Greene Arts & Rafts

GreeneLand is not only the birthplace of American art (see www.greenearts.org), the citadel of captivating cat shows (http://cat-n-around.com ) and the focal point of painting with light ( www.rudieberkhout.com ) but also the creative capital of transmission art. That genre, as Acra-based leader Tom Roe explains, encompasses “radio art, video art, light sculpture, and installation and performance utilizing the electromagnetic spectrum.” Products emanating from transmission artists bear such titles as “Airscape,” “When Radios Sleep What Dreams May Come,” “.00011574Hz” and “Wireless Electric Chair.” Lately added to Mr Roe’s roster of practitioners is Max Goldfarb whose “Ambulant Transceivers” project, currently on display at the Neuberger Museum of Art in Purchase NY, melds “radio transmission with infrastructures of the built environment, improvised radio-electronic objects, and performative architecture.” Got that? What’s more, Goldfarbiana will feature in a show in Guatemala called--you’ll soon rejoice in this digression; are you ready?--“Burocrazy.” Anyhow, GreeneLanders can learn more about transmission art at a free workshop conducted, by members of the collective Cross Current Resonance Transducer, on August 16 at the Catskill Community Center. Participants (young and grown up; must pre-register by August 5^th) will learn about “harvesting sunlight” (renewable energy), “motor madness” (tinkering with DC motors), and using technology to make artworks.M49 Studio inventory

6000=approximate number of dollars raised for the YMCA-to-be, in Coxsackie, by Catskill Kiwanis Club (plus Frank Porto, abundantly) at the Albert Natarnicola Memorial golf tournament on July 20th at Catskill Golf Club. The receipts/revenue came from the 108 and (especially) the numerous and generous $ponsor$.

7000=approximate number of dollars generated for United Way of Columbia & Greene counties by the GreeneLand tourism office’s Wacky Raft Race. Among participating marine contraftions (which, according to a trepid local journalist, “ranged in various shapes and sizes”): “Cool Running,” “Raft of Justice,” “Late Bloomer” (Athens-Coxsackie Rotary’s perennial winner), “Heather Darlin’s Duck,” “USS Patri-Ark,” “Rock n Row.”

SUED, IN U.S. District Court for Northern District of N Y, by United States of America: ten thousand dollars in greenbacks and a Dodge Ram pick-up. That’s what the legal notice says. (Another legal notice, pertaining to the impending auction sale of two horses, gives the address of a Big Pink Farm as 11 Liberty Street in Catskill).

“LOST CATSKILL” is the topic of a talk and slide show that historian Ted Hilscher will deliver tomorrow (Sunday) at Beattie-Powers Place.

NECROLOGY DEPT. Regional as well as local news media devoted attention in the past few days to the deaths last Monday of two GreeneLanders. In one case, a freak accident took the life of Michael Tomaselli, 41, of Catskill Creek Ranch in Freehold. Mr Tomaselli was delivering a truckload of soil to a construction site in Rensselaerville. The back of his 1969 Mack dump truck evidently tipped at an unexpected moment, pinning him fatally upright against the cab. The other case evidently is a murder. The victim was Martha Conners, 48 (why is it customary to give the age?), who lived, with an array of pets, in a trailer off Old Kings Road in the town of Catskill. She had been reported missing four weeks ago. Her decomposed body was found, underneath the body of one of her dogs, by some visiting young men, including her 19-year-old son, Michael, a Long Island resident, on Monday. Suspicion has fallen on an unnamed man who, according to a neighbor, had been living with Ms Conners before she disappeared.

NIMBY NEWS. GreeneLanders Jessica Bitner and Kristy Burns have launched a clothing line, Lap of Luxury, aimed at fashion-conscious NASCAR fans. The idea came to them from events at home in Greene County, Tennessee.

GARBLE DEPT. “Greetings Mountainkeeper!” says the e-mail message. “As a member of Catskill Mountainkeeper, we want to keep you updated on the many issues that we are confronting in the Catskills...." Translation: As you are a Mountainkeeper, we want to keep you updated….

DAILY MAUL. “Cat lovers…are being encouraged to vote for their favorite 2008 ’Cat’n Around Catskill cat statutes.” “New York is the only State in the Union were 14-year-old boys and girls cannot hunt big game.” “Heavy flooding in recent years have altered the…stream….” “I am not saying that we should not allow condos in our village but feel we should get our priorities strait first.” And (according to The Solomon [Islands] Star, via World Wide Words) New Zealand’s Foreign Minister has warned that serious consequences ensue when locals undertake to “change a government at the barrel of a gnu.”