Catskill

My name is Musho.

I'm a teacher at the Village Zendo, and I also manage and teach at the Catskill Zen Circle in Catskill, New York, where I live.

Most of you know that the Village Zendo has a couple of retreats every year, twice a year, a summer retreat in Litchfield, Connecticut, and a winter retreat at Garrison.

And I want to talk tonight about something that someone said at the end of our summer retreat this year, which I was at.

We've got one in Binghamton now.

We've got one in Watertown, Catskill, Fishkill, Hudson Valley, and then Erie, Pennsylvania as well.

So we're about 60,000 customers in total, about 2.3 million in recurring monthly revenue, about 250 employees.

And notably, I know we're going to talk about this a little bit more today, but we're a five generation family business.

Light yellow.

Rocky Banks, Catskill, Ohio, West.

Wild licorice.

White.

The four ciders I have will be Wixom from Eve's Cidery, a single varietal, really delicious, sharp, and has a long history.

And then also I will have a blended cider from Hearts Be True, which is a small cidery near Catskill in the northern part of the Hudson Valley.

And then another blended cider from Scrumpy U, which is in the northern Cat Northwest Catskills.

uh which are different regions of new york it's a much larger state people think of new york city but it's a very large state and before uh the west pacific northwest of america became the predominant apple producing region new york state was the highest apple producing region at one point in history so there's a lot of apple history along with neighboring new england which is this People may be surprised to hear that there are varieties being developed in America, like some cases back to the 1600s.

And that will be in the colonies of Massachusetts.

I'm 44 years old.

I live in, uh, Catskill, New York.

Um, I was originally born in the Bronx.

My parents moved me up here when I was 12, and-

I lived in America and me and Amy, my wife Amy Rigby, we made three albums together.

And we, the last one we did in America, I mean, we moved into this kind of just about habitable house in upstate New York in a town called Catskill.

And we spent, we, we, we spent everything we had to buy this place.

It was like, it was amazingly cheap.

I think

Catskill is the cutoff for upstate.

So you're coming up, you know, I think it goes out Catskill and Western starts like probably like the Verona area.

When you get out to like the turning stone way that starts Western.

And then you got the Adirondacks when you get up into just past Saratoga, I think is what starts, you know, the Adirondacks.

Allied is cool.

It's a unique builder because they were basically built in the U.S. up in Catskill, New York, of all places, founded in 1962.

And they were one of the first... fiberglass production boat builders.

So in early 60s, like most boats were still wooden and they were one of the first fiberglass boats and people were, you know, unsure that a fiberglass boat would survive the rigors of the sea.

It proved to be a forgery.

i was temporarily in troy n y when the discovery was made and as i made no secret of my whereabouts at any time i was followed to troy was there arrested and after lying in jail at albany one night was taken next morning to coxsackie greene county and front thence to catskill after one day in jail there i was brought before a justice and examined on the charge of uttering a forged note there was a most exciting trial of four days duration i had two good lawyers who did their best to show that i did not know the note to be forged when i sold it but the justice seemed determined to bind me over for trial and he did so putting me under five hundred dollars bonds My half-sister at Sydney was sent for, came to Catskill, and became bail for me.

I was released, and my lawyers advised me to leave, which I did at once, and went to Pittsfield, and from there to Worthington, Massachusetts, where I had another half-sister who was married to Mr. Josiah Bartlett, and was well off.

Here I settled down, for all that I knew to the contrary, for life.