1. science
2. social science
3. history
4. medieval history

PRESORTED
STANDARD
PERMIT #3036
WHITE PLAINS NY
Vol. 10, No. VIII
Westchester’s Most Influential Weekly
Thursday, February 26, 2015 • $1.00
Rajeev Goyal
Leads Push For The
Peace Corps Campaign
Author Profile by Lee Daniels, Page 10
WWW.WESTCHESTERGUARDIAN.COM
Page 2
THE WESTCHESTER GUARDIAN
Thursday, February 26, 2015
Government/CommunitySection
Council Hearing to Follow Zoning Board Meeting
By Peggy Godfrey
It didn’t take long
after New Rochelle’s
City
Council’s
February 10, 2015
meeting to place the
proposal for an apartment building
for 371 North Avenue on the
Zoning Board of Appeals agenda
for March 3. This precedes the City
Council hearing set for March 10,
2015. 38 Rosyln Associates, Inc.
proposed a new development that
consists of a forty-eight luxury
multi-family rental units with retail
space along North Ave. and parking
at grade. The five foot landscaped
parking lot buffer is less than
the ten feet required in the New
Rochelle Down Town business
zoning district that is being sought,
so a variance is needed. But why
should this be a surprise?
This proposed development
required the New Rochelle City
Council to declare themselves
the lead agency for an environmental review to determine if the
downtown density bonus floating
overlay zone is appropriate for this
project, located in an area that is
already congested with traffic.
Commissioner
of
Development,
Luiz
Aragon,
emphasized the new proposals
(referring also to 70 Grand Street
and 45 Burling Lane proposal)
“all want additional density.”
Apparently this proposal calls for a
change in floor area ratio (F.A.R.)
from 2.0 to 4.0. F.A.R. The F.A. R.
is the measure of square footage of
the building relative to the total
area of the land on which it is
located. A letter from Greg Varian
of the Varian Law Firm said the
density bonus would change the
F.A.R. from 2.0 to 2.9. This measurement has often been reduced to
lessen congestion in the area projected. North Avenue, for example,
frequently has a bottleneck going
into Garden Street. Residents are
aware that there is a great deal of
traffic on North Avenue, especially
during peak commuter hours on
this important south-north street,
resulting in slowdowns.
Councilman Barry Fertel
asked about the parking requirements and among the alternatives
suggested was that the developer
could make a donation to the city’s
parking fund. City Manager Chuck
Strome spoke about the distance
from the building to the nearby lot
on Lawn Avenue and the number
of available spaces there. There was
a suggestion this lot was underutilized. Further, for the four floors of
residential apartments above the
commercial structure, no PILOT
(payment in lieu of taxes is being
sought.)
Mayor Noam Bramson suggested the Council approve lead
agency status for the project.
Councilman
Al
Tarantino
reminded everyone that this
project needed 48 spaces, but only
has 43. While allowing the developer to pay a $5,000 fee in lieu of
the needed five spaces could be an
option, this could cause a problem
at a later date if these spaces are
needed by the city.
Tarantino also wanted to know
if this company was committed to
renting all the commercial space.
Comments about Avalon, which
did not rent much of its commercial space, was noted as an example.
Councilwoman Sharil Rackman
was concerned that the l0% of
affordable housing units did not
become Section 8. The answer was
that the monthly rent of $2,700
would not permit Section 8. When
Councilman Jared Rice asked
when a shovel could be placed in
the ground, the answer was “April
or May.” Councilman Ivar Hyden
wanted to know if the parking
spaces would be included with the
rent because the Avalon buildings
(which did not include the parking
fee with the rent) caused the city to
change all the downtown parking
regulations.
The Varian Law Firm represents the 38 Roslyn Association.
Varian felt New Rochelle had a
“desire to redevelop North Avenue”
and this project would be beneficial
to improve both the downtown
and North Avenue. The Lombardi
development will “facilitate a
walkable transit oriented community. The parking spaces, he felt
Mission Statement
Table of Contents
Community.............................................................................2
Guardian Opinion...................................................................3
Entertaining............................................................................3
In Memoriam..........................................................................4
Government............................................................................5
Community.............................................................................6
Creative Disruption.................................................................7
Travel.......................................................................................8
Eye on Theatre.......................................................................10
Film Retrospective.................................................................12
Legal Ads..............................................................................14
Calendar................................................................................14
Cultural Perspectives.............................................................15
Mary at the Movies...............................................................16
could be reduced to one per unit
especially because it is within 500
feet of a public parking facility.
Varian clearly states that the zoning
board of appeals needs to approve
a variance to reduce the buffer
standards in the zoning code. The
recommendation of Commissioner
Luiz Aragon to approve this project
before the public hearing, zoning
board and county planning board
have had time to comment is cited.
Councilman Lou Trangucci
had noticed there were discrepancies in the permitted construction
hours and was told by Aragon this
problem would be addressed and
hours would be uniform. When the
density of this five-story proposal
near the train station was discussed, Bramson asked about the
possibility of building a higher
structure, perhaps to 20 stories. He
was told the company could not
get the financing and construction costs for that height would be
double that of a five-story concrete
building. The council set the public
hearings for their March l0, 2015
meeting.
Sam Zherka, Publisher
Mary Keon, Acting Editor /Advertising
Publication is every Thursday
Write to us in confidence at:
The Westchester Guardian
Post Office Box 8
New Rochelle, NY 10801
Send publicity 3 weeks in advance of your event. Ads due Tuesdays, one week prior to publication date. Letters to the Editor & Press Releases can only be submitted via Email:
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
Office Hours: 11A-5P M-F
914.216.1674 Cell • 914.576.1481 Office
Read us online at:
www.WestchesterGuardian.com
The Westchester Guardian is a weekly newspaper devoted to the unbiased
reporting of events and developments that are newsworthy and significant to
readers living in, and/or employed in, Westchester County. The Guardian will
strive to report fairly, and objectively, reliable information without favor or
compromise. Our first duty will be to the PEOPLE’S RIGHT TO KNOW, by the
exposure of truth, without fear or hesitation, no matter where the pursuit may
lead, in the finest tradition of FREEDOM OF THE PRESS. The Guardian will cover
news and events relevant to residents and businesses all over Westchester
County. As a weekly, rather than focusing on the immediacy of delivery more
associated with daily journals, we will instead seek to provide the broader, more
comprehensive, chronological step-by-step accounting of events, enlightened
with analysis, where appropriate.
From amongst journalism’s classic key-words: who, what, when, where, why, and
how, the why and how will drive our pursuit. We will use our more abundant time,
and our resources, to get past the initial ‘spin’ and ‘damage control’ often characteristic of immediate news releases, to reach the very heart of the matter:
the truth. We will take our readers to a point of understanding and insight which
cannot be obtained elsewhere.
To succeed, we must recognize from the outset that bigger is not necessarily
better. And, furthermore, we will acknowledge that we cannot be all things to all
readers. We must carefully balance the presentation of relevant, hard-hitting,
Westchester news and commentary, with features and columns useful in daily
living and employment in, and around, the county. We must stay trim and flexible
if we are to succeed.
THE WESTCHESTER GUARDIAN
Thursday, February 26, 2015
Page 3
GOVERNMENT
America’s Immigrant Entrepreneurs in Technology
By Limus Woods
As America debates immigration
reform in 2015, we should remember
that the contributions of hard working
people from foreign places have
enhanced this country in many ways,
especially in the area of technology. In
fact, the co-founder and former CEO of
Yahoo! Inc., one of the founders of You
Tube, and the creator of Google are all
from distant lands.
Photo from Yahoo.com
Jerry Yang
Photo from PicPix.com
Sergey Brin
Photo by Mathabula Sethuraman
Steve Chen
2015 marks the tenth year that we
all have been enjoying YouTube, one of
the most well loved sites ever created.
YouTube started out as a fun idea in a
garage, but now over half of the videos
that are viewed online today are from
this sharing site. One of the three
founders is Steve Chen, was born in
Taiwan and with his family, emigrated to
the States when he was 8. He attended
the University of Illinois (UrbanaChampaign) and after graduation,
worked at what is probably the best site
online today to send and receive money
via business transactions - PayPal.
Even before buying You Tube
in 2006 for $1.6 billion, Google
was the most popular search engine
on the Internet. Sergey Brin, originally from Moscow, Russia, was a
student at Stanford University in
the late 1990’s when he met Larry
Page, the other original creator of
the mega Internet probing tool
that is now used by billions every
day. Brin and Page were really just
working on a research project with
the goal of trying to organize pages
on the Internet. They determined
that the best way to do it would be
to list them by popularity, making
the most useful results after a search
appear highest on the page.
The name Google came from
a term in mathematics that represents the number 1 followed by 100
zeros called a “googol.” Brin’s affinity
for math and science is, no doubt
inspired by his father, who was a
mathematician and an economist in
the Soviet Union. Sergey was born
in August of 1973 and emigrated
with his family to the United States
when he was six years old, to escape
religious persecution.
Jerry Yang, a co-founder of Yahoo,
was born in Taiwan in the late 1960’s
and his family moved to the United
States when he was 10. Yang left the
company in 2012, having already
proven himself a business mastermind,
to redirect his energy to the Stanford
University Board of Trustees. Maybe
it was because he felt at home there.
Yang received his Master’s degree in
Engineering at Stanford and he met
his wife, Akiko Yamazaki, a successful Wildlife Conservation Director
there. Stanford University is also where
he’d met his close friend and business
partner David Filo, the other founder
of Yahoo. Together, they started a
site called “Jerry and Dave’s Guide to
the World Wide Web”, that quickly
became too popular to keep a secret,
and eventually it evolved into Yahoo.
Not long after, the worldwide revolutionary, online navigational guide was
born.
President Obama’s plan for immigration reform can ensure that future
generations in America will benefit
from the worldwide diversity and
thinking of history-making entrepreneurs, such the three lifestyle changing
revolutionaries mentioned above. One
running similarity between Yang, Brin
and Chen is that they all came to the
United States as preteens, as do many
of the brightest foreign students that
now grace the halls of the wonderful
learning institutions across our nation.
One of the goals of President Obama’s
Executive Order is to keep those
promising students in the U.S., allow
them to grow into productive citizens,
attend colleges and universities here,
and create jobs on American soil in the
decades to come.
Contributing writer Limus Woods can be
contacted at [email protected].
Commercial • Industrial
& Residential Services
Roll-Off Containers 1-30 Yards
Home Cleanup Containers
Turn-Key Demolition Services
DEC Licensed Transfer Station
www.citycarting.net
City Carting of Westchester
Somers Sanitation
B & S Carting
AAA Paper Recycling
Bria Carting
City Confidential Shredding
DEP Licensed Rail Serve
Transfer & Recyling Services
Licensed Demolition Contractor
Locally Owned & Operated
Radio Dispatched
Fully Insured - FREE Estimates
800.872.7405 • 203.324.4090
On-Site Document Destruction
8 Viaduct Road, Stamford, CT 06907
Same Day Roll Off Service
Page 4
THE WESTCHESTER GUARDIAN
Thursday, February 26, 2015
COMMUNITY
Santa Isn’t The Only One Watching…
one from the downtown Business
Improvement District.
In the next phase, the department
will expand the system by adding more
cameras around the vicinity of schools
and major roadways leading in and out
of the city. Another objective of Phase II
is a partnership with private entities such
as retailers to acquire more cameras.
Commissioner Patrick Carroll
noted, “The surveillance cameras
provide our Department additional eyes
around the city, 24/7, never blinking,
never closed. In the future we hope to
reach out to the business community to
expand the system.”
Report: Small Or Large, All Fracking Companies Break Rules
clear. Fracking is a leaky, failure-prone
technology that is not safe and cannot
be made safe by rules, good intentions,
or promises to do better next time,” said
Sandra Steingraber, PhD., biologist and
science advisor to Americans Against
Fracking. “President Obama needs to
follow Governor Cuomo’s lead and ban
fracking.”
