Hiking Orange County

Enjoyed a great hike from Cascade Lake in Warwick to Grandview overlooking Greenwood Lake today. Great picnic at Bellvale Farms also. Planning a kayaking trip soon on the Hudson and continuing with the hiking excursions. Orange County is a really cool place to live and work. Will post photos soon...

Wildlife at the Seligmann Homestead

Earlier this spring we were lucky enough to have two baby Great-Horned owls hatched at the Seligmann Homestead - right outside our office windows. They eventually moved a little further off to a quieter location, just in time for a new fawn to be born at the office. Last week, we got to enjoy the bleating of a very annoyed fawn who was longing for its mother (who was off feeding during the day). It was a lovely sight, made more so by the knowledge that we have a peaceful enough setting here that even protective mothers like our deer and owl feel comfortable raising their young at the Seligmann Homestead.

Metro-North RR Visits Citizens Foundation

Held an informational breakfast this morning with Howard Permut, President of Metro-North RR. Learned about current programs, ridership and new initiatives. Some good progress has been made but we have a long way to go before mass transit is where it could/should be for our residents. Now that we have to pay an additional tax to the MTA we need to constantly advocate for more and better service.

Sugar Loaf Mtn Hike

OCCF Trustee Bob Krahulik and OCCF Friend Al "Skip" Buckbee led a group of 160+ hikers up Sugar Loaf Mountain on Saturday. The weather held out for us - the hike was great (so I heard) and the hikers enjoyed the trip and the picnic lunch we supplied afterwards. For more information about events like these, sign up for our email list by emailing bonnie@occitizensfoundation.org.

Homage to: Grattage, Frottage, Fumage and Collage

Join this independent hands-on workshop that explores the Surrealist techniques of:

Grattage-Surrealist technique of grattage, which involved scraping off dry pieces of paint, resulting in random lines and shapes.

Frottage- (from French frotter, "to rub") is a Surreal and "automatic" method of creative production developed by Max Ernst. In frottage the artist takes a pencil or other drawing tool and makes a rubbing over a textured surface. The drawing can be left as is or used as the basis for further fantasy driven articulation.

Fumage-is a Surrealist technique attributed to Wolfgang Palen in which impressions are made by the smoke of a candle onto a piece of paper or canvas.

and Collage (from the French: coller, to glue) is a work of art, made from an assemblage of different forms, thus creating a new whole. A collage may include printed material from magazine or newspaper, labels, ticket stubs and photos and may include found objects, portions of other artwork affixed and or glued to a piece of paper or canvas. The origins of collage can be traced back hundreds of years, but this technique made a dramatic reappearance in the early 20th century with the Surrealists many of whom visited and worked in the Seligmann studio

Our group will be working outside on the lawn of the Orange County Citizens Foundation near the studio of Kurt Seligmann so if it rains, we can all work in watercolor!

The date:

July 15th, 1:00 PM
Remember to bring your own supplies and lots of imagination!
Pot Luck Picnic- Bring something Surreal that you would like to eat and share

While this is an open free workshop an attendance registration is required please call Bonnie @ 845-469-9459 or contact Professor Slater-Tanner @ susan.slatertanner@sunyorange.edu for further details.

Tweeting with the Citizens Foundation

We're always eager to find ways to keep connected with our Orange County citizenry and so thanks to Citizens Foundation Chair Noreen Fennell, we now have Tweeting capability. That's right, you can now follow us on Twitter at occfny - learn more about our upcoming events and initiatives as they happen!

Susan Beth Pfeffer Visits Local Students

Award-winning author Susan Beth Pfeffer visited students at the CJ Hooker Middle School on May 13th as part of the Citizens Foundation's Read All About It traveling cultural exhibit. The students had read one of Ms. Pfeffer's riveting science fiction novels earlier this year and were eager to learn more about the author and her work. Thanks to Kathryn Loughran, Library Media Specialist at CJ Hooker Middle School and Ms. Pfeffer for their cooperation.

Jeanne MacDonald and her silky sound

We're very fortunate to have Jeanne MacDonald performing in a benefit concert for us on Saturday night, May 30th. Jeanne has one of the silkiest, sexiest voices around and she's an incredible performer. Local elementary music school teacher by day and nationally-recognized cabaret performer by night, Jeanne lives in Bloomingburg and is donating her time and talent because she believes in the Citizens Foundation and our community. We're grateful to her and hope we get a fabulous turnout for what is sure to be a fabulous show. For more information and to reserve your seat (space is limited so do it soon!), visit our calendar page or call us at 845-469-9459.

4H Calf Auction

This weekend, OCCF Trustee Al Buckbee (Bellvale Farms) convinced me to attend a calf auction with my family to benefit the Orange County 4H Clubs. I had no idea what a fun and great learning experience this would be. The barn in Slate Hill where the auction was held was jam-packed with dairy farmers, their families, and 4H'ers looking for a good deal on a calf of their own. The farmer on my left traveled from Sussex County, NJ to pick up some good bargains. The bidding was based on precise measurements: what the calf's pedigree was, how much milk her mother had produced, her age, even the length of her neck in some cases (a long-necked heifer tends to produce more than a thick-necked one).

