Beacon Dispatch

Beacon Voices: Michael Benzer and Jennifer Smith

by Ellen Timmer

ET: This facility is pretty impressive. Can you tell me what you do here?

MB: We make glass for Hudson Beach Glass, as well as for Architectural Glass and Beacon Glass Works. The products that we make under the Hudson Beach Glass name are some of the products at the firehouse gallery on Main Street.

ET: Can you tell me a little bit about the manufacturing process?

MB: The day to day processes is a lot like a foundry; we cast each piece individually. However, our molds are reusable so we don’t have to make a new mold every time. After the glass is made, we spend our time on secondary processes like sandblasting and finishing and then packing and shipping.

Beacon Voices: Michelle Rhone-Collins

Community Builder

by Nell Timmer

On a beautiful, early fall day I sat down in the playground of the Beacon Community Center to talk with Michelle Rhone-Collins, the new director, about the past, present and future of the center.

ET: So, you are the new director of the Beacon Community Center. What is this place?

MR-C: Well, it is a wonderful facility with different activities for, primarily, right now, young people—for their out-of-school time—and older adults. So, we are open every day after school for kids to come by and participate in some academic enrichment activities and some arts and recreational activities. And a couple of mornings a week there is time for older adults to come by and take yoga, exercise classes, art classes, and workshops.  Part of my work as the new director is to broaden the scope of programming so that we can include more activities for toddlers, parent support groups, especially for new parents. That was something that was very helpful for me as a new mother. I would also like to see some adult workshops in areas that folks are interested in, from budgeting to gift wrapping. And, some more comprehensive programming for teens as well.

ET: How long has the Beacon Community Center been in existence?

MR-C: It has been in existence for over 40 years, since 1965. Families have attended the BCC for generations yet there are many people who are not aware of its existence or its location. I want that to change and for people to see this as a really active resource for the community.

Beacon Voices: Kamal Alassal

by Kate Fraher

Kamal Alassal, proprietor of Dr. K Imported Car Service & Repair, is a local mechanic who came to Beacon from Lebanon, by way of Manhattan and Briarcliff. He stepped away from his work on a 1971 Maserati to talk about his business, the growth of Beacon, and war in Lebanon.

Beacon Voices: Jim Eve

by Jack Sine

While everyone knows about the growth of the arts community in Beacon, few are aware that the art of the written word also flourishes here, thanks mainly to the efforts of one man – Jim Eve.

Jim has a long background in poetry having honed his poetic skills at the Second Sunday Poetry Group and The Hudson Valley Writers Association, both in Poughkeepsie. He has been the featured poet at poetry reading venues all over the tri-state area and has had his work published in several poetry journals.

When Jim joined the board of directors of the Howland Cultural Center he saw an opportunity to bring poetry to Beacon and started a poetry reading group of his own titled “Calling All Poets”. It meets the second Friday of every month at the Howland Center and features well known poets from the tri-state area. It also provides open mike time for aspiring poets to read their poetry.

We recently had an opportunity to sit down with Jim and ask him about his poetic background.

Beacon Voices: Dan Fisherman, “Grease Monkey”

by Michael Daecher

With gas prices hovering around $3 per gallon, many people are wondering how they can save money at the pump. Dan Fisherman, computer programmer and teacher of math and science at the Randolph School, has found an interesting way to get around that. He converted his car engine to run on vegetable oil instead traditional gasoline. That’s right, the next time you eat at the Sukhothai Restaurant, the waste oil used to cook your food will soon be used to power Dan’s 1982 Mercedes-Benz.

Using vegetable oil to power diesel engines is not a new idea. In fact, at the 1900 World’s Fair, Rudolph Diesel used peanut oil when demonstrating his new engine, and encouraged farmers to grow their own energy source. Now “grease cars”, vehicles that have been converted to run on straight vegetable oil, are becoming more common.

Dan, his wife Jenn Clapp, 9-year-old son Noam, and 5-year-old daughter Eva moved to the Mid Hudson Valley in 2002. After a year living in Wappingers, they moved to Beacon, where they currently reside. Originally from New York City, Dan is not a gear head. In fact, he knew very little about car engines before he decided to embark on this adventure. I recently sat down with him to talk about how it all works.

Beacon Voices: Irina Mozyleva, Opera Singer

by Michael Daecher

The first time I saw Irina Mozyleva sing was a few years ago at the Alagash coffee house on Main Street here in Beacon. A friend and I saw her perform a recital of traditional Russian folk songs for an audience of about 25-30 people. I could fit the amount I know about opera into a Dixie cup, but talent like hers moves you fundamentally. As comfortable covering American musical numbers as she is belting out Shostakovich, Irina has made Beacon her home.

