Woodstock Film Festival

2010 festival poster, created by Portia Munson, using flowers from her Catskills garden

Five years ago this weekend, we discovered the Hudson Valley for the first time, when we came to the Midnight Ramble at Levon Helm's.

We fell in love with everything about the area on that trip: the people, the food, the leaves, the Catskills, the music and art scene, the small towns, and especially the way we felt when we were here. We felt like we were home.

Now, we are home.
We've made the Hudson Valley our home, and we fall more in love with it every day.

We had no idea the Woodstock Film Festival was going on that first weekend, it was a happy accident we discovered as we wandered around Woodstock.

The small town of Woodstock makes this event a very personal, informal and intimate gathering. It's the epitome of independent as it sets itself apart from other festivals like Sundance, Telluride, etc -- this is a place where passionately creative people are relaxed and having fun while working their tails off all day long.

This event became our focus for a return trip every fall since then. So tonight, as we head to the first film of our fifth Woodstock Film Festival: LennonNYC, a film by Michael Epstein, it'll be a staycation for us.

We'd ducked into Oriole9 in Woodstock for a cup of coffee that Saturday five years ago, and found ourselves surrounded by filmmakers, composers, locals, writers, actors, and all sorts of friendly people, all buzzing about the festival.

We were taken with the cozy, funky vibe of OR9 and the warmth that surrounded us.

We walked down the street and met Barry Feinstein, the brilliant photographer, at his show at Lotus Gallery. Wavy Gravy was there too. We just kept laughing at how great it was.


photo courtesy Lotus Gallery, Matt Dillon and Barry Feinstein, Lotus Gallery, 2006

Since then, through the film festival, we've met so many people and seen some wonderful films.

Here's a quick highlight reel from our years here.

• Discovering the Bearsville Theatre and the Bear Cafe
• Seeing the Felice Brothers at the Colony Cafe
• Attending Martha Frankel's actors' dialog every year, meeting such diverse people there as Steve Guttenberg, Melissa Leo, Lucy Liu, Patricia Clarkson -- brought together in a way only Martha can bring people together
  
• Meeting Elliot Landy, the famous Woodstock rock photographer, at his opening at Lotus Gallery
  
• Meeting Jonathan Demme and seeing his great Neil Young movie, Neil Young Trunk Show
• Hanging out in the towns of Rosendale, Saugerties, Phoenicia and more
  

I could go on and on...really.

But soon it's time to head across the river on this most glorious fall day.

I'm going to try to bring you some interesting tidbits from each day's festival events.

When welcoming attendees to films last year, Meira Blaustein, Co-Founder/Executive Director of the festival, offered that the allure of Woodstock could be explained in the words of a Catskills folk legend:

If you spend more than two days in the shadow of Overlook Mountain, your heart stays there forever.

And so, just like that, here we are.

A.L. Stickle, Rhinebeck NY

The other day I wandered into a place I'd been meaning to go,
a "variety" store called A.L. Stickle in Rhinebeck.
Here's how it went.
The first thing I see is this:


Really? My camera starts twitching. And my quippiness rears its head.


Then I notice things are displayed just like they were in Woolworth's
in DAYS OF YORE.
For you kids out there, Woolworth's was the place you'd go to buy a parakeet and a pack of underpants, to paraphrase David Letterman.


All the prices are marked on the items in grease pencil.
Everything's meticulously and thoughtfully organized.
In fact, there are a couple people doing just that as I look around.


Wow, I haven't seen one of these since I won one at the state fair with one of those little mechanical cranes behind glass that you pumped your coins into only to find out that just about anything it tried to pick up was the wrong size or weight to actually make it down the chute and into your hand.


When I see this sign, I think, "OK, I'm going to offer them 20 bucks for this sign. SCORE. I'll be the first person who's ever even noticed it."
I'm picturing how great it'll look in the kitchen.


I notice another sign and imagine my collection growing.
My blog's going to be about how I scored these vintage signs from some unsuspecting storekeeper.


But then I begin to notice that these signs and mechandise ARE the store.
But not in a precious or ironic way. In an appreciative, thoughtful way.
It's clear that whoever owns the store knows exactly what they have,
and they're enjoying the heck out of being able to use it in a practical way.

Check it out:








Nothing like vintage ads to remind you
that doggies and broken glass are a bad combo.
And also that no one's come up with a better way to package a light bulb.




Seriously amazing. Oil cloth, for your picnic tablecloth.


I repeat, seriously amazing.
I ordered some of these online awhile back after being unable to find what I needed.


This looks a bit like the stuff I unearthed in my mom's kitchen when I emptied her house.
And I kept it, by the way, cause that's how I roll.


