Ring around the Sun: The magnificent 22-degree halo
Folklore says that such a ring around the Sun or Moon portends the arrival of a storm within 24 hours. There’s truth to that.
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Nutcracker vs. Mouse King, at a theater near you
The world’s favorite ballet will be performed on three local stages this weekend.
Vanaver Caravan brings Into the Light! to Kaatsbaan
Saturday-Sunday, Dec. 14/15: This unique holiday production celebrates imagination and multicultural traditions. It’s set in a Northern country where Lucia loses her inner light as the Sun’s light diminishes with the winter season.
Supporting actor Ally Condrath steals the spotlight in Denizen’s Christmastown: A Holiday Noir
Condrath is a bundle of energy on the road to stardom, soon to appear in a TV series called Pixar IRL on Disney+. And for this month only, she’s in New Paltz.
Ask a professor: Robert Miraldi discusses First Amendment challenges in the age of digital and social media
We have met to talk about the unprecedented journalistic conditions of the Trump Age, in which the press finds itself demonized, discredited and (often literally) attacked. Meantime, digital media have created all kinds of new sources, opportunities and venues for journalists, who, in the podcast and oral history age, enjoy latitude for opinion and personal identity as never before. And no one really gets paid much for any of it. New media companies still appear to work in spacious, urban, open-plan offices, but it is a stock Getty image. Everyone’s actually holed up in a bedroom somewhere drinking Monster.
Why Religion? Historian Elaine Pagels Reconnects at St. Gregory’s
Sunday, Dec. 15: Pagels is best-known for research and publication involving a cache of over 50 ancient Greek texts discovered translated into Coptic in Upper Egypt in 1945. After completing her doctorate at Harvard University, she participated with an international team of scholars to edit, translate and publish several of these texts as The Gnostic Gospels. It was the loss of her young son that inspired her deep exploration on the questions asked in this illuminating book.
X-stuff and Planet Nine
Astronomers use the letter X followed by a constellation name to represent objects emitting X-rays — a rarity in the cosmos.
Perrotta/Marotta play BSP
Friday, Dec. 20: The Marotta of course is the legendary drummer Jerry, who has played with pretty much everybody, but most pertinent to this discussion is his radical work as the featured percussionist on the first four Peter Gabriel solo albums – albums that defined a new way of arty ensemble playing (the third record in particular) and that established a musical dialect from which Sarah Perrotta has drawn across her entire career.
Bardavon presents Handel’s Messiah with the Hudson Valley Philharmonic and Cappella Festiva
Saturday, Dec. 21: A total of 140 instrumentalists and singers on the Bardavon stage will join the Philharmonic to perform George Frideric Handel’s most popular choral work. Audience members will be invited to sing along.
Dark Waters is a powerful environmental wake-up call
A man known for his personal environmental activism – particularly on the subject of fracking here in New York State – Mark Ruffalo the movie star disappears admirably into the role of a most unflashy, but doggedly tenacious, modern American hero.