Kaatscast: the Catskills Podcast

After 36 years in the New York State Assembly, Deborah Glick is stepping away from public office. First elected in 1990, Glick became the first openly LGBTQ member of the New York State Legislature and went on to play a key role in some of New York's most consequential fights over civil rights, reproductive freedom, environmental protection, tenant rights, and public health.

In this episode of Kaatscast, recorded at her Catskills home, Glick reflects on a career that spanned six governors, dramatic shifts in Albany, and decades of social and political change. She discusses everything from coming out publicly in 1973, to helping secure statewide protections for LGBTQ New Yorkers, to the compromises and negotiations behind landmark legislation.

We also talk about the importance of state government, the growing influence of money and lobbying in politics, efforts to protect horseshoe crabs and pollinators, and why she believes ordinary citizens still have more power than they realize to influence public policy.

In this episode:

• Becoming the first openly LGBTQ member of the New York State Legislature
• The fight for SONDA, GENDA, hospital visitation rights, and a ban on conversion therapy
• Codifying Roe v. Wade protections in New York before the Supreme Court reversal
• How compromise shapes legislation
• Protecting horseshoe crabs, pollinators, and New York's ecosystems
• The stalled Packaging Reduction and Recycling Infrastructure Act
• Why state government may affect your daily life more than Washington does
• What comes next after a lifetime in public service

Links & Resources

• Learn more about the New York State Assembly: https://nyassembly.gov
• Deborah Glick's legislative record: https://nyassembly.gov/mem/Deborah-J-Glick
• Deb's public "coming out," 1973, in: New York Illustrated
• Kaatscast: https://kaatscast.com

A behind‑the‑scenes journey into one of the most unusual and inspiring places in the Catskills — the Catskill Biological Field Station — where museum artists, taxidermists, curators, and scientists gather to practice and preserve the craft of natural history.

Kaatscast spends a full day at the Catskill Biological Field Station, a Catskills campus operated by the Institute for Natural History Arts. More than a location, it’s a living workshop — a place designed from the ground up to keep traditional museum craft alive. The station’s main building, The Pavilion, is itself a museum: “to step inside… is to enter the movie set for Indiana Jones or maybe Jurassic Park with the design and direction of a Wes Anderson movie.”

Across its cabins, trails, and field stations, the property functions like an open‑air classroom for natural history — a place where museum professionals can immerse themselves in slow, careful, hands‑on work, surrounded by the landscapes that inspire it.

The day begins with Dr. Walter Meshaka, who demonstrates herpetological fieldwork and explains why museums still collect specimens. His analogy captures the spirit of the place: “Think about these specimens as a research library. Every specimen is a first edition book.”

In a meadow clearing, diorama artists Stephen Quinn and Sean Murtha paint an expansive wetland scene en plein air — a reminder that museum dioramas begin not in studios but in natural landscapes. Their presence underscores what makes the Field Station special: it’s one of the few places where artists can still practice diorama craft the way it was done a century ago.

Back at the Pavilion, Joyce Cloughly demonstrates how leaves and plants are molded and cast by hand. As George Dante notes, modern shortcuts — “a generic fern… bought online from Amazon” — undermine accuracy. The Field Station exists to counter that trend, preserving the field‑based techniques that once defined natural history exhibits.

The expedition continues to unfold at a rustic ornithologist’s cabin, where Dr. Peter Capainolo prepares bird study skins and skeletons. His demonstration — “the feathers are attached to the skin… sort of like a pelt” — reveals the unseen labor behind museum collections and the precision required to make specimens useful for generations.

Later, Brett speaks with Darrin Lunde, mammalogist, museum curator, and author of The Naturalist. His perspective deepens the day’s themes: the value of fieldwork, the ethics of collecting, and the responsibility museums carry as repositories of biodiversity. His presence rounds out the lineup, connecting mammalogy and museum science to the artistry unfolding across the property.

The Catskill Biological Field Station is not a museum, not a school, and not a retreat — but something in between. It’s a rare space where natural history professionals can gather outside institutional constraints, work with their hands, teach emerging artists, and preserve techniques that are disappearing from modern exhibit production. It’s a place built by people who care deeply about the craft, and who want to ensure it survives.

