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Vol. VI, No. LI
Westchester’s Most Influential Weekly
Thursday December 19, 2013
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GLENN SLABY Saving Souls One Meal at Time Page 5 CHRIS ROSTENBERG How to Handle a Crying Girl Page 6 LUKE HAMILTON Has Hollywood Seen the Light? Page 7
Why Can’t Congress Aim Higher? By LEE HAMILTON, Page 3
Talking Points Don’t Create Jobs By Prof. OREN LEVIN-WALDMAN, Page 4 WWW.WESTCHESTERGUARDIAN.COM
SHERIF AWAD “Crop”-Viewing Egypt Differently Page 7 HELEN WEISMAN 22nd Annual Train Show at NYBG Page 9 ROBERT SCOTT
New Rochelle Almost Became Hollywood East
Page 10
JOHN F. McMULLEN I Got an iPad! Page 14 JOHN SIMON Watsons Galore Page 15
rience fundraising, knowledge of what development entails and experience working with sponsors/donors; 2) Operations Manager- must have a good knowledge of computers/software/ticketing systems, duties include overseeing all box office, concessions, movie staffing, day of show lobby staffing such as Merchandise seller, bar sales. Must be familiar with POS system and willing to organize concessions. Full time plus hours. Call (203) 438-5795 and ask for Julie or Allison
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THE WESTCHESTER GUARDIAN THE WESTcHESTER GUARDiAn THE WESTCHESTER GUARDIAN THE WESTcHESTER GUARDiAn
Of Significance Of Significance
Community Section ............................................................................... 4 Community Section ............................................................................... 44 Business ................................................................................................ Business ................................................................................................ Calendar ............................................................................................... 44 Calendar ............................................................................................... 45 Charity .................................................................................................. Creative Disruption ............................................................................ 56 Charity .................................................................................................. Contest Cultural Perspective ........................................................................... 766 Contest .................................................................................................. Creative Disruption ............................................................................ Energy Issues ....................................................................................... Creative Disruption ............................................................................ Education ............................................................................................. 867 In Memoriam ....................................................................................1078 Education ............................................................................................. Fashion .................................................................................................. Medicine .............................................................................................10 Fashion .................................................................................................. 89 Fitness.................................................................................................... Najah’s Corner ...................................................................................119 Fitness.................................................................................................... Health ..................................................................................................10 Movie ....................................................................................12 Health ..................................................................................................10 HistoryReview ................................................................................................10 Music ...................................................................................................12 History Ed Koch................................................................................................10 Movie Review ...................................................................12 Community ........................................................................................13 Ed Koch Movie Review ...................................................................12 Spoof ....................................................................................................13 Writers Collection.............................................................................14 Spoof ....................................................................................................13 Sports Scene .......................................................................................13 Books Sports Scene .......................................................................................13 Najah’s...................................................................................................16 Corner ...................................................................................13 People ..................................................................................................18 Najah’s Corner ...................................................................................13 Writers Collection.............................................................................14 Eye On...................................................................................................16 Theatre ..................................................................................18 Writers Collection.............................................................................14 Books Leaving on a Jet Plane ......................................................................19 Books ...................................................................................................16 Transportation...................................................................................17 Government Section Transportation ...................................................................................17 Government Section ............................................................................20 ............................................................................17 Campaign Trail ..................................................................................20 Government Section ............................................................................17 Albany Correspondent ....................................................................17 Economic Development....................................................................17 Albany Correspondent Mayor Marvin’s Column..................................................................20 .................................................................18 Education ...........................................................................................21 Mayor Marvin’s Column .................................................................18 Government .......................................................................................19 The Hezitorial ....................................................................................21 Government .......................................................................................19 OpEd Section .........................................................................................23 Legal ....................................................................................................23 OpEd Section .........................................................................................23 Ed Koch Commentary.....................................................................23 People ..................................................................................................24 Ed Koch Letters toCommentary.....................................................................23 the Editor ..........................................................................24 Strategyto...............................................................................................24 Letters Editor............................................................................25 ..........................................................................24 Weir Onlythe Human OpEd Section .........................................................................................25 Weir Only Human ............................................................................25 Legal Notices ..........................................................................................26 ..........................................................................................27 Legal Notices ..........................................................................................26
YOUR PARENTAL RIGHTS AND COMMITMENT OF GUARDIANSHIP AND CUSTODY OF THE CHILD FOR THE PURPOSES OF ADOPTION, AND MAY FILE BEFORE THE END OF THE 15-MONTH Office Space AvailablePERIOD.
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TODY OF THE CHILD AND TO SEEK ENFORCEMENT OF VISITATION THE CHILD. tor of DevelopmentFT-must RIGHTS have a WITH background in development or experience fundraising, of what development entails and Feature Section.................................................................................................................................. 3 experiBY ORDER OF THE FAMILY COURT OF THE STATE OF NEWknowledge YORK ence working with sponsors/donors; 2) Operations Manager- must have a TO THE ABOVE-NAMED RESPONDENT(S) WHO RESIDE(S) OR IS FOUND AT [specify Governance. ................................................................................................................................... good knowledge of computers/software/ticketing systems, duties4 include address(es)]: overseeing all box office, concessions, movie staffing, day of show lobby Westchester On the Level is usually heard from Monday to Friday, from 10 a.m. to 12 Piblic Policy................................................................................................................................... 4 suchStreet, as Merchandise seller, Last known addresses: TIFFANY RAY:staffing 24 Garfield #3, Yonkers, NY 10701bar sales. Must be familiar with POS Noon on the Internet: http://www.BlogTalkRadio.com/WestchesterOntheLevel. system and willing to organize concessions. Full time plus hours. 4 Call (203) Community Section......................................................................................................................... Last known THOMAS: 24and Garfield Street, NY 10701 Because of the importance of addresses: a FederalKENNETH court case purporting corruption and bribery 438-5795 ask for Julie#3,orYonkers, Allison Calendar......................................................................................................................................... 4 allegations, programming with be suspended forArticle the days of Family March 2610 toa.m. 29, 2012. An Order Show Cause 10 of the Court Act having filed with this Court Westchester On the Level istoheard fromunder Monday to Friday, from tobeen 12YonNoon seeking toConductor modify the placement for the above-named child. kers Philharmonic Orchestra James Sadewhite is our scheduled guest Friday,
Westchester On On the the Level Level with with Narog Narog and Aris Westchester and Aris Aris and
Westchester On the Level is heard from Monday to Friday, from 10 a.m. to 12 Noon Hope Community Services........................................................................................................ 5 on the Internet: http://www.BlogTalkRadio.com/WestchesterOntheLevel. Join March 30. YOU ARE HEREBY SUMMONED toPlease appear before thistopic. Court at Yonkers on the Internet: by http://www.BlogTalkRadio.com/WestchesterOntheLevel. JoinFamily Court the conversation calling toll-free to 1-877-674-2436. stayday on Compassion. . ................................................................................................................................. 6 located at 53 So. Broadway, Yonkers, New York, on the 28th of March, 2012 at 2;15 pm in the It is howeverby anticipated that theto jury will conclude its Please deliberation ontopic. either Monthe conversation calling toll-free 1-877-674-2436. stay on afternoon of27. said day to answer thethe petition and towill show cause why said child should notand be ending on Richard Narog March and Hezi Aris are your co-hosts. In the week beginning February 20th day or Tuesday, 26 or Should that be case, we resume our regular Current Commentary................................................................................................................. adjudicated to are be a entourage neglected child whythe you should not be dealt withFebruary in accordance withand the ending6on Richard Narog andhave Hezi your co-hosts. In week beginning 20th February 24th,schedule we an Aris exciting ofand guests. programming and announce fact on the Tribune website. provisions of Article 10that of the Family CourtYonkers Act. Cultural Perspectives................................................................................................................... 7 February 24th, we exciting entourage ofshow. guests. Richard Narog and Hezian Aris are co-hosts of the Every Monday is have special. On Monday, 20th,that Krystal Wade, a tocelebrated participant PLEASE TAKEFebruary FURTHER NOTICE, you have the right be represented by a law- in http:// Education....................................................................................................................................... 9 Every Monday is special. February 20th, a celebrated participant in http:// www.TheWritersCollection.com ouryou guest. Krystal Wade isWade, a you mother ofright three who works fifty miles yer, andOn if theMonday, Courtis finds are unable to payKrystal for a lawyer, have the to have a lawyer www.TheWritersCollection.com is our guest. Krystal Wade is a mother of three who works fifty miles assigned by the Court. from home and writes in her “spare time.” “Wilde’s Fire,” her debut novel has been accepted for publication Experiences.................................................................................................................................... 9 from home and writes ininher “spare time.” “Wilde’s Fire,” her novel has been for publication and should be available 2012. Not far behind her second “Wilde’s does she do it? PLEASE TAKE FURTHERisNOTICE, that debut if novel, you fail to appear atArmy.” the accepted timeHow and place History. . ........................................................................................................................................10 noted above, the Court will hear and determine the petition as provided by law. and should be available in 2012. Not far behind is her second novel, “Wilde’s Army.” How does she do it? Tune in and find out. Tune in and find out. Dated:............................................................................................................................................13 January 30, 2012 OF THE COURT Co-hosts Richard Music. Narog and Hezi Aris will relishBY theORDER dissection of all things politics on Tuesday, February 2 column 1 column CLERK OF THE COURT Co-hosts Richard Narog and Hezi Aris will relish the dissection of his all things politicsfrom on Tuesday, February Disruption............................................................................................14 21st. Yonkers CityTechnology-Creative Council President Chuck Lesnick will share perspective the august inner 21st. Yonkers Council President Chuck Lesnick will share 22nd. his perspective from the august inner sanctum of theCity City Council Chambers on Wednesday, February Stephen Cerrato, Esq., will share Eye on Theatre.............................................................................................................................15 sanctum of the CityonCouncil Chambers Wednesday, February 22nd. Esq.,be will share his political insight Thursday, Februaryon 23rd. Friday, February 24th hasStephen yet to beCerrato, filled. It may a propi....................................................................................................................................16 his political Thursday, February 23rd. Friday, February 24th has yet to be filled. It mayofbeThat a propitious day toinsight sumGovernment. uponwhat transpired throughout the week. A sort of BlogTalk Radio version Was tious day toThat sumWas upGovernance. what transpired throughout the week. A sort of BlogTalk Radio version of That Was The Week (TWTWTW). .................................................................................................................................16 The Week That Was (TWTWTW). For those who cannot join us live, consider listening to the show by way of an MP3 download, or on Politics. ..........................................................................................................................................17 For thoseWithin who cannot join us consider listening tofind the the show by wayinof MP3 that download, orlink on demand. 15 minutes of live, a show’s ending, you can segment ouranarchive you may WHYTeditor@gmail.com OpEd.................................................................................................................................................18 demand. Within 15 minutes of ainshow’s ending,paragraph. you can find the segment in our archive that you may link to using the hyperlink provided the opening Legal Notices, to using the hyperlink provided in the opening paragraph. 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THE WESTCHESTER GUARDIAN
Thursday, DECEMBER 19, 2013
FeatureSection GOVERNANCE
Why Can’t Congress Aim Higher? By LEE H. HAMILTON Congressional budget negotiators are moving to meet a December 13 deadline to produce, well, something. For weeks, we’ve been told to keep expectations low.There’ll be no “grand bargain,” negotiators say. Commentators believe that even the narrowest agreement will be a signal achievement. So here’s my question: Doesn’t that seem like an awfully low bar to you? Yes, I know. The atmosphere on Capitol Hill is poisonous. The two parties — even the various factions within the parties — can barely stand to be in a room with each other. Expecting a sizable budget accomplishment from Congress right now is like expecting water from a rock. It would take a miracle. Yet there are consequences to not producing an agreement capable of clarifying fiscal affairs. Right now, government agencies cannot plan ahead; they can’t consider long-term projects; they have trouble with staffing; they can’t set priorities; they’re forced to fund programs that have outlived their usefulness and cannot fund programs they know are necessary. And that’s just the federal bureaucracy. Contractors and people who depend on federal spending can’t plan, either. Our economy can’t achieve liftoff, and millions of ordinary Americans remain mired by its slow growth. Washington faces tough choices about spending, taxes, and entitlements, and Congress isn’t making them. Things are not wholly bleak. Republican Paul Ryan of Wisconsin,the lead House negotiator, and Democrat Patty Murray of Washington, who
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heads up the Senate team, have been working at least to address the sequester. As you’ll recall, this is the draconian set of across-the-board budget cuts put in place in 2011. At first, many agencies were able to defer maintenance, spend money they’d squirreled away, and cut staff by attrition. This next year will be much tougher: agencies are out of easy options, and defense spending faces an immense, $21 billion cut. That will be felt in every congressional district in the country; given how adept the Defense Department has been at spreading its largesse around. Not surprisingly, pressure is coming from both sides of the aisle to ease the impact. The sequester is a cleaver, cutting good and bad government spending without rhyme or reason. If congressional negotiators can take a smarter approach, that’s all to the good. But if they’re going to do that, shouldn’t they address the real problems? The country needs gradual deficit reduction that avoids disrupting the economy or harming the vulnerable. It needs reforms to Social Security and Medicare that put them on a solid footing for decades to come. These are daunting challenges, but Congress’s toolbox is hardly empty. It could limit itemized tax deductions, increase Medicare premiums for the well-to-do, place caps on spending, shave federal employee benefits to bring them in line with the private sector, increase government fees, sell public assets, put more of the wireless spectrum up for bid, increase the Social Security contributions of higherincome earners, change the consumer price index.... There are literally scores of possibilities, none of them easy, but all of them offering adroit negotiators
the chance to craft a long-term solution to problems that have beset Capitol Hill for years and held economic growth far below its potential. By addressing these issues head on, Congress could move beyond the political machinations that have deeply frustrated so many Americans, and play a constructive role in the economy: promoting growth by investment in infrastructure and basic research, providing incentives for entrepreneurship and job creation. It could create a responsible framework for reducing spending as the economy grows. It could reform a tax code that everyone agrees is broken. At some point, Congress will have to put the federal budget on “a sustainable path for the long term,” in the words of the CBO. So long as it does not, the economic consequences hurt everyone. Congressional leaders seem blissfully unconcerned about this and aim only for low-hanging fruit, but Americans know that Congress can and should do better, and are rightly tired of careening from crisis to crisis. As members of Congress continue to make politically attractive suggestions that don’t come close to achieving a lasting solution, let’s urge them to get real. It’s time for Congress to go big. Now on Facebook you can find information about our educational resources and programs, and you can share your thoughts about Congress, civic education, and the citizen’s role in representative democracy. “Like” us on Facebook at “Center on Congress at Indiana University.
