Louise Kalin's Solo Show & The New Voices Exhibit at Longyear Gallery

By Jenny Neal

MARGARETVILLE — Last Saturday, October 18 saw the opening reception of Louise Kalin’s Solo Show “First Impressions Second Thoughts”, and The New Voices Exhibit, at the Longyear Gallery. Also on show was a small show of the works of members of the gallery. 

Louise Kalin grew up in the Catskills until the age of nine when her family moved to Cape Cod, where “the ocean, salt water, sand and pine woods became my home. My visual world changed, and New England aesthetics took hold”. Her work evokes the natural world in dreamlike renderings, like so many artists here in these mountains.

This latest body of work on show at the Longyear is described as a survey of her experimental print works. The exhibition brings together a selection of prints that “explore process, layering, and reinterpretation, offering a fresh perspective on the possibilities of printmaking”. 

Louise has been making art since she was “very little”. Her mother was an art teacher in Roxbury and then she was the art teacher for all of Gilboa. When the family moved to Cape Cod, her mother became the art teacher for five towns, “so I always had paper and crayons and things. It was just part of everyday life” and art has been a part of her everyday life since. She has been an arts administrator, ran a gallery, was a graphic designer and worked in publication design. She has renovated and restored three houses. 

When asked if she thinks the world would be a better place if everybody created a little bit of art every week, she replies: “much”. 

Of the Catskills, she states: “my Catskills childhood nurtured me in a reverence for nature and the environment. The layers, the patterns and colors of my surroundings are embedded in my prints, drawings and sculptures”.

The four “new voices” were Cena Pohl Crane, GG Stankiewicz, Jennifer Lord Rhodes and Jerry Gallo who together presented a dynamic body of work that was a riot of vivid color.

Cena Pohl Crane just recently moved her art studio to the Commons Building. She is now upstairs on the second floor and was showing four large pieces. Cena cites some of her influences being the German expressionists: “Nolde, Kirchner, Der Blaue Reiter, those guys, but I’ve always really had a love for Egon Schiele. The way his figures are so emotive”.

Cena’s figures are definitely emotive. In her depictions of women, it’s their poses that stand out, and the color that swirls around them like gauze. Her nudes seem to glow, radiating from the canvas. Cena was also influenced early on by a semester in Florence as an art student, and would spend whole days in the Uffizi Gallery with her sketch pad, developing a passion for Caravaggio and other renaissance painters. The dramatic German and Italian influences merge in her paintings. 

GG Stankiewicz presented abstract pieces inspired by nature, textured and woven like plant matter, in stark contrast to Jennifer Lord Rhodes’ digital symbols. Jennifer is inspired by architecture, data points, digitization, psychological noise, stillness and the meditational states found in repetition and labor”.  

Adding a dash of playfulness in the room was a large abstract piece by Jerry Gallo, serving to prove that art can make you smile as well as think. Jerry’s piece looked like a rendering of a small colorful painting floating along in a sea of blueness that was maybe a surreal rendering of space or the ocean - for sure a delight to behold. 

This new voices exhibit was “a bit of a one-off” according to organizer Mary McFerran, who put the show together with Rick Mills and Sheila McManus. Mary says, “the membership of the gallery thought of the idea to host non-members as a way to broaden our audience and we are hoping it will open dialogue for interest by potential new members”. 

“First Impressions Second Thoughts” by Louise Kalin, and the New Voices Exhibit will be on show until November 16, 2025. Longyear Gallery, The Commons Building, 785 Main Street, Margaretville, NY. longyeargallery.org. 845-586-3270. Hours of opening: Friday, Saturday, Sunday 11am-4pm.

