Upstate Oddities

Bus Stop

Tired of plain old run-of-the-mill firewood?

At Shapiro & Sons the wood is seasoned to capture the heady scent of marble notebooks, bologna sandwiches and Bazooka bubble gum.

However, not all of their buses are filled to capacity. Many are empty shells sinking into the earth - a modern day elephant graveyard...

of school buses...

...and other modes of ~~rusty~~ rural transportation.

Hey, no shoving on the bus!

Bowling for Bagels

After you climb every mountain and ford every stream, there are plenty of other activities to be had in the Catskills. One can shoot some hoops.

Or hop on a pony.

But if wild horses (ba-dum-ching!) aren't your thing, you can always rent a pair of groovy two-toned shoes and have a ball at the Liberty Lanes.

Every bowling alley should have such style!

And artistic flair!

That's quite a hand span, there!

Peering through the door (I wish they had been open!) I spied this cool shirt.

But what's a Kiddush Hashem, you may ask? A strike? A turkey? No, a Kiddush Hashem is any action by a Jew that brings honor, respect and glory to God. If it's any indication of skill, my shirt would have to read Chillul Hashem. God hates gutterballs.

Brown acid. Never a good idea.

Maybe it was just the time of year, but with nothing else to do we decided to go on down to Yasgur's Farm and check out the new Bethel Woods Center for the Arts. I had heard good things about the newly built museum celebrating that little concert we've all heard about. They don't allow photography in the museum, but I highly recommend going to see it for yourself. It's a wonderfully realized multi-media experience that takes you from the 50's right up to the Age of Aquarius and into the mud and music of Woodstock. If you go down the road a bit, you'll come across this monument:

And just beyond that is the field where it all happened!

The view when the mushrooms kick in:

I wish I had pictures of all the memorabilia displayed in the museum. I would love to own an original Yasgur's Dairy Farm milk bottle! But I think my favorite artifact was the journal of a kid who was clearly there for the music. He had detailed entries on every single act. My favorite: "Some asshole just jumped onstage. Townsend knocked him off."

Signage Whimsy

Cozy

Trippy

Haunted

Fite Club

Although the main focus of Opus 40 is Harvey Fite's magnificently constructed bluestone environment, there are other curiosities for a visitor to explore.

In the early 70's, after he had retired as a professor at Bard College, Fite took time out from Opus 40 to build a museum to house his collection of quarryman's tools and artifacts.

The museum is a fascinating tour through the history of the area and the skills of its workingmen: quarrying equipment is represented, and so are the tools, most of them hand-forged, that the quarryman used every day for farming, blacksmithing, carpentry and the like.

It's a lot to take in at once!

And no matter where you are, this Hessian guard follows you with his eyes.

The space is filled to the brim - no surface is left bare, including the walls where tools are arrayed in pleasing patterns.

From windowsills...

...to rafters - fascinating objects abound.

Apparently Harvey Fite was a man who liked to keep all his ducks in a row.

The pot-bellied stove in the corner looks well-worn and well-loved...

...as do the rest of the tools and equipment on display.

Anyone know what this is?

Besides being an extraordinary quarryman, Harvey Fite was also a fine artist, and as such his sculptures have a home in the museum alongside his tools. This combination of the utilitarian with the purely aesthetic is what makes for such a unique space. This hand of Thomas Jefferson was carved from a catalpa tree which bloomed, according to Fite, for the first time on July 4, 1776.