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I love making my patients happy. They’re always telling me I’m their favorite nurse. I do my job the very best way I possibly can do it, to let them know that I care about them. My residents are very grateful and they make me feel that I’m doing what I’m supposed to be doing. I feel good at the end of the day because I brought sunshine into somebody’s life.
LOCAL 1000 AFSCME, AFL-CIO DA N N Y D O N O H U E , P R E S I D E N T
Meet Elizabeth
Lee Hamilton is Director of the Center on Congress at Indiana University. He was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives for 34 years. .
Westchester On the Level
NEW ROCHELLE, NY – The Guardian Radio Network, WGRN, operated under the auspices of Hezi Aris’ Hezitorial Absurdity, Inc. continues to build its programing day on the Blog TalkRadio platform. Herein is the schedule for the week of December 12 – 16, 2011. Richard Narog and Hezi Aris are your co-hosts. Listen to our radio programs live by clicking onto the following hyperlinks: Westchester on the Level http://www.blogtalkradio.com/westchesteronthelevel;
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11/20/13 11:03 AM
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THE WESTCHESTER GUARDIAN
Thursday, DECEMBER 19, 2013
PUBLIC POLICY
Talking Points Don’t Create Jobs By Prof. OREN LEVIN-WALDMAN The unemployment rate in December fell to 7.0 percent, but that figure is misleading. The jobless rate is most likely higher because the official definition of unemployment does not take into account those who have either given up and stopped looking or those who haven’t filed an unemployment insurance claim in a prior four-week period because they exhausted their unemployment benefits. With the proposed budget deal negotiated between Senate Democratic and House Republican budget leaders, we can expect even lower official unemployment. Both House and Senate Democrats were pushing for an extension of unemployment insurance to assist the long-term unemployed. Under the proposed deal, there will be no extension. This means that more people will have exhausted their benefits and will no longer be officially unemployed. They will, however, continue to be jobless, which is not reported in the monthly unemployment figures.
Politically, lower unemployment ought to lead to more support from all pockets of society. It would suggest that the economy is improving and maybe even growing. But if the result is that joblessness is the same as it was before, and now bound to be higher, we need to seriously ask ourselves whether we are truly better off. Of for that matter do the politicians really care? Increasingly politics have boiled down to creating the impression that efforts are made to solve vexing societal problems like unemployment. The image has become more important than the policy itself. We no longer have to debate the merits of policy; only how it makes a political party look and to what extent that image can draw political support. To date neither party has done much to help the middle class who has seen its wages stagnate over the last three decades. One party talks about expanding programs and raising taxes on the rich while the other talks about reducing taxes and eliminating regulations. In the last presidential election the Republican nominee touted Staples as an example of his business success as an argument that he could create jobs. Really?
Minium wage job creation is now the measure of our success? Meanwhile, the best the other party could offer us was new taxes for so-called new investment. Failing to get infrastructure investment, the middle class was told that the economy would grow simply by spending more on social programs, including extending unemployment benefits. We have now settled for new standards to measure success. The economy is now doing well because without this spending it would have been worse. Even as people are losing health insurance because their plans have been cancelled due to their not meeting the new standards under the Affordable Care Act, they are told that they are better off paying more for so-called better plans. But are they better off if the premiums are going up while their wages are still stagnating? Many years ago, the late Senator from New York Daniel Patrick Moynihan wrote a piece where he talked about defining deviancy down. The gist was that things that were considered immoral or socially, and even politically, unacceptable say a generation or two ago, are now the new norms. Defining deviancy down would appear to characterize our new standards for measuring economic
CommunitySection
success. We will never rebuild the middle class if we continue to accept that a 7 percent official unemployment rate is the new normal. We will never rebuild the middle class if our idea of new jobs are anything that pays a wage, albeit minimum wages. We will never rebuild the middle class if our nation’s politics continue to be centered on image and Harold Lasswell’s famous definition of who gets what, when, and how. We will only rebuild the middle class when public officials begin to represent the interests of the middle class, and that can only happen when they subordinate their own personal interests to the public interest. Wages need to go up, unemployment and joblessness need to go down, and public spending needs to be invested in rebuilding the nation’s infrastructure. Workers need to be given voice, because it is only through voice that they, especially low-wage workers, can redress the asymmetrical power relationship between and employers. A wage policy, whether through greater organizing efforts or an indexed minimum wage will do. Institutions, in other words, matter. But this is only the beginning. One policy that would benefit the middle class would also include a single payer universal insurance plan that would eliminate
employer-based insurance. This would make us more competitive with other nations and end job-lock. Another policy that would benefit the middle class would be tax reform. A tax code with a few flat rates but absolutely no deductions would preserve progressivity while removing special interests from the tax code. Taxes should be about raising revenue; not social engineering. And yes, the middle class would benefit from serious campaign finance reform — perhaps publicly funded elections. This too would free politicians to represent the public interest, rather than special interests. Oren Levin-Waldman is professor of public policy in the School for Public Affairs at Metropolitan College of New York (olevinwaldman@metropolitan.edu ) and author of several books on wage policy. They include the just published: Wage Policy, Income Distribution and Democratic Theory (http://www.routledge. com/books/details/9780415779715/#reviews); The Political Economy of the Living Wage: A Study of Four Cities (M.E. Sharpe 2005); and The Case of the Minimum Wage: Competing Policy Models (SUNY Press 2001). He is a researcher for the Employment Policy Research Network (EPRN), and some of his work can be found at http://www.employmentpolicy.org/ people/oren-levin-waldman.
CALENDAR
News & Notes from Northern Westchester By MARK JEFFERS It is our electric company’s happiest time of the year as we just finished decorating the house with more lights than ever before…a glowing bear, two reindeer, Frosty and Santa, I think we are giving our neighbor Chevy Chase’s character Clark Griswold a run for his money. I threw on some shades and just finished this week’s “brighter than ever,” edition of “News & Notes.” A special thanks to the Bedford Hills Fire Department as they lit up the faces of all of our neighborhood children and their parents, too, with the annual Candy Cane Run. Santa and his fireman helpers delivered joy and candy canes throughout the entire district last Saturday from the back of the fire truck… Ho Ho Ho! As the year draws to an end, how about
donating your car to help fight cancer, your donation supports American Cancer Society, Children’s Tumor Foundation, Prostate Cancer Foundation, Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer, Leukemia & Lymphoma Research and Children’s Cancer Research; call today 888-950-2873 for details. We held our annual “Clubhouse Holiday Spectacular” radio show on WGCH this week at Grand Prix NY for our good friends at the Community Center of Northern Westchester for awareness and their wonderful food drive; according to Mary Ellen we raised the most food donations for our show to date. Thanks to all who stopped by and dropped off donation. If your shopping is done and your presents are wrapped, or if you just need a break from it all: celebrate nature this holiday season by helping Teatown Lake Reservation educators in this important census to count
wintering birds. The information gathered is compiled and sent to National Audubon, which uses the information to monitor trends in populations and other conservation issues that impact avian health. Dress for the weather and wear hiking boots. Call 914762-2912 x110 for more information. Local businesses in Mount Kisco are joining forces to raise money for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital this holiday season. Ann Taylor, located at 41 South Moger Avenue, has put together a holiday gift basket filled with 12 donated gifts from the area to raffle off; to enter the raffle, and simply make a donation to St. Jude at Ann Taylor between now and Dec. 22. Nationally, Ann Taylor has raised $11 million since its partnership with St. Jude began in 2007. Teens and ’tweens catch the fun holiday movie “The Nightmare Before Christmas” at the Field Library in Peekskill on December
A Very Special “Clubhouse Christmas Spectacular” show from Grand Prix NY in Mount Kisco on WGCH 1490AM collecting food and donations for the Community Center of Northern Westchester in Katonah. 23rd. This event is free of charge and open to the National Football League and the NY/ middle and high school age. NJ Super Bowl Host Committee on the Westchester County is teaming up with Continued on page 5
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Donations from the two-week drive was accepted by the Catholic Charities trio of Monsignor Kevin Sullivan, Karen Reynolds and Sister Christine Hennessey, along with Orla Kelleher of Aisling Irish Community Center. As I leave you this week, to go and get my daughters and lovely wife as many presents as possible, I will buy from our
wonderful local merchants and shops here in northern Westchester and hope that you will do the same. Shop local this way our friends and neighbors will have a good holiday as well…see you next week.
CALENDAR
News & Notes from Northern Westchester Continued from page 4
Super Kids-Super Sharing project, which puts books, sports equipment and school supplies into the hands of local children in need. Participating schools will ask their students to gather gently used or new books
and sports equipment from home and drop those items in collection boxes at the schools. Most school collections will begin in early January. In support of The Abbott House, MTK Tavern is hosting a Toy Drive on Friday, December 20th at 8: 30pm on Main Street in
Mount Kisco. With several NY locations, for 50 years Abbott House has provided comprehensive and caring services for abused, neglected and abandoned children and their families, as well as for developmentally disabled children and adults. My friend Frank Drucker tells me that Empire City Casino & Yonkers Raceway, donated over 500 toys and coats.
Mark Jeffers resides in Bedford Hills, New York, with his wife Sarah, and three daughters, Kate, Amanda, and Claire.