Featured Guests:

• George Dante, President & Founder, Institute for Natural History Arts
• Dr. Walter Meshaka, Senior Curator of Zoology & Botany, State Museum of Pennsylvania
• Stephen Quinn, Diorama Specialist, American Museum of Natural History
• Sean Murtha, Artist & Preparator, Bruce Museum
• Joyce Cloughly, Modeler & Exhibit Artist
• Dr. Peter Capainolo, Senior Museum Specialist, Ornithology, AMNH
• Darrin Lunde, Mammalogist, Museum Curator, Author of The Naturalist

In this episode, Brett Barry visits the Delaware County Historical Association to talk with historian Tim Duerden about Escape From the Sugar House, his first work of historical fiction. The book follows Levi Hanford, a Connecticut teenager swept into the Revolutionary War and imprisoned in a New York City "sugar house" — one of several makeshift prisons where thousands died from disease, starvation, and neglect.

Duerden discusses the Revolution as a civil war, the economic forces shaping Loyalist and Patriot strongholds, and the postwar migration that brought veterans like Hanford to the Catskills. The conversation centers on a unique artifact: a cane crafted from a Sugar House beam and gifted to Hanford late in life.

A compelling blend of history, storytelling, and regional heritage.

As the leaves change, Kaatscast and Cidiot join up to look at fall foliage on both sides of the Hudson. Cidiot's episode covers the science of leaf color with Cary Institute scientist Dr. Amy Zanne. This one covers the west side: an environmental educator explains why leaves change color, and five more Catskills residents describe how they spend the season and where they go to see it.

In this episode

• 00:00 Introduction, with a reading of "Poème d'Automne" by Langston Hughes

The autumn leaves
Are too heavy with color.
The slender trees
On the Vulcan Road
Are dressed in scarlet and gold
Like young courtesans
Waiting for their lovers.
But soon
The winter winds
Will strip their bodies bare
And then
The sharp, sleet-stung
Caresses of cold
Will be their only
Love.

• 01:33 Matt Savatgy, environmental scientist in residence in the Onteora School District (Cornell Cooperative Extension / Ashokan Watershed Stream Management Program), on chlorophyll, why trees go dormant, how drought and a wet August affect color, and why the Northeast shares its foliage with places at similar latitudes like South Korea. Favorite spots: the escarpment at North Lake, Ashokan Quarry Trail, Giant Ledge, Overlook Mountain.
• 11:57 Milton O'Connell of the Bruderhof community in Platte Clove on fall hikes (Kaaterskill High Peak, Indian Head, Plattekill Mountain, Dibble's Quarry) and the community's fall festival.
• 15:41 Painter Christie Scheele on why fall is the season she paints least, what she looks for in late-fall oaks, and driving Route 28 west.
• 21:24 Photographer Casey Kelbaugh on shooting foliage in overcast light, iPhone settings, and a one-way hike through Diamond Notch to the West Kill brewery.
• 28:10 Ed Ullmanm of Wellness Rx in Phoenicia on fall as a season of reflection, plus his advice on flu shots, COVID boosters and immune support.
• 33:05 Samantha Awand-Gortel, manager of Ulster Savings Bank's Phoenicia branch, on preparing finances for winter costs and her favorite views, including the Belleayre and Hunter Mountain Oktoberfests.
• 35:42 Closing and how to send in your own fall favorites

Event: The Bruderhof fall festival in Platte Clove is Saturday, October 3, 2026, 2:00–5:00 PM, open to the public (hayrides, pumpkin carving, cider making).

Links

• Cidiot podcast, East of Hudson fall guide with Dr. Amy Zanne: https://www.cidiot.com/
• Bruderhof: A Christian Community in the Platte Clove: https://www.kaatscast.com/bruderhof-a-christian-community-in-the-platte-clove/
• Christie Scheele's Kaatscast episode: https://www.kaatscast.com/catskills-artist-christie-scheele/
• ... and the Drive 28 Arts & Culture audio tour: https://drive28.com/
• Walking the Long Path from Manhattan to the Catskills (Casey Kelbaugh): https://www.kaatscast.com/walking-the-long-path-from-manhattan-to-the-catskills/
• Wellness Rx: A Prescription for Rural Healthcare: https://www.kaatscast.com/wellness-rx-a-prescription-for-rural-healthcare/
• Samantha Awand-Gortel's 2023 financial literacy episode: https://www.kaatscast.com/financial-literacy-at-ulster-savings-bank/
• Share your fall favorites: kaatscast.com (contact page or Send a Voicemail): https://www.kaatscast.com/contact/

