Above: Ulster County Sheriff Paul Van Blarcum on ABC News.

Paul Van Blarcum, the Sheriff of Ulster County, ignited a furor in the Catskills and in the national media on Thursday in when he posted a plea on Facebook asking licensed gun owners to carry their weapons with them at all times in case they encounter a mass shooting like the one that killed 14 people in San Bernardino, California on Wednesday, Dec. 2. 

“I want to encourage citizens of Ulster County who are licensed to carry a firearm to PLEASE DO SO,” Van Blarcum wrote in a post that he also sent to local media outlets as a letter to the editor. “We are the thin blue line that is entrusted in keeping this country safe, and we must be prepared to act at any given moment.”

Above: Taco Juan's in Woodstock. Photo by Kat Stan, shared in the Watershed Post's Flickr pool. 

Will Nixon, the co-author of “Walking Woodstock” and “The Pocket Guide to Woodstock,” has decided that the best way to capture the spirit of Woodstock life is in verse.

Nixon’s new book, “Acrostic Woodstock,” is a collection of 70 poems about the famous little Ulster County town. Each poem is an acrostic, where the first letters of each line spell out the title of the poem.

The real fun is the subject matter. For Nixon, everything is fodder for a poem. Levon Helm’s Midnight Ramble gets an ode, as does the town hardware store and the taco shop:

TACO JUAN’S BENCH

Above: "Islamberg: A Muslim Community in the Catskills." A video produced by Jessica Vecchione of Vecc Videography in partnership with the Watershed Post. We take a look at how the small religious community of Islamberg has dealt with threats from people like Robert Doggart, a Tennessee man who plotted to burn the hamlet and massacre its citizens in April 2015. Help us do more reporting like this: donate.  

For the second time this year, an armed man has threatened to drive across the country to the Catskills to attack Islamberg, a community of about 25 African-American Muslim families located in the rural Delaware County town of Tompkins.

Rumors that the community is a breeding ground for homegrown terrorists have made Islamberg a target for anti-Muslim extremists around the United States.

Above: Jon Ritzheimer brandishing a gun in a Facebook video in which he says he is driving to Islamberg on Nov. 18. 

At home in the Catskills, however, Islamberg has longstanding collegial relationships with the FBI, local law enforcement and its neighbors. (For an inside look at Islamberg and its relationships with locals, see our video above.)

On Nov. 18, Jon Ritzheimer, an ex-Marine from Phoenix, Arizona, posted a video on Facebook of himself with a handgun in the front of a car, saying that he is on his way to Islamberg.