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By Steven Levine Too often the question is asked in bars and parlors around the world, “Why is pop music so pop-ular?” I say too often because the answer is simple: quality mixing. People turn off the music when they … Continue reading
By Steven Levine
President Martin Van Buren is often credited with the etymology of the word “okay,” dating back to the 1840s and Van Buren’s old-boys’ political club, “Old Kinderhook.” (Most recently in the motion picture, Silver Linings Playbook) While no one has yet to offer conclusive evidence for this particular origin, you don’t need to look hard to offer proof for Old Kinderhook’s ineffable beauty.
Photo I snapped of my father standing in the center of a frozen Sleepy Hollow Lake, 30 miles South of Albany, NY, an exemplar of the landscapes that inspired countless American painters and authors such as Henry David Thoreau
What I’m talking about is an idyllic lake and the surrounding land nestled all-too-comfortably in the Hudson Valley, New York. This sort of land embodies the spirit of Henry David Thoreau, where giants from the past loom dauntingly in the State’s psyche. The likes of John D. Rockefeller, Theodore Roosevelt, and Cornelius Vanderbilt chose to spend their golden years in the rolling hills and expansive fields, overlooking dramatic mountains.
Carolers Caroling by Frederick Church’s Olana Mansion in Greene County, New York. Frederick church was an architect, philanthropist, engineer, among other things. Most famously he was a premier painter known for his successful attempts at painting rural New York. Picture credited to newyorkhistoryblog.org
I decided to join the ranks of these old, rich white men and move to the Valley for the winter months. Between meditative walks along frozen riverbeds and progressively miserable attempts at “artwork,” I managed to window shop for rustic antiques and at the end of the day I found myself imagining retiring here years later to spend my time arranging furniture in my stone castle overlooking the river, as Martin Van Buren surely did for his estate.
Atop Windham Mountain experiencing nirvana, or something akin to it. image taken by Steven Levine via Instagram
The trip cleared my head from the collateral noise of my manifestly cluttered city life. I finally had the space I didn’t know I craved to breathe in and out and think, ‘I’m O.K. at Old Kinderhook.’ Nothing could be better.