“Invasive species” has become one of the most charged phrases in environmental discourse — but what if the term itself obscures more than it reveals? In this episode, Brett Barry sits down with Dr. Erik Kiviat, co‑founder of Hudsonia and a field biologist with decades of research on introduced plants, to explore the nuance behind weeds like knotweed, purple loosestrife, and common reed. As Kiviat notes, “There is a fear and hysteria of things that come from somewhere else….” His perspective reframes the conversation, showing how many “invasives” also provide habitat, pollinator resources, water‑quality benefits, and even medicinal compounds like resveratrol.

From the herbarium at Hudsonia's field station on the Bard College campus, Kiviat explains how human disturbance creates ideal conditions for these plants, why management must be site‑specific rather than fear‑driven, and how wildlife — from songbirds to pollinators — routinely use knotweed in ways that complicate the usual narrative. The episode offers a grounded, science‑based look at a topic often clouded by alarmism, reminding us that ecology is complex, adaptive, and rarely served by simple labels like “invasive.”

"Close your eyes when you roll through town and open them when you get to the driveway," is essentially how Peter and Sarah Finn jokingly welcomed friends to their Hunter home in the mid-1990s — when dilapidated buildings and FOR SALE signs dominated Main Street.

The Finns turned frustration into action, buying a rotting dairy barn and a struggling movie theater, and building what would become the Catskill Mountain Foundation in 1998. Nearly 30 years later, CMF runs a three-screen cinema, a piano performance museum, ballet and theater programs, artist housing, an organic farm, and a monthly regional magazine, and employs about 30 people.

Peter's new book, Driven to Build, Guided by Values: Leading for Long-Term Success in the For-Profit and Nonprofit Worlds, traces the principles behind both CMF and FINN Partners, the global PR firm he founded.

Peter and Sarah join host Brett Barry at their home in Hunter, along with CMF Executive Director Amy Scheibe, to talk through the foundation's origins and where it's headed. Topics include:

• The Finn family's roots in Hunter, going back to Peter's great-grandparents, who arrived from the Poland-Ukraine borderlands in 1889 (a story also told in Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers)
• Buying and renovating the Red Barn and the old Hunter movie theater, and how conversations with Sean Byrne (Hunter Foundation), Barry Kerr, Linda Nichols, and Pam and Judd Weisberg shaped CMF's formation
• The distinction between CMF (arts) and its neighbor, The Hunter Foundation (Main Street revitalization)
• Funding the foundation's early years and building donor relationships, including Hunter Mountain's Slutsky family
• How Peter's PR-agency background shaped CMF's multi-pronged structure
• Current capital projects: new theatrical equipment and a rehearsal/dance studio at the Orpheum (funded by a $1.75M state matching grant), a NYSERDA net-zero grant for the studio building, and new artist housing (Creekside Retreat)
• What's next for CMF

Links:

• Peter Finn's book: Driven to Build, Guided by Values
• The Catskill Mountain Foundation: https://www.catskillmtn.org
• Kaatscast: https://www.kaatscast.com — full episode archive, transcribed and searchable

Ed Van Put spent more than fifty years studying, fishing, and protecting Catskill waters — and in the process became one of the region’s most respected fly fishers and fisheries biologists. In this episode, Nick Lyons returns to Kaatscast to share the story of how Ed’s final book, A Fly Fisher’s Revelations, brought him out of retirement at age 93. Joining Nick is Ed’s wife, Judy “Obie” Van Put, who offers a deeply personal portrait of Ed’s life, his gentle nature, and his lifelong devotion to the rivers he loved.

Together, Nick and Obie trace Ed’s journey from a curious New Jersey kid to a principal fisheries biologist for New York State, his meticulous fishing journals, his contrarian approach to fly selection, and his decades of work securing public fishing rights and cold‑water releases. They revisit Ed’s favorite flies, his philosophy of presentation over complexity, and the stories behind his landmark books on Catskill trout fishing. It’s a celebration of a man whose knowledge, humility, and passion shaped generations of anglers — and whose legacy continues to ripple through Catskill waters.