 

Cena Pohl Crane and one of her paintings in the New Voices Exhibit at the Longyear Gallery - Image by Jenny Neal

Image by Jenny Neal. Image of Jerry Gallo's painting at the New Voices Exhibit at the Longyear Gallery Oct 18

                                    Image by Jenny Neal. Painting by Jennifer Lord Rhodes

 

                            Jenny Neal Images of Louise Kalin's solo show - Reception on Oct 18

Jerry Gallo in front of his painting at the Longyear gallery’s New Voices Exhibit Oct 18. Image by Jenny Neal
 

Louise Kalin in front of one of her pieces from her solo show entitled "First Impressions Second Thoughts” at the Longyear Gallery Oct 18.

Painting by GG Stankiewicz. Part of the New Voices Exhibit at the Longyear Gallery Oct 18. Image by Jenny Neal
 
 

 

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Obituary - Jutta Greenberg

 

Jutta Greenberg, 89, passed on October 13, 2025 at her home in Margaretville, New York surrounded by the love of her children. A longtime resident of the Catskills who loved the natural beauty the rural landscape had to offer.

She is survived by her children; Cindy, Len, Susan, and Lauren, her ten grandchildren and her seven great-grandchildren.  Her legacy will live on in the hearts and minds of those who will always remember their “Mamie / Grandma”. 

In keeping with her wishes there will be no funeral services.  A Celebration of her Life will be held Spring/Summer 2026. In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to Helios Care at 297 River Street Service Road, Oneonta, NY13820 in Jutta’s name as a gift to express our immeasurable gratitude for the warmth, love and care they provided to our mother.

 

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A Conversation about … White Snakeroot and Tansy

Tansy

White snakeroot

By Jean Thomas

Last week I talked about my houseplants. This week I'm focused on wild plants. I'm a pretty frugal person, and I'm of the opinion that if a plant reseeds itself into the fields and roadsides around me, I should be able to collect the seeds and relocate some into my own garden. Of course, this is the time of year for many plants to produce seeds. So I go out into the wilderness around my house with a knapsack full of envelopes and prescription bottles (empty) and any small containers that can be sealed up for the winter. And a sharpie because I have a memory like a sieve.

During my September dog-emptying strolls I spotted and admired a plant that had many interesting features. It had a chalky white flowerhead similar in shape to yarrow and leaves like Asters. It flowers very late in the season and thrives in dry shade as well as full sun. I marked a plant and waited for the seed heads. I also googled it to find its formal name (Ageratina altissima) and other features. Turns out there's good news and bad news. (There is another plant with the common name Virginia Snakeroot. AKA Aristolochia. Not at all similar) The good news is that it's a popular perennial pollinator plant, commonly known as White Snakeroot, and deer usually avoid it. This brings up the bad news... it's toxic. In fact notoriously so. The plant has a chemical, tremetol, that causes severe trembling and even death. It became infamous in the eighteen hundreds when cows grazed on the plant and settlers drank the milk which contained the toxin. Abraham Lincoln's mother (Nancy Hanks Lincoln) died of this “Milk Sickness” when he was nine years old. All I have to do is keep it away from kids and pets. Easy peasy.

The other free ranging perennial that caught my eye this year is Tansy (Tanacetum vulgare). All summer I passed a hayfield bordered by masses of these and I want some. Wikipedia describes the flower like this:  “corymb of flower heads with recognisable Fibonacci spirals.“ Pretty classy, eh? What it means is the flower is built like a broccoli floret. But the flower heads are much smaller , like tiny buttons,and bright yellow, and the leaves are shaped somewhat like ferns. The Fibonacci thing refers to the spiral formed by the seeds that is a geometric wonder. It looks like a teeny, tiny sunflower head with the seeds in spiral rows. 

The two have a couple of things in common. Maybe that's what drew my eye. Tansy can be toxic, too. It's valued by herbalists for many uses, but can be problematic. The toxin that belongs to Tansy is called thujone.  It has alkaloid content, called tanacetin, which makes it distasteful to animals.Like many herbs, the scent is  sharply distinctive, so it is rare that cattle (or deer) graze it.  Both Tansy and Snake Root are colonizers, which is a good thing because I want to plant them in a meadow. But if you want them in a more genteel type of garden, be sure to deadhead them to keep them in line.

