This and That by JL

I remember it well.  Our first ArtsBash in our brand new, old historic building in 1999.  I thought of this today as preparations got underway for this year’s ArtsBash tomorrow night.  We purchased the building at 31 Mamaroneck Avenue, White Plains in 1998.  It had been empty for five years. Our next door neighbor was [...]

The Rivertowns are a hotbed of dancers.  I have that from a reliable source. Maxine Sherman, a former principal dancer with Alvin Ailey’s American Dance Theater and Martha Graham Dance Company told me so…and she should know.  With the drop of a tiara, Maxine can reel off the names of dozens of well known ballet [...]

I never ran the Boston Marathon, but when I moved there years ago to lead the Boston Center for the Arts, I went to every one of them. Marathon Mondays, First Nights on New Years Eve and the concerts on the Commons. These events (and the Red Sox) were the Boston way of life. So [...]

I can’t wait to see the movie “Koch” not just because he was a colorful Mayor. But, let’s just say, I knew the man. He was my boss, so to speak. Some time ago…actually a long time ago in the late seventies, I was Deputy Commissioner of Cultural Affairs for New York City when Koch [...]

Christine Andreas is Westchester’s “Fair Lady” having appeared in many Broadway revivals including “My Fair Lady,” “On Your Toes” and “Oklahoma.” This Tony-awardee is bringing her  newly arranged cabaret show “Bemused” to a Westchester Community College soiree on April 17th at Tappan Hill.  It’s all about raising funds for need-based scholarships to give deserving students of [...]

As a child, I remember being so inconsolable watching the wicked queen poison Snow White, that I actually ran out of the movie theater. Steve Apkon would no doubt say: “It was the power of the image.” Apkon, Founder of the Jacob Burns Film Center, explores visual literacy in his book, The Age of the [...]

When people ask where I’m from, I most often say, “I’m just a kid from the Rockaway’s.” This used to evoke a querulous “Where?” But no longer. Unfortunately, the Rockaway’s are recently famous, but not for the charm and fun I knew riding my bike on the boardwalk on a brisk winter’s day from Beach [...]

Beauty, we are told, is in the eye of the beholder. So for some beauty is a sunset.  For others, it’s a sports car or a diamond.  For Robert Wiener, Chairman of Maxx Properties and ArtsWestchester board member, beauty is a geode.  For more than 40 years, Wiener has been collecting geodes, some 2,000 of [...]