At a Fleischmanns street fair, a bottle with a bright red label and bold white type — Station Navy Strength Gin — stops Brett at the Skillers booth. Owner James Rooney pours a taste and explains why British sailors once needed their gin strong enough that gunpowder would still ignite if it got splashed with the stuff. That bottle leads to a drive up to Lexington, NY, to see where it's made.

Skillers Mountaintop Distillery occupies a small pre-fab barn in what started as Rooney's ski house property near Hunter. Kaatscast walks us through some of the New York state laws that made a small operation like his possible — the Micro Distillery Act of 2003, which cut licensing fees enough to let small producers in; the Farm Distillery Act of 2007, which let distillers open tasting rooms and sell direct, the way wineries already could; and the Craft New York Act of 2014, which simplified licensing further and let farm distilleries sell in satellite locations. In exchange, farm distilleries have to source at least 75% of their ingredients from New York — Skillers uses 100% New York corn as the base for all three of its spirits, filling in the small remainder with botanicals like coriander that can't be grown locally.

The three bottles get a full tasting. Greywacke vodka takes its name from the bluestone bedrock under the Catskills, and Rooney credits its stony, mineral edge to Schoharie Creek water that's filtered through that rock. The navy strength gin, bottled at 57% ABV, is built specifically to survive being mixed into a Negroni without landing flat. And horilka — a honey and chili spirit named for the Ukrainian word for flower (kvitka) — nods to the area's Ukrainian community, using local honey and an ultrasonic extraction process to pull flavor from Thai chilies.

Gin-smith Jeff Graham describes running the still, watching a batch drip for hours to yield about 20 gallons at a time. Marketing director Todd Spire talks about the tasting room's weekend acoustic music series. And we learn that Skillers spirits are now on shelves at Elevated Wines in Hunter and behind the bar at Small Talk in Woodstock and Peekamoose in Big Indian. Next up: a Skillers Negroni made entirely in-house, which means Rooney is now considering his own line of vermouth.

Featuring

• James Rooney, founder and owner, Skillers Mountaintop Distillery
• Jeff Graham, gin smith
• Todd Spire, director of marketing
• Ric Rawlins, tasting guest

Music: "Growing Up Catskills" by Josh Roy Brown, from the documentary of the same name.

The Shandaken Theatrical Society turns 50 this year, and its home stage — the Phoenicia Playhouse — has a history that stretches back even further. Built in 1887 as a lodge for the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, the building later served as an auction house and a movie theater before falling into disrepair by the 1980s. Community intervention saved it from demolition, and STS has run it ever since.

This episode brings together voices spanning the organization's history: board member and longtime performer Faye Storms, who arrived in the Catskills just three years after STS was founded in 1976; playhouse manager Geneva Turner, who also works as a standardized patient and intimacy coordinator when they're not running the house; technical director George Muller, a veteran of Live Aid and the Philadelphia Orchestra before landing in Phoenicia; and Wallace Norman and Hank Neimark of Woodstock Fringe, in town for a co-production of Songs Mostly of the Theatre.

Fifty years ago, STS opened with a production of The Sound of Music — and there's talk of marking the anniversary with a singalong screening of the film. Beyond that possible nod to their roots, the season has grown into a full slate of drama, comedy, open mics, a concert series with Flying Cat Music, and youth theater camps.

Find out more at https://phoeniciaplayhouse.com

In 1845, a feudal land system that had survived the American Revolution finally met its match in the hills above Andes, New York — and the clash left a county undersheriff dead and hundreds of farmers under arrest. The Anti-Rent War was a massive, organized uprising that had been building since the late 1830s and swept across upstate New York — yet it remains largely unknown outside this region.

Victoria Kupchinetsky and Misha Gutkin are Russian-born journalists who stumbled upon the story at an Andes community day parade — and couldn't let it go. The result is Calico Rebellion, a documentary that centers the voices of local descendants, historians, and storytellers to bring this "final chapter of the American Revolution" back to life.

We talk about the patroon system and its perpetual leases that kept tenant farmers from ever owning the land they cleared; the Calico Indians, disguised farmers who donned homemade masks and calico dresses to resist rent collectors; the dinner horns repurposed as an alarm network; and the fatal confrontation on Dingle Hill that set off a chain of trials, pardons, and ultimately, legislative reform.

