This and That by JL

It’s a little early to be thinking about pumpkins. The roses are hardly in bloom. But ever since COVID-19 became a crisis, Waddell Stillman has been obsessed with those orange creatures of fall. Stillman is not a farmer, but the President and CEO of Historic Hudson Valley (HHV), the organization that, in 2005 dreamed up […]

In the northern part of Westchester, where I live, spring is announced by the high tones of the chipmunks and the baritones of the bullfrogs. I watch the little creatures scurrying about all day and at night. I listen to the groans of the bullfrogs. For me, these signs of re-emerging life are a metaphor for […]

Elliot Fox strides into his empty theater on a recent coronavirus day. He’s never seen it so forlorn. No sounds of clapping. It’s empty for the fourth week in a row. During those four weeks, he has incredulously cancelled or postponed 72 performances between March and May. Now that Governor Cuomo has hit the New […]

    Jeff Haydon is in a contemplative sort of mood. As CEO of the Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts, he is pondering a momentous decision. Every summer since 1945, there has been a music festival at its 90-acre property in Katonah, NY, 50 miles north of New York City. Caramoor’s renowned music […]

                                                                                                    We at ArtsWestchester are launching […]

    In times like these, what do we need? A touch… a voice…perhaps, a hand…a place to sigh, or cry… maybe we need a space to think of things to come, of ways to cope. In these uncertain times, we need a song to sing… a path to follow… a phrase to give us hope. Some words may help us believe again. We need a way, a means, to help us fathom […]

I usually describe myself as “just a kid from Far Rockaway.” It’s sort of a salute to the modest beach town on the Rockaway peninsula where I grew up. A few blocks away from our house in the Bayswater area was the Gustave Hartman Orphan Home. The kids who lived there were homeless. They had […]

Somewhere between first and second grade at P.S. 104 in Bayswater, Queens, we kids Iearned that George Washington as a boy chopped down a cherry tree. With pre-made stencils, we all crayoned an ax to bring home to our mothers. Later, perhaps in third grade, we learned that George Washington could not tell a lie. […]