WAG magazine - April 2021

The wild world of presidential pets Raging bull: Ken Burns’ ‘Hemingway’ Animal artistry – Cartier, Stephen Pace, Brian Keith Stephens Pet care, from here to eternity – Gwen Sherman, D.V.M., Sienna Sky Marble men – Steve Cavazzi and Oscar Reyes Katrina M. Adams Tennis, life and leadership

pet connections: reinvented JUDGED A

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IN NEW YORK STATE WESTCHESTER & FAIRFIELD LIFE APRIL 2021 | WAGMAG.COM

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CONTENTS APRIL 2021

8 Cover story – Prez pets 12 The running of the bull 16 A colorist’s love of the natural world 20 Fanatically yours 24 An artist out of Aesop 30 A bunny’s tale HOME DESIGN 32 Marble man 36 Written in stone 38 A sumptuous Greenwich sanctuary 42 Designing with pets FASHION & BEAUTY 44 The sleek beauty of Cartier’s panthers 46 The ultimate in luxe skincare

48 How to be ‘The Perfect Gentleman’ 52 Net gains 54 The RealReal, really 57 What’s Trending FOOD & SPIRITS 62 Dinner at DD’s Diner with dad 64 Luxury in a wine glass 66 What's cooking?

TRAVEL 68 In a class by itself 72 Wine country, reborn 76 Italy in the palm of your hand 78 The right kind of baggage 82 Putting the joie in the vivre

WELLNESS 84 Connecting to survive 88 What to eat pre-exercise WAG THE TAIL 90 Saving pets – and veterinarians 94 Helping pets and their parents at the end 96 Taking your dog to work, part two 98 We and our Shadow 100 When & Where 104 Wit: We Wonder: How have your pets helped you through the pandemic?

THIS PAGE: “My Lover Is Coming Home” (2020), oil and wax on cotton. Courtesy the Lyman Allyn Art Museum.

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EDITOR’S LETTER

BY GEORGET TE GOUVEIA

In this our year of reinvention, WAG’s April animal issue reconsiders lic. Planning to attend? Along with your masks, hand sanitizer and soour relationship with our fine, furry, feathered friends. The animals in cial distancing manners, you may want to bring along your camera or our lives have helped us through one of the most challenging times, sketchbook. Animal artistry is always popular, as Phil’s story on Brian as our Wits reveal. We couldn’t have gone through our sorrows withKeith Stephens’ whimsical paintings at New London’s Lyman Allyn Art out them. Or our joys. Certainly, Wares columnist Cami’s son, Gregory Museum, Katie’s column on panther jewelry and our look at Stephen Weinstein, wouldn’t have had as unique a proposal for his fiancée, MiPace’s work at Fairfield University Art Museum attest. chaela Pavia, without their Doodle puppy, Franklin. As Cami writes in Sometimes animals figure obliquely in our stories. Valmont’s her piece on redecorating with pets in mind, Gregory put the engageL’Elixir des Glaciers has used honey in products that are luscious and ment ring through Franklin’s collar for a touching surprise. (We hope luxurious. Now it draws on the DNA of sturgeon for its heavenly EsFranklin’s going to be the ring bearer at the wedding.) sence of Gold Sturgeon Fluide Merveilleux and Crème Merveilleuse.

Meanwhile, the veterinarians who care Marvelous indeed. for our pets are having a particularly difWhen we think of Ernest Hemingway, we ficult time, as Jeremy discovered during think of spare, muscular prose, stories of his interview with Gwen Sherman, D.V.M., daring-do, but also, as Ken Burns’ new PBS retired from the VCA Mount Kisco Veteridocumentary series “Hemingway” alludes, nary Clinic. animals — bulls, cats big and small and mar“We’re dealing with constant sadness lins — that represent different aspects of a and disappointment in our industry, becomplex figure. cause people are coming to us with their Speaking of cats, Gregg interviews Peekskill animals that are ill,” she tells Jeremy. “And music publicist Josh Bloom, whose cat, Stella, what happens is that pet owners often functions as a kind of personal coach. think they’re being financially taken adIn some of our stories this month, animals vantage of. But medicine is expensive and don’t figure at all. Yonkers resident Katrina M. our overheads are massive. And, added to Adams — who set any number of milestones that, most veterinarians coming out of vet in her unprecedented two terms as chair and school are loaded with hundreds of thoupresident of the White Plains-based United In my Easter bonnet on my favorite holiday/holyday in front sands of dollars of debt, which can take States Tennis Association — took time from of my aunt and uncle’s apartment building in Mount Vernon. their entire career to pay, because we don’t her packed schedule to talk about her new Check out the story on the bonnet and the late, lamented Lord & Taylor here. wagmag.com/farewell-to-lord-taylor-2. make the kind of money that M.D.s and book, “Own the Arena,” on tennis, life and Photograph by Gina Gouveia. dentists make. So veterinarians are already leadership. We also consider a pair of marble under tremendous stress.” men. Oscar Reyes, owner of Westchester and Marble Granite Works in As a result, she says, “we are having a major issue with suicide in Mamaroneck, https://www.wagmag.com/the-close-ties-behind-westthe (veterinary) industry” — this at a time when trauma psychologist chester-granite/ is branching out from kitchens and bathrooms to creShauna Springer says in a separate story that the pandemic has created ate marble, granite and butcher block cutting boards, cheeseboards, “a confluence of vulnerabilities” — loss, anxiety, fear, depression — that is trivets and spoon rests. Steve Cavazzi ( Jeremy’s story) works on big a “perfect storm” for suicidal thoughts. As Americans, we like to change commercial projects like the World Trade Center. the channel and tough things out. But it’s time to face mental illness On the fashion front, we visit The Real Real, which is expanding its head on. We cannot do that, however, without support, Springer says. luxury fashion consignment business to include more brick-and-morSupport is precisely what Sienna Sky Pet Cremation Services in tar shops, like the delightful one on Greenwich Avenue, as well as art Ghent, New York, offers its clients. Not only does it ensure your pet gets and home goods. And Jeremy looks at what it takes sartorially to make individualized attention at the end, we learned from owner and care“The Perfect Gentleman,” the title of a new Thames & Hudson book. taker Susan Bandy, but it also offers grief counseling — all while beneThese stories should be of particular interest to those who, while likfiting its sister enterprise, The Lily Pond, a sanctuary in which specialing animals, don’t necessarily want to read a whole magazine devoted needs animals can live out their days. to them. Birds of a different feather, we’d guess.

Elsewhere, we take a more light-hearted look at the animal kingdom A 2020 YWCA White Plains & Central Westchester Visionary with our cover story on the wild, woolly, wacky world of presidential Award winner and a 2018 Folio Women in Media Award Winner, pets, which includes Champ and Major Biden. The two, who divide Georgette Gouveia is the author of “Burying the Dead,” “Daimon: A their time between the Biden family home in Delaware and the White Novel of Alexander the Great” and "Seamless Sky" (JMS Books), as House, have made German Shepherds hot once again — if indeed these well as “The Penalty for Holding,” a 2018 Lambda Literary Award versatile, protective working dogs ever went out of fashion — which is finalist (JMS Books), and “Water Music” (Greenleaf Book Group). good news for puppy Shadow, our German Shepherd mix Pet of the They’re part of her series of novels, “The Games Men Play,” also the Month, who’s seeking a forever home. name of the sports/culture blog she writes.

Our expanded What’s Trending column, which includes NOTIQ’s Her short story “The Glass Door,” about love in the time of the vegan leather desk accessories, reminds us that with vaccinations coronavirus, was recently published by JMS and will be part of a on the rise, the Greenwich Polo Club and the Spring Horse Shows at Covid art exhibit at ArtsWestchester next month. For more, visit theOld Salem Farm in North Salem will once again be open to the pubgamesmenplay.com

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prez pets “If you want a friend

BY GEORGETTE GOUVEIA in Washington, get a dog,” Harry S. Truman once said. True to his own advice, the Truman White House was home to Mike, an Irish Setter, and Feller, a Cocker Spaniel puppy that soon found a place with Truman’s physician, because, ironically, the Trumans actually preferred being “a pet-free family.”

If they did, they have been among the few. Of the 45 individuals who have served as president (through 46 presidencies since Grover Cleveland served two nonconsecutive terms), only three never had a pet in the White House — James Polk, Andrew Johnson (who nonetheless fed the white mice found in his bedroom) and Donald J. Trump, who had a relationship of mutual antipathy with first wife Ivana’s Poodle, Chappy.

Hyannisport, Massachusetts, Aug. 14, 1963 – President John F. Kennedy, wife Jacqueline, son John Jr. and daughter Caroline with their dogs Clipper (standing), Charlie (with Caroline), Wolf (reclining), Shannon (with John Jr.) and two puppies from Pushinka, who was a gift from Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev. Cecil Stoughton White House Photographs.

"

I wouldn’t mind having one, honestly, but I don’t have any time,” Trump said at a Feb. 11, 2019 rally in El Paso, Texas.

“How would I look walking a dog on the White House lawn?...Feels a little phony to me.”

Clearly, the vast majority of presidents haven’t cared how it looked. In addition to the usual dogs, cats and horses, presidents have had grizzly bear cubs (Thomas Jefferson); alligators (John Quincy Adams); tiger cubs (Martin van Buren); goats (William Henry Harrison); pardoned turkeys (Abraham Lincoln); mockingbirds (Grover Cleveland); opossums (Benjamin Harrison, Herbert Hoover); roosters (William McKinley); guinea pigs, lizards, garter snakes and laughing hyenas (Theodore Roosevelt); cows (William Howard Taft); sheep (Woodrow Wilson); squirrels (Warren G. Harding); racoons, bobcats and pygmy hippopotamuses (Calvin Coolidge); and ducks, hamsters and rabbits (John F. Kennedy).

‘MAJOR’ PROBLEM The current president, Joe Biden, has returned the White House to the venerable tradition of housing pets with German Shepherds, Champ and Major, who arrived with great press fanfare in January. (They will divide their time between the White House and the Biden family home in Wilmington, Delaware, when first lady Jill is on the road, a practice put in place after Major — the first shelter dog to live in the White House — bit a guard. This is not the first time a White House pet has gone territorial. Scottish Terrier Barney, son of George W. Bush and famed for his “Barney Cam” view of White House Christmas decorations, once bit a reporter, while Pete, Teddy Roosevelt’s Bull Terrier Mix, once grabbed a French ambassador by the pants and chased him up a tree.)

“LITTER”ARY EFFORTS The Shepherds’ presence has been memorable in other, more pleasant ways, inspiring the delightful new children’s book “Champ and Major: First Dogs,” among others. White House pets have always been literary. Bill and Hillary Clinton’s tuxedo cat and Labrador Retriever were the subjects of “Dear Socks, Dear Buddy: Kids’ Letters to the First Pets” by

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Hillary, even though dear Socks and dear Buddy couldn’t stand each other. Quipped Bill: “I did better with the Palestinians and Israelis than I’ve done with Socks and Buddy.” Bo — one of Barack Obama’s two Portuguese Water Dogs, who really shone at holiday times, patiently sporting rabbit ears for Easter festivities — figured in the president’s “Of Thee I Sing: Letters to My Daughters.”

For sheer creativity, however, few could top Socks and Buddy’s predecessor, Millie, George H.W. Bush’s English Springer Spaniel. Millie — who would have a litter of six pups, appear on TV shows and give her name to a Houston dog park — was the author of “Millie’s Book” (1990), a dog’s eye view of the White House that she “dictated” to her mom, Barbara Bush.

President Joe Biden with Champ (foreground) and Major in the Oval Office on Feb. 22. Courtesy the White House.

Grace Coolidge, wife of President Calvin Coolidge, with Laddie Boy, an Airedale Terrier, pet of preceding President Warren G. Harding; and Rob Roy, the Coolidges’ white Collie. National Photo Co.

POLITICAL ANIMALS Despite such ingratiating achievements, presidential pets have never been able to extricate themselves from politics.

Recently, Newsmax host Greg Kelly went after Champ Biden for being a bit, well, mangy. (Hey Greg, Champ’s 12. That’s 69 in dog years. He’s a newbie senior. Let’s just say you’re lucky you didn’t go after Major.)

It’s the latest in a long line of tails, uh, tales in which a prez pet got caught between his parent and an opponent. Few incidents were more infamous than the rescue of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Scottish Terrier, Fala, accidentally left behind on the Aleutian Islands during a wartime trip, at an alleged cost of thousands of dollars to the taxpayers.

“You can criticize me, my wife and my family,” FDR responded during his 1944 campaign. “But you can’t criticize my little dog. He’s Scotch and all these allegations about spending all this money have just made his little soul furious.”

Roosevelt’s clever turning of the tables in his “Fala speech,” which drew admiring chuckles and applause, is credited with helping him win an unprecedented fourth term. (Before ever entering the White House as president with Irish Setter King Timahoe, Poodle Vicki and Terrier Pasha, Richard Nixon gave a variation of the Fala speech as Dwight D. Eisenhower’s pick for vice president. Accused of having a slush fund, Nixon countered with the poignant “Checkers speech,” saying that the only gift he ever accepted was Checkers, the black-and-white Cocker Spaniel given to his daughters, Tricia and Julie. The “Checkers speech” warmed the heart of Eisenhower’s wife, Mamie, and kept Nixon on the ticket.)

Dogs in particular have been good running mates, so to speak, ever since Warren G. Harding’s Airedale Laddie Boy was covered extensively in the early Roaring ’20s. When Herbert Hoover threw his hat into the presidential ring later in the decade, he acquired King Tut, a Belgian Police Dog that proved a “fetching” com-

panion in coast-to-coast newspaper photographs.

Dogs have also contributed mightily to détente. JFK may have had a potentially earth-shattering standoff with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev in the Cuban Missile Crisis, but it didn’t stop Kennedy’s wife, Jacqueline, from accepting feisty mixedbreed Pushinka from the Russian leader.

Once she passed security — she was, after all, the daughter of a cosmonaut — Pushinka would fall in love with the Kennedys’ Welsh Terrier, Charlie, with whom she had four “pupniks,” as the president called them.

The Kennedys were among the first families — including Gerald Ford’s and George Herbert Walker Bush’s — who walked their own dogs, celebrated their litters and even, in Ford’s case, cleaned up after them.

Once when Ford’s Golden Retriever Liberty made a mess on an Oval Office rug, Ford stopped a Navy steward from addressing it.

“I’ll do that,” the president said. “No man should have to clean up after another man’s dog.”

Whatever else you can say about them, the White House’s fine furry and feathered friends have kept their two-legged parents human.

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Ernest Hemingway in the 1950s with one of the many beloved cats at his home in Cuba. Courtesy A. E. Hotchner.

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the runnning of the bull He has been the fault line in American fiction, creating a new style — and a new type of hero — that subsequent writers would either emulate or define themselves against. He was as much a

BY GEORGETTE GOUVEIA myth of machismo as a man, an invention of his own imagination that foreshadowed our cult of branded celebrity. And though he may not be fashionable today — there are no new scholars of his works, says Mercy College literature professor Christopher Loots — his legacy lies at the intersection of white, male, American identity, gender studies and cancel culture, even as the relationship between his complex character and fine writing begs the question, What price art?

Now America’s greatest film storyteller, Ken Burns, working with longtime collaborator Lynn Novick, has trained his lens on the man who may have been its greatest literary one in “Hemingway,” which will air on PBS at 8 p.m. April 5, 6 and 7. Written by Geoffrey C. Ward and produced

by Sarah Botstein, “Hemingway” is a fascinating and at times confounding exploration of Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961), to which Burns’ team brings its trademark blend of evocative location shoots, experts’ insights and archival material, with Jeff Daniels as Hemingway and Meryl Streep, Keri Russell, Mary Louise Parker and Patricia Clarkson as his wives.

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What writing could be Any discussion of Hemingway — who grew up in tony Oak Park, Illinois, the son of Clarence Edmonds Hemingway, a prominent, nature-loving physician — must begin with his seminal, groundbreaking writing style.

“What Hemingway did and why we study his work is that he made it OK for you to write in a simple, short, refined way,” says Loots, a Ph.D. in English literature with a focus on American and international studies who is teaching a course on Hemingway this semester in Mercy College’s Master of Arts in English Literature Program. “With a writer like Henry James, you’d need a year to get through a paragraph. Hemingway wrote in a shorter, seemingly simple but not simplistic manner that changed the way we think about writing…. He democratized it.”

In this, both Loots and Burns’ documentary note, Hemingway was influenced by the musicianship of his mother, the former Grace Hall, who never let her six children forget that she had given up a career in the arts for them and who taught Ernest, her second-born and older son, to play the cello.

The musicality in Hemingway’s works is defined by a mix of staccato, declarative sentences and longer, more fluid lines threaded by polysyndenton, or the rhythmic repetition of conjunctions “on and on and on,” Loots says. But the author’s crisp style was also honed by the journalistic career that began with The Kansas City Star after high school and would serve as a counterpoint to his fiction; and the influence of Gertrude Stein, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ezra Pound, James Joyce and other writers of the so-called “Lost Generation” that came of age in World War I and sought to find itself in 1920s Paris.

Writing, however, isn’t merely about the rhythm of language. It’s using that rhythm to capture images and experiences in engaging stories with meaty characters. One of the greatest strengths of Burns’ series is the way he connects the images and experiences of Hemingway’s life — say, camping, fishing

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and hunting with his father on the lakes and in the woods of northern Michigan — to the typed words on a page.

This is no filmmaker’s conceit. In Paris, Hemingway also absorbed the Modernist paintings of such artists as Pablo Picasso, Joan Miró and Juan Gris, whose shapes and colors distilled emotion and experience.

“Hemingway spoke specifically about the Cubists and the Modernists: ‘I’m trying to do in words what they’re doing in paint,’” Loot says.

“He would spend days, weeks on sentences, going over and over them to find the combination that would put the reader there in the story.”

