2007 EVENTS

Events Archive

November

Poet Robert Milby	POETRY AND MUSIC ON SATURDAY AFTERNOON Athens Cultural Center welcomes poets Robert Milby and Will Nixon as Poetry at the Hudson continues Two of the busiest and most productive Hudson Valley poets, Robert Milby and Will Nixon, will be the featured readers when Poetry at the Hudson meets at the Athens Cultural Center, 24 Second Street, on Saturday, December 15, 2007 at 2 p.m. An open mike will be part of the occasion, and pianist Don Yacullo will play several selections during the event.
Robert, a resident of Florida, New York, has been reading his work in the Hudson Valley, New York City, and various parts of New Jersey and New England since early 1995. He has been published in such journals as Home Planet News, Hunger Magazine, Soul Fountain, and Asbestos; has a CD out called Revenant Echo (Sonotrope Recordings, 2004); and had his first book of poetry, Ophelia’s Offspring, published by Foothills Publishing in June. He writes for The Delaware and Hudson Canvas, in Bloomingburgh, NY, and hosts eight (count them: eight!) recurring Hudson Valley poetry events. Characterized as a freelance thinker, he has a website at www.robertmilby.com. Will has published two poetry chapbooks, When I Had It Made (Pudding House Publications) and The Fish Are Laughing (Pavement Saw Press). His first full- length collection, My Late Mother as a Ruffed Grouse, is forthcoming from Foothills Publishing. He's now working on a series of poems inspired by the movie "Night of the Living Dead," and another series inspired by his experiences living in Hoboken, New Jersey in the 1980s, called "Love in the City of Grudges." He coordinates the poetry portion of the Doug Grunther “Woodstock Roundtable” show Sundays on radio station WDST, and is a co-host, together with Josie Peralta, of the World Poetry monthly readings at Café Mezzaluna, in Saugerties. He moved from mid-town Manhattan to a Catskills log cabin in 1996, trading Chinese takeout for a woodstove, and now lives in Woodstock. Don has played the piano and composed music since the age of five. He has been a classical accompanist, church organist, laborer, and special educator. He has performed and recorded music with classical and original rock and jazz ensembles (SeLah, Joe Montini, and Joe Lentine) and currently performs all over the United States with Potential Unlimited, a troupe of exceptionally talented musicians who have developmental disabilities. Yacullo also performs with The Princes of Serendip, a musical threesome that is based in Woodstock, and has since 1995. The readings will be hosted by area poet Bob Wright. There is a suggested donation of $3. To reach the Cultural Center, proceed on NY 385 into the village of Athens and turn west onto Second Street; it is the second building on the right. For additional information, call 518-444-4561.
August
Poet Donald Lev	POETRY AT THE HUDSON CONTINUES Poets Roberta Gould and Donald Lev are joined by pianist Don Yacullo performing on the Athens Cultural Center baby grand Saturday, August 18th, 2 PM Bob Wright's popular series, Poetry at the Hudson, returns to the Athens Cultural Center on Saturday, August 18th at 2 PM. Two noted and prolific poets who live in the Hudson Valley, Roberta Gould and Donald Lev, will be the featured readers and pianist Don Yacullo will play selections at three points in the event. An open mic follows the featured readings.

Gould is the author of eight books of poems. Her most recent books are In Houses With Ladders, published by Waterside Press, and Pacing the Wind, issued by Shivistan Publishing. Her recent poems have appeared in Confrontation, Home Planet News, and Chronogram, as well as in several anthologies and on-line zines, including Void and Poetz. She has read widely in the Hudson Valley, where she lives, and in the Metropolitan area, and she has edited several poetry journals, including Light: A Poetry Review. Esta Naranja, one of her books, was published in Spanish in Mexico, where she lived for some time. While there, she organized an educational campaign for international tourists on fairly tipping hotel personnel and waiters. She has a masters in Spanish, studied geology at SUNY Ulster, and is an amateur pianist. Poems and other information about her work can be found at www.robertagould.net.

