Last year, town officials missed the opportunity to tap into a grant that would help fund a new building for the Saugerties Animal Shelter, but town officials said they would try again this year.
The Ulster County Poorhouse opened in New Paltz in 1828, at the site on Libertyville Road where the Ulster County Fairgrounds and county pool complex are now located. The facility closed in 1976 after having housed thousands of people in the intervening years. Some were classified as “insane” or “intemperate,” but the records show just as many who were admitted because of old age, sickness or disability. There were unwed mothers, “debauched” women, abandoned wives, babies and children, former slaves and recent immigrants injured while employed building the Catskill Aqueduct and D & H Canal.
Rosendale has its annual Pickle Festival, Saugerties its Garlic Festival, Margaretville its Cauliflower Festival. New Paltz is among many towns in the Hudson Valley with a seasonal celebration of their apple crops. But is there a community in the region as yet that has claimed the humble-but-delicious mushroom as the centerpiece of an annual feast? That prospect may be in New Paltz’s foreseeable future, if Amanda Heidel has her way.
“It’s similar to regular golf,” said the city’s parks superintendent. “But the neat thing about disc golf is you don’t have to worry about a tee time, you don’t have to pay for greens fees, though there might be a nominal charge if there’s a tournament going on. We really believe it’s going to be a great asset to our parks system. We’re really pleased to have this happen.”
Keeping the annual July 4 festivities going has proved to be a perennial challenge.
Kingston Stockade FC will open its fourth season of local soccer at Dietz Stadium on Saturday, May 4. They’ll host the New York Cosmos, the reigning champion of the North Atlantic Conference of the National Premier Soccer League (NPSL).
The Go Smart Go Green Fair at the Greco Senior Center this Saturday, May 4 from noon to 4 p.m.
The Women’s Woodstock Cycling Grand Prix is set to return for its 7th annual weekend, May 3-5. The Grand Prix, the only all-women cycling weekend in the country, is officially sanctioned by the USA Cycling Pro Road Tour, meaning it is open to many of the world’s best competitive licensed women cyclists.
The tournament episodes will begin airing Monday, May 6.
May 10 to October 31: Harvey Fite, one of the founders of the Fine Arts Department at Bard College, spent time restoring Mayan ruins at Copán in Honduras while studying Mesoamerican indigenous sculpture, and in the process learned how to do dry-key stone masonry, a technique that uses gravity to create stable stone structures without mortar. In 1938 he purchased an abandoned quarry in High Woods as a source for bluestone to sculpt, and began to position some of his larger pieces in that outdoor setting.