The visual, the musical, the experiential would all come together in a series of now classic works, including “The Sun Also Rises,” his first novel, about the Lost Generation in Paris; “A Farewell to Arms,” based on his experience as an ambulance driver in World War I; “For Whom the Bell Tolls,” which drew on his coverage of the Spanish Civil War; “The Snows of Kilimanjaro,” evoking his adventures as a big game hunter in Africa; and “The Old Man and the Sea,” inspired by his later years in Cuba and for which he won the Pulitzer Prize in 1952. Two years later, he would be awarded the Nobel Prize for literature — an honor he coveted even as his fragile ego made him feel unworthy of it.

The cat and the bull

A Hemingway family portrait, October 1903. From left to right, Ursula, Clarence, Ernest, Grac, and Marcelline Hemingway. Courtesy Ernest Hemingway Collection, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston.

Despite that ego, or maybe because of it, Hemingway was simultaneously recreating himself as the Hemingway man — risk-taking, hard-drinking, globe-trotting, big game-hunting, bullfight-watching, gun-toting and woman-loving, which is not the same as being a lover of women. He liked to be called “Papa,” even though Loots says he didn’t want to be a father. (Ultimately, he threw himself into the role as the father of three.)

For all “Hemingway’s” literary analysis with scholars like Mary Dearborn and Mark Dudley and such writers as Edna O’Brien and Mario Vargas Llosa, what will draw viewers and keep them there is its tale of a complex man — brilliant yet sometimes sexist, racist and anti-Semitic in his fiction and nonfiction works; back-stabbing to helpful friends and colleagues; and often brutal to his children and four wives, the last three of whom were journalists — Hadley Richardson, the love of his youthful Paris days and mother of son John; heiress Pauline Pfeiffer, the mother of sons Patrick and Gregory; Martha Gellhorn, who left him for her identity as a single career woman; and Mary Welsh, the keeper of his flame.

In perhaps the documentary’s most telling moment, Hemingway excoriates Gregory for causing Pauline’s collapse and subsequent death in 1951 after she bailed her younger son out of jail in Los Angeles for cross-dressing.

(In reality, Pauline died on the operating table of a burst, previously undetected adrenal gland tumor, though the release of adrenaline from the stress of the incident may have been a contributing factor.) Gregory — who would later alternate between his identities as Greg, father of eight, and Gloria — wrote a response that goes to the heart of what we today call cancel culture: Were his father’s achievements worth devastating the lives of his four wives and three children?

Can an artist’s or athlete’s accomplishments be separated from who and what he is? It’s a question each person must answer

for himself, Loots says, though he suggests that when it comes to Hemingway the writer, we take Hemingway the man out of the equation.

“He’s something different from the macho myth, which he manufactured,” Loots says. “In his stories, there’s a gentleness and a quality that is antithetical to the alpha male machismo.”

Often, he adds, Hemingway identified with the unloved woman — as in his short story “Cat in the Rain,” in which the title animal serves as a metaphor for a neglected wife — and explored gender role-playing and androgyny, both in works like “The Garden of Eden” and in his marriage to Mary, This fluidity appears in his love of cats, emblems of feminine grace — some 50 of which still roam the Ernest Hemingway Home and Museum in Key West — and his fascination with bulls, protean symbols of masculinity and suffering.

It is suffering and the ability to endure that galvanize Hemingway’s works, Loots says.

“In ‘A Farewell to Arms,’ he wrote, ‘The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places.’”

Hemingway himself broke for good on July 2, 1961 when he put a shotgun to his head at his home in Ketchum, Idaho, 19 days before his 62nd birthday. Experts now attribute his suicide to the debilitating mental and physical effects of alcoholism, concussions and hereditary haemochromatosis, in which the accumulation of iron in the body leads to mental and physical deterioration. Perhaps, too, the myth, which was now overshadowing the work, had engulfed the man.

Humans are bound to suffer. But as Hemingway’s first book suggests, the sun also rises every day. “Maybe,” Loots says, “we are stronger for having suffered.”

For more, visit pbs.org and for more on Christopher Loots’ fall class, “The Literature of the Left Bank, Paris,” visit mercy.edu.

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Stephen Pace’s “Untitled (Heron in Flight)” (1991), ink on paper, part of the Fairfield University Art Museum’s “Birds of the Northeast: Gulls to Great Auks” (through May 14). Gift of the Stephen and Palmina Pace Foundation.

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a colorist's love of the natural world Stephen Pace (1918-2010) was a member of the second

BY GEORGETTE GOUVEIA generation of the Abstract Expressionists, who put New York on top of the art world in the mid-20th century. But his two-dimensional works in a variety of media were about a lot more than evocative shapes and colors.

Missouri farm boy, he had a real affinity for animals in color-block works that evoked the paintings of his friend Milton Avery — the horses of his youth, a favorite subject; nude women with cats, a feminine symbol; and the gulls of Maine, where he and wife Palmina, who often posed for him, had a studio and home in Stonington.

Three of his bird works are part of “Birds of the Northeast: Gulls to Great Auks,” through May 14 at the Fairfield University Art Museum, which is the recent recipient of more than 132 works by Pace from the Stephen and Palmina Pace Foundation. The group — which includes oil paintings, large watercolors, prints and drawings that span his career — is the largest gift by value in the museum’s 10-year history.

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Among the more than 132 works that the Stephen and Palmina Pace Foundation has given to the Fairfield University Art Museum is “Horses in Winter (91 9)” (1991), oil on canvas.

C

arey Weber — the museum’s Frank and Clara Meditz executive director, who curated the bird exhibit with Fairfield University biology professors Brian Walker, Jim Biardi and Tod Osier — says Pace began as a traditional painter, studying with WPA (Works Progress Administration) artist Robert Lahr as a teenager.

Even after his was drafted into World War II, he continued to paint, recording views of European landscapes. After the war, he studied on the GI Bill at the Instituto Allende in San Miguel Allende, Mexico, and with Hans Hofmann, a forerunner of the Abstract Expressionists, at The Art Students League of New York in Manhattan. During the late 1940s and 1950s, Pace forged strong friendships with members of the New York School of Abstract Expressionism, becoming, in Hofmann’s view, one of the most significant artists to emerge from its second generation. But

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about 1960, his style shifted, Weber says.

“I wouldn’t say he was abandoning Abstract Expressionism,” she says, “but instead he’s using expressive brushstrokes, shapes and colors and applying them to figural studies.”

It’s telling that the shift came a few years after Pace met Milton Avery, whose figurative blocks of color evoked Henri Matisse and spurred financier Roy R. Neuberger to assemble a collection of his paintings that would be the basis for the Neuberger Museum of Art at Purchase College.

“Pace was a dear friend of Milton Avery,” Weber says. “(Avery) definitely was an influence on him.”

You can see this in works like “Pink Nude, Rear View” (2005, oil on canvas), in which long, thick brushstrokes of peachpink stand out against a stark green backdrop and the brown of the woman’s hair and footstool. In “Untitled (Horses)” (1990s, watercolor on paper), a black-gray and a lavender-gray horse romp amid a sea of green slashes. And in “Three Gulls Alighting” (1981, watercolor on paper), the trio’s forms are made of blank canvas and orange stick legs outlined against a sea of green and a darker green coast.

“Three Gulls” is one of three Pace works in “Birds of the Northeast,” the others be-

ing “Maine Gulls” (1981, lithograph on paper) and “Untitled (Heron in Flight” (1991, ink on paper). They’re part of a show that encompasses paintings, prints, drawings, photographs, sculptures and natural history specimens from the early 19th century to the present, illustrating familiar species and those now lost to us. The exhibit accompanies Todd McGrain’s “The Lost Bird Project,” monumental bronze memorials to five “lost birds,” (the Carolina parakeet, the great auk, the Labrador duck, the passenger pigeon and the heath hen), on the lawn in front of the university’s DiMenna-Nyselius Library. “Birds of the Northeast” notes that more than 150 species of birds are now extinct worldwide, with an estimated 1,200 set to follow over the next century if we don’t take action.

Weber grew up spending summers on Cape Cod, where she developed a passion for our fine, feathered friends. “Birds are beautiful,” she says. Equally important, their presence in this exhibit signals the kinds of shows she wants to do.

“One of our priorities is to do more interdisciplinary shows with our wonderful faculty in which we can explore how art meets nature.”

For more, visit Fairfield.edu/museum/.

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fanatically yours If you think your job is demanding, try being a music publicist. With the music industry in an endless state of flux due to the everchanging way that people listen to and purchase music (vinyl, CD, streaming, and the return of cassettes), as well as the barriers to live performance due to the pandemic, the challenges are myriad. Enter Peekskill-based Josh Bloom of Fanatic Promotion. He’s been doing music PR for nearly 25 years and even launched his own record label. Through it all, Bloom has managed to keep his head and keep his clients in the public eye. Josh was kind enough to speak to me about his business during his morning treadmill workout:

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BY GREGG SHAPIRO

Josh Bloom.

Courtesy Josh Bloom.

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Josh, seeing as how music is central to everything that you do professionally, can you recall your earliest musical memory?

“Yes. (I was) 5 years old. I was persuaded to do chores around the house by being allowed to pick a record from my parents’ record collection to be mine, which I guess (meant) I could bring it up to my bedroom and keep it there. I remember picking ‘Let It Be’ by The Beatles.

When did you know that your life’s work would be related to music?

“It was only when I realized I could actually get paid to do what I was already doing. I’ve been promoting the arts and music starting back when I was 8 years old and started an entertainment newsletter that I would type on my neighbor’s typewriter in his dining room. I’d get on my bike and deliver it to the neighbors in their mailbox.”

Do you remember what was the name of the newsletter?

“That I don't remember. (Laughs) I wish I did remember that actually. It was in my early 20s where I started to realize I can actually charge people for this.’

Your publicity firm Fanatic Promotion has an incredibly diverse roster. How do you go about determining if a potential client is a good fit?

‘Clients ask me all the time, ‘Do you work with this genre or do you work with that genre?’ I always say, ‘I work with the genre of good songwriting.’ As long as I really believe in the artist's work and their passion for whatever they're trying to convey, I feel confident I can talk about it effectively.”

What would you say is the most significant way in which being a music publicist has evolved over the years?

“It's constantly evolving. The method by which you have to adapt to get the music to an audience changes almost daily. I started doing this in the very early days of the Internet, so blog culture and so much of the editorial coverage moving online was certainly an overall massive change. But in terms of new avenues to go down, just to be able to reach people, it's really just day by day.”

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I just watched the beautiful video for your client Samantha Sidley’s cover of “A Dream Is a Wish Your Heart Makes,” which features a woman in a K95 mask, very much placing it during the pandemic. What kind of an effect has Covid-19 had on the work that you do?

“It's interesting. I feel like it's been one of the busiest years of my entire career in doing this — fortunately, and I am incredibly grateful to be busy — I say it out loud to myself every day, that it’s sort of miraculous to be busy, not only for the distraction, but also just to keep going and to stay in business. I found that artists are stuck at home and they are reacting to the pandemic by creating on an artistic level. They are reacting to the pandemic by creating just to stay busy. There's a lot of music and a lot of art.

Very fortunately for me, artists are coming to me saying, ‘I've done this. Can you help me get anyone to notice it and listen to it and pay attention to it?’”

What are some of the Fanatic Promotion projects about which you are most fanatical for 2021?

(Laughs) “I’m still working with a great record called ‘Godmuffin’ by Mike Viola, who I consider a genius songwriter. He is probably most well-known for being the voice of the song ‘That Thing You Do’ from the Tom Hanks movie. When you see the band playing it in the movie, he is the voice you hear. He is also a really genius record producer and songwriter in his own right. That record came out at the end of last year, but I'm still working on that. I'm really excited about that. Another artist, Samantha Sidley’s label-mate Alex Lilly, is about to start recording a new record which I'm really excited about. There’s a sort of avant-garde Tom Waitsian artist I work with from Jersey City named J Hacha De Zola. He just finished a new record I've mentioned on my Facebook the other day that I'm pretty excited (about), because I’m one of the only people who’s gotten to hear it. It’s quite a leap for him.

Next year, 2022, is the 25th anniversary of the founding of Fanatic Promotion. Do you have plans to commemorate the occasion?

“Yes, I'll probably go to the guy I work with who works on my social media. He’s a really creative guy and he might have some ideas of how we can do some kind of

retrospective or something like that. I have a feeling I'll probably just personally post on Facebook or my social media myself to say, “Wow, 25 years. I can’t believe that I’m this deep into this. Hoping for another 25.”

No plans just yet, but I’m sure there will be something.”

Josh, would you please say something about your history in and connection to the Westchester County region?

“That Beatles record that I mentioned from my parents’ record collection, I took it off the shelf about five miles away from here. I grew up around here in… Yorktown Heights. I lived in New York City for almost 15 years. I lived in Colorado for seven years.

But I came back to this area, because I have family here and I know it well and I love Westchester County…. Peekskill is where I am now. I can drive past my childhood home five miles away from here. It’s not red anymore. It’s yellow, but it’s still there.”

(Laughs) This interview is running in WAG magazine’s animal issue. Do you have any pets?

“Yes, a cat named Stella. She’s sitting right here. For some reason, when I’m on this treadmill, she positions herself to block me from the doorway.”

She wants to make sure you get in all of your steps. How old is she?

“She is 7, I think.”

Do you have a favorite musical act with an animal in its name?

“This wouldn't be my favorite musical act, but I love them. It just so happens that I sent an email about them to someone the other day, comparing some music I was listening to this artist. The band is called Tiger Trap. It’s a band that’s no longer together, but it featured a songwriter named Rose Melberg. They were part of this genre called twee, which really isn't around anymore. It had an innocent, indie pop sound. They were a great band and she's an amazing songwriter. I can't say it’s one of my favorite bands of all time, but I certainly love them. That was the first thing that came to mind when you said that, because I literally typed her name 24 hours ago. Might as well give them a plug.” (Laughs)

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an artist outof Aesop

Artists have been obsessed with animals ever since the dawn of civilization when our primitive ancestors created cave paintings and petroglyphs of the creatures around them.

Animals are also the focus in

BY PHIL HALL one of Connecticut’s ongoing museum exhibitions – “Almost True Tales,” featuring the animal paintings of Brian Keith Stephens, which runs through May 19 at New London’s Lyman Allyn Art Museum.

Stephens visualizes the animal kingdom by recalling classical iconography, fables and folk tales that invested the birds and beasts with human wisdom, failings and aspirations. He provides playful titles for his paintings. “Perfect Romance” finds an opposites-attract dynamic with a willowy pink flamingo perched atop a squat giant tortoise. “I Know the Secret From the Bottom of the Sea” finds a whale descending to the oceanic depths with its lower jaw opened in a vaguely jaunty manner. “Can You See the Rooster in the Moon?” places a pair of roosters in direct view of each other, as if to anticipate a cockfight, while the ironic title suggests the silly avian rivals are incapable of seeing the proverbial bigger picture from beyond their petty barnyard domain.

Brian Keith Stephens’ “Who’s That Lipstick On the Glass?”

(2020), oil and wax on cotton.

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"

I've used a lot of animals throughout my work and I've used them with my children,” Stephens says. “With this exhibit specifically, I was relating to folk tales.

A lot of them are Aesop, who used animals in metaphors for human beings.”

Indeed, several of Aesop’s most beloved fables are recast through Stephens’ imagination. “The Hare and the Tortoise,” “The Fox and the Crow” and “The Lion and the Hare” show up on his canvases. He also observes that the exhibition’s title “Almost True Tales” is related to the ongoing glut of deliberate misinformation permeating traditional and social media. In the visitor’s guide to the exhibit, the museum expounds on that concept further by noting: “At a time when the constant and omnipresent flow of information makes it harder than ever to identify what is true, Stephens’ work encourages viewers to recall the simple human virtues embodied by animals in countless tales.”

Still, Stephens laments that allegedly civilized people historically ignore the value of animals, both on the mythologized spectrum of folk tales and as participants in a living ecosystem.

“In the folk tales of the American Indians, the wolf was a superior thing,” he says. “But then when we came over, we killed them all.”

Beyond the text sourcing for his inspiration, Stephens brings a multitude of styles and substances to his work. Throughout his career, he has used mixed media for his art, often attaching cloth to the surface of his canvases, which are overlaid with broad brushstrokes and swipes of the palette knife. The works in “Almost True Tales” are created from oil and wax applied to either cotton or Canadian birch surfaces, and the result is an almost dreamlike quality, with hazy visions of the animals frequently juxtaposed against sharply defined botanicals.

But Stephens is not shy about bringing a cross-cultural vibe to his work, blending Scandinavian, Polish, Indian, Uzbek, Russian and Mexican artistic traditions. The

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(top) Brian Keith Stephens, Your Dress Is A Curtain, (2020), oil and wax on Canadian birch.

(Below) His “Promise You Never Make Me Eat Sardines” (2020), oil and wax on cotton.

result is a series that is both universal in tone and personality yet distinctive in presentation.

“I love playing with color,” he says. “I love playing with paint, using the brush and palette knife to get the effects that I want. It has a texture, a thickness of richness. This is a fun activity.”

For the exhibition space, Stephens moved beyond the frames of his work to ensure a visual experience that effectively highlighted his creations.

“I painted the walls a darker color, so my paintings really pop,” he says. “If I say so myself, it really looks beautiful there. Aesthetically, it is quite magical.”

Stephens, who received a B.F.A. from Connecticut’s Lyme Academy College of Fine Art in 1998 and an M.F.A. from City

College of New York in 2004, has presented his work in solo and group exhibitions across the United States and in Europe.

Since the Covid-19 pandemic began, he has remained rooted at his residence in Old Lyme. He had previously divided his time between Connecticut and New York City, and resided in Paris, Italy and Poland earlier in his career.

“Almost True Tales” was conceived solely for the Lyman Allyn Art Museum, with no present plans for other venues. Having an exhibition that is special to this Connecticut institution has generated a great deal of appreciation from the regional arts community and its supporters.

“People have responded quite well,” he says, adding that some of the works have already been sold to collectors while others

will be packaged in future gallery shows he is planning. He also is grateful that the museum has made the exhibition available for in-person viewing and has not limited it to a virtual-only show, which has become too commonplace during the pandemic.

“The museum is very Covid-friendly,” he says. “I think it's important to mention that people can come and see it. They are only allowing a certain amount of people at a time, but you can just show up. That’s nice, because I know people are itching to get out — and it is up until May, so it will be there when it's warmer weather.”

