This and That by JL

“History got under my skin.” That’s the way Waddell Stillman explains his 27-year stint at Historic Hudson Valley (HHV), first as CFO and now as President and CEO. It’s what led him and his team to develop a groundbreaking education program about slavery in the Colonial North. People Not Property is an interactive website and […]

    I must admit I was curious. Having gone for years to the very dated Bedford theater, I was sad to hear it was closing and then happy to hear it that was being rescued by community-minded folks whose fond memories of the vintage theater, like mine, lingered on. So off I went one […]

The opportunity to get a good bowl of Matzoh Ball soup in Westchester is diminishing. Pastrami and corn beef mavins like the Mt. Kisco Deli  have disappeared.  Thank heaven there’s still two Epstein’s Delis and a Rye Ridge Deli in the county where the menu includes such Yiddish favorites as brisket with stuffed derma and […]

What a weekend there is coming up. It’s a veritable feast of arts happening in the county. Every Tuesday morning at 8:20am, I get on the phone with T.J.McCormack at WVOX (1460AM) for a five minute chat about the arts. There was so much on the docket for this weekend that I couldn’t get it […]

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 […]

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 […]

The presidential election is less than two weeks away and American entrepreneurship is on the line.  We are told by candidates that 60% of all jobs come from small businesses. So, I thought I’d check in with Chris Wedge, who is the brains, the heart and the innovator of Blue Sky, an animation studio that produced […]

Perhaps I am dating myself…BUT…When I was just a kid growing up in the Rockaways, my mother and I would board the Long Island Railroad every Saturday for an hour trip into Manhattan for ballet classes and for Leonard Bernstein’s Young People’s concerts at Carnegie Hall.  The closest thing we had to culture was the […]