HOPE COMMUNITY SER VICES
Saving Souls, One Meal at a Time By GLENN SLABY “Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.” Martin
Luther King Jr. How do you combat the incessant need faced by our poor neighbors? Every generation has their challenges and the people to overcome them. Our generation, our community of New Rochelle has Hope Community Services fighting a battle against poverty that will never end. What happens today at Hope, in this old former Catholic High School basement, determines the soul of future generations. Started in 1984 strictly as a soup kitchen and food pantry, this 501.c3 corporation adapted to the changing environment and grew to become this multifaceted operation. Through strong leadership, they established ways to help the community beyond simply the distribution of healthy groceries. Sometimes people need just a small package until the next payday. Sometimes, there are deeper, complicated issues. Along with distributing 463,010 free meals in 2012, they provided assistance with mental health, domestic violence and housing concern, in the process becoming the largest provider of such services in Westchester. We can do no great things, only small things with great love. ~Mother Teresa Matters of assisting are complicated and the logistics formidable. Nonprofit organizations have the same problems and contentions like any other business, and more because of their corporate, tax exempt status, and other issues and policies come into account. Rent, utility and telephone services are not donated. Insurance is always needed and regulations have a cost effect. While there may be a strong volunteer effort, a minimum paid staff is necessary. Also, a healthy charitable program, through the service of hot sit-down meals or the distribution of prepackaged food, requires
an organization that operates with precision and discipline. Hope does both and more. With a barebones operation, thanks to 300 volunteers, donations and grants, this community enterprise reaches many of our multi-ethnic city, leaving a lasting impact of generosity and kindness. However, what is not donated must be purchased. Since thirty per cent of food is contributed (and greatly appreciated by Hope) from our City’s widely diverse population and religious institutions, the remaining seventy per cent is a detrimental cost factor, especially with the 4% inflation rate on food products. Most of the food arrives from the Food Bank – lower than market price but still affected by the inflation rate. Through these difficult times, a remarkably high ninety-four cents out of every dollar donated goes towards their clientele. Those served are the working poor, the immigrant, the physically and the mentally ill, many with dual diagnoses. They are our neighbors and maybe family members. The working poor represent a growing eighty per cent of their clientele because the minimum wage has not increased with inflation. Currently, this wage, is actually worth $2 less than it was in 1968, when adjusted for inflation, according to a June study by the non-partisan Economic Policy Institute. “We can no longer trust in the unseen forces and the invisible hand of the market .~Pope Francis. The Food Pantry: Six hundred children are on the list “of 1,062 of New Rochelle’s low income families, homeless individuals, seniors and the disabled” receiving food. Their pantry distributes carefully, chosen, neatly packed, nutritional shopping bags to New Rochelle residents, with identification, every other Wednesday. In 2012, 426,380 meals were provided, through the distribution of 18,700 nutritionally balanced bags of food. Those wanting to receive must present a Medicaid ID card, proof of residence for the last 9-12 months and a photo ID. They will then obtain a separate ID from Hope with a bar code that is scanned upon each
visit through their own computerized validation system. The amount a family receives is determined by their individual situation. Currently, on average, 600 hundred bags are distributed every two weeks. More are handed out in the winter as seasonal summer jobs end. There is an unbelievable amount of behind the scenes work and logistics that goes into food distribution, specifically, assembly-line processing. Every corner and niche is utilized to the fullest with goods stacked and arranged on pallets. At 7:30 am the line begins to form for the 9 am opening. By the afternoon – the work from two weeks of effort has been completed - all by volunteers. For Thanksgiving, 735 bags and 700 turkeys were distributed. The Soup Kitchen: One of the first things a visitor notices about the dining room are the brightly colored, table clothes, which adds a warm and welcoming feeling to this old, clean, simply adorned, adjacent
basement room that now brings needed joy, companionship and of course nutrition to a sometimes hidden segment of our society. Three days a week (Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and the last two Mondays of the month), congregants from New Rochelle, gather pleasantly and orderly for a fresh and healthy meal. Eighteen tables, ten neighbors per table, averaging 150 individuals per day (including 25-30 children), and increasing, are lives on this journey being uplifted out of personal misfortune. The soup kitchen served 36,630 of our neighbors in 2012. Here, Hope staff are able to sit and talk in a comfortable, non-threatening atmosphere, reaching out to individuals and their families, delving into deeper issues, seeing if further assistance is needed. The Social Programs: The issues of assistance are more complex than previous generations realize, much less contended. Now, our society recognizes that an individual’s needs extend beyond the want
for nutrition. There are health issues, both physical and psychological requiring attention. Handing out food without treating underlying issues does little to help longterm problems. The Hope Community Services has developed programs to deal with situations that extend beyond food assistance. Addressing the changing environment and deeper tribulations, Hope established the Community Outreach and Self Sufficiency Program serving 1,490 clients a year from the growing Hispanic community and 100 new immigrants. For people with HIV/Aids and housing issues, counseling services are provided. To address domestic violence issues, another program provides housing and case management. Finally, they connected with Housing and urban Development (HUD) and the Department of Social Services (DSS) to keep many families from becoming homeless. What is accomplished is witness that our world can reach out profoundly on a local level. The Future: Funding is always tenuous and precarious, with twenty-five per-cent originating from various government sources, the remainder must be conjured by private sectors such as religious institutions, foundations and individuals. Grants are obtainable, but the availability of cash has been decreasing. Cash flow is challenging with virtually no cushion. Collecting 600 toys for children for the holiday season is a short-term issue and the need for a larger facility is a long-term concern. Also, they do not have any substantial program for the home bound – another hidden segment. “A man should always bear in mind that his desire for profit is for the purpose of being able to donate to Charity.” ~Likkutei Etzotyh hashalem by Rabbi Nachman Bratzlaver. HOPE Community Services, (914) 636-4010, info@hope-cs.org Glenn Slaby is married and has one son. A former account with an MBA, he is a freelancer with The Westchester Guardian, writes part-time, and struggles with mental illness, yet works at the New Rochelle Public Library and at St. Vincent’s Hospital in Harrison, New York.
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COMPASSION
How to Handle a Crying Girl By CHRIS ROSTENBERG One day in Social Studies class many years ago when I attended Mamaroneck High School, an announcement was made that a certain school counselor had died. I didn’t know him, a bald man in his sixties who had a nice smile. The girl sitting next to me, Melissa, broke down and wept. As we left the class, she went on crying and my heart
was really torn. I wanted to go up to her and put my arm around her shoulder or hold her hand or something, but I was too much of a coward. Finally, a young black woman, who I didn’t think Melissa even knew, went and comforted my friend. My failure made me sad and angry with myself. It should have been me to take care of Melissa. We had been friends for years. We were originally both in the class of 1986, but had both been held back a year and were now in the class of ’87. We were the only
ones in that Social Studies class who were white (it was a Black Studies class) and we tended to sit together. I decided that if ever a woman broke down in front of me, I would summon the courage to look after her. I got my chance the next year, unfortunately. A boy who had been very popular in high school, Doug, went on to college and got killed while walking across the street at his university. His little brother, Matt, and I had been in a play together. At the funeral, Matt delivered the eulogy, and he recited his brother’s senior quote, “I’d rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints, the sinners are much more fun.” Matt explained
that the line comes from a Billy Joel song called, “Only the Good Die Young.” When Matt said that, he cried, along with many other people, including me. A few days later in gym class, a young girl named Susie freaked out and ran out of the room. I somehow knew she was distressed over Doug’s death. The gym teacher thought that after a crisis, you should stick to your normal routine and he tried to stop me from following Susie, but I got out. I found her in the hall, and we made our way back to the gym after everyone had left. Susie, I think, had a little bit of a crush on me. I was a senior and had a lot of friends, and she was
a freshman or sophomore and was cute. Her older brother had been friends with Doug and I suspected she had had a crush on him, who was confident and good-looking and liked by lots of girls. I put my arms around Susie and put my hand on her back. She was crying into my shirt and she had a runny nose. In a joking, reprimanding tone I said, “That’s right, get snot all over my shirt.” Susie burst out laughing. So did I. Chris Rostenberg is a freelance writer. Correspondence may be directed to ChrisRosty@gmail.com.
CURRENT COMMENTARY – CORPORATE STRUCTURE
Ancient Corporate History Yields A Modern Question By LARRY M. ELKIN When the Bishop of Vasteras acquired a 12.5 percent share of Stora Kopparberg – Sweden’s “Great Copper Mountain” – in 1288, he probably thought he was just making an investment. I doubt he believed he was surrendering any of his religious freedoms. Of course, that may be because the concept of religious freedom scarcely existed until it emerged here in North America, hundreds of years later. It is interesting to note that corporations and similar associations have been around much longer. They date at least back to the Roman Empire, according to the late legal scholar Harold J. Berman. Corporations allow an enterprise to continue across generations, even across centuries. Copper was mined at Stora Kopparberg for approximately 1,000 years, up until the 1990s. Yet for all this history, we still debate some fundamental questions about what happens when we form a corporation. Do we gain rights, or lose them, or both, or neither? Does the corporation, which by definition has a legal existence independent of that of its owners or members, have rights of its own? This is precisely what the Supreme Court will consider in two cases it has agreed to hear during the current term, which will end in June. The first case, Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby Stores, is a government action, while Conestoga Wood Specialties Corp. v. Sebelius is a private business case. Both grow out of the Affordable Care Act’s requirement that employers provide health insurance that includes birth control and related medical
services. The justices are not being asked to strike down this requirement outright; rather, the cases test whether profit-making companies can be exempt from this requirement when it conflicts with the owners’ religious beliefs. (Nonprofit religious institutions are already exempt.) Corporations and other business entities, such as limited liability companies and partnerships, are demonstrably not people in the conventional, non-legal sense. That is why they are not citizens and why they do not vote. But business entities do act as proxies for their owners, who are all cardcarrying members of the Homo sapiens club. I know of no businesses that are owned by Martians. Mitt Romney made this point in his much-quoted remark, “Corporations are people, my friend,” on the presidential campaign trail last year. Corporations were invented for two pressing reasons. The first is so an enterprise does not, by default, end immediately when its owner dies. It would be enormously disruptive to employees, customers, landlords and vendors if every business abruptly ceased to exist when a particular human life ends. Corporations were historically given the legal status of a “person” only in the sense that they could continue a business over the course of the entity’s “life,” which has the potential to go on for much longer than a human being’s. The second reason to have corporations and other business structures is to protect the owners’ non-business assets from the business’ debts and obligations. If individuals risked personal bankruptcy every time they invested in a business, the modern stock market could not exist and the Industrial Revolution could never have happened. It is in society’s best interest to support
these features of corporations and private business entities. Business owners do not, and should not, sacrifice their personal rights and liberties merely because they choose to conduct their affairs through one of these structures. We don’t give up our free speech rights when we incorporate, as the Supreme Court rightly held in its Citizens United decision. Nor do we surrender our religious liberties. These rights are enshrined in the First Amendment, as the first order of business in the Bill of Rights. The founders might have written “except for corporations” into the Constitution, but they did not. Once the high court sorts out these initial issues, the question that will be left is whether mandating that birth control coverage be part of health insurance funded by businesses impermissibly burdens the religious rights of business owners who believe that birth control is morally wrong. The two cases the Supreme Court will hear raise this question in slightly different contexts. The first is whether corporations can file suit under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, a federal law passed in 1993 designed to make it easier for individuals to sue when government action restricts their religious rights. The second is whether corporations can make constitutional claims regarding religious freedom under the First Amendment. If the Court holds that business entities can sue under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which is at issue in the Hobby Lobby case, the decision will effectively rule on whether or not a business qualifies as a person under that law. The statute adopts the stance that the courts usually apply when government actions might abridge constitutionally protected liberties: that there must be a compelling
government interest in requiring the desired behavior, and that the law must choose the least-restrictive means of addressing that interest. The liberties at issue are not always religious. Such principles apply when the government requires warnings on cigarettes or pharmaceutical products, or nutritional labeling on food items. These requirements compel speech that the products’ makers might prefer not to make, but that speech serves a compelling interest in protecting public health and safety. Even if you argue that providing birth control is a compelling interest, which is not a universally accepted position, it is not at all clear that the Affordable Care Act’s requirement is the least intrusive way to pursue such an interest. Similarly, the Affordable Care Act’s mandate that most businesses provide health insurance to workers would survive a direct First Amendment challenge for this reason. (The Supreme Court last week declined to take up a case on this very point, which leaves the employer health insurance mandate intact for now.) So would a challenge to a minimum wage law. But is there a compelling interest in requiring employer-funded health care programs to cover birth control? The Conestoga Wood Specialties case will tackle this issue from the perspective of the First Amendment, rather than under the 1993 federal statute. The Court plans to hear both cases together, with an hour of argument shared between the two. Birth control products are inexpensive and readily available. Megan McArdle, a columnist at Bloomberg, pointed out that generic birth-control pills run about $25 a month through Costco’s pharmacy, and about double that for a brand name. A year’s
supply would cost far less than the deductible already built into most health insurance plans. If the government wants to make sure that family planning products are available to all who want them, it could freely distribute such products directly. What is the compelling interest in forcing an employer who cites religious objections to provide a plan that covers these products to his or her workers? The Supreme Court probably took this case because it is uncomfortable with where the lower courts have ended up so far in resolving this question. In the Hobby Lobby case, three federal appeals courts have ruled in favor of the business, while two have ruled against. My guess is that the birth control mandate will be curtailed or struck down when the court decides the issue next year. The debate over whether corporations are people or whether they have rights is ultimately just semantics. Corporations are owned by people, and people have rights. The corporation is just a useful vehicle through which to exercise them. That ancient Swedish bishop gained the right to profit from a copper mine when he acquired his Stora shares. He had no reason to think he surrendered any of his other rights. Neither do we.