“Almost True Tales is at Lyman Allyn Art Museum, 625 Williams St, New London through May 19. For more, call 860443-2545 or visit lymanallyn.org.

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a bunny's tale “Real isn't how you are made,” said the Skin Horse. “It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become

BY GEORGETTE GOUVEIA Real.”

“Does it hurt?” asked the Rabbit.

“Sometimes,” said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. “When you are Real you don't mind being hurt.”

“Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,” he asked, “or bit by bit?”

“It doesn't happen all at once,” said the Skin Horse. “You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand.”

— Margery Williams’ “The Velveteen Rabbit”

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The author’s collection of “wascally wabbits” includes several items related to Beatrix Potter’s Peter Rabbi.

Photographs by Bob Rozycki.

E

aster, which took place April 4 this year, is a great time for wascally wabbits, as Elmer Fudd would call them — first and foremost chocolate ones, of course, delivered with equally chocolatey, colored-foil or candy-shell eggs and jellybeans by surrogates of the Easter Bunny himself — symbol of the ancient goddess of fertility and spring and of the German-American tradition of an egg-laying hare that gives its colorful creations to good little boys and girls.

Then there are fictional creations like Elmer’s nemesis, Bugs Bunny, now trend-

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ing as the 3-D star of the upcoming basketball parenting movie “Space Jam: A New Legacy,” in which he teams with LeBron James; and as the inspiration for a Tik Tok challenge in which you lie on your stomach, propping yourself up on your arms and bend your legs so that your feet become rabbit ears. Meanwhile, Peter Rabbit gets his due not only in Beatrix Potter’s illustrated books, eternal in their exquisite daintiness, but in tableware at Pottery Barn and its sister store, Williams-Sonoma.

But perhaps our favorite bunny tale is Margery Williams’ “The Velveteen Rabbit,” illustrated by William Nicholson. (We have the 1983 edition illustrated by Tien Ho.) Williams was an Anglo-American who grew up in rural Pennsylvania with a dual passion for books and nature. She began writing fiction while still in her teens, publishing her first, adult novel, “The Late Returning,” in 1902 at age 21.

But it wasn’t until she married Francisco Bianco, a book department manager from Italy, had two children and discovered the poetry of Walter de la Mare, who was perhaps best-known for his children’s books, that she found her voice. Though she wrote a variety of works, often from

the perspective of their animal characters, “The Velveteen Rabbit” (1922) remains perhaps her most resonant. It tells the story of a stuffed rabbit’s journey from a Christmas stocking to a little boy’s heart.

At first the rabbit is, in the tradition of many great protagonists, shy and uncertain. He’s far less shiny and modern than other toys in the nursery. But when he meets with the shabby but wise Skin Horse, who had been beloved by boy's uncle, he learns that being new and new-fangled isn’t what matters.

The boy and his bunny become inseparable, sharing picnics and tea parties. But then the boy contracts scarlet fever and his germy old toys are discarded for burning.

The Velveteen Rabbit despairs of ever truly being real, a tear trickling down his face.

It’s from that tear that a miracle is born.

“The Velveteen Rabbit” is about many things, not the least of which is the beauty in growing old and wise. But in an age that’s all about being your authentic self, the book is really about what it means to be real. You’re not real because you are beautiful or new or trendy.

You’re real because you love and are loved in return.

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P. 36 Written in stone

P. 38 A sumptuous greenwich sanctuary

P. 42 Designing with pets

marble man Steve Cavazzi loves history. And history loves Steve Cavazzi, a brawny, inked and smiling Danbury, Connecticut, resident who traces his ancestry back 1,200 years. His face wears more of a beam than a smile, one that could easily light up a room.

“I’ve been told,” Steve says, “that after the fall of the Roman Empire, members of my family took over parts of (what would become) Italy as landlords,” and you’d better believe him, because he has the papers to prove it. “All of our family history was very welldocumented, and those documents were handed down to the first-born son in every generation.”

Lobby archways at 520 Park Ave., Manhattan.

Courtesy Steve Cavazzi.

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BY JEREMY WAYNE

Steve Cavazzi.

One especially notable ancestor was Dante Alighieri, the 13th-century Florentine writer, poet and philosopher, author of “The Divine Comedy.” Another was Antonio Cavazzi da Montecuccolo, an 18th century Capuchin friar and missionary to Africa, whom a pope commissioned to write a history of the Congo. “We actually have the original manuscript,” Cavazzi mentions casually.

I mention casually that I hope it’s stored in a safe place, along with all the other age-old family treasures.

“Oh yeah,” says, Cavazzi, with a roll of his eyes. “Though, in fact my mom did something so reckless with it. She hot glued, it to a display case she had bought to hang on the wall. I was like, mom, you can’t do that.”

At this point you might think the genial and historically-minded Cavazzi was pulling your leg, or that he had completely lost his marbles. Far from it — although marble certainly comes into the story.

His great-grandfather, a doctor and a veterinarian, came over from Italy, early in the last century and, in 1934, his son, Arthur — Steve Cavazzi’s grandfather — started working for G M Crocetti Inc., the tile, terrazzo and stone contracting company located in the Bronx.

When Crocetti’s founder died a decade later, Arthur Cavazzi was able to buy a 25% share of

the business and grew it to become the biggest marble company in the Northeast.

The revitalized Crocetti company “did everything,” from the massive Co-op City development in the Bronx to the Pan American Building now the MetLife Building in Manhattan) to the Baltimore Harbor Tunnel. When, in turn, Steve Cavazzi’s father took over the business, he continued the legacy. But in 2007, G M Crocetti closed its doors. “For multiple reasons — the perfect storm of reasons,” says Cavazzi, smiling, though perhaps a little wistfully.

With the family business no longer behind him and after a spell as an electrician, Cavazzi decided to make his career in the world of stone. In 2012, he was admitted into the BAC Local 7 — the tile, marble, terrazzo and bricklayers’ union.

His four-year apprenticeship, however, was no walk in the park. Leaving home each morning at 4:30, he would walk the four miles to the Brewster train station, to catch the train into Grand Central Terminal. He was making $100 a day — from which the train fare and his lunch had to be deducted — but eventually the pay improved and work came in. As for marble, it is, so to speak, ingrained in him.

“Every guy in the union, when they hear my last name, they known exactly who I am,” he muses.

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T

he work is skilled, physically demanding, sometimes thrilling and often dangerous. A typical day at the World Trade Center, where he worked for three and a half years, would start with setting up the stones in chronological order, using a pulley system attached to the ceiling of the 90-foot-high lobby to hoist them up.

“You pull 3 feet and the stone moves maybe an inch,” says Cavazzi, giving a sense not only of the physical demands of the job, but also the scale of the project. How did they build the Pyramids,” I ask him?

“Or the Empire State Building, for that matter,” he retorts — “in just 18 months.”

He also describes laying the floor in the lobby, beating the stone down into its bed of compacted sand — half a million square feet of glorious, flawless marble.

Although he doesn’t chisel marble, Cavazzi is used to laying some extremely elaborate designs and doing so in some extraordinary places. He has worked, as he says, for some of the wealthiest people in the world. He “did” Larry Silverstein’s place (that would be 30 Park Place, one of Manhattan’s tallest residential towers, where the World Trade Center developer owns a home,) as well as Ira Rennert’s 64,000-square-foot mansion in the Hamptons, believed to be the largest private home in America. “We did 30 million dollars of stonework there,” Cavazzi says breezily. “The plumber used to ride around on a bicycle just to get from one side of the basement to the other.”

Diamonds may be forever but marble clearly isn’t going out of fashion any time soon either. Nor does the best stuff come cheap. Italy, specifically Carrara, is still the home of the world’s finest white marble, Cavazzi says.

Ask him about his favorite gigs and he comes back to the World Trade Center.

“It had a real purpose. And there was so much hustle and bustle, with documentary film crews and ironworkers a quarter of a mile in the sky, walking

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The Cavazzi family crest. (The name was changed from Cavazza, seen here, to Cavazzi at Ellis Island when family members immigrated to the United States.) The hexagonal star (a common symbol and no connection to Judaism in this case) sits above a pendulum signifying equity, Steve Cavazzi says. The three pillars below it represent the three sons of King Manfred (1232-66), son of Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II, who ruled over Sicily during a tumultuous time and was known for his graciousness, generosity, good looks and intellectual abilities.

across beams.” It brings to mind the iconic Charles C. Ebbets photograph “Lunch Atop a Skyscraper (New York Construction Workers Lunching on a Crossbeam),” a dizzying view from the then-under-construction 30 Rockefeller Plaza that appeared in the Sunday photo supplement of the New York Herald Tribune in October, 1932. Cavazzi points out that the workers can’t always be harnessed in either, since they have to be extremely versatile and the work is often even more dangerous than it appears, “you know, with all that steel swinging around them out there,” he adds.

Inevitably, as skyscrapers progress, the views become increasingly exciting. “Just being up there, seeing New York City from 1,400 feet in the air, man,” Cavazzi says, seeming to get another adrenalin rush just recalling it. “You get on that hoist (the elevator going up the side of

the building) and yeah, it can be a little frightening, feeling the wind whipping round you.” I need no convincing.

Clearly, though, he loves his trade. He points out that he can handle all kinds of stone. “If you can work with marble, which is the hardest stone, you can work with anything.”

Or for anyone. Although private contractual work was traditionally shunned, unusually for unions, Local 7 members are allowed to solicit their own work, especially in these difficult times. “You call the union and they set you up. Either that, or you know people,” Cavazzi says with a twinkle. If you can do it in stone, Cavazzi will do it — and you don’t have to have a 64,000-square-foot mansion to get his attention.

Reach Steve Cavazzi at scavazzi1986@yahoo.com.

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written in stone

BY GEORGETTE GOUVEIA

Oscar portrait in stone.APRIL 2021 36 Reyes' WAGMAG.COM

When we last talked to Oscar Reyes, owner of Westchester Marble and Granite Works in Mamaroneck, wagmag.com/ the-close-ties-behind-westchestergranite/ he was in the midst of doing what he always does, creating stonework for kitchens, bathrooms, jacuzzis, fireplaces and barbecues, but mostly for kitchens. Then a little thing called the pandemic came along.

"

The first week of the lockdown last year, everything closed and we hunkered down,” he remembers. “I told my guys to stay home and stay strong.”

It was not long, however, before Reyes and his team were back together and expanding. Not only did some projects need to be completed, but people staying home were noticing that some elements of the house needed to be repaired or replaced, particular in the kitchen and in the shower, where sheets of porcelain rather than tiles are the trend.

“We’re grateful,” he says. “Not everyone’s been busy.”

But it’s not just his business that Reyes is

A cutting board by Oscar Reyes (left) of Westchester Marble and Granite Works promises to usher in a new line of kitchen essentials from the company, including cheeseboards, trivets and spoon rests.

thankful for. He, a daughter and his sisterin-law in his native Guatemala have all survived the virus while several clients and associates didn’t make it.

“I’m sad for the people who are gone, good people. It didn’t need to be this way.

They’re gone far too soon.”

If there has been any upside to the virus, it is that it has afforded people the time and the impetus to take more entrepreneurial risks.

“I always had this thing in the back of my mind to find something smaller and be creative and make something useful,” he says.

So Reyes — who started in a garage in Tarrytown and has counted Martha Stewart and Hertz among his clients — has

turned to making 16-by-12-inch cutting boards with different colored marble or granite borders framing butcher block.

Plastic feet keep the boards from scratching counters.

Reyes is not limiting his horizons to cutting boards. He’s also thinking of cheeseboards — half- butcher block, half-granite or marble — trivets for your hot dishes and spoon rests.

“I think there’s a wider market for such things,” he says. And given the craftsmanship he puts into projects great and small, we concur.

For more, visit marbleandgraniteworks.com and facebook.com/Westchester.granite.

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a sumptuous greenwich sanctuary PRESENTED BY SOTHEBY’S INTERNATIONAL REALTY

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S

teven Gambrel transformed this Georgian-style manor both inside and out to create the perfect sanctuary perched on the highest point in the prestigious Greenwich Conyers Farm Association’s Cowdray Park, with unobstructed views as far as the eye can see.

This is an unprecedented opportunity to buy an estate fully furnished and appointed with Gambrel-designed custom furniture, carpeting, lighting and accessories that imbue the enchanting manse with a sense of modernity and style.

You need only bring your toothbrush and prepare to indulge your sense of luxury just in time for

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spring. Simon Johnson built his reputation by illustrating the marriage of landscaping and architecture, and nowhere is his genius epitomized more pristinely than throughout the winsome 14 acres he forged here, creating outdoor living space as stunning as the new Gambrel interiors. Stroll among the manicured foliage of your own private English country garden and escape into a world of your own.

The residence features stylish living space comfortably spread over four levels, including eight bedrooms, ten full bathrooms, three half baths and six fireplaces.

Movement within the house is a pleasure, as each room fuses to the next while thrilling you with a unique artistry. Principal rooms present you with endless options for recreation, relaxation, creativity and productivity — a palatial reception hall, ravishing formal rooms, a paneled library, an orangery, an office, a gym, a billiards room, a sommelier’s dream wine cellar and a theater-quality screening room. Impeccable design meets smooth functionality in a gourmet kitchen

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and butler’s pantry that will entice even the most reluctant cook, while a state-of-the-art catering kitchen on the lower level facilitates large-scale entertaining.

The second-floor owner’s suite is a masterpiece unto itself with a bedroom, a sitting room and a private deck overlooking the verdant grounds, a luxurious bathroom and a pair of complementary dressing rooms bearing the size and finishes of a showroom. There are three secondary bedrooms, each decorated in its own serene style on this floor. The four remaining bedrooms are spread across three levels of the home, providing solitude when desired but with quick access to social areas. Two well-placed elevators also ease movement throughout the manor. Ample quarters for

staff, a parking courtyard and a capacious seven-car garage that is sure to please the automobile aficionado are among the many amenities.

Weather will never limit your opportunity for aquatic recreation with both indoor and outdoor pools. The sun-drenched outdoor pool features an ivy-covered pool house. Not to be outdone is a stunning glass-enclosed indoor pool for year-round use. Estates such as this come to market only rarely.

(Please note that while this $30 million property has a Greenwich address, it is located in Armonk for public schools and tax purposes.) For more, contact Leslie McElwreath at 917-539-3654 or 203-6183165.

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“Puppy love”: The author’s son, Gregory Weinstein, proposed to Michaela Pavia by tying the ring to their Doodle puppy Franklin’s collar. Courtesy Cami Weinstein.

designing with pets

BY CAMI WEINSTEIN

D

uring the pandemic, pet ownership surged to all-time highs, emptying shelters and increasing interest in purchasing from breeders. Pets staved off the loneliness of being isolated and many people just jumped at the chance to own a pet, given that working from home now enabled them to care for a pet. Pets are a wonderful part of our lives. They bring unconditional love to us and their comic antics add laughter as well. For families, they are a teaching moment, too. It’s so important for children to learn to care and to take care of another living thing.

The joys of pet ownership far out way the inconvenience of caring for a pet. Living with a pet can be challenging. When choos-

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ing one you should carefully consider your lifestyle and what kinds of changes you are willing to make to accommodate this new creature in your life. The considerate researching of different breeds can make for a happier addition to your home.

If you have family members who have allergies, consider a hypoallergenic breed.

There are both cats and dogs that are bred to be more compatible with allergy sufferers. If barking or yapping dogs drive you crazy, consider some of the quieter breeds such as a Basenji or a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel. If you are personally active, then a high-energy dog such as a Jack Russell Terrier or a Poodle that can accompany you on a daily run may be more to your favor.

If constant shedding will drive you up the wall, think about getting a Bichon Frise or a Chinese Crested dog. If you have a family with small children, a Labrador Retriever or a Boston Terrier is a good choice.

Once you have decided on your pet of choice or shelter pet, consider if you want

to get a puppy or an older pet that is already house broken. Although puppies are beyond adorable and fun, they are a lot of work and an older pet can offer companionship without the work of training it. Older pets often make great choices for retired or elderly people.

Bringing your pet home requires some thought. Set up a designated area for your pet where it can feel safe. If it’s a puppy, child gates and a penned-in area may be prudent. Add some toys and a dog bed so your new addition understands where its own space is. Set up its own feeding station, keep a leash nearby for walks and, of course, poop scoop bags.

Living with pets also requires some thought when furnishing your home. I encourage my clients to consider performance fabrics when purchasing upholstered pieces. While performance fabric costs more than regular fabric, it wears better so it saves money in the long run. If your pet sheds, then a heavy-duty vacuum with attachments for pet hair is a must. (A good pet brush will keep its coat in tip-top shape). Keep houseplants away from your pet, because some plants are poisonous or can make your pet sick. Puppies love to chew, so keep shoes, slippers and electrical wires away from them.

Recently, my son Gregory and his fiancée, Michaela Pavia, brought home their Doodle puppy, Franklin. (Franklin was the engagement ring bearer, with the ring tied to his collar.) The pair carefully researched different breeds and reputable breeders and have waited months for Franklin to be born and ready to come home. They have their home set up to accommodate their puppy.

They chose a Doodle, because they both have allergies and never wanted to be in a position of not being able to care for him because of their allergies. We can’t wait to have the puppy join our family, because all of us want to help in anyway we can to take care of him with them. After this long pandemic, I have a feeling this little guy is going to the light at the end of the tunnel.

For more, call 203-661-4700 or visit camidesigns.com.

FASHION & BEAUTY P. 44 The sleek beauty of Cartier's panthers

P. 46 The ultimate in luxe skincare

P. 48 How to be 'The Perfect Gentlemen'

P. 52 Net gains

P. 54 The RealReal, really

P. 59 What's trending?

the sleek beauty of Cartier's panthers

C

BY KATIE BANSER-WHITTLE

ourage, beauty, freedom, confidence, power and ingenuity are all symbolic attributes of the panther, feline of folklore and myth throughout the world.

So it isn’t surprising that panthers have been associated with some of the most elegant jewelry of the last 100-plus years — the legendary creations of the panthère de Cartier line.

The origin of Cartier’s panthers isn’t an ancient legend but a modern one — Jeanne Toussaint, a remarkable 20th century woman who embodied and inspired Cartier’s panthers.