In light of the report’s findings,
Environment New York and its allies
urge New York’s Congressional representatives to do all they can to support
the fracking ban in New York and to
advocate for a fracking ban on all federal
public land.
“Governor Cuomo listened to the
science and the real data on drilling
damage,” said Leibowitz. “This is what
true leadership looks like and its essential
for our Congressional representatives to
follow his lead.”
Environment New York Research
& Policy Center is statewide advocacy
organization bringing people together
for a cleaner, greener, healthier future:
EnvironmentNewYork.org
Surveillance Camera Program Assists New Rochelle Police Department
On Thursday, February 12, 2014,
The New Rochelle Police Department
hosted a demonstration of the new surveillance cameras that are being installed
[New York, NY]- From Fortune
500 companies like Cabot Oil, to momand-pop operators,to firms like Chevron
who tout their clean records, virtually all
frackers are prone to infractions of environmental rules, a new report says. The
analysis of Pennsylvania’s oil and gas
industry over a four-year period found
that the top offenders of air, water, and
health protections averaged more than a
violation each day.
The analysis from Environment
New York Research & Policy Center,
Fracking Failures: Oil and Gas
Industry Environmental Violations in
Pennsylvania and What They Mean
for the U.S., comes just one month after
New York’s landmark fracking ban was
announced.
“Fracking is an inherently risky,
dirty, dangerous practice, and regulations can’t change that,” said Heather
Leibowitz, Director of Environment
New York. “But this report shows that a
throughout the city. The cameras have
become a key aid for the New Rochelle
Police Department, officials noted.
The program, initiated in 2013, has
range of oil and gas companies struggle
to meet even modest protections for our
environment and public health.”
“As troubling as the data in this
report is, it underestimates the actual
magnitude of problems with shale gas
development in PA,” said Anthony
Ingraffea,Ph.D,Department of Civil and
Environmental Engineering at Cornell
University. “Many offenses do not receive
violations (the problem of letting operators down too easily); and many wells are
not inspected often enough to discover
problems (the problem of chronic
understaffing of inspectors). Truly tough
regulations for shale gas development do
not exist anywhere.”
The rules so often broken by the oil
and gas industry are not matters of paperwork. Rather, the study tracks lapses such
as allowing toxic chemicals to leach into
the air and water, endangering drinking
water through improper well construction, and dumping industrial waste into
expanded to nearly 50 cameras installed
at dozens of strategic locations, many in
the City’s downtown. The cameras were
funded in large part by grants, including
waterways.
“We’re not talking about misfiled
papers,” said Leibowitz. “We’re talking
about serious risks for workers, drinking
water, and public health.”
From the very beginning of clearing
a site for drilling, through extraction, transport and delivery of finished
products, fracking threatens the environment. The report examines violations
of the regulations intended to mitigate
some threats during both the drilling and
the operation of a well.
Houston-based Cabot Oil committed the most total violations with 265.
Pittsburgh-based Atlas was guilty of the
most breaches for every well drilled, while
Dallas-based Mieka was responsible for
the most per well operated.
Four firms -- EQT, Chevron
Appalachia,Consol and Shell -- who told
the public they would adhere to higher
standards when they formed the Center
for Sustainable Shale Development, were
also among the worst offenders.Together
they racked up at least 100 infractions
even after they pledged to do better in
2013.
“Even when the very best technological efforts, however, are made,
the probability of unintended adverse
outcomes remains a significant concern,”
said Sheila Bushkin-Bedient, MD,
MPH, member of SUNY Albany’s
Institute for Health and the Environment
and President of Bushkin Public Health
and Preventive Medicine Consulting.
“Accidents happen. Deterioration of
equipment happens. Chemical emissions
and spills occur frequently. Furthermore,
the inherent design of the entire industry,
at every level of technological planning,
leads inevitably to irreversible pollution
of air, water, soil, the ecosystem and the
food chain. The threat to human health
is widespread and affects every organ
system with acute and chronic suffering.”
“The results could not be more
FLEETWOOD
THE ROMA BUILDING
RENOVATED APARTMENTS FOR RENT
Prime Yorktown Location
Beautiful, Newly Renovated Apartments
COMMERICAL SPACE FOR RENT
Great Visibility • Centrally Located
STORE
950 Sq. Ft. Rent: $3250 /Month
OFFICE SPACE:
470 Sq. Ft. Rent $850/Month • 1160 Sq. Ft. Rent $1650/ Month
914.632.1230
2022 SAW MILL RIVER RD., YORKTOWN HEIGHTS, NY
1 Bedrooms Starting at $1400/month • Studios Starting at $1200/month
Brand New Kitchens, Living Rooms & Bathrooms • Granite Counter Tops • Laundry On-Site
New Cabinets, Stoves & Refrigerators, Credit Check Required
Elevator Building • 1 Block from MetroNorth Fleetwood Station • Monthly Parking Nearby
Available Immediately Call Management Office for details:
914.632.1230
80 West Grand Street, Fleetwood
THE WESTCHESTER GUARDIAN
Thursday, February 26, 2015
Page 5
With the Budget, the President Calls the Shots
has the best ideas for addressing the
country’s needs.
There will be times in upcoming
months when it sounds as though our
economy’s health depends on what our
lawmakers do. The budget, after all, is
where the President and Congress can
have an impact on the economy. I’m
not persuaded, however, that it’s as large
as they’d have us believe. For one thing,
the Federal Reserve, through its control
over the money supply, has its hands
on an immensely important economic
lever. So do the big banks, major corporations and, most importantly, millions
of consumers.
Still, Congress faces important
questions. The deficit, which in past
years was the focus of furious debate,
holds less attention this year because
we’ve made so much progress in
reducing it. A few years ago, it amounted
to almost 10 percent of GDP; in 2014,
it was 2.7 percent. On the other hand,
the federal debt—what we owe to
creditors who financed our accumulated
annual deficits—is higher than it’s been
for generations, and we’re not dealing
with the hard choices necessary to get it
under control. In particular, this means
finding ways to control entitlement
spending in an aging society. We do not
need to panic about our finances, but we
can’t afford to be complacent either.
There will be voices in Congress
over the next few months urging that we
curb spending sharply. In a recovering
economy that is still beset with income
stagnation, I’d argue that slamming
hard on the brakes would be a mistake.
Instead, we need to shift our spending
toward investment, focusing on areas
that generate or underpin economic
growth: infrastructure, research and
development, education.
Congress used to reign supreme in
budget-making. George Washington
didn’t even think it was his job to send
a budget to Congress, and the president
wasn’t legally required to submit one
until the budget act of 1921 codified the
practice. Now, of course, the President
has become the chief budget-maker,
and the Congress reacts to—and largely
accepts—his proposals. The maneuvering on Capitol Hill over the next few
months will, indeed, nudge the country
in one direction or another. But our
basic course was already set by the time
those 2,000 pages hit lawmakers’ desks.
GOVERNMENT
By Lee Hamilton
All but five or ten
percent of the White
House’s spending blueprint will make it through
intact. The President’s
budget, in other words, is never “dead on
arrival.”
It may not be obvious from the news
coverage, but a good bit of Congress’s
2015 agenda just landed on Capitol Hill
with a thud. I mean this literally. The
federal budget that President Obama
recently submitted runs to 2,000 pages.
This is the most important government document produced each year,
so its heft is more than physical. The
budget is how we decide what share of
this country’s economic resources we
should devote to government—and
how we should spend them. It’s where
we set out our national priorities, sorting
out how to allocate money among
defense, the environment, education,
medical research, food safety, public
works... You get the idea.
Which is why you saw the political maneuvering begin the moment
it arrived. In a press conference after
President Obama submitted his budget,
House Speaker John Boehner dismissed
it out of hand. “The president gave the
American people a good laugh yesterday,” he said. Every year, politicians play
some variation on this theme. I’ve lost
count of the times I’ve heard a budget
declared “dead on arrival.”
Yet here’s what you need to
remember: Congress changes only a
small portion of the budget. Well over
half is mandated spending—interest
on the debt, entitlements, contractual
obligations of the government. And
even when it comes to the roughly 40
percent of the budget that is discretionary spending, Congress never rewrites it
wholesale; in general, all but five or ten
percent of the White House’s spending
blueprint will make it through intact.
The President’s budget, in other words,
is never “dead on arrival.”
This is not to say that what Congress
does will be unimportant. The debate
from here on out will be specifically
about taxing and spending priorities—
about how much money should go to
defense, or homeland security, or social
welfare—and more generally about who
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.
For information about educational
resources and programs, explore the
website at www.centeroncongress.org. Go
to Facebook to 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.”
Source URL: http://congress.indiana.edu/
the-budget-the-president-calls-the-shots
Published on The Center On Congress
at Indiana University (http://congress.
indiana.edu)
Diana O’Neill
Holistic Health Services
I will journey with you during challenging times such as
grieving the loss of a loved one or recovering from a negative relationship.
Counseling • Energy Healing • Hypnotism • Spiritual & Psychic Healing
By Appointment, Only.
Free consultation given on first visit.
914.630.1928
Holistic Health Services • 212 North Ave. Suite 204 A, New Rochelle, NY 10801
• 914.630.1928
Page 6
THE WESTCHESTER GUARDIAN
Thursday, February 26, 2015
THE NEW ROCHELLE PUBLIC LIBRARY
More than Just Books: Part II of an Ongoing Series
By Glenn Slaby
The New Rochelle
Public Library, (http://
www.nrpl.org), was chartered in 1894 and has
two branches. The Main
Library is located in the downtown
business district at 1 Library Plaza,
between Lawton Street and Memorial
Parkway, T. 914.632.7878. The
Huguenot Children’s Library is on the
North side of town at 794 North Ave.,
T. 914.632.8954.
Our Mission: The New Rochelle
Public Library is a community resource
that seeks to improve the life of every
citizen in our city. It is dedicated to
encouraging learning in all stages of
life, to protecting intellectual freedom
and to providing fair and equal access to
information.
General Events. Ongoing activities include performances in the Ossie
Davis 138 seat theater, named after
the late actor who with his wife Ruby,
made New Rochelle his home for four
decades. A wide variety of entertaining events occur here on a regular basis,
sponsored by the Friends of the New
Rochelle Public Library; a donation of
two dollars per adult per event is suggested. Films, based on a particular
theme are also shown in the theater
with “Surround-Sound” and discussions
usually follow. Lectures and author visits
are also presented in the theatre space.
The summer program includes international dance and music performances.
Many smaller events occur in other
locations throughout this modern,
three-story building, including book
discussions meeting every third week in
the conference room; Saturday knitting,
crocheting, etc. workshops (September
- June) and free computer classes
(beginners – refresher courses). The
Friends of the Library sponsor monthly
book sales and don’t forget to check
out the bookstore, open Tuesdays and
Thursdays from 1:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m.,
and on Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 3:00
p.m., except for Book Sale days. (There
are always a few hundred books for sale in
the lobby at bargain prices!)
Dr. Vincent Bonelli, Professor of
History and Political Science, Bronx
Community College of the City
University of New York leads a biweekly Current Events discussion
during the fall and the spring. And keep
an eye out for those “How-to” seminars
and classes. The League of Women
Voters sponsor and host debates, classes
and conferences during “Coffee and
Conversations” get-togethers on Friday
mornings, from January to May and
from September to November. The
League also host debates between candidates for the New Rochelle Board of
Education and the library’s Board of
Trustees. Again, these are free events.
Programs
and
Services:
Westchester Community College
offers four levels of English as a Second
Language (ESL) classes at the library,
a valuable service to residents of New
Rochelle and to the County as a whole.
While the class is free, students do need
to purchase the $35 textbook.
