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American Beauty

Forbes has named the Hudson one of the World’s Most Beautiful Rivers, along with the Caño Cristales, the Danube, the Kenai, the Mekong and more... The magazine didn’t, however, manage to find a particularly stunning photo of our river; see their shot here. The more dramatic snapshot above is by Hudson’s own Alphonse Telymonde.

Quotable Hersey

[T]yranny has finally achieved its foul purpose when among the many, scattered at large, there are acquiescence, apathy, complacency, bland acceptance of outrage, pride in vulgar triumphs, blurring of the meaning of words, confusion in moral standards—in short, a blight of communal character. It is when people who are thought of as good solid citizens, whose who make up the backbone of the populace, become touched by this blight and do not realize it, become not only infected but the infectors—this is when tyranny has won the day. The ‘good’ citizens then say: What a beautiful day! What a fine year this has been! Are you going to the amphitheater this afternoon?.

— John Hersey, The Conspiracy (1972)

Happy talk

Aiming to fill the void left behind by the closing of Angela Guzzi’s Happy Clown, Hudson Park has opened an ice cream shack on Route 9 (in what used to be the barbecue pavilion of Rural Gourmet)... Hudson Park also has a nice selection of vegetarian and non-veggie lunch options, including a falafel wrap.

Politics as Theater (Take 4)

At The Gossips of Rivertown, Carole Osterink has broken the widespread Hudson rumor that Linda Mussmann of Time & Space Limited plans to stage (pun intended) a write-in primary vote among Democrats against Nick Haddad.*

Osterink speculates that Mussmann might also run on a third-party line, though the website for her moribund Bottom Line Party seems to have disappeared. According to the State Board of Elections, as of July the BLP had a balance of $136.94 in its account, and no donors at all in 2010-2011. (Out of the grand total of four donors in 2009, the only Hudson resident contributing to the Bottom Line was Mussmann herself; in 2008 there were a whopping three donors, the only Hudson contributor being Paula Forman.)

Mussmann has run three times previously for Mayor, each of those runs unsuccessful, and also lost a single bid for the School Board. Above is a graph of the votes that Mussmann has garnered Citywide in her previous mayoral runs in the general election. Only members of the Democratic Party can vote in the primary, meaning the tallies on September 13th likely will be considerably smaller.

In a blog interview in January of this year, Mussmann said (either coyly or disingenuously, depending on your take) that:

Running for Mayor is not something I am thinking about now but is always an option that is open to me.

In a separate interview two years ago, her partner Claudia Bruce (who serves as the Treasurer of the BLP) said of their political work:

Linda has run for mayor three times. We say the whole thing, is all theater. It is all theater. ... So many of the things that we’re doing in the community are a part of our theater experience.

And indeed, it is difficult to view this fourth quixotic attempt—if indeed the rumor is true—as much besides a theatrical show, one which accomplishes little except to keep TSL’s co-director in the spotlight. (And maybe the other co-director will get a chance to revive some songs from the 2001 campaign.)

Mussman’s third run not only was her worst showing. It also cost Mussmann a great deal of personal support, and moved a large portion of her board to quit en masse after she broke a promise to them not to continue her campaign after she lost the Democratic primary. In another interview, Mussmann admitted that third run was not easy, indulging in a certain sense of victimhood for her own decision:

My last campaign as mayor was highly controversial, because people felt I should not have run. I was the third party spoiler. And people directed a lot of hostility toward TSL because of me personally. Which is a hard thing to put up with. Or to withstand. And, financially and emotionally, is very hurtful.

While there are approximately 1,850 registered Dems in Hudson, past primaries have drawn only a small fraction of those registrants—with turnouts ranging from 250 to 750 voters—meaning that someone could win the top line of the ballot with just 130 or so votes. This being a write-in primary, which requires voters to spend more time and volunteer the name of a candidate, the actual valid votes cast could be quite small.