Toussaint was a designer, businesswoman and tastemaker par excellence in Paris’s most fashionable circles for 50 years. She was an intimate of luminaries like designer Coco Chanel and luxury businessman Louis Cartier, whose pet name for her was “petite panthère.”

Toussaint was a great influencer long before that term was invented. Beautiful, sleek and fearless, she wore a panther fur coat, moved with a panther’s grace and championed the original, daring and sensual in design.

Panthers — the genus panthera includes leopards, snow leopards, jaguars, lions and tigers — were the mascots of high style in the early 20th century. Travelers to colorful, faraway locales such as Africa and Asia popularized the use of exotic animal skins.

Panthers and their intriguing patterning appeared in interior design and clothing and as motifs in fine and applied art.

In 1913, Cartier wanted an advertising campaign to appeal to the wealthy, sophisticated women who were his target clients. He went to Georges Barbier, the leading fashion illustrator of the day. Barbier created the image that symbolized les pantherès de Cartier — an elegant Art Deco beauty with a chic black panther stretched at her feet.

Cartier jewelry’s first panther-influenced design appeared in a diamond and onyx bracelet wristwatch in 1914. The small irreg-

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ularly shaped gems were artfully set in platinum to recall the distinctive markings of the panther’s fur. The next Cartier panther appeared on a diamond-framed onyx vanity case that Cartier gave to Toussaint, by this time his lover as well as his muse.

Soon the panther prowled throughout the realm of Cartier, appearing on rings, bracelets and cigarette cases. Toussaint, who had started in 1913 as director of handbags and accessories, became an increasingly important member of the creative team and eventually the artistic director of Cartier’s fine jewelry, the company’s most expensive and luxurious creations.

The panther evolved from a two-dimensional stylized motif to a dynamic, sensual creature of beauty, mystery and power. Cartier and Toussaint’s panthers reached new heights of fame in the 1940s and 1950s, in the form of fabulous pieces custom-designed for the world’s most glamorous socialites — the Duchess of Windsor, Barbara Hutton, Daisy Fellowes and the Princess Aga Khan.

The first fully modeled panther appeared in 1948, a gold and enamel great cat atop a huge emerald. It was a gift from the Duke of Windsor to his American duchess, the former Wallis Warfield Simpson. The fabulous feline was such a success that it was succeed-

18-karat gold panther ring, Cartier.

Sold for $2,952 at Skinner Inc. Eight-karat gold and diamond panther charm, Cartier.

Sold at Skinner Inc. for $4,688.

18-karat gold panther brooch, Cartier.

Sold for $2,337 at Skinner Inc.

ed the next year by another royal panther, this time of diamonds and sapphires and seated majestically on a cabochon sapphire.

Other Cartier panthers soon adorned other fashion-forward women. Bracelets, necklaces, rings, earrings, pendants and watches incorporating the elegant animal are an important part of Cartier’s luxury creations.

The panther motif continues today, with rare and unexpected materials and faceted carvings joining the menagerie. New expressions of the timeless design include abstract interpretations that convey the supple grace of a panther’s movements.

Fashions change but style is forever. Cartier’s stylish evocations of the panther over the last 100 years are continuously evolving.

They are as endlessly fascinating as the beautiful animals to which they pay homage.

For more, contact Katie at kwhittle@ skinnerinc.com or 212-787-1114.

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APRIL 2021 WAGMAG.COM

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the ultimate in luxe skincare

O

BY GEORGETTE GOUVEIA

f all the luxurious skincare products we have sampled at WAG, few have been more sumptuous than Valmont’s L’Elixir des Glaciers line. Its scent, sweet but not cloying, is intoxicating, while its texture is rich but supple.

The line began 20 years ago with its Précieux skincare and cosmetic products for smoothing and beautifying the skin, made from Valmont’s triple patented salmon DNA as well as the glacial waters and rare plants of Switzerland — where the company is based in Morges, a city on Lake Geneva.

Valmont followed up with its Majestuex products, designed to nourish and repair the skin using a beehive of ingredients — honey, propolis and royal jelly.

Now as the company looks to make L’Elixir a standalone brand — the way La Mer is independent of Estée Lauder, Valmont CEO Sophie Vann Guillon said in a recent Zoom meeting from Valmont’s headquarters — it has introduced its most luxe collection to date, Essence of Gold Sturgeon, using the minerals magnesium, manganese and selenium, along with DNA from the milt, or semen, of three species of sturgeon — the diamond, Siberian and white sturgeons.

The sturgeon is a fish that dates from The new Essence of Gold Sturgeon collections from Valmont's L'Elixir des Glaciers offers Valmont's most sumptuous skincare to date.

Photographs courtesy Valmont.

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Sophie Vann Guillon, CEO of Valmont.

roughly 30 million years ago, with some 24 species today. Since 2010, they have been protected and the males are rare, so the only way to acquire sturgeon milt is by breeding the fish. L’Elixir des Glaciers partners with a sturgeon farm in the Dordogne region of southwest France that breeds the fish “sustainably and ethically,” the company’s press materials state.

There is, however, nothing “fishy” about the resulting products Fluide Merveilleux and Crème Merveilleuse. With woody/ floral base notes of rose, cedar and lily of the valley powdered by vanilla and amber, the products have a heavenly scent that foreshadows a texture that lies between a serum and a cream. (Indeed, you can use Fluide Merveilleux before you apply your serum or in place of it.)

Use both morning and night, lightly massaging them into the face and neck to add radiance to the skin.

All this marvelousness comes with a hefty price tag -- $360 for Fluide Merveilleux and $1,000 for Crème Merveilleuse.

But Valmont is betting that for a thousand bucks you’ll feel and look like a million.

L’Elixir des Glaciers’ Essence of Gold Sturgeon, is available April 4 at lamaisonvalmont.com.

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how to be

'the perfect gentleman' If you have ever felt inappropriately dressed, or would simply like to raise your sartorial game, “The Perfect Gentleman: The Pursuit of Timeless Elegance and Style in London” ($60, 224 pages), to be published by Thames & Hudson on April 20th, is undoubtedly the book for you. No mere style-guide, this excellent volume, by London-based style writer, broadcaster and curator James Sherwood, maps the history of London’s “heritage houses,” British luxury brands such as John Lobb, Asprey and Turnbull & Asser, renowned for their quality and workmanship, many of them hundreds of years old and still flourishing in London today.

BY JEREMY WAYNE

Cover of James Sherwood’s new “The Perfect Gentleman.”

Courtesy Thames & Hudson.

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Irena Sedlecká’s bronze sculpture of George “Beau” Brummell was unveiled

by Princess Michael of Kent in 2002 and positioned on Jermyn Street in London.

All images from James Sherwood’s new “The Perfect Gentleman” (Thames & Hudson).

The combined businesses of Robert Lewis and James J. Fox have traded at No.19 St James’s Street for more than 200 years.

I

n this book you will find not only fashion, but historical context, with chapters ranging from Edwardian London to the New Elizabethan — meaning modern—age, brought vividly to life with nearly 300 blackand-white and color illustrations. Here, Oscar Wilde rubs (metaphorical) shoulders with the likes of the Duke of Windsor, Cary Grant and Mick Jagger, against a sumptuous

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backdrop of London’s most elegant men’s shopping streets — Jermyn Street, Bond Street and Savile Row. With a foreword by that immaculately dressed Englishman, Terence Stamp — the actor with whom half a generation fell in love after his portrayal of the raffish soldier, Sgt. Frank Troy, in the film of Thomas Hardy’s novel, “Far from the Madding Crowd” while the other half fell in love with his costar, Julie Christie — this delicious book is as educational, practical and eye-opening as it is decorative to have open on your coffee table.

As the book so clearly demonstrates, style isn’t just about what a “gentleman” wears, it’s about what he smokes, writes with (and on,) shoots with and travels with.

“The Perfect Gentleman” covers all of the above in depth, with additional notes on what he eats and drinks, where he stays and sleeps, what gifts he gives and even what he drives. What’s more, you don’t need to go to London to take full advantage of what you glean between the covers, since a handy address book at the back gives full details of every venue covered, as well as web addresses for online ordering.

Of course, a true gentleman requires more than a good suit of clothes and a handmade pipe to be “perfect,” and notwithstanding the tongue-in-cheek nature of the book’s title, the one thing Sherwood doesn’t address, and perhaps the most vital question of all, is how does the ”perfect” gentleman behave? “Manners makyth man,” pronounced one of England’s great educators, William of Wykeham, way back in the 14th century, a maxim which is hard to improve upon.

But perhaps this is too deep and too much to ask of what is essentially a very lovely, stylish book, written to elucidate and give pleasure. The real takeaway? It never hurts to be well- dressed.

For more, visit thamesandhudsonusa. com.

WWW.MURIQICOSMETICS.COM

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Net gains

BY GEORGETTE GOUVEIA

K

atrina M. Adams — who has scored any number of firsts in her unprecedented two terms as chair and president of the United States Tennis Association — has always been poised at the net, on and off the tennis court.

When celebrities showed up in the President’s Suite at Arthur Ashe Stadium inappropriately dressed during the US Open, Adams was there not only to oversee hospitality but to tell them politely but firmly they’d have to adapt to the suit-and-tie, nojeans, no-sneakers policy or leave. An apologetic Al Roker and son went in search of other footwear; a gracious Alex Rodriguez thanked Adams for her hospitality and vowed to return another day in something other than jeans. But Jerry Seinfeld raised a fuss and was relocated to a sponsor’s box and an unnamed mogul turned abusive to the staff. Protective of her team, Adams simply stood her ground.

As she writes in her new book, “Own the Arena: Getting Ahead, Making a Difference, and Succeeding as the Only One” (Amistad/HarperCollinsPublishers, $26.99, 272 pages), it wasn’t her first time in the hot seat.

In her guise as chair of the International Tennis Federation Fed Cup Committee as well as chair and president of the White Plains-based USTA, Adams was the one who had to do extensive apologizing when the wrong version of the German national anthem was performed during opening round matches of the Fed Cup, the World Cup of women’s tennis, in 2017. (It was a version that had been used by the Nazis, and the hosting Americans hadn’t bothered to double-check it, a valuable lesson about the devil being in the details.)

In other moments, Adams has had to stand there smiling, waiting for others to do the right thing as when John McEnroe took

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it upon himself to present the trophy to the 2018 US Open men’s singles champion, Novak Djokovic, instead of handing it to Adams, as previously discussed. Stepping into the breach in etiquette, Djokovic accepted the trophy, then walked over to Adams and kissed her on both cheeks, thanking her for her years of service “with an amused twinkle in his eye. He’d made it seem to the millions of viewers and spectators in the stands like it was all part of the plan. Crisis averted.”

By then Adams had al1. OWN THE TABLE. There’s a reason you ready had enough controhave a seat there. versy for one Open. A day 2. OWN YOUR LEGACY. Set an example. earlier, the tennis world 3. OWN YOUR COURAGE. Be bold, collided with social media standing on the shoulders of those who as Serena Williams lost came before. first her cool — when um4. OWN YOUR IDENTITY. Celebrate your pire Carlos Ramos penalbackground – and those of others. ized her for allegedly re5. OWN YOUR CHOICES. Trust that you’ve ceiving help in the stands made the right ones. from her coach, Patrick 6. OWN YOUR NETWORK. Surround yourself with those who can help.

Mouratoglou — and then 7. OWN YOUR VILLAGE. Surround yourthe women’s final to Naoself with family and friends who can go on mi Osaka before a raucous the journey with you. crowd that was pulling for 8. OWN YOUR VOICE. Don’t be afraid to Williams to tie Margaret speak out.

Court’s record of 24 Slam 9. OWN YOUR SUCCESS. championships. Social me10. OWN YOUR FAILURES. Loss is part of dia quickly split into team succeeding.

Serena and team Naomi 11. OWN YOUR OBLIGATIONS. Reach out and decided that Adams’ to pull others up.

12. OWN THE POSSIBILITIES. Don’t fear remarks at the trophy prethe path ahead. sentation were a little too team Serena for an impartial official — an irony given that as an African-American, Adams has long advocated for diversity and women of color like Williams and Osaka. So, more apologies, clarifications and in particular outreach to Osaka to make sure that she understood how happy Adams was for her.

It’s not surprising that Adams should open her book with this explosive incident.

At once balletic and psychologically brutal, tennis is a highly formal, highly individualistic sport in which the majority of players, Adams observes, lose most of the time and fans read whole relationships into a handshake or hug at the net. (In the Covid era, players tap their rackets to acknowledge one another.)

“Tennis is a preparatory sport for becoming who you are,” Adams writes. “It builds character and resilience both inside and outside the sport. It teaches us what

Katrina M. Adams’ 12 Match Points for Life

it means to have a good loss that helps us to develop smarter strategies for the next match, along with the endurance and persistence that come from repeatedly falling on your face.”

Because it requires so much inner direction, it can also teach you about leading yourself and others — crucial at a time when the coronavirus has tested our concept of leadership.

“My parents were my first leaders,” Adams, a Yonkers resident, says in a recent phone interview. “They were teachers.”

Chicago educators, James and Yvonne Adams were supportive, if not demonstrative parents who sacrificed much to afford the lessons, coaching and tournaments for a sport in which their daughter would soon outstrip her older brothers. Participating in the police-sponsored tennis program at the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Boys Club in Garfield Park and educated at St. Mel Holy Ghost and Whitney M. Young High School, whose alumni include Michelle Obama, Adams would star at Northwestern University in 1986-87 when she helped the Wildcats to a Big Ten Conference Championship, was named Intercollegiate Tennis Association Rookie of the Year and became the first African-American to win the NCAA doubles title.

She left Northwestern to turn pro, ranking as high as No. 67 in singles and No. 8 in doubles on the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) tour and turning to coaching and commentating when her playing career ended. But where she has really stood out is in a leadership role, joining the USTA board of directors in 2005 and rising from vice president of the nonprofit to first vice president to president and chair, becoming the first African-American, first former professional player and youngest person to serve as USTA president and chair.

Her oversight has ranged from infrastructure (the transformation of the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, Queens, the opening of the USTA National Campus in Orlando, Florida); to outreach, particularly in underserved Latino communities.

Among her proudest accomplishments was working with Billie Jean King to create a memorial to one of their “sheroes” — Althea Gibson, the Jackie Robinson of tennis — in the form of Eric Goulder’s granite sculpture of the woman who broke tennis’ color barrier in the 1950s.

Today, Adams says, there are 13 Black women in the WTA’s main draw — one facet of her mantra, to embrace all.

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The RealReal, really

BY GEORGETTE GOUVEIA

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Scenes from The RealReal Greenwich.

Photographs by Pippa Drummond.

W

hen we wrote about The RealReal, perhaps the ne plus ultra in luxury consignment, in 2017, the then mainly online business had offices in six cities, including New York.

What a difference four years make. The billion-dollar company now has 14 brick-andmortar locations with plans to add 10 this year. Its newest is The RealReal Greenwich, an elegant 3,100-square-foot space on tony Greenwich Avenue that illustrates how the

business is expanding in other ways. Yes, you’ll find all the fashion labels you’d expect — women’s ready-to-wear from Chanel, Brunello Cucinelli and Prada; menswear by Cucinelli, Tom Ford and Hermès; handbags by Gucci and Louis Vuitton; and jewelry and watches

by Cartier, Patek Philippe, Rolex, Tiffany & Co., Van Cleef & Arpels and David Yurman.

But what’s fascinating here is that the company is now thinking outside the box by considering jewelry whose appeal may be less in a brand name and more in its unusual craftsmanship and by embracing such home goods as art coffee-table books, vintage Italian furniture, Alex Katz prints and other two- and three-dimensional artworks.

All this is evident in the goodies you’ll find amid the store’s earth-toned, woodsy, stone setting, which evokes the Modernist Noyes House in New Canaan. We immediately fell in love with a tiny, turquoise Hermès Birkin bag, which stood out on artful shelves of such bags. Alas, even in mint secondhand condition and small sized, it was still $22,000. Similarly, a pink bouclé Chanel jacket — nothing makes us swoon the way pink bouclé Chanel does — was $4,000.

No matter. We had fun spying everything and then consigning a few modest treasures — a Tiffany T necklace, three rings and a Gucci wallet -- which taught us how the

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Scenes from The RealReal Greenwich.

Photographs by Pippa Drummond.

business actually works. (As per Covid-19, The RealReal is also conducting virtual consignments, having done 100,000 last year. It also conducts at-home evaluations in select markets such as Greenwich.)

Senior retail marketing manager Elyssa Noblesala introduced us to gemologist Lori Wanner, who conducted an initial appraisal of our rings and necklace while handbag expert Julio Cortez considered the wallet. It’s a bit like PBS’ “Antiques Roadshow” in that you’re weighing your own ability to have acquired a bargain or a real find against what the market will bear. The necklace, a gift, and two of the rings — an oval pink morganite and an aquamarine flanked by cat’s-eye-shaped sapphires — were valued at about what they sold for originally. But the third — a blue topaz bracketed by aquamarines — was valued at twice what we paid. The wallet also turned out to be worth more than we imagined.

So we were jazzed about the final tally and signing one-year contracts at no cost to ourselves for the five pieces, which would go on to a second authentication as well as photography and copywriting to appear on The RealReal website a few weeks later. (While the company has had some complaints about

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authentication procedures that resulted in mislabeling by inexperienced staffers, it maintains that its rigorous process adheres to the highest standards of expertise.)

Just because our goods were valued at a certain price, however, that doesn’t mean we will be earning that amount. The RealReal pays commissions that are anywhere from 40 to 85% depending on the product, the resale price and the number of items you consign.

“Our goal is to sell your item at the highest price the market commands based on our internal and external data,” says Megan Zamiska, The RealReal’s public relations specialist. “Based on pricing analysis, some items will flow through a discount cadence once they have been on our site for a minimum of 30 days. Also, the longer an item is listed on the site without selling, the more discounted it may be. Your commission tier is based on the initial price of your item before any discounts are applied and your final payout will be calculated on the final selling price of your item.”

If after a year, your item doesn’t sell, you can reclaim it or The RealReal will donate it to charity.