AARP sponsors trained volunteers from the Tax Counseling for the
Elderly program and Volunteer Income
Tax Assistance who offer free seasonal
tax help on Tuesdays and Thursdays
from 9am to 2 pm; the service ends
mid-April. The County Clerk’s Mobile
Office visits the library as well, assisting
residents with requests such as applying
for permits, passport applications and
confirming the licenses of contractors.
Web connections include Good
Reads’ for all ages containing more
than 20 e-newsletter and interviews
with more than 1,500 authors. Join an
existing book club or you can always
start your own!
Homebound Services are available for those who are unable visit the
library and they will deliver materials
every three weeks. If you want to know
more about caregiving and assisting
loved ones, the Westchester County
Department of Senior Services - Family
Caregiver Support Program, maintains
a Caregiver’s Resource Center on the
third floor. Finally, there is the Senior
Benefits Help Center where assistance can be garnered in areas such as
Medicare health and prescriptions,
HEAP, food stamps, minor home
repairs, tax relief, etc.The Senior Benefits
Information Center at the BTOP Help
Center on the second floor is free and
confidential, with access to material via
hardcopy and online: just drop in every
Friday from 10am to 1pm.
Free Family Museum Passes
are available to Library cardholders
in good standing, who are residents
of New Rochelle, and over the age of
18. Participating museums include
the Bruce Museum, the Children’s
Museum of Art, The Children’s
Museum of Manhattan, El Museo del
Barrio, the Guggenheim and Hudson
River Museums, the Intrepid Sea, Air
and Space Museum, and the Museum
of the City of NY.
The Bliss Music Center, one of
my favorite areas, is located on the third
floor, with its collection nearly 4,000
titles ranging from jazz, Spanish, pop,
musicals, rock, country, spiritual, folk to
movies and more! Not too sure what
you want? No Problem! The Center is
equipped with Listening Stations that
allow patrons to preview music before
making a borrowing decision. Some
materials are free and downloadable
(audio / Video / music): the computers have applications that allow patrons
to record onto their “I-Pod or MP3
compatible device, including iPhone®
and music-enabled mobile phones.
On-line listening collections include
the “Strachwitz Frontera Collection
of Mexican American Music, digitized from largest repository of Mexican
and Mexican-American vernacular
recordings in existence”. “Fifty seconds
of any recording is available.” The
Belfer Cylinders Digital Connection,
provides “online access to digital audio
files of cylinders in the Belfer Audio
Laboratory and Archive at Syracuse
University. Belfer’s cylinder collection
includes over 22,000 cylinders, 12,000
of which are unique titles.” Cylinder
Preservation and Digitization Project,
contains “audio from the turn of the
20th century digitized from the earliest
commercial sound recording format:
cylinders. Popular music, early jazz and
blues, opera and classical music from the
University of California, Santa Barbara,
Davidson Library, Department of
Special Collections.”Finally, The Global
Music Archive, is a multi-media reference archive and resource center for
traditional, popular, music, song and
dance of Africa and the Americas.There
is so much to experience and discover,
why should we limit ourselves to what
is popular? Instead, look deeper, experiment, learn and enjoy.
Exhibits: Local Organizations
including the New Rochelle Art
Association, The New Rochelle Council
on the Arts and Our Children exhibit
at the library’s Lumen Winter Gallery.
From fine art to crafts, outstanding works in various are nearly always
on display. The New Rochelle Art
Association, exhibiting since 1914,
presents four exhibits annually. New
Rochelle Council on the Arts, founded
in 1975 by New Rochelle City Council,
“is an arts advocacy organization that
stimulates and encourages the study
and presentation of the performing and
fine arts.” Our Children, Our Artists,
has promoted art created by children
in New Rochelle City School District
schools, since 1980. Local artists, clubs
and cooperatives also present their work
here throughout the year.
Courses and Classes
As with all libraries, much that is
offered is available on their web sites.
And I didn’t even mention the volume
and selection of books. If you have
not visited the New Rochelle Public
Library, stop by to get acquainted with
our resources: a little extra effort makes
our reading a lot more enjoyable.
Glenn Slaby is married and has one son. A
former account with an MBA, Glenn
suffers from mental illness. He writes parttime and works at St. Vincent’s Hospital in
Harrison where he also receives therapy
Creative Disruption
Domestic Drones
By John F. McMullen
Even before there were military
drones, there were remote controlled
model airplanes and I remember a
friend and co-computer hobbyist, Peter
Schug, experimenting years ago to first
control these airplanes from a laptop
and later from a smartphone. The technology then was aimed at a relatively
small niche market. No more! Now the
use of drones by hobbyists, law enforcement, and commercial enterprises has
become not only newsworthy but the
subject of political debate and government regulation.
Most people may have read about
drones but have never seen one. To
properly appreciate the potential of
these units, it may help to watch the
variety of videos in the text box associated with this column and see the great
video photography that can be done
from these small flying machines. There
are many videos all over YouTube; I
found those included representative.
Once one appreciates the potential of the drones, it is easy to see the
interest across many areas. Photographers
want to use them to take pictures in places
either difficult to reach or which they have
had restricted access -- Law enforcement
and private detectives want to use then
for patrol or surveillance --Forest rangers
and environmentalists see them as very
useful in tracking animal migrations
and changes in water flow -- Emergency
workers want to use these to examine
disaster areas for contamination – and
it is not just “potential;” drones have
already been used for all of these things.
The 2013 publication “Drones: Are
They Watching You?” (http://www.
amazon.com/Drones-WatchingMedia-S ource-Presents/dp/
B00EMGQSK4/)
provides
examples:
The Mesa County Sheriff ’s Office
in Colorado uses drones to cover wideopen spaces looking for lost hikers.
Alabama police used drones to
surround a bunker occupied by a kidnapper with hostages and relayed video
for TV footage, showing the kidnapper
that he was surrounded on a 24-hour
basis.
Farmers in Oregon have been using
drones for crop monitoring.
The University of Missouri School
of Journalism and the University of
Nebraska Lincoln courses have included
using drones in reporting.
The National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)
have been using drones for marine
mammal research in Antarctica.
Vanderbilt University archaeologists have been using drones in the
Andes Mountains of Peru to aid in the
Continued on page 7
THE WESTCHESTER GUARDIAN
Thursday, February 26, 2015
Page 7
promulgating the regulations with some
fearing the skies overrun with drones.
On Sunday, February 15, 2015, the
FAA released the regulation (http://
www.faa.gov/news/press_releases/
news_story.cfm?newsId=18295),
surprising many by effectively derailing Amazon and Google’s plans
(http://www.usatoday.com/story/
tech/2015/02/15/amazon-cool-todrone-rules/23473791/) -- “Under the
proposed regulations, drones cannot fly over
people not involved in the drone operations, and the drones must be flown by an
observer on the ground who can maintain
visual contact with the aircraft.”
Amazon immediately reaffirmed
its commitment to its planned system,
“Prime Air” and called on the FAA to
review its regulation. Paul Misener,
Amazon vice president for global policy,
said “The FAA needs to begin and expeditiously complete the formal process to address
the needs of our business, and ultimately our
customers,’’ he said. “We are committed to
realizing our vision for Prime Air and are
prepared to deploy where we have the regulatory support we need.” The preparation
“to deploy” refers to Amazon’s plans to
begin the service in counties where such
prohibitions do not exist.
It is obvious that the recent
announcement of the FAA regulations
and the White House statement do not
bring the drone discussions to a close.
The debates over privacy and surveillance will – must -- go on and the push
back from Amazon and Google against
the FAA regulations is bound to come
(it will be interesting to see where Amazon
CEO Jeff Bezos’ Washington Post comes
down of the issue.).
All in all, it is obvious that this
column is simply an interim report –
Let the Games Continue!
we’ve seen ye
https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=XdlmoLAbbiQ
Drone
flight
over
Skid
Row LA - See what happens!
h t t p s : / / w w w. yo u t u b e . c o m /
watch?v=98Wh1K1pT9Y
Drone
helicopter
spies
topless
woman
h t t p s : / / w w w. yo u t u b e . c o m /
watch?v=5HOtqFxqmRA
Phantom Drone Flies Over
Flooded Quarry | Finds Buried Treasure
h t t p s : / / w w w. yo u t u b e . c o m /
watch?v=kdX_VmQrJ4w
MassiveYacht Fire Caught by Drone
h t t p s : / / w w w. yo u t u b e . c o m /
watch?v=UpgLDHhsh50
World smallest Drone Spy cam
may soon be used by the U.S. Army
h t t p s : / / w w w. yo u t u b e . c o m /
watch?v=zncK2XyA7Yw
First look at the Rotorpixel gimbal
for DJI Phantom 2 Vision - on the
kitchen table
https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=w1njtavc0Yo
Rotorpixel Phantom 2 Vision
2-Axis Brushless Gimbal - Sample
Footage https://www.youtube.
com/watch?v=dI5W8LNYmk8
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.
Comments on this column to
[email protected]
John F. McMullen is a writer, poet,
college professor and radio host. Links
to other writings, Podcasts, & Radio
Broadcasts at www.johnmac13.com,
his books are available on Amazon, and
he blogs at http://open.salon.com/
blog/johnmac13.
© 2015 John F. McMullen
Creative Disruption
Domestic Drones
Continued from page 6
search for colonial and Inca towns abandoned since the 1500s.
As might be expected, as soon as
drones began to become part of the
public consciousness they also became
part of the public debate. Concerns for
privacy were immediately raised when
photographers were using drones to
take photographs of weddings and
events to which they had been barred.
There were additional concerns raised
that hobbyists would be using drones
to peer in windows and over walls to
photograph people in possibly compromising positions. Finally, when it
became known that law enforcement
agencies throughout the country were
implementing drones or would be as
soon as funds could be found, there
were public statements from civil liberties organizations insisting that proper
safeguards, including the use of warrants
for aerial surveillance be implemented
before drones could be deployed for
such work.
Ex-NYC
mayor
Michael
Bloomberg, speaking on his radio
show on March 22, 2013 (http://
w w w. w o r 7 1 0 . c o m / m e d i a /
play/23013447/)did not see much
distinction between a camera on top of a
building or a drone up in the air. He said,
“We’re going to have more visibility and
less privacy – I don’t see how you stop that.
It’s just we’re going into a different world,
uncharted, and, like it or not, what people
can do, what governments can do, is different. And you can, to some extent control, but
you can’t keep the tides from coming in.” He
also pointed out that, with the facial recognition software under development,
city residents and visitors would be
much more visible and that they would
have to pay for an increase in security
with a loss of privacy. “It’s a different
world,” Bloomberg added. “Everybody
wants their privacy, but I don’t know
how you’re going to maintain it.”
The response from the New
York Civil Liberties Union was
rapid. Donna Lieberman, executive
director, wrote in an e-mail (quoted
in the Christian Science Monitor
-- http://www.csmonitor.com/
U S A / Po l i t i c s / 2 0 1 3 / 0 3 2 7 /
D r o n e s - a b o v e - N e w -Yo r k scar y-but-inevitable-MayorBloomberg-says-video), “It is
disappointing that Mayor Bloomberg
thinks that the more than 2,400 surveillance cameras already blanketing New York
City are inadequate enough to require the
addition of an unmanned drone program.
We need clear rules to ensure that this
new technology is used in a responsible manner that safeguards our
privacy. At bottom, there should be
a system of checks and balances to
ensure that police do not use drones to
perform indiscriminate mass surveillance of New Yorkers, or to compile
and maintain permanent records of
people’s daily activity.”
