The Kate Chronicles

Recalling the Glory Days of Reader’s Digest

ARTS | WESTCHESTER  By KATE STONE LOMBARDI Published: October 1, 2010

BY the 1940s, only one publication exceeded Reader’s Digest in sales. It was the Bible. And the Digest even put its stamp on that book, producing a condensed version in 1982 and presenting it to Pope John Paul II.

Starting with newsstand sales in 1929, the Digest became an instant success and ultimately a global phenomenon, as well as an exemplar of paternalistic policies that coddled employees. This fall, as part of the company’s recent restructuring, the last employees will be leaving the Digest’s former headquarters here — a sprawling campus perched on a hilltop — for offices in White Plains and Manhattan.

But many of the glory days will stay behind, captured in a collection of artifacts and documents on view at the New Castle Historical Society in “Reader’s Digest: The Local Magazine That Conquered the World.”

The society is housed in the former home of Horace Greeley, the founder of The New York Herald Tribune, and a visitor must walk upstairs and through Greeley’s study, past his desk and old typesetting equipment, to see the exhibition. It seems fitting that one visionary publisher should play host to another.

DeWitt Wallace, the founder of the Digest, had what at the time was a revolutionary idea. In the early 20th century, he believed that people were overwhelmed by too much information and needed help sorting it out. He began culling what he considered the best stories from other publications and condensing them into easily consumable pieces.

Mr. Wallace was initially met with skepticism. The exhibition includes several panels that chart the magazine’s history, and the first, “Birth of an Idea,” includes a letter from the editor of The Red Cross Magazine, John S. Phillips, granting Mr. Wallace permission to excerpt an article. “I have looked over your little publication,” Mr. Phillips writes. “But, personally, I don’t see how it will be able to get enough subscribers to support it.”

The early lives of Mr. Wallace and his wife, Lila Bell Acheson Wallace, are documented, as is their extensive philanthropy and art collection. Mrs. Wallace started collecting art in the 1940s, creating one of the first corporate collections in the country.

At one time, the halls, conference rooms and even the cafeteria at the Digest’s headquarters were decorated with paintings by Renoir, Chagall,van Gogh, Degas and the like. Mrs. Wallace believed it was important that employees be intellectually stimulated in their work environment. Alas, visitors to the exhibit will not see any of these works; most were sold at auction in the late 1990s. Instead, a small pile of 1990 calendars titled “Great Paintings From the Digest Collection” sits on a chair, with a handwritten note reading, “Free — help yourself.”

The value of this exhibition is less in what it offers visually than in how it captures an era. Evidence of bygone days of corporate largess is seen throughout the show. One case holds a silver compact with the Digest logo of a Pegasus engraved upon it. The compacts were given to women with 10 to 14 years of service at the company; men received a gold pocketknife. Employees who put in 15 to 19 years at the company got a silver traveling clock. For 20 or more years of service, workers were handed two tickets to Bermuda, with two extra weeks of vacation thrown in.

A 30-minute video includes testimony from former employees, who reminisce about the Digest’s baseball, bowling and golf leagues.

“At the end of every season was a party,” one man recalled. “You’d fill out a form. Did you want the filet mignon or the lobster?”

Another former editor remembered Mr. Wallace chasing everyone from their desks at 4 p.m., insisting that they go home. “He believed if you were smart and organized enough, you should get your work done by that time,” the employee said. It was hard to lose your job at the Digest; Mr. Wallace finally fired a man after he failed to show up for work for eight weeks.

There is also an online component to the show. At the Web site rdexhibit.com, former employees are invited to contribute their own memories.

Many write about their encounters with the Wallaces. Elinor Griffith, a former editor and a co-curator of the exhibition, said that both the site and show have attracted many Digest alumni, some of whom have reconnected with one another after decades.

The show chronicles many milestones of the Digest’s success. By the 40th anniversary of Reader’s Digest, the magazine had 40 editions and was published in 13 languages and in Braille.

A 10-foot panel shows a timeline of steady growth, beginning with a circulation of 290,000 in 1929 and leveling off in 1982 at 31 million. Books and record divisions opened, and the Reader’s Digest Sweepstakes was established. Influential stories — like a 1933 investigation about preventable car crashes, “And Sudden Death!” — are highlighted. Every issue of the Digest is available for browsing.

Correspondence from famous contributors is also on display. Charles Lindbergh requested in a 1939 letter that no changes be made “in text, punctuation, capitalization or title” in an article he contributed. In 1962, Richard M. Nixon wrote that he was “pleased and honored” that the Digest would excerpt his book. “I hope you do not catch too much ‘political flak’ from some of my never-say-die critics,” Nixon added.

Glaringly absent from the show is any mention of the company’s decline. Reader’s Digest filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in August 2009 and emerged from it early this year. The staff was reduced by nearly 8 percent. The company’s stately old headquarters is now the proposed site of a housing development. But the remnants of its past at the historical society give testament to a corporate culture that has indeed become part of history.