With more than 21 million members and some 17 million items sold, The RealReal — which offers same-day online shopping and in-store/curbside pickup — continues to grow despite the pandemic. Sales were up in the last quarter of 2020 14% -- compared with Q4 2019 -- while supply grew 13% over the same period.

With 35 % of new consignees coming from Gen Z and millennials, The RealReal looks to be assured of an audience for years to come.

Meanwhile, shoppers continue to look for lightweight women’s outerwear; Gucci and LV handbags; men’s sneakers by Nike, Yeezy and Louis Vuitton x Supreme; Rolex watches, the No. 1 selling watch brand at The RealReal in 2020; Cartier Love jewelry; and, always, diamonds.

But with Greenwich seen as a prime location for consignors and shoppers alike, as TRR head of shop Tori Cornish has noted, the store is always primed for one-of-a-kind items.

So WAG readers, start hunting in those closets.

For more, visit therealreal.com/Greenwich.

WHAT'S TRENDING Horse shows, polo return to WAG country With vaccinations on the rise and restrictions lifting, Greenwich Polo Club matches and Old Salem Farm’s Spring Horse Shows are once more opening to the public.

Polo gets off to a thundering start with the Greenwich Cup June 6, 13, 20 and 27, followed by the American Cup July 11, 18 and 25 and the East Coast Open Aug. 29, Sept. 5 and Sept. 12. The gates open at 1 p.m. Sundays for 3 p.m. matches. For tickets and more, including Covid guidelines, visit greenwichpoloclub.com.

Meanwhile, Old Salem Farm’s Spring Horse Shows return May 9 with Welcome Day, followed by show jumping competitions for avocational and professional riders of all ages May 11 through 16 and 18 through 23. For more, visit oldsalemfarm.net.

Jump into the Spring Horse Shows at Old Salem Farm in North Salem, which will once more be open to the public in May. Copyright SEL Photography 2020.

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Swing into spring When they — whoever they are — talk about “a dog’s life,” could they possibly mean the adorable pet swing beds we spied in Home Goods and on Amazon? While they wouldn’t be big enough for more than a pet, they’re fine enough to make us wish we could crawl into bed with one.

SkyMall Steel and Wicker Rattan Hanging Hammock Pet Chair Bed, $199 on Amazon.

Doggone it On April 6, Thames & Hudson will publish “Magnum Dogs,” a collection of canine photography, with images selected from the Magnum Photos archive.

Bringing together a diverse selection of images that showcase man’s best friend through the skill of Magnum’s photographers, the book features some 180 photographs of dogs from around the world and highlights the depth of their relationships with humans. Since the Magnum photo agency was founded eight decades ago, dogs have found their way into some of the collection’s most captivating images – from immaculately coiffed show dogs captured in wryly observed photography by the likes of Martin Parr and Harry Gruyaert to privileged, intimate glimpses of the fourlegged confidants of Hollywood stars, as seen through the lenses of Eve Arnold and Dennis Stock. Whether depicting pampered pooches lounging in Parisian apartments or beloved family dogs, these images offer insight into the universal human bond with canines.

Thames & Hudson publishes “Magnum Dogs,” featuring images by Magnum Photos, April 6. Book cover courtesy Thames & Hudson.

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A good horse tale You may know Sarah Maslin Nir from “Unvarnished,” her Pulitzer Prizenominated New York Times exposé of the nail salon industry and her reporting on the early Covid outbreak in New Rochelle.

(She contracted the virus and has recovered.) But she’s also “Horse Crazy,” as suggested by the title of her recent Simon & Schuster book, out in paperback this summer. It’s partly the memoir of how she overcame the challenges of living in the big city with the help of some equine friends, but it’s also the story trainers, riders and collectors of horse memorabilia who found in their fleet companions a metaphor for wholeness.

For more, visit simonandschuster.com.

Sarah Maslin Nir’s recent “Horse Crazy: The Story of a Woman and a World in Love With an Animal” (Simon & Schuster, $28 hardcover) is due out in paperback this summer.

A diet of ‘vleather’ goods We have found the perfect products to slake our thirst for notebooks, planners, agendas and card and tablet cases, to name a few, without feeding our leather guilt.

It’s NOTIQ, a collection of vegan leather — should that be vleather? — goods created by Nigerian-born Vivien Jade, who is using her company to increase the business skills of the women in her native country and in Uganda.

The Spring Collection features work accessories in Bliss (a sky blue) and Lush (a deep green). And while we’re partial to our Bliss planner, which comes in a nice little pouch, we now have our eye on a croco blush set that includes a 15-each case that would be perfect for our laptop. Our business accessories wants never end and, thanks to NOTIQ and Jade, they never have to.

For more, visit notiq.com.

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FOOD & SPIRITS

P. 62 Dinner at DD’s Diner with dad

P. 64 Luxury in a wine glass

P. 66 Adding zing to chicken

Dinner at DD’s Diner with dad STORY AND PHOTOGRAPH BY JEREMY WAYNE

"R

eally?” asked my twin sons, as we pulled up at DD’s, a diner in Ossining that I had been recommended by someone who knows his grub as well as his diners.

True, I had driven them 35 minutes across Westchester on a Sunday evening when they would rather have been doing whatever it is 17 year olds like to do at this time of the week, with the promise of a slap-up meal in a delightful setting on the Hudson. As young men about town and the spoiled sons of a critic, doubtless they had been expecting a fine-dining establishment, soft candlelight and very possibly the strum of gypsy guitars.

Maybe the odd celeb at a neighboring table, too. What they got instead was faux-wood, Formica and frosted glass. And not so much as a glimpse of the Hudson River.

Installed in a booth, though, Olympic-sized menus in their hands, they started to cheer up. We admired the retro look, all the more impressive since I later learned that DD’s only opened five years ago. Son No. 1 said the circular, fabric lampshades — which I kind of thought looked like upturned drums — had a 1930s, Bauhaus look.

(He’s the one who wants to be an architect, you understand.) Son No. 2 said the place had a “juke box jive.” (He’s into his music.) This was true, but, ironically, one of the things DD’s was missing, at least on the evening we visited, was just that — music.

It could have done with a bit of “Jailhouse Rock” to get the party going.

But back to those menus. Seriously, the entire Ossining White Pages, printed in a continuous column, could not be any lon-

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ger than this monster of a bill-of-fare, with its eggs, pancakes, soups, quesadillas and salads; its taters, tacos, paninis, wraps and sandwiches; and yet more still with its “standards,” “classics,” entrées, and famous “Not Your Mom’s Mac & Cheese.” Just imagine that last one if you can — seven iterations of mac and cheese, each baked in an iron skillet. (True, I don’t know your mom or her cooking, and likely as not nor does co-owner and chef Michael Lombardi, but I’ll bet you a dollar to a doughnut that she doesn’t make you duck and truffle mac, at least not on a regular basis.)

We attacked the starters. A generous heaping of tuna tartare came with guacamole and wonton chips, an embarrassment of riches. Macaroni and cheese balls, breaded and deep fried, which should have had “carb alert” stamped across their menu listing, retained an extraordinary lightness. An onion soup, piping hot under its heavy overcoat of gruyère, was dense with onion and intense. We gave a thumbsup to the quesadillas, served with yet more guacamole and a sour cream drizzle.

Spanakopita, that Greek favorite of flaky phyllo pastry, filled with spinach and feta, was delicious in two Herculean parcels that

DD’s Diner, exterior sign.

could hold up a continent. The boys tried penne alla vodka and “nicely al dente, not too much vodka,” was their verdict. I wasn’t entirely clear whether this was a good or bad thing, but they finished their large portions regardless. I opted for the salmon burger, a dinner special, as if this encyclopedia of a menu needed additional “specials.” It ticked all the boxes, fresh and spicy, served in a soft brioche bun, with a good tartare sauce, terrific “three tone” slaw and golden fries.

I pressed milk shakes, floats and an elusive New York egg cream on the boys, but they, who are always hungry, on this occasion were beaten. “No, no, no,” they pleaded, “not another thing,” as though I were torturing them, which, of course, I was, But who ever said the restaurant writer’s job was an easy one? We settled instead for a sundae, since after all it was a Sunday. (“Please, Dad, do not on any account make that joke in print,” they begged me again, and somehow, miraculously, appetites — mine included — revived sufficiently to enjoy chocolate and vanilla ice cream, topped with whipped cream and chocolate syrup.

Our verdict was unanimous: We all loved DD’s, even if the service was utterly shambolic. Dishes brought before silverware, water forgotten, dishes banged down with the elegance of a cobbler hammering a particularly recalcitrant boot. Not that we could really blame our young (and apparently new) server, whom I’ve no doubt is terribly nice to seniors and injured wildlife. In all honesty, he had not been sufficiently trained to be on the restaurant floor unaided and on a quiet Sunday evening, probably after a busy day, all eyes, including his, were off the ball.

The bill finally brought, after so long a wait I had almost grown a beard or at least stubble, something clicked. It was those darn lampshades that had been bothering my subconscious, and now I knew what they reminded me of. The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York — turned upside down, of course. I ran this thought by the budding architect. “Yes,” he conceded, “that’s exactly it,” a rare point to dad.

It had been a lovely, bonding dinner and as we left the restaurant and headed north up steep, Stormytown Road, there was a bonus. We finally got our river vista — a stunning view across Croton Bay, as the sun set on the horizon beyond.

Along with some very good food, that last ember of an evening at DD’s will stay indelibly in my mind.

Reservations are not accepted. To view DD’s menu, visit ddsdiner.com

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Luxury in a wine glass

BY DOUG PAULDING

E

veryone knows you can’t judge a book by its cover. In this case you can. Far Niente is a producer of Cabernet Sauvignon and Chardonnay based in Oakville, (Napa Valley) California. If there is a more attractive label in all the wine world, I haven’t seen it. This one always grabs my attention. The label shows the winery nestled between the surrounding foothills and the vineyards all framed by vines with bright green foliage and plump, redolent grapes ready for harvest. I have tasted Far Niente Cabs and Chardonnays over the years and its single vineyard Nickel and Nickel wines and they always remind me this is luxury in a glass.

I recently had the opportunity to Zoomtaste with Nicole Marchesi, Far Niente’s head winemaker while sharing a bottle of her recently released 2018 Cabernet Sauvi-

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gnon, albeit 3,000 miles apart. Nicole wrote for her college (University of California at Davis) newspaper and was assigned to write a story about the university’s viticulture and enology program. That assignment persuaded Nicole to change her academic studies to this department. She graduated, pursued and caught winery positions in Sonoma and New Zealand before landing a job at Far Niente in 2005. In 2009 she was named head winemaker for the brand.

Far Niente, meaning “without a care” or “sweet to do nothing” began in 1885 when gold prospector John Benson bought the property and hired an architect to design a gravity-fed winery, which allows for gentle movement of the juice and subsequent wine through the multiple steps necessary to craft a quality product. Benson, a visionary with big plans, ran the operation for almost 35 years when some health issues slowed him down. Then Prohibition shuttered the winery. It sat, completely abandoned, for 60 years until Gil and Beth Nickel bought the property and began a three-year restoration and expansion project for the

building and the vineyards. Gil had been in the nursery business so he and Beth knew about plants and how to grow them to maximize their potential. The plantings on the property and the vineyards reflect the insider’s green knowledge with which they entered this endeavor.

Gil was an entrepreneur and a visionary as well and over the years he excavated into the hills to create 40,000 square feet of subterranean space for barrel aging and bottle resting areas. His efforts have led to a nomination for the National Register of Historic Places as well as a first Chardonnay harvest in 1979 and a maiden Cabernet in 1982. Far Niente remains progressive — installing floating solar panels in 2008, making them net zero users of electricity, producing more energy than they consume. The vintner’s practices are all organic, pure and ecologically sound.

So let’s talk about this wine. Nicole calls herself “a steward of the brand,” working to achieve a recognized “house style of a balance of elegance and power.” The aroma and taste work together wonderfully.

Dark and generous cherry emanates from the glass. Then you will notice subtle tickly cinnamon along with some dried spices and hints of leather and unlit cigar. The tannins are balanced, helping to create a full mouth experience with a persistent and silky finish.

This Napa Cab is assembled largely from grapes purchased from noteworthy vineyards in the region. The grapes are crushed, juice is fermented and then oak aged. Nicole told me they use several different coopers, or barrel makers, and can approach their house style by adjusting the different flavors and textures the oak infuses into the wine.

Although the term, “without a care” is embodied in the name, Far Niente wine is anything but. There is no detail overlooked and nothing is left to chance. Precise vineyard care and grape selection, immaculate winery practices and blending put Far Niente in another realm. This wine, properly stored, will easily last a couple of decades. Far Niente has a wine club you can join that discounts your first order and will share special offerings when available. Here is a brilliant idea from the website, farniente.com: Assemble a small group of friends interested in wine who have some expendable income.

Far Niente will send an assortment of wines to each friend and will arrange a convenient time for you to learn virtually while having a safely distanced personal tasting, face to face sort of. With prices ranging from $70 to $200, these wines aren’t inexpensive but in these Covid times this is an education and a party.

Write me at doug@dougpaulding.com.

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SPICED CHICKEN WITH BROCCOLI INGREDIENTS • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

2 chicken leg quarters with skin 2 tablespoons butter, soft 2 cloves garlic minced 1/4 cup dill or cilantro chopped fine 2 tablespoons salt 1 tablespoon black pepper 1 tablespoon coriander powder 1/2 tablespoon cumin powder 1 tablespoon paprika or chili powder 1/2 teaspoon fennel powder 1 teaspoon onion powder or 1/2 a shallot 2 tablespoons olive oil 2 cups broccoli florets 6 cups of water 1 tablespoon salt

WHAT’S COOKING?

FOOD & SPIRITS

DIRECTIONS

Adding zing to chicken

BY RAJNI MENON Spiced chicken (or chicken roast) is one of the most popular dishes all over Kerala. Chicken roasted with a marinade of spices and sautéd with roasted onions is one of the best dishes that goes along with rice or flatbread. This version of mine is a blend of spices along with a compound butter to bring out a better flavor.

Hope you enjoy it.

• Clean 2 chicken leg quarters thoroughly, including under the skin. Set aside.

• Make a compound butter by mixing soft butter, dill or cilantro, salt and black pepper in a small bowl well.

• Pull the skin apart and use your fingers to place a chunk of the compound butter underneath the skin. Place the skin down, hold with one hand and spread the butter by pushing the butter all over with the other hand. The butter gets spread all over on the chicken underneath the skin.

• Next prepare the rub that goes on top of the skin. In a bowl mix the remaining spices and olive oil. (If using a shallot, pound the shallot in a mortar with the pestle and make sure its ground well to a smooth paste.) Mix well and rub this on top of the skin all over the chicken. Marinate it for a 1/2 hour in the fridge.

• Preheat the oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit while chicken is marinating.

• Place the chicken on a baking sheet. Bake for 50 to 60 minutes.

• Boil water in a deep pan. Once boiling add in salt and broccoli florets for 3 to 4 minutes so that they turn bright green. Serve the broccoli and chicken with a side salad.

For more, visit creativerajni.com.

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TRAVEL

P. 68 In a class by itself

P. 72 Wine country reborn

P. 78 The right kind of baggage

P. 76 Italy In the palm of your hand

P. 80 Putting the joie in the vivre

In a class by itself

BY JEREMY WAYNE

Lobby at Mr. C — Coconut Grove Luxury Miami Hotel.

Courtesy Mr. C Hotels.

I

swing my rented Toyota Camry onto the forecourt of Mr. C — Coconut Grove Luxury Miami Hotel, so excited to be here finally after my long drive up from Key West, that I narrowly miss sideswiping a midnight-blue Rolls Royce and a matching Bentley. That, I have to say, would have been a most inauspicious start to my stay.

Mr. C is the hot new hotel in what is currently one of South Florida’s most sough-after districts, where old world

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charm and quiet money meet Miami style and zing. And where, demurely parked side by side, those handsome cars could easily be a synonym for Mr. C itself — sleek, glamorous and highly polished.

Outside the hotel entrance, a gorgeous guy in a vivid pink shirt and bright-white panama hat is chatting languidly with a gorgeous girl in a white sheath dress so sleek she must have been poured into it, and while a bellman removes my battered, 20-year-old Bric’s weekender from the trunk, a parking valet whisks the Camry silently away.

I head for the front desk, which like everything at Mr. C is custom-made and perfect. But not so quick. Because, between the street door and the desk there is, rather sensibly, a small bar and, almost before I

Pool at Mr. C — Coconut Grove Luxury Miami Hotel.

realize it, a white-jacketed female bartender has thrust a Bellini — the signature drink of the Cipriani empire — into my hand. It is a cliché, undoubtedly, but if only all clichés were as delicious as this one.

At the desk, meanwhile, manager Rafael picks up my credit card with such delicacy, you’d think it was made of gossamer and hands it back along with the key card for my room. “Did you like the Bellini?” asks the head bartender, who wanders over as I wait for the elevator, and whose snazzy, cerulean blue suit I feel I could commit a terrible act to acquire. “Yes, I like it,” I reassure him. “That makes me very happy,” he says.

The Mr C hotels, of which there are now three — in Los Angeles, New York and Miami - are the brainchildren of fourth-generation “hospitality leaders” Ignazio and

Maggio Cipriani. The Cipriani restaurant name and legacy really need no introduction here. Suffice it to say that inside every restaurateur is a hotelier longing to get out.

Mr. C hotels? It was only a matter of time.

My fourth-floor guest room, with its duck-egg blue walls, is like a berth on an oligarch’s yacht — a tasteful oligarch, with an impeccable yacht. London-based designer Martin Brudnizki has pursued a nautical theme with so much understatement that the effect is almost subliminal.

The room is a gallery of exquisite objects and handmade cabinetry, including a lacquered, pale ebony desk and built-in closets with drawers that glide. A luxurious headboard in the softest two-tone blue fabric and an abstract blue carpet with matching ikat curtains continue the maritime trope.

At the end of the desk, there’s a cocktail bar, with half-bottles of gin, vodka, rum and whiskey, along with six pre-made cocktails, including a Negroni and a macho-sounding, tequila-based Matador.

