Rural Intelligence
Style

Splendid Peasant Antiques: A Modern Approach to Folk Art

Kitty and Martin Jacobs understand if you're just as interested in their stunning contemporary house as their museum quality collection of antique folk art. After all, they built this house on a dirt road in Sheffield two years ago not only as their home but as a destination
By Editor
Parties

Vassar & New York Stage and Film Summer Preview

Twenty-seven years ago, Mark Linn-Baker and some other New York actors set up a summer program at Vassar that has blossomed into an annual festival where established and emerging theater artists collaborate on new productions in all stages of development.  Though most of the professional actors come from
By Editor
Food

Flatiron

Contemporary steakhouse gives surf and turf a creative twist
By Lisa Green
Food

AgriCulture: Putting Our Animals to Work

AgriCulture bloggers Peter Davies and Mark Scherzer are the owners of Turkana Farms in Germantown, NY. This week, Peter writes: As  Mark and I have learned more and more about what livestock  require to flourish and (awful though it may sound) taste good, we have become increasingly aware that it
By Editor
Food

Restaurants: High Steaks at Flatiron

By Kathryn Matthews When Flatiron Restaurant in Red Hook opened in August 2008, it was an instant hit, filling a void for red meat lovers in this part of northern Dutchess County.  The good news: after two-and-a-half years, this contemporary steakhouse has aged well. Craig Stafford and
By Editor
Style

Style Shopping: Stair Galleries' Albert Hadley Warehouse Sale

This Friday, Stair Galleries in Hudson will conduct an auction that includes items from the warehouse of Albert Hadley, interior designer extraordinaire, who is retiring at 93. As Christopher Petkanas writing for the The New York Times recently observed, in the late 1970s through 80s and well beyond, Hadley was
By Editor
Arts

The Alchemy of Art and Commerce

Last Blues of Dusk by Susanna Heller at the John Davis Gallery There is a hardly-secret, yet too-seldom-applied formula for enlivening Main Streets at night. Rather than play favorites, let us offer one example of a town from outside our region that applies it brilliantly: East Hampton,
By Editor
Style

Ornamentum: Jewelry That is Art and Vice Versa

Crafts, in general, fare badly in the hierarchy of art;  jewelry-making perhaps most of all, particularly in the U.S., where it is still too often dismissed as a pass-time for 1960s-style drop-outs.   Stefan Friedemann, who with his wife Laura Lapachin owns Ornamentum, a Hudson gallery
By Editor
Food

At the Farmer's Wife in Ancramdale, the Son-in-Law Also Rises

Even before Dorcas Sommerhoff opened The Farmer's Wife, her café and takeout shop in the heart of Ancramdale in 2002, she had spent more than a decade as the go-to caterer for savvy residents of Dutchess and Columbia Counties who craved earthy but sophisticated country cooking for
By Editor
Style

Battle Hill Forge: Alternative Metalworkers with Indie Spirit

In a funky barn-red building hard by Route 7 in Falls Village, CT, Willy Blass, Israel "Izzy" Fitch, and Jeffrey Vanam turn metal into poetry. Over the past five years, they have handcrafted everything from custom andirons and chandeliers to garden gates and nature-inspired jewelry.  Once
By Editor
Parties

Hudson Pride Foundation Makes Big Plans for June

Last year, the newly formed Hudson Pride Foundation organized its first annual parade in less than six weeks.  The organization has been making plans for this year's pride festival ever since, and Peter Frank hosted a fundraiser at his beautiful Hudson house last weekend to recruit sponsors and
By Editor
Parties

Barrington Stage Celebrates the Playwright Mentoring Project

There's more than meets the eye when you really pay attention to the cultural institutions that are the backbone of the Rural Intelligence region. They all offer educational programs to children who might not otherwise participate in the arts, which is why Barrington Stage Company is so proud
By Editor

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Rural Intelligence

Celebrating the best of rural life in Berkshire, Columbia, northern Dutchess and northern Litchfield counties.

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