Lev, who was born in New York City in 1936, attended Hunter College, worked in the wire rooms of the Daily News and the New York Times, and then drove a taxi cab for 20 years (with a six-year hiatus in which he ran messages for, and contributed poetry to, The Village Voice and operated the Home Planet Bookshop on the Lower East Side). His earliest poems appeared in print in 1958, and he started his first small press magazine, HYN Anthology, in 1969. The most recent of the 13 collections of his poetry, Yesterday's News, was published in 2002 by Red Hill Outloudbooks, in Claryville. A chapbook, Grief, will be published by Bard Press/Ten Penny Players, in Staten Island, in the fall and should be available at the end of October. His brief underground film-acting career pinnacled with his portrayal (he wrote his own lines) of "The Poet" in Robert Downey Sr.'s 1969 classic Putney Swope. He and his reclusive cat Kit Smart live in High Falls, where he spends most of his time publishing the literary tabloid Home Planet News, which he and his late wife Enid Dame founded in 1979.

Yacullo has played the piano and composed music since the age of five. He has been a classical accompanist, church organist, laborer, and special educator. He has performed and recorded music with classical and original rock and jazz ensembles (SeLah, Joe Montini, and Joe Lentine) and currently performs all over the United States with Potential Unlimited, a troupe of exceptionally talented musicians who have developmental disabilities. Yacullo also performs with The Princes of Serendip, a musical threesome based in Woodstock, since 1995.

The readings will be hosted by area poet Bob Wright. There is a suggested donation of $3. For additional information, Mr. Wright can be contacted at 518-444-4561.

July

PAINT AND PHOTOGRAPH ATHENS If you like to work en plein air, come to the village of Athens and capture your favorite spot with your brushes or through the lens of a camera Judging--Saturday, August 18th
	Okay, we admit it. We wanted to come up with another thinly veiled excuse to promote the arts and the presence of artists in the Village of Athens. So, the Athens Cultural Center is sponsoring a summer contest for artists and photographers. All you need to do is send in a registration form and start working on location anywhere in the village. All mediums are accepted. We want to leave a good impression on our summer visitors and show them just how art conscious our village is.
Winning entries will be judged on Saturday, August 18th as part of the Hudson River Regional Festival. First prize paintings will be awarded a $400 prize and the top photograph will receive a $100 prize. The top two artworks will become property of the Athens Cultural Center and will be donated to a local institution. So help make Athens a place for the arts. Who knows? You might take home some prize money, to boot! Click here for full contest rules. For more information, please contact Ron Coons at YMIRon@aol.com.

June

THREE RARE, EARLY HOUSES OPEN TO THE PUBLIC FOR THE FIRST TIME IN YEARS

Celebrate Old Home Week with a tour of homes in Athens, a lunchtime concert in the park and a photography sale. Fete the Evarts Library on its centennial and watch as the Athens Cultural Center helps recreates the Old Home Week parade up Main Street.
Saturday, June 30th

To help the Evarts Library celebrate its centennial, the Athens Cultural Center has joined forces to stage a celebration replete with house tours, parades, exhibits, old time music and old-fashioned children's games. This revives the first Old Home Week celebration which was started 100 years ago, in conjunction with the laying of the cornerstone of the Evarts Library. In the way that only the village of Athens can do, we're recreating this slice of Americana on Saturday, June 30th. The centerpiece of our celebration is a tour of homes in the village including three major, early houses that have not been open to the public in at least 50 years and an exhibition at the Cultural Center highlighting the library centennial and the celebration of Old Home Week in Athens. The Greene County Camera Club will host a photography sale at the Cultural Center. The Evarts Library will host a centennial celebration on its lawn. Babe Ruth Little League and APAC will help host a lunchtime concert in the Riverfront Park. We'll all parade up Main Street together. So come out to Athens and help us fete the library as it turns 100.

