Sunday, Sept. 23: This event is free for people of color. General admission costs $10.79. It’s explicitly billed as a measure of reparation. Why reparations? The event promoters quote Ta-Nehisi Coates: “Two hundred fifty years of slavery. Ninety years of Jim Crow. Sixty years of separate but equal. Thirty-five years of racist housing policy. Until we reckon with our compounding moral debts, America will never be whole.”
We clicked instantly. We laughed so much, like the time I sat down to rest against a wall during a beer festival, happily digesting my bratwurst, the now-empty paper plate by my side. A few people walked by me, said something that sounded kind even in German, bent down and threw some coins on my plate. I was puzzled. When Michi returned from getting us some soda (wink), I shared my confusion about what happened. She burst out laughing, gasping out, “They think you’re a bum!”
Saturday, Sept. 15: There’s live music, food and vendors, but let there be no mistake about who the headliners are here: brewers, over 90 of them serving up samples of 180 different products.
Hudson River Valley Rambles; classics for kids in Beacon; make paper and hunt mushrooms at Minnewaska
Sunday, Sept. 16: As you taste your way through the Hudson Valley food, wine and beer tastings, attendees are asked to choose their favorite morsels.
Friday-Sunday, Sept. 14-16: One of the region’s most substantial, current and challenging music and art festivals, SoundScape’s promoters reveal themselves as fearless, ambitious and undaunted by logistics and coordination. Consider, for example, one of the centerpieces of this year’s weekend: an orchestral piece composed by Stephen O’Malley of the ambient sludge-rock band Sunn O))) performed by Bard College’s 76-piece The Orchestra Now on Friday night.
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.
Saturday, Sept. 15: Attendees can test drive electric cars and speak with energy efficiency and renewables experts. There will also be activities for kids, including a bicycle-decorating contest with prizes and wildlife education from Eric the Reptile Guy.
Friday-Saturday, Sept. 14-15: There’s probably a supermassive black hole in the core of every galaxy. Ours has the weight of four million Suns.
Monday, Sept. 17: There’s a growing rumble of popular interest in a movement to pass a “Green Amendment” or Environmental and Social Responsibility Amendment to the US Constitution. It takes varying forms, but in general would establish a constitutional right to a healthy environment, grant the natural environment “personhood” and standing in court and/or require large corporations to recertify at regular intervals that their business practices are environmentally responsible or lose their charters.