Students share work at Troutbeck Symposium

Students presented to packed crowds at Troutbeck.
Natalia Zukerman
Students presented to packed crowds at Troutbeck.
The third annual Troutbeck Symposium began this year on Wednesday, May 1 with a historical marker dedication ceremony to commemorate the Amenia Conferences of 1916 and 1933, two pivotal gatherings leading up to the Civil Rights movement.
Those early meetings were hosted by the NAACP under W.E.B. Du Bois’s leadership and with the support of hosts Joel and Amy Spingarn, who bought the Troutbeck estate in the early 1900s.
Students from Arlington High School in LaGrange, New York, Kara Gordon, Nicolas Giorgi, Justin Meneses Aquimo, Akhil Olahannan, and Sheik Bowden together with their teacher Robert McHugh, made the historical marker possible by pursuing a grant from the Pomeroy Foundation.
“We believe strongly that markers help educate the public, encourage pride of place, and promote historical tourism,” said the foundation’s research historian and educational coordinator.
The ceremony began with a land acknowledgement by students Kennadi Mitchell and Teagan O’Connell from Salisbury Central School who gave thanks to the Muncie Lenape, Mohican and Schagticoke people by saying, “This guardianship has brought us to this very moment where we may learn from one another. We honor and respect the continuing relationship that exists between these peoples and this land.”
The crowd was then welcomed by Charlie Champalimaud who, with her husband, Anthony are the current owners of Troutbeck. Speeches were then given by Kendra Field and Kerri Greenridge, co-hosts of the event and founders of The Du Bois Forum, an annual retreat of writers, scholars, and artists engaged in historic Black intellectual and artistic traditions.
Field noted, “It is our genuine hope that the dedication of new historical sites, most especially this one, as part of our larger commitments, will make more complex, more diverse, and more complete the answer to the simple question ‘what happened here?’ and the closely related question, “what might happen next for generations to come?’”
MaryNell Morgan enchanted the audience with her a capella renditions of several of Du Bois’s “Sorrow Songs.”
Du Bois used these songs as part of the presentation of his 14 essays in his seminal work “The Souls of Black Folk,” first published in 1903.
A graduate of Atlanta University where Du Bois taught twice, Morgan sang a medley of songs explaining that the best way to understand “The Souls of Black Folk” is to understand the songs. In attendance at the evening event were also local officials, Amenia Town Supervisor Leo Blackman, and New York Assembly Members Didi Barrett and Anil Beephan. Closing remarks were given by Hasan Kwame Jeffries, Associate Professor at Ohio State University and one of the panelists for the Symposium.
Over the next two days, more than 200 middle and high school students from 16 regional public and independent schools converged to present and discuss their year-long research projects, uncovering the often-overlooked local histories of communities of color and other marginalized groups, answering the questions posed the night before, “what happened here and what might happen next for generations to come?”
Rhonan Mokriski, history teacher and educational director for the Troutbeck Symposium, emphasized the student-led nature of the forum by saying the directive was to “give it to the students and let them run with it.”
Through visual art, documentaries, personal and historical narrative, photographs, and multiple forms of storytelling, students skillfully presented their findings, revealing truths— often difficult ones—in the tradition of their predecessors who did so in the very same location.
Said Jeffries, “It’s one thing if the kids were doing research and then presenting in the, let’s say, school gymnasium, right? But to be able to do it here at Troutbeck, it adds the power of place and makes it all the more powerful.”
Natalia Zukerman
Student presentations ranged in topics from the Silent Protest of 1917 and its connection to the Amenia conference of 1916, the links between Lorraine Hansberry, Langston Hughes and Nina Simone, to local families, Amy Spingarn’s quiet activism, reimagining Du Bois’s ‘The Crisis’ through a modern contextualization that included the recent Supreme Court action on Affirmative Action.
Jeffries and Christina Proenza-Coles, a professor at Virginia State University spoke after each set of presentations, responding to and contextualizing the students’ work.
“These projects themselves are commemorations,” Poenza-Coles said. “They are themselves peaceful protests that are pointing us to a more just future.” Poenza-Coles emphasized the interconnectedness of past and present and stated, “Spaces that we would have thought about as white spaces, in fact, were also black and brown spaces from the beginning of history. Histories are completely intertwined.”
Blake Myers, programming, marketing, and culture manager at Troutbeck spoke passionately about the community effort it takes to put on the event year after year. She said that while making sure the program is sustainable, “It really is a replicable model,” and hopes to see other institutions, schools, and foundations adopt it as a teaching tool.