Thermos replacement parts?
For the lucky few who have a real Thermos thermos?
Outstanding.


One of the wise men bolted.
Good to see the other two are hangin in though,
enjoying the perfectly consistent 70 degree temps.


Wow.


The ribbon selection is brilliant.


And as you can see, I'm not the only one enjoying it.


The vintage toys are displayed all around the store on an upper ledge.
Many still with boxes.


Most of the ad pieces are with the appropriate merchandise.
Which is very cool.


I almost faint when I come upon this.
I instantly think of my friend Chandra at GREER.
She'll flip.




Upon closer inspection, I see that it does indeed contain vintage cards.
Studio Cards!
I'm in the middle of reading a great book about them!


The school supply section causes me equal joy.
It's all arranged so well, among the kind of glass dividers I haven't seen used in eons.


I still remember when I went from a plastic ruler to a wooden ruler.
That was pretty serious.


I never studied the kind of big time geometry that required a bow compass; always squeaked by just with the kind that holds the golf pencil.




And this is the proprietor! You thought I'd never get around to this, didn't you?

Meet Matt Stickle, grandson of the store's original owner, Alfred Lee Stickle.

That's why this fantastic place is called A.L. Stickle, and it's been a Rhinebeck fixture for over 62 years, with Matt running it for over a dozen.

Alfred Lee Stickle bought a store in 1946 -- a Ben Franklin. A nearby grocery store was destroyed by a fire, and he bought that property and had the new store built there. A.L. Stickle opened in 1951.

When Al became ill, his grandson Matt came home to help run the store, and took over after Al passed away. Matt now runs the store with his wife Leah, and other family members. Jan, Al's wife, still comes in to help out a few days a week.

Matt found all these great pieces in the basement of the store, and as he brought them up, his late grandfather would say, "I haven't seen that in years!"

He loves what he's doing, and he's doing it for the love of the store.
It's obvious in talking to him, and when shopping, that he cares about what he does, and about his customers.

Oh, and yeah. None of the vintage display pieces are for sale.
I didn't even have to ask that question once I'd heard Matt's story.
But I did.
Cause I knew you'd ask.












We are across the river from Woodstock, after all.




A lion's eye view of Market Street from the front window.


I'll be back.

As I left, the word "notions" popped into my head. This is where you find them.
Nobody even uses that word anymore.
Stuff like thread, elastic, thimbles. Notions!
My dad sold sundries, so I know notions.

I also thought if we'd had a store like this near us when my daughter was little, we'd have been in there almost daily, at her suggestion.

It was refreshing to discover a place that turned out to just be what it is -- not retro, not hip, not designed to be anything other than an authentic, working five and dime.

I love New York. Upstate.

ps.
Check out Matt's wife Leah's cute-as-a-bug Etsy store, Go Monkey Designs.
The tote bags and French lounging pants are fantastic!

My 9-Year-Long Party

There’s a lot to be said for not drinking. But I’m not going to say it here. I don’t come here to bore you. Not on purpose.

Nine years ago today, I stopped drinking. No DWI. No major drama.

Just a party one night, at a friend’s house. (Worth noting, I haven’t seen that friend since.) I didn’t drive my own car home, since by this time in my drinking career even I knew that wasn’t cool.

So I had to get a ride to get my car the next morning. I wanted to be sleeping instead. The thing that pissed me off the most about this was that I couldn’t stay in bed till noon. My ride was only available at 8 am.

On the way back to my bed, it suddenly hit me that instead of being mad about the early hour, maybe the whole thing could've been avoided somehow. (I always was a good problem solver.) So, yeah, next time I’ll just get a ride to the party, I decided.

After waking up later that afternoon, I sat on my couch smoking a cig and having coffee. Major headache. That last beer wasn’t so necessary in retrospect. Well, maybe those last four. Forgot my own rule about alternating drinks with water and Advil too.

My first inclination was to head to the store and get my own dainty little six-pack of Corona. To drink while pondering my future rules for drinking.

But I didn’t. I decided to quit drinking. At 4:00 in the afternoon on September 9, 2001.

I wish I could tell you about some great awakening I had. It’d be much more profound. Or some funny stories about how hard it was to quit. But it wasn’t hard, as it turned out. I never looked back.

I did go to 90 meetings in 90 days. In a small town in Iowa. So that’s something. That was more like a punishment I decided to inflict upon myself than anything else.

I found out I’m not an AA person. Sorry if you are. The people in the meetings I attended spent too much time (for me) talking about what fun they had while drunk and what great drunks they were.

