| Watershed Post

Catskills Irish Arts Week kicks off in East Durham

Above: Musicians performing at the Catskills Irish Arts Week. Photo by Timothy H. Raab, from the Catskills Irish Arts week Facebook page.

Fervid followers of traditional Irish music and dance descend on East Durham this week for the twentieth annual Catskills Irish Arts Week.

The week-long event, which started in 1995 with 10 instructors and 70 participants, has grown to include over 70 instructors of music, dance, art and writing who will lead workshops to hundreds of participants. In the evenings, local pubs and music venues host performances and more informal music sessions.

On Saturday, the week winds up with the East Durham Trad Fest, a day-long celebration of Irish music, dancing and storytelling. This year's Trad Fest will honor Felix Dolan, a longtime member of the Catskills Irish Arts Week teaching faculty who died in 2013.

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Catskills Irish Arts Week

irish arts week

irish heritage

irish step dancing

michael j. quil centre

Guide me a river: The art of Catskills wilderness guiding

Charles “Sonny” Somelofski of Catskill Outdoor Adventures in Margaretville (catskilloutdooradventures.com), remembers when the licensing process to become an outdoor guide in New York state was a simple paper questionnaire with a $2 fee that asked whether he could swim, handle a boat, and read a map and compass.

“That was it, back then,” Somelofski says. “Bang! I was able to take people out and do it all.”

Today, being a state-licensed outdoor guide requires a bit more: taxable income disclosure forms, a physician’s statement, and certifications in first aid, CPR, and water safety. Those are the just the basics. Guides can be licensed in a number of different categories, ranging from camping and fishing to whitewater rafting and ice climbing, each with different licensing requirements.

The heart of guiding, however, has remained the same: proving to the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) that you can reliably take paying customers out into the great outdoors and bring them back again in one piece.

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Locals brace for Hudson Project music fest

Locals are gearing up for traffic, crowds and delays this weekend as the Hudson Project, a new music and arts festival in the tradition of Woodstock, kicks off in Saugerties.

Legions of hippies and hipsters — an estimated 20,000 a day — will flood 800-acre Winston Farm for the three-day festival, according to a report in the Kingston Daily Freeman. The farm previously played host to 1994’s reprisal of the famed Woodstock festival, and was the intended site for the original 1969 event before it relocated to Bethel.

At the helm of Hudson Project is original Woodstock festival co-founder Michael Lang, who told the New York Times that the Project is his attempt at bringing a successful recurring festival to the area.

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Festivals

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Ulster County

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New York State Police

State audit finds ORDA in the red

The regional authority that runs Belleayre Mountain Ski Center in the Catskills, along with Gore and Whiteface in the Adirondacks, has some troubling financial problems, according to a new audit released Wednesday by the New York State Comptroller's Office.

The audit has been in the works since March of 2013, when state comptroller Thomas DiNapoli announced that his office would be taking a closer look at the authority's finances.

In the audit report (embedded below), DiNapoli found that the Olympic Regional Development Authority (ORDA) has racked up $45 million in losses in a three-year period from 2010 to 2013.

The authority took over management of Belleayre in 2012. The mountain was previously run by the state Department of Environmental Conservation.

The audit found fault with several aspects of ORDA's management of Belleayre. In one instance, auditors wrote, ORDA awarded a contract for ski rental equipment concessions at Belleayre to an outside company without seeking competitive bids. The authority should open up the process to competition, the audit report stated:

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Olympic Regional Development Authority

Belleayre Mountain

ORDA

More than a funny girl: "One Night With Fanny Brice" at the Open Eye Theater

For a few days in July, the legendary Borscht Belt musical comedian and Ziegfeld Follies superstar Fanny Brice returns to the Catskills -- at least in spirit.

Actress and singer Patricia Dell stars in the upcoming one-woman show “One Night With Fanny Brice,” by playwright Chip Deffaa, staged by Margaretville's Open Eye Theater. In her role as Brice, Dell takes on the indomitable persona of the first female star of the Jewish entertainment circuit, and breathes fresh life into musical classics nearly a century old.

