Community Calendar

Embark on a tranquil midweek journey through LongHouse Reserve's 16-acre sculpture garden and nature sanctuary. In these weekly walks, expert docent Irwin Levy leads an intimate, hour-plus long tour that delves into the harmonious blend of art, design, and nature created and curated by founder Jack Lenor Larsen.

Suketu Mehta, author of This Land is Our Land: An Immigrant’s Manifesto, will speak at Opalka Gallery in collaboration with the NYS Writers Institute in recognition of Constitution Day. Earlier event at 4:30pm at UAlbany Performing Arts Center.

Now an Associate Professor of Journalism at New York University, Suketu Mehta is an award-winning author who focuses on global migration inspired from personal experience as an immigrant in his acclaimed book This Land is Our Land – named by The Times as one of the 100 Must-Read Books of 2019 and one of the 10 Best Nonfiction Books of 2019. He is also the author of the acclaimed “Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found,” which won the Kiriyama Prize and the Hutch Crossword Award and was a finalist for many others, including the 2005 Pulitzer Prize.

’This Land Is Our Land’ reads like an impassioned survey course on migration, laying bare the origins of mass migration in searing clarity.” —The New York Times

Mehta speaks at Opalka Gallery in collaboration with the NYS Writers Institute.

This event is free but please register in advance through the Opalka Gallery website.

Savage Wonder Art Center presents THE TRIAL by Franz Kafka, adapted from the German and directed by Christopher Paul Meyer, four Saturdays in September. Five actors play twenty-five parts. Doors at 6 p.m. for dinner, cocktails and live music; performance at 7 p.m. Fifty dollars, all-inclusive. September 5, 12, 19 and 26 at 141 Main Street, Beacon

Read + Hike Book Club is returning! Come discuss themes of ecology and humanity’s relationship with nature with other book and nature lovers in our reading and hiking club! Each month we will go on a leisurely hike with stopping points for book discussion. Some months will have guest lecturers. Participants may choose to come to all the meetings, some meetings, or just one!

September Book: Our Green Heart, the Soul and Science of Forests by Diana Beresford-Kroeger

HYBRID. How do we find purpose in life? Some people find that in religion, which leads to community and a moral code. People who are not religious also need a place to socialize, people with similar views to talk to and a moral code to live by. I will give a short HYBRID talk to explain how humanism does the same without a supernatural being telling us what to do. I will also talk about the American history of humanism. Then I will ask the humanists who are present live or on Zoom to explain how they came to humanism

Embark on a tranquil midweek journey through LongHouse Reserve's 16-acre sculpture garden and nature sanctuary. In these weekly walks, expert docent Irwin Levy leads an intimate, hour-plus long tour that delves into the harmonious blend of art, design, and nature created and curated by founder Jack Lenor Larsen.

A special talk on the wonderful word of mushrooms for the John Cage Mycological Foray!

Join us at the John Cage Trust for an exploration into the funky and fascinating world of Fungal Relationships and build on your Ecological Literacy!

Fungi are amazing ecological facilitators! They form some of the most interesting relationships and partner with a wide variety of organisms. These associations can be mutualistic, or one organism may benefit while the other seems unaffected, but some relationships are downright parasitic (which is not always negative)!

The talk will be given by Luke Sarrantonio as part of the John Cage Mycological Foray at Bard College (click the link for the compete schedule of free events).

Luke Sarrantonio has had a dynamic career in Mycology (15+ years), developing ecology and cultivation-based educational programs, organizing an annual mushroom and arts festival (For the Love of Fungi), community projects, and a line of functional mushroom products (under the name Mycophilic). His most recent projects include an outdoor mushroom farm and teaching space with his partner Kaya, at their farm in Accord, NY (Eat Flowers Farm), and a community project called Eat More Mushrooms. He also offers mentorships and private classes.

The NYS Writers Institute's ninth annual Albany Book Festival returns to the University at Albany on Saturday, Sept. 26. Featured guests include:

• Elizabeth Kolbert, Pulitzer Prize-winning environmental writer
• Carol Gilligan, pioneering feminist scholar
• Gish Jen, acclaimed novelist
• Keith McNally, restaurateur and memoirist
• Namwali Serpell, award-winning novelist and critic (On Morrison)
• Arash Azizi, political analyst (What Iranians Want)
• Porochista Khakpour, acclaimed novelist (Tehrangeles: A Novel)
• John Katzenbach, bestselling thriller writer (The Architect)
• Megan Nolan, Irish novelist (Ordinary Human Failings)

Festival discussions will explore topics including climate, memoir, fiction, food, history and contemporary social issues, with additional guests and events to be announced.

Albany Book Festival
10:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 26
University at Albany Uptown Campus, 1400 Washington Ave.
Free and open to the public. No registration required.

All my work begins with observation from nature. I want to know what lies behind the forms and textures –the marks of time and experience written into everything from fossils and rock formations to plants and trees.

My drawings and sculptures are partners in crime and dancing partners. Drawing involves investigative mark-making and sculpture is a form of physical thinking. The combination is a material proposition that invites you to look at the world in a completely different way, to escape words and communicate in a physical way.

Rather than working realistically, I'd rather look beneath the surface to observe raw energy and a struggle. The forces of growth and decay, pressure, time, and adverse human influences work their way into the tension between 2D and 3D. I don’t want to imitate nature, I would rather interrogate it. - Iain Machell 2026

Skidmore Encore announces registration for its Fall 2026 lecture series delivered by the remarkable Skidmore College faculty for adult learners age 55+ from around the local region. Encore attracts intellectually curious people who are eager to learn. Join us! The 2026 program runs for seven weeks on Tuesdays from September 29 through November 10 in the gorgeous Arthur Zankel Music Center Skidmore College campus. Online registration opens Tuesday, September 1, 2026 at 9:00 AM.
For more information: www.skidmore.edu/encore