Victoria and Misha also reflect on what it meant — as immigrants from the Soviet Union — to dig into this forgotten corner of American democracy, and what the Anti-Rent War says about the ongoing work of keeping a democratic system alive.

Visit https://calicorebellion.com/ for Calico Rebellion screenings, events, and info.

What did Beethoven's piano actually sound like? At the Catskill Mountain Foundation's Piano Performance Museum in Hunter, New York, you don't have to wonder — you can sit down and play one.

Brett Barry visits the museum at the Doctorow Center for the Arts with performing arts director Pam Weisberg and docent Stacey Bowers, who guide him through dozens of historic instruments spanning three centuries — from a mid-18th century French harpsichord to a nine-foot Baldwin concert grand that once traveled with Liberace.

Along the way: the difference between a harpsichord's pluck and a piano's strike, why Beethoven's piano had four strings per key, the short life of the American square piano, and what it means to let the instrument tell you what it can do.

The museum is open Saturdays 11 a.m.–3 p.m.; group tours available by arrangement. For performances, schedules, and more: http://catskillmtn.org/piano-performance-museum

Every spring, something remarkable happens in the tidal waters of Black Creek in Esopus, New York: tiny, translucent eels — just an inch and a half long and barely the weight of a postage stamp — swim in from the Atlantic Ocean, following a journey that began in the Sargasso Sea nearly a year before.

In this episode, guest host Sierra DeVito joins the Hudson River Eel Project at Black Creek Preserve, where Professor Susan Hereth of SUNY New Paltz leads a team of college and high school students in weekly data collection on the American eel — one of nature's most elusive and mysterious creatures. No one has ever witnessed eels spawning. No one knows exactly what draws them to the Hudson, or to Black Creek specifically. And yet, year after year, they return.

We wade in with the crew as they haul the fyke net, count and weigh glass eels, record field data, and release the eels upstream. We also hear from students about what it means to do real science in the real world — and why it matters.

In this episode:

• The remarkable (and still poorly understood) life cycle of the American eel, from the Sargasso Sea to the Catskill tributaries
• How community scientists collect data that feeds into long-term fisheries research
• The black market for glass eels — and why a single eel can be worth serious money
• Why getting students into the muck may be the best environmental education of all

For more information or to inquire about volunteering with the Hudson River Eel Project, visit the NYS DEC website — https://dec.ny.gov/nature/waterbodies/oceans-estuaries/hudson-river-estuary-program/community-science-volunteer-opportunities

Kaatscast walks a stretch of the Finger Lakes Trail in Delaware Wild Forest with Heather Houskeeper — herbalist, long-distance hiker, author, and founder of the School of Plant and Place Connection — to talk about foraging, plant medicine, and what it means to truly belong in a landscape.

Along the trail, Heather identifies edible and medicinal plants including garlic mustard, jewelweed, and dandelion, and explains how to approach foraging safely, ethically, and with a spirit of reciprocity. She also shares how a post-thru-hike sense of helplessness in the woods sent her to herbal medicine school, how she built a career around botanical hiking, and why she believes our innate knowledge of the plant world isn't quite lost — maybe just dormant.

Find Heather at http://thebotanicalhiker.com/ and http://schoolofplantandplaceconnection.com/.

The Catskill Park's most visited corridor — Kaaterskill Falls and the Kaaterskill Clove area along Route 23A — may be heading for a major management overhaul. In this extra edition, host Brett Barry sits down with Jeff Senterman, Executive Director of the Catskill Center, to dig into a newly released Visitor Use Management report that recommends capping daily visitors at 1,000, implementing timed entry and advance reservations, and evaluating a public shuttle service to replace the recently shuttered private one.

Senterman welcomes the framework while pushing back on its most restrictive proposals, arguing that limiting public access to the forest preserve should be a last resort — not a first response. He also reflects on what the report misses: the history of the place, the unresolved dangers of pedestrian and car traffic along 23A, and the years of groundwork that preceded this process.

The public comment period closes June 1st. To read the report, search "Kaaterskill Falls Visitor Use Management" at dec.ny.gov. NYSDEC is accepting public feedback on the report through June 1, 2026 at ForestPreserve@dec.ny.gov.