On February 15th of this year –
almost two years after the Bloomberg
comments, President Obama issued a
memorandum to federal agencies specifying measures to guard against abuse of
data collected in drone flights. newser.
com reported (http://www.newser.
com/story/202730/obama-lays-outprivacy-rules-for-drones.html) that
the directive requires, “Among other steps,
the order requires agencies to review privacy
and civil rights protections before deploying
drone technology and to follow a range of
controls. Personally identifiable information collected in drone flights is to be kept
no longer than 180 days, although there are
exceptions. But the proposal includes safety
restrictions such as keeping drones within
sight of operators at all times and no nighttime flights. That could mean no package
or pizza deliveries by drone.” The White
House also released a statement on the
directive – “[Unmanned aerial systems]
are a potentially transformative technology in diverse fields such as agriculture,
law enforcement, coastal security, military
training, search and rescue, first responder
medical support, critical infrastructure
inspection, and many others. The administration is committed to promoting the
responsible use of this technology, strengthening privacy safeguards and ensuring full
protection of civil liberties.”
Expanded commercial use of
drones also became a major point of
discussion as the public became more
aware. Under existing Federal Aviation
Administration (FAA) regulations,
commercial use of drones within the
United States was barred without prior
approval of the agency. The agency,
however, had chosen not to enforce this
regulation where commercial photographers were involved but was adamant
that other commercial use of drones
would be prohibited until new covering
regulation was promulgated.
Amazon put more urgency into the
need for arriving at this regulation when
it announced that it was developing a
drone delivery system for small packages
that would allow these deliveries in
hours rather than days. It would test
the technology in Australia where such
testing would not be prohibited. Google
followed shortly thereafter with its
announcement that it would also begin
testing of its own delivery system; in its
case it would not be used for delivery of
ordinary commercial goods but rather
for delivery of medicines and supplies to
hard-to-reach locations.
The announcement of these
systems brought heightened demand
for the FAA to move rapidly in
CES 2015 Parrot Drone Show Las
Vegas
https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=tDFtkoExEQk
This is the most amazing drone
ADVERTISE YOUR DISPLAY HELP WANTED ADS IN
THE WESTCHESTER GUARDIAN!
Do you have jobs available at your business?
The Westchester Guardian
publishes every Thursday and we would love to run your
Help Wanted Display Ads,
due Wednesday one week prior to publication date.
Call today to reserve
Display Ad Space in our next issue:
914.216.1674
Page 8
THE WESTCHESTER GUARDIAN
Thursday, February 26, 2015
TRAVEL
Belgium’s Fairytale City—bruges
unique flavors like “bitter ganache with
a touch of vodka” and “passion fruit and
By Richard Levy
Imagine yourself lost
in a charming, idyllic,
medieval city with
winding
cobblestone
lanes, ancient canals,
stone-footbridges and gabled 14th
century buildings so breathtakingly picturesque you could be imagining only
one place: the enchanting, romantic city
of Bruges; the crown jewel of Belgium.
I first discovered Bruges while
working as a “creative mercenary” for a
Brussels ad agency. They were about to
lose their biggest account and I was sent
there from NY to try and help them
save it. At the time I was an awardwinning advertising “Mad Man.” Well,
I saved the account, so the President of
the agency rewarded me with a weekend
in Bruges.
The pastoral Belgium countryside
drifted by in slow dissolves during our
train ride from Brussels and we arrived
in Bruges in less than an hour. Bruges
is called the “Venice of the North; truly
a magical city to experience and as you
step onto the street, you will feel as if you
have just been transported 1000 years
back in time.
On your first day take a dream-like
boat ride along the canals past ornate
gabled historic buildings. After dinner,
take a romantic horse and buggy ride
all around Bruges; even more enchanting at night. Climb the 366 steps to the
top of the 13th Century “Belfry Tower”
in the historic center of the city for an
energetic workout and panoramic vistas.
(You’ll feel like “Quasimodo”, but sorry
you can’t ring the bells.)
Bruges is very walk-able and as
always, the best way to see any city. Rent
bikes for a couple of hours or for the
day: a great way to not only see this very
picturesque city but to get out to the
countryside. (Bike rentals: In the Markt
or Main Square $8 Euros for 4 hours
and a better deal by the day.) Be prepared
to hold on tightly as you navigate the
centuries old “cobblestone” streets. (Pack
a seat cushion, your “tushie” will thank
you.) Heed my advice and leave your 4”
heels at home: pack the sneakers and
hiking shoes. Be sure to pack a folding
umbrella because it sprinkles often in
Bruges and the city looks even more
enchanting through the misty, foggy
rain. If you do get caught in the rain, just
start singing, dancing and twirling your
umbrella like Gene Kelly.
Wander along the medieval Dijver
canal. Spend a fun hour at one of Bruges
most fascinating attractions, “The
Sound Factory,” an interactive museum
lime”. Visit Bruge’s most renowned
chocolate shop “Sukerbnnyc Dumon”.
inside a very contemporary building
where you compose a symphony using
a touch screen and the chimes from the
city’s church bells.
You can take a ride in a hot air
balloon for 170 Euros and float serenely
over Bruges and the postcard-perfect
fairytale countryside below. Check out
Belgium’s trendy designers at L’ Heroine.
Bring back some “chocolate and lace” for
yourself and as gifts. Bruges is a chocoholics dream come true and the shops
encourage you to taste their chocolates.
Stop by “The Chocolate Line” with its
Spend some time at the charming
“Zilverpand Mall”, with their 25 quaint
shops: the best place to get great deals on
lace, chocolate and other unique items.
Belgians are more fanatical than
the French about the art of dining and
foraging for quality ingredients. They
are very proud of their plump, North
Sea mussels, prepared every possible
way: steamed and served in a small pot,
broiled, baked with bread crumbs and
like escargots, shells open and baked in a
garlic butter sauce, (my favorite).
The other famous Belgian dish
is French fries or “frites” which are
thick-cut, double-fried in beef fat and
very addictive. A popular street food,
“Frites Trucks” serve them in paper
cones, topped with a glob of “mayo”; not
a ketchup bottle in sight, but trust me
it’s delicious! There are also dedicated
“frites restaurants” where you are served
a platter of frites as main course with
salad on the side. The best frites restaurant is “Chez Vincent’s”: sit upstairs for
a great view of the historic “St. Salvador
Cathedral”.
Be sure to visit the Groeninge
Museum which houses a collection of
artwork that spans several centuries and
focuses on works by painters who lived
and worked in Bruges.
For a truly religious experience,
go to “Basilica of the Holy Blood” -A beautiful church built in the Gothic
style on the Burg square, housing a relic
– “a vial of blood that is said to be that
of Jesus”.
Beer lovers, can go straight to
Brewery De Halve Maan” –a brewery
museum offering a tour of the beer
making process and admission includes
the price includes one great beer. (Yes,
brewing beer is an art and some of us
have always fantasized about a museum
like this!) Where to stay? For your one
splurge, stay in the magnificent “Relais
Bourgondisch Cruyce” boutique hotel,
it’s one of Europe’s most romantic
hotels, beautifully decorated with
precious antiques, exclusive objects
d’art, luxurious fabrics and wonderful
flower arrangements. This extraordinary hotel with its half-timbered façade
and stained glass windows is situated in
the historic centre of Bruges where two
canals cross. Reserve a beautiful double
room overlooking the medieval canals
with a private marble bathroom Rouge
Royal. In the morning they serve delicious breakfasts with unbelievable views
of the canals and the city center. (Worth
every Euro, especially with the stronger
dollar.) Huis-Koning is a charming B
& B where the very attentive owners,
Lynn and Peter, will treat you like
family. Huis-Konig is located in a won-
derful old house with comfy rooms and
the great homemade breakfasts. Then
there’s also the very unique B&B: “Casa
Romantico”, featuring a sauna, Jacuzzi
and an outdoor heated pool. (Great in
winter when it’s snowing).
Surprisingly, quaint little Bruges
has a Three-Star Michelin “HertogJen” restaurant and you absolutely must
have dinner there one night. The regular
five-course dinner is approximately 115
Euros. Foodies will enjoy their “Special
195 Euro Dinner” which includes four
spectacular starters, one spectacular main
course and one spectacular desert. It will
Continued on page 9
THE WESTCHESTER GUARDIAN
Thursday, February 26, 2015
Page 9
TRAVEL
Belgium’s Fairytale City—bruges
Continued from page 8
probably be the best meal you’ve ever
eaten. (Check out their astounding
menu and make reservations before you
leave NY. ([email protected].)
Another fabulous, less expensive
restaurant is “De Florentyner”. At
the end of the day kick back at “Café
Vlissinghe” which has an extensive
selection of draught and bottled beers
and probably the oldest pub in Bruges
dating from 1515. Or stop by “De
quaint medieval village. You can also
go there by bike or local bus. It takes
15 minutes by bus and an hour by boat.
If it is warm enough for the beach, be
sure to spend an afternoon at “Ostend”,
the monumental beach resort dedicated
in 1865 by King Leopold; 15 minutes
away by train.
As you leave Bruges, you’re sure
to feel sad but you will look forward to
returning again one day soon.
Once you board the express train
cafes that ring this historic 14th Century
Square, which has been called one of
the most magnificent squares in all of
Europe. Even Hitler thought it “too
beautiful to bomb”. Look for the “Rue
de Butchers” a narrow street right off the
Grand Place with it’s small, charming
restaurants and atmospheric charm: a
walking thoroughfare abounding with
Bierbistro”, with its beautiful cellar from
the 15th century; the perfect place to
have a drink (or two) along with their
to Brussels, be prepared for a dose of
culture shock as you are thrust back in
the real world of this international city.
Stay in the fabulous, old world classic
tasty homemade dishes created to
accompany beer. Prices are reasonable
and location is excellent if you want to
experience some history of Bruges.
For scenic side trips not far away,
go to “Damme.” Riverboats go there
on half-day, very idyllic trips and it’s a
“Amigo Hotel” right next to the world
famous “Grand Place.” Its magnificent 14th Century ornate baroque and
gothic guild houses, built as a merchants
market in the 13th century, will awe
you. Linger over an amazing Belgian
beer in one of the many charming old
17th century stepped gables, decorated
doorways, cafes and restaurants with
lavish pavement displays of seafood,
piled high on mounds of ice. This street
offers a wide variety of restaurants at
various price points. Two of the most
well known restaurants are “Chez Leon”
which serves “mussels in a pot” for a very
reasonable price. For a more upscale
restaurant you can’t beat “Aux Armes de
Bruxelles”. Order the traditional Belgian
dishes, “Waterzooie “ a delicious, souplike chicken vegetable, potato stew in
a creamy sauce and start with shrimp
croquettes (Croquettes aux Crevettes
Grises) a very popular Belgian appetizer.
“Brugs-Beertje” is an excellent pub with
hundreds of different beers, authentic
Belgium beer-cafe atmosphere and delicious, affordable food plates.
Be sure to take a selfie next to
the “Manekeen Pis”, this famous
small statue of a “little boy peeing in
a fountain,” a perfect example of the
irreverent Belgian humor. This unique
Brussels icon has been amusing visitors
on the corner of Rue de L’Etuve &
Stroofstraat since 1619. If you are an art lover don’t miss
“The Museum of Ancient Art” housing
one of the world’s best collections of
Belgium and Dutch old masters. “The
Magritte Museum” (my favorite) is
located in the Royal Museums for Fine
Arts of Belgium; the world’s largest collection of René Magritte’s surreal works
of art.
How to get to Brussels: The least
expensive Brussels airfare surprisingly
is not on Brussels Airlines but on Air
France. (Shop around for lowest fares
on dates you’re planning at google.com/
flights.) Avoid going to Bruges between
June 1-July 31. It can get pretty crowded,
making it difficult to enjoy the magical
medieval ambience. Brussels is fabulous
in the winter, however and along with
less expensive flight and hotel rates, a
wonderful travel value.
