The Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in collaboration with the Catskill Science Collaborative, presented “Snakes in the Catskills: A Primer,” the latest in its lecture series, on June 5. Presenter John Vanek, is a zoologist at the New York Natural Heritage Program in Syracuse.
There are thirteen kinds of snakes in the Catskills. Only two are venomous. Vanek defined the Catskills area as including the counties of Greene, Delaware, Ulster, Sullivan, and Dutchess.
John Vanek said, “Snakes are just amazing creatures. They are very misunderstood.” He added, “The more we understand about them, the more we can explain to our friends, you don’t have to kill them every time you see them.” He said humans have an “ingrained fear of snakes,” which he tries to help with education about snakes, starting with children.
He went on to say about snakes, “They can think. They have personalities that you can measure. They form kinships with other snakes and some snakes are good mothers.”
Of the thirteen kinds of snakes, the most common are Garter snakes. He said the females are bigger than the males as with many snakes who give birth to live young. They eat worms, small amphibians, and mammals.
Garter snakes have two yellow stripes and come in a variety of colors.
They can grow to two to three feet long and live in meadows, wetlands, and woods.
The Northern Water Snake can grow to three to four feet and live in streams and rivers. They eat fish and frogs. They are more common in the Hudson River Valley. Vanek said water snakes “have a temper,” and will nip you touch them. They are not venomous.
The Black Rat Snake grows to five to six feet long and lives on a diet of small mammals and birds. They love to climb trees and live on cliffs and ledges at the eastern edge of the Catskills. Met on a trail, they stand their ground and may rear up and hiss.
The Eastern Milk Snake hunts mice, small mammals, and other snakes.
They were mistakenly believed to drink milk from cows. They are in meadows and farms and are nocturnal.
The Northern Ring-Necked Snake has a ring on its neck and a bright yellow belly. It grows to about ten to twelve inches. They eat salamanders and baby snakes. They live in moist, rocky areas.
The Northern Brown Snake can grow to twelve inches. “They are known as “the gardener’s friend” said Vanek because they eat slugs, snails, and worms. There has been a decline in their numbers for unknown reasons.
The Black Racer is a shiny black snake that eats other snakes. Its numbers are declining in the Catskills. It grows to three to five feet.
John Vanek, is a zoologist at the New York Natural Heritage Program.John Vanek
Another garden helper is the Northern Red Bellied Snake. It is a small snake ten to twelve inches long. It eats slugs and snails. Its habitat is woods and meadows. To escape predators, it “flips over to show its red belly,” hopefully scaring them, and zips away.
The Eastern Ribbon Snake lives on the edges of wetlands. It can grow to be two to three feet and about as “thick as string cheese.” It eats salamanders and frogs.
The Smooth Green snake lives in meadows and bogs. It eats caterpillars, spiders, and other insects. It is about ten to twelve inches in length. Its numbers have declined due to insecticides and habitat loss.
The Eastern Hog Nosed Snake burrows in the ground and favors toads for its meals. There are a wide variety of colors. It can grow to three to fourfeet. It can puff up its neck in a “bluff display” which makes it look like a cobra which causes people to kill it out of fear. There are no cobras in the United States.
The Copperhead is one of two venomous snakes in the Catskills and can grow to two to three feet long and can be as thick as a golf ball. They are uncommon but can be localized. They camouflage well in leaves or on trees and are hard to spot. They eat frogs, small mammals, and cicadas. They like rocky outcrops and forests.
The Timber Rattlesnake can grow to four to five feet and is as thick as a baseball. They like rocky outcrops and forests. They eat mice, shrews, chipmunks, and other small mammals.
Rattlesnakes will sit along a scent trail, often a log, with their head up, waiting up to three weeks for a small mammal. Once they inject venom, they wait for the animals to die, follow its scent trail, and eat it, “with no fuss,” said Vanek.
“Fangs are like hypodermic needles and super fragile,” said Vanek. If fangs are broken, they won’t be able to hunt. “Rattlesnakes don’t want to bite us. Biting is a last resort.”
