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It’s 40 minutes from my front door in Lakeville, Conn., to Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y., also known as the town of Red Hook (not to be confused with the one in Brooklyn).
It’s a bit of a drive, but the ride is exquisite, especially at sunset. The famous Mercato restaurant in Red Hook has closed down, but its chef/owners Michele and Francesco Buitoni (descendants of award-winning Italian pasta makers) have now opened GioBatta in nearby Tivoli, N.Y.
That might not be enough to tempt you deep into the heart of the scenic Hudson Valley — but then there is Bard SummerScape.
Anyone who thinks of New England and the Hudson River Valley as being home to more traditional music hasn’t checked out the college’s eclectic and experimental summer offerings in theater and music.
“Eclectic and experimental” might be off putting, but when you combine them with the third E — entertaining! — then you have something worth a 40-minute drive.
There are several stages and venues at Bard including of course the Sosnoff Theater in the undulating, metal-clad Frank Gehry-designed building, which is worth a trip to Annandale-on-Hudson in its own right.
There is also a new stage at Montgomery Place, the historic Hudson Valley estate just down the road from the main campus that was purchased by Bard a few years ago.
Montgomery Place this summer will host some of the younger, kickier events, including three performances from July 15 to 17 by transgender artist Mx. Justin Vivian Bond in “Your Auntie Glam’s Midsummer Flutter.”
For those who are not connoisseurs of the world of drag: The New Yorker magazine calls Bond “the greatest cabaret artist of this generation.”
Other dance and theater programs on the schedule for the summer fall somewhere between Mx. Bond and the more traditional, classical end of the spectrum.
A highlight, for me at least, of this year’s SummerScape will be the first fully staged North American production, at the Sosnoff Theater, of one of only three operas composed by Ernest Chasson, called “Le Roi Arthus.”
This French-language opera tells the story of King Arthur and his betrayal by his best friend and his wife (and eventually his son, but that’s not in the opera).
At the helm for this production (performed between July 25 and Aug. 1) is Bard’s president as well as the SummerScape festival founder and artistic director, Leon Botstein. Botstein is eccentric, creative and talented and loves to put on worthwhile shows that are only rarely produced.
Sometimes, of course, there’s a reason why no one has ever produced a show before. “Le Roi Arthus” is a very long opera (the Gramophone recording is 2 hours and 47 minutes long). But Botstein is on record as being a huge fan of the opera, which has passages that are described as rich and gorgeous. The whole show might not be outstanding but (and this might be the theme of all SummerScape shows), what is life without a little experimentation.
For those who fear that nearly three hours of an opera they’ve never heard before might be too much, the production will also be streamed, allowing the viewer to wander in and out.
Also at Bard between Aug. 6 and 15 will be the Summer Music Festival, built around the career of Nadia Boulanger and the musicians who influenced and taught her.
The list is long and, according to the preview statement of the festival, includes “music by her teachers and mentors, including Gabriel Fauré, Louis Vierne and Charles Marie Widor; her Parisian contemporaries, like Claude Debussy, Olivier Messiaen, Francis Poulenc, Maurice Ravel, Erik Satie and expats George Gershwin, Cole Porter and Igor Stravinsky; her male students, including Jean Françaix, Astor Piazzolla, and illustrious Americans Marc Blitzstein, Elliott Carter, Aaron Copland, Philip Glass, Walter Piston and Virgil Thomson; her female students, like Marcelle de Manziarly, Thea Musgrave, Julia Perry and Louise Talma; other women composers, Germaine Taillefaire and Lili Boulanger, Nadia’s celebrated sister, among them; and some of the bygone composers whose music she vociferously championed, like Monteverdi, Bach and Brahms.”
For full information on Bard SummerScape and the Summer Music Festival, go to www.fishercenter.bard.edu.
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Telecom Reg’s Best Kept On the Books
When Connecticut land-use commissions update their regulations, it seems like a no-brainer to jettison old telecommunications regulations adopted decades ago during a short-lived period when municipalities had authority to regulate second generation (2G) transmissions prior to the Connecticut Siting Council (CSC) being ordered by a state court in 2000 to regulate all cell tower infrastructure as “functionally equivalent” services.