Celebrate the end of another lovely
vacation on your last night in Brussels,
with reservations at “Com Chez Soir”
restaurant; ask for a table near the
kitchen and watch the chefs prepare
your gourmet dinner through the huge
glass wall. The shopping in Brussels is
fabulous so save some vacation money
for special purchases.
When you start your vacation in
medieval, fairytale Bruges and then set
aside a few days to enjoy the sophisticated, bustling international city of
Brussels, you have the very best of both
worlds! Here’s wishing you a “Bon
voyage” and to be politically correct
since you are going to Belgium, as the
Flemish say, “Goede reis”. Photos 1 2 & 3 on Pg 8 and Photos 2,
3, 4 & 5 on Pg 9 Bruges, courtesy of
VisitFlanders.com
Bruges Reie by Night Photo (c) P. Monney courtesy of VisitFlanders.com
Photo 4 Pg 8 and Photo 1 Pg 9 are of
Brussels, courtesy of VisitBelgium.com
Page 10
THE WESTCHESTER GUARDIAN
Thursday, February 26, 2015
Arts & EntertainmentSection
Author Profile: Rajeev Goyal
By Lee Daniels
Rajeev Goyal grew
up on Long Island,
where his family had
moved from Rajasthan,
India to raise their three
sons. After taking pre-med courses at
prestigious Brown University in Rhode
Island, with the intention of following
in the footsteps of his father, a cardiologist. Goyal instead set his sights on law
school. He deferred his admission and
volunteered for the Peace Corps, which
sent him to Nepal.
Rajeev Goyal
Not long after Goyal’s arrival in
Nepal in 2001, a violent coup was
launched by opposition Maoist fighters
on the monarchy government. With the
country in political and social turmoil,
and the failure of peace talks launched in
2002, the military responded to subdue
politically motivated factions, resulting in the deaths and the displacement
of thousands (a comprehensive peace
accord was not reached until 2006).
In 2012, Goyal published a book
about his Peace Corps experience in
Nepal and his continued work in development afterward, called The Springs
of Namje—A Ten-Year Journey from
the Villages of Nepal to the Halls of
Congress (Beacon Press).
The book begins with Goyal’s
arrival in Nepal in 2001, the year of the
royal massacre, through his training in a
village south of Kathmandu. Goyal was
initially posted as a teacher at a middle
school in Baitadi in far-western Nepal,
became disillusioned with the project,
until one day, a Nepali colleague of
Goyal’s in the village reasoned that the
problem was not in the power of the
and was then transferred to the village
pumps nor the integrity of the pipeline,
of Namje, in eastern Nepal where he
but rather in the lack of voltage from
taught high school until he completed
the power source, which came from
his term of service. Upon his return to
larger villages across the nearby
the U.S., he worked as a proborder with India. Even with
ponent for environmental and
a generator to supplement the
sustainable agriculture initiatives
weak power supply, there was
through both the Peace Corps
still not enough juice to power
and NGOs.
the pumps.
The pivotal story in the
With the help of an electribook, which the title implies,
cian, they procured and installed
centers on Goyal’s involvement
an automatic voltage regulator. It
in creating a badly needed, viable
worked.
water source for the village of
“On July 9 at 6:34 a.m.,
Namje.
when water poured into the
“Other than Brazil, Nepal
three reserve tanks at the top of
is the richest country in the
Namje hill, people living near the
world in terms of hydropower
reserve tanks stepped out of their
potential, but in Namje this was
homes, confused, thinking that
a crude joke. The milky glacial
rain was falling from a cloudmelts from the Himalayas
less sky. As we stood around
supply water to billions of people,
the tanks and listened to the
but in Namje at four o’clock in
water from Saacho Khola filling
the morning, long before the
them, I don’t think anyone knew
roosters were up, I woke to the
how much Namje and Thumki
dull metallic sound of sixteenvillages would change over the
liter aluminum cans, called
next ten years and how complex
gagris, banging into each other
the nature of those evolutions
as the villagers prepared for the
would be,” Goyal wrote. morning trek to Saacho Khola,
Returning to New York
a small, gurgling stream that was
afterward and starting his
the village’s only source of water
law studies at NYU, Goyal’s
for seven months of the year,”
“The political landscape is undergoing centuries of resourcefulness as a volunteer
wrote Goyal.
change in just a decade’s time. [Nepal]’s a fascinat- shined through as he sought
In his 2013 collection of
travel essays, Strange Stones: ing place. I’m donating a portion of the book proceeds refuge from the humdrum of law
Dispatches from East and West towards developing a biodiversity land trust for courses by selling hats made of
(HarperCollins, 2013, author schools in eastern Nepal. Last year we helped six yak wool that he had imported
Peter Hessler, himself a Returned schools acquire land plots, and if the book does well, I’m from Nepal on weekends on the
Peace Corps Volunteer in China, hoping we can assist more schools this year, through streets near the university.
Disinterested in working for
described Goyal’s thoughts and growing outward concentric circles.”
a
law
firm after graduating from
motivation behind the project
– Rajeev Goyal, in a 2012 interview
law
school
and passing the bar
in a chapter about the young
with Lee Daniels.
exam, Goyal determined instead,
activist’s unique talent for develto use his natural talent as a
opment abroad as well as in
ground spring was located, to facilitate fundraiser, returning to Namje several
Washington.
times before raising $28,000 at NYU,
“He caught a case of scabies so bad the gravity-fed line.
They then built a pipeline that and, with a matching grant from Rotary
that it scarred his arm. After visiting a
doctor in Kathmandu, he returned to would run along the side of the staircase International, built two schools in the
his village and noticed other effects of and installed a pump, powered by a gen- district.
He continued instead to forge
the water shortage. “One day a good erator, to move the water down the pipe
ahead on his path in development,
student didn’t come to class, and I asked and holding tanks for the water.
Despite all the man hours of and found his calling as an activist
him why. He said he was getting water.
I brought all the villagers together and labor poured into the project and the on Capitol Hill, joining the National
asked, ‘If there’s a way to solve this sophisticated—for rural Nepal, at Peace Corps Association and lobbying
problem, are you willing to donate your least—equipment, the water system for more funding for the Peace Corps
would not work. With only a few weeks through persistent and dogged deterlabor? “They were willing to do it.”
to go before the end of his service, Goyal mination and hard work, cultivating
Goyal managed to raise $20,000 for
the project, an amount which the Peace
Corps later matched.
Over 500 villagers volunteered for
Goyal’s project, in which over 1,200
stone steps were built into the hillside
where the water source from an under-
supportive sources in Congress such as
Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont).
“In August, I spent time with him
on Capitol Hill, and within two and
a half days he had talked to fifteen
senators without appointments. It was
as if the political world had suddenly
become very small, and yet it had a
distinctly exotic tilt—Rajeev could find
a Nepali connection that would start
almost any conversation,” wrote Hessler
in Strange Stones.
Since 2006, Goyal has led the ‘Push
for the Peace Corps Campaign,’ whose
goal is to “expand and improve the Peace
Corps,” and push for increased funding
and volunteer enrollment.
After returning from a trip to Nepal
myself in 2012, I read Goyal’s book,
which gave me incentive to reach out to
Goyal and ask him about his continued
work in development.
“I’m actually at Cornell this year
doing a fellowship in international agriculture, but I’m in D.C. now and then
for Peace Corps and Nepal-related
things. Kathmandu has transformed
very rapidly in terms of the built infrastructure. And, the political landscape is
undergoing centuries of change in just a
decade’s time. It’s a fascinating place. I’m
donating a portion of the book proceeds
towards developing a biodiversity land
trust for schools in eastern Nepal. Last
year we helped six schools acquire land
plots, and if the book does well, I’m
hoping we can assist more schools this
year, through growing outward concentric circles,” he said.
I asked him more about why he
decided to go back to graduate school,
after two degrees and several years’ experience in development under his belt.
“I got very interested in the intersection of formal education infrastructure
and possibilities to teach permaculture
and medicinal plants.The ag studies have
been fascinating and completely new for
me (I studied English Literature and
Law). I’m hooked on plants and sustainable ag work now,” Goyal explained.
For more information about
Rajeev Goyal and his work, visit: http://
rajeevgoyal.com/ .
Lee Daniels is Arts & Entertainment
writer for the Westchester Guardian, and a
Returned Peace Corps Volunteer.
Author Photo and Cover Art courtesy of
Beacon Press
THE WESTCHESTER GUARDIAN
Thursday, February 26, 2015
Page 11
EYE ON THEATRE
Rare Masterpiece
By John Simon
QUESTION:
Name one of the greatest
American
comedies?
ANSWER:
Eugene
O’Neill’s “The Iceman
Cometh.” Q: Name one of the greatest
American tragedies? A: O’Neill’s “The
Iceman Cometh.” Q: Can both be
right? A: For this tragicomedy, yes.
Though at the Brooklyn Academy of
Music, even with one minor character
cut, it lasts four hours and 45 minutes,
with three intermissions, I saw only one
person leave before the ending.
It is 1912, at Harry Hope’s saloon
and rooming house--based chiefly
on a seedy establishment the young,
alcoholic Gene O’Neill frequented-featuring a cast of 19, several of whom
are heavy-drinking deadbeats he hung
out with there. Though some readers
may know something of the story,
perhaps from seeing the 1946 premiere,
or the movie, or one of various revivals,
here goes.
Proprietor Hope has never stepped
out in the 20 years since his wife died;
two bartenders alternate, Chuck by day
and Rocky by night; upstairs inhabitants prefer drinking and dozing
communally downstairs. They include
Hope’s brother-in-law and former
circus man Ed Mosher; as well as
Willie Oban, a Harvard Law School
graduate and subsequent ne’er-do-well.
(A crooked ex-policeman has been
omitted.)
We have a curious trio from the
Boer War: Cecil Lewis, a former British
officer, Piet Wetjoen, a former Boer
commander, and a former Boer War
correspondent, James Cameron, nicknamed Jimmy Tomorrow, for the day
on which he promises to return to his
old post. Even more pathetic is Hugo
Kalmar, former editor of Anarchist
periodicals, now mostly passed out,
but during periodic waking moments
babbling about future Socialist glory.
Saddest of all is Joe Mott, former
owner of a Negro gambling house, now
a boastful flunky, condescended to by
all as he carries on about starting anew.
Then there are the three prostitutes:
Margie and Pearl, for whom bartender
Rocky is a pimp, and Cora, who with
bartender Chuck fantasizes about being
an engaged couple. More importantly,
we get old Larry Slade, former West
Patrick Andrews, Brian Dennehy. Photo credit Richard Termine
Background: Salvaore Inzerillo, John Reeger, Marc Grapey, John Judd. Foreground:
Lee Wilkof, Brian Dennehy. Photo Credit Richard Termine
Lee Stark, Salvatore Inzirillo, Tara Sissom. Photo credit Richard Termine
Iceman: Ensemble. Photo credit Richard Termine
Coast Syndicalist-Anarchist, now
mocking the Movement; and recently
arrived Don Parritt, son of an important
woman in the Movement and former
lover of Larry’s, now imprisoned (as it
emerges) upon her son’s snitching. Larry
rejects his persistent attempts at friendship and refuses to become what the
fellow craves, his judge.
Last, the quasi-eponymous
iceman, Theodore “Hickey” Hickman,
a charismatic salesman, who has been
dropping in twice a year for a long
bender, usually on Hope’s birthday, and
has entertained his fellow souses with
jokes and anecdotes, for which reason
they all eagerly await him.
This time, however, escaping from
worse than a mere smotheringly loving
wife, Hickey is a different man: an
earnest teetotaler with a mission to get
the gang to reject their pipe dreams,
and propel them into facing reality and
resuming their former lives. Affected
by Hickey’s urging into trying to do so,
they do, but things turn out very differently from expected. Dread though
desired consequences ensue for both
men, as matters are revealed for both
Hickey in a startling confession, and
for Parritt, after Larry finally does
condemn him.
