May's End

MESKADA. That's the title of a feature film to be shot starting next week in GreeneLand. As conceived by writer-director Josh Sternfeld, it's a police drama set in a county where "class tension and resentment reaches [sic] a boiling point when a wealthy Hilliard child is killed during a house robbery gone wrong and the main suspects' trail leads back to the downtrodden, dying town of Caswell." Some extras, at $100 per day, are still needed. For more information, see "Meskada" on Google; read the Daily Mail story (Andrew Amelinckx, 5/27); e-mail meskada@gmail.com.

GENDER GAP. Evidently the boys of GreeneLand still are slackers. Among Greenville High School's top ten graduates, eight, including Valedictorian Emma Lord and Salutatorian Kimberly Fabian, are girls. At Cairo-Durham, nine of the ten top scholars in a class of 120 are female. Among Windham-Ashland-Jewett top ten (out of 40), however, six graduates are boys. As for Coxsackie-Athens, And at Catskill High School, the disparity was small. The four boys almost matched the girls numerically, and Valedictorian Kedong Wang scored to full scholarship to Princeton University.

NOT OVER. Although scheduled performances of River of Dreams ended last Sunday (in the Catskill High School auditorium, amid tumultuous applause and joyous weeping), the troupe will perform extracts in Beacon next week. And there's a prospect that this musical adaptation of Hudson Talbott's eponymous book will come back to life in New York City. The cast of 50 GreeneLand kids has been invited to perform in Manhattan's Battery Park, as part of the official launch of Hudson Quadricentennial festivities. From the finale as composed by Frank Cuthbert: "May your dreams come true and sail with you upon the river of dreams."

GASOLINE PRICES have hit a new high. At the start of the week, the nation-wide average price for a gallon of regular was $2.435. On the East Coast, it was $2.294. Those figures went up in subsequent days. And in Catskill on Thursday, in at least one case--Cumberland Farms in Jefferson Heights--the price jumper from $2.51 in the morning to $2.58 in the afternoon.

TOMORROW. At Hunter Mountain resort, the Mountain Jam festival swings into its second day & night (www.mountainjam.com) while at the Catskill Mountain Foundation's nearby Doctorow Center,Theater Ten Ten performs the Gilbert & Sullivan light opera, "Ruddigore." In Tannersville, the Rubber Duck race starts at 11am (www.mentgroup.com) and so does the festival. In Cairo, the town-wide yard sale coincides with "unveiling"of 40 bears (& butterflies) and with recent reports of live bear sightings. In Freehold, guitar duo Tequila Mockingbird performs at Ruby's Hotel while just down the road, the Freehold Country Pub hosts a Greenville Beautification Project fund-raising gala (966-4183). In Catskill, a new ice cream parlor, Spoon Me, opens at 396 Main Street (as adjunct of the MOD cafe) while across the street, at 396 Main, Kurt Andernach displays his handiwork in his new custom furniture shop, Somersault Woods. Then, in the evening, Historic Catskill Point will rock to the sounds of the Columbia Memorial Hospital splendid annual ball.

"HERE TO STAY"= message on the big West Bridge Street sign of car dealer Sawyer Chevrolet.