Dalvin Aboagye

Spring rambles offer the perfect chance to find some of the Hudson Valley's elusive woodland wildflowers.
The Valley may not host showy fields of tulips or bluebonnets. Yet for the hikers, painters, students, explorers, photographers and general observers among us, spring offers something compelling: a special crop of wildflowers that we can spot only for a limited window.
In just a little over two months, spring ephemerals soak up all the nutrients and sun they can before most trees manage t...

The natural gardening movement, with roots in the Hudson Valley 3 decades ago, is taking on new life to support biodiversity.
Like many, Millbrook resident Liselotte Vince earned her green thumb as a kid years ago, when beauty was the big goal. Whatever perennials or annuals caught her mother’s eye found a spot in their yard. “I don’t think a lot of attention was paid to what kind of plants we were using,” Vince says. “You kind of just bought what was available or appealed to you at the nurse...

Powerhouse cutters like the Penobscot Bay keep the river's shipping lanes safe and clear.
It’s almost unbelievable now to imagine that there was a point during the early 20th century when cars could zip across the solid surface of the frozen river from Nyack to Tarrytown with ease. While the river probably won’t freeze over completely this year, with temperatures in the teens on several February afternoons, there’s still plenty of ice to go around in the waters between Poughkeepsie and Sauger...

What does resident relief and equity look like to those crunching the numbers?
Asset managers who oversee the finances of an affordable housing stock for about 5 million households have had to reevaluate every aspect of their workflows in response to the economic and operational risks associated with the COVID-19 pandemic. Unlike their counterparts who oversee the portfolios of market-rate housing developments, both for-profit and nonprofit affordable housing providers must maintain cash flow...

This is the final part of a four-part series published in partnership with Scenic Hudson.org’s HV Viewfinder.
Sometimes we’re told change will take decades, even generations. Then world-shaking events like the COVID-19 pandemic show us it really can happen in a hurry. Such is the case with climate change—too often, we’ve been told that altering our approach to energy, agriculture, and everything else associated with making our world more sustainable will have to be incremental. Suddenly, this...

This is part one of a four-part series published in partnership with Scenic Hudson’s HV Viewfinder.
Sometimes we’re told change will take decades, even generations. Then world-shaking events like the COVID-19 pandemic show us it really can happen in a hurry. Such is the case with climate change—too often, we’ve been told that altering our approach to energy, agriculture, and everything else associated with making our world more sustainable will have to be incremental. Suddenly, this year we s...

David, whose name has been changed to protect his privacy, sat facing the rest of the circle and began to speak. He remained uninterrupted for several minutes as the five others seated in the room—one of whom was his mother—listened intently, staring at him through masked faces. The blue polka-dotted carpet and clean white walls conjured the image of a therapist’s office, but between the respectful atmosphere and the circular arrangement of the chairs, the whole affair felt more like a suppor...

For generations, the canopies provided by the Eastern hemlock trees have been integral to the Empire State’s forest ecosystems. Although more plentiful in the Adirondacks, the Catskills and Hudson Valley area also host the needled evergreen — the Eastern hemlock is the third most common tree in the region.
As centuries have gone by and the inhabitants of the area have changed, the hemlocks have weathered all nature has had to offer, until now. Swaths of Eastern hemlocks in New York State have...

Sobering fact: the energy needed to heat, cool and power all U.S. homes accounts for 20% of national emissions. While we keep nominally improving our boxy domiciles, some have abandoned the modern home model in favor of living within the Earth itself. The idea first got attention during the environmental movement of the 1970s and 80s, especially taking hold in the Southwest. Yet earth-sheltered homes have been around for centuries, and all over; early human settlements and Indigenous groups u...

From Kansas City's overlooked mob past to the Black gamblers who funded their communities while staving off both the mafia and the cops.
“Here’s the thing about America: The minute you relax and fatten up, somebody hungrier is gonna come along looking for a piece of your pie,” the precocious teen Ethelrida Pearl Smutney (E'myri Crutchfield) narrates during the first tense face-off in the first episode of the fourth season of FX's irreverent crime anthology series Fargo, set between Don Donate...

The last thing Helen wanted was to be alone.
Despite her husband being asleep in the other room, Helen, who uses drugs intravenously, knew the risks associated with using heroin solo if something went south. (Her name has been changed to protect her privacy.) Her two-year pathway to addiction had followed the same trajectory as thousands of other Americans: after developing a dependency to prescription painkillers after a surgery, she started using harder drugs to stave off the symptoms of wi...

The coronavirus pandemic, the subsequent transition to telework, and sky-high costs of city living have led some young American professionals to depart from major metropolitan hubs for America’s rural and suburban communities. Businesses are rethinking the necessity of the office.
Christopher Ingraham, a data reporter originally from upstate New York, found himself in a similar position–albeit several years ago. In 2015, Ingraham was based in Washington, D.C. He penned an article at the Washi...

Amid the brick and brownstone homes of Hudson, Nkoula Badila is teaching fellow residents within the city’s communities of color to sow seeds of green.
After launching a GoFundMe campaign in June, Badila’s community gardening initiative, Grow Black Hudson, shot past the initial $10,000 funding goal within 6 days. It amassed an extra $3,000 that’ll let organizers gather more supplies, plants and seeds. Thanks to this funding, plus in-kind donations, Badila and fellow community members have alr...

After months of lockdown limbo, gyms and fitness centers in New York State are beginning to reopen. The pandemic drove millions to shift exercise outside, to parks and beyond, in the meantime. Experts say those healthy new habits have been beneficial — not only for health, but for public access, community ties, and climate change. Will they last?
For many, a good chunk of quarantine has been spent breaking out their old pair of running shoes or revisiting old grade-school gym class exercises ...

As Kathy Stevens sits in the shade contemplating the Catskill Animal Sanctuary’s next move, she loses her train of thought at the sight of a few goats approaching. She beams at each of their bleats. The four young recent rescues — Levi, Chester, Molly and Arlo — rush at her, licking her face and nibbling at her clothes like housebound dogs excited to have their owners back home.
“You always want people to have this,” says Stevens, the founder of the Saugerties-based sanctuary. For the last tw...