Growing up in Olive as the kid of new-comers was a experience that's hard to describe. I often caught the tail end of rumors and legends from my peers who had family in the region going back before the foundation of the town yet I wasn't like the kids who only spent the summer or even only a few weekends a year there. I would often be surprised by history that was common knowledge to other Olive residents but I also would be able to recite the history of how the Ashokan Reservoir came about. I was even resentful of the "City" even though none of my family had been displaced!  

This dichotomy combined with my family's frequent involvement in community events and the organizations and my own interest in cultural history was what led me down the path to wondering how exactly Olive came to be the town it is today. Especially as someone who has had a first row seat to the separation between hamlets as a West Shokan kid who had to deal with being in between the two methods of getting to the north side of the reservoir. 

Importantly, while I acknowledge my relationship to current board member and my father, David Edinger, Olive Branch to Itself is not meant to push a specific political narrative of Olive forward, but rather discuss the many efforts everyone in town has made over the past century to keep the community together. 

In its own way, this project is all at once my attempt to disrupt the focus on the town before the Ashokan or the construction of the Reservoir that most local histories have written before, even as I acknowledge just how much the Ashokan Reservoir and its politics have — both positively and negatively — affected the place I call home. It is also born of my want to communicate the ways in which the modern day Olive is special to me and other residents.

Ludmilla Edinger (also known as Milla to the majority of Olive) was raised and homeschooled in a log cabin on High Point Mountain in West Shokan with her parents and little brother. She was a regular at the Olive Free Library, a constant fixture at the Arts and Crafts table at the Olive Rec Summer Day Camp even as a counselor, and — while not the best soccer player — could frequently be seen playing in the Olive Soccer League at Tongore Park.

She is currently a masters student in her final semester at the University at Albany in the Public History program and works with the New York State Library as a student assistant. She previously received her MSIS from the University at Albany and attended Marist where she studied History with a minor in the interdisciplinary Hudson River Valley Regional Studies. 

Her academic interests lie primarily in the communication of history to the general public though she has her favorite topic in New York State History with special focus on the history of Olive and the Dutch settlement of New York. She also dabbles in just about any craft she can get her hands on.

In the future, she hopes to return to Ulster County, if not Olive itself, and work as a librarian, offering the same sense of community that the Olive Free Library gave to her as a child and continues to do to this day.