Tour of homes: 10 AM- 4 PM
Photo: Howard Hall Farm, the earliest Federal House on the Hudson River	Tour times: Guided tours of village homes will be held on the hour at 10, 11, noon, 1, 2 and 3 PM. Meet at the Athens Cultural Center at least 15 minutes prior to the tour start. Tickets: Tours cost $15 per person with advance reservation, $20 at the door. To reserve tickets in advance, email your name, number of tickets and requested tour time to info@athensculturalcenter.org. Please put "House Tour Tickets" in your email subject line. Parking: Parking is available on North Franklin Street, just north of the intersection of Second and Franklin Street. The Athens Cultural Center is located one block away, at 24 Second Street, between Franklin and Washington Streets.
Haight-Gantley House	Featured properties: The tour will feature the Haight-Gantley House, a significant work by Barnabus Waterman, the House of History architect, built during the War of 1812. This house has not been open in decades and the last recorded house tour was for the Athens sesquicentennial in 1955. The house is surprisingly in tact and features an impressive and rare oval ballroom and striking views over the Hudson River. Also featured is Howard Hall Farm, constructed circa 1780 and considered by some to be the earliest Federal house in left the Hudson Valley. This house, which has been in private hands since the 1970's, is virtually unknown to Federal architecture
aficionados although in retains much of its early fabric including such rarities as cylinder glass windows and perfectly preserved period European marble fireplace surrounds. An impressive Civil War era house, retaining its elegant period detail and impeccably decorated with a mix of American and European antiques, will be shown on a house tour for the first time ever. This house was probably the last in-village farm in Athens and only left the hands of the original farming family a few years ago. The Evarts Library, other village gems and a stroll up Second Street and down South Franklin Street, which contain some of the most impressive houses in the village, round out the tour.

Old Home Week Parade:
12:45 PM
The parade route runs up Second Street from the Riverfront Park to the Evarts Library. The Athens Fire Department will pull their 19th century fire wagon, library trustees will ride in a horse-drawn carriage and classic cars will carry local dignitaries to the reviewing stand. Not since Norman Rockwell have you seen anything this quaint.

Lunchtime Concert in the Park:
12-1 PM
The Saints of Swing brass band and the Dented Fenders barbershop quartet give a lunchtime concert in the gazebo in the Athens Riverfront Park. Have some lunch while you listen to old time music and watch the Hudson River meander by.

Evarts Library Centennial Celebration:
1-3 PM

Photo: the Evarts Library

Especially for kids or the kid in you, the Evarts Library will host its centennial celebration on its front lawn. Following the serving of the centennial birthday cake and lemonade, enjoy free horse and buggy rides, Professor Marvel's Old Tyme Magic Show, Uncle Sam the Stilt Waker and many turn-of-the century games. The Post Office will hold a special centennial stamp cancellation for those secret philatelists in the crowd.

The Evarts Library will also be one of the stops on our tour of historic village homes. An exhibition highlighting the history of the library centennial and the Old Home Week celebration is on view concurrently at the Athens Cultural Center.

Photography sale and show
10 AM to 4 PM

The Greene County Camera Club mounts a sale of photographs by its members during all the festivities at the Athens Cultural Center. While you wait to purchase tickets to the home tour, you can take home a modern Hudson River school masterpiece by one of the Camera Club members. You can also view the ongoing exhibition "Many Eyes, Many Views" at the Athens Cultural Center featuring works by the Camera Club.

The Old Home Week celebration is a joint production of the Athens Cultural Center, the Evarts Library, the Athens Performing Arts Committee and the Athens Babe Ruth League.

Funding for this event was provided by the Athens Community Trust, the National Bank of Coxsackie and Marshall and Sterling Insurance.

Celebrate Flag Day with the Athens Cultural Center
Join us for a night of fireworks, jazz, barbecue, Hollywood gift bags and the opening reception of our next show
Saturday, June 9th, from 6 to 10 PM

One Night Only...
On Saturday, June 9th, the Athens Cultural Center will celebrate Flag Day with an event-packed evening that starts with art and our annual raffle of Hollywood awards show gift bags and ends with jazz and fireworks in the Athens Riverfront Park.

