Bombers host Harlem baseball for a fun day

PINE PLAINS — It’s been a few years since the teams have met, but with the summery weather last week there couldn’t have been a better time for the Rice School, a congregation of Christian Brothers private school in Harlem, N.Y., to travel to the Harlem Valley for a day of baseball.

Stephen Fitzgerald, the school board’s chairman, has a house in the area, and said he met Pine Plains head coach Phil Amelio when he did masonry work on his home.

The two teams first played in 2003, and last Thursday squared off for the fourth time. (Two of Rice’s current assistant coaches were players in the 2003 game.) Fitzgerald said Rice hasn’t traveled to Pine Plains in a few years, due to his team’s lack of experience.

“It’s always difficult in New York City,� Fitzgerald explained, to reserve a field for practice time or actual play. Permits are required for teams, and scheduling restrictions will sometimes cut a game short if it extends into another team’s reservation.

Rice was on spring break last week and took advantage of more than just an afternoon trip north. They arrived early in the morning and were treated to a barbecue at the Lions Club pavilion as well as fishing on Stissing Lake, courtesy of Roger Lougheed, who owns Peddler’s Cafe in town.

“The town treated us great,� Fitzgerald said, “Roger specifically.�

The baseball game, which started at 3:30 p.m., counted as a non-league match for the Bombers. They won, 4-1, improving their record to 2-0 this season.

Latest News

Finding ‘The Right Stuff’ for a documentary

Tom Wolfe

Film still from “Radical Wolfe” courtesy of Kino Lorber

If you’ve ever wondered how retrospective documentaries are made, with their dazzling compilation of still images and rare footage spliced between contemporary interviews, The Moviehouse in Millerton, New York, offered a behind-the-scenes peek into how “the sausage is made” with a screening of director Richard Dewey’s biographical film “Radical Wolfe” on Saturday, March 2.

Coinciding with the late Tom Wolfe’s birthday, “Radical Wolfe,” now available to view on Netflix, is the first feature-length documentary to explore the life and career of the enigmatic Southern satirist, city-dwelling sartorial icon and pioneer of New Journalism — a subjective, lyrical style of long-form nonfiction that made Wolfe a celebrity in the pages of Esquire and vaulted him to the top of the best-seller lists with his drug-culture chronicle “The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test” and his first novel, “The Bonfire of The Vanities.”

Keep ReadingShow less
Art on view this March

“Untitled” by Maureen Dougherty

New Risen

While there are area galleries that have closed for the season, waiting to emerge with programming when the spring truly springs up, there are still plenty of art exhibitions worth seeking out this March.

At Geary Contemporary in Millerton, founded by Jack Geary and Dolly Bross Geary, Will Hutnick’s “Satellite” is a collection of medium- and large-scale acrylic on canvas abstracts that introduce mixtures of wax pastel, sand and colored pencil to create topographical-like changes in texture. Silhouettes of leaves float across seismic vibration lines in the sand while a craterous moon emerges on the horizon, all like a desert planet seen through a glitching kaleidoscope. Hutnick, a resident of Sharon and director of artistic programming at The Wassaic Project in Amenia, New York, will discuss his work at Geary with New York Times art writer Laura van Straaten Saturday, March 9, at 5 p.m.

Keep ReadingShow less
Caught on Camera: Our wildlife neighbors

Clockwise from upper left: Wildlife more rarely caught by trail cameras at Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies: great blue heron, river otters, a bull moose, presenter and wildlife biologist Michael Fargione, a moose cow, and a barred owl.

Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies

‘You don’t need to go to Africa or Yellowstone to see the real-life world of nature. There are life and death struggles in your wood lot and backyard,” said Michael Fargione, wildlife biologist at Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook, New York, during his lecture “Caught on Camera: Our Wildlife Neighbors.”

He showed a video of two bucks recorded them displaying their antlers, then challenging each other with a clash of antlers, which ended with one buck running off. The victor stood and pawed the ground in victory.

Keep ReadingShow less