The food was fantastic and the silent auction, along with the live auction, was a lot of fun. Agriculture, like many of the calves on Saturday night, is alive and kicking in Orange County!

I didn't come home with a calf (thank goodness) but my kids are signing up for 4H as soon as possible.

Thanks to Lucy Joyce and her children, Kevin and Jasmine Lewis, for a pre-show introduction for my family to raising goats, chickens, and horses. What a great day!

Seligmann, Surrealism & Sugar Loaf

Last Friday (5/1), we held a joint reception with SUNY Orange to celebrate the accomplishments of approximately 15 students who took a course on Kurt Seligmann and Surrealism at our facility in Sugar Loaf. Professor Susan Slater Tanner taught the 5-week course and if the students learned half as much as we did from Professor Tanner, they all deserve A's (but I'll leave that up to the Professor). We hope that the course will be offered again in the fall and we really hope that the students who took the course this time around will help us turn our small tribute to Kurt and Arlette Seligmann into an interactive tool for Seligmann and Surrealist students around the world.

Susan Metzger Honored at Annual Ottaway Medal Dinner

We're really excited to be honoring Susan Metzger this year with the Ottaway Medal. Susan has been a transportation and environmental preservation advocate in Orange County for many years. She's a past Chair of the Citizens Foundation and was head of the organization when we moved to the Seligmann Homestead in Sugar Loaf in 2001. Instead of a commemorative journal, Susan and the Board of Trustees have agreed that a more effective way to honor Susan and her work is to publish the Environmental section of our next Quality of Life Report in her name. Contributions can be made online or by contacting us at 845-469-9459. We've kept the cost of our dinner tickets the same as last year's to encourage people in this tight economy to join us. May 7th at the Inn at Central Valley - register online or call us. And congratulations to a wonderful citizens of Orange County on a much deserved award!

Farm Exhibit Becomes Permanent - Housed at CCE

In 2007, the Exhibits Committee put together a fabulous photo exhibit of 25 working farms in Orange County - each complete with a short history and description of how the farm operates today. We had no idea how popular the exhibit would turn out to be and so we didn't develop it as a permanent display. This winter though, we bit the bullet and had a very talented local artist and framer, Marie Liu, convert the exhibit into an easy-to-handle permanent display. Each farm is represented by one large modern-day photo, and then one large frame which includes a written history and description, 4-6 smaller historical photos and current photos. The exhibit will be housed at Cornell Cooperative Extension in Middletown - please visit! Below you can see Lucy Joyce (CCE) and Marie Lui mounting the new display.

NYS Legislature May Pass Payroll Tax to Fund MTA without Adding East River Tolls

What many of us feared would happen may happen sooner and in a more damaging way than we thought. Crain's just reported that the Governor and the NYS Senate have formally abandoned East River tolls as a way to help fund the MTA's operations and capital plans. Unfortunately, our lawmakers and executive leadership have not abandoned a payroll tax on employers within the MTA's catchment area. While many recognized that the payroll tax was probably a done deal, however unfair to our employers, we hoped that our state leadership would not tax us in vain. Without adopting all of the Ravitch Commssion's recommendations, the MTA's serious infrastructure and operational problems cannot be addressed in any meaningful or long-term way.

Fort Montgomery - West Point Reading on 3/12

Colonel Johnson

Steve Grove

Russ Reeder (son of author Red Reeder)

Read All About It: The Lives and Works of Orange County's Authors

On Thursday, March 12th, the Citizens Foundation and the Fort Montgomery Historic Site hosted a reading of West Point authors. It was an incredibly interesting event - our readers were outstanding - thank you Col. Johnson and Steve Grove! One of the most touching parts of the evening was when Russ Reeder, son of Red Reeder (one of our featured authors) shared some of his memories of growing up at West Point with the audience. A hearty thanks to Dorothy Szefc from SUNY Orange and the Citizens Foundation's Exhibit Committee, who really took the lead on organizing this wonderful event.

Revinventing Our Places Conference

The 3/13 Reinventing Our Communities conference was a great success - thanks to our speakers, organizers, and Mount St. Mary College. Lou Marquet and Stu Turner are two of the Citizens Foundation's most committed Trustees - thanks for all of your hard work over the past year to keep Placemaking on the front burner!

Monica Quigley used her considerable expertise on demographic shifts to set the stage for the day's discussion. Gianni Longo was masterful as our Building Consensus moderator. We learned how important it is to plan with the public from planners David Field, Alan Sorensen, and John Clarke. The afternoon panel on Getting Started gave attendees a chance to learn about funding sources, comprehensive plans, pitfalls to watch for like the burn-out factor, and sheer passion for your cause. Paul Beyer provided us with assurances that the State of New York is backing up their Smart Growth speak with real action.

What topics should we focus on next? Did you attend the conference and have comments?