Over the next few months she’s planning several performances as part of her “History Through Song” series, the first of which will be on Saturday, May 7, at the Howland Cultural Center. It seems fitting that Beacon, which has become home to so many great visual artists, can also accommodate great musical talent. The Howland Center has become one of Irina’s favorite places to perform in the world. The songs she chooses to perform tell the story of her life growing up in Russia and also reflect her experience as an American immigrant. As an independent artist Irena has found a way to balance her work with her family, which includes her husband, architect Aryeh Siegel, and their 7-year-old daughter Lia. In articulate but heavily accented English, she tells an extraordinary story of growing up in the Soviet Union and making her way to America through song. 

Beacon Voices: Abdullah Wajid, Imam

by Michael Daecher

Sitting on Main Street, across from the post office, is Beacon’s Masjid Ar Rasheed Islamic Teaching Center. The building serves as a community center and mosque for about 200 Muslim families in town. You may not have noticed the mosque itself on Main Street, but you may have heard the distinctive call to prayer reminding all Muslims to bow towards Mecca and pray.

When I moved to Beacon four years ago, the call to prayer was one of the first things I heard. Along with the bells of St. John’s church, it was a reminder of how important faith is to so many people living in Beacon. Since then I’ve heard sporadic reports of vandalism and harassment at the mosque. But after speaking with Imam Abdullah Wajid, I found that those incidents have done nothing to shake his faith in Islam or in his non-Muslim neighbors.

Beacon Voices: Mr. Albert Bell, Barber

by Michael Daecher

The tv was tuned into the Iowa / Minnesota football game on a sunny Saturday afternoon in mid-November. Iowa was killing, but few of the customers seemed to notice. Above the tv a hand-written sign quoted the Bible, “In all these ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thee” and signed photos of semi-famous locals and knick knacks from 16 years in business cluttered the walls. I sat in the back of the Main Street Beauty Shop and watched as the proprietor of the shop, Albert Bell, played an animated game of checkers with a friend. From the looks of it, they’d played a few times before. But Mr. Bell (all the people in the shop call him that) showed me a tally sheet proving he held the advantage over time.

There are three generations of barbers cutting hair at the Main Street Beauty Shop: Albert, his son Michael Sr., and his grandson Michael Jr. They run a successful business, and have done for many years. All were busy clipping, shaving, chatting, and listening (yes, barbers are like bartenders in that way.) During my all too brief visit, Mr. Bell sat with me and shared his philosophy of biweekly haircuts and a good shave.

Beacon Voices: Edwin Lee Gibson, "Actor-vist"

by Michael Daecher

The waiter approached our table, “We only have ‘Plantation’ rum, sir.”

Edwin laughed, “Now how are you gonna offer a brother a drink with a name like that? Come on!” He then left the waiter off the hook and placed his order.

Edwin Lee Gibson is an actor who believes strongly in speaking his mind. Maybe that’s what makes him so popular with the kids. I first encountered Edwin more than a year ago at the first community meeting to discuss the Beacon Master Plan. There he asked some tough questions about how people outside of the meeting would be involved. One of the few African Americans in attendance, he may have made some people feel uncomfortable about starting such an ambitious project without input from the entire community. Rightfully so.

Over the past six weeks you could have found Edwin reading and acting out stories for small children, such as “The Lorax” and Shel Silverstein’s “The Giving Tree.” Edwin and his theater partner Daphne Richards created the program, which they call The Petry Dish, as a prelude to a larger community theater project. With a strong commitment to community, keen intellect, and an easy laugh, Edwin may be one of the few people that could bring people onto the stage who have never set foot in a theater. I sat down with Edwin over drinks at a steak house in Fishkill to talk about how he made it to Beacon, and why he feels that theater is critical to our future as a city.

Beacon Voices: Buddha Heroes

by Michael Daecher

If you’re a regular shopper at Beacon’s Key Foods, you’ve undoubtedly met Alex Campone, the congenial cashier with tattooed arms and a shaggy mop of black hair. He started working part-time at the grocery store while a student at Beacon High   School. Now that he’s graduated, he’s starting his first year at Dutchess Community College and working to support his passion, playing in the local punk band Buddha Heroes.

Alex and his buddies Mark and Rob are the core of the Buddha Heroes, a band whose sound some compare to the Southern California punk scene of the early 1980’s. Listening to their demo, you can certainly hear early Social Distortion or Agent Orange, but the Buddha Heroes are not interested in comparisons.

Download the Buddha Heroes' MP3 "Wavin in the Sun"

I learned about Alex’s alter ego after seeing him behind the wheel of his multi-colored van, a 1987 Chevy with about 150,000 miles on the engine. Like something from a psychedelic A-Team episode, the van will be the band’s home as they tour the Northeast and beyond to build their audience one club at a time. The Buddha Heroes just came off consecutive shows at Club Crannell Street in Poughkeepsie and the Continental in Manhattan. I was able to catch up with Alex C., Mark P., Rob C., and their good friend Derrick at Mark’s parents’ house here in Beacon late one weekday night in late August (bass player Clark E. couldn’t make the interview.)