 

“Reader’s Digest: The Local Magazine That Conquered the World,” through January 2011, at the New Castle Historical Society, 100 King Street, Chappaqua, N.Y. Open Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday, 1-4 p.m. Admission is free. Information: (914) 238-4666.

 

A version of this article appeared in print on October 3, 2010, on page WE8 of the New York edition.

 

An Artist Unpacks His "Graphic Toolbox"

 BOLD STATEMENTS “Paradox & Conformity,” the solo exhibition by Richard Deon, will be on view at the Hudson River Museum through Sept. 5.

By KATE STONE LOMBARDI

Published: August 6, 2010

Enlarge This Image

Chester Higgins Jr./The New York Times

Mr. Deon with his painting, “RX.”

Enlarge This Image

Chester Higgins Jr./The New York Times

Nearly 50 works are on display.

MORE than 30 years ago, Richard Deon pulled a book called “Visualized Civics” out of a trash bin. Today, variations on the graphic images in that discarded school textbook — a man standing tall and dapper in a suit with his hands at his sides, an archetypal American Indian, a professorial figure with a pointer — can be found throughout the artist’s work.

Walking through his solo exhibition at the Hudson River Museum here, Mr. Deon referred to these recurring images as his “givens.” It was easy to understand why. They echo consistently in the nearly 50 works on display, which include paintings, prints and two huge banners specially designed for the museum’s atrium. The exhibition, “Paradox and Conformity,” displays the artist’s exploration of these icons, many from the 1950s, which he places in odd contexts, often using false perspective or other visual tricks to create what he calls “a sense of irritation” in the work.

In one enormous banner, “Low Tide,” the suited figure appears lying down. He would look almost funereal if not for the small smile on his lips, his wide-awake stare, and the incongruous ocean horizon at his head. The figure reappears in many paintings throughout the show — his ramrod posture looks military on the bow of a ship in “Weehawken,” a false depiction of a Civil War naval battle. But in “Measure of Success,” he stands as a businessman, with the background text — “Knowing’s Not Enough” — suggesting some disruption of a climb up the corporate ladder.

This ubiquitous figure, along with other characters, has become part of what Mr. Deon calls his “graphic toolbox.” That source material is transformed into something almost surreal in each work. One of the paintings on display, “Burning the Department of Interior,” shows a group of figures sitting cross-legged around what at first appears to be a campfire. But the flames are coming from an office building, where tiny suited figures are at work in cramped spaces. Sitting around the campfire are mostly shirtless men with long hair.

It would have been easy for this painting to be “weaponized,” meaning heavily politicized, Mr. Deon said, so he began to play with the work after he originally thought it was finished. The artist pointed to two men wearing shirts and hats on the outside of the circle, figures he added later. He also noted that smudged text in the painting had initially been very clear.

“When there’s a lot of context with a story being described, I don’t want to take it to a conclusion that real life has,” he said. “I want a dreamlike conclusion where you are not really sure where the story has ended.”

In addition to his iconic figures, Mr. Deon uses a group of symbols repetitively, including a chevron; a flag that doesn’t belong to a country (an image he found on a matchbook in Canada); and an abstract shape the artist simply calls “the object.”

Noting that his paintings have become “a repository for accidents,” Mr. Deon, who also works as an art director and publication designer, said the creation of “the object” began with a stock illustration of a microscope for a graphics job. The day after he had roughly cut out the image, he found its “negative shape” — the paper that he had cut away — in the trash. It is this shape, vague in its outline, that became “the object.”

Mr. Deon’s work occupies two floors of the museum. Among the first works the visitor sees is “Death in the Long Grass,” in which a kneeling man in a loincloth is posed in front of a large cow, which originally appeared in the show “Got Cow? Cattle in American Art” at the museum in 2006.

“Since then Richard’s images, always sophisticated, have matured and deepened, and we are happy to welcome him back this summer for a solo show,” said Bartholomew F. Bland, the curator of exhibitions. “The scale and strength of his graphics are powerful enough to stand up to the architecture of the museum’s large and open galleries, which he has filled with a cast of characters that appear and reappear in his paintings, much like a repertory theater troupe.”

Mr. Deon lives in Dover Plains in Dutchess County, and works in a restored carriage house. His fascination with and manipulation of historical figures began as early as the seventh grade, when he defaced a school textbook. Already playful in his work, the youngster added touches like airplanes to the background of the Boston Tea Party. (He paid for the book, and at the suggestion of an English teacher, started taking art classes, ultimately studying at the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan.)

Circus posters were also a source of inspiration. Mr. Deon noted that a lithography shop that designed many posters seemed to use the same models repeatedly. The short stocky lion trainer figure was also the acrobat and the horseback rider. The idea of using the same figures over and over again in his paintings took hold.

Despite the recurring images, Mr. Deon’s work is not all that predictable. Abraham Lincolnappears in Roman armor in “Lincoln Ignores the Carbon Compact,” while in “Lincoln Handles the Fragments of a Red Dish,” he is dressed in a toga, pointing to “the object” while an attentive group looks on. Time and perspective are confused.

