Thursday, Mar. 28: Once, farmers knew how to make a living hedge and fed their flocks on tree-branch hay. Rural people knew how to prune hazel to foster abundance: both of edible nuts and of straight, strong, flexible rods for bridges, walls and baskets. Townspeople cut their beeches to make charcoal to fuel ironworks. Shipwrights shaped oaks to make hulls. No place could prosper without its inhabitants knowing how to cut their trees so they would sprout again. Pruning the trees didn’t destroy them; rather, it created the healthiest, most sustainable and most diverse woodlands that we have ever known.

Sunday, Mar. 10: Bufalino – known locally, nationally and internationally as a dancer and choreographer – will read at Inquiring Minds bookstore in New Paltz.

This is a love story as well as an environmental and political thriller and exposé. Ironically, it is the love story that asks the most willingness and imaginative extension of the reader.

Thursday, Mar. 7: By attempting to name secrets and lies that he and his mother spent a lifetime avoiding in Heavy, Laymon asks us to confront the terrifying possibility that few in this nation actually know how to love responsibly, and even fewer want to live under the weight of actually becoming free.

Not only alcohol but also cards and dancing were prohibited at the original Mohonk (quite a change from the tavern of John Stokes, from whom the Smileys bought the original chunk of property, and who was known to chain unruly drunks to a tree). But the resort also served as the site of numerous conferences and social initiatives that were, by the standards of the time, progressive if not downright incendiary.

Saturday, Feb. 9: Dr. Michael Crupain believes that circadian rhythms have an important influence on healthy eating, and he expounds on this premise in What to Eat When: A Strategic Plan to Improve Your Health and Life through Food.