Larry M. Elkin, CPA, CFP®, has provided personal financial and tax counseling to a sophisticated client base since 1986. After six years with Arthur Andersen, where he was a senior manager for personal financial planning and family wealth planning, he founded his own firm in Hastings on Hudson, N.Y., in 1992. That firm grew steadily and became the Palisades Hudson organization, which moved to Scarsdale, N.Y., in 2002. The firm expanded to Fort Lauderdale, Fla., in 2005 and to Atlanta in 2008.
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life on earth because “man corrupted this world and filled it with violence”. While certainly part of the reason for God’s wrath, the Bible teaches that man is not the cause of corruption. Sin, working through man, produced corruption after the Fall. A slight distinction, but one which has immense consequences. If man is the source of corruption, then man must be eliminated. That sounds like it could be a plank in the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation mission statement or taken from the by-laws of the Earth Liberation Front. But if sin is the source of corruption, then sin must be eliminated, and that is only possible through the substitutionary death of the Lamb of God. The good news is that as these productions air, there will be many opportunities for conversation which may not have taken place previously. Questions may come from curious agnostic/atheist friends who want to know about how closely the film matched
the Bible; or opportunities may come from believers who thought it was really cool how Moses was motivated by his burning passion for social justice. At which point, you can gently redirect them to the Moses’s true “burning passion” , emanating from a bush with the voice of the one true God.
CULTURAL PERSPECTIVES
Has Hollywood Seen the Light? Biblical Films Abound! By LUKE HAMILTON I miss the days when Hollywood ignored God. Until recently, the fastest way to kill your career in Tinseltown was to utter that three-letter-word: G-O-D. If you were to drop the G-bomb in Hollywood without following up with “damn” or a genuflection to L. Ron Hubbard, you’d find yourself staring at a lot of slammed doors. The only thing studio producers and directors enjoy more than ignoring God is slandering Him. All that began changing several years ago, when films which openly spoke about God and religious belief had surprisingly strong showings at the box office. Films like The Passion of the Christ, which grossed $370m and earned three Oscar nominations, and The Blind Side, which grossed $300m with two Oscar nominations, have really challenged the rabidly anti-theistic predilections of many Hollywood moguls. Studios in Hollywood are waking up to the fact that Bible-believing Americans love to support films which speak of them and to them. In response, producers have packed the assembly line with films like Darren Aronofsky’s Noah, a mini-series remake of The 10 Commandments produced by Harvey Weinstein, and a reboot of the Left Behind series, starring Nicholas Cage. Before we start applauding the miraculous conversion of the film and television industry, let’s remember that studio producers have
allegiance to their pocketbooks (first), their leftist political ideologies (second), and their respect for God and His people (never). We assume incorrectly that Hollywood is godless; there is a god in Hollywood and his name is Mammon. In the hopes that some of Weinstein’s staff has this column plugged into their feed reader, here are some suggestions for future projects which could serve to capture the Christian/Jew demographic while remaining true to their ideology: Samson & Delilah – “This summer, romantic comedy lets its hair down!” College football star, Samson, is a clean whistle. No partying, no drinking, he doesn’t even get a haircut. But all that is about to change. When he transfers to Philistine State, he gets more than he bargained for in Delilah, the foxy editor of the campus newspaper. What will Samson do when he finds out that Delilah is working for the head coach of University of Sorek, tasked with capturing Samson’s playbook before the big game?? Solomon – The comparisons are eerie. Their life-stories are seemingly cut from the same cloth. Thousands of years after the wisdom of Solomon, there was . . . Jobs. Both men harnessed the hardship in their lives to rise above the pack. Steve had to build his business in his parents’ garage. Solomon was tasked with erecting a timeless architectural masterpiece in the city his ancestors stole from the peaceful Canaanites. Both would succeed beyond their wildest dreams and
achieve the fame which both so desperately sought. But would their success be enough to allow them to finally impress the fathers they never really knew? Saul of Tarsus/Paul of Truth – What would you do if one day you realized that the truth on which you had founded your life was not truth at all? Saul of Tarsus, born and raised to be a law professor at a prestigious university throws his promising future away when struck with a blinding thought on a road-trip to Damascus. This summer, follow Saul as he journies across the world and time itself. From introducing the concept of prison reform to a jailor in Philippi to learning to live in harmony with Mother Nature while stranded on the island of Melita, join Paul as he searches for his truth in a world of possibilities! As preposterous as these adaptations might seem, I guarantee that they are not far-fetched. As Aronofsky’s Noah will demonstrate, Hollywood seeks to slap a patina of biblicality on a barge of liberalism in order to capture more revenue from a demographic goldmine, while utilizing the biblical illiteracy of that demographic to help spread their ideological disease. This is what concerns me most. I fear that most American Christians and Jews will find it “refreshing” to see that Hollywood is talking about God while they neglect to evaluate Hollywood’s bile in the light of God’s Holy Word. As cool as it is to cast Anthony Hopkins as Methuselah and Russell Crowe as Noah, it appears that Aronofsky feels he’s a better editor than Moses. In the film, humanity is visited by “Watchers” who are six-armed angels that bestow knowledge and gifts on humanity. And God decides to destroy all
CULTURAL PERSPECTIVES
“Crop” - Viewing Egypt from a Different Angle By SHERIF AWAD The Egyptian revolution in January 25 mystified numerous artists and filmmakers in Egypt and beyond. Since its first spark in 2011 until today, we were exposed to many features and documentaries that looked towards the revolution and its aftermath from different angles. The latest documentary comes from two collaborating artists, the Dane, Johanna Domke, and the Egyptian, Marouan Omara. Domke is a visual artist who was born in 1978. She grew up in Germany and Argentina and studied Fine Arts at the Royal Danish Art Academy in Copenhagen, Denmark, and the Malmö
Continued on page 8
Johanna Domke and Marouan Omara at Goethe Film Week.
Luke Hamilton is classically-trained, Shakespearean actor from Eugene, Oregon who happens to be a liberty-loving, right-wing, Christian constitutionalist. When not penning columns for ClashDaily.com, Hamilton spends his time astride the Illinois-Wisconsin border, leading bands of liberty-starved citizens from the progressive gulags of Illinois to [relative] freedom. Hamilton is the creative mind/voice behind Pillar & Cloud Productions, a budding production company which resides at www. PillarCloudProductions.com. He owes all to his Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, whose strength is perfected in his weakness.
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THE WESTCHESTER GUARDIAN
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CULTURAL PERSPECTIVES
“Crop” - Viewing Egypt from a Different Angle Continued from page 7
Art Academy, in Sweden. She carried out a number of collaborative projects and participated in artist in residencies at Platform, Istanbul, Turkey. Omara who was born in 1987, went on to study photography at the faculty of Applied Arts in Cairo and joined the Academy of Cinema Arts and Technology in 2006 to follow his passion for filmmaking. Starting his career as a freelance photographer, he showed his work in exhibitions both nationally and internationally. He is currently preparing his first feature film “Repeated Stopping” which will be produced in the beginning of 2014. In Crop, the two filmmakers reflect upon the impact of images in the Egyptian Revolution in 2011 and juxtapose it in relation to the political images of Egypt´s leaders. Instead of showing footage from the revolution, they decided to shoot their film entirely in Egypt´s oldest and most influen-
Marouan Omara. tial state newspaper al-Ahram. Throughout the building – from the top-level executive office towards the smallest worker cubicles – we follow the narration of a hypothetical Egyptian photojournalist who missed the revolution due to a hospital stay. After resuming his work in the newspaper, life doesn’t seem quite the same for him.His voice presents a personal reflection to the media ploys of the old regime. Crop was screened in several film festivals around the world including the International Film Festival Rotterdam, Festival del Cinema Africano d’Asia e America Latina in Milan, Italy, and Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival in Japan. Co-director Johanna Domke answered these questions about her experiences in shooting the film in al-Ahram and her collaboration with Marouan Omara. AWAD: How was the idea of this documentary conceived?