Opening Reception:
6-8 PM
Join us for the opening of our latest exhibitions showing photographs by members of the Greene County Camera Club in "Many Eyes, Many Views." Also, opening that evening "The Evarts Library and Old Home Week," celebrating the centennial of Athens' own public library. As always, we provide the art and the libations, you provide the excitement!

Hollywood Gift Bag Raffle:
7:15 PM
Take a chance to score the same swag that the Hollywood A-listers' get. We have the gift bags that were given out to Hollywood celebrities at the Oscars, Grammys, Emmys and Screen Actor's Guild awards shows. Each bag has a retail value of approximately $600. The bags will be raffled during our opening reception. For a full listing of the bag contents, click here.

Barbecue in the Park:
5:30-8 PM
The Babe Ruth League of Athens will host a chicken barbecue in the Athens Riverfront Park. So, after you've strolled through our exhibit and won a gift bag, walk down to the Riverfront Park for a barbecue dinner under the stars. Put gluttony to good use and help our local Little League team.

Jazz in the Park:
8-10 PM
Just as you're polishing off your last chicken drumstick, Nancy Donnelly and her trio will get their drumsticks warmed up for an evening of jazz standards. If you want to hear "Sweet Home Alabama" one more time, this ain't the place for you. But, if you want sultry jazz to warm you up for a fireworks finale, then c'mon down.

Fireworks
9:45 PM
Finish your Flag Day with a patriotic burst of fireworks over the Hudson River. Hudson shoots them off but we have the better view from the Athens Riverfront Park. You decide which set off more sparks, the jazz, the art or the fireworks.

The Flag Day celebration is a joint production of the Athens Cultural Center, the Hudson/Athens Flag Day Committee, the Athens Performing Arts Committee and the Athens Babe Ruth League.

Funding for this event was provided by the Athens Community Trust and the Bank of Coxsackie.

April

Poetry on the Hudson:
Poetry reading by Alan Catlin and Matthew Spireng
open mike following
Saturday, April 21st, 2 p.m.
Suggested donation $3
Hosted by Bob Wright
For more information, call 518-444-4561

Alan Catlin has been publishing in the "little and not-so-little" magazines and journals since the middle 70's, primarily as a poet. Up till now he has been published in hundreds of places, amassing enough file cards representing published work to fill two and half file card boxes.

His first chapbook appeared in 1980, and dozens have followed in the last twenty-five years. Three of those were winners of national competitions. A fourth was first runner-up and was also printed. Another dozen or so have been finalists in competitions over the years. In addition to the many chapbooks, he has four full-length books to his credit, ranging from the now-long-out-of-print Animal Acts, which was hailed as the “Most Neglected Book of 1984” by legendary Wormwood Review editor Marvin Malone. A collaboration with Paul Weinman called Barred on Both Sides received that same accolade several years later. More recent books include Drunk and Disorderly, from Pavement Saw Press; The Schenectady Chainsaw Massacre, from Staplegun Press; and Playing Tennis with Antonioni, from March Street Press, which also published his chapbook Stop Making Sense.

Over the years his work has received 17 Pushcart prize nominations—13 for poetry, and four for fiction. Although he does not write science-fiction poetry per se, he has received three Rhysling Award nominations for best science-fiction poems of the year. Book manuscripts of his have been finalists in several national competitions, including those for The Brittingham Award (University of Wisconsin Press), The Lena Miles Wever Award (Pleiades Press/LSU Press), and the Quercus Review Press. He has also published reviews, over a hundred short stories, and had a column named after his submission to William Safire's On Language column in the New York Times. Stories of his have been in Slipstream and The Literary Review and have made regular appearances in the irregular NYC magazine, Happy, once ranked 13 in the market for short stories by Writer's Digest.

