Beaconites!

There's a growing movement to bring more outdoor learning to public schools. This month, we profile Land to Learn, a non-profit organization that provides hands-on, garden-based learning to elementary students and teens throughout the Hudson Valley.  Executive Director Nicole Porto previously worked as a farmer and has dedicated her career to building sustainable and just food systems. In our inte...

Lastar Gorton, Beacon's new Ward 1 city council rep, is tired of watching families be forced out of the city because their paychecks can't cover the rent or a mortgage down payment.   Lastar grew up in Beacon, and she has watched waves of lifelong Beaconites leave as the cost of housing rises, while developers have erected dozens of mostly luxury condo buildings. That includes her uncle, who was f...

How do you end up going into business with your life partner? For Paula and Justin King, the couple behind Rexhill Studio, the decision came many years after they first met, as their separate interests and skillsets gradually converged in their adopted home city.  Paula grew up in NJ, attended NYU  and lived in the East Village in the 90s. Justin grew up in Ohio, took an early interest in art and...

Not sure what to do with your one precious existence? Good news from the true-life adventures of Vibeke Saugestad: You don't have to pick one thing.   Best known as a power-pop singer-songwriter, Vibeke is also an accomplished literary translator, multi-instrumentalist, puppet-maker and ventriloquist.   "I don't stand still for long," she says in our interview.  Vibeke's music career started in th...

Beth Poague's life changed when she and her then-husband Jim learned that their youngest son Finn had a rare genetic disorder. Their pace of living shifted, they sought community with other families going through the same thing, and as Finn got older, Beth channeled her energy into advocating for changes to Beacon's schools on her son's behalf. First at JV Forrestal and later at Rombout Middle Sch...

Repost: Some listeners experienced a truncated version of this interview, so we are deleting and reposting. -ZR The tables have turned! After six years and more than 133 interviews, Beaconites creator and host Zach Rodgers (i.e. me) moves into the guest's chair for a discussion of his life and the evolution of this community project. A few listeners have asked for this episode over the years, and...

Julie Winterbottom has written a wide range of books aimed at children, including books on farts, pranks and horror — all designed for maximum humor, spine chills and fun. Her most recent work is a little different: "Magic in a Drop of Water" tells the story of ecologist Ruth Patrick, who did pioneering research connecting biodiversity to river pollution and helped to write the 1972 clean water ac...

Mike Diago loves eating, and writing about, food, but his interest is only partly about the cuisine itself. In articles for Eater, Saveur, Chronogram, The Bittman Project and other publications, Mike has created a niche covering the critical role food and eateries play in stabilizing communities. He has written about the surprising Dominican expat tradition of holding spaghetti feasts on the beach...

Heather Christian is a singer, playwright, composer and recent winner of a MacArthur "genius grant."  Her compositions use spiritual music forms to explore themes as varied as ghosts, grief, the Odyssey and the Big Bang. She describes them as " choral-based complex music theater works." They are often presented in the round, in part to obliterate the hierarchy between audience and performers. "I'm...

As the only candidate running for city council representing Ward 4, Carolyn Glauda is pretty much a shoe-in for the seat, but she still wants to earn your vote. In this interview, she shares her vision for a safer, more affordable and more sustainable Beacon.  Carolyn has been a member of the traffic safety committee since 2020, an experience that got her hooked on civic engagement. In this interv...

In this back-to-school episode, we hear from two longtime teachers in the public schools. High school history teacher Christina Dahl and JV Forrestal kindergarden teacher Lesli Tomkins talk about changes for the 2025-26 school year, the largest of which is a new "bell-to-bell" ban on cell phones at Rombout Middle School and Beacon High School. This is a huge experiment that's playing out across Ne...

Our new interview with Margot Kingon, an artist and the founder of Second Wave Supplies, has a wonderful sweep to it.  As an artist and creative instigator, much of Margot's work could be labeled "art as social practice." Her many projects have included a long-running pop-up dance party (Dance/Play), a year-long series of Covid-era family portraits, and most recently, an art supply thrift store in...

Originally from Seattle, Gracelyn Woods grew up housing insecure, food insecure and raised by a single mom. From these tough beginnings, she cultivated a fierce attitude of hard work and self-determination that resulted in a successful career in TV and event production in New York City. But after 20 years of this work, culminating in a big job with the landmark Apollo Theater, Gracelyn found herse...

