This and That by JL

    In thinking about the uncertainty of the past 20 months, I can’t help but breathe a sigh of relief that the arts in Westchester have survived. Yes, although we are somewhat battered financially, we are spiritually stronger than ever, undaunted in the knowledge that the value of the arts is not a myth, […]

Bravo to artist  Mary Lincoln Blondell, who didn’t leave the disposition of her artwork to chance. She left money in her estate to take care of her artwork after her death. She was a sculptor who was as bold in her art as she was in her determination that her work live on after her […]

For just a few moments, it felt much like a time warp, in which I was back in the Sixties in the East Village searching for some abandoned church or obscure place where there was an arts happening going on. It was always some hard-to-find place like the one in Verplank, NY, which just opened […]

Many Americans like myself have blended families. In this case, I am referring to families that have become multicultural through marriage and other means. The recent fervor to assist Afghanis to leave their country (not an easy thing to introduce strangers to a new life and certainly a traumatic circumstance) is an all too poignant […]

As we put ArtsNews to bed, we watched our Congress struggle with the meaning of infrastructure. We too struggle with this same question: What is infrastructure? Is it simply roads and bridges, as we’ve been led to believe? Or does it include other things that make life livable, or even bearable, such as health, education […]

  Hearing the roar of Niagara Falls for the first time since I was eight years old was chilling. Perhaps it was because I heard it not at the edge of the falls but in a cavernous 19th century ruin. It was at the abandoned pool house on the historic Lyndhurst estate. It was an […]

     I cringed when I heard Russian President Vladimir Putin announce: “There is no such thing as happiness…it’s only a mirage.” Shocked as I was, it seemed to me to be the ultimate denial of three American ideals embodied in our Declaration of Independence – life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.      […]

“My guest blogger this week is my assistant Megan Thomson Connor. Megan is a gifted writer and arts administrator who discusses the history of Juneteenth in the blog below. ” – Janet Langsam In 2020, New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo issued an executive order recognizing Juneteenth as a holiday for state employees. Westchester County officials decided […]