The Great Lawn at Harmony Hall was mowed and groomed Friday afternoon as last minute preparations were being made for Sunday’s Highlands Bluegrass Festival, featuring the Rowan Cunningham Band.

With the Jacob Sloat house closed for on-going renovations, the festival will take place on the grounds of the historic Jacob Sloat house, where the Town of Ramapo’s mobile stage will be the center of Sunday’s attention. Vendors in colorful booths will line Harmony Hall’s walkways, selling crafts and other goods.

A community-oriented event, the Highlands Bluegrass Festival is sponsored by the Town of Ramapo and Friends of Harmony Hall, the Jacob Sloat house support group that helps manage the house and raises funds for the continuing renovation and restoration projects.

Sunday’s weather is expected to be more of the same — sunny with temperatures in the seventies. So, grab a friend and a blanket and follow the rooster down to Harmony Hall for an afternoon of sun, music and seeing the sights.

The Highlands Bluegrass Festival takes place Sunday, September 8, from 1 – 6 p.m. Additionally, the Sloatsburg Public Library will feature a display of Highlands-themed nature photographs by Harmony Hall Curator Geoff Welch.

The Highlands Bluegrass Festival is free and takes place at Harmony Hall in Sloatsburg, NY, Sunday, September 8, from 1 – 6 p.m.

Photo of the Highlands Bluegrass Festival rooster enjoying a live stage jam session courtesy of Geoff Welch.

Next to New City, the Village of Spring Valley has the largest population in Rockland County and straddles both the Towns of Ramapo and Clarkstown. Spring Valley is a microcosm of sorts of Ramapo itself, with a fast-growing Orthodox population and a mix of colors, ethnicities and beliefs. And just like many other towns and villages across the county, Spring Valley appears to be at a crossroads, with an entrenched political hierarchy that faces growing citizen clamor for change. The current Spring Valley mayor is running for re-election even while under federal indictment for public corruption. Newly built store fronts in the village have sat empty — some for years.  The following article excerpts Karben Copy and Ryan Karben’s colorful take on the Spring Valley mayoral race as it winds its way to the Tuesday, September 10, primary. 

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Ever so slowly the men and women who make up the Sloatsburg Volunteer Community Ambulance Corp are building a first rate emergency first responder outfit that can answer most any emergency.

Last year Thomas Lorenz III earned his Eagle Scout wings with a project at the SVAC that involved a complete renovation of the entire upstairs. Suddenly, the SVAC had a second-story meeting room that now hosts local scout meetings and other events.

Now the Sloatsburg Ambulance Corp is a finalist to win a coveted grand prize AmbuBus® conversion kit from First Line Technology, which develops, manufactures and supplies materials and equipment to first responders. One of 25 finalist currently competing in a First Line Technology Facebook contest, SVAC is up against other first responders from all across the country. The grand prize is the conversion kit that can transform any type of transit bus or larger vehicle into an ambulance for up to 18 people.

This is where the social and media connect with you. To win, SVAC needs to garner votes on First Line’s contest page. The process is simple: go to the First Line Vote Here page and in the upper right corner above the big purple arrow click the large Like button. A list of contest finalists should appear below. Find Sloatsburg Volunteer Ambulance Corp and vote for them.

Voting goes through September 20, with the winner scheduled to be announced October 1.

“What caught our attention was the sincerity of the nomination,” said Jennie Williams, Marketing Manager at the Chantilly, VA-based First Line. Williams said that the online nomination process contained two parts — one part related to how the AmbBus® would be used by the organization, with the second part concerned how much the organization “deserved” the conversion kit.

SVAC’s nomination hit all the right notes.

There is currently not a single resource like this between the 3 counties we border. We see less than 10 MCI’s a year but a tool like this could go mutual aid to MCI’s all over, it would be a great asset and would help us do our job to the best of our abilities providing superior patient care with the most state of the art equipment. I believe that we need to do more in preparing for such incidents considering we live 30 minutes outside of NYC and are 45 minutes from multiple smaller cities in Orange County, this AmbuBus would be an incredible asset to our arsenal of EMT’s who want to get out there and save lives. — excerpt from part of SVCAC nomination essay

The volunteers at SVAC did their part. First Line Technology is doing theirs. Now, the local community must put shoulder to the wheel and do its part: log in to the Facebook contest page and vote (only people not biz pages can vote).

Next week at this time it will be up early and off to school. And don’t forget those school lunches. Now parents can prepay for school lunches and track their kid’s lunch account — no more Jr. pitching pennies with his lunch money. The only hold-up might be the $1.95 that will be charged for each credit card transaction. Continue Reading

Well, it’s that time of the year to put your whites away as late summer and early fall is upon us – back to school and all.

The Sloatsburg Public Library has you covered with a full schedule of fall programming (you might have seen the latest Book & Beyond in the mail). Did you ever want to Tush Push or put on your duds and kick up your heels to the Virginia Reel? Now you can learn some fancy footwork by signing up for the library’s Line Dancing program. $20 gets you four Tuesday classes: September 17, 24, October 1 and the 8. Continue Reading

The Highlands Bluegrass rooster knows where it’s going. Do you?

Join the unofficial mascot of the Highlands Bluegrass Festival on the Great Lawn at Harmony Hall in Sloatsburg next Sunday, September 8, from 1 – 6 p.m. Throughout the festival the rooster can be spotting all around the festival, from the stage with musicians, on the lawn in the audience or most anywhere among the booths of various craft vendors who come from far and wide to take part in the annual festival.

Here the rooster visits with Friends of Harmony Hall President Barbara Berntsen and Friends board member Ken Linsner, known around these parts for his popular annual antiques roadshow event held at Harmony Hall — Got Treasure?

Take a moment to enjoy an interlude of scenes and sounds from the Highlands Bluegrass Festival in this original video by Jack Sinsabaugh (the video may take a moment to load due to the Animoto embed process).

http://animoto.com/play/3xOoZSroroSPv4lSifqbMg

The Highlands Bluegrass Festival is a Sloastsburg’s community event that draws people from throughout the Hudson Valley and relies on the support of the home crowd to help with it’s continued success.

Proceeds from the Highlands Bluegrass Festival go toward restoration of the historic Jacob Sloat House in Sloatsburg, which is on the National Registrar of Historic places.