About Will, founder and owner of Glencadia
By glencadia2Personal Statement
I am Will Pflaum, owner and founder of Glencadia Corporation, the parent company of Glencadia Dog Camp. My wife Aenne and I moved from Park Slope Brooklyn to Stuyvesant Falls, NY, Hudson Valley, Columbia County in 2005. At the time, we had one small son, Ollie, who is now heading to Columbia University – my alma mater, the upper west side where I used to roam. Two other children were born here upstate, in 2008 and 2014, Leo and Viola respectively. Lotta was born in Ethiopia in 2008 and we adopted her in 2009.
When we moved here from the city, there is so much we didn’t know, I could write a book on city ignorance of this rural area… but I wrote a slightly different book called Under Two Maples in 2016. My son wants us to update the book and do a part two to cover the next four years. As ignorant as we were, I wouldn’t recommend more information, as stumbling around and making mistakes worked out well and the dumb stuff we did turned out to be the smart stuff years later. Or maybe my perspective changed. In any event, I knew nothing and now I know you don’t need to know much, so, well, you tell me the moral of the story.
In New York, I worked in graphic design, mostly for adult trade book publishers. Nostalgically, I might reminisce about finding opened boxes of some excellent paper, ink, editors, authors, early websites, Flash, a letterpress for a Buddhist’s themed book, brokering a print job, or lugging around a large paper portfolio. It was another life and world ago now.
After running Glencadia for many years, in 2018 I decided to expand our operation. Hiring people, renovating, upgrading, and constructing new spaces, acquiring new vehicles, and other substantial investments. That’s business. It’s better to have more people and be a bigger operation. More people, more redundancy, better service.
I love it here and I’m proud of this little business we have here. It’s nice and there is no show to this: what you see is what you get. I have other parts of my life that aren’t relevant to the business, but there they are, designer, more books, rap records, anti-corruption war, pro se lawsuit, art, a book of art and poetry…
And lots of dogs.
Does any of the information/personal history in this post matter to the operation of Glencadia and our ability as a team to care for dogs and work with customers? Maybe. Maybe not.
Education
Columbia University, NY: M.A. in Anthropology and Education — May 19, 1993 / M.Ed. in Anthropology and Education — May 19, 1993.
The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor: B.A. with high honors in History and Anthropology, minor in Spanish Language and Literature — 1986 – 1990
Experience
Small Business Owner. Stuyvesant Falls, NY — 2005 – present: Ran business offering country vacations to city dogs.
Graphic Designer. New York, NY — 1991 – 2004: Designed promotional materials, mostly for the adult trade divisions of New York City book publishers.
Classroom Teacher. South Bronx, NY — 1990 – 1991: Taught third grade in public school
Publicity Assistant. New York, NY — 1992 – 1993: Promoted books for the adult trade division of Houghton Mifflin
Deputy Press Secretary. New York, NY — 1994 – 1995: Worked in the local office of congresswoman Carolyn Maloney
Adjunct Instructor. Brooklyn, NY — 1992 – 1994: Taught anthropology at Medgar Evers College, CUNY
Tenant organizer. Brooklyn, NY — 1989 – 1991
Projects
Books: Juba: The Search for the Sons of the Martyrs (Pflaum, 2012) // Pazzis Sureda (pazzis.com)// M.O.G.E. (2013) // Dog Stories: Watch Your Step (2009) //Islands of the Imagination (2013) // Under Two Maples: Twelve years in the country (2017)
Maroon: 31 Year Reunion Detroit Free Press article Billboard article Stereogum article
Dog War: The story of a guy from the city wandering into a corrupt town in upstate NY in a corrupt county and fighting the government.