Forms for registering to vote, absentee ballots, military ballots, et al. can be downloaded via the Columbia County Board of Elections website.

Clearly, there's a time and place for politics in theater. (The play Danton’s Death about French revolutionaries is so beloved by Mussmann, she had her own chapbook version printed up.) Based on the Mussmann track record in prior elections, at least, it's less clear that there is much place for theater—or at least performance art—in Hudson politics. If it’s just a bit of avant garde the-a-ter that Mussmann is craving, the mere feint of a vanity campaign ought to be enough to satisfy that need for drama. Hudson is a real place, inhabited by real people, with real problems and potential. The residents of this small city deserve better than to be treated as props in someone else's play.

 

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* Haddad was endorsed by the party but was forced into a write-in option after his signed acceptance form was not included with the rest of the Hudson Democrats’ voluminous petition paperwork; HCDC chair Victor Mendolia has stated that he “took full responsibility for the error.”

Tu(n)esday: Zep

 

Dazed & Confused live, 1969. (All eyes on Bonham here.)

Grazin’ Diner

Painting by James Gurney

After a frustrating wait, word is that the I.R.S. has finally cleared away the remaining liens left over from the former owner of Hudson’s Diamond Street Diner, which was seized by the New York State Department of Taxation and Finances in the Fall of 2009. This in turn clears a path for the diner to be revitalized by its new owners, the Gibsons of Grazin’ Angus Acres in Ghent.

Grazin’ is reknowned for grass-fed, biodynamic, animal welfare approved beef, raised with no hormones or antibiotics or GMOs (and said to have provided the only meat served at Chelsea Clinton’s wedding in Rhinebeck). Organic ice cream and eggs are also in the offing, presumably at a reasonable price point since the owners are also producers. The farm’s website is here, and the diner’s website will be here.

With a lot of hard work, they may be able to open in time to catch some of the Fall season; when the diner closed, the owners (or seizers) failed to turn off the water, causing all of the pipes to burst. Otherwise, an early 2012 launch may be more likely... at which time, the articles (and arguments) about who has the best hamburger in the Hudson Valley will start getting slung around like hash browns on a griddle.

In the meantime, their products can be found regionally at the Hawthorne Valley Farm Store, Honest Weight Food Co-op, or at the greenmarkets in NYC. For some rave reviews, check out the Yelp comments.

Art Saturday: Hélio Oiticica

Link: Tate Modern retrospective

Sower, Copake, 1933

Walker Evans photos (with hints of Millet) from the Metropolitan Museum’s collection.

Winter in Summer

Photo shoot in the 500 block of Warren Street, Hudson (NY).

Quotable Pynchon

There is no real direction here, neither lines of power nor cooperation. Decisions are never really made – at best they manage to emerge, from a chaos of peeves, whims, hallucinations and all around assholery.

— Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow (1973)

Tu(n)esday: Bob Marley

 

I can get sick of pretty much any song, but not this one (Concrete Jungle, live, on the BBC’s Old Grey Whistle Test; said to be the first real mainstream exposure of the British public to Marley).

BREAKING: Haddad team prevails

Photo: Joseph A on Flickr

Observers keeping a watch on the Columbia County Courthouse report that the Republican effort to prevent a Democratic primary—in which it is expected that Nicholas C. Haddad will be written in as the party’s choice of nominee for Mayor—has failed in court.

According to sources, Judge Hummel agreed with attorneys Ken Dow, Ed Reisner and John Friedman that the GOP failed to serve notice on the affected parties in a timely manner, missing a key election law deadline which was inviolate. The merits of the petitions themselves could not be questioned, because the Republicans did not follow the correct process.

So ironically, the GOP attempt to trip up the Democrats with technicalities itself failed on a technicality. (One wonders whether the Hudson and County Republicans will be demanding a refund from their lawyers, including Bill Better, and process servers.)

This means that there will indeed be an open write-in primary among Democrats on September 13th, in which any name can be written in.