This and That by JL

What’s it like to have a river in your backyard? It’s inspirational, according to Masha Turchinsky, the Yonkers native and Executive Director of the Hudson River Museum. Perched at the Museum, one can look out and gaze at the mighty Hudson, whose presence continues to fuel the museum’s mission. Up until the 16th century, the […]

    People around the world over watched in horror and disbelief as the beloved monument Our Lady of Paris crumbled under intense fire. I too was riveted as I watched, hoping that this Cathedral of Notre Dame would survive. And it did. So swift and strong was the outpouring of concern and support, that […]

    If you remember the handle “Samo(c),” then like me, you hung out in the East Village in the ’70s where Jean-Michel Basquiat was doing his graffiti-style thing. You can visually stroll the streets of “the village” at the Jacob Burns Film Center in May through “FrameWorks 2019: Art on Film,” a curated series […]

Walking along a busy NYC street and amidst the hustle and bustle, one may be reminded of the purest human emotion … Love. So many questions, thoughts and memories are often ignited at the mere mention of this powerful word. Witnessing this emotion is a reminder to stop, to reflect, and to feel. “Public art […]

Over many years, I have been asked: “what’s an arts council?” Having cut my teeth, so to speak, on the board of the Queens Council on the Arts, I feel qualified to say that at its simplest, it is a local arts agency that brings programs and resources to a particular locality. In the Sixties, […]

    It’s not every day that we blow up a bridge in Westchester. And although hundreds have been lining up for weeks to see the blow up of the last remnants of the Tappan Zee Bridge on Saturday, sorry to say, it’s not happening. So, Saturday is a bummer, not a blow up.  For […]

  Dear Friends, Every picture tells a story and the one above does just that by ­­offering a chance…a chance to girls and boys to discover the world through their own creativity. That is how we prepare young people for a world that demands innovation. If you care about making those chances available for every […]

    Upward bound in an elevator in a Tel Aviv hotel, I shared a lift with an Israeli preteen chattering in Hebrew but wearing a t-shirt that announced “Hear Me Roar”. The reference on her shirt was of course a reference to the Helen Reddy song of 1973. I wondered how those lyrics made it to a kid’s t-shirt in Israel. […]