Nathan Lane is a wonderful
Hickey, appropriately chubbier and less
dashing than former incumbents of the
role. Everything about him, including
superb diction and his elegant movements, bespeaks his life-of-the-party
past as well as his new reformatory zeal.
He is equally fine in making enthusiastic preparations for Harry Hope’s
birthday party in Act Two, and in delivering his very long, self-incriminating
(but still also delusory) confession in
Act Four.
Brian Dennehy is a powerful
Larry even in his quiet pessimism and
passivity, and one can well see why
Parritt wants him as both father figure
and judge. O’Neill’s essential bleakness is admirably conveyed in Chuck
and Cora’s love-hate engagement by
Marc Grapey and Kate Arrington;
so too the prattle of the former Boer
War adversaries now turned friendly
enemies, delivered by John Reeger and
John Judd. John Douglas Thompson
and Lee Wilcof are equally heartbreaking in Joe’s foolish bravado and Hugo’s
soporific bluster. Patrick Andrews is
aptly both scared and scary as Parritt.
Stephen Ouimette is duly touching
as a somewhat gruff but kindly Harry
Hope. All the others are just as good,
making this a supreme ensemble
cast under Robert Falls’s sovereign
direction.
Kevin Depinet’s scenery (inspired,
it seems, by John Conklin) is starkly
evocative; Natasha Katz’s lighting is
superb, especially in the slow dawning
of Act One; and Merrily MurrayWalsh’s costuming is appropriately
drab or garish as required.
The play’s title alludes to the biblical
Bridegroom, a figure of coming hope,
and also to the joke about the husband
coming home late and shouting to his
wife upstairs, “Has the iceman come
yet,” to which she hollers from above,
“No, but he is breathing hard.” We hear
about three variously problematic wives
in the play, two of them with a real or
supposititious adulterous “iceman”
lover. But the true iceman is Death,
whose salesman Hickey proves to be.
One cannot dispute O’Neill’s own
assessment of “The Iceman Cometh”: “I
think it’s about as successful an attempt
at accomplishing a thing comprehensively and completely in all aspects as
I’ve ever made. And I feel there are
moments in it that hit as deeply and
truly into the farce and humor and pity
and ironic tragedy of life as anything in
modern drama.”
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. He reviews books for the New
York Times Book Review and for The
Washington Post. To learn more, visit his
website: www.JohnSimon-unsensored.
com
Page 12
THE WESTCHESTER GUARDIAN
Thursday, February 26, 2015
Film Retrospective
Gone With The Wind
By Robert Scott
“I want you to meet
your Scarlett O’Hara,”
agent Myron Selznick
told his brother, producer
David O Selznick. Myron represented
half of Hollywood’s most famous stars,
directors and writers.
Before becoming an independent
producer, David O. Selznick worked
at MGM, where his marriage to Irene
Mayer, daughter of MGM studio chief
Louis B. Mayer, gave rise to a joke, “The
son-in-law also rises,” a play on the title
of the Hemingway novel.
The date was December 10, 1938.
The place was the back lot at MGM
studios in Hollywood. A number of old
movie sets had been cobbled together to
represent the Atlanta railroad depot and
burned under the watchful eyes of professional firefighters. The conflagration
was a crucial scene in his long-awaited
filming of the best-selling novel Gone
With the Wind.
Standing before the producer was
British stage star Vivien Leigh. She had
made half-dozen films in England and
he had screened two, Fire Over England
and A Yank at Oxford.
David O. Selznick was immediately
smitten by her beauty and the hidden
fire smoldering beneath it. “I took one
look and knew she was right for the
part,” he later admitted.
As a producer, he was in the unenviable position of shooting a film for which
he did not have a female star. Two years
before, he had purchased the film rights
to the phenomenally successful novel.
Published in 1936, the manuscript had
been discovered by Macmillan editor
Harold Latham on a swing through the
South in search of new writing talent.
Its author, Margaret Mitchell, was
a petite (4 feet 9-1/2 inches) native
of Atlanta who had labored for years
typing and revising the work before
putting it aside. So large was the
Mitchell manuscript, Latham had to
buy another suitcase in which to carry it
back to New York.
One of the most popular books
of all time, the 1,037-page novel was
priced at three dollars and sold more
than a million copies in the first six
months, a remarkable feat in a country
that was just emerging from the Great
Depression. This Civil War-era masterpiece has been translated into 27
languages. More than 30 million copies
of have been sold worldwide in 38 countries. Approximately 250,000 copies are
still bought each year.
Pirated galleys of the forthcoming
book turned up at some Hollywood
studios, but Macmillan’s asking price
for film rights was a steep $100,000.
Few studios expressed interest even
after Macmillan reduced the figure
to $60,000. Darryl F. Zanuck of 20th
Century Fox eventually offered $35,000
for film rights to the book.
At the urging of Kay Brown, his
literary scout in New York, producer
David 0. Selznick topped Zanuck’s
offer with a bid of $50,000. Within
days, director Mervyn LeRoy offered
$55,000.
Selznick had already produced three
big movies based on classic novels, Little
Women, David Copperfield and A Tale
of Two Cities. Margaret Mitchell had
seen his David Copperfield and admired
it. She accepted Selznick’s offer—then
the most ever paid for an author’s first
novel. Realizing later that he had grossly
underpaid Mitchell, Selznick would
give her an additional $50,000 in 1942
as a bonus.
The Screenwriters: Sidney Howard,
a Pulitzer Prize-winning Broadway
playwright who had dabbled in screenwriting since 1929, agreed to write the
screenplay for a salary of $2,000 a week.
Selznick’s tendency to involve himself
in every aspect of film production was
widely known as were his detailed
memos to stars and directors. To be free
from such interference, Howard insisted
on working at his Berkshire farm near
Great Barrington, Mass., 3,000 miles
away. His first draft would have made
a movie more than five hours long.
Howard reluctantly agreed to travel to
Hollywood to work on another draft
with Selznick and George Cukor, the
director assigned to the picture.
The second version turned out to
be 15 pages longer than the first. Sidney
Howard would receive sole screen
credit, although, in typical Hollywood
fashion, a total of eleven other screenwriters (including Selznick) would work
on the script. Tragically, Howard never
saw the finished film. He died on his
Massachusetts farm in August of 1939.
One of his farm workers had left the
heavy farm tractor in gear, and when
Howard started it by cranking it, the
machine lurched forward and crushed
him against a barn wall.
The Stars: The four principals were
billed on the film’s posters with Clark
Gable’s name on top, the names of
Leslie Howard and Olivia de Havilland
on a second line, and “Presenting Vivien
Leigh” below theirs. Leigh’s billing was
quickly moved to just below Gable’s
when she won the Oscar for best actress.
Hollywood stars like Norma
Shearer, Miriam Hopkins, Tallulah
Bankhead, Joan Crawford, Jean Arthur
and Irene Dunne--all in their 30s-were screen-tested but were patently
too old to play a young and wild Scarlett
O’Hara plausibly. Of the 31 Hollywood
and Broadway actresses screen-tested
for the role of Scarlett O’Hara, only
Paulette Goddard and Vivien Leigh
were tested in color.
Selznick’s nationwide “Search for
Scarlett O’Hara” campaign, during
which thousands of dollars were spent
interviewing 1,400 aspiring actresses
for the part on college campuses and
in small theater groups, actually was
a clever publicity stunt designed to
maintain interest in a very expensive
film for which he did not yet have the
money to produce.
Today, the casting of virtual
unknowns in lead roles is hardly a risky
move. But Selznick’s choice of a British
actress to play a Southern belle, was then
almost revolutionary.
The only actors producer Selznick
ever seriously considered for the role
of Rhett Butler were Clark Gable,
Gary Cooper, Errol Flynn and Ronald
Colman. Gable didn’t see himself in a
period film, nor did he believe he could
live up to the public’s anticipation of the
character.
Two years earlier, hopelessly miscast,
he had played in Parnell, a costume
drama set in Ireland, with Myrna Loy.
The film was roundly panned by critics
Continued on page 13
THE WESTCHESTER GUARDIAN
Thursday, February 26, 2015
Page 13
were scrapped or later re-­shot. One
of the few scenes directed by Cukor
to survive to the final cut of the film
is the birth of Melanie’s baby. Despite
having been dismissed from the production, George Cukor privately
continued to coach both Vivien Leigh
and Olivia de Haviland on weekends
at their request.
When Fleming received Hecht’s
revised script, he calculated that there
were 650 separate scenes to be filmed.
In order to complete the picture in
time for a Christmas release, he would
have to shoot three pages of script a
day, each the equivalent of only two
minutes of film time.
Because his footage was deemed
to be too dark, cinematographer
Lee Garmes was fired a month
into production. Ernest Haller and
Technicolor Company cameraman
Ray Rennahan replaced him.
First Facts and Honors: Half a
million feet of film were shot before
photography ended on July 1, 1939.
This was edited down to 20,000 feet.
There are more than 50 speaking
roles and 2,400 extras in the film. All
seven of Hollywood’s then-existing
Technicolor cameras were used to film
the burning of the Atlanta railroad
depot. Estimated production costs
were an unprecedented $4.25 million.
The premiere in Atlanta on
December 15, 1939, at the 2,500seat Loew’s Grand Theater had been
planned for months—almost as long
as the shooting of the film. Georgia’s
governor proclaimed a state holiday.
Programs were prepared showing the
major performers in the film, but the
programs distributed at opening eliminated McDaniel’s photograph.
The cast flew to Atlanta—that
is, the white members of the cast
flew there. Hattie McDaniel, Oscar
Polk, Butterfly McQueen and the
other blacks in the cast remained in
Hollywood. Their presence would have
caused problems in racially segregated
Atlanta. Clark Gable was upset at
McDaniel’s exclusion and threatened to
boycott the ceremonies until McDaniel
persuaded him to participate.
The movie’s line “Frankly, my
dear, I don’t give a damn.” was voted
as the #1 movie quote (out of 100)
by the American Film Institute. (The
word” frankly” does not appear in
the book--a screenwriter added it.)
Contrary to popular belief, Gone
With the Wind was not the first film
to use the word “damn.” The expletive
was used in numerous silent title
cards and in several talkies, including
Cavalcade in 1933 and Pygmalion in
1938.
Gone With the Wind was ranked
#4 on the American Film Institute’s
1998 list of the greatest films in 100
years of filmmaking.
The Academy Award ceremonies were held in Los Angeles on
Feb. 29, 1940, at the Coconut Grove
nightclub in the Ambassador Hotel,
with Bob Hope as master of ceremonies, White cast members of Gone
With the Wind sat together. Hattie
McDaniel and a black companion
sat at a separate table at the rear. It
was the first color film to win the
Best Picture Oscar. After garnering
13 nominations, it won ten Oscars,
including one to Hattie McDaniel as
Best Supporting Actress, and a posthumous Best Screenplay award to
Sidney Howard.
The first film to credit a production designer, mainly to highlight
the major contributions of William
Cameron Menzies, who not only
art-directed the film but also directed
some of the second units, it also won
the Irving J. Thalberg Memorial
Award for David Selznick.
With a running time of 238
minutes, Gone With the Wind is still
the longest running movie to win the
Academy’s Best Picture award. Only
Ben Hur (1959) and Lawrence of
Arabia (1962) have come close to its
length among Best Picture winners.
At a time when the average price
of movie tickets in the U.S. was 23
cents, admission to Gone With the
Wind was set at 75 cents at matinees
and $1.in the evening. Most theaters
could only fit in three performances a
day. Despite this handicap, in its first
run it sold 202 million tickets—an
amazing figure considering that the
population of the U.S. at that time was
a little more than 130 million.