Now, all these good and bad features must be considered, but these two plants are only mildly dangerous. Lots and lots of plants are just plain scary. Next week I'll talk about some wicked plants! Just in time for Halloween.

If you have comments or suggestions for future columns, contact me at jeanthepipper@duck.com.

 

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THE CATSKILL GEOLOGISTS BY PROFESSORS ROBERT AND JOHANNA TITUS - A Shallow Sea at the Top of the World

Last week we climbed to the top of North Point in the eastern Catskills and saw the geology there. This week let’s do the big one. What would the two of us do if we were to reach the top of Mt Everest? Yep, of course, you guessed it; we would look at the rocks! Well, that is never going to happen but fortunately there have been several geologists who have scaled the mountain and did look at the rocks. That was actually a long-time goal of our science. Geologists wondered what kind of rocks could be at an elevation of over 29,000 feet and how did they get there? They found some remarkable categories up there and there is a lot that can be learned from them. Those rocks were limestones, and they belong to a unit of rock poetically called the Qomolangma Formation.

                                               

A shallow tropical sea; photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. 

You have probably heard the word limestone, but do you really know much or even anything about that type of rock? Maybe - or maybe not. If you climbed to the top of Mt. Everest and picked up a piece, then you would first see a mass of gray lithology. But if you looked carefully then you would likely start seeing bits and pieces of fossils. If you were lucky, you would see a piece of coral. Then you would probably see some shells. Those would almost certainly belong to creatures called brachiopods. There just might be a clam there too. If we were up there standing next to you, we would point here and there and say words like trilobite, crinoid, conodont, and ostracod. We would take some rock home and be able to determine that there were microscopic fossil algae inside the rock.                                     

You don’t have to know the meaning of any or all of those words; they are, each of them, types of fossil invertebrate animals. They all lived in the salt waters of an ancient ocean. There are a lot of them in this limestone and that tells us that it was a diverse ecology. Limestone almost always forms in shallow tropical seas so now we have some very remarkable images. First, we see ourselves standing atop the summit of Mt. Everest. All around us is the snow and ice of a very highly elevated mountain top. But the rocks also speak to us of ancient times. Back then this site was not 29,000 feet in elevation; it was just a little below sea level. It wasn’t a frigid climate; it was tropical. Our visions tell us of a mountain peak; the rocks point toward a shallow Bahamas-like sea. They can’t both be right, can they? Yes, they can. Our modern senses speak to us accurately about what the Himalayas are today. The rocks indicate what it was like at the Mt. Everest site about 350 million years ago. 

What an adventure it must be to climb Everest. But if you do it as a geologist, then you climb to an elevation of 29,000 feet and arrive at the bottom of a tropical sea 350 million years into the past.

Contact the authors at randjtitus@prodigy.net. Join their facebook page “The Catskill Geologist.” Read their blogs at “thecatskillgeologist.com.”

 

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Outdoors with Larry DiDonato - DEC Intensifies CWD Sampling in Herkimer County

DEC is calling on hunters to help eradicate Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) from the New York landscape. CWD is an always deadly disease affecting cervids like whitetail deer and can be devastating on local deer populations. DEC asks hunters to help with sampling efforts to ensure CWD does not gain a foothold in New York. Hunters can follow guidelines and safely drop off deer heads at advertised locations near the affected area.

 

Last fall, DEC and the Department of Agriculture and Markets confirmed Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD), an always fatal disease of deer, moose, and elk, in a captive deer facility located in the Town of Columbia in southern Herkimer County. After confirming the case, DEC sampled 196 wild deer in the surrounding area and did not find the disease.

Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) was first found in New York in Oneida County in 2005. The disease was identified in both a captive deer facility and two nearby wild deer. DECs response back then was nothing less than stellar. An intense de-population and sampling of deer around the epicenter where the deadly and contagious disease was conducted successfully contained the dreaded cervid disease. As far as I’m aware, New York is the only state to have effectively eradicated CWD once it was detected in both captive, and wild whitetail deer and hunters should be thankful for DEC’s past efforts and take heed of their proscription to contain it once again.

For the 2025 hunting season, DEC is intensifying its efforts to sample deer in the towns of Columbia, German Flatts, Litchfield, Warren, and Winfield in Herkimer County, and the town of Richfield in Otsego County. Hunters can bring their deer heads harvested from these six towns to one of eight drop-off locations for free testing. Taxidermists can also collect samples from deer intended for mounting. DEC will test deer heads at no cost to hunters and immediately notify hunters if a test result is positive for CWD.  

Deer head drop-off instructions 

1. Cut the deer head off with some neck remaining. 

2. Keep the head chilled or frozen until submission to DEC. 

3. Remove the skull plate and antlers on bucks before submission. 

4. Place the head in a plastic garbage bag. 

5. Label the bag with your name, address, and phone number and complete the DEC tag at the drop-off location. 

6. Place the DEC tag in the small bag provided and place in the garbage bag with the head. 

7. Zip-tie the bag closed and deposit the bagged head in the white metal container at one of the drop-off locations below. 

Deer head drop-off bin locations

• Town Of Columbia - 936 Jordanville Road, Ilion (To the left of the salt barn) 

• Town Of Columbia - 147 County Route 259, Ilion (At the DOT buildings) 

• Town of Litchfield - 804 Cedarville Road, Ilion (On the southern end of the salt barn) 

• Town of Warren - 131 Hyde-Bell Lane, Jordanville (At the DOT buildings) 

• Town of German Flatts - 85 East Main Street, Mohawk (Behind the YMCA) 

• Town of German Flatts - 106 West Main Street, Mohawk (Herkimer County Sewer District Buildings) 

• *Correction to drop-off location: Town of Richmond - 1545 County Route 25, Richfield Springs (Boss Farm) 

• Town of Winfield - 306 Stone Road, West Winfield (Across the road in the turnaround) 

DEC urges hunters and taxidermists to help protect New York’s wild deer and moose populations from CWD. Submit you deer head and encourage others to do the same.  This year, DEC aims to collect samples from a minimum of 295 deer from the six-town area.

Hunters and partners play a vital role in keeping New York's wild deer herd free of CWD. DEC continues to work with the public to monitor deer health and prevent the disease from spreading. For details on CWD, DEC’s 2024 incident response, and ongoing surveillance plans visit DEC's CWD webpage.

Happy hunting, fishing, and trapping until next time!

News and Notes

Earlton Fish & Game Club to Hold Opening Day Hunter's Breakfast 

The Earlton Fish & Game Club is once again hosting its Opening Day Hunter's Breakfast on Saturday, November 15th, 2025 from 8:00 am to 1:00 pm at their clubhouse at 56 Potic Creek Road, in Earlton. The breakfast, available for a free-will offering, includes cooked to order-pancakes, sausage, eggs, bacon and more! All donations will be appreciated. There will also be a 50/50 raffle. All are welcome, no need to be a hunter to come! For more info call 518-694-8323 or email Info@EarltonGunClub.com.

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Whittling Away with Dick Brooks - Bear With Me

This is the season that brings out the animal in me.  I’m almost positive that in another life I was a bear.  There are just too many signs that this is a true statement to argue with.  I’m furry, granted there isn’t much on the top, but I won’t go topless in the forest during hunting season with good reason.  I frequently use large stationary objects as scratching poles.  I will admit to having more than once dipped a finger into the honey jar and then licked the wayward digit clean.  I like digging for stuff, roots, buried treasure, grubs, it doesn’t much matter, I just like digging.  I like to fish and I love berries.  My eyesight isn’t great and I like sniffing old stuff.  I’m fond of a nap after the consumption of a large volume of victuals.  I have been known to growl on occasion.  All these are very bear-like behaviors.