Honestly, you could drink yourself silly here, or hunker down for a siege. And you could also wear Mr. C’s ineffably chic, free-

bie slippers to The Met Ball and people on the world’s best-dressed list would be ogling them and asking their publicists to find out where you got them.

Up on the fifth floor — the top floor of this low-rise new build — in Mr C’s restaurant, Bellini (what else could they have called it?), they are dispensing their namesake drinks as if they are going out of style.

Being perverse, I opt for a Vodka Roger instead, white peach juice with vodka (as opposed to the Bellini’s prosecco,) which has me right back there at Harry’s Bar in Venice. O Sole Mio! With its eight-branched, Murano-glass chandeliers, its snowy table linens, its exquisite crystal and flatware and Perfidia purring plaintively on the sound system, this restaurant is so innately elegant, all Covid-cares — indeed, all worldly cares — are at least temporarily banished. Max, the maître d’, who moved here from New York to open the property in 2017, and who tells me he has not had one moment of regret since, runs the show with élan, while our Colombian head waiter is so simpatico, so attuned to your every need, you wish he were your primary care provider.

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Il Giardino at Mr. C — Coconut Grove Luxury Miami Hotel.

You can eat outside up here too, on Bellini’s narrow terrace, best enjoyed on a balmy Miami night, when the heat and humidity of the day have gone.

A few steps up from the terrace, is Mr. C’s small but perfectly-proportioned pool, where guests hang out by day, soaking up the South Florida sun on what are arguably the world’s plushest, most comfortable chaise lounges, gazing out through Bulgari sunglasses across Biscayne Bay. Back at ground level, there is even more outdoor space, tables and chairs for lunch or a light snack in front of the main entrance, as well as an utterly enchanting terrace, Il Giardino, adjoining the lobby. I want to call this space a corte sconta, a hidden courtyard, because it sounds so much lovelier in Italian, a plant-filled, walled garden to relax in over a morning cappuccino.

As I finish mine and return to the elevator on the second day of my stay, I again see the cars I almost pranged when I arrived and wonder who might drive such slick,

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expensive machines. But Mr C is a case of class over flash cash, and these fourth generation Cip-kids are the great inheritors of a family name and brand that has always paid at least as much attention to style and finesse as it has to mere dollar signs.

Later in the day, as I prepare to depart, the cars have gone, but have been replaced by two gleaming, blood-red Ferraris. “With all these smart cars, my Camry is a bit embarrassing,” I joke with the female valet, to which she replies, “Wheels is wheels, sir, and at least you don’t have to worry about where you park a Camry.” An old head on young shoulders.

The car is brought around in three minutes flat. Rafael, the front-desk manager, waves goodbye and the bartender mouths across the lobby, “Come back and see us soon.”

Soon? Tomorrow if I could. Then again, why ever leave? Heavens — I’m just coconuts about this hotel.

For more, visit mrchotels.com

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www.BlossomFlower.com 914.237.2511 APRIL 2021 WAGMAG.COM

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Wine country, reborn

BY BARBARA BARTON SLOANE

Many travelers are wondering what to expect when visiting the California wine country in light of last year’s devastating fires. The fires occurred in rural parts of the area, leaving most of the counties physically unaffected.

Of course, any loss is heartbreaking, but Mother Nature quickly began to heal burned vineyards and hillsides.

Thus today, visitors will find thriving vineyards, charming towns, parks filled with history and natural beauty, stunning vistas and miles of dramatic Pacific coastline eagerly awaiting guests. Due to coronavirus protocols, advanced reservations may be required for wine tastings. Dining reservations are also strongly suggested.

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Houseboats in Sausalito.

Photograph courtesy of Sloane Travel Photograpy.

Getting out among the vines Just an hour’s drive northeast of San Francisco is one of California’s most visited attractions — the vine-covered hillsides of Napa and Sonoma counties. My visit took me to a region reminiscent of Tuscany, with undulating, lush green hillsides crisscrossed with vines and awash in wildflowers — a dramatic landscape sprinkled with appealing small towns, world-class restaurants and 600 wineries and tasting rooms.

Wine, wine everywhere and drops and drops of it to spare.

Glen Ellen, in the heart of Sonoma Valley, is a sweet little hamlet of less than 1,000 people. It is steeped in a blend of inspiring libations, local dining delights and the region’s noble, natural beauty. Here the Benziger Family Winery is an 85-acre estate that has become a research and teaching center for the cultivation of grapes with more flavor and aroma. For more than 30 years, the family has been singularly dedicated to three things — family, great wine and healthy vineyards. I hopped aboard a tram that took me through the winery’s vineyards, caves and factories. The guide explained that Benziger wines are certified sustainable and organic — not because Benziger wants to be known as "the green winery," but because its experience has shown that great wine has green values. My tour ended in the Benziger tasting room. Did the wines I tasted have more flavor, more aroma? I can only tell you that I left the winery a happy camper.

Veni, vici, vido While wine may be the main attraction, this region’s supporting cast — land imbued with dazzling beauty, a lineup of acclaimed restaurants and a multitude of recreational and cultural activities — makes nearby Napa Valley in the North Bay portion of the San Francisco Bay area a most desirable destination. In Yountville, I checked into my hotel and then quickly set out to discover this town, which is saddled with a rather unfortunate name. Actually, to give credit where credit is due, when one George Calvert

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Sausalito.

Yount first saw the Napa Valley, he said, “In such a place I should love to live and die.”

How’s that for a glowing stamp-of-approval? Yount settled here in 1836 and planted the first vineyard in the valley. Today, wineries in Yountville include such well-known producers as Domaine Chandon and Robert Mondavi. And only in Napa Valley could a tiny rural village boast more Michelin-starred restaurants per capita than any other place in North America. Yountville: The name sounds better already.

The town’s compact layout makes it great for wandering on foot or bike. To quote one of Napa’s chefs: “For those of us that have to commute or run to the airport and back, it’s nice to come home to a community that has almost everything you need within 300 yards.” I explored upscale, deluxe boutiques and checked out the Napa Valley Museum with its Èdouard Manets and Andy Warhols, and the lively, offbeat diRosa Center for Contemporary Art Before returning to the hotel, I just had to see the holy grail of gourmet dining — Thomas Keller’s French Laundry. It’s situated down a side street — a lane, really. The restaurant is sited on what

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looks like an abandoned lot. I made my way to the front door flanked with pretty green topiary. Expecting grandeur, I thought this citadel of haute cuisine appeared somewhat ordinary and unprepossessing. Perhaps the magic lies within.

Wined and dined out My wine country experience, albeit heady and delicious, left me needing a break. I needed to clear my head and instead feed mind and soul. I needed to be “Sittin’ on the Dock of the Bay” — and there’s no better place to do it than in Sausalito, where Otis Redding penned his song of the same name. Listening to the lyrics, I found his song is kind of sad. Redding sings that he’s traveled 2,000 miles from home just to sit on the dock of the bay “wastin’ time.”

Sorry, I can’t relate to that. The town offers many delightful diversions, not the least of which is a tour of its iconic houseboat scene.

Victoria Colella was my guide for her ‘Docks of the Bay” historic houseboat tour. This vibrant community of floating homes recently turned 72, but it remains as rebellious and funky as ever. I saw original house-

boats, art studios, wooden boat building shops and working boat yards. Victoria told tales of the Beat era, the houseboat wars and showed us the boat where movie actor Sterling Hayden lived in his heyday.

Sausalito is a mere hour’s drive from Napa and is ranked as one of the top 20 destinations in the country, with its smalltown charm, Mediterranean character and awe-inspiring views of San Francisco, its sister city across the bay. One of the best views to be had — anywhere — is from a small, chic and understated hotel with just 31 rooms — The Inn Above Tide. Each room comes with its own private deck and though it was chilly out there and cozy inside, the view won me over. I realized that from my vantage point, I was seeing San Francisco in an utterly unique way. Darkness fell softly over the bay as the lights of the city came alive before a backdrop of flaming orange. Granted, there are hundreds of hotels around San Francisco Bay, but there’s only one hotel on it — and that made all the difference.

For more, visit sonomacounty.com, napavalley.org and Sausalito.org.

Italy In the palm of your hand

BY DEBBI KICKHAM Teddy Blake luxe handbags are handmade in Italy by old world artisans who make your purchase a distinctive experience. Courtesy Teddy Blake.

W

ho doesn’t love a European designer handbag? I sure do. But their prices can be astronomical.

That is why I am currently obsessed with Teddy Blake handbags. Not only are they beautiful, but they are handmade in Italy and come in a wealth of styles and colors. Most important, they come at a price point that won’t break the bank.

CEO Samy Waiche founded his compa-

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ny a few years back when he was in the market to purchase a special present for his girlfriend. Unfortunately, he discovered that most luxury handbags were out of his price range. Not wanting to sacrifice quality for cost, he launched Teddy Blake in 2016 as a first-class Italian brand — and the rest is history. Never heard of Teddy Blake? You’re not alone. Its handbags are the world’s best-kept secret. They are definitely under-the-radar but deserve to be front and center in your walk-in closet.

“I wanted to create handbags that don’t cost a thousand dollars, or two thousand dollars,” Waiche told me in a phone interview from France. The price range of these posh purses is from $300 to $550, but they

look like a million bucks. “No other brand can do what we do,” Waiche added. “We sell directly to customers, and we cut all costs to shake up the industry and make luxury affordable.”

Another outstanding point of differentiation is that there is a huge diversity of styles, sizes and colors. One style can come in three sizes and in 50 different colors. For example, if you lust after a black bag — and who doesn’t? — you can find it at Teddy Blake in luxe leather that is smooth, grainy or less shiny, or in high-shine crocodile, with either gold or silver hardware.

“We really go into the details,” he said.

One stunner that is my favorite is the Ava. It comes in light beige and many oth-

er colors, in 6-inch, 9-inch, 11-inch and 14inch, depending on what you prefer. You may also like the Eliza faux-croco bucket bag in light pink. Or the Kim Stampatto, 11-inches, in orange. The company also just launched handbags in python. It also makes matching wallets and credit card cases for the ultimate ensemble. No matter what you select, you’re adding la dolce vita to your lifestyle — and your outfit.

WAG readers can take advantage of a special $20 discount by applying the customer code WAG20 at checkout. And the packaging, might I add, is perfection.

For more, visit teddyblake.com. And follow Debbi on Instagram at @Debbikickham.

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The right kind of baggage

L

ast month, WAG wrote about McLaren’s new high-performance hybrid supercar, the $250,000 Arturo. Now international travel and lifestyle brand TUMI has unveiled its new collection of McLaren-inspired luggage.

Embodying TUMI and McLaren’s two-yearold partnership on performance luxury, the capsule collection is comprised of nine pieces.

Each contains elements of McLaren’s sleek, bold supercars and race cars. All are highlighted with its signature Papaya colorway and feature CCX6 carbon fiber accents.

Key travel pieces include the Aero International Expandable 4 Wheel Carry-On and the Quantum Duffel. The carry-on is crafted in a hybrid of materials, including Tegris, an extremely hard-wearing thermoplastic composite found in race cars. The hard shell is contrasted by a molded-fabric front panel with a supercar-influenced design that is echoed throughout the collaboration.

This solid build allows the collection to protect the contents it carries, incorporating fur-

ther elements of McLaren’s supercar designs.

The interior features a compression strap that takes its cues from the six-point racing harnesses found in McLaren’s race cars and track-only models such as the limited-edition McLaren Senna GTR. The Velocity Backpack was created to keep wearers connected all day long thanks to the inclusion of a USB port and padded laptop compartment. TUMI’s hallmark “Add-a-Bag” sleeve makes it a fitting companion to the collection’s carry-on.

The Torque Sling and Lumin Utility Pouch are additional contemporary styles for light-carry and hands-free days. The Orbit Small Packing Cube, Trace Expandable Organizer and split compartment Teron Travel Kit are all ultra-portable accessories to keep your belongings protected, organized and readily available through every leg of your journey.

The collection is available at tumi.com, TUMI’s global retail stores and select McLaren retailers. — edited by Georgette Gouveia.

Working with high-performance car manufacturer McLaren, TUMI has designed a capsule luggage and travel accessories collection as sleek as McLaren’s supercars. Courtesy TUMI.

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Putting the joie in the vivre

BY JEREMY WAYNE

R

ococo curlicues meet pop art and exposed ducting in the recently relaunched Hotel Nyack. The former Time Nyack Hotel, which started life as a plastics factory and was later a music studio, is now part of Hyatt’s eclectic “Joie de Vivre” collection. The vision of the boutique brand — known informally as JdV — is reconnecting hotels with their local communities, but the individual hotels’ undeniable hip factor is going to appeal to Gen Z guests as well as the village elders.

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Lying on my supremely comfortable bed in my spacious corner suite, gazing at the high ceiling, I do wonder what all these pipes might be carrying. There is a mass of them, including one directly over my head, so that Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory comes inexorably to mind and I half-expect an everlasting gobstopper to pop out at one end.

Not that I’m short of candy and treats, because a basket by the Keurig coffee machine in the closet supplies me with a Hershey bar, as well as Oreo cookies, peanuts, Pringles and Famous Amos.

There’s also a minibar stuffed with sodas, while new partnerships with local vendors, currently in the works, mean more locally made and esoteric snacks will be coming soon. In the bathrooms, with their large shower stalls, expect to find luxurious tow-

Lobby at Hotel Nyack. Courtesy Hotel Nyack.

Pool at Hotel Nyack.

els, along with sweet-smelling, Jonathan Adler products.

Oh, and did I mention the distinctive, dizzyingly “busy” red rugs, scalloped into fleur-de-lys at the edges, found in the bedrooms and the common areas of the hotel?

They’re a cross between regal and kitsch, I can’t quite decide which. But apparently a lot of guests ask if they can buy one (answer — “unfortunately, no longer.”)

Best of all, perhaps, is the view of the Hudson River and the Gov. Mario M. Cuomo Bridge. Be sure to request a central balcony suite if you are a fully fledged pontist and want to spend your stay bridge-and-river gazing.

Downstairs in the bar, bartender Joe’s a friendly sort. He elbow-bumps me as I take a seat and asks my name. (Over the years I’ve been accustomed to getting the actu-

al “elbow” in bars, so this elbow-bumping makes a pleasant change.)

Just off the lobby hangs an empty gilt picture frame just made for selfies and a conversation piece of a human skull, made from bullets. Thankfully, it’s not nearly as gruesome as it sounds. Another outsized picture frame reveals a hologram of Mick Jagger, as unmistakable as he is Instagram-able. There are also a lot of mildly suggestive, fluffy faux-fur cushions dotted around the place, on armchairs, ottomans and sofas.

While Hotel Nyack may not be everybody’s cup of tea, it is undoubtedly going to appeal to a wide swathe of people. General Manager Anthony Damiano is understandably enthusiastic about his property, believing it will quickly establish itself as a favorite neighborhood hangout. In line with the JdV

ethos, he’s keen to stress that the hotel will be integral to its local environment. “We want to be part of Nyack — not just a hotel in Nyack,” he expounds. He says he and his team are excited because they know they have a lot to offer. “We feel that if we connect with our community, everything else will fall into place.”

With its more than 6,000 feet of flexible event space, including a 2,500-squarefoot ballroom (and one which has the rare commodity of natural light), Damiano is also anticipating a great deal of interest in events of all kinds, including, of course, corporate events, weddings and bar mitzvahs.

Indeed, he says, the enquiries are already coming. “By the time we get to the summer, we’re going to be seeing a lot of action,” he says with a twinkle.

Asked about business travelers, Damia-

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King room at Hotel Nyack.

no concedes that, with the pandemic, this sector has taken the biggest hit. But business people are edging back. “There are a number of businesses in the area — pharmaceutical companies, banking, different business not only in Rockland County but in Tarrytown,” he comments. “What’s really been big, though, has been filming,” he throws in, tantalizingly. Who’s filming? Damiano confirms that episodes of “FBI: Most Wanted,” “Severance” and “Prodigal Sons” have all been shot in the area in recent

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months, the producers choosing to make the hotel their base.

Hotel Nyack’s restaurant, named The Grille, feels wistful, with only a few diners actually dining early in the week I visit, on the cusp of spring, but there are plans afoot to redesign the room. That goes for the spacious patio, too. In a few weeks’ time, the garage doors to the patio will be open and it will become what Damiano describes as “a hot and happening area.” An attractive outdoor bar is already in place and live mu-

sic and entertainment, including movies shown on a giant screen, will be featured on weekends. Back in The Grille, while the fairly safe, American-fusion menu isn’t going to frighten the horses, the kitchen turns out fresh and vibrant salads, wonderful crab and golden calamari (with the halved lemon muslin-wrapped, no less,) as well as steaks and chops cooked with great care and precision.

Also to look forward to, early to mid-May will see the opening of Hotel Nyack’s pool, which will be a further boon. And with a collaboration with a local spa and wellness center, located less than a mile away, the hotel will become a fully-fledged, urban resort. “In this area, we don’t really have this kind of hotel, so we do feel we have that little extra difference.”

Which is very possibly understating it.

“We have the local community behind us and a lot to look forward to,” reiterates Damiano. As the front door opens and the first check-ins of the day arrive, Mick Jagger looks down approvingly.

For more, including reservations, visit hyatt.com.

WELLNESS

P. 84 Connecting to survive

P. 88 What to eat pre-exercise

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Connecting to survive

BY GEORGETTE GOUVEIA

S

uicide is the 10th leading cause of death in the United States, and suicide rates have been on the rise steadily since 2000, according to the John Hopkins Psychiatry Guide.

While it may still be too early to draw a correlation between Covid-19 and deaths by suicide, experts say that the pandemic, like previous ones, has exacerbated factors that may increase suicides, including anxiety, social isolation and the loss of loved ones, jobs and careers.

“Suicidal crises have become more prevalent and calls to crisis centers have increased,” says trauma psychologist Shauna Springer, who calls “the confluence of vulnerabilities” created by the pandemic “a perfect storm” for suicidal thoughts.

