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Hudson's First Annual Ramp Festival

The ramp, that incorrigible first forage-able of the season, will be celebrated in all its odiferous glory on Saturday, April 30 at Hudson's First Annual Ramp Fest.  “The ramp is a harbinger of spring," says the event's organizer, Jeff Gimmel, of Swoon Kitchenbar in Hudson.

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Community

Broadway is Bittersweet for Litchfield's Larry Kramer

If you think Larry Kramer's seminal 1985 AIDS play, The Normal Heart (which will open on Broadway on April 27), is strictly a period piece, think again. Yes, it is set 30 years ago, when a mysterious disease is killing gay men, and the panic tearing through the

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Food

Hancock Shaker Village: All This And Ice Cream Too?

They may have had odd views about how to keep the human race going (essentially: leave that messy task to earthbound wretches), but apart from that, the Shakers were an exemplary lot, and not just because of their famously prescient taste and high standards of craftsmanship.   They provided safe haven

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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 Jessica Stingo, the

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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 small

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Food

Soup & Sandwich Salvation! Amenia's Back in the Kitchen

Besides a post office and a library, every small town needs a breakfast and lunch spot where you can rub shoulders with the neighbors or pick up a homemade cup of soup or a hearty sandwich to eat on the run. For a long time, the Cozy Corner was the

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Community

International Women’s Day, a Celebration in Three Acts

Aretha Franklin and Annie Lennox had it right: Sisters are doin’ it for themselves, and have been for the past century. On Saturday, March 5, the 10th Annual International Women’s Day Conference at Simon’s Rock will celebrate what is actually the 100th anniversary of International Women's

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Community

20 Questions for Author Frank Delaney of Kent, CT

In literary circles, Frank Delaney is best known as a best-selling novelist and radio and television interviewer. In the Rural Intelligence region, he's known as a bon vivant and husband of the exuberant novelist Diane Meier. Delaney's latest novel, The Matchmaker of Kenmare, is a love

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Community

Dress Rehearsal for IS 183's Annual Costume Party

The annual IS 183 Art School of the Berkshires costume ball and dance party has evolved to become one of those mythic—and epic—galas that define a certain bobo Berkshire lifestyle. The yearly challenge is to create a party that surpasses the previous one in both creativity and fundraising

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Community

A Birthday Celebration for W.E.B. Du Bois

By Kathryn Matthews "One ever feels his twoness—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings, two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder…."—W.E.B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk, 1903 This

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Community

The Norman Rockwell Museum's Social Conscience

As anyone who has visited the Norman Rockwell Museum well knows, the artist had a well-defined social conscience that is evidenced in such iconic paintings as The Problem Everybody Lives With, The Golden Rule, Moving Day and the Four Freedoms paintings that he made during World War II to illustrate

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Community

Club Helsinki and The Next Stage in Hudson's Evolution

Once construction was finally done, Club Helsinki Hudson proceeded to have such a prolonged, soft opening—months of sound checks, followed by a long wait for the chef, Hugh Horner, to finally take up his post—there was never a clear ta-dum! moment for the rejoicing to begin. Even so,

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