I always sat there listening, thinking, “It’s over, people. You gotta let it go. You drank. Badly. It’s not a good thing. It’s not a badge of honor. It’s dumb. Really, any moron can do it. So how about we quit talking about it and live our lives?”

Some of my friends said they didn’t ever think I had a drinking problem. The funny thing about that is that pretty much right after they said that, I never saw most of them again.

I had some very close longtime friends who were uncomfortable being around me when I quit drinking and they didn’t. I understood this. I never liked to be around people who weren’t drinking when I wasn’t. I didn’t get those people at all then.

Note I said, “I understood this.” Because now I think about this and it pisses me off that I could have been friends for that long with people who obviously weren’t my friends. But that’s all part of the gift that keeps on giving when your life’s about booze.

After nine years, so much still surprises me about sobriety. Everything’s so much easier, even the bad stuff that happens to you. At least you can think straight about how to make pain go away. The common sense that eluded you for so long becomes second nature, and you go to the head of the class rather quickly it seems.

OK, that should do it for this installment. I’ll leave you with a funny story that I think of every time I hear someone rationalize their excessive drinking.

A drunk finds himself in detox after a bender. He discovers he’s on a gurney and his hands and feet are in restraints. He looks at the guy next to him, and sees that in addition to his hands and feet, his roomie's head is strapped down too.

“WHOA. That guy is way worse than me!” he thinks to himself, with great relief.

PS: Here’s a perfect essay by one of my favorite writers, Anne Lamott, on her 10th anniversary of being sober. She discusses how angry she was when she finally got it that there were no loopholes in sobriety: no more bullshit, in other words.

Life without bullshit doesn't suck.

Dongan's Doneag'ins, Amenia NY

Rural Intelligence is a website that does a fantastic job keeping us posted on what's happening in this area.

This week's issue featured a story about a new shop that opened in Amenia called Donegan's Doneag'ins. I was pretty much in the car headed there before I finished reading the article. It's the creation of Dennis Donegan, who's won five Emmys for his work over seventeen years as the set decorator on CBS' As the World Turns, a soap opera that's older than me. Sadly, the last episode airs on September 17.

The show's already wrapped, though, and Dennis and his wife Martha have moved to the Hudson Valley with the props they were able to buy from the show, and opened this shop to re-sell them at very reasonable prices.

The drive from Rhinebeck to Amenia was gorgeous. I can't wait to do it again when the leaves are changing.







Dennis' shop is on a corner, and fills the lower floor of the building. It's brimming with treasures, and he'll be rolling out more as time goes on.




I've always been fascinated by set decoration. (And yes, a CBS soap fan, but only two: Guiding Light, which went off the air, and As the World Turns, which sadly joins it.) A former teacher with summers off, you know -- after a while you get into some habits that you never give up. Or something.

Another shopper in the store said she started watching ATWT as a little girl, when her mom turned it on during naptime. It still has that calming effect in the afternoons.






It's great fun to ask Dennis about the objects, and he let me try to guess which character they belonged to after he found out I knew my stuff.


Dennis said, "If you really are a fan of the show, I've got something you'll enjoy." He dug around in an unpacked box, and out came an Emmy. I've never seen one before, I'm still waiting for someone I know to win one and give it to me.

It really is a beautiful trophy. Dennis said he knew where four of his were, one of which he gave to his dad. He couldn't quite remember where the fifth one was. I decided he might miss this one if I slipped out with it.










Photos of the items in use on the elaborate sets. So cool to see after watching it for so long.


















Dennis' memory about where every object came from is amazing. This vase came from Pier One back in the day when Pier One had things like this.
























This lamp had already been sold to a gentleman who came in to pick it up while I was there. He had no idea it had an acting background until I told him. Not sure he was a true fan though.


This is the quilt that hung by the big stone fireplace in Tom and Margo's cozy house.
It's at 4:44 here, for you die-hards. And you know who you are.

This is such a great place to find a gift for a soap fan, a decorator, or anyone who loves an object with a fun story behind it. Dennis has created a beautiful shop; website coming soon.

I'm going to watch those final episodes now with whole new eye. I'm glad some of Oakdale lives on with Dennis and Martha, and their customers.

Donegan's Doneag'ins 3324 Rte. 343, Amenia, NY 845-789-1331

PS. Here's something else about soaps. My dad was a salesman, on the road every day for years. When he was older, and in the hospital, I turned on his TV for him and All My Children was on. I was stunned to find out he knew all the characters and the plots. He told me he'd been watching it while he ate lunch in bars and cafes for all those years on the road. I couldn't believe it. So there ya go. You just never know.