After nearly 30 years wading Catskill streams, Dany Davis has learned that rivers don't just carry water — they carry time, memory, and if you're paying close enough attention, a few life lessons too. Now retiring as Stream Studies Coordinator for the NYC Department of Environmental Protection, Dany is heading home to Alaska, and he sat down with us to reflect on what the streams gave back.

On the banks of Warner Creek in Chichester, the conversation turns to geology, glaciers, and the surprisingly personal lessons a river can teach you. We trace the story of the Catskills from ancient Devonian forests to the last ice age to today's turbidity monitoring network. Dany also reflects on a life shaped by curiosity, transition, and the concept of connectivity that runs through both rivers and human community.

In this episode:

• How streams literally carved the Catskill Mountains
• The 380-million-year-old river sand beneath your feet
• Why Stony Clove Creek became the focus of New York City's water quality research
• What turbidity has to do with glacial legacy sediment
• Dany's personal journey through gender transition — and finding equilibrium
• What yellow birch trees mean to a retiring geologist
• The "Rondout to Resurrection" road trip through seven river basins on the way home to Alaska

Want to dial in to your own neighborhood stream? Head over to the USGS Water Dashboard for real time data!

For a hamlet of just a few hundred people, Pine Hill punches well above its weight. This week, Brett Barry visits the Pine Hill Community Center to mark its 25th anniversary — and to find out what it actually takes to keep a place like this alive.

The center's origin story is equal parts heartbreak and generosity. In 2000, a tragedy in the community prompted founders Florence and Bernie Hamling to transform Bernie's research and development space into somewhere people could simply come together. Twenty-five years later, it offers pottery classes, concerts, art exhibitions, a wellness program, a farmers market, a thrift shop, youth programs, and a weekly social circle — all out of a former eyeglass factory that was once a gas station.

Director Colleen McMurray, who joined during the pandemic amid an ongoing renovation, walks us through the building and breaks down how the center sustains itself: a mix of private donations, grant funding (including a state grant secured in 2023), and a remarkably productive thrift shop managed by volunteer Berns Rothchild.

Also featured: how the community itself has shaped nearly every program the center offers, what's coming next (a dementia social program, a second-floor expansion, and an elevator), and why Florence thinks other small towns struggle to replicate what Pine Hill has built.

More info and program schedules: http://pinehillcommunitycenter.org/

Recorded by production intern Sierra DeVito. Transcripts by Jerome Kazlauskas. Kaatscast is a production of Silver Hollow Audio.

Brett Barry visits Anna Plattner and Justin Wexler at their 95-acre forest farm in Cairo, New York, home base of Wild Hudson Valley — an educational organization dedicated to inspiring learning and building connection through shared experiences in nature, history, and wild foods.

Justin and Anna trace the origins of Wild Hudson Valley back to 2013, when Justin, freshly burned out from a master's in teaching at Bard College, found his way back to the woods and a fledgling idea for an environmental education business. A serendipitous encounter at a master naturalist training program brought Anna into the picture, and the two have been growing Wild Hudson Valley together — personally and professionally — ever since. In 2021, they took the leap to pursue it full-time, greatly expanding their offerings to include eco camping, foraging workshops, and the Wild Harvest Box, a monthly subscription of wild-harvested ingredients for adventurous home cooks.

The conversation covers a rich range of topics: the history and cultivation of American ginseng (the plant that first brought them together), the ecology of forest farming and why it requires so much more than just planting things and walking away, the role of invasive species and deer in disrupting native plant communities, and the concept of ecoliteracy — the ability to truly read a landscape. We also draw some fascinating connections between the work of 18th-century botanist John Bartram and what Wild Hudson Valley does today, from "boxes" of natural specimens to a deep respect for indigenous plant knowledge.

Brett, Justin, and Anna also dig into some of the surprising edibles hiding in plain sight — stinging nettles more nutritious than spinach, common milkweed with more uses than most people imagine, and sumac cones their kids lick like lollipops. And they share the quiet but meaningful work of hosting Lenape and Mohican people on ancestral homeland visits to the Catskills and Hudson Valley — a practice rooted in gratitude and reciprocity.

For information about Wild Hudson Valley's eco camp, foraging workshops, the Wild Harvest Box, and property consultations, visit http://wildhudsonvalley.com/.

And to hear a fun podcast about the life of John Bartram, check out Nature Calls: Conversations from the Hudson Valley, episode 115: John Bartram.

