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Summer Nights of Canaan
Jul 16, 2025
Wednesday, July 16
Cobbler n’ Cream
5 to 7 p.m.
Freund’s Farm Market & Bakery | 324 Norfolk Rd.
Canaan Carnival
6 to 10 p.m.
Bunny McGuire Park
Thursday, July 17
Canaan Carnival
6 to 10 p.m.
Bunny McGuire Park
Friday, July 18
Cocktail Party
5 to 7 p.m.
Douglas Library | 108 Main St.
Canaan Carnival
6 to 10 p.m.
Bunny McGuire Park
Saturday, July 19
Boot Drive
8 a.m. to 2 p.m.
North Canaan Fire Co. | 4 E. Main St.
3rd Annual Fly-In
8 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Triumph Airfield | 547 W. Main St.
Canaan Railroad Station Museum
10 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Canaan Union Station
New England Accordion Connection
9 a.m. to 8 p.m.
Canaan Union Station
Canaan Carnival
3 to 10 p.m.
Bunny McGuire Park
Berkshire Resilience Brass Band
5 to 8 p.m.
Canaan Union Station
Barbecued Chicken Dinner
5 to 7 p.m.
St. Martin of Tours | 4 Main St.
Canaan Fireman’s parade
6 p.m.
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Foxtrot Farm & Flowers’ historic barn space during UAW’s 2024 exhibition entitled “Unruly Edges.”
Brian Gersten
Art lovers, mark your calendars. The sixth edition of Upstate Art Weekend (UAW) returns July 17 to 21, with an exciting lineup of exhibitions and events celebrating the cultural vibrancy of the region. Spanning eight counties and over 130 venues, UAW invites residents and visitors alike to explore the Hudson Valley’s thriving creative communities.
Here’s a preview of four must-see exhibitions in the area:
1. Wassaic Project (37 Furnace Bank Road, Wassaic)
“So It Goes” is a powerful group exhibition curated by Eve Biddle, Bowie Zunino, Jeff Barnett-Winsby, and Will Hutnick. The title, drawn from Kurt Vonnegut’s “Slaughterhouse-Five,” signals a reckoning with how we process the horrors of the world. Through play, reflection, and immersive scale, 43 artists respond with urgency and imagination. Installations can be seen throughout the town of Wassaic at Maxon Mills, Gridley Chapel, and Luther Barn, each space transformed by this deeply thoughtful show.
2. Foxtrot Farm & Flowers (6862 Route 82, Stanfordville)
“Queer Bestiary,” a group show curated by Charlotte Woolf, is inspired by Patricia Ononiwu Kaishian’s book “Forest Euphoria.” The exhibition investigates queer ecology and human relationship to land through the work of 10 artists using painting, sculpture, textiles, and photography. The exhibit is accompanied by a variety of interactive experiences including tattoo pop-ups, karaoke, book readings, and pick-your-own flowers.
3. ChaShaMa North/ChaNorth (2600 Route 199, Pine Plains)
ChaShaMa North (ChaNorth) will have open studios all weekend and has partnered with Paradice Palase, a platform for emerging artists, to mount a site-specific sculpture exhibition featuring 20 artists entitled “Alone, You Are Heard.” On Saturday evening, July 19, stop by for Weird Music Night for an audio-visual synthesis of experimental music, performance art, and unexpected happenings. Don’t miss this opportunity to experience an eclectic lineup of acts that redefine the boundaries of performance.
4. Millbrook Arts Project(3 Friendly Lane, Millbrook)
The Millbrook Arts Project is hosting a curated exhibit entitled “Generated Utility” at the newly renovated gallery at the village library. The exhibit will feature the work of artists Natalie Beall and Kathy Greenwood. Additionally, visitors will have access to 12 open artists studios across town. The weekend culminates in a free outdoor concert on Saturday evening at 6 p.m. at the Millbrook Bandshell. Enjoy the Indie-Folk sounds of Strawberry Runners and She Keeps Bees.
For more information and a complete list of participating artists and locations, visit: upstateartweekend.org
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The late Glenn May on one of his favorite rivers, the San Juan in New Mexico, circa 2010.
Photo from Facebook
My nomadic attorney Thos is planning a fishing and camping trip of major proportions later this summer, starting in New Mexico and working his way north through the Rockies into Canada.
