By Tina Traster

‘It sounds like you’re planning a bat mitzvah,” my friend Monica said when I described the surprise party I was throwing for my soon-to-be 8-year-old.

“Oh no,” I assured her, a bit defensively. “It’s just a garden-variety garden party.”

Don’t you think the phrase “garden party” classes up an event? Maybe it’s those lingering images of Jay Gatsby’s lavish Long Island lawn affairs that get me. Catered food. Flowy dresses. A sun-drenched day slipping away into oblivion. So genteel!

Yes, throwing a garden party had been near the top of my bucket list forever.

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by Tina Traster

Everyone said owning chickens is great but you’ve got to watch out for predators. I took this to heart because we share our wooded mountaintop home with hawks, raccoons, foxes and feral cats.

I bought a custom-made coop from a guy who builds them in Michigan. The little green, wooden house has screened windows, a door with a hasp, and a hatch that lifts open to the nesting box where you collect eggs. The run, which is attached to the house, is made up of two wood-framed galvanized wire triangles that form an airtight enclosure.

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by Tina Traster

Spring at my house is like a duel in an old western. My husband wields the Home Depot catalog, packed with tons of stuff for DIY backyard projects. My weapon of choice is the Crate & Barrel catalog, loaded with staged backyard idylls that make me want to reach for the lemonade pitcher.

Funny thing is, we don’t really have a back yard. We have land behind our house; in fact, it’s nearly three-quarters of an acre. But we don’t use it; it’s inaccessible.

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by Dave Zornow

Why is Ely, Minnesota cooler than Nyack, NY? Let me count the reasons: 94,917 to be exact. That’s how many more votes Ely has than Nyack in BudgetTravel.com‘s online poll to determine the Coolest Small Town in America.

Now, I’d hate to accuse this former mining outpost on the Canadian border of stuffing the ballot box, but this little town with a big chamber of commerce has almost 26 times as many votes as it has residents (2,000 census 3,724).

BudgetTravel.com says a “cool small town” must fewer than 10,000 people and has to be on the upswing. “It’s a place that’s beginning to draw attention and new residents because of the quality of life, arts and restaurant scene, or proximity to nature,” says BudgetTravel. “And cool doesn’t mean quaint. We want towns with an edge, so think avant-garde galleries, not country stores.”

Ely may outnumber Nyack in bears, but we outnumber them in bars. In fact, we even have a bar named after a black bear. They can’t touch us in the arts and the Hudson and the Palisades round out our nature pedigree.

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by Tina Traster

My friend’s husband Paul came over to cut down trees in the woods behind our house. He arrived with a gas-powered chainsaw, an electric chainsaw, soundproofing earmuffs and protective eyeglasses. My husband, misty-eyed, watched him unload his Jeep. Then they shared a manly handshake.

“I want to get rid of that one, those two over there, and that big one over there is dead, so let’s take it down, too,” I said to Paul. Continue reading →

by Christina Cabot

Nyack, April 15 — It’s a day when the collective groan of a tax-paying society can be heard from every corner. Perhaps George Harrison said it best in the song “Taxman” when he sang, “If 5% appears to small, be thankful I don’t take it all.”

Now to be fair, I’ve found that this year, I know more people pleased with the outcome of their tax filing than I can remember in the recent past.  But still, the whole endeavor is a stress-inducing one.  I caught myself fantasizing this morning about a tropical getaway that included lots of spa services – or at the very least a trip to Koblin’s to find me some bath oil and aromatherapy candles.  In fact, Nyack seems to offer a plethora of options for those either celebrating a pending refund, or trying to forget the check they have to send by 11:59 pm tonight.
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April 1, 2010 — Here’s a link to the April 1 “not necessarily the news”  NyackNewsAndViews.

Stories from the new Republic of Nyack included coverage of a contagious onomatopoeia pandemic, Tofu farmer woes, Faber College’s plan to open a Nyack campus and Carnival Cruises dropping anchor in the Port of Upper Nyack.

“Only two months up and running, Café Barcel, in Nyack, seems to have established a sweet compact with locals,” writes Alice Gabriel in the NY Times. She offers high praise for the restaurant’s buñuelos and the rest of the restaurant’s Latin fusion fare. Continue reading →

by J.C. Brotherhood

Driving home from work on Main St. in the early morning I spied a flock of Puffing Beer Grebes harassing a female VodkaDuck in all her winter plumage. It occurred to me she wasn’t objecting very strenuously to their raucous attention.

Next to them were a couple of Rosy Billed Rum Suckers and a Scotch Hawk trying to keep warm (though by the color of the Rum Suckers beaks it didn’t appear they were in danger of freezing to death anytime soon).

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Happy Thanksgiving.

And a tip of the hat (if not of the hatchet) to the MTA for this LOL-able poster.

Have a Tryptophantastic day and safe travels wherever you may go.