DOMKE: Marouan and I met at a time where there was a lot of media attention on the revolution. It was about one year after the revolution and Cairo was full of camera crews, artists and photographers. Both of us had never had the impulse to document what was going on in the streets. Marouan, who even took part in the revolution during the height of the tumultuous 18 days revolution that continues to this day, had never considered taking a single picture. We were both fascinated by the need for images that the people and the media around the world had on the subject. We wanted to understand what impact those images had on people’s perception of Egypt and what it meant for the Egyptian people. Moreover, we wanted to go back in history to draw attention on how images were dealt with in the past, and what they meant in a political context. We started our research by interviewing photographers and journalists from both the national and international press. At a very
Johanna Domke. early stage, we decided not to use any images of people to which the narrator refers which creates distance to them which is intended to make apparent how powerful the impact of an image is.These images are actually present in our memory like a blue print. While we hear about Sadat´s appearance as a leader, we don´t need to see him standing in his uniform since we can remember the image. Or, in case we have never seen a picture of Sadat, we can actually imagine it. When talking about Egypt, we have an image in mind that probably resembles the picture found on the website of Egypt Today magazine www.EgyptToday.com, despite probably knowing that this place does not exist. The interesting question is who actually constructed these images and what do they serve apart from being a fantasy? It is needless to talk about the images of the revolution. Everyone has been exposed to
A scene from “Crop” taken at “al-Ahram” building in downtown Cairo. countless numbers of images and videos pre- be many. We move through the building, feel that it reached people in a different way. sented in media or over Facebook. At issue is where he has worked or even still works. We It was a very touching moment. why in a film concerning images about the look for him and see him present in everyone AWAD: What was your experience revolution, why we would need to show it we come to meet. shooting in al-Ahram? again? We wanted to draw attention to an AWAD: Did you face any problems or difDOMKE: Once we had the shooting internal transformation that has evolved in ficulties in presenting the documentary to permit it was easy to deal with the people relation to those images. The definition of a the Egyptian censorship? Was it easy to in charge. They let us film throughout the shift from a highly idealized representation get permits to shoot inside the al-Ahram entire building. Of course there was always of the nation to one of its national identity buildings? a representative of the public relation departthat the people of this country actually take DOMKE: The film has as of yet only ment present to survey our shooting. We part in “by whether being in it, or making it” - as it is expressed in the film. While it been shown in Cairo during the Goethe were generally very impressed by the people is an imperceptible visual change the film Institute Film week and on smaller occa- working at the al-Ahram. We thought we sions during talks we gave in institutions like would get many more questions or reacextracts a gut reaction from the viewer by the Townhouse. There have been no incidents tions regarding our presence with a camera. very images shown. The viewer is asked to imagine the narrative. In fact, there are three from an official side. It was extremely diffi- We later assumed that people knew that it is cult to get access to the al-Ahram and even not easy to enter the building with a camera ways by which to appreciate the film, by lismore so to obtain a shooting permit. We so we obviously had all legitimateness. They tening, watching, or imagining it. were lucky though with the timing of our were told by the public relations department AWAD: Why did you choose to narrate request. It was during the first round of the to look serious and efficient while working. the contemporary history of Egypt presidential elections, when al-Ahram was This resulted in their ignoring us while thorthrough this form: a photographer’s narra- shifting heads of departments all the time, to oughly observing us by eye peripherally. tion on images taken inside the newspaper appear more open and transparent. We had AWAD: Tell us about your future projects. al-Ahram? a letter of support from the Goethe Institute DOMKE: We now plan a documenDOMKE: Without any footage, film that passed over many desks and collected tary project that will take place in Sharm cannot be realized. One day, when we had an stamps and signatures. It was a process that El-Sheik. It deals with the cultural confroninterview with a journalist at al-Ahram, we took about four months and cost us endless tation that entangles the tourists and the got the idea to set our film entirely within phone calls, visits and tattered nerves. In the the al-Ahram building. It suddenly became end, we believe that none of us would have Egyptians working there. We are selected apparent to us that this immense building gotten access without the other… Johanna to take part in the Dubai Film connection had actively generated the defining the by herself would have been too suspicious, at the Dubai Film Festival in December 2013, where we will present and develop the images about which we are talking about and Marouan would probably not have been now and as people have throughout history. taken seriously! Our collaboration confused project. It was previously shortlisted for the Robert Bosch Co-Production Award. At the same time it is a wonderful represen- them and they gave us the permission; after tation of society itself, revealing it from top paying quite a large amount for a location Born in Cairo, Egypt, Sherif Awad is a film / down, from the high rank officers to the fee. video critic and curator. He is the film editor of workers less so, displaying all sorts of hierarAWAD: What was the feedback and Egypt Today Magazine (www.EgyptToday. chies and power structures. The narration is comments when you screened the Crop com), and the artistic director for both the based on the many interviews we carried out at the Rotterdam Film Festival and other Alexandria Film Festival, in Egypt, and the with photojournalists. The narrator is a fictifestivals? Where was it screened before and Arab Rotterdam Festival, in The Netherlands. tious character. He is an amalgamation of the He also contributes to Variety, in the United after Rotterdam? many people who shared their stories with States, and is the film critic of Variety Arabia DOMKE: The reactions were very us. The protagonist gives voice to those many (http://varietyarabia.com/), in the United stories. In this way it is both true and fictive. positive and the audience appreciated the Arab Emirates (UAE), the Al-Masry Al-Youm alternative view on the subject very much. This character, “whose name is Ahmed, but it Website (http://www.almasryalyoum.com/en/ Our most mentionable screening we had could also be Amr”, as it is said in the beginnode/198132) and The Westchester Guardian ning of the film, is the story of one who could was the one in Cairo, where you really could (www.WestchesterGuardian.com).
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Thursday, DECEMBER 19, 2013
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situation worse was a lack of communication on the criteria teachers must use. This places the school district in a very disadvantaged position. Common Core was promoted by businessmen and philanthropists who had not worked in public schools. To prepare students for the future, this country needs creative, innovative problem solvers. There have been warnings to those districts that want to remove themselves
from the federal “Race to the Top” program that even if they do not want to comply with “Race to the Top” mandates, the district will still have to commit to the in Bloom (computer program to record students’ scores) and adopt the Common Core curriculum.
EDUCATION
Controversy Over Common Core Continues By PEGGY GODFREY Have the teachers who protested on December 9, 2013, in 60 locations across the country reached a point of no return with the Common Core standards imposed upon them? When New York State tested students using these new standards much lower achievement scores resulted this year. On December 11, 2013, Catherine Gewirtz reported in Education Week that the New York City Council had asked Governor Cuomo to take a serious look at public school accountability and “develop a system based on multiple forms of assessments” instead of on a lot of standardized testing. Several Westchester schools have even opted out of the Race to the Top that include use of these Common Core mandates. Could it be the recent publication of a book, “Reign of Error” by Diane Ravitch, has spurred on this discussion? Ravitch clearly states that the Common Core curriculum was initiated during the Presidency of George W. Bush. He recommended the adoption of the mathematics and reading Common Core curriculum standards although these standards had never been field-tested. This was also the time that support grew for the expansion of charter schools and vouchers. Ravitch states both political parties now favor this approach. The National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) said some improvements in students’ achievement scores had happened in the 70’s and 80’s. But Ravitch, citing research in the field, explains that using test scores to rate teachers doesn’t work because it causes teachers to spend more
time on teaching these basic subjects and less time on other subject areas such as social studies or science. While charters and programs such as Teach for American can be cited as solutions to the problems of improving education for students, there is plenty of evidence these approaches are short sighted and inadequate to allow the real problems dedicated teachers face in the classroom. The damage caused by demands to rate teachers on student scores and closing schools which have low standardized test scores in Ravitch’s view could be called “an admission of failure by those in charge.” Efforts are usually made before a low achieving school is closed to give extensive training to teachers and additional classroom instructional time in the core areas of reading and mathematics which will be tested. The cycle continues as teachers are blamed for their failure to raise student scores. Why are those in charge of closing schools asked why the only solutions they offer are new public schools or charters? Ravitch warns that all this choice in schools has not produced equality. Rather it creates inequality and intensifies race and ethnic segregation and produces class segregation. Therefore, it is no surprise to view the teachers protesting Common Core. The protest in Yonkers reflected teachers’ concern for the Common Core requirements in the schools and its heavy reliance on standardized testing which was causing stress for parents, students and teachers. Legislators were going to be asked to stop this testing and to slow down the implementation of the Common Core standards. The requirement to place student test scores in a “portal”
which will necessarily track a school district’s Common Core results is very controversial with many parents as children’s scores will be recorded and tracked on these difficult tests. However it is important to note that these portals became mandatory when New York State accepted $700 million in federal “Race to the Top” funds in 2010. Also in accepting these funds higher achievement level mandates were placed on children and teachers. The low state test scores this year reinforce the pressure and stress that even good schools are experiencing. Most schools had willingly adopted these standards when the Obama administration in 2009 suggested some of the states complying could win grant money in the “Race to the Top” program. A significant thrust of the Common Core mandates was to prepare students for “college and careers.” But not all students are going to college and the thinking skills promoted may not be relevant for all of them. The response to this observation has been that no matter what kind of job a person has, “skills can help them to perform better in their job.” In New York State some of the most difficult conditions to comply with were the evaluation of teachers. Criteria mandated were that these evaluations must be based: 20% on their students’ test scores, 60% on classroom observation, and 20% on locally chosen assessment criteria. The plight of limited English proficiency students is very severe, as there are no waivers on the mandated achievement scores that must be taken. Similarly, no matter how poor or handicapped children are, they must all meet the states’ test standards. Making this
EXPERIENCES
The 22nd Holiday Train Show at the NYBG By HELEN WEISMAN Imagine you step off Metro-North and enter the Landmark Enid A. Haupt Conservatory at the New York Botanical Garden (NYBG). Once inside, you sense your world has changed. Caught in disbelief you cannot help but to blink your eyes into focus to what you see. Everywhere you look… everything you see… everything you smell. At this time, you turn around a bend. It turns out the train now in front of you, is made of plant life! Maybe next, you stare up at City Hall.
You see each window crisscrossed by lotus of dogwood twigs. Then, you glance up to see if time still exists. Not only does it still exist; it is in the form of a tower made of Honey Suckle. Resting on top of the building is the Statue of Justice made of baroque styled acorns and formed with tobacco leaves with her scales made of acorn caps. Now you see another train, maybe this one looking like a ladybug. Perhaps this leads you to the Statue of Liberty. Instead of copper turned green, her robe is made of palm fronds, while wheat stalks lace themselves around her neck. Her flaming torch is fashioned from a dried monarch flower,
which burns inside a pomegranate half. Perhaps, next you see Ellis Island. It is made of elm bark stonework, its towers of fungus hemlock cone, whole acorns forming a variety of pinecone scales. With a blast, you are jolted back to your senses and realize your standing in the middle of the 22nd Holiday Train Show at the NYBG! The show opened on Saturday, November 16, 2013, and will remain open until Sunday, January 12, 2014. The show features 21 model trains and over 140 replicas of New York landmarks, both past and present. All of the buildings are
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Peggy Godfrey is a freelance writer and former educator.
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THE WESTCHESTER GUARDIAN
Thursday, DECEMBER 19, 2013
EXPERIENCES
The 22nd Holiday Train Show at the NYBG Continued from page 9
completely made of organic materials such as bark, cork, twigs, leaves, stems, fruits, acorns, seeds, pinecones, and willows. They were designed by Paul Busse’s company, which is known as Applied Imagination (AP). Some of the buildings created, that are still in existence now, are the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Empire State Building, the Statue of Liberty, City Hall, and the main branch of the New York Public Library at 42nd Street and 5th Avenue. The entrance of this model is made with bark. The iconic lions that align each side of the library are made out of pear-shaped pods. Their manes are formed from meadow grass. The structures vary in weight. Some are not heavy, but some are. For instance, it takes 8 people to handle the massive model of the flagship Macy’s store in Herald Square. Above the cityscape are four New York bridges, all crafted from a variety of tree branches and bark. The four bridges
are the George Washington Bridge connecting New York City and New Jersey, the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges uniting Brooklyn and Manhattan, and the Hell Gate Bridge linking Astoria, Queens with Ward’s Island. The trains run along on more than 1,200 feet of track, crisscrossing the length of almost 4 football fields. This year’s show differs from last year’s in several ways. For instance, the Palm Dome pool appears as a more significant display because two new trains have been added, and the mansions of the Historic Hudson Valley have been placed by the pool. One of the new trains that has been added this year is the Metro-North model, which is a nice addition for Westchester residents. It also makes for a pleasant contrast to the historic and whimsical trains that are usually seen. Another new feature is a collection of fanciful animal homes that are located in the Artist’s Studio part of the show. These structures are on loan to the NYBG from the artists at AP. Karen Daubmann, Associate
Photo of the botanical train by and courtesy of Ivo M. Vermeulen.
Vice President for Exhibitions and Public Engagement enthusiastically states, “It is cool to see the variety of buildings that Paul Busse and his team can create.” I would say that the wonderful energy from the Artist’s Studio part of the exhibition comes across from the zest with which the creators from AP chose the Busse collection appearing in this year’s ‘Who Lives Here?’ collection. Leslie Salka of AP, referring to the separate pieces in it says, “Each has so much appeal and personality. It was wonderful to be able to showcase them where their details could be appreciated by all children, (young and old!), as they identify their favorites. Arranging them to their best advantage, selecting the plants that will nestle around them, to add the perfect pop of color or texture, until it feels just right, is what I most enjoyed creating.” Still, if asked what is the most impressive aspect of the Holiday Train Show, I would have to say that it is where the whole exhibition takes place, namely the Landmark Enid A. Haupt Conservatory. Reflecting on this facet of the show, Daubmann remarks,
Photo of New York’s City Hall by and courtesy of Ivo M. Vermeulen. “It is a treat to be able to walk into the Victorian jewel box structure, to feel warm and cozy and to be surrounded by thousands of tropical plants…all this while seeing trains circling back and forth and crossing on overhead structures. The sounds of the trains, the smells of the flowers, the twinkling of the
Photo of Lady Liberty and crowd by and courtesy of Talisman Brolin.
lights – it’s all in a beautiful setting, contributing to a magical experience!” Helen Weisman is a freelance science journalist living in New York City. She has taught writing at The City University of New York.
Photo of the trains and the poolside crowd by and courtesy of Talisman Brolin.
