This and That by JL

          Did you ever stumble on an intimate conversation between two people that you felt you weren’t supposed to hear but couldn’t stop listening to?  That’s how I felt watching the play Constellations, now on stage at the Whippoorwill Hall Theater.  In this production by the Hudson Stage Company, two awkward […]

Our exhibition, “Brick by Brick,” is inspiring stories as warm and loving as any brick fireplace. Diana Costello’s grandpa, Pietro Viscogliosi, sounds like the quintessential brick mason, just like Serafino Laboranti, my former neighbor in Queens and the only person I would trust to build a brick floor in my kitchen. Serafino was a master mason […]

    Many of us remember exactly where we were when John F. Kennedy was shot.  For me, the scene is emblazoned in my mind. I was in my kitchen spooning mashed banana into my toddler’s mouth. The radio soothed some Sinatra… perhaps it was The Summer Wind. From bliss, I went into panic mode […]

Can it be true that, in terms of size and production, the brick industry in the Hudson Valley was second of importance in our region to IBM? So George H. Hutton told us in his book The Great Hudson River Brick Industry. We can quibble with his hyperbole, but the truth is that in its […]

Every year, when the wind begins to blow and the leaves start to rustle, we hear strains of a ghost story called The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.  It’s a scary short tale written in 1820 by Washington Irving whose home, Sunnyside, is transformed annually by Historic Hudson Valley (HHV) into an adventurous dwelling. HHV is the keeper of […]

Ordinarily, one wouldn’t mention the Erie Canal, Carnegie Hall and the Croton Aqueduct in the same breath. But they do have a shared history that will be explored in a new, highly anticipated exhibition called Brick by Brick, which will be presented by ArtsWestchester at its stately White Plains gallery through January 2019. The exhibition tells […]

Just when I think that collaboration is one of the hardest ways to work in the arts world, I become encouraged anew by what I see happening among artists in Westchester. What makes collaboration so difficult is that its success depends upon a shared vision. This shared vision may be hard to achieve, but it […]

    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. […]