“‘Wow’ was my reaction reading the script,” said Dell. “My only exposure to her was the movie, ‘Funny Girl,’ starring Barbra Streisand. There’s a lot more to her.”

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On the ropes: Sundance Rappel Tower

Tom Crucet built a 65-foot-tall rappelling tower in Phoenicia because he knew it would be fun. Thirty years later, it still is.

“It’s one of the joys of my life,” says Crucet, who is a lawyer by trade and has been a town justice for 17 years. “I loved doing it when I was in the military.”

Rappelling was just one of the skills Crucet mastered during his tenure as a Green Beret with the U.S. Army’s Special Forces: He also parachutes and scuba dives.

Crucet uses his Sundance Rappel Tower to teach skills to groups of Boy and Girl Scouts, firefighters and other rescue workers, rock climbers and anyone else who wants to learn how to descend a vertical obstacle using ropes.

Open year-round on weekends by appointment only, the tower offers four levels of training to groups of eight to 22 people. The sessions cost $25 per person and last about a half-day. The first part is about 40 minutes of classroom training, and the remainder of the instruction is devoted to practicing skills on the tower.

Some students come for one lesson. Others camp out nearby for a weekend and spend several days honing their skills, Crucet said.

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Here comes the rain again...and wind, too

Look out, Catskills: Yet another round of thunderstorms is taking aim at the region, with the possibility of high winds, damaging hail and even the chance of a tornado.

As of late Tuesday afternoon, a line of storms is organizing in western New York and Pennsylvania, and moving steadily eastward across the region. A severe thunderstorm watch is currently in effect across Central New York, including Delaware County in the Catskills region, until 8 p.m.

Storm trackers at the National Weather Service caution that there is a slight chance the storms could spawn a tornado or two as they swirl across Central New York.

The eastern Catskills are not yet under severe weather watch, but thunderstorms are expected this afternoon and evening. Locals should keep an eye on the weather as the storms move eastward.

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Catskills July fourth celebrations captured on film

Above: As part of Hanford Hills Museum’s Independence Day festivities they had a 3 horsepower Novo engine powering a Dickson’s improved ice cream churn (seen above operated by Amanda Osborn and Cory Young.)

Above: Young entrepreneurs in Phonecia set up an iced tea stand on Main Street. Photo courtesy of Mystery Spot Antiques.

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Thruway car crash leaves two dead

A horrific multi-car accident on I-90 last Friday left two people dead, including a South Cairo resident, and two others injured.

Shortly before midnight on Friday, July 4, State Police, Fire, EMS and Thruway Authority responded to an accident on the westbound section of I-90 between exits 24 and 25, at mile marker 151 in Guilderland.

According to a New York State Police news release, Tyler S. Pascuzzi, 24, of Coxsackie was driving a 2004 Volkswagen GLI at “a high rate of speed” with two passengers in the car when he struck a 2003 Honda Civic.

The driver of the Civic, Brian T. Miller, 29, of Schenectady lost control of the car and struck the center guide rail.

The Volkswagen began to spin out, and then struck an Old Dominion Freight Lines tractor trailer. The car separated in two pieces upon impact.

The Volkswagen's two passengers, Cody J. Veverka, 23, of South Cairo and Alicia M. Tamboia, 24 of Wingdale, were ejected from the car and pronounced dead at the scene, police said.

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fatalities

Albany Medical Center

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Hanover Farms plans a move to Shokan

Hanover Farms, a Route 28 farmstand that has been embroiled in legal battle with the town of Shandaken since 2012, is looking for a fresh start -- a new town, and a new name.

Outside the shuttered farmstand, a new sign has appeared, announcing that the farmstand is re-opening at the "old bank" in Shokan. Eight miles east on Route 28, at the Shokan bank building that formerly housed a Bank of America branch, another sign has sprouted up: "Opening Soon: Greenheart Farmstand."

But the farmstand's announcement is unnerving officials in the town of Olive, who are hoping the business's father-and-son owners Al and Alfie Higley do things by the book this time.

"[Al] Higley was in yesterday to put in an application for a site plan. But there's no permission from the town of Olive for him to do anything at all," said Sylvia Rozzelle, supervisor of the town of Olive. "If he opens without a permit, that's not a good thing."

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