HISTORY
When New Rochelle Almost Became Hollywood East By ROBERT SCOTT At the turn of the 20th century, the city of New Rochelle was one of the many “bedroom” communities surrounding New York
City. Composer George M. Cohan had poked fun at life in the suburbs in his 1906 Broadway hit musical set in New Rochelle, Forty-five Minutes from Broadway. The lyrics of its title song included sentiments like: Oh! What a fine bunch of reubens. Oh! What a jay atmosphere. They have whiskers like hay, And imagine Broadway
Only 45 minutes from here. Cohan was wrong, of course. With a population of more than 20,000, the newly incorporated city was one of the wealthiest and most sophisticated in the state. Many personalities from the theater were among its daily commuters to the big city just to its south. In 1909, 44-year-old theatrical producer Edwin Thanhouser turned up in New Rochelle looking for a large house to rent. He had served an apprenticeship as an actor with road companies touring the United States before becoming a highly successful director of a repertory theater in Milwaukee. Hoping to repeat his Milwaukee
success, he moved to Chicago and leased a theater, but found the Windy City a tough nut to crack. To stem his losses and with a wife and two children to support, he canceled the lease on his failing Chicago venture and began thinking about the future. Thanhouser decided to head to New York and become a movie producer. The city was already a thriving center of film production--just about the only one in the country. Moviemaking offered quick profits but it also had its pitfalls. Chief among these was Thomas Edison’s persistent patent litigation. Inventor of the peep-show Kinescope and the movie camera, Edison’s diligent prosecution of patent infringers discouraged competition. Studios became guarded
strongholds where movies were made behind locked doors with metal shrouds over cameras to protect them from prying eyes. Producers still couldn’t resist using urban streets for the hairbreadth chases that added new thrills to every movie. Whenever a camera crew appeared in public, however, an Edison operative would soon show up, adept at pretending to be a curious spectator or a country bumpkin asking foolish questions. Process servers and lawsuits would quickly follow. The public was growing weary of prize fights and snippets of films of acrobats, freaks, magicians or optical tricks on the
Continued on page 11
Edwin Thanhouser after his retirement.
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HISTORY
When New Rochelle Almost Became Hollywood East Continued from page 10
screen. Too often, movies had nothing to say, no story to tell. By the time Edwin Thanhouser decided to utilize his theatrical talents and become a movie maker, the Edison Studios had released two films in quick succession that gave birth to the story movie. The first, The Life of an American Fireman, ran for six minutes. The second, The Great Train Robbery, ran for 11 minutes. Both were gripping masterpieces that swept the motion picture industry and would change the course of movie making forever. When movies got longer, the singleviewer peepshow type of movie quickly lost its appeal. Screen projection and storefront theaters began to spring up, with audiences seated in chairs rented from the local undertaker. Demand for movies became so great, producers were often shooting several films simultaneously on adjacent sets. Space ample enough for movie making was in short supply in Manhattan and rents were high. Edison moved his studio to the end of the Third Avenue elevated line in the Bronx. The Vitagraph Company moved its film-making operation to the Flatbush section of Brooklyn, where they erected a tall smokestack with its name spelled out vertically. It would dominate the Brooklyn landscape for many years to come.
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While searching for a large house to rent for his family in New Rochelle, Edwin Thanhouser stumbled on exactly what he needed for a movie studio—a large wooden building that formerly had been a roller skating rink.
A southern Westchester location for the Thanhouser studio posed no casting problems. The best source of film actors was still a short train ride away in the city at 39th Street and Broadway, near the Metropolitan Opera House. Here out of work stage actors congregated--“resting,” as they called it-hoping to be chosen by a casting director. A few actors scorned film work and insisted on using other names. And because it was accepted practice to press movie actors into service as carpenters, scene painters or other menial jobs, some would haughtily insist, “I am an actor and I will act--but I will not build sets or paint scenery.” Actors commuted from the city via train. If any had to work late, New Rochelle’s famous Pepperday Inn was conveniently nearby. The Thanhouser studio made almost 150 films before it found a starlet who was to prove to be a gold mine and capture the hearts of a growing audience of movie fans. Her name was Florence La Badie. Born Florence Russ in 1888, she had been
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THE WESTCHESTER GUARDIAN
Thursday, DECEMBER 19, 2013
HISTORY
When New Rochelle Almost Became Hollywood East Continued from page 11
adopted by a French-Canadian family and had already made 31 short films for the Biograph Company, playing small, uncredited roles under the direction of mercurial D.W. Griffith. She began working at the Thanhouser studio in June of 1911. Her first movie for Thanhouser, The Smuggler, was released the following month. It had a cast of three players. As the only female in the film, her exceptional beauty and acting ability could not fail to be noticed by moviegoers. Studio publicists took advantage of the fan magazines springing up, eager for photos and news stories about movie stars. Florence La Badie was portrayed as a female daredevil capable of driving speedboats or motorcars and piloting airplanes, although she admitted to an intense fear of snakes to interviewers. She would make four more films with Griffith before starting to work exclusively for Thanhouser in January of 1912. In April of that year, the film world was surprised to learn that the Thanhouser studio had been sold to a group headed by
34-year-old Charles J. Hite for $250,000. An increase of 25 times his initial investment of $10,000 seemed like a handsome return to Edwin Thanhouser, who took his family to Europe for an extended stay. Hite moved to New Rochelle, rolled up his sleeves and got to work. On January
13, 1913, the wooden former roller rink was engulfed in flames and destroyed. Scriptwriter Lloyd Lonergan wrote a screenplay, gathered some Thanhouser players who were present and quickly shot a film titled When the Studio Burned. One of Hite’s achievements was the 23-episode serial titled The Million Dollar Mystery, with Florence La Badie playing the daughter of a millionaire. Publicity about the serial included a missing person report to the New Rochelle police. The names of the people involved in the disappearance curiously were the same as those of the principal characters in the serial. Picked up and
reprinted by newspapers across America, the kidnapping story was the first of the great film press agent hoaxes. Charles Hite did not live to see the results of his labors. On the night of August 21, 1914, driving from the city to his home in New Rochelle, his new eight- cylinder touring car plunged off the 155th Street viaduct near the Harlem River Speedway. Chapter 9 of the serial had just been released. The Million Dollar Mystery was a huge success. Production costs were about $125,000, and gross receipts were nearly $1.5 million. When war broke out in 1914, Edwin Thanhouser came back from Europe with his family and was persuaded to head the
Thanhouser studio again. But the industry had changed during his absence and he could not repeat his original financial success. By 1917 production diminished to a handful of films. Florence La Badie had remained loyal to the studio. After shooting of her film The Man Without a Country was competed in August of 1917, she decided to take a brief vacation with her fiancé, Daniel Carson Goodman. They visited her parents in Montreal and then motored down the Hudson Valley, with stops at points of interest. steep hill variously reported to be “near Ossining” or “near Croton.” The runaway car crashed at the bottom of the hill. Goodman’s leg was broken, but La Badie’s
Continued on page 13
The original Thanhouser Company studio at the corners of Warren, Grove and Main in New Rochelle.
Florence LaBadie.
Photo of fire that destroyed the Thanhouser studio.
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Thursday, DECEMBER 19, 2013
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HISTORY
Hollywood East Continued from page 12
injuries were more serious. She was thrown from the car, which then rolled over on her and fractured her pelvis in several places. Hospitalized in the Ossining Hospital on Spring Street, the only hospital between Tarrytown and Peekskill, her recovery was agonizingly slow. Her attending physician was Dr. Charles C. Sweet, whose office was at 13 Maple Place in Ossining. Six weeks later, the sudden death from septicemia of this popular and beloved movie star caused a national outpouring of grief. Her unmarked grave is in a plot purchased by her birth mother in Brooklyn’s landmark Green-Wood Cemetery. With its principal star gone, the assets of the studio that had made more than a thousand films were sold off. Edwin
Thanhouser retired and moved to Long Island with his wife, Gertrude, remaining there until 1945. Their final years were spent in an apartment at Fifth Avenue and 8th Street in Greenwich Village. She predeceased him in 1951; he died five years later. Both are buried in Kensico Cemetery in Valhalla, N.Y. Ned Thanhouser, Edwin Thanhouser’s grandson, has collected family mementos and corporate records and rescued a few surviving Thanhouser films from oblivion. These are now available to the public. See www.thanhouser.org for details. The tragic Florence La Badie chapter of the Thanhouser story finally has a more cheerful ending: Ned Thanhouser recently raised money for a headstone to be placed on her unmarked grave on her next birthday, April 27, 2014. Robert Scott researches and writes about local history. He lives in Croton on Hudson, N.Y.
Gravestone of Edwin and Gertrude Thanhouser in Kensico Cemetery, Valhalla, NY
MUSIC
THE SOUNDS Tower of Power “Hipper than Hip” OFBLUE www.RealGoneMusic.com – www.TowerofPower.com By Bob Putignano Still sounding as fresh as ever it’s hard to believe that Tower of Power have been with us as a powerhouse large horn based band for over forty-five years. “Hipper than Hip” (full
title is “Hipper than Hip Yesterday, Today & Tomorrow Live On the Air & In Studio – 1974”) is a mouthful, but it also captures the band with one of its best lineups in full flight.
These were the pioneering days of FM radio and Long Island WLIR had an amazing schedule of live broadcast music either from My Father’s Place club, or from Ultrasonic Recording Studio which is where this performance was captured and they initially shared it with their listeners on their
popular 92.7 – FM airwaves. So on 5/14/74: Greg Adams, Brent Byars, Emilio Castillo, Bruce Conte, David Garibaldi, Mic Gillette, Doc Kupka, Lenny Pickett, Rocco Prestia, Chester Thompson, and Lenny Williams found their way to Hempstead, LI and put down their funky grooves in front of a live
studio audience. The always short “Oakland Stroke” finds the band broiling with enthusiasm and creativity then quickly shift into the on their signature (mostly instrumental) “Squib
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THE WESTCHESTER GUARDIAN
Thursday, DECEMBER 19, 2013
MUSIC
The Sounds of Blue Continued from page 13 Cakes.” Conte’s crystal clear guitar solo is first up, briefly the band pauses as the band broils into a vamp-vocal choruses of “Squib Cakes” with a rousing B3 solo from Thompson who authored this tune. Meanwhile the horn-charts bristle with pride as the band seemingly knows they are on their game. “This Time It’s Real” bursts into the pocket with Prestia’s bass-lines as vocalist Lenny Williams grabs the reins. The funked-up “Soul Vaccination” ensures that the party rolls on especially when Kupka’s fat baritone sax blows out the bottom. Williams
dedicates “You’re Still a Young Man” to the ladies of NY; a soulful and emotional tune where you’ll shiver when Mic Gillette’s hits those remarkable highnotes on his trumpet. Old time soul is on display on “Clean Slate” as the band coagulates, Williams preaches about the positives of being men as opposed to women, which becomes a showstopper. More emotions are exhibited on “So Very Hard to Go” as the band continues to percolate. Disc one closes with additional funk on “Get Yo’ Feet Back on the Ground.” Conte’s clean guitar lines are fiery here and those famous horn-charts soar smartly.