The rooms, walls, and wooded paths of Troutbeck reverberated for three days with stories, past and present, celebrations and revelations of untold narratives and marginalized voices.
Said Jeffries, “America is a product of decisions and choices that were made, and often those were bad decisions and bad choices from the perspective of somebody committed to human rights and to equality. But that’s our foundation, that’s how we started this whole thing.
“So, you have that on the one hand, but then despite the systems of oppression that are designed to do just that, you always have people willing to fight against it and people who are willing to carve out spaces to preserve, promote and protect their own humanity.”
Left to grapple with the complexities of historical memory and its implications for contemporary society, Jeffries offered, “The work that’s being done here, connected with Troutbeck, it’s not just about recovery and discovery, which is critical. But then the question is what do you do with it (the information)? How do we commemorate?
“What do we put in place physically so that we don’t forget. Often, we think about history and this question of ‘if you don’t remember the past, if you don’t remember the systems that are created, then we are doomed or bound to repeat it.’ But we’re not going to repeat anything because most of the stuff, we never stopped doing.”
There was some laughter from the audience and Jeffries concluded, speaking to the students, “But you’re waking up, remembering, focusing, and bearing witness so that we can finally disrupt it. We can finally stop doing the things from the past that have created and generated inequality in the present by focusing on this community that is very much doing the work.”
SHARON — Sharon Dennis Rosen, 83, died on Aug. 8, 2025, in New York City.
Born and raised in Sharon, Connecticut, she grew up on her parents’ farm and attended Sharon Center School and Housatonic Valley Regional High School. She went on to study at Skidmore College before moving to New York City, where she married Dr. Harvey Rosen and together they raised two children.
Sharon’s lifelong love of learning and the arts shaped both her work and her passions. For decades, she served as a tour guide at the American Museum of Natural History and the Asia Society, sharing her knowledge and enthusiasm with countless visitors. She also delighted in traveling widely, immersing herself in other cultures, and especially treasured time spent visiting her daughter and grandsons in Europe and Africa.
She was also deeply connected to her hometown, where in retirement she spent half her time and had many friends. She served as President of the Sharon East Side Cemetery until the time of her death, where generations of her family are buried and where she will also be laid to rest.
She is survived by her husband, Harvey; her children, Jennifer and Marc; and four beloved grandchildren.
Claire and Garland Jeffreys in the film “The King of In Between.”
There is a scene in “The King of In Between,” a documentary about musician Garland Jeffreys, that shows his name as the answer to a question on the TV show “Jeopardy!”
“This moment was the film in a nutshell,” said Claire Jeffreys, the film’s producer and director, and Garland’s wife of 40 years. “Nobody knows the answer,” she continued. “So, you’re cool enough to be a Jeopardy question, but you’re still obscure enough that not one of the contestants even had a glimmer of the answer.”
Garland Jeffreys never quite became a household name, but he carved out a singular place in American music by refusing to fit neatly into any category. A biracial New Yorker blending rock, reggae, soul and R&B, he used genre fusion as a kind of rebellion — against industry pigeonholes, racial boundaries and the musical status quo. Albums like “Ghost Writer” (1977) captured the tension of a post–civil rights America, while songs like “Wild in the Streets” made him an underground prophet of urban unrest. He moved alongside artists like Lou Reed and Bruce Springsteen but always in his own lane — part poet, part agitator, part bridge between cultures.
“I think what I tried to do with the film, wittingly or unwittingly, was just to show that we all have these lives and they don’t often meet our dreams of what we think we’re entitled to, we’re talented enough to get or whatever,” said Claire. “We all have these goals, but we’re sort of stymied. Often, it’s partly circumstance and luck, but it’s also very often something that we’re doing or not doing that’s impeding us.”
This is not the typical rock-and-roll redemption story. There are no smashed guitars, no heroic overdoses, no dramatic comeback tour. What we get instead is something quieter and more intimate: hours of archival footage that Claire spent years sorting through. The sheer effort behind the film is palpable — so much so that, as she admitted with a laugh, it cured her of any future ambitions in filmmaking.
“What I learned with this project was A, I’m never doing it again. It was just so hard. And B, you know, you can do anything if you collaborate with people that know what they’re doing.”
Claire worked with the editing team of Evan M. Johnson and Ben Sozanski and a slew of talented producers, and ended up with a truthful portrayal — a beautiful living document for Garland’s legions of fans and, perhaps most importantly, for the couple’s daughter, Savannah.
“She’s been in the audience with me maybe three or four times,” said Claire. “The last time, I could tell that she was beginning to feel very proud of the effort that went into it and also of being a part of it.”
