Co-creators of a podcast, “Who’s the Ass?”, nominated in two categories for a Signal Award for podcast achievement, Amenia resident Jane Watson and filmmaker Frank Donnelly are thrilled by the recognition and hoping for votes from area residents.
AMENIA — A low-budget storytelling podcast created by Amenia resident Jane Watson and documentary filmmaker Frank Donnelly, and their joint venture Spiked Eggs Productions has been nominated in three categories for a Signal Award.
Watson was notified on Tuesday, Oct. 2, that the Spiked Eggs podcast titled “Who’s the Ass?” had been nominated for the national award in categories including Shows: Best Sound Design and Shows: Best Scripted (Fiction). Another Spiked Eggs podcast, “Bingo After Dark,” has also been nominated in the category of Shows: Best Editing.
Signal Awards, the Oscars of podcasts, is in its third year, seeking to uplift the podcast medium by recognizing strong, meaningful and novel audio projects. The 2024 awards are focusing on recognizing podcasts that define modern culture.
Competition for Signal Awards is stiff, with competing nominations this year going to Saturday Night Live cast entries, Wanda Sykes and more.
Produced on Watson’s kitchen table in Amenia, “Who’s the Ass?” is described as dark comedy fiction with one foot in the present world of social media and the other in an imagined past.
Commenting on the nomination and the production process on Thursday, Oct. 4, Watson said that she has lived in Amenia for 21 years, while Donnelly lives in Staten Island, their work together being largely remote. Their actors may reside in the UK or the US and participate in script reads together on Zoom.
Donnelly, an award-winning documentary filmmaker and journalist, has earned several awards for his 2015 documentary “Crossing Waters,” an examination of the ebb and flow of immigrant residents within a single low-income neighborhood in Poughkeepsie.
Watson and Donnelly work together on auditioning and casting, and then Watson takes over on pre-production and production, voice actor direction, and then post-production editing and sound design, all at the kitchen table.
The podcast episode, released Aug. 2 and titled “Who’s the Ass?” is inspired by a fable, “The Miller, His Son and the Ass.”
“The premise is how things can go terribly wrong when you try to please others, when you let strangers tell you how you should live your life. I thought immediately of how it could correlate to today’s culture of people pursuing “likes” on social media or following the advice of “influencers,” Watson said.
Watson said she liked the satiric idea of interplay between fable characters and modern culture. “There is also a bit of a clash between generations: a Boomer vs. Gen Z,” Watson said.
The concluding episode of the nominated podcast will be released in November.
“I’m a storyteller at heart,” Watson said. Watson has a background as a New York City photojournalist and later a filmmaker and she fell in love with audio drama podcasts about nine years ago. They reminded her of old-time radio broadcasts and the power of imagination.
“Just about everything you can do with a camera, you can do with sound,” Watson said, identifying foreground and background and other tricks with audio to tell the story.
How to Vote
Fans of podcasts who would like to hear the nominated episode(s) can go to any of several platforms such as Apple, Amazon, Spotify, Audible and others, and search for “Spiked Eggs Productions.”
To cast a vote for a Signal Listener’s Choice award, go to vote.signalaward.com and scroll to “Start Voting.” In the search space, type “Spiked Eggs Productions” to see the three nominations. Voting concludes Thursday, Oct. 17.
AMENIA — The first day of school on Thursday, Sept. 4, at Webutuck Elementary School went smoothly, with teachers enthusiastically greeting the eager young students disembarking from buses. Excitement was measurable, with only a few tears from parents, but school began anyway.
Ready for her first day of school on Thursday, Sept. 4, at Webutuck Elementary School, Liliana Cawley, 7, would soon join her second grade class, but first she posed for a photo to mark the occasion.Photo by Leila Hawken
Millerton Police Chief Joseph Olenik shows off the new gear. Brand new police cruisers arrived last week.
MILLERTON — The Millerton Police Department has received two new patrol cars to replace vehicles destroyed in the February 2025 fire at the Village Water and Highway Department.
The new Ford Interceptors are custom-built for law enforcement. “They’re more rugged than a Ford Explorer,” said Millerton Police Chief Joseph Olenik, noting the all-wheel drive, heavy-duty suspension and larger tires and engine. “They call it the ‘Police Package.’”
Olenik worked with The Cruiser’s Division in Mamaroneck, New York, to design the vehicles.