Vanek then mentioned safety measures if you are out walking in the woods.
“Leave snakes alone.” He emphasized. “Don’t pick up a snake.”
Do not step over logs because a rattlesnake could be waiting on the other side, head up, for its prey. Instead step up on a log or rock and look over before putting your foot down.
Stay on trails because there is less risk of meeting a snake. Wear long pants and boots and carry a cell phone with emergency numbers.
If bitten by a snake, the only first aid he recommends is “to get to a hospital.” Take a picture of the snake if you can. “The treatment for any snake in New York is the same.”
Timber rattlesnakes have been declining in numbers due to habitat loss and fragmentation caused by building roads.
If you see a snake, you can be a citizen scientist and photograph the snake. Upload a picture to www.iNaturalist.org or nynhp.org/contribute-data.
The Edgewood Restaurant, a beloved Amenia roadside restaurant run by George and Anne Phillips, pictured during its peak years in the 1950s and ’60s.
It began as a former gas station and tavern called The Narrows, on the road to Sharon, around a switchback east of Troutbeck. It became a roadhouse restaurant for weddings, bar mitzvahs, proms, graduations, birthdays and holidays with relatives. At Easter, New Year’s and Christmas, George and Anne served the food free — customers only paid for drinks as a thank-you for another good year.
It was a different time. Amenia was an isolated dairy farming community, and two large state psychiatric hospitals employed 4,000 potential diners. People needed a friendly neighborhood restaurant run by a local couple who knew everybody. They offered special-occasion favorites: fried chicken, meatloaf, sliced turkey with gravy, pork chops from nearby farms, and fresh white bread baked at 4 a.m. by George.
There was no maître d’. Waitresses, many still teenagers, greeted guests and helped them find a table. Cloth napkins and sturdy white plates sat in a knotty pine dining room that felt more like a family home than a formal restaurant. Large tables down the center accommodated families. George and Anne fed the staff before opening, and everyone ate the same meals served to customers. Everything was homemade classics of the 1950s and ’60s: cold shrimp and cocktail sauce, stuffed mushrooms, veal parmesan, King crab, clams and oysters on the half shell, chopped hamburger steak, French onion soup, fried chicken and pumpkin pie.
George was a tough but fair boss with a quirky sense of humor. Former employee Kevin Rooney, who worked there as a teenager, recalled being served a hot fudge sundae on a sweltering day — only to discover the “ice cream” was Crisco. Revenge came later in the form of a Coke spiked with Tabasco sauce.
George also kept a series of German shepherds — Rinny, Schultz and Dooley — named after a Jonathan Winters routine featuring talking beer steins. The dogs were locked inside at night for security. Tony Robert, another former employee, remembered coming in one day to find Schultz with the seat of someone’s pants in her jaws. When kids tried to sneak into a dance through the bathroom window after the fire marshal had closed the overcrowded place, George put Rinny in the restroom. Problem solved.
Anne also ran a no-nonsense operation. She marked liquor bottles at night so no one would sneak a drink, though the cleanup crew found ways around it, sipping the blackberry liquer instead. Along with cooking and baking everything from scratch, she raised their children in a life closely tied to the restaurant. The bus dropped their daughters off there after school, and one recalled doing homework while the family spent more time in the restaurant than in their nearby home.
George Phillips bakes fresh bread in the early morning hours at the Edgewood Restaurant.Provided
After 23 years of long hours — often more than 100 a week — George began stepping back, at times closing the restaurant to recover. He later moved into real estate and Anne opened a successful craft store.
George sold the place in 1972. At one point, it became a lively beer joint and concert venue, featuring local bands, such as Random Concept, Little Village and Good Friend Coyote. When New York lowered its drinking age to 18 — while it remained 21 just across the state line — it drew crowds from Connecticut. Locals called them “Connecticut Rags,” kids with fancy cars who came to dance, drink and sometimes fight, rocking the floors so hard they bounced like a trampoline and shook dust from the rafters.
