SamPratt.com

R.I.P. Drayton Grant

Drayton Grant, the able and unfailingly jolly Rhinebeck attorney, died Wednesday morning after a battle with cancer.

Her law partner John Lyons writes:

“It was an honor and a privilege for me to be Drayton’s friend and partner. Her tremendous capacity to love her fellow man and her community and to work hard for both, along with her rock-solid integrity and character, her easy sense of humor and boundless joie de vivre, her intelligence and indomitable spirit were known by all. These are just a few of the qualities which I loved in her and which, over the course of our almost 20 years as partners and friends, changed me in so many ways for the better. Her positive imprint on those she knew and loved and on her community will be a lasting testament to her spirit and her life.”

Her obituary (with information about calling hours and funeral time) can be found here.

Puryear in Dutchess

Tspace, the private exhibition space in Rhinebeck created by architect Stephen Holl and curated by photographer Susan Wides, held an opening this weekend for National Medal of Arts recipient Martin Puryear.

The event, which featured an installation of Puryear’s work Vessel, also included a performance on a 300-year-old standup bass, a catalog essay by Carter Ratcliffe, and a separate gallery of paintings by Wides’ husband Jim Holl:

 

Comparative Burgerology

Does healthy, organic food cost more than “regular” food? And what’s a hamburger supposed to cost around here, anyway?

Ever since Grazin’ revitalized a formerly-empty restaurant space on Warren Street, one has heard more than a few hyperbolic discussions about prices, with little actual relationship to the reality of the 21st Century cost of delivering a decent meal.

The chart below collects some representative menu prices for burgers in the region. For the purposes of a fair comparison, the price of a side of fries was included if those don’t come automatically with the burger:

As the hard numbers above show, the price of a burger in these parts can range from a low of $5.50 to a high of $13. The average burger price of the 15 establishments list above is $9.98—precisely 3 cents higher than than that of the Grazin’ all-organic, Animal Welfare Certifed burger.

In short, getting a healthy, organic, responsibly-created, locally-sourced, farm-to-table burger is no more expensive than eating at most any other non-fastfood restaurant in the area... which just points up the irrationality of some of the anti-organic voices in our midst. Those who denounce $9-$10 for a burger as outrageous clearly haven’t been getting out much lately.

Now some Rush Limbaugh listeners may cry foul, noting that they could get a slider and fries at McDonald’s or Burger King for even less than any of the prices above. Yes, you could... except those aren’t hamburgers. Those are reprocessed sewage patties masquerading as food. If you eat them regularly, you will almost certainly die early. And the price of that to your family and society far exceeds anything that buying organic ever could.

The morning after

There are only a few hours left in the shelf life of Chelsea Clinton wedding humor, so:

General Electric removed all PCBs from the river for the weekend as a courtesy, but will restore the Hudson to is natural condition Monday after the last guests have sobered up and gone home.

[h/t Vince Mulford]

Making the rounds (7/4)

ANNANDALE » Roberta Smith files an extensive review of two shows—the Eisenberg collection, and a Philippe Parreno retrospective—at Bard’s Center for Curatorial Studies. 

CLAVERACK » Speaking of music, local resident Melora Creager of Rasputina was profiled in The Wall Street Journal a few weeks ago.

HUDSON » And speaking of reviews, a big New York City publication is said to be readying a piece on the Hudson music “scene,” with Dan Bunny among the reluctantly-featured scenemakers.

NEW LEBANON » June 25th » A minor accident caused some local law enforcement to discover some unusual cookies in a Nassau man’s car.

MARYLAND & HUDSON » June 28th » Cumberland, Maryland forestry expert Bernie Zlomek compares the views from Green Ridge along the Potomac to those overlooking the river in his hometown of Hudson.

TEXAS & HUDSON » July 3rd » An obituary for NASA engineer and Hudson native William Dayton Dodge, Jr., appeared in a San Antonio newspaper.

HILLSDALE & HUDSON July 4th » A horticultural piece in The Wall Street Journal by Hillsdale resident Bart Ziegler features bearded irises in the garden of his neighbor Peter Cipkowski, plantings which have been handed down to him all the way from his grandmother’s Hudson garden.

ATHENS & HUDSON » July 10th » Public tours of the Hudson-Athens Lighthouse will also take place Saturday, as well as on August 14th, September 11th, and October 9th. Details are pending at the Society’s website. The annual Athens street fest is also next Saturday, with fireworks at 10 pm (easily visible from Promenade Park in Hudson); the raindate is Sunday.

RHINEBECK » July 31st » Chelsea Clinton will get married at the former Astor estate off River Road.

COLUMBIA COUNTY » July 1st » Ken Flood, the Planning Director for the County, tells Mid-Hudson News that “a large portion of the jobs in his county are in the tourism industry,” pegging the number at 6.5%, which actually sounds like an underestimate. But Flood says this “percentage is much higher than any of the other counties in the Hudson Valley.” Wonder how those numbers are put together.

Business is slow

And well it should be (at this BP station near Rhinebeck).