The most convincing sign occurs in the fall.  The temperature starts to drop and my appetite starts to increase.  Breakfast goes from toast and coffee towards pancakes and syrup, scrambled eggs, bacon is always good and maybe a doughnut or two just to keep the fat level where it should be.  Lunch goes from being nothing to soup and a sandwich, not a dull, slim, lack luster, ladies’ luncheon kind of sandwich but a creative exercise in gastronomic artistry that would make even Dagwood wince.  Damn the torpedoes, leave no leftovers behind.

A short period of hibernation on the couch and I’m ready for supper.

It’s a well known fact that bears are Omnivores. Omnivores are the trash cans of the animal kingdom, they can and will eat anything.  I am now and always have been an omnivore and I’m proud of my heritage.  This time of year, I’m not fussy, I’ll eat anything—step on my foot and my mouth opens.  As a former bear, I still feel the pull of Mother Nature’s will.  She whispers softly in my ear, “You should eat, it’s getting cold, Winter’s on the way”.  Who am I to mess with Mother?  I eat, my pants groan, my belt runs out of holes.  Blubber is good, the more blubber-the better.   Winter will be long and cold, only the fat bears will survive.   

It starts to snow, I’m ready.  My brother bruins waddle off to their dens, I recline on the couch, we doze off.  The bears sleep for three months, never knowing the howl of the freezing wind or the bite of the falling snow.  I wake up in twenty minutes.  Old humans are lousy hibernators.  I spend the next three months freezing my now prominent posterior off shoveling snow and trying to lose the weight I put on during the fall feeding frenzy.  This inability to get a decent winter’s snooze leaves me grumpy and grouchy.  I walk around growling to myself and around mid February I get this irresistible urge to bite any passing weatherman.   This is the price I pay for not having remained a bear.

Thought for the week—Two Thirds of Americans can’t do fractions.  The other half just doesn’t care

Until next week, may you and yours be happy and well. 

Whittle12124@yahoo.com .

 

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Getting Creative About Farm Safety - NYCAMH Opens Submissions for Annual Farm Safety Youth Art Contest

FLY CREEK - The New York Center for Agricultural Medicine and Health (NYCAMH) announced its annual Farm Safety Art Contest, open to students grades 5 through 12 in New York. Entries must be submitted by November 14 and contest winners will be announced in December.

By getting creative with the theme “Be Farm Smart: Stay Away from Moving Parts,” students are helping to make safety on the farm a priority for everyone. This year’s theme promotes safety when working around mechanical hazards such as moving parts, sharp objects, pinch points, crush points, wrap points, and more.  

The contest has two format categories: print and digital. This allows participating artists to use the medium they prefer. Prizes will be awarded for first and second places in each category and in two grade brackets: 5th through 8th and 9th through 12th. 

NYCAMH Educators are available to provide a no-cost safety training and demo for classes and youth groups about the contest theme. Teachers, group leaders, etc. can request an in-person or virtual lesson to engage their students on moving parts safety. 

To request a lesson or learn more about the contest, email info@nycamh.org or call 607-547-6023 and ask for Allison. More information, including the contest entry form and guidelines, can be found by visiting nycamh.org/ArtContest. 

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Revolutionary 250 - George Zimmer Jr.’s Final Battle of the Revolution, Part 4

This article Part 4 of 4 celebrates the Chester Zimmer Collection and the ongoing construction of the Chester Zimmer Library at the Old Stone Fort Museum Complex in Schoharie as well as taking note of the upcoming 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States of America.

By Mark Stolzenburg

September 1853. Zimmer sent two more letters to new Commissioner of Pensions, Loren P. Waldo, in Washington, DC, along with requested repeat testimony from Jacob Becker and Christianna Norman. This was in response to a letter from Waldo questioning the duration of George’s service.  It was obvious age was affecting his ability to keep up the fight, and he had tapped out his surviving compatriots who could offer cogent testimony. In a shakier hand he wrote, “After a lapse of more than 70 years precision can hardly be expected.”

