Feb 28, 2025 Vio (V) and Chris (C) by Maria (M)
M: How long have you lived in Rosendale and in the area?
C: About a year and a half.
M: So far, what do you love about Rosendale?
C: Oh, so peaceful. People are happy. I don’t know, it’s just a beautiful, beautiful area out in the country.
V: I like the Main Street in Rosendale with the different shops and activities. We haven’t really had time to explore all of them, but we’d like to as we have more time. It has a good vibe. We love the rail trails around, the nature possibilities, the Spring Farm Trailhead, Mohonk, the whole area. The nature is very appealing to us.
M: I just took a break at lunch and went up Joppenburgh Mountain and came back down. It was just such a nice walk.
V: We’ve been exploring all those places. We love it.
M: Why are these things important to you?
V: I think that in our technology crazed society, people are actually craving to get back to nature. And actually craving peace. And also at the same time, craving community. With people, with each other.
C: I think nature is a healer too.
V: Nature is definitely the healer. We’ve experienced it in our own lives, the lives of our kids. As teachers, if we had crazy kids, we would take them out to the woods and play. And we would see dramatic results. That’s it in a nutshell.
M: Do you have any concerns or worries for Rosendale’s well-being?
C: We’ve seen lots of families with kids. They’re in Rosendale and they like to be there. Yeah.
V: It makes us very happy to see that. Yeah.
M: There are a bunch of young families now on Main Street. What ideas do you have for Rosendale? What would you like to see happen?
V: Well, because we’re both gardeners and we love growing flowers, our idea was to have planters and possibly coupled with Adirondack chairs. That would be a place where people could sit, relax, chat, bring people together and also enjoy a beautiful planter full of flowers. Someone who knows the city much better than us would have to pick the places.
M: You also mentioned earlier that you could see this as a form of traffic taming.
V: Yes. Not that we’re against the yellow signs, which cropped up last year. We wondered if we would have something in the town that would make people slow down because of the beauty of it. And then that would the signs.
C: And it would encourage people who have the frontage on the roads to make their properties nicer.
V: Yeah. It might even be something that businesses in Rosendale, or in other more populated places, would want to sponsor.
M: Exactly. That is the kind of thing that we’re hoping to put together.
V: It could have a Rosendale trademark, I think. If they’re made in Rosendale and not anywhere else. It would be kind of fun.
M: And any other thoughts that you have for Rosendale? Anything you’d like to see more of?
V: I like the idea of the music in the park. That’s really cool. Email would be a platform to inform people of what the different events are. Just that there’s some kind of platform where people are informed in the area of events.
M: Ulster County is starting an arts calendar.
M: They did a survey this last year about culture in Ulster County. And one of the things everybody asked for was a cultural calendar. So that’s a nice thing.
C: Traffic is a big concern for a lot of people. Route 213 is a big route out to 209, it’s a through route. That’s why it’s so busy. Trucks and everything.
M: Anything else?
V: I guess we’re still pretty new. So we’re still in the discovery stage. But it’s fun. The more people we can get to know the better. I mean, we’re really happy to, to branch out.
M: Well, it’s nice to have first impressions as well.
C: You know, I like to fish. Where is the river accessible? It seems like it’s all private.
M: Creek accessibility has been coming up over and over again because the areas where the creek is accessible have been diminishing.