There are plenty of good reasons to hope for a more bikeable Beacon. To name a few:  1) Improved safety (for drivers and pedestrians as well as for cyclists)  2) Reduced traffic congestion 3) Greater equity for people who can't afford a car or don't want to drive around for small errands.  4) Bikes are fun :) In this interview, Meg Lazaros, one of the founders of the Beacon Bicycle Coalition, disc...

Lena Rizkallah has carved out a niche giving financial advice to women in their 40s and 50s, often helping them navigate transitional moments in their lives. For these clients — who may be going through a divorce, starting a businesses or taking on a new creative project — Lena helps frame out a financial plan that can enable the vision. "Money equals freedom," she says.  Born to Palestinian paren...

Our interview with Sergei Krasikov is a must-listen if you're into trails, open spaces, water sheds and being outside in any weather.   Originally from Belarus, Sergei has made Beacon his home in every sense. He is a community builder and civic volunteer with a special focus on land conservation. As the chair of the Conservation Advisory Committee and founder of the Fishkill Creek Watershed Allian...

Paulette Myers-Rich has partnered with dozens of artists and writers during an accomplished career in fine art printing. In this interview we talk about many of those collaborations - including a series of books featuring Irish poets produced jointly with the Center for Irish Studies at the University of St. Thomas.  Paulette moved to Beacon in her fifties, choosing it in part because it visually...

Kim Pennock is an educator and the poultry lead at the Stony Kill educational farm and 4H club. Stony Kill has chickens, cows, sheep, rabbits and bees, with a focus on heritage breeds. Each August, its 4H youth are represented at the Dutchess County Fair, and some go on to participate in the youth livestock sale. They come away with useful skills, friendships and a commitment to raising animals et...

Pat Halvey is well acquainted with death and grieving. He was 13 years old when his father first initiated him into the family funeral business, and he's worked with the deceased and the bereft ever since. That business, Riverview Funeral Services, recently merged with Beacon's other multi-generational death and funeral services provider, Libby.  In our interview, Pat talks about many facets of de...

While living in Brooklyn in the early 1990s, Neil Caplan saw a drawing of Bannerman's Castle on Pollepel Island - situated between Beacon and Cold Spring. Inspired, he set out to gain stewardship of it, shore up its historical features, create a system for public access and ultimately stage theater there. The result is the Bannerman Castle Trust: one part historic preservation, one part public par...

Curtis Harvey's creative work has played out on two parallel tracks. As a musician, he helped define a certain 1990s post-rock sound as guitarist and singer for Rex, and he has gone on to play with many other bands in Beacon and beyond. As director of exhibitions at Dia:Beacon, where he has worked in various roles for 22 years, Curtis installs the work of Fred Sandback, Meg Webster and other major...

Early childhood learning is pretty fraught at the moment. The lingering effects of Covid-era learning challenges, an epidemic of teacher burnout, and a rise in autism spectrum diagnoses have all contributed to a simmering crisis in education that we're probably not talking about enough. But there are bright spots. One is the Tioronda Learning Center, a longstanding pre-K program serving Beacon, le...

Kristen Holt-Browning is a poet, editor and (now) novelist. Her debut work of fiction, Ordinary Devotion, juxtaposes the lives of two women separated by 700 years. Kristen grew up nearby in the hamlet of Stone Ridge, spent some years in New York City (Manhattan, then Brooklyn) before moving back to Beacon 15 years ago.  In this interview, she talks about her experience growing up in the Hudson Val...

Sam Anderson is a master of the essay form whose work spans a huge range of human experience and culture.  As a staff writer for The New York Times Magazine, Sam has interviewed and written about Weird Al Yankovic, writer John McPhee, NBA point guard Russell Westbrook, travel guru Rick Steves, Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami and the people trying to rescue Michaelangelo's David from ruin. He has...

Yvette Valdes Smith knows firsthand how spiraling housing costs have made Beacon unaffordable to many. Yvette and her husband rented in Beacon for years, but moved to Fishkill when they realized they couldn't afford to buy a home here.  "Housing is a huge issue. It's going to require us not being NIMBY about things. We have to increase housing stock," she tells Beaconites. Raised in Isla Verde, Pu...