Disc two: “Time Will Tell” slows the band down a notch but not for long as the band hauntingly segues into “Man From the Past” Williams takes command and has a cast of players supporting him like Conte’s brimming guitar, Thompson’s crafty B3 organ and those fascinating horns. Now it’s time to get “Down to the Nightclub” a fabulously funky staple of TOP that’s performed quickly here at a little over two minutes. “Just When We Start Makin’ It” is a pretty ballad where the horns are allowed to roam and add sweet fills. Also checkout Conte’s “Rainy Night In Georgia” like guitar lines too, as this unfolds as pure unadulterated soul especially when Thompson’s B3 sets sail too. It’s time to “Knock Yourself Out’ a vehicle that allows most band members
a moment in the spotlight and stretches out for nearly nineteen minutes, its uncontaminated ear-candy that will burn a hole in your soul. Thompson’s B3 stands-out, Conte’s supporting guitar comps are dead-on too, then Williams returns to vocally rule the roost as the horns majestically sparkle too. TOP encores with what else “What Is Hip?” And it is. Conte’s bright guitar leaps in, the horns do all the right fills, Gillette’s trumpet kills as the band throws it to Conte’s guitar and back and forth it goes. Williams’ vocals are authoritative as he rightly professes that “this ain’t nothing but a party,” and who can argue? “Hipper than Hip” is almost two hours of live recorded music unearthed
for all of us to dance the night away. Amazingly it was cut as it aired with no edits or overdubs a miraculous achievement because their musicianship is intuitive, telepathic and at times astonishing. So don’t be square, get hip and enjoy this blast from the past that was recorded nearly forty years ago. You dig?
investigating the new iPad. Tom: It has enough power to set up but I need to plug it in to fully charge it. Jed: Maybe there’ll be an open plug at Barnes and Noble Jed pulls into the Barnes and Noble parking lot and they both get out -- Tom is carrying his new iPad and plug. They enter the store and see and find that there is an open plug in the read of the coffee area by the window. As Tom plus in the iPad, Jim Casey looks up from his iPad Mini and his conversation with John McMullen and says “Ah, Tom you got the new iPad. Where did you get it?” Tom: At the Apple store. John: Great -- have fun with it. Tom: Thanks. If I have any questions, I’ll ask you guys. Jim: That’s fine. ------------------------------------This is just one of the scenarios that comes to mind when first presented by Bezos’ wild dream. Dale McFetters, in his New York Post article, “Here Come The Drones” (http://nypost.com/2013/12/06/ jeff-bezos-and-the-future-of-dronedelivery-service/), quotes a Washington Post article stating that a Colorado town has considered issuing hunting licenses for drones and speculates that “Amazon could cut off deliveries to the town, notifying the residents that there are packages waiting for them but they’ll have to pick them up at the company’s headquarters in Seattle” (He concludes the article by writing “A billionaire with his own fleet of drones is
not someone you want to mess with”). Other concerns are that hackers will modify drone software to deliver paid-for expensive items to the hackers, that faulty software, cameras or GPS systems might cause drones to fly into birds, power lines, towers, trees and / or humans. There is also a real concern for what will happen to our personal air space (and sanity) if the drones arrive. It is one thing to envision eight drones buzzing around Jefferson Valley, NY, Sayville, LI, or Smallsville, Arkansas but what about 10,000 in downtown Manhattan? Obviously, the FAA will have to carefully study the control or airspace (and such a study might take years). So there are potential problem, real and imagined, relating to the deployment of commercial drones -- if the idea proves feasible, Amazon certainly won’t be alone in their use. In spite of the problems, Rich Lowry, editor of National Review, in a New York Post column, “Imagining a drone future” (nypost.com/2013/12/03/ imagining-a-drone-future), sees not only a future for drones but a bright future, writing “drones could have a variety of applications that don’t involve spying or firing missiles at terrorists. They could be used to monitor power lines and pipelines. They could be used in search-andrescue. They could be used in making movies and promotional videos. They could be used to evaluate storm damage. And they could be valuable to farmers.” He further writes that Chris Anderson, former editor of Wired Magazine and present the CEO
of 3D Robotics, “believes drones may be the future of agriculture, allowing farmers to monitor large fields more carefully, and use water and pesticide with greater precision and care. Japan has realized this for a long time. Its ministry of agriculture began promoting the use of drones in the early 1980s. Now, 40 percent of Japan’s rice crop is sprayed by unmanned aircraft.” So, if we accept that drones (or any other disruptive technology) are coming, what does it mean for our environment, economy, or us personally. It means that there will be different and, most probably, many less jobs. It means that our ways of doing things will be different and that, to function in the new ways, we must adapt. It also means that regulation, economic safety nets (unemployment, public assistance, etc.), and taxation rates and policies may have to change. To understand and plan for the impact of such transformative changes, we need public education and discussion on the issues with technologists, economists, business leaders, and policy makers / political officials -- and, to date, we have had none of such discussions Jonah Goldberg, writing in his New York Post (the NY Post has, surprisingly, had more opinion pieces on the drones than either the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times) column, “Get set for the rise of the machines” (http://nypost. com/2013/12/06/get-set-for-therise-of-the-machines/) about both the introduction of tablets in to restaurants to replace waitpersons and the vision of Amazon Drones, admitted to
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TECHNOLOGY CREATIVE DISRUPTION
Boom! I Hit It! I Got An iPad! By JOHN F. McMULLEN From the New York Times, December 2013 -- Amazon Delivers Some Pie In The Sky (http://www.nytimes. com/2013/12/03/technology/amazon-delivers-some-pie-in-the-sky. html) (November, 2015 -- Jed and Tom are under trees next to a field in Yorktown Heights, NY. Jed has a 30-06 rifle with a telescopic sight and Tom has a high power binocular.) Tom: One of them is coming now. Tom: It looks like an iPad box. Jed: I got it -- I’ll knock it down in the field. Tom sprints out into the field. Jed sights the overhead Drone with the scope and presses the trigger. BOOM! The Drone rises in the air from the impact and then drops rapidly crashing into the field. Jed is already packing the rifle into its case and moving rapidly through the trees toward his car. Tom has ripped the package from the downed drone and begins to run toward the car. By the time Tom gets to the car, Jed already has the motor running. As soon as Tom gets in, Jed starts moving, heading toward route 202. Jed: Check the package on the iPad.
There could be a tracking device on it. As Tom tears the package apart, a Yorktown police car, siren on, passes them, driving in the opposite direction. Jed: Amazon got to the police faster than it had been before -- we have to be careful. Tom: I’m worried that they might start using satellite or drone cameras tracking the delivery drones. That could kill us. Jed pulls into the Triangle Shopping Center and stops by a trash car. Tom jumps out, puts the packaging into it and jumps back into the car. Jed pulls the car into a deserted area behind the stores and they each replace a stolen license plate on the car. Jed puts the stolen plates in the truck and they start off, back on 202 heading back from where they came. As they pass Dowling Park, the site of the drone downings, Jed says “The State Police are there too”, Tom: We have to be careful -- it looks like they’re ramping up. Jed: You’ll enjoy the iPad -- now we each have one. Tom: And an iPhone -- and a Galaxy S5. I’d love to get the Note 4 and that watch -- I think it’s the Gear 2 that works with it. Jed: We can’t push it too much. You’re right. They are ramping up. Jed turns right on Lexington Avenue, heading toward US 6. Tom is
Continued on page 15
THE WESTCHESTER GUARDIAN
Thursday, DECEMBER 19, 2013
Page 15
Creative Disruption is a continuing series examining the impact of constantly accelerating technology on the world around us. These changers normally happen under our personal radar until we find that the world as we knew it is no more
Broadcasts at http://www.johnmac13. com; hear my interview of The Westchester Guardian editor Hezi Aris at www.blogtalkradio.com/rapidtalk/2013/10/13/ the-johnmac-show
TECHNOLOGY CREATIVE DISRUPTION
Boom! I Hit It! I Got An iPad! Continued from page 14
having accepted the future but having no answers on how to deal with the disruption, “The robot future is coming
no matter what, and it will require some truly creative responses by policymakers. I don’t know what those are, but I’m pretty sure antiquated ideas that were bad policy
100 years ago aren’t going to be of much use. Maybe the answers will come when artificial intelligence finally comes online and we can replace the policymakers with machines, too.” A funny line -- but, by then, it will be too late for the working class.
Links to other writings, Podcasts, & Radio
EYE ON THEATRE
Watsons Galore By JOHN SIMON
It is difficult not to be ambivalent about a play like “The (Curious Case of the) Watson Intelligence” at Playwrights Horizons, or, for that matter, about its author, Madeleine George. Why would a play title contain a parenthetic statement in the middle, if you think of quotation marks as suspenders and parentheses as a belt, and realize how bizarre it is to wear the two simultaneously? But even the name Madeleine George calls forth ambivalence. It reads suspiciously French, yet Google tells us that the author was born and raised in Amherst and now lives in Brooklyn, which seems archetypically American. Nothing wrong, of course, with being either French or American, but both at once strikes me as, in either French or English, de trop. Now then, what is this play about? It time travels in four different periods connected mostly by the name of the titular character, really four different Watsons: two fictitious, one historic, and one an android. If this were an absurdist play, such as Ionesco’s “The Bald Soprano,” in which any number
of persons referred to, male or female, old or young, are called Bobby Watson, okay; they might even be Ms. George’s inspirers. But the George play, though not without absurd touches, strives to be largely realistic. So we get first the fictional Dr. John H. Watson, Sherlock Holmes’s sidekick and chronicler, circa 1889. Then we have Thomas A. Watson, Alexander Graham Bell’s reallife assistant, historically the first person to be summoned by telephone in 1876. And then there is IBM’s natural-language-processing supercomputer (named Watson after Thomas J. Watson, the founder of IBM), that in real life in 2011 defeated on the quiz show “Jeopardy” the two strongest human contestants. In the play, however, he (or it?) is the invention of the heroine, Eliza, as well as her copacetic soulmate. Recently divorced from one Frank Merrick, she has also a living lover, a Watson about whom she is profoundly ambivalent: “You’re the only one I want to be around, and I have a really hard time being with you.” To add to our confusion, the same excellent actor, John Ellison Conlee, plays both the passionate lover and the compassionate robot. The big irony here is that
the ex-husband Merrick, whose defective computer Watson was fixing, hired him to spy on Eliza, whom he jealously still pursues with frantic, unanswered phone calls. But the spy beds the woman, which, confessed, redoubles Merrick’s rage. This Merrick is a radical candidate for political office, which allows the playwright to go off on another complicating tangent. And how muzzy is a play in which the author makes heavy weather of the fact
David Constabile and John Ellison Conlee.
that Graham Bell’s message to Watson, originally reported as “Mr. Watson—come here—I want to see you,” was recalled 50 years later, in 1931 at Bell Labs, by Watson as “”Mr. Watson--come here—I want you.” This, in the play, is spoken to another Eliza, a radio interviewer. Thus a probably simple memory lapse in real life becomes a discrepancy invested by the playwright with vaguely sinister implications. How in love with ambiguity can an author be?
There are some improbabilities throughout. Why does the first Eliza come to see Sherlock Holmes about some strange symmetrical punctures on her arms? (Explanation much later.) Holmes, after all, is not a doctor. But Dr. Watson is, and is graciously hospitable to the woman in Holmes’s temporary absence. Yet he has no explanation for the red marks, a bit of questionable suspense.
Continued on page 16
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THE WESTCHESTER GUARDIAN
Thursday, DECEMBER 19, 2013
EYE ON THEATRE
Watsons Galore Continued from page 15 Again, why are the android confidant and the somewhat unlikely new bedmate of the final Eliza played by the same actor? Is the reason economy or mystification, either way gimmicky and confusing. And would a jealous ex-husband really hire a computer repairman as spy? And would that
fellow accept the job even for good money? Especially since he tells us later that money was not his motive. All this is somewhat mitigated by good décor by Laura Thompson, winning costumes by Anita Yavich, and effective direction by Leigh Silverman. And by very good acting. I have already praised the versatile Conlee’s aptly differentiated Watsons, but David Costabile, as Merrick, is equally solid. They, like Amanda Quaid in her sundry Elizas, are exceptionally well spoken,
David Constabile and John Ellison Conlee.
both for projection and British accents. Ms. Quaid moreover is a deft actress, managing to look both prim and sexy, either separately or together, whatever the script calls for. A peculiar duality attaches to this play. It is absorbing from scene to scene thanks to savvy dialogue and strange situations that keep you involved. But when it is over, it leaves you wondering what on earth was it trying to say? What, in English or French, was its raison d’être? Production photos of “The (Curious Case of the)
Amanda Quaid and David Constabile.
