Once upon a time there was a small hilltop near Nanuet, N.Y., where cows grazed in dusky light as the world turned around and around in perfect order. Trees covered the landscape, and the region was peaceful even though New York City was only 20 miles away.

That was in 1945, the year the Kleins — Jewish immigrants from eastern Europe — moved from the city to “Sunnybank,” a family commune near that hilltop on 40 acres of rural land in Rockland County.

Among them were Robert and Florence Klein, who raised two children, Mitch Klein and Sally Klein, aka Sally Alley Muffin Stuffin of Wendell, now 63 (yes, that’s her legal name), a puppet-maker, teacher, song writer, and creative artist extraordinaire. She retired from Swift River School last year after teaching art to local students for more than 20 years, and most recently founded Cloth With Clout, a political T-shirt business endeavor heavily influenced by her past.

While talking about Cloth With Clout recently, Sally held a handmade sign covered with pictures of her late mother, who “has been a big part of it, the other half of my operation.”

Sunnybank

Sally Alley Muffin Stuffin’s life in New York, as seen through the lens of memory, was idyllic — every morning without fail a driver delivered fresh milk and corn by pony cart, and in the evenings Sally watched the cows and the mist until it got too dark to see.

In the spring, “a zillion tulips” bloomed across the street. In the backyard “was a magic tree that was also a rocket ship, and a swimming pool the family dug by hand,” remembered Sally, sitting at the dining room table of her Farley Road home.

Growing up, she got to know many “friends-of-the-family, and that’s one word. It didn’t take much to be a friend-of-the-family,” she reminisced. “When all of the hippy communities started, to everyone else it was an alternative, but to us it was normal.”

Today, Sally has recreated that “normal” in the backwoods of Wendell.

Re-framing reality

However unique and interesting it was, Sally’s upbringing wasn’t perfect and at times she saw through cracks in the safety of Sunnybank to a far different world outside.

For example, Sally often asked her grandmother, a Jewish immigrant from Hungary, “about the old world, and she would never talk about it. She carried with her all that pain — the old country, the immigrant experience, and sweat shops.”

Sally’s father, Robert, was a tenant union leader who advocated for housing rights during the Civil Rights era by writing grant requests and taking landlords to court. Those experiences “gave him a deep, deep, anger, but not a vicious anger,” Sally said.

In her own home, hanging on the wall above the piano was a lithograph printed by Sally’s mother depicting Jewish World War II refugees who didn’t have anywhere to go, and who were living in Cyprus internment camps run by the British government.

“When I was little I would climb up onto the piano to look at this lithograph, and it was really beautiful. It was my first experience with political art, and how powerful it is,” Sally said.

Gradually, as she got older, the cracks in Sally’s New York life opened wider. Sally’s father (who always admired her huge imagination) died when she was 16.

Almost simultaneously, the local zoning board changed the family’s land from “farming” use to “residential” zoning, which in turn increased property taxes and forced many farmers out. By the time Sally left home for college at the University of Colorado, the land had shrunk from 40 acres to six.

Sally Alley Muffin Stuffin

Art, for Sally, is the act of creation itself (as opposed to an end result), and it extends through many different mediums — wood carving, puppet-making, songwriting, music, drawing, painting, sculpting, building, even her name, which she was inspired to change because of a poem.

One night, while living in Eugene, Ore. during her mid-20s, Sally was awakened from sleep by a few lines of poetry. Sally started writing, and “my hand just kept on going and going and going.” When she stopped, “it was this incredible poem, and at the very bottom was ‘Sally Ally Muffin Stuffin.’ That’s who wrote it,” Sally said. Often, Sally noted, she created puppet characters from poems and monologues, but this time was different.

Soon after she fell back asleep, Sally dreamed of going to court to change her name to Sally Ally Muffin Stuffin — an idea that was met with laughter from everyone in the courtroom. When she had the same dream again a decade later after moving to Franklin County, a voice told Sally to take legal action. She officially changed her name in Greenfield District Court.

Teaching creatively

Throughout her teaching career, Sally’s name has been a portal for children to enter a world of imagination. Often, she wrote and directed educational musicals for students to perform — plays like “Little Red Riding Hood and the Amazing Story of Food” about the gastrointestinal tract featuring a rollerblading Red Riding Hood puppet and a Big, Bad Wolf singing “Sugar Buzz” with a choral line of intestines echoing “convolution” to the tune of the Hallelujah Chorus from Handel’s Messiah.

Out of all those performances, one stands out. In 1996, Sally wrote “Buffalo Trilogy,” a musical that tackled Native American struggles through many different perspectives. Sally read history books and talked to a local Native American who was knowledgeable about the subject. For a while, she felt stuck, and struggled to compress the heavy subject material (Native Americans being killed) into bite-sized pieces for young children.

During that time Sally took walks through the woods to clear her head. Eventually, she found clarity, and through that learned to let go and allow creativity to flow freely, without expectations. The resulting play was so powerful, Sally noted, that 40 of the 60 student performers held a “Buffalo Trilogy” reunion two decades later.

“Art allows us to look at the hard things, go to the hard places, be there with hard truths, and have compassion,” Sally said.

Cloth With Clout

Sally’s mother, Florence, died last year at 92, two days after their shared birthday on June 14. Today, her lithograph print hangs in the basement of Sally’s Wendell home, next to a chopping block where Sally splits wood for heat, and not far from an easel where Sally makes her own political statements — slogan T-shirts under the brand Cloth With Clout. The shirts are screen printed and later hand-painted.

One says “stop billionaire welfare,” another, “dissent is patriotic,” and “hate can never make America great ... but empathy will.” Ten percent of all sales go to charity.

The idea for starting a political T-shirt brand came during Greenfield’s 2016 Women’s March, through creative banner’s held by attendees, and by an overall feeling of frustration with current events.

“Obviously, I don’t like what’s going on in the world,” Sally said, holding up one of the T-shirts. “I felt like I could do something positive by drawing. It was something healthy I could do.”

Sally intends her slogan shirts to continue conversations the Women’s March started through messages that contrast Sunnybank to today’s political climate. She noted, “I don’t want to be making art that reflects negativity, even though I’m reflecting a negative situation. I hope they’re conversation-inspiring.”

At the same time, creating political messages and donating to charity connects Sally to her family — her mother, a fellow-political artist who donated generously to others throughout her life, and her father, an advocate for marginalized people.

Once, on a return trip to New York as an adult, Sally’s brother, Mitch, found the hilltop where the cows once were, covered with concrete and buildings. Sally’s New York is long gone, but the lessons she learned there — her imagination, steeped in a supportive community — have blossomed. And it’s from that place, from her past, that Sally creates her T-shirts.

But that doesn’t mean it has been easy.

Soon after her mother died, Sally was sitting on her couch feeling alone in her business endeavor, having recently retired from Swift River School, unsure about the future. Then, Sally noticed a picture of her mother resting on her own piano, and, “all of a sudden, I felt surrounded by her blessing,” Sally said, glancing at the handmade sign propped against a papier-mâché wall.

“Now, I feel like I have a partner.”

To purchase Sally’s T-shirts, visit www.clothwithclout.com.

You can reach Andy Castillo

at: acastillo@recorder.com

or 413-772-0261, ext. 263

On Twitter: @AndyCCastillo

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