The Harvard-educated Springer, who holds a Ph.D. from the University of Florida, is a trauma psychologist and Psychology Today blogger. (Based in northern California, she is the chief psychologist for Stella, a network of PTSD clinics that partners with talk therapists and offers a procedure, the Stellate Ganglion Block, that involves in-

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Shauna Springer.

Courtesy Shauna Springer.

jecting a local anesthetic into a cluster of nerves in the neck to calm the fight-or-flight response.)

While she has done extensive work with members of the military who affectionately call her “Doc” Springer — she is the author of “Warrior: How to Support Those Who Protect Us” and the co-author (with Jason Roncoroni) of “Beyond the Military: A Leader’s Handbook for Warrior Reintegration” — 70% percent of her patients are civilians suffering from all kinds of trauma.

“What I have learned about trauma is that it applies to all of us,” Springer says.

“The chronic threat response, the surges of anxiety and irritability: It changes us biologically and psychologically.

“The really important point,” she added, “is that human suffering is universal and thoughts of suicide are not rare.”

Recently, Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, revealed that she had suicidal thoughts brought on by the confinement of her life within the British royal family. She is, she told interviewer Oprah Winfrey, in a better place now, happy with her husband, Prince Harry; their son, Archie; and their expected baby girl in their new Montecito, California, home. The prospects are not as rosy for many of the hard-working, perfectionistic young women of Japan, where suicide is on the rise in that demographic group.

What accounts, then, for the difference between suicidal thoughts and acting upon them?

“There’s no single cause for suicide and that’s a humbling truth for all of us,” Springer says. “There may be a genetic predisposition to depression, which is a risk factor.

But depression is not the only cause of suicide….A suicidal crisis can be triggered by the loss of a loved one, especially the loss of a loved one to suicide.”

Right now, she says, the nation is experiencing traumatic grief, with more than 550,000 dead. That grief is underscored by the reality that in many if not most cases, we haven’t been able to attend the deathbeds or funerals of lost loved ones. Loss and social isolation can be a devastating combination, one that even those with the strongest identities cannot weather. Indeed, a strong identity can be a risk factor if that identity is threatened, Springer says. She has seen it among military members who embody “the warrior code” and then have to transition to civilian life.

“When you lose your structure and your role, that’s a risk factor.” In the pandemic, many who have lost jobs, careers and relationships are struggling with their sense of themselves.

Meghan told Oprah that she gave up the trappings and reality of her identity as an independent-minded American actress and feminist — her name, her career and her blog, along with her car keys, driver’s license and passport — to take on a role for which she said she received little training and support.

Support is the key two-way street — support for those who are suicidal and reaching out to others if you yourself have suicidal thoughts.

“It’s not so much a case of if you can pull yourself out of a crisis,” Springer says. “It’s can you turn to those you love and trust?”

Suicidal thoughts dwell in valleys and tunnels, Springer says. The way through is by connecting.

“You have to connect with people you love and trust and assemble a team of support. But you also have to find some purpose and connect to the deeper meaning of suffering.

“When you connect, you survive.”

If you or anyone you know is having suicidal thoughts, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-2738255. For more on Shauna Springer, visit docshaunaspringer.com.

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With over 50 doctors serving 20 locations, including 7 Urgent Care | Walk-In centers, two orthopaedic-only Surgical Centers and 12 state-of-the-art Sports Therapy | Rehab locations, we make it convenient for you to get the orthopaedic care you need, close to where you live.

There’s simply no other Connecticut practice that offers the convenience, personalized care and comprehensive experience that you’ll find with Connecticut Orthopaedics. From your first visit, to diagnosing your injury, to treatment and rehabilitation, we offer end-to-end orthopaedic services designed to accommodate your every need.

Moving Forward Together

203.407.3500 ct-ortho.com

Quick Tips to Stay Healthy in the 2021 Baseball Season Dr. Brandon Erickson is a Sports Medicine Surgeon at Rothman Orthopaedics and serves as an assistant team physician for the Philadelphia Phillies. He has a special interest in shoulder, elbow and knee injuries to athletes and non-athletes alike and sees patients in Manhattan and Westchester County, NY.

The 2021 baseball season is fast approaching and many players are anxious to ramp back up as quickly as possible. However, most athletes saw a disruption to their normal routine in 2020 because of the pandemic.

As such, most baseball players, specifically pitchers, did not go through their normal in season or off-season routines. This could make these athletes susceptible to injury in 2021. This post will give a few quick tips to help minimize the risk of injury in 2021.

PAY ATTENTION TO YOUR BODY. Your workload is often defined by a combination of innings pitched, pitches thrown, batters faced, days of rest in between outings, etc. While workload can vary from year to year, most athletes stay relatively consistent with some increase or decrease in workload each year. As 2020 caused most players to have a decreased workload, athletes must be cognizant of this when entering 2021. All of your workload metrics decreased in 2020.

While it would be nice to simply revert back to your 2019 workload, this may not be possible as your body may not be able to tolerate that workload yet. It is important to listen to your body as your workload begins to increase, and understand the difference between mild soreness after a game or pain.

Soreness is to be expected and is no cause for concern. Pain that prevents you from doing your normal activities, that wakes you up at night, or that lingers more than a couple of days can be cause for concern.

Oftentimes, you know your body better than anyone, and it will tell you if things are not going well. Just remember to pay attention.

STRETCH One of the easiest ways to decrease risk of shoulder and elbow injury is to properly stretch. This specifically applies to the throwing shoulder, trunk of the body, and hips. For the shoulder, external and internal rotation are extremely important, especially in pitchers. Similarly, internal rotation is paramount for the hips, especially

in the landing leg for pitchers as it is necessary to rotate over this leg to generate a forceful pitch. Players who lose motion in any of these areas place themselves at risk of shoulder and elbow injury. Therefore, a daily stretching routine should be instituted for baseball players in an effort to decrease their risk of injury.

START A STRENGTHENING PROGRAM. While stretching is very important, it’s also important to strengthen the muscles of your shoulder, shoulder blade, and your core. The shoulder blade functions as the foundation of the shoulder in a throwing athlete. When the shoulder blade is in a good position because the muscles originating from the shoulder blade are strong and firing, it can decrease the risk of shoulder injuries in throwing athletes.

Similarly, a strong core can help take stress off of the upper body during the throwing cycle and therefore can help decrease injury risk. A band routine for scapular stabilization and a core workout several times per week is a helpful way to keep the athlete healthy.

GIVE YOURSELF PLENTY OF TIME TO ADAPT TO YOUR THROWING PROGRAM. One of the most common ways pitchers get injuries is because they try to rush back to pitching before their arm is ready. It takes several months for a pitcher’s arm to be ready to throw competitively. This is one of the reasons spring training in professional baseball is so long, and is why pitchers and catchers report first.

It’s important to take the necessary amount of time to complete a throwing progression before trying to throw in a game. Whether this takes 6 weeks or 10 weeks, the important thing is that the shoulder and elbow are ready to see the stress placed on them during a game. Make sure to complete each stage of the throwing progression without skipping steps, or rushing through different checkpoints.

For more information or to make an appointment, please visit RothmanNY.com or call 888-636-7840.

Remember the “old you”? The you that could run, jump, and play with the best of them? It’s time to get back to that.

That’s why at Rothman Orthopaedics we are exceptionally specialized. We not only specialize in orthopaedics, each of our physicians only focuses on one area of the body. Which means you can have the confidence that you can get past pain and be what you were.

RothmanNY.com | 888.636.7840

HARRISON | MANHATTAN | TARRYTOWN

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seem to do the same thing.) The less damage to your muscles, the faster you recover, and the better you adapt to your exercise over the long term.

• Floods your bloodstream with amino acids just when your body needs them most. This boosts your muscle-building capabilities. So not only are you preventing damage, you’re increasing muscle size.

Before you rush off to mix a protein shake: While protein before a workout is a great idea, speed of digestion doesn’t seem to matter much. So any protein source, eaten within a few hours of the workout session, will do the trick.

What to eat pre-exercise

BY GIOVANNI ROSELLI PHOTOGRAPH BY BOB ROZYCKI “But one thing is certain in the case of nutrition and health, the science can be confusing and can lead to ‘paralysis by analysis’ (a state in which you take no action because you’re not sure what to do).”

— health expert Melissa Hartwig Urban

T

here seems to be more and more confusion and conflicting information about what to eat, when to eat and how much to eat prior to exercise. Below I try to break it down thanks in large part to my governing nutrition certification, Precision Nutrition. The following is based on that research and philosophy.

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PRE-EXERCISE NUTRITION What and when you eat before exercise can make a big difference to your performance and recovery. In the three hours before your workout, you’ll want to eat something that helps you: • sustain energy; • boost performance; • hydrate; • preserve muscle mass; and • speed recovery.

PROTEIN Eating some protein in the few hours before exercise: • Can help you maintain or even increase your muscle size. That’s important for anyone who wants to improve health, body composition and/or performance.

• Can reduce markers of muscle damage (myoglobin, creatine kinase and myofibrillar protein degradation), or at least prevent them from getting worse. (Carbohydrates or a placebo eaten before exercise doesn’t

CARBOHYDRATES: • Fuel your training and help with recovery. It’s a popular misconception that you only need carbs if you’re engaging in a long (more than two-hour) bout of endurance exercise. In reality, carbs can also enhance shorter term (one hour) high-intensity training. So unless you’re just going for a quiet stroll, ensuring that you have some carbs in your system will improve high intensity performance.

• Preserve muscle and liver glycogen.

This tells your brain that you are well- fed and helps increase muscle retention and growth.

• Stimulate the release of insulin. When combined with protein, this improves protein synthesis and prevents protein breakdown. Another reason why a mixed meal is a great idea. No sugary carb drinks required.

FATS: • Don’t appear to improve or diminish sports performance. And they don’t seem to fuel performance. That’s what carbs are for.

• Do help to slow digestion, which maintains blood glucose and insulin levels and keeps you on an even keel.

Like many of the topics that I address in my WAG articles, this one can run deep and elicit many follow up questions and comments. As always, I’ll be happy to continue this dialogue via email, so feel free to reach out to me at Gio@ GiovanniRoselli.com.

Wishing everyone a happy and healthy start to the spring season.

WAG THE TAIL P. 90 Saving pets – and veterinarians

P. 94 Helping pets and their parents at the end

P. 96 Taking your dog to work, part two

P. 96 We and our Shadow

Gwen Sherman, D.V.M, with Cavalier King Charles Spaniels Rikki, left, and Levi.

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Saving pets – and veterinarians

BY JEREMY WAYNE PHOTOGRAPH BY BOB ROZYCKI.

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In balancing strength and compassion, Gwen Sherman, D.V.M., hits the mark.

The veteran vet, recently retired from VCA Mount Kisco Veterinary Clinic, can command any kind of horsepower — be it in a show jumping circle or on a racecar track. But she has also brought a tender touch to the proverbial creatures great and small — all in a profession that is, she reveals, facing alarming challenges underscored in the time of Covid.

“People are adopting a lot more animals, especially dogs right now,” she says. “Veterinarians are concerned, because there’s such a demand that unfortunately it also encourages the puppy mills that we’re not huge fans of.

The adoptions are not limited to traditional pets but include the more exotic variety as well — a troubling practice, she says.

“My feeling is they’re not meant to be kept as pets. I mean, it depends on the species, but when you commit to something like an exotic bird, they can live 40 to 50 years, so there has to be tremendous thought and preparation. These animals need to be provided for. They also need a tremendous amount of attention and stimulation. It’s like living with perpetual toddlers. They can develop anxiety issues and start picking their feathers, and things like that….It’s not always in their best interest.”

There is another possible Covid-related effect she wants to talk about that has more to do with two-legged creatures.

“It’s a subject I think most people are unaware of, and that is we are having a major issue with suicide in the industry.”

Indeed, she adds, veterinarians have one of the highest rates of suicide, five times that of other professions.

“Well, we’re dealing with constant sadness and disappointment in our industry, because people are coming to us with their animals that are ill,” says Sherman, a supporter of Not One More Vet, a nonprofit that aids veterinarians and veterinary students who have suicidal thoughts.

“And what happens is that pet owners often think they’re being financially taken advantage of. But medicine is expensive, and our overheads are massive. And, added to that, most veterinarians coming out of vet school are loaded with hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt, which can take their entire career to pay, because we don’t make the kind of money that M.D.s and dentists make. So veterinarians are already under tremendous stress.”

Despite the challenges of veterinary medicine, or maybe in part because of

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Cavalier King Charles Spaniels Rikki, front, and Levi.

them, Sherman seems to have been destined for animals. Growing up in Carmel — not far from North Salem, where she was born and now resides — Sherman says, “We always had a houseful of cats and dogs. And the cats were always catching birds and mice and things like that. I always found the need to try and rescue these poor creatures and nurse them back to health — typically after my own cats had already done a bit of damage.

“Nature and the environment were kind of home for me. They just spoke to me. And growing up, I belonged to forage clubs, and I also used to ride western pleasure (a competitive, easygoing western style), before I moved on to gymkhana (competitive games on horseback). I moved up to state level and was doing barrel racing and keyhole and things like that. So horses were a big part of my life growing up also.”

“English riding, which is also very beautiful, is much more common here, but my preference — or I should say my comfort level — is more in western riding. I actually spent several weeks out in Montana last fall. I took a little break from work and went out west where I was on a 30,000acre ranch, back in the western saddle, herding cattle.”

With her love and early experience of animals, it’s not surprising that Sherman would go on to earn a Bachelor of Science degree in zoology and chemistry from the University of Maryland at College Park and a D.V.M. from Auburn University College of Veterinary Medicine. After working in two practices, one in northern Westchester and one in Putnam County, she became co-owner in 2004 of the VCA Mount Kisco Veterinary Clinic.

“I’d kind of taken (things) as far as I could to that point. I had 14 years experience and

was ready to really just have things run the way I wanted them. I wanted to make sure we were very compassionate and caring towards our clients and these animals — not just the very best animal health care but also the very best in compassion and nursing care for them.”

And that includes the latest treatments, says Sherman, who trained in oncology.

“As the field grew, new specialties grew up, like cardiology and neurology. There’s also surgical laser, which I was trained in about 25 years ago. And therapy like they use for the sports teams, where actually the modality has shifted into veterinary medicine.”

With retirement stretching before her like an open road — or trail — Sherman can indulge her passion for various kinds of horsepower.

“I’ve always had an interest in not so much the type of car but more handling and the speed. I’m fortunate to have raced on track. I do belong to a private club at this point, and I’ve had some success winning actually up at Lime Rock (Park in Lakeville, Connecticut,) with a Ferrari I was driving.

“Racing is very relaxing for me. Things that are very high energy — riding horses, herding cattle — that’s a relaxation for me and it was also a great preparation for emergencies that would come in to the clinic. I could usually stay quite calm because the adrenalin rush was very natural.

And I still continue to have a passion for cars.”

Not your typical hobby perhaps, but then, Sherman adds, “if I tried to cook for you, I’d probably kill you.”

For more on VCA Mount Kisco Veterinary Clinic, visit vcahospitals.com. And for more on Not One More Vet (NOMV), visit nomv.org.

A WRITER TRYING TO OUTPACE HER PAST A DELIVERY MAN ON THE FRONTLINES AND THE GLASS DOOR THAT DIVIDES YET CONNECTS THEM

AVAILAB JMS BOO LE AUG. 12KS

FROM WAG’S EDITOR COMES A BRIEF TALE OF LOVE AND LOSS IN THE TIME OF CORONA THEGAMESMENPLAY.COM APRIL 2021 WAGMAG.COM

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Helping pets and their parents at the end

BY GEORGETTE GOUVEIA

When a person dies, the bereaved are greeted with cards and condolences, food and flowers. But what happens when someone loses a beloved pet?

“Some people say, ‘Oh, it was just a dog. It was just a cat. You can get another one,” says Susan Bandy, owner and caretaker of Sienna Sky Pet Cremation Services in Ghent, New York.

They don’t necessarily realize that each pet is unique, as is each pet-parent relationship.

For the end of a pet’s life, Bandy provides what she calls an equally unique service that allows you to follow your pet’s final earthly journey in a variety of ways.

View of the Pond. Courtesy Susan Bandy.

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Sienna Sky Office. Sienna Sky Urn Selection.

You can have your pet cremated, with the ashes returned in an urn of your choice, along with a certificate and a memorial bookmark, within 24 to 48 hours. Or you can opt for a service before the cremation and receive the ashes within one to three hours. A third option allows for a group pet cremation, with the ashes scattered in a woodland area of the premises.

“Most people are used to their vets handling the cremations with big crematoria out of state,” Bandy says. “Garbage bags of dogs are cremated together. You’re not getting back your pet’s ashes.”

In some cases — one infamous one in particular — you’re not getting back animal remains at all. Karen Walker founded Buddy’s Place in Hudson, New York, in 2005 after her adored Basset Hound, Buddy— euthanized at home in the presence of family and wrapped in his special blanket — was, unbeknown to the family and their veterinarian, dumped unceremoniously with the remains of other animals in a farm ditch.

Walker was given an urn that was actually filled with wood ashes. Her Buddy never came home.

Out of her grief and the desire to spare others similar heartache, Buddy’s Place was born.

“What Karen did was start a pet cremation service that was run with ethics and compassion,” says Bandy, who, when the time came, took her own pets to Walker. In the course of talking, Bandy realized that Walker was looking for someone to take over the business. Bandy apprenticed with Walker for a year, getting all the necessary certification, licenses and zoning for constructing and operating a crematorium on her property. When Bandy purchased the business in 2018, the retiring Walker asked her to change the name. Buddy was, after all, her pet.

“I named it Sienna Sky after the pink, gold, orange sunset, a time of closure,” Bandy says. “So new owner, new name, new location but the same service” — one that drew Walker’s large clientele that extended beyond New York state.

But Sienna Sky is only half the story. A portion of its proceeds go to Bandy’s other enterprise, The Lily Pond, an 80-acre nonprofit animal sanctuary that provides a lifetime home for 39 special needs horses, dogs, cats and parrots that cannot be adopted. These include blind dogs, diabetic cats and horses that can no longer be ridden, victims of cruelty and hospice cases. Bandy is working to become an equine assisted learning coach to facilitate nonriding interactions between horse and student.