The total Gone With the
Wind box office gross from all
sources, adjusted for inflation, is a
stunning $3.44 billion. Not bad for
the combined effort of the demure
little lady from Atlanta and the tall
Hollywood producer who knew
exactly what he wanted in a motion
picture…
Film Retrospective
Gone With The Wind
Continued from page 12
and avoided by the movie-going public.
Gable later regretted accepting the role.
Selznick persuaded him to change
his mind by offering a $50,000 signing
bonus that enabled him to divorce his
second wife, Maria Franklin Gable, a
Texas matron 17 years his senior, and
marry actress Carole Lombard.
Few of the principal cast members
were happy with the characters they
were portraying. Leslie Howard privately felt that he was much too old to
play Ashley Wilkes (the character was
supposed to be about 21 at the start of
the film and Howard was 46). He wore
extra make-up and a hairpiece to make
him appear younger, but complained
that his costumes made him look like “a
fairy doorman at a hotel.”
Selznick was able to persuade him
to take the part by offering him credit as
producer of another film, Intermezzo: A
Love Story, in which he would star with
Ingrid Bergman. Rand Brooks, who
played the role of Charles Hamilton
and died early in the story, was actually
a rough outdoorsman and didn’t like
playing a wimpy character. Butterfly
McQueen disliked the negative stereotype of her character.
Judy Garland was the leading contender for the role of Scarlett’s younger
sister Carreen, but was tied up with commitments to The Wizard of Oz, another
film being directed by Victor Fleming.
Her “Andy Hardy” series co-star, Ann
Rutherford, was chosen instead.
Veteran actress Hattie McDaniel
was cast as Mammy after other AfricanAmericans, including Louise Beavers,
Etta McDaniel, Ruby Dandridge, and
Hattie Noel, were briefly considered
for the part. McDaniel would become
the first African-American to be nominated for—and win—an Academy
Award. The fact that McDaniel would
be unable to attend the premiere in
racially segregated Atlanta annoyed
Clark Gable so much that he threatened
to boycott the premiere unless she was
invited.
The Directors: Production of the
film started on January 26, 1939, with
George Cukor as director. Gable’s and
Cukor’s personalities were poles apart.
Cukor was a fussy, intellectual type and
vague in his instructions to actors. He was
also openly gay with effeminate mannerisms and was considered to be a “woman’s
director.” Cukor’s slow, methodical style
reminded Gable of John Stahl, director
of the ill-fated Parnell.
Legend has it that Clark Gable
complained about director George
Cukor, but nothing in David
Selznick’s internal memos indicates or
suggests that Gable played any role in
the dismissal of Cukor. Instead, they
show Selznick’s mounting dissatisfaction with Cukor’s slow pace and the
quality of his work. After two weeks
of shooting, Cukor was already five
days behind in the schedule; a delay
blamed by Selznick on Cukor’s perfectionism and fondness for retakes.
Louis B. Mayer, head of MGM was
also unhappy with the rushes he had
seen.
Selznick asked Gable, now an
old hand in the movie business, for
a suggestion. Gable recommended
Victor Fleming, who had directed
him in Red Dust and who was almost
finished with The Wizard of Oz. To
appease Cukor, MGM gave him
another film to direct, The Women,
with an all-female cast. On March 2
shooting restarted on Gone With the
Wind with Victor Fleming as director.
When Fleming took over as
director, he rejected the shooting
script, telling Selznick, “David,
your (expletive) script is no (expletive) good.” Selznick panicked and
called novelist Ben Hecht, offering
him $15,000 for a quick rewrite.
Production was shut down for 17 days
while Hecht rewrote it.
Hecht thought Sidney Howard’s
original script was superb and used it
as the basis for his rewrite, which was
largely a scissors and paste-pot job.
Hecht cut Sidney Howard’s screenplay to give more focus to the story
of Scarlett and Rhett and to eliminate
some of the historical pageantry.
Almost half of Cukor’s scenes
Robert Scott taught creative nonfiction
writing at the Writer’s Digest School for
eighteen years. He lives in Croton-onHudson, NY.
Page 2
Page 14
THE WESTCHESTER GUARDIAN
Community/Gover
THE WESTCHESTER GUARDIAN
Thursday, February 26, 2015
CALENDAR
COMMUNITY
News and Notes from Northern Westchester
WestchesterCommunity College Unde
By Mark Jeffers
Open 7 Days A Week
NYC’s #1
TOPlESS
SPORTS
BAR
• Gentlemen’s Club
• sushi RestauRant
• Fine DininG
NYC’s oNlY BoDY SUSHI
252 West 43rd St.
212-819-9300
(Between 7th & 8th Ave.)
www.mycheetahsnyc.com
FREE ADMISSION WITH THIS PASS
The New
Don’t
Don’t Waste
Waste Your
Your
Time
Time Anywhere
Anywhere Else
Else
Club
Club
New York
NEW YORK’S
NEW
YORK’S
PREMIER
PREMIER
GENTLEMEN’S
GENTLEMEN’S
CABARET
New York
CABARET
Escape Reality…
Escape
The VIP Club!
Escape to
Reality…
First Class Adult Entertainment,
Sushi Bar and Lounge.
HAPPY
HOUR
@ Entertainment,
THE VIP!
First
Class
Adult
2-For-1BarDrinks
Sushi
and Lounge.
Mon – Sat Before 9PM
Escape to The VIP Club!
HAPPY HOUR @ THE VIP!
COMPLIMENTARY
ADMISSION
2-For-1
FOR TWODrinks
WITH THIS PASS
Mon – Sat Before 9PM
20 W. 20th ST. (btwn 5th & 6th)
COMPLIMENTARY
ADMISSION
212-633-1199
FOR
TWO WITH THIS PASSs thevipclubnyc.com
In sports news, the
king of performanceenhancing drugs, Alex
Rodriguez delivered a
hand written apology
note to NY Yankees fans. I wonder
if he had someone write it for him…
Not to worry, I personally typed this
week’s “drug free” edition of “News and
Notes.”
It is my one of my favorite times of
year, when my wife does not glare at me
for buying boxes and boxes of cookies!
Soon there will be the classic Do-sidoes, Samoas, Trefoils, Thin Mints
and Tagalongs filling up our pantry. It
is cookie season for the Girl Scouts of
America, so treat yourself to a couple
of boxes when you see them in your
neighborhood and support these hard
working young ladies.
Happy
New
Year…
ArtsWestchester will partner with the
Westchester & Hudson Valley chapter
of Organization of Chinese Americans
to celebrate the Chinese New Year on
March 1st in White Plains as they
present a showcase of local and regional
traditional artists across a wide variety
of art forms, including music, dance,
magic and visual arts.
The Summer Music Center at the
Westchester County Center in White
Plains is a six-week music instruction program for young people in
grades 3 through 12, providing daily
class instruction in band and orchestral instruments, as well as keyboard,
guitar and recorder. The program runs
from 9am to 12:30pm daily, June 29
through August 7. Tuition is $575
for Westchester resident participants
registering before May 29, $625 after;
keyboard students pay $625 before
May 29 and $675 after. Non-residents
add $75 to each fee. For more information, call 914.231.4673.
Tim Rooney, Jr., General Counsel
of Empire City Casino at Yonkers
Raceway, has been selected 2015
Grand Marshal for the 60th Annual
Yonkers St. Patrick’s Day Parade which
takes place on McLean Avenue on
Saturday, March 21st.
Northern Westchester Hospital
announced recently that Lisa and
Mark Schwartz, two highly respected
business leaders and philanthropists
from our community, donated $1
million in support
of NWH’
By NANCY
KINGs ongoing
surgical services W
modernization.
e s t c h e s t As
er
a hospital thatCommunity
provides College
high quality
is the
patient-centered
NWH
is redelatestcare,
public
institution
to
signing and come
expanding
its
surgical
under scrutiny
of the
suites to ensureNew
adequate
spaceInspector
for new
York State
technologies
betterthatalign
the
General when itand
wasto
revealed
a former
facility
the coach
sophisticated
proceassistant with
basketball
falsified academic
dures
beingand
performed
by their
surgicals
transcripts
forged an
administrator’
staff.
signature. As a result, the community college
the White
Plains YWCA
on
has Join
canceled
its 2014-2015
Basketball
March
for a funthe
afternoon
of musical
season. 1However
story doesn’
t stop
entertainment,
age-appropriate
games
there, because many
student athletes
use
and
craft activities
for your
preschool
Westchester
Community
College
as a
children.
Zevto Haver
his four-year
band in
springboard
play atleads
NCAA
an
eclectic
mix ofhas
music,
instruments,
colleges;
the scandal
now spanned
several
dance
andseveral
stories
woven together to
states and
teams.
makeFormer
a unique
and High
fun interactive
Mt. Vernon
School star,
musical
experience,
sponsored
the
Jamell Walker
was a star
player forbyWCC
YWCA
s Learning
Center,
and was atChildren’
the school
on a full basketball
offering high-quality, diverse early
care and education programs that
COMMEMORATION
create
a strong foundation for life-long
learning.
This event certainly won’t help
my diet…the spring Hudson Valley
Restaurant Week
is set for
March 9-22
By NANCY
KING
and will feature prix fixe, three-course
Onand lunches
a
frigid
dinners for $29.95
for
November
evening,
a
$20.95.
The Garden Express Workshop
Series continues on February 28th
with Garden and Design Planning at
scholarship.
He playedFarm
on the award
winning
Hilltop Hanover
in Yorktown
team
and was
granted,
of
Heights.
Create
yourupon
owncompletion
flower and
what
was thought
to be to
a two-year
with
vegetable
gardens
enjoy stint
healthy
WCC,
full scholarship
to play
ball with
producea and
fresh flowers
this summer.
nationally
Florida
A&M University.
Learnranked
about
a broad
range of
Not
longregarding
after his arrival
at Florida
A&M,
topics
the use
of prescripan
anonymous
tipster
informed
the
college6,
tion medications on Friday, March
and
the Westchester
NCAA that Walker’
s scholarship
at The
in White
Plains at
as
WCC
stripped
prior, after
it
part ofhad
thebeen
Mall
Walka year
program.
Tom
was
revealed
he
only
taken
one
class
at
the
Grandville, Director of Pharmacy
college.
a scholarship at
ServicesIn order
at theto maintain
Burke Rehabilitation
the
college, awill
student
must be
matriculated
Hospital,
educate
seniors
about
for
a
full
credit
load.
prescription medication including,
furtherofinvestigation,
was
the Upon
side effects
medications,it drug
revealed
that
there
are
several
other
former
interaction and adverse reactions mediWCC
whoonare
alsoother,
playing
cationsstudents
may have
each
tipsbason
ketball
for
Division
1
schools
and
that
they
how to read labels, potential hazards
too
might be drug
at a new
under
less
of multiple
use school
and the
differthan transparent circumstances. St John’s
ence between generic and brand name
University, famous for their Red Storm
drugs. The program will begin at 9am
team, has opened an investigation into the
at the Food Court on Level 4.
The Small Town Theatre
Company in Armonk will present the
Tony Award-winning play “Vanya
and Sonia and Masha and Spike” on
February 27 and 28.
As White
you probably
heard Comedy
of the
Plains Department
of
Central’sSafety
“The to
Daily
Show” host the
Jon
Public
commemorate
Stewart
is leavingofthe
big
third
anniversary
theprogram,
shootingthe
death
question
is
who
will
be
his
replacement,
of Kenneth Chamberlain Sr. The 68
if it’s old
not me,
I’ll see
you next
year
former
marine
wasweek.
shot to
Community Marks 3 Years Since
vigil was held in front
LE G A L N O T I C E S
HASTINGS ELECTRIC & MECHANICAL SERVICES,
LLC Articles of Org. filed NY Sec. of State (SSNY)
9/17/14. Office in Westchester Co. SSNY design.
Agent of LLC upon whom process may be served.