Kaatscast is a production of Silver Hollow Audio. Find us at http://kaatscast.com/ and on Instagram @kaatscast.

Production intern: Sierra DeVito. Transcriptionist: Jerome Kazlauskas.

In this episode, host Brett Barry joins Jan Jaffe, board president of Wellington Blueberry LLC, outside the shuttered Wellington Hotel on Main Street in Pine Hill, New York — a 12,000-square-foot, 19th-century landmark and one of the few remaining intact Catskill hotels that survived the era's notorious fires.

Jan shares the origin story of this ambitious community-driven project: how roughly 20 neighbors pooled resources in the fall of 2022 to purchase the long-vacant building. Their goal: rehabilitate the historic structure into 10 units of workforce housing (studios and one-bedrooms targeted at residents earning 60–80% of area median income) and a much-needed community grocery store.

Four years in, Wellington Blueberry has made remarkable pre-construction progress — clearing 60 dumpsters of debris, completing environmental review, obtaining all necessary permits, securing a letter of intent from Bank of America for historic tax credits, and earning a 2025 designation from the National Trust for Historic Preservation as one of America's 11 Most Endangered Historic Places. Their developer and construction manager is RUPCO, the region's leading nonprofit housing developer, and their architects are Albany preservation firm Thaler Riley Wilson.

But they're still at "the last mile" — approximately $1 million short of the full funding needed to break ground.

Topics covered:

• What workforce housing means and who it's designed to help
• How historic tax credits work and why they matter for this project
• The "Dagwood sandwich" of layered funding sources (grants from Restore NY, Ulster County, anonymous donors, and more)
• What the community has already accomplished — including two volunteer clean-up events with 40 people each
• Plans for a local grocery store serving both residents and visitors
• How prospective tenants will eventually apply via lottery

To learn more or donate, visit http://pinehillwellington.com/. Donations can currently be made through RUPCO's website.

Hoppy Quick has been chainsaw carving bears in the Catskills since 1979 — but he'll tell you he's not an artist. He's a spiritual being who found himself through the bear.

In this wide-ranging conversation, we visit Hoppy at his home in Samsonville — a converted 1951 school bus, a canvas teepee workshop, a crackling fire ring, and a horse named Ginny — and quickly discover that a conversation about whittling wood leads somewhere much deeper.

We talk about his 47-year search for the perfect bear face, carving as meditation, and what it means to live in grace. Hoppy shares the story behind the Heart Tribe, his COVID-era community of tens of thousands, and reflects on ego, fear, the divine feminine, AI, and why he believes the path forward is exactly 16 inches — from your head to your heart.

As the world seems to be straining at its seams, Hoppy emerges like a bear from the tree line — unexpected, unhurried, and offering a wise and grounding call to our higher selves.

Singer‑songwriter Steve Koester, the creative force behind Two Dark Birds, joins Brett in the Kaatscast studio for a deep, generous conversation about songwriting, place, and the long arc of making music in the Catskills. With the band’s fifth studio album, Dreamers of the Golden Dream, Vol. 1, arriving February 27, Steve reflects on the evolution of his sound—from full‑band records to quiet, introspective work and back again—and how living in the mountains continues to shape his writing.

Steve shares the origin story of Two Dark Birds, the move from New York City to the Catskills, the band’s shifting lineup, and the role of analog recording in a digital world. He talks about the emotional terrain behind songs like “Born to Fall,” “Good Boy Good,” and “Kid, I’m Fried,” and performs several tracks live in the studio.

The conversation also explores the realities of releasing music in 2026, the joys and limits of streaming platforms, the resurgence of vinyl, and the creation of Steve’s independent label, Vfib Records.

Music Featured

•

“Born to Fall” — live in studio

•

“Good Boy Good” — from Dreamers of the Golden Dream, Vol. 1

•

“Kid, I’m Fried” — live in studio

•

“Girl of Summer” — album track (closing)

Links & Resources

•

Two Dark Birds — ⁠⁠https://twodarkbirds.com⁠⁠

•

Vfib Recordings — ⁠⁠https://www.vfibrecordings.com⁠⁠

•

The Woods Studio (Todd Adelman) — ⁠⁠https://thewoods.studio⁠⁠

•

Bearsville Theater — ⁠⁠https://bearsvilletheater.com⁠⁠

Photo credit: Sam Erickson