It is far better to update those regs instead, especially for macro-towers given new technologies like small cells. Even though only ‘advisory’ to the CSC, the preferences of towns by law must be taken into consideration in CSC decision making. Detailed telecom regs – not just a general wish list -- are evidence that a town has put considerable thought into where they prefer such infrastructure be sited without prohibiting service that many – though not all – citizens want and that first responders rely on for public safety.
Such regs come in handy when egregious tower sites are proposed in sensitive areas, typically on private land. The regs are a town’s first line of defense, especially when cross referenced to plans of conservation and development, P&Z regulations, and wetlands setbacks. They identify how/where the town plans to intersect with the CSC process. They are also a roadmap for service providers regarding preferred sites and sometimes less neighborhood contention. In fact, to have no telecom regs can weaken a town’s rights to protect environmental, scenic, and historic assets, and serve up whole neighborhoods to unnecessary overlapping coverage and corporate overreach. Such regs are unique to every town and should not follow anyone else’s boiler plate, especially industry’s.
Connecticut is the only state that has a centralized siting entity for cell towers. The good news is that applicants must prove need for new tower sites in an evidentiary proceeding and any decisions have the weight of the state behind them. The bad news is that the CSC used to be far less industry-friendly and rote in their reviews, which now resemble a check list. There is an operative assumption at CSC that if an applicant wants a tower, they must need it, otherwise why spend significant money to run the approval gauntlet? This reflects a subtle shift over the years at CSC from sincere willingness to protect the environment toward minimal tweaking of bad applications with minor changes. The bottom line is that towns really cannot rely on the CSC to do all the work for them.
What CSC issues telecom providers is a “certificate of environmental compatibility” after an evidentiary proceeding (not unlike a court case) with intervenors, parties, expert witnesses, and the service provider’s technical pro’s sworn in and subject to cross examination. Service providers get to do the same with any opposition from intervenor/party participants – like towns and citizens -- and their experts. It’s an impressive process whose ultimate goal is the fine balancing between allowing adequate/reliable public services and protecting state ecology with minimal damage to scenic, historic, and recreational values. They unfortunately often fall short of their mandate – like approving cell towers with diesel generators over town aquifers -- evidenced by CSC only rejecting about five cell towers in the past 15-20 years.
The CSC was founded in 1972 and clarified its mission in the 1980’s to prevent the state from being carved up willy-nilly by gas pipelines, high tension corridors, and broadcast towers. With the sudden proliferation of cell towers beginning in late 1990’s, it became the most sued agency in Connecticut by both an arrogant upstart industry if applications were denied and by towns/citizens when bad sites were forced on them. CSC gradually formed a defensive posture that drives their decisions toward industry with deeper pockets and attorneys on retainer.
For citizens, nothing can wreck one’s day like the CSC. It behooves towns to protect what little toolkit they have, and understand the legal parameters of the CSC’s playing field. The CSC is not a “normal” government agency where municipal/citizen redress is based on logic and local support. Their process is largely immune to everything but specific kinds of evidence – like town regs with setbacks/fall zones, radio frequency transmission signal strengths, sensitive areas identified, and detailed wildlife inventory, among others.
There is a current cell tower fight involving two intervening towns -- Washington and Warren; both with good cell tower regs – over a tower site within 1200’ of a Montessori School, near Steep Rock’s nature preserves with comprehensive geology/wildlife databases that include endangered, threatened and special concern flora and fauna, on established federal/state migratory bird flyways, within throwing distance to a historic site capable of being listed on the Underground Railroad, and with an access road on a blind curve entering a state highway that will permanently damage wetlands, vernal pools, and core forests. There are well credentialed environmental experts, including Dr. Michael Klemens, former chair of Salisbury’s P&Z, as well as the former director of migratory bird management at the US Fish and Wildlife Service, and an RF engineer testifying to alternative approaches, plus three attorneys representing intervenors. It is the most professional challenge I have seen at CSC since Falls Village successfully mounted one that protected Robbins Swamps several years ago.
The hearing is ongoing, with uncertain results. To see what it takes today to stop an inappropriate tower siting, see Docket #543 under “Pending Matters” at https://portal.ct.gov/csc before removing local cell tower regs – the lowest hanging fruit that any town can possess in case it’s needed.
B, Blake Levitt is the Communications Director at The Berkshire-Litchfield Environmental Council. She writes about how technology affects biology.