SSNY shall mail copy of process to The LLC 618
Warburton Ave Hastings-On-Hudson, NY 10706.
Purpose: Any lawful activity
303 TOWER DRIVE, LLC Articles of Org. filed NY
Sec. of State (SSNY) 1/23/15. Office in Westchester
Co. SSNY design. Agent of LLC upon whom process
may be served. SSNY shall mail copy of process to
Mr. Luis Otero, C/O SKD Capital Corp. PO Box 1311
Yorktown Heights, NY 10598. Purpose: Any lawful
activity.
RON RET REALTY, LLC Articles of Org. filed NY Sec.
of State (SSNY) 12/4/14. Office in Westchester Co.
SSNY design. Agent of LLC upon whom process
may be served. SSNY shall mail copy of process to
The LLC 374 McLean Ave Yonkers, NY 10705. Purpose: Any lawful activity.
MIGHTY SYSTEMS, LLC Articles of Org. filed NY
Sec. of State (SSNY) 1/29/15. Office in Westchester
Co. SSNY design. Agent of LLC upon whom process
may be served. SSNY shall mail copy of process to
The LLC 11 Forest Ct Larchmont, NY 10538. Purpose:
Any lawful activity.
TOTAL WELLNESS MICRONUTRIENT PHARMACEUTICAL CONSULTING PLLC Articles of Org.
filed NY Sec. of State (SSNY) 12/15/14. Office in
Westchester Co. SSNY design. Agent of PLLC
upon whom process may be served. SSNY shall
mail copy of process to The PLLC 51 Livingston Rd
Scarsdale, NY 10583. Purpose: Any lawful activity.
MLG PROPERTY LLC Arts. of Org. filed NY Sec. of
State (SSNY) on 12/1/14. Office in Westchester
County. SSNY desig. Agent of LLC upon whom process may be served. SSNY shall mail process to:
c/o Link NY Realty LLC, 141 Parkway Rd. Suite 13B
, Bronxville, NY 10708, Purpose: any lawful activity.
Ruth DeLuca, LLC Articles of Org. filed NY Sec. of
State (SSNY) 01/28/15. Office in Westchester Co.
SSNY design. Agent of LLC upon whom process
may be served. SSNY shall mail copy of process to
The LLC 3 Lincoln Ave. E. #2, NY 10604. Purpose: Any
lawful activity.
20 W. 20th ST. (btwn 5th & 6th)
WESTCHESTERsGthevipclubnyc.com
UARDIAN LEGAL ADVERTISING
212-633-1199
[email protected]
914.216.1674 • M-F 11A- 5P
LITTLE BEAR ASSOCIATES LLC Articles of Org. filed
NY Sec. of State (SSNY) 1/13/15. Office in Westchester Co. SSNY design. Agent of LLC upon whom
process may be served. SSNY shall mail copy
of process to The LLC 7 Little Bear Dr Yorktown
Heights, NY 10598. Purpose: Any lawful activity.
PUBLICATION EVERY THURSDAY
SUBMIT ADS TUESDAY,
10 DAYS PRIOR TO RUN DATE
eligibilit
WCC l
Connect
scripts o
who also
College.
and SUN
all of th
to their
attendin
At
assistant
Last m
provided
an adm
so. Odd
anything
thought
Nearly e
athlete w
script fra
Reserve Now for Holiday Parties!
ITALIAN CUISINE
Zagat Rated “Excellent”
Voted “Best Italian Restaurant ” Westchester Magazine, 2006
Open 7 Days : Mon.-Thurs. Noon - 10PM • Fri. Sat. & Sun. Noon -11PM
RESERVE NOW FOR HOLIDAY PARTIES 2 PARTY ROOMS AVAIL. SEATING 75 & 100
914.779.4646
www.ciaoeastchester.com
Ciao • 5-7 JOHN ALBANESE PLACE, EASTCHESTER, NY 10709
death b
the earl
19, 201
went o
mornin
that he
he wan
should
check
officers
elderly
the eld
more ag
Chamb
killed b
alleged,
Sho
Attorne
Grand
and of
the dea
justifiab
that th
him wa
in perc
officer
inciden
Hart. H
out the
In
Chamb
Chamb
THE WESTCHESTER GUARDIAN
Thursday, February 26, 2015
Page 15
down a street in Tribeca and spotted
him reading scripts in Starbucks.
Maybe they were for his appearances
in The Sopranos and 24.
Director for both the Alexandria film
Festival , and the Arab Rotterdam Festival
in The Netherlands. He also contributes to
Variety, in the United States and is the
Film Critic of Variety, Arabia (http://
amalmasryalyoum.com/ennode189132
and The Westchester Guardian: www.
WestchesterGuardian.com
CULTURAL PERSPECTIVES
Run
By Sherif Awad
One of the films
screened in European
Film Market of the
Berlinale 2015 is Run,
the feature debut by
writer-director Philippe Lacôte, an
Ivorian director who has submitted
short narratives and documentaries to
film festivals since 1994. Before finalizing Run, Lacôte also filmed a short
narrative called To Repel Ghosts
(2013); a fictionalized account of
artist Jean-Michel Basquiat’s journey
to the Ivory Coast.
Run is the name of the title
character in Lacôte’s new film. Run,
a young man played by newcomer
Abdoul Karim Konaté, is running
away after assassinating the Prime
Minister of his African country. Run
has no choice but to be constantly on
the move and he plays a fool wandering around town for months. During
this time, he re-lives his past in flashbacks, from his childhood through his
adventures with his country’s militias
and up to his current situation.
“Run was born as I started
doing fieldwork in Ivory Coast
over ten years ago”, said Lacôte. “ I
remember in the year 2002, I set off
to Yopougon, a suburb of Abidjan
where I grew up watching films in
the cinema of the neighborhood.
Equipped with a digital camera in
order to assess how the young generation was faring, I thought that
filming my childhood friends would
help me understand my rather
complex tie to my country. Three days
later, the rebellion broke out, which
drove me to film my neighborhood
for the first three weeks of the curfew,
with no specific goal, just like some
sort of photographic logbook. But
it so happens that Yopougon is the
largest municipality in West Africa,
with 1.5 million residents. It is also
the stronghold of the Young Patriots,
one of the fiercest supporters of
former president Laurent Gbagbo. I
felt I was recording the reactions of
ordinary citizens, filming busloads
of activists who were heading for
meetings and morning papers and
their front pages”.
Lacôte then went to the house
of a Young Patriot to interview him.
When he asked him how he had
joined the movement. He answered:
“Well, I have lived three lives”. It
took Lacôte six years to make his
documentary Chroniques de Guerre
en Côte d’Ivoire (Chronicles of the
Ivory Coast War), released in 2008,
that became some sort of autobiographical portrayal about the Young
Patriot surviving the civil war in
Ivory Coast. “However, I have always
kept in mind the words of the Young
Patriot which made me want to tell
the story of a man living three lives”,
continued Lacôte. “So, I made the
Young Patriot’s statement mine and
set it as an imaginary, fictional tale. It
did not take me long to decide that
the character was going to shift from
one life to another, each time fleeing
the previous one. Nowadays, in Ivory
Coast, 75% of the population is under
30. Each of these youths has followed
a tortuous path, so much so that for
me, running did not mean a cowardly
Isaach De Bankolé in Run
flight but a vital impulse - the character cannot get ahead with his life and
must therefore find a way out. I have
met a lot of people over there, who
are faced with no choice - they have
to organize their lives depending
on the circumstances surrounding
them, finding themselves in a place
they have not chosen and having to
re-invent themselves. I chose to stick
with the actual lives of these youths.
Bearing this in mind, I decided to
narrate those three lives. The name of
the character was an obvious choice
for me and the plot of the story fell
into place”.
Run’s only friend and mentor
in the film is played by internationally renowned Ivorian-born star
Isaach De Bankolé who was once
a Mathematician, discovered by a
director as he was about to become
an airline pilot. De Bankolé turned
to acting and studied drama in
France until he landed small roles
that won him a César Award (The
French Oscars) for Best Newcomer
for Thomas Gilou’s Black Mic Mac
(1987). De Bankolé was seen in
several French comedies and he also
worked on stage in Patrice Chéreau’s
productions. De Bankole became
a favorite of Jim Jarmusch and
appeared in Night on Earth (1990),
Ghost Dog: Way of the Samurai
(1999) and Coffee and Cigarettes
(2002) then Michael Mann’s Miami
Vice (2005) and Martin Campbell’s
Casino Royale (2006). He has
never overlooked art house productions, starring in Julian Schnabel’s
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
(2007) as well as Claire Denis’ White
Material (2008). I was once walking
Born in Cairo, Egypt, Sherif Awad is
a film/video critic and curator. He is the
film editor of Egypt Today Magazine
(www.EgyptToday.com) and the Artistic
Isaach De Bankolé and Abdoul Karim Konat in Run
Page 16
THE WESTCHESTER GUARDIAN
Thursday, February 26, 2015
Mary At The Movies
Kingsman: The Secret Service
Michael Caine is Chester King (Arthur),
the snobbish leader of Kingsman.
Street smart and athletic, Eggsy
Based upon the comic book series, remote country estate, accessible via an makes his way through the program
The Secret Service by Mark Millar and ultra high speed underground rail con- despite some hazing from his upperDave Gibbons, the plot revolves around nection. Mark Strong plays Merlin, class fellow recruits. Meanwhile, Harry
an elite group of secret super spies who in charge of the Kingsman training Hope has stumbled upon a diabolioperate at the very highest level of the program and Internet communications. cal plot hatched by Internet billionaire
Richmond Valentine (Samuel
British government, sworn to
Jackson) to dramatically reduce
protect and defend the empire
earth’s population. “Gazelle,
with their lives. Colin Firth
(Sophia Boutella)” is Valentine’s
plays the debonair Harry Hart
assassin, whose prosthetic legs
(Galahad) who, unable to save a
give new meaning to the term
fellow agent, promises his son and
“stiletto heels.” Kingsman: The
widow help, if it is ever needed.
Secret Service is an entertaining
He leaves the son with a medal, a
comedy/spy thriller with a sinister
telephone number and a code.
subtext.
Seventeen years later the son,
MPAA Rating: R for
“Eggsy” (Gary Unwin) is jammed
sequences of strong violence,
up and uses his one free phone call
language and some sexual
at the police station to call Hart,
who arranges his release and then From left: Harry (Colin Firth), Eggsy (Taron Egarton), content. Running time 129
recruits him into the Kingsman Merlin (Mark Strong), Roxie (Sophie Cookson) and minutes. Produced by Marv Films;
training program, located in a Percival (Alastair Macintosh). Photo by Jaap Buitendijk 20th Century Fox distributors.
Gazelle (Sofia Boutella) and Richard Valentine (Samuel L.
Jackson). Photo by Jaap Buitendijk
From left: Harry (Colin Firth), Eggsy (Taron Egarton) meet
Richard Valentine (Samuel L. Jackson). Photo by Jaap Buitendijk
Art Show at Bronxville Women’s Club
The Bronxville Women’s Club
will present “Landscapes: Light,
Color, Reflection,” art created by Carol
Sommerfield. The exhibit commences
on March 1 with an opening reception from 2-5 p. m. that is Free to the
public. The Gallery hours are Mondays
through Fridays 9 a.m. - 5 p.m.; and by
appointment: 914.337.3252.
The Bronxville Women’s
Club is located at 135 Midland
Avenue:
bronxvillewomensclub.org
Open 10AM - 8PM Mon-Sat.
Juice Bar • Smoothies • Salads
Paninis • Rice Bowls
Dine In -Take-Out • Dobbs Ferry Delivery
914.479.5555
MIXONMAINNY.com
63 MAIN ST., DOBBS FERRY, NY
WWW.WESTCHESTERGUARDIAN.COM