New Lebanon

For the first one, we went up to the Shaker Museum and Library, Big Stone Barn.

They were doing some restoration in New Lebanon, New York on it.

We were creating some examples of different restoration options for the museum to then have contractors come in and... copy and work with it was kind of a it was a collaboration the university of florida had um preservation people up there i remember meeting marty from world monuments fun but i don't remember if that was coincidental or if that if they were a part of that or i have to go look i can send better information on that

So some architectural carving? No, this

Uh, my friend Susan Jamieson, who had basically produced, I think it's either 12 or 13 powwows in Columbia County and in the Berkshires, uh, previously in Stephentown, Great Barrington, and more, and, uh, she had come to me saying that they were looking for a new home.

Coincidentally or serendipitously, whatever you prefer, a number of years before, I had the great pleasure of bringing my friend, Grammy Award-winning Native American singer Joanne Shenandoah to New Lebanon, which is where I was living on Mount Lebanon, uh, the home of also Darrow School, where I went to school many years ago, came back and taught there, and then lived on the mountain.

It's a very, very special place.

It was the spiritual home to the Shakers.

They called it Mount Lebanon rather than New Lebanon.

Um, it is New York State, although it's right smack on the border of Massachusetts as well.

So it was a spiritual home to the Shakers.