Savannah pursued a career in music for a while herself but has changed tracks and become a video producer.
“I think she couldn’t quite see music happening for herself,” said Claire. “She was like, ‘I don’t know if I want to struggle the way I saw my dad struggling and I’m going to get a job with a salary.’”
The film doesn’t just track the arc of an underappreciated musician, however. The music, always playing, is the soundtrack of a life — of a man navigating racial, musical and personal boundaries while balancing marriage, parenthood, aging, addiction andrecovery. Garland and Claire speak plainly about getting sober in the film, a life choice that gave them both clarity and shows Claire as a co-conspirator in his survival.
“I did some work early on with a director,” said Claire. “He wanted the final cut, and I didn’t feel like I could do that — not because I wanted so much to control the story, but I didn’t want the story to be about Alzheimer’s.”
Diagnosed in 2017, Garland, now 81, is in the late stages of the disease. Claire serves as his primary caregiver. The film quietly acknowledges his diagnosis, but it doesn’t dwell — a restraint that feels intentional. Garland spent a career refusing to be reduced: not to one sound, one race or one scene. And so the documentary grants him that same dignity in aging. His memory may be slipping, but the film resists easy sentimentality. Instead, it shows what remains — his humor, his voice, his marriage, the echo of a life lived on the edges of fame and at the center of his own convictions.
The Moviehouse in Millerton will be screening “The King of In Between” on Sept. 20 at 7 p.m. Peter Aaron, arts editor of Chronogram Magazine will conduct a talkback and Q&A with Claire Jeffreys after the film. Purchase tickets at themoviehouse.net.
The Haystack Book Festival, a program of the Norfolk Hub, brings renowned writers and thinkers to Norfolk for conversation. Celebrating its fifth season this fall, the festival will gather 18 writers for discussions at the Norfolk Library on Sept. 20 and Oct. 3 through 5.
Jerome A. Cohen, author of the memoir “Eastward, Westward: A Lifein Law.”Haystack Book Festival
For example, “Never Take the Rule of Law for Granted: China and the Dissident,” will be held Saturday, Sept. 20, at 4 p.m. at the Norfolk Library. It brings together Jerome A. Cohen, author of “Eastward, Westward: A Life in Law,” and Mark Clifford, author of “The Troublemaker: How Jimmy Lai Became a Billionaire, Hong King’s Greatest Dissident, and China’s Most Feared Critic” in dialogue with journalist Richard Hornik to discuss the rule of law and China.
The Council on Foreign Relations stated, “Few Americans have done more than Jerome A. Cohen to advance the rule of law in East Asia. He established the study of Chinese law in the United States. An advocate for human rights, Cohen has been a scholar, teacher, lawyer, and activist for sixty years.”
Cohen, a professor at New York University School of Law and director of its U.S.-Asia Law Institute, revealed his long view on China: “We are now witnessing another extreme in the pendulum’s swing toward repression. Xi Jinping is likely to outlive me but ‘no life lives forever.’ There will eventually be another profound reaction to the current totalitarian era.”
Mark Clifford, author of “The Troublemaker: How Jimmy Lai Became a Billionaire, Hong Kong’s Greatest Dissident, and China’s Most Feared Critic.”Haystack Book Festival
In “The Troublemaker,” Clifford chronicles Lai’s life from child refugee to pro-democracy billionaire to his current imprisonment by the Chinese Communist Party. Clifford is president of the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation, a Walter Bagehot Fellow at Columbia University, and holds a PhD in history from the University of Hong Kong. He was the former editor-in-chief of the South China Morning Post and The Standard (Hong Kong and Seoul).
Journalist Richard Hornik, adjunct senior fellow at the East-West Center in Honolulu.Haystack Book Festival
Richard Hornik, adjunct senior fellow at the East-West Center, will moderate the discussion. Hornik is the former executive editor of AsiaWeek, news service director of Time magazine, and former Time bureau chief in Warsaw, Boston, Beijing and Hong Kong.
Betsy Lerner, author of “Shred Sisters,” is giving the 2025 Brendan Gill lecture at the Haystack Book Festival.Haystack Book Festival
The Brendan Gill Lecture is a highlight of the festival honoring longtime Norfolk resident Brendan Gill, who died in1997. Gill wrote for The New Yorker magazine for fifty years. Betsy Lerner, New York Times-recognized author of “Shred Sisters,” will deliver this year’s lecture on Friday, Oct. 3, at 6 p.m. at the Norfolk Library.
Visit haystackbookfestival.org to register. Admission is free.