So I wanted to reconnect with a fellow named Glenn May, who was my main fishing buddy for several years in the 1990s when we both lived in Albuquerque and worked at the same bookstore. Last I heard he was living in Colorado, which is on the itinerary, more or less.
An email bounced back so I tried Facebook, only to learn he died in his sleep in February.
He was a little younger than me, about 60 I guess.
This was disconcerting.
I was already working at the bookstore when he came on board, and we recognized our mutual interest when I found him trying to carve out a shelf or two for fly-fishing titles amid the general chaos of the sports section.
I had a Ford Escort, which was good on gas but didn’t hold much gear, especially when you factored in critical supplies such as beer.
He had a gigantic and battered Ford F350 which was terrible on gas but would go anywhere and could hold everything. It also had a long-expired Delaware license plate, which made for some tense moments.
We managed to wangle the same two days off, Sunday and Monday, and we’d often bug out after our Saturday second shift and fetch up somewhere around 1 a.m., pitch a tent and be on the water at dawn.
The bookstore did not pay much, and out West the distances (and gas consumption) are exponentially greater than in the relatively compact East.
If it was near the first of the month, we took the Escort. Mid-month when we were feeling bucks up, we’d go with the truck.
Glenn was a dry fly guy to his core. I had been trained in similar fashion but was dabbling in the dark arts of subsurface fishing, so when one of us was catching the other was often fishing.
He was also a Dallas Cowboys fan. They were suffering through a particularly bad season one year in the mid-90s, and as we drove from river to river we listened to the games on the radio. He lamented, and I privately gloated.
I wandered back east but Glenn stayed put, eventually becoming a fairly big name in the New Mexico newspaper world. He wrote about fly-fishing for the Albuquerque Tribune and about everything for the Santa Fe New Mexican, and that’s not a complete list.
Then he was off to Cameroon with the Peace Corps. And then Turkey, not in the Peace Corps. He did a stint teaching English in South Korea.
I occasionally got cryptic emails describing the fishing in places like Bulgaria, and he kept up a Facebook presence, so I had some idea of what he was doing.
More recently he was back in the Four Corners, working for the Ute tribal nation in some capacity. I think there was a wife in there too.
I’m struck — again — by how, over the years,I have spent a lot of time with fishing friends and I know next to nothing about them except they dislike fishing with dropper rigs and have a weakness for hazelnut coffee.
The other thing that stands out about Glenn was that he was the best trout spotter I have ever fished with. No scouting flies for this guy. He was almost always aiming at specific fish, where I was working specific spots. To use a sports analogy, he played man-to-man while I played zone.
I spoke to him on the phone in 2004. We reminisced about the time we were edging around a canyon pool and when he looked back all he saw was my ballcap floating on the surface. (I was underneath temporarily.)
Or the time the drunk idiots chucked rocks into the pools we were working. They were poor shots so the rocks came very close to hitting us. They also called our fly rods “fairy sticks.”
We snuck up on them later when they were cavorting in a hot spring and let the air out one of their tires. Only one. We wanted the punishment to fit the crime.
They recovered enough that we encountered them later at a rustic saloon that sold flies and had a collection of brassieres attached to the ceiling. Luckily they didn’t put two and two together, probably because they were engrossed by the decor. We prudently oiled out and made our escape.
I’ll wrap this with a story about the famous New Mexico tailwater, the San Juan River.
The first time we tried it together he was doing well with miniscule dry flies, size 24 callibaetis, and long leaders tapered to 7X.
I think this was when my antipathy for what I call “specks” started. No matter what, I could not lay out my speck the way he could.
So while he was horsing big fat rainbows into the net, I was fumbling with tackle and cussing.
Finally, I tied on a big gaudy Royal Coachman fly with a pink post and about twice the normal amount of hackle. I think I bought it at the brassiere bar.
Shortening my leader to something around seven feet and 3X, I heaved it near the streamside vegetation while Glenn watched. He may have smirked a bit.
A nice rainbow, probably rejoicing at the prospect of a square meal instead of nibbling on specks, smacked the ridiculous fly and we were off.
It was big enough, and I had consumed enough beer, that Glenn kindly assisted in netting the beast. He looked at it, the fly and at me, shook his head, and said “Now that is some raggedy fly-fishing.”
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