natural world into her pieces, instead using maps. An environmental activist originally from Argentina, Abait’s work highlights “environmental fragility, specifically the impacts it has on immigrants.” Her installation that is currently on display at Maxon Mills, takes the form of a mountain range built solely from maps of the US and Argentina.
Throughout the day, visitors could “Arm Wrestle 4 A Popsicle”. Winners had the choice of 3 playfully flavored trout-inspired popsicles - Nightcrawler, Power Bait, and Salmon Roe. Artist Katie Peck, who spent the day in costume as a rainbow trout, encouraged guests to step up and try their hand at an arm wrestle.
Shibori Indigo dyeing, group meditation, and dance workshops were open for community members of all ages as well.
While the daytime activities fostered appreciation of fixed art, a dance party until midnight at The Lantern Inn offered guests a space for performative art.
When describing the environment of The Wassaic Project, Smith emphasized, “It’s all community, it’s all love.”
A serene scene during the Garden Tour in Amenia.
AMENIA — The much-anticipated annual Amenia Garden Tour drew a steady stream of visitors to admire five local gardens on Saturday, July 13, each one demonstrative of what a green thumb can do. An added advantage was the sense of community as neighbors and friends met along the way.
Each garden selected for the tour presented a different garden vibe. Phantom’s Rock, the garden of Wendy Goidel, offered a rocky terrain and a deep rock pool offering peaceful seclusion and anytime swims. Goidel graciously welcomed visitors and answered questions about the breathtaking setting.
Amenia Finance Director Charlie Miller welcomed visitors to his Bog Hollow Road garden in Wassaic, a manicured expansive yard with well-placed garden beds framing a far-reaching view. He said he plans carefully each winter for the next spring’s improvement.
The organic, environmentally responsible Maitri Farm was next, a lesson in coordinating agriculture with natural balance. The farm stand and a walk among the greenhouses brought visitors together.
Near the center of Amenia was the garden of Polly Pitts-Garvin, offering a chance to visit a robust vegetable garden with raised beds to be envious of and a remarkable absence of any insects or usual vegetable garden problems.
At Chez Cheese, the vast garden acreage surrounding the 1850s historic home of Joan Feeney and Bruce Phillips in Millerton, visitors could begin at refreshment stations where walking tour maps of the 15-acre property were available. There were streams and ponds with docks, and a dozen bridges arranged around the landscape. In the 19th-century, the property had been the home of the Wilson Cheese Factory, inspiring the name of the estate.
The Amenia Garden Tour was supported this year by Paley’s Garden Center in Sharon.
Gary Dodson working a tricky pool on the Schoharie Creek, hoping to lure something other than a rock bass from the depths.
PRATTSVILLE, N.Y. — The Schoharie Creek, a fabled Catskill trout stream, has suffered mightily in recent decades.
Between pressure from human development around the busy and popular Hunter Mountain ski area, serious flooding, and the fact that the stream’s east-west configuration means it gets the maximum amount of sunlight, the cool water required for trout habitat is simply not as available as in the old days.
This is not a new phenomenon. It does seem to be getting worse, though.
Gary Dodson and I convened where the creek makes its final run into the Schoharie reservoir, part of the New York City water supply system, on a semi-broiling Thursday afternoon, July 11.
The goal was simple. Catch smallmouth bass, which abound in the lower section of the river.
This was hot stuff — as in an 80-degree water temperature.
The air temperature was actually slightly less at 77.
After negotiating the intensely slippery rocks, festooned with treacherous algae, the first major pool presented several difficulties, with a back eddy competing with a main flow and several large trees draped about the whole thing.
I hit on the simplest strategy, which was to flip a weighted attractor fly called a Tequilley into the start of the eddy so it would proceed slowly but steadily into the maelstrom, sinking all the while.
This worked. A proper adult smallmouth, with bronze coloring and vertical stripes, took the thing.
The point-and-shoot camera finally died, however, and I was not going to try to fumble my phone out for a nice but routine fish photo.
Why not?
Because I guarantee the fish would have made a sudden, last-moment bolt for freedom, causing me to drop the device into the drink.
Gary moved downstream while I continued trying to annoy the residents of the pool, succeeding a couple of times with different colored Wooly Buggers.
Then we all got bored and I moved off, where Gary was catching rock bass and cussing them out for not being something else. I have to admit, they are not the most compelling critters. Something about the red eyes.
This latest trip was dominated by extremely tedious and distasteful Harry Homeowner activities, but on both Wednesday and
Thursday mornings I prowled Woodland Valley Creek. By “morning” I mean “dawn,” because that was when the water temps were down to a barely acceptable 64.
I made the acquaintance of several stocked browns and of a handful of their wild cousins. The wild fish are smaller and nimbler.
The successful ploy was an Adams wet fly, size 16, drifted behind something big, like a Parachute Adams or Stimulator.