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Highlands Current Audio Stories

Highlands Current Audio Stories

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The Highlands Current is a nonprofit weekly newspaper and daily website that covers Beacon, Cold Spring, Garrison, Nelsonville and Philipstown, New York, in the Hudson Highlands. This podcast includes select stories read aloud. Arte Política y Gobierno
Episodios
  • PCNR Stops Publishing

    PCNR Stops Publishing
    Apr 12 2026
    Cold Spring newspaper closes after 160 years
    The Putnam County News & Recorder, which was published weekly in Cold Spring for 160 years, has closed.
    The PCNR published its last print edition on Jan. 28 due to what the editor, Rick Pezzullo, at the time called "unforeseen circumstances." It continued to publish a digital edition, but that did not appear on April 8, and the paper's website has not been updated since April 2.
    The weekly had been published since April 2024 by a Carmel-based company called Putnam Media Inc. Its owners were described as "a group of Putnam County citizens" but never identified. The company purchased The PCNR and The Putnam County Courier, based in Brewster, from Douglas Cunningham, their former editor.
    A source said the investment group voted, 14-2, to dissolve Putnam Media Inc. as of March 31. On April 6, Eric Gross, the senior reporter for The PCNR and Courier, joined Mid Hudson News as its Putnam County bureau chief.
    Kathy Kahng, a Kent resident who was identified after the 2024 sale as the papers' general manager, did not return a phone call or email seeking comment.
    The loss of the two papers reflects a national trend. According to the State of Local News, a report compiled by Northwestern University, nearly 40 percent of local newspapers have vanished in the past 20 years. That represents at least 3,400 titles, including 130 in 2025. Newspapers have been hit hard by competition from Facebook and Google for local advertisers.
    The PCNR dated to March 1866, when Charles Blanchard founded The Cold Spring Recorder, promising readers "a family journal devoted to the dissemination of general and local news, and the impartial discussion of questions of public interest."
    He sold the paper in 1867 to a group of residents who appointed the village postmaster, Sylvester Beers Allis, as editor. Nearly 20 years later, in 1886, a county history reported that The Recorder, now owned by Allis, was "independent in politics, fearless in expression of opinion and has an extensive circulation."
    After Allis died in 1891, his heirs sold the paper to Irving McCoy, who ran it for 15 years before handing the operation to Otis Montrose, the principal of the Cold Spring school. Montrose ran The Recorder for 29 years; after his death, it passed to W. Osborn Webb, owner of the upstart Putnam County News, who merged the two publications and sold The PCNR in 1939 to pursue a graduate degree in journalism. (According to his obituary, in 1946 Webb was among the founders of the Central Intelligence Agency.)
    Jack Ladue, the next owner, ran The PCNR for 44 years until his retirement in 1983. In 1965, ahead of its centennial, he added the motto to the front page — "We are 100 Years Old — But New Every Wednesday." Ladue sold the paper to Robert Ingram, who ran it for 13 years before Brian O'Donnell took over in 1996.
    In 2008, Roger Ailes, the founder of Fox News, and his wife, Elizabeth, who owned a home in Philipstown, purchased The PCNR. Soon after, they added The Courier, which began in the 1840s but had gone bankrupt six weeks earlier. In 2016, after Ailes was accused of sexual misconduct and forced out at Fox, the couple sold both titles to Cunningham.
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    4 m
  • Philipstown Updates Immigration Policy

    Philipstown Updates Immigration Policy
    Apr 12 2026
    Requires feds to provide judicial warrant
    A policy passed in 2017 to forbid Philipstown employees from participating in immigration enforcement has been revised to specify that access to personal data and town facilities is banned without a judicial warrant or court order.
    An ad hoc committee's changes to the town's "equal protection" policy were unanimously approved by the Town Board on Thursday (April 9). The policy bans town employees and contractors from collecting information about immigration status or disclosing personal information such as names, addresses and Social Security numbers, without an order or warrant from a federal judge.
    It also bars officers from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and other federal agencies from nonpublic areas without a warrant or court order. If an employee is served with a judicial or an administrative warrant — documents issued by the agencies without a judge's signature — they are not to allow access to data or nonpublic areas. Instead, they must give the warrant to the town clerk, who will notify the supervisor and town attorney.
    Judy Farrell, a member of the Town Board, suggested the revision in February. At that time, she said the new language was designed to protect personal data, not immigration status, which the town does not collect. "It's about requiring judicial process, which residents are entitled to under the Constitution, and to make sure our town staff aren't sharing residents' information," she said.
    Following Supervisor John Van Tassel's recommendation, the policy will take effect in June to allow training for town employees. "I don't think it's fair to put an employee in a position that they're going to implement a policy without prior training to the actual policy," he said.
    Philipstown's original equal-protection policy passed, by a 3-2 vote, in April 2017, with "no" votes from Van Tassel, then a councilor, and Bob Flaherty, who voted on Thursday for the revised guidance. It similarly barred town employees from aiding immigration investigations or arrests unless required by state or federal law or a judge's order.
    That same month, the Beacon City Council approved a policy limiting cooperation with federal immigration authorities, and declaring the city to be "welcoming, safe and inclusive." Both policies were enacted amid heightened immigration enforcement during President Donald Trump's first term. Philipstown's revision comes as Trump expands deportations in his second term.
    In January 2025, the state attorney general, Letitia James, issued guidance that noted federal law does not require a local government to communicate with immigration authorities, but that a federal statute says municipalities cannot prevent employees "from sending to, or receiving from" them information regarding someone's citizenship or immigration status. Nothing prevents governments from withholding other information, said James.
    Federal officials say restrictions imposed by state and local governments, which they designate as "sanctuary" jurisdictions, hinder the capture and deportation of dangerous criminals.
    Immigration arrests have more than quadrupled, and deportations have risen fivefold, during the first year of Trump's second term, according to a report this month from the Deportation Data Project, a team of academics and lawyers who obtain and analyze immigration data.
    While the Trump administration says it is focused on criminals (entering the country without legal authorization is a civil offense), the arrests of people without criminal convictions increased eightfold, according to the report.
    Food-scrap recycling
    Jeff Mikkelson, advocacy chair for the Cold Spring Chamber of Commerce and a member of the town's Climate Smart Task Force, asked if Philipstown would be the fiscal sponsor if an application for a grant to expand the residential food scraps recycling program to businesses is successful.
    A $6,000 grant from Williams College has enabled a startup commercial pr...
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    5 m
  • Looking Back in Philipstown

