Saturday, Sept. 15: Montgomery Place, the 379-acre Livingston family estate adjacent to the Bard College campus, was acquired by Bard early in 2016. This month, the college is organizing a series of free cultural events to inaugurate the historic manse, with its large handsome portico, as an exterior performance space, to be called the Stage at Montgomery Place.

Sometimes described as what the News from Lake Wobegon would sound like if it had been scripted by Stephen King, Night Vale uses the mundane format of a community radio station to convey its accounts of highly disquieting goings-on in a small desert town where every conspiracy theory comes true. To feed his imagination, Cranor says, he likes to “scour community calendars” in small local newspapers.