November 1853 to February 1854.  Zimmer somehow enlisted or was offered the assistance of attorney Peter Decker, his grandnephew. Decker had less patience than his great uncle George. He fired off a series of sometimes disjointed letters wherein he made no attempt to hide his feeling that the Federal government’s relentless demand for more testimony in the Zimmer case was simply absurd. No other testimony could be realistically possible. “Mr. Zimmer is the only relict of revolutionary days remaining with us and he is to be relied upon in his statements for reference as far as I am concerned.” Decker, hoping name dropping might help, wrote that he would refer the case to William L. Marcy, who, after an already long and productive political career, was then US Secretary of State. This may have been an idle threat on Decker’s part. There seems to be no record that Secretary Marcy got involved.

February 22, 1854. Decker, in a letter to Commissioner Waldo, laid out the type of war it was in Schoharie, that the governor asked the militia troops to garrison local forts for protection into 1783.  To reinforce his point, he included a map he drew of the forts in the Schoharie and Fox valleys, including the Becker Stone House at Fox Creek.  “I have furnished this hasty sketch hoping that it may have a tendency to throw some light upon the subject and if consistent be the means of giving to an aged patriot and good old democrat the little pittance he thinks himself entitled to from a country he has served faithfully in the hour of her need.”

December 1856 to March 1857. There are further delays because Isaac Laraway was asked to testify again, Jacob Becker’s identity was questioned, and the veracity of Zimmer’s signature was challenged on some correspondence. Josiah Minot had replaced Waldo as President Pierce’s pension commissioner in 1856.

At the end of an undated brief of several pages, an unnamed pension official wrote, “This old soldier is his own agent, and I would be delighted to be able to inform him of the fact that a small pension has been allowed him.”

On February 23, 1857, George Zimmer Jr. was granted a pension, retroactively from March 4, 1831, at $20 per year.

August 5, 1857. George died at the age of 91.

Last Patriot standing?

Who was the last Schoharie County Revolutionary War veteran to die? That depends on who you consider to be of Schoharie County and how little proof of birth and service you can live with. I see three contenders: 1. George Zimmer Jr., the man detailed above, 2. Isaac Laraway, who testified for George, and, 3. one Daniel Frederick Bakeman.

Zimmer was clearly born in what was to become Schoharie County and died there in 1857. Laraway was born in today’s Green County and outlived Zimmer. He died in 1858 in the Town of Broome, Schoharie County.

Bakeman (also Bachman or Bochman) claimed to have been the last Revolutionary War veteran from anywhere still living in 1866. He died in 1869 in Freedom, NY (Cattaraugus Co.) and claimed to have been born in Schoharie in 1759, but no record to that effect seems to exist. A record that matches Daniel F. Bakeman’s name and his parents’ names shows he was baptized in Schenectady in 1773. His parents were married in 1772. If his birth occurred near this date, then he would have been too young to have served in the Revolution. His pension was denied for insufficient proof of service, then he was granted a “political” Revolutionary War pension by an act of Congress in 1867. Despite this inconsistency, Bakeman is widely credited with being the last Revolutionary War veteran to die. I consider his claim to birth in Schoharie and the date of such birth to be questionable. 

Lacking further evidence, George Zimmer was likely the last Patriot to perish of those born in the current bounds of Schoharie County. Hopefully he spent his pension wisely (and quickly). Then there was the date of his death:  August 5,1857. It’s hard to wrap your head around the fact that this Revolutionary Patriot, had he lived four years more, would have seen the country he risked his life to found torn apart by secession and civil war, yet again. 

  

George Zimmer Jr., probably in the 1850s. Photo located in the Chester Zimmer collection at the Old Stone Fort by David Pelepzuck. Chester noted that the photo came from Alice Ruland, a descendant of Mr. Zimmer. 

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