    Looking Back in Philipstown
    Apr 11 2026

    250 Years Ago (April 1776)
    On April 2, George Washington wrote from his headquarters near Boston to Brig. Benedict Arnold: "The chief part of the troops are marched from hence towards New York. I will set off tomorrow." The general was concerned that the British, who had evacuated Boston, were headed to New York City.
    On April 13, after traveling nine days by horseback, Washington and three aides arrived in New York. He made his headquarters at Richmond Hill, a 26-acre estate located in what is now Greenwich Village.

    It was during his stay that the New York governor and the New York City mayor, both loyalists, plotted to capture and/or kill Washington with assistance from his bodyguards. The plotters had loose lips, however, and the alleged ringleader, Thomas Hickey, was hanged. "The discovery of this plot, and the effort to investigate it, led colonial authorities to devise new systems" that today would be called counterintelligence, wrote Brad Meltzer and Josh Mensch in The First Conspiracy.
    On April 19, Washington wrote to Congress reporting that four regiments ordered to march from Boston to defend New York had not left because their colonels had not arranged for them to be paid. He lamented the lack of trained officers.
    On April 22, Washington left for Philadelphia to consult with Congress about the defense of New York.
    On April 29, the Iroquois complained that there were not enough traders to meet their needs for blankets, clothing and ammunition and called for a meeting with the Americans at Albany. Most sachems remained neutral about the war, but this lack of trade goods would push some to side with the British.
    150 Years Ago (April 1876)
    William Jaycox reported that, after a 9-inch snowfall on April 5, sleighing was good on the old post road. In the village, the snow melted by evening.
    Stephen Davenport, "among the few of our old men who retained a good memory of the past half century," according to The Cold Spring Recorder, died at age 76 after complaining of a headache at breakfast.
    After a hoghead of molasses being unloaded at J.Y. Dykeman's store in Nelsonville broke open, "most of the sweet stuff was wasted on the ungrateful soil," according to The Recorder.
    A prisoner escaped from the county jail in Carmel by taking the place of the boy who usually delivered the coal to heat the jail overnight. The jailer discovered the escape when he woke up in the cold.
    John Brady broke his leg when he was thrown from his wagon near Garden Street. His horse was spooked by a boy rolling a barrel.
    The Recorder noted that "a fine goat which has grown fat and kept itself in fine condition by stealing all about the village was shot, somewhere downtown, on Tuesday afternoon. … We could not avoid sorrow at the creature's dying moans, but could not say that its death was unjust."
    A one-armed traveling cornet player performed on Main Street for tips.
    After a Saturday night stop at Fishkill Landing, the Van Amburgh & Co. circus paraded into Cold Spring with an elephant, camel and a lion in a cage on Monday morning for a performance later in the day.

    Standing a few rods from the West Point Foundry, a group of 12 men, including Robert Parrott, Capt. Ottinger and Colin Tolmie Jr., a clerk, observed test firings of projectiles designed for the Coast Life Saving service. After a successful first shot, Tolmie was instructed to add 4 more ounces of gunpowder. During its flight, the second projectile exploded, sending a 60-pound fragment into the men, who were standing 40 feet away. Tolmie, 46, was struck in the head and killed instantly. Tolmie had worked at the foundry for nearly 30 years; he came to Cold Spring at age 9 when his father was hired to supervise the forging department, and he was apprenticed at age 17.
    Peter Louis, a Frenchman who lived on Bank Street and had fought as a sharpshooter in the Civil War, worked at the foundry pattern shop until a leg disease forced him to become a peddler. He and Charles Hines were returning ...
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    12 m
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