“We really want to thank the Pine Plains Police Department for their tremendous support,” Olenik said. After the fire, “they were the first ones to come forward and offer help.”
The new police cruisers are outfitted with lights with automatically adjusting brightness to best perform in ambient conditions.Photo by Aly Morrissey
Since February, Millerton officers have been borrowing a patrol car from Pine Plains. With the new vehicles now in service, Olenik said he plans to thank Pine Plains officers by treating them to dinner at Four Brothers in Amenia and having their car detailed
The main entrance to Kent Hollow Mine at 341 South Amenia Road in Amenia.
AMENIA — Amenia residents and a Wassaic business have filed suit against the Town Board and Kent Hollow Inc., alleging a settlement between the town and the mine amounts to illegal contract zoning that allows the circumvention of environmental review.
Petitioners Laurence Levin, Theodore Schiffman and Clark Hill LLC filed the suit on Aug. 22. Town officials were served with documents for the case last week and took first steps in organizing a response to the suit at the Town Board meeting on Thursday, Sept. 4.
The lawsuit is the latest in a multi-year long legal battle surrounding the mine on South Amenia Road. After Kent Hollow Inc. — a subsidiary of Bethel, Connecticut, based homebuilder Steiner Inc. — applied for a state mining permit in 2017, the Amenia code enforcement officer issued the business a notice of violation.
At the time, Kent Hollow Inc. did not possess a special permit to conduct mining operations as required by Amenia zoning code, and the property did not reside in the Special Mining Overlay district established as part of rezoning efforts coinciding with the 2007 adoption of the town’s comprehensive plan.
Kent Hollow Inc. appealed the violation, claiming the use of the property as a mine predates amendments to town and state regulations. The Zoning Board of Appeals denied the appeal citing insufficient evidence in 2019. That spurred Kent Hollow to file two lawsuits — one in the New York State Supreme Court and a federal civil rights lawsuit — challenging the town’s order.
In July 2025, those lawsuits were brought to a close when the Town Board voted at a special meeting to accept a settlement agreement allowing Kent Hollow to continue mining operations under limited hours and quantities.
The most recent suit alleges the 2025 settlement amounts to contract zoning that allows Kent Hollow Inc. to skirt environmental review and the scrutiny of the permitting and rezoning process. Court documents allege Kent Hollow did not adequately prove a continuous, legal nonconforming use.
Supporting the argument, petitioners have submitted the court documents and decision from the 2019 New York Supreme Court case against the town Zoning Board of Appeals, and the documents from the preceding ZBA appeals process including receipts and tax returns from Kent Hollow Inc. purporting to establish the nonconforming use.
Kent Hollow Inc. formed as a subsidiary of housing developer Steiner Inc. and purchased the property in 1971, according to state and county real estate records.
Millerton News reporting from 1971 Amenia planning board meetings detail Kent Hollow’s pursuit of a four-section, 40-unit apartment complex on the property.
The News reported Kent Hollow was granted tentative approval on July 6, 1971, to build eight units on the site with the expectation that more would be built later.
The additional units never came to fruition and Kent Hollow apparently abandoned the housing project, opting to use the property as a gravel mine.
Attorneys for the Town of Amenia or Kent Hollow Inc. have not filed responses to the lawsuit as of press time.
AMENIA — While the courage and perseverance of Revolutionary era patriots is well understood and celebrated, the stories of the fate of British loyalists in New York are not as clear.
Seen as the initial event in observance of the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution, the Amenia Historical Society will present a talk titled, “The Plight of a Loyalist in Revolutionary New York,” examining the journal of Cadwallader Colden, Jr., spanning the period of 1777-1779. The speaker will be noted author, genealogist and historian Jay Campbell.
The talk is scheduled for Saturday, Sept. 27, at 2 p.m. at the Smithfield Presbyterian Church in Amenia. The handicapped-accessible church is located at 656 Smithfield Valley Road. Refreshments will be served.
Colden was the son of a New York Lieutenant Governor. He was a surveyor, farmer and mercantilist, serving as a judge in Ulster County. His fortunes changed dramatically with the dawn of the Revolutionary War when he remained loyal to the British Crown. His arrest came in 1776, just before the start of his journal.
Campbell is a historian specializing in Hudson Valley history, and the regional stories of Revolutionary era families.