Watson Intelligence” by and courtesy of Joan Marcus. Venue Details: Mainstage Theatre, 416 West 42nd Street, (between 9th and 10th Avenue), New York, NY 10026. Tickets: (212) 5639261, or visit pearltheatre.org. Reservations can be securely accomplished online via Ticket Central, or by calling the Playwrights Horizons box office at (212) 279-4200. John Simon has written for over 50 years on theatre, film, literature, music and fine arts
for the Hudson Review, New Leader, New Criterion, National Review, New York Magazine, Opera News, Weekly Standard, Broadway.com and Bloomberg News. Mr. Simon holds a PhD from Harvard University in Comparative Literature and has taught at MIT, Harvard University, Bard College and Marymount Manhattan College. To learn more, visit the JohnSimon-Uncensored. com website.
John Ellison Conlee and Amanda Quaid.
GovernmentSection POLITICS
Differences From The Heartland Are Not So Vast By RICH MONETTI I received a phone message from Congressman Sean Maloney on Wednesday night, inviting me to take part in a Town Hall Phone Q&A. I queued up my tape recorder, and let the congressman fly. Part way through transcribing the next day, I realized there was a snafu. The conference call I tapped into emanated from Illinois and U.S. Representative Chris Balkema (R) of the 11th Congressional District. Annoyed, I fretted the wasted time. But realized it might be interesting to compare and contrast Blue State Westchester to those less than enlightened Red Staters who many of us like to denigrate. The first question seemed pretty reasonable. Every day, said the first questioner, President Obama taunts the Republicans to provide alternative suggestions to improve the Affordable
Care Act. As such, what suggestions do you have for the president in the hopes that we don’t slide toward a single-payer system? (Here, I could have been clued in, but even I have doubts that our dysfunctional government could deliver healthcare to 300 million people) “When President Obama pleads that the Republicans don’t have any ideas, the first thing that comes to mind is what about being able to purchase insurance across state lines,” replied Representative Balkema. That didn’t sound exactly like a Democrat. Actually, it sounded like someone making perfect sense. In turn, my juxtaposed Congressman added, “As we look at other types of insurance we have not seen the exponential increases that healthcare have accrued.” Now not to interrupt the flow of my discovery, this point is quite disingenuous. Neither party would dare slipping this one past the insurance companies.
Subjecting the industry to actual capitalism would only lower rates and decrease profits, which is exactly why the initially proposed “public option” went down in flames. Nonetheless, at this point I was thinking where was this query when all this emerged in 2008. “Let’s let the free market drive this thing,” Balkema said to my approval. Suddenly, I don’t sound like such a liberal, but for me this is only a starting point. In turn, the government could intervene so as to make the system even more equitable. Moving on, pseudo Sean Maloney then piped in with a little tort reform. Good for him, because anyone who’s spent five minutes with a doctor knows how this bogs down his or her entire outlook. You don’t have to crossstate or party lines to be sympathetic – not to mention the cost passed onto us taxpayers. But then it started to sound funny.
“Let’s put a provision in place that says, ‘let the loser pay.’ Oh boy, that would certainly tighten up the number of lawsuits around the country,” said Balkema. Yeah, it would knock them down to zero. The odds are already heavily stacked in favor of the party with the most money, and ordinary people with real grievances would be risking too much to ever sue. Perplexed, I let it go. This brought us to the mandate. “Let the mandate for people to buy insurance be repealed,” he said. I’m not all that crazy for this either. For instance, what’s my friend Pete going to do? A long time struggling actor, writer, director, he’s never had insurance. How is he going to pay for this – even with a subsidy? Piggybacking on that, Balkema questioned how this would end when the government can tell you what you need to buy and what you need to have. Well, they do that already but interesting point nonetheless. Then the exchange screeched to a halt for me. “Suddenly, the socialist concept is taken
to the ultimate degree,” said Balkema. Huh? Still unready to concede that this wasn’t Sean Maloney, I thought he was speaking only in terms of healthcare, and since I have my own doubts about single payer, I thought it pretty brave to question the Democratic party line. On the hand, socialism wouldn’t mandate that people pay for healthcare. The government would provide it. But I guess Republicans have their fascism and socialism mixed up. So yes, I should have figured out something was awry – especially when the congressman echoed the old Reagan adage that government can’t solve the problem, it is the problem Not until the next caller said she was from Illinois, did I fully realize what was happening. But in the end, it proves there’s common ground in our not so polarized nation and it would be nice if someone seized upon it. The Republicans just need to stop with the socialism nonsense. It’s embarrassing. Rich Monetti has been a freelance writer since 2003 and lives in Westchester.
THE WESTCHESTER GUARDIAN
Thursday, DECEMBER 19, 2013
Page 17
PoliticsSection THE BOGEN PERSPECTIVE
The George Washington Bridge and Governor Chris Christie Open 7 Days A Week
NYC’s #1 TOPlESS SPORTS BAR By BOB K. BOGEN Probably the juiciest political scandal in decades, “right here in River City”. That is our Big, Big River City, New York on the Hudson. [Apologies to Meredith Wilson and his great hit Broadway musical and memorable film, “Music Man”, and the con-man “hero’s” song wailing about drinking, gambling, and the resulting failure of the young to buy his instruments and make music “right here in River City.”] No sex this time, as far as we know. Just colossal, grotesque, raw politics, and with a disastrous threat to the recognized leading Republican candidate for the presidency of the United States, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie. Some readers will recall multiple George Washington bridge access lanes were, according to this week’s New York
Times account “unexpectedly and mysteriously shut down,” essentially blocking the world’s busiest bridge, carrying over 70,000 vehicles a day, and probably the world’s most important bridge, three months ago, back in September. It was the day schools opened and continued for the rest of the week. The result was one of history’s worst traffic jams. Casual as well as essential emergency vehicles were stalled as much as four hours. The New York Times on the day of this writing, December 11, three months after the unprecedented, largely unreported massive blockage, did finally carry a substantial article on the event and its significance. In fact, the International New York Times ran a similar story just earlier this week. Two weeks earlier, November 21, the Wall Street Journal had already published a comprehensive account of the amazing events. Even weeks before that, the
sustainable and infrastructure promoting Surdna Foundation’s program, The Works- Next City, also published a serious account of the events. In MidNovember WNYC radio reviewed the story and earlier it is reported the New Jersey Record and the Star Ledger also covered this unprecedented and apparently politically motivated cause célèbre. The original cover account by the Port Authority, owner of the bridge, major airports, and much else, was that the closing of most bridge access lanes was for a “traffic safety study.” The Port Authority Executive Director Patrick Foye, and Deputy Executive Director Bill Baroni, who was appointed by Governor Christie, now deny any such study. Such closures are always given substantial review that in such major closures can take a full year. In any case any such closures would involve
Continued on page 18
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THE WESTCHESTER GUARDIAN
Thursday, DECEMBER 19, 2013
THE BOGEN PERSPECTIVE
The George Washington Bridge and Governor Chris Christie Continued from page 17 notification to local executives and the police. No such notifications were provided or even permitted despite serious concerns of bridge employees who were directed to close the several bridge access lanes, submerging the borough of Fort Lee, N.J., into dense traffic jams that some said converted Fort Lee into a massive parking lot for an entire work-week, until the closures were discovered by the Port Authority Director, Mr. Foye. According to the Wall Street Journal he then angrily ordered the closures reversed. It is clear that a Christy schoolmate and also a key appointment by the Governor to the Authority, David Wildstein, actually ordered the closures and forbade any of the operating employees to tell anyone of the action. Bill Baroni created the position for Wildstein as the Authority’s director of interstate capital projects. He was hired to take “a real aggressive approach” to getting Mr. Christie’s agenda
through. “Our job here is not to make friends, he said. State and Port Authority investigations are now underway, including consideration of state and federal law violations as well as charges of mismanagement and incompetence. Wildstein has just announced he would resign, effective January first. The Port Authority, one of the world’s first and largest such organizations, was designed to be above politics. That no longer seems to be the case. Governors have sometimes appointed four or five to work at the Port Authority. Governor Christie has named fifty. But it appears that may be the least of his vigorous use of power. If the hours I was able to search out this unfortunate sequence, did not uncover elements the current official investigations and hearings will bring to public notice, there may turn out to be even more color to this story. If the belated investigations can actually establish a direct connection
of the bridge blocking to the Governor, impeachment and prosecution would be appropriate, and/or assignment in-lieu of incarceration might require him to serve as a toll collector or bridge patrolman for some substantial number of years. If his usual deniability is successful, some lesser finding might simply indicate he installed overzealous subordinates “who took matters into their own hands against the wishes of their boss.” Bob K. Bogen served as comprehensive long-range facilities planning director for the New York Metropolitan Regional Planning Commission; as planning director for the New England Regional Commission; as a major United Nations official in Pakistan; Board Chairman of the Communications Coordinating Committee for the United Nations; and Principal Representative of Architects / Designers / Planners for Social Responsibility to the United Nations.
OpEdSection THE HEZITORIAL – INVESTIGATION
Conduct Unbecoming Yonkers Greater Good By HEZI ARIS The YONY/Rivertowns Creative Meetup is a seemingly positive gathering of corporate representatives and individuals “dedicated to accelerating an emerging creative and tech business corridor along the Hudson River in Westchester County that is transforming our former industrial waterfronts and downtowns into economic generators once again.” It is only when YONY attests: “Our mission is to inspire with the insight of creative leaders, to establish connections with people and resources to help our members flourish, and to promote the clustering of tech and other creative industries in Downtown Yonkers and communities along the Hudson,” that issues arise.
Laudable as the mission statement sounds, is it not anathema to the “family values” espoused by Mayor Mike Spano who admitted to having been violated by a pedophile years ago. Were he to know of a pedophile within his midst, would he still permit his ethical standards to erode? A well-known pedophile has been welcomed into YONY’s fold while Yonkers City Hall asserts ignorance despite being advised days ago. Mayor Mike Spano’s Administration were made aware of James F. Surdoval’s involvement with YONY as a consultant to the operations. Why is Mayor Mike Spano willing to align the December 12, 2013 Meetup by presenting it, thereby validating its operation, in tandem with the YONY Initiative, Inc., and Sarah Lawrence College? The New York Times labeled James F. Surdoval, “part political advisor, part
administrator, and 100 percent dealmaker”. Surdoval was a director of the Yonkers Waterfront Development Corporation years ago. Yonkers “insiders” were quick to support Surdoval when he denied his behavior. To this day, Surdoval has his supporters. Supporting the YONY Initiative should not be permitted to cloak the presence of Surdoval from any direct or ancillary association with the City of Yonkers. Besides the City of Yonkers, the Sponsor, are Co-Sponsors: Sarah Lawrence College and the Yonkers Industrial Development Agency. Series Sponsors are iPark Hudson, Collins Enterprises, 66 Main, Metro92, GDC-Ginsburg Development, L+M Development, and Hudson Valley Bank.
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LE G A L N O T I C E S NOTICE OF FORMATION OF LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY (LLC). NAME: NARVEN Co, LLC Articles of Organization were filed with the Secretary of State of New York (SSNY) on 09/23/13 Office location: Westchester County. SSNY has been designated as agent of the LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail a copy of process to: The LLC, 233 Hessian Hills Road, Croton on Hudson, New York 10520, principal business location of the LLC. Purpose: wholesale pharmaceutical sales. PRINCE 26, LLC Articles of Org. filed NY Sec. of State (SSNY) 5/5/04. Office in Westchester Co. SSNY design. Agent of LLC upon whom process may be served. SSNY shall mail copy of process to Veracity Development 199 Lafayette St #1A New York, NY 10012. Purpose: Any lawful activity. Notice of Formation of 578 East Fordham LLC. Arts. Of Org. filed with SSNY on 9/4/2013. Office Location: Westchester County. SSNY designated as agent of the LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to William Fleming, 16 Bronx St, Tuckahoe, NY 10707. Purpose: any lawful purpose.
NOTICE OF FORMATION OF Psychiatric NP Therapeutics, PLLC. Arts of Org filed with Secy of State of NY (SSNY) on 9/24/13. Office location: Westchester County. SSNY designated agent upon whom process may be served and shall mail copy of process against PLLC to principal business address: 481 Main St., Ste. 303A, New Rochelle, NY 10801. Purpose: Any lawful activity.
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