Dalvin Aboagye

The country’s appetite for entertainment boomed during the pandemic as life in lockdown without concerts, theaters and sporting events made streaming king.
Last year, the share of online streaming service subscribers grew by 50 percent, raising the status of industry giants like Netflix and Disney+ to household essentials. While some services like billionaire-bankrolled short-form mobile video platform Quibi failed to make their mark, streaming continues to muscle dominance over traditional c...

Two species of prickly pear cactus have adapted to thrive along the Hudson River.
With all the emphasis on native plants these days, you’d be forgiven for shaking your head when stumbling across a cactus on a local hike, assuming it’s not native. But here’s a surprise: two types of seemingly desert-ready cactus are adapted to thrive in the Hudson Valley. Parts of the region host two distinct species of prickly pear, the only cacti native to New York State.
The green spiked pads of these prick...

It’s never said nearly enough, but Black history — the successes and the suffering — is American history.
The Black men and women whose labor and lives have touched every corner of American life over the centuries deserve equal standing alongside the mythic tales surrounding white founding fathers and politicians. We’ve come a long way from Black stories only being told through the lens of trauma and powerlessness, but the work is far from over. And even narratives concerning the lowest momen...

When the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic brought the world to a grim standstill back in March 2020, 28-year-old Kallie Vangas’s life was among the many turned upside down after being infected. Day by day, Vangas’s case shifted from the usual fever and chills to more persistent problems like labored breathing and increased heart rate. For the first few months, her constant pleas from doctors were shrugged off as anxiety, even as her issues grew in frequency and ferocity.
“I struggled with ...

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...