“A lot of the horses here have so much to offer,” Bandy says. “They’re wonderful.”

Bandy is also studying to be a certified grief coach and offers loss of pet workshops.

Grief is an intense, individual experience that takes time. But one thing that can help the journey is the knowledge that we honor the dead by serving the living. Those who have experienced loss and come to Sienna Sky are helping to support the animals of The Lily Pond — Bandy’s 39 pets, as she calls them — “and that makes this place unique.”

For more, visit siennaskypetaftercare. com and lilypondsanctuary.org.

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Taking your dog to work, part two

BY CRISTINA LOSAPIO

(Editor’s note: Cristina continues her exploration of taking your dog to work.)

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n an office remember not all people are dog lovers, because they may have had a bad experience with an overexcited or aggressive dog. So help set all your co workers up for success by creating a calm state of mind with your dog. That will help build the confidence of the co-workers who have had dog-related trauma. Practice at home with family visiting your mock office space.

Entering the office for the first time with your dog will set the tone. Curious, calm and peaceful are what I would be looking for in my dog. I would not nurture over-

excitement or tense energy. The leash is a helpful tool, because it is an extension of you and you can also show your dog what you want by using the leash to navigate.

Walk around the office letting your dog build confidence using his nose to take in the office. Make your way to your desk. It would be helpful to have the bed set up beforehand so you are not overwhelmed.

When you do have people arrive at your desk or office, instead of having co-workers touch and talk to your dog, wait for your dog to feel comfortable, smelling first and, if your dog is calm and relaxed soliciting for attention, give your co-worker direction on what is OK. The more you prac-

WAG Follow My Lead columnist Cristina Losapio with her pooches.

tice, the more confident you will feel and the more comfortable your dog will feel.

Throughout the day, pick times to go on walks outside. Connect with your breath, be present, not on your phone, but instead listening to your body. It’s a great break to recenter and ground yourself. When you return to the office, bring that calm energy to your desk and repeat the walk as needed throughout the day.

SOME THOUGHTS: Half-days with your dog to start may be best.

To start I may have one dog visit the office at a time for a day and then build on that.

• Speak to your veterinarian making sure titer tests (antibody blood test that can tell you if a previous vaccine is still protecting your dog's immune system) and vaccines are up to date.

Instead of having all the dogs coming in on one day, pick the dogs that vibe best together and have a few dogs come in on one day with the other group coming in on the next dog day.

I would not have high value bones like marrow bones, bully sticks, deer antlers, or raw hides laying around.

Work with your co-workers and be understanding. You are not just looking out for your own dog, you are looking out for all

dogs that come to the office. Blaming others does no good and is not constructive.

Have poop bags and extra leashes available.

If for some reason you have to feed your dog at the office, make sure not to have other dogs hovering around. I may even go out to the car and then do a walk after.

Create a little bio to send out to co-workers so everyone knows something about your dog and any allergies.

Bring a towel in case of rain.

If your have an office kitchen, keep it clean and have lids on garbage pails.

Keep all chemicals and bait traps concealed and out of dogs’ reach.

Make a cute sign for the door to the main office, maybe even with pictures of the office dogs, so people are aware that dogs are at the office and that the main door needs to remain shut.

If you are going to use treats, reward a calm, relaxed state of mind, not an overexcited, pushy state of mind.

Wear appropriate walking shoes when taking your dog outside.

Have a dog drawer of cleaning supplies available.

Know the closest emergency veterinary hospital just in case.

Consistency, patience and followthrough are essential to the foundation of success with our dogs and will help them to be the best version of themselves and help us be the best version of ourselves.

Doing a little today, nothing tomorrow and trying to make up for it the next day doesn’t show consistency. Yelling, getting frustrated or angry at your dog will only show your dog that you are weak and short-fused, so right there you’re not showing patience. Without consistency and patience, you have no follow-through.

Our dogs teach us about ourselves. They bring to the surface our shortcomings and help us grow if we listen. When we listen, we will be able to have open communication in any situation life throws at us. So follow my lead and enjoy the journey. It may get bumpy but you will be ready for it.

For more, contact Cristina at Trail Dog Inc., 914-755-1153.

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PET OF THE MONTH

WAG THE TAIL

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We and our Shadow

With Champ and Major’s arrival at the White House, German Shepherds are hot once again. So it is with Shadow, the SPCA of Westchester’s stunning 5-month-old German Shepherd mix.

It’s hard to believe but Shadow was originally abandoned at a high-kill shelter and made the journey to the SPCA to find a loving family. This handsome gent is a smarty pants who loves to play with his toys and romp around the yard. He needs an active home that will keep him enriched and that also wants a large lap dog, as he is such a mush.

Shadow would love to have a canine buddy as well as he really enjoys playing with the doggy friends he has made at the SPCA. If you’re interested in learning more about Shadow, email shelter@spca914.org.

WAGMAG.COM APRIL 2021

Shadow is an active, lovable smarty pants in need of a home that can enrich him.

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WAG

WHEN & WHERE THROUGH APRIL 27 Jacob Burns Film Center (JBFC) celebrates its reopening with “Projecting Light Through Darkness,” an outdoor light installation, paired with an upgrade to the theater marquee. 7 p.m. to 11 p.m., daily, 364 Manville Road, Pleasantville; 914-7475555, burnsfilmcenter.org.

APRIL 1 THROUGH 28 Bethany Arts Community will present “To Pablo Neruda With Gratitude,” an in-person exhibition featuring the works of Rochelle Udell, who will comment on all 24 of poet Pablos Neruda’s “Las Odas/The Odes,” as well as the objects those poems highlight. 40 Somerstown Road, Ossining; 914-944-4278, bethanyarts.org.

APRIL 1 THROUGH 30 Harrison Public Library will present “Cerealism,” a virtual exhibition that features the Cubist, mosaic cereal box collages of Michael Albert. Albert has created more than 700 original collages of cereal boxes. harrisonpl.org.

APRIL 2 THROUGH JUNE 13 MoCA Westport presents “Smash,” featuring contemporary artist Marilyn Minter’s videos, exhibited together for the first time. Seeped in lush imagery oscillating between figuration and abstraction, Minter’s works encapsulate feminism, pleasure, voyeurism and notions of beauty, desire and chance. Noon to 4 p.m. Wednesdays through Sundays, 19 Newtown Turnpike, Westport; 203-2227070, mocawestport.org.

APRIL 4 THROUGH MAY 4 New Normal Rep is a new theater company dedicated to presenting both new and underproduced plays via the internet, in ways that maintain the essential dramatic spirit and nature of both the works and the theatrical experience itself. Its second production, “Two Sisters and a Piano,” by Pulitzer Prize winner Nilo Cruz, stars Jimmy Smits and Daphne Rubin-Vega. Set in 1991, during the Pan American Games in Havana as the Russians pull out of Cuba, the play portrays two sisters — Maria Celia, a novelist ,and Sophia, a pianist ,serving time under house arrest. Passion infiltrates politics when a lieutenant assigned to their case becomes infatuated with Maria Celia,

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April 2 through June 13 – “Green Pink Caviar” and “Smash” are part of “Smash,” featuring Marilyn Mintner’s videos, exhibited together for the first time, at MoCA Westport. Copyright Marilyn Mintner.

whose literature he has been reading. 2 ​ 03220-9336; newnormalrep.org.

APRIL 6 The Westport Library presents “Art, Civil Rights and Social Justice: A Conversation Between Redell Hearn and Kathleen Motes Bennewitz on the Art of Tracy Sugarman.” In 1964, Sugarman, a Westport artist, writer and civil rights activist, participated in the Freedom Summer project in Mississippi, chronicling the drive to register Black voters. Sugarman’s illustrations of that time, part of the Westport Public Art Collections, are on exhibit at Westport Town Hall. Join Hearn, founding director of the Department of Academic Affairs and former curator of art and civil rights at the Mississippi Museum of Art and Tougaloo College, Jackson, Mississippi, (to which Sugarman donated his original drawings and photographs) and Bennewitz, Westport’s town curator, in this virtual discussion on the effects of Sugarman’s drawings during the 1960s civil rights movement and the current social justice resurgence. 7 p.m.

Registration required. 203-291-4800, westportlibrary.org.

APRIL 8 THROUGH AUG. 29 Norwalk’s Lockwood-Mathews Mansion Museum opens “Socially Distant Art: Creativity in Lockdown,” an open juried exhibition featuring artists Simone Agoussoye, Cindy Bernier, Carol Bouyoucos, Megan Chiango, Nat Connacher, Katharine Draper, Ellen Ehli, William Evertson, Rebeca Fuchs, Pat Genova, Barry Guthertz, Gail Katz, Joanie Landau, Sophia Livecchi, Fruma Markowitz, Kathie Milligan, Lake Newton, Julie O’Connor, Michael O’Hara, Alan Richards, Paula Salerno, Charlotte Saunders, Robbii Wessen, and Gregg Ziebell. Juror Gail Ingis noted their “varied interpretations of social distancing, isolation and the multifaceted challenges experienced during the pandemic.

Viewers will be drawn into their world and hopefully find it engaging and cathartic.”

Noon to 4 p.m. Wednesdays through Sundays, 295 West Ave.; 203-838-9799, lockwoodmathewsmansion.com.

APRIL 11 After reaching an audience of more than 3,000 across five continents with its digital performance “FCC Presents, Gifts,” the Fairfield County Chorale presents a digital performance of Antonio Vivaldi’s

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WHEN & WHERE choral masterpiece “Gloria.” Featuring the talents of David Rosenmeyer (FCC music director and conductor), Malena Dayen (mezzo-soprano), Troy Ogilvie (choreographer), Rodrigo Aranjuelo (video designer), and the more than voices and faces of the chorale. Registration required. 4 p.m., 203-858-3714, fairfieldcountychorale.org.

House, will span 40 feet and comprise an array of flowers that bloom sequentially, creating a variation of height, texture and color. Selected blooms correspond to the plant varieties found in the paintings of Connecticut-based, African-American artist, Charles Ethan Porter (1847—1923).

10 a.m.-4 p.m. Thursdays to Mondays, 199 Elm St.; 203-594-9884, theglasshouse.org.

APRIL 14 The India Cultural Center of Greenwich and the Greenwich Library partner to welcome Avni Doshi, author of “Burnt Sugar,” her debut novel, shortlisted for the 2020 Booker Prize for Fiction. Described as “stunning and unforgettable” and “at once shocking and empathetic,” “Burnt Sugar” is about the love and deception shared between a mother and a daughter, the journey into shifting memories, alternating identities and the subjective nature of truth. Doshi will be interviewed by author, screenwriter, playwright, and educator Sharbari Ahmed. She teaches at Manhattanville College and lives in Darien, Connecticut. Reservations required. 7 p.m., 917-685-1394, iccgreenwich.org.

APRIL 17 Concordia Conservatory will present the final concert of the Hoch Chamber Music Series’ 2020-21 season, which will be recorded at Sommer Center and broadcast to ticket-holders. The virtual concert will feature the music of jazz composer John Patitucci and selections by Franz Schubert.

7 p.m.; 914-395-4507, concordia-ny.edu/ conservatory.

APRIL 15 Wilton Library presents Pulitzer Prize winner Natasha Trethewey, author of the Wilton Reads 2021 pick “Memorial Drive: A Daughter’s Memoir,” in conversation on Zoom with Megan Smith-Harris, founder and executive director of the Fairfield Film Festival. In her memoir, the author chronicles her life growing up as a “child of miscegenation” in Mississippi, and how her life was affected by her mother’s death during a horrific crime in 1985. “Memorial Drive” has garnered many awards and accolades and was included in many Best Books of 2020 lists. Reservations required.

6 p.m., 203-762-6334, wiltonlibrary.org.

APRIL 16 THROUGH NOV. 30 New Canaan’s The Glass House opens its grounds for the first time since the pandemic with the first artist-designed garden to activate the historic site’s 49acre landscape, David Hartt’s “A Colored Garden.” As part of a year-long residency, Hartt’s circular garden, located in the southern meadow just below The Glass

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APRIL 17 THROUGH MAY 16 Ballet des Amériques presents “Evenings of Dance in Westchester,” a series of live performances of works created by choreographer Carole Alexis. The program will feature new works and pieces from the company’s eclectic repertoire. Times vary, 16 King St., Port Chester; 718-309-0437, balletdesameriques.company.

APRIL 18 The Sanctuary Series presents “Dialogues and Dialectic,” a concert by violinist Ariel Horowitz, which will be streamed via the organization’s Facebook page. The program will follow the evolution of the violin and piano throughout the history of Western classical music with works

by Bach, Mozart, Franck, Schumann and Dvorak. 4 p.m.; thesanctuaryseries.org.

APRIL 24 Guitarist John Scofield is a three-time Grammy Award-winning artist with more than 40 recordings to his credit. NPR describes Scofield as “one of the most prolific and admired jazz musicians of his generation.” As a principal innovator of modern jazz guitar, he played alongside Miles Davis for more than three years, and his work has influenced guitar greats since the late 1970s. Now he adds yet another

credit to his resume — solo guitarist — in socially distanced, limited-capacity, live shows. 4 and 7:30 p.m.; Ridgefield Playhouse, 80 East Ridge; 203-438-5795, ridgefieldplayhouse.org.

Fairfield Theatre Company invites you to Lisa Lampanelli’s “Sit Down & Shut Up!,” an evening of stories, insights and questionable advice from the former “queen of mean”. Taking a left turn from the insult comedy she’s long been known for, Lisa has created a revealing and revelatory evening by letting it all hang out. From her ups-and-down with dieting and body image to her public retirement from insult comedy, Lisa tells all. Live and livestreamed. 8 p.m., The Warehouse, 70 Sanford St., Fairfield; 203-259-1036, fairfieldtheatre.org.

APRIL 24 AND 25 Taconic Opera will resume its spring season with a production of Verdi’s “La Traviata​” at the football field in Depew Park in Peekskill. The in-person performances will welcome up to 100 audience members. 1 p.m., Depew Park, 1 Robin Drive; 855-886-7372, taconicopera.org.

APRIL 28 THROUGH 30 Irvington Theater will stream a onewoman show by J. Elaine Marcos, who reveals her rule-breaking approach to auditioning while retracing her journey of crossing casting barriers to find success on stage and screen.

The show will be available on demand. irvingtontheater.com.

Presented by ArtsWestchester (artswestchester.org) and the Fairfield County Cultural Alliance (culturalalliancefc.org).

Presents

Floral Design Workshops Nature is Your Canvas Friday, June 18, 2021 7 PM - 9 PM

Late Summer Flourish Wednesday, September 15, 2021 7 PM - 9 PM

Winter Wreaths Friday, December 10, 2021 7 PM - 9 PM Speaker: Steve Ricker Westmoreland Sanctuary’s Director of Conservation Workshop Coordinator: Nadia Ghannam Over 20 years of working in the arts and museum field.

Call (914) 666-8448 or visit westmorelandsanctuary.org to register 260 Chestnut Ridge Road, Mount Kisco NY 10549 Virtual or in-person based on NY state COVID-19 Guidelines

WE WONDER:

HOW HAVE YOUR PETS HELPED YOU THROUGH THE PANDEMIC ?

“I have four cats and love each and every one.

They all have their own personalities and it is so much fun to watch and play with them.

I have them trained to sit and wait patiently for their snacks. When I call the names, they stand up for their snack. They are so cute and very entertaining. Their names are Cleo, Jasmine, Eli and Comet.”

PATRICIA GADSON

“My pets have helped me through the pandemic so much. I live alone and had their company throughout the entire time till I had to go back to work. I personally do not like to be alone and my fur babies helped me so much.”

MELISSA SALAZAR driver New Rochelle resident

kennel-cat caretaker Mount Kisco resident

“Having my pet kept me entertained. I had bought a whole bunch of new toys and even a cat leash just to try new things. I discovered just how much she naps and what her life consisted of when I was at work. She helped me get through by being her cute self and never making me feel alone.”

SHAIRE GADSON practice assistant White Plains resident

“Having dogs throughout the pandemic helped carry a sense of normalcy when the rest of the world was in a tailspin.

Having to care for another being and keep to their schedule, sometimes made you forget for a moment what was happening across the globe. Being able to take my dogs out for walks and get outside to exercise was mentally relieving for me. When I would return home after a short errand and see them wiggling with excitement in the window that I’d return, that’s one of the best feelings and to know how happy they are and that their lives only revolve around our little world. Having them throughout the pandemic really made all the difference in how I handled lockdown, so much so that I brought home another dog.”

“Having my dog around has helped me tremendously. It’s giving me companionship in filling my days with outdoor activities that I wouldn’t usually do if I did not have him. I’m so happy he was around for the past year as we all dealt with minimal human contact.”

ZACHARY SOULIER

senior account executive Milford resident

“My not so mini Doxie whose name is Sadie has meant a lot as when I was totally isolated from humans I was never along. She was my constant companion. We explored outside places that we would not have found otherwise. Our bond as friends grew stronger.”

LISA TENNEY

teacher Yardley, Pennsylvania, resident

ELLIE MILLS

data analysis tech Boston resident “Furguson “Gus” has helped me by keeping me occupied and reminding me that I am not alone in dealing with the pandemic. He loves to hang out in Zoom meeting backgrounds and especially loves to ask to go out and come back in multiple times during each meeting. When (I’m) speaking with customers via Zoom, he helps close the sale purely through his good looks and personality. I keep telling him that the commission check is in the mail.”

IVAN PAVLAK

specialty sales representative for Sanofi Hyde Park, New York resident

“Remi is a very intelligent GoldenDoodle, sometimes too clever to not be a human. He’s very intuitive in knowing when my anxiety and depression are quite high and coming in my room invited and uninvited to lay in bed with me or get a pet. The energy he gives off, and pets in general, truly does change the vibe and aura of the space. (He) calms me down without saying anything and also is a physical example of there being more than this particular moment in time or whatever other external stressors. I work in a hospital at the moment and fresh air feels foreign for the first eight or nine hours of the day. Sometimes he’ll bug me to go on a long walk and I begrudgingly obey but once we’re out there I’m so thankful for the furry bully who makes me breathe a little deeper.”

KELSEY NADIA ZADEH writer Peekskill resident 104

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