“It’s going to continue being a skating rink, but there are also going to be lots of other programs that we’re excited about,” says Apkon. “We really think of it as a community center.”
Many of the old Game Farm buildings still stand, and the site’s 3.5 miles of paved walkways – which connect to a 20+ mile trail system that leads to waterfalls and swimming holes – are open to visitors.
Unlike their former cozy spot on Partition Street, this incarnation of Olsen & Company is spacious enough to invite in a crowd of shoppers and eaters.
“We’ve always admired this building. We spoke with the Masons, who were operating on a much smaller scale by then. We saw what it could be and took the risk.”
“From the minute customers found out Ancestry.com existed,” says Mid-Hudson Library System executive director Rebekkah Smith Aldrich, “they were hoping their local library would have it.” The digital genealogy service is available for free on-site at certain branches, like Poughkeepsie’s Adriance Memorial and Boardman Road Libraries, as well as in Kingston.
The recently refurbished Rip van Winkle II, set to take over her touring duties this month, is described by Hudson River Cruises general manager Kevin Buckel as “an upgrade in every way from the Rip van Winkle, in terms of comfort and accommodations,” providing “a more authentic riverboat experience.” The new Rip has three decks instead of two, accommodating 400 passengers instead of 300.
“I think what we do here is more important now than it’s ever been,” says director Jim Tinger. “The struggle with anxiety and other mental health issues has been more prevalent for kids in recent years than I’ve ever seen before. And isolation is our big battle now. Before electronics, I used to say we were combating boredom, because kids get in trouble when they’re bored. And that’s still true, but now battling isolation is the new war.”
The biggest misconception about grants is that they are “easy money,” says Eric Roth, grants manager for the Mohonk Preserve.
The attention focused lately on the nationwide opioid crisis has shed much-needed light on the complex problems associated with the use of addictive drugs for pain management. What hasn’t come up as often in the discussions are alternative solutions to manage acute or chronic pain without resorting to opioids in the first place. And that’s where physical therapy comes in.
By the time Washington Irving moved to Sunnyside, he was renowned on two continents as “the first American man of letters.” He had already written both of his most famous stories, “Legend” and “Rip Van Winkle”; covered Aaron Burr’s treason trial for a newspaper; co-founded the literary magazine Salmagundi; coined the phrase “the almighty dollar,” as well as the nicknames “Gotham” for New York City and “Knickerbocker” for one of its residents; spawned the fiction that Christopher Columbus’ contemporaries believed the Earth to be flat; and, with his accounts of traditional Yorkshire Yuletide celebrations in his Bracebridge Hall stories, planted the seed of inspiration in Charles Dickens that would soon lead to the writing of A Christmas Carol.