At closing time, they had to dodge police waiting across the state line. Sometimes Jack Rooney, Kevin’s father and the bartender, drove them home. One morning, Betty Rooney got a call from a worried mother asking if her son was there. “If he’s wearing red tennis shoes,” she said, “he’s asleep on my front lawn.”
The Edgewood also drew actors from the Sharon Playhouse and notable visitors, including Paul Newman, Cole Porter and even Supreme Court justices. George showed silent movies on a sheet in the dining room, and guests could dance to the Les Schulman Orchestra or to George and his brothers, who had their own band.
It served as a gathering place for groups such as the Eastern Artificial Insemination Cooperative and for events like the Knights of Columbus Communion breakfast. Families marked milestones there — including one that celebrated five birthdays at a Palm Sunday brunch in 1970.
Christmas dinner cost $3 and included stuffed olives, roast pig, prime rib, Virginia ham, deep-sea scallops, Long Island duck, creamed onions and, of course, crème de menthe parfait. On New Year’s Eve 1959, dinner was $15 a couple — $7.50 each for all the champagne you could drink.
The venue came to an end when the building burned to the ground in 1985.
The building is gone, but not the memories — the laughter, the music, the meals, and George carving steaks by hand. He lived a century, but the Edgewood, for those who knew it, was timeless.
Next time you’re driving to Sharon and pass the empty, weedy lot with a rusty electric meter, imagine calling George’s old number to make a reservation for a place that lives on in memory.
Minimalist works by Agnes Martin on display at Dia:Beacon.
Martin, the Canadian-born New York and New Mexico resident who died in 2004, made the kind of ambiguous abstract art that inspires countless imitators and interpreters.
At first glance, most of the pieces in the new show, “Painting Is Not the Act of Painting,” (on display until June 22) are variations on simple lines and grids painstakingly applied by the artist’s own hand using paint and pencil.
Despite their relative simplicity, it took Martin years of rejecting her own artwork to reach this level of pure abstraction. She would often take knives to paintings she didn’t like, literally slashing work that didn’t live up to her expectations. It wasn’t until she was in her 50s that she began making the work she would become known for.
That evolution is reflected in the exhibition’s 24 works.
Dia:Beacon seems like a perfect place for them. The museum is a monument to simplicity. Even the most complicated pieces are abstractions in their own ways. A straight, unpainted plywood wall with diagonal backing by Donald Judd suggests a room under construction. Michael Heizer’s singular ovoid boulder embedded into a gallery wall strikes unease into visitors.
Subtle grids and softly layered lines by Agnes Martin draw the eye at Dia:BeaconD.H. Callahan
Martin’s pieces feel at home here. In the context of such visual, if not conceptual, simplicity, her art seems louder than it might in almost any other setting. Faint blue and peach stripes gain vibrancy when compared with the all-white canvases of Robert Ryman or the large gray mirrors of Gerhard Richter, both a few rooms away. By comparison, the visibly human-drawn lines of pencil or etched-out paint seem almost complicated, and technically masterful.
It’s enough to make you ponder the name of the exhibition, “Painting Is Not the Act of Painting,” pulled from a quote by Martin: “Painting is not making paintings; it is a development of awareness. And with this awareness, your work changes, but very slowly.”
In a world where studio assistants and fabricators contribute to the output of many artists, Martin relished the act of painting. She painted nearly every day of her adult life. For her, the process was an integral part of the work, and it’s hard to look at these pieces without appreciating her hand.
This repetitive study is also demonstrated across the hall in a gallery dedicated to a single work by Andy Warhol. The piece, “Shadows,” is a study of variations on a single subject. Warhol took photos of shadows in his office and, using a silkscreen process, painted them 102 times on identically sized canvases.
Walking into the room, it may seem like the same image repeated. On closer inspection, the canvases vary widely in color and composition. The work suggests that repetition can produce unexpected forms.
Agnes Martin has become enshrined as one of the leaders of the minimalist movement of the 1960s and ’70s. Her work and artistic philosophies have inspired countless admirers. This exhibition displays a selection of important pieces from nearly 50 years of practice.
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