Currently he is working on another volume in his Killer Drink series five of which have been published and a sixth accepted. He is also at work on an extended sequence of self-portraits with artists, which may or may not be actual self portraits. Last year he wrote the first volume of a fictional memoir about his years spent in hotel and restaurant management, called Chaos Management. The second volume of memoirs will contain linked stories all of which are set in the same three hours, in a bar, over a number of years; it is titled Hours of Happiness. He is currently enjoying his recent retirement from the unchosen profession of barman.

Matthew Spireng's full-length book manuscript Out of Body won the 2004 Bluestem Poetry Award and was published in 2006 by Bluestem Press at Emporia State University. His chapbook Young Farmer is due out in 2007 from Finishing Line Press. Previous chapbooks were Encounters, 2005, by Finishing Line Press; Inspiration Point, 2002, the winner of the 2000 Bright Hill Press Poetry Chapbook Competition; and Just This, 2003, by Hampden-Sydney College. The title poem of Inspiration Point refers to the lookout by the same name on the escarpment in Greene County.

Spireng's individual poems have won two national awards and been recognized in numerous other national contests. He has also received two Pushchart Prize nominations. Since 1990 nearly 500 of his poems have appeared in publications across the United States, including The American Scholar, Yankee Magazine, Southern Humanities Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, English Journal, and Louisiana Literature. He is also an award-winning journalist.

Spireng lives in Lomontville in Ulster County in the house in which he was raised on the wooded acreage left from the family farm.

March

Poetry on the Hudson:
Poetry reading by Mike Jurkovic and Cheryl Rice
Open mike following
Saturday, March 24th, 2 p.m.
Suggested donation $3
Hosted by Bob Wright
For more information, call 518-444-4561

Mike Jurkovic is currently co-director of the Calling All Poets Reading Series in Beacon, New York, and the founder and host of the annual Hudson Valley Poets Fest, held in Rosendale, New York, since 2003. He was also the founder and host of the Voices of the Valley Poetry Performance Series, whose events took place in various venues from 1996 through 2002. He regularly contributes CD music reviews to Chronogram and the Folk and Acoustic Music website, and his column, The Rock ‘n Roll Curmudgeon, appeared in Rhythm and News Magazine from1997 to 2004.

His poems have appeared in The South Carolina Review, The Comstock Review, The Baltimore Review, the Meridian Anthology, Heaven Bone, DrumVoices Revue, Eclipse, Carquinez Poetry Review, Haight Ashbury Literary Review, Wisconsin Review, Hunger, Epicenter Magazine, Bear Creek Haiku, Salvage, Chronogram, the Hudson Valley Literary Magazine, the Literary Gazette, Medicinal Purposes, and The Country and Abroad. Online on the Internet, his poems have appeared on Tamafyhr Mountain Poetry, NewPaltzNation.com, and Recursive Angel. He has three poetry CDs: Lean On Me: A Hudson Valley Christmas (Drezdon, 1998) and the self-produced Guided by Anxiety and Clapping Is Not Mandatory. His work appears in two national anthologies: Will Work For Peace (Zeropanik,1999) and Dyed-In-The-Wool: A Hudson River Poetry Anthology (Vivisphere,2001). Mike lives in Walkill, New York.

Cheryl Rice, who was born on Long Island and currently lives in Kingston, has been writing for more years than she can remember. She has had both poems and prose published in such periodicals as Bitterroot, Oxalis, Satori, Chronogram, Poets Gallery Press, Poetry Motel, Chronogram, The Country and Abroad, The Florida Review, The Gathering of the Tribes, Home Planet Planet News, Mangrove, Other: -----, The Temple/El Templo, Ulster Magazine, and The Woodstock Times, and online at albanypoets.org, poetrypoetry.com., and thehiddencity.com. She has read from her works on several local cable-TV shows, including Marist College=s Media Center, and was a co-host of ACatskill Caravan,@ a Woodstock cable-TV show devoted to the arts. She was the host of a weekly poetry open mike at Rip=s Cafe, in Saugerties, and for many years hosted an annual February event, known as the ASylvia Plath Bak-Off,@ at the A.I.R. Studio Gallery, in Kingston. She has lived in New York's Hudson Valley for more than 25 years.