“The conformity part is the familiar images,” he said. “The paradox is, ‘Why the hell are these things together?’ ”

“Paradox and Conformity,” through Sept. 5 at the Hudson River Museum, 511 Warburton Avenue, Yonkers. Information: hrm.org or (914) 963-4550.

On the Trail, an Eerie Tale

Photographs by Suzanne DeChillo/The New York TimesAt Philipsburg Manor in Sleepy Hollow, N.Y., from top left: flax hanging in a barn; a resident ram; making soup over an open fire; wheat kernels that are ground into flour at the mill.

By KATE STONE LOMBARDI

Published: October 15, 2009

Tarrytown, which sits high on a hill and has majestic views of the Hudson River, claims as a native son none other than Washington Irving, the author of “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” and other spooky tales. Its sister village, North Tarrytown, voted to rename itself Sleepy Hollow in 1996. So a visit to both villages is worthwhile, especially asHalloween looms and Irving’s tales come to life — at least in the imagination. Take the Hudson Line on Metro-North from Grand Central Terminal to Tarrytown.

Multimedia

Slide Show

Spooky World

Map

Sleepy Hollow and Tarrytown

10 A.M. Grab a cab at the train station and head to Philipsburg Manor, 381 North Broadway in Sleepy Hollow, (914) 631-3992, a national historic landmark. (Get a card from the driver; you’ll need a ride back.) In the late 17th and early 18th centuries, the manor was a farming, milling and trading complex. A visit ($12; $6 for children 5 to 17) is a trip back in time, complete with staff members in period costume, like the miller dressed in breeches and stockings who makes stone-ground corn. (A bag costs $3.) The farm also has historical breeds of oxen, cows and sheep, and you can tour the 300-year-old manor house and learn, among other things, the lesser-known story of slavery in the North. This weekend and next, the manor will hold special Halloween events for children, like pumpkin carving and the telling of ghost stories.

11:30 A.M. From Philipsburg Manor, walk across Route 9 (North Broadway) and one block north to Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, 540 North Broadway, (914) 631-0081. You won’t be able to cover all 90 of its historical acres, but you can easily find gravestones etched with old Dutch names like Vanderbilt and Van Rensselaer. The cemetery maps can also direct you to the graves of the famous, including Andrew Carnegie, Brooke Astor, Leona Helmsley and Irving himself, whose family plot is set off by a wrought-iron fence. The beautiful Old Dutch Church, built in 1685, abuts the cemetery, and has its own burial grounds. Both the church and the cemetery were featured in Irving’s work.

1 P.M. Take a cab from Sleepy Hollow to Main Street and Route 9 in Tarrytown. For lunch, some local residents gravitate to Lefteris Gyro, 1 North Broadway, (914) 524-9687, for reasonably priced Greek dishes like Avgolemono, an egg-lemon soup with rice and chicken ($4 large), or the homemade yogurt, served with honey and walnuts ($4.25). For a really casual feel, consider Lubins-N-Links, 29 Main Street, (914) 909-4198, for all-beef hot dogs ($2.75 with two toppings) served with homemade sauces like “Dad’s ‘Jubee’ onion sauce” and “Mama’s spicy kraut.” On weekends, try the “teenie weenies,” which look like pigs in a blanket.

2:30 P.M. On a recent episode of TV’s “Mad Men,” Betty Draper took her children shopping for antiques in Tarrytown. She could do the same today. Main Street is dotted with a half-dozen charming stores crammed with furniture, lighting fixtures, paintings and more. Try Michael Christopher Antiques, 23 Main Street, (914) 366-4665, which specializes in lighting (a gorgeous English Regency chandelier priced at $5,200 sits in the window), or the less expensive Carol Master Antiques, 10 Main Street, (914) 332-8441.

4 P.M. Snack time. Coffee Labs Roasters, 7 Main Street, (914) 332-1479, a cozy spot with a huge coffee roaster in its center, offers an array of coffees, teas, smoothies and pastries. The place usually has a couple of dogs lying around; it offers free dog biscuits. Humans can sample the homemade Mallomar-style cookies in mocha, raspberry and other flavors ($2.15). Children in tow? Try Main Street Sweets, 35 Main Street, (914) 332-5757, for its homemade ice cream. The shop always has seasonal offerings — and an apt choice these days is its pumpkin ice cream ($2.95). Once fortified, walk down the long, steep hill of Main Street, which takes you back to the Tarrytown train station.

More Than Just Loaves and Fishes

By KATE STONE LOMBARDI
Published: April 10, 2009
HARTSDALE

ARE you welcoming home a prodigal son and not quite sure what to prepare for dinner? Or perhaps you have an angry army to appease and believe making an elaborate feast might just do the trick. Well, the Rev. Dr. Rayner W. Hesse Jr. and Anthony F. Chiffolo have just the cookbook for you.

The two Hartsdale residents have written “Cooking With the Bible” (Greenwood Press), which is inspired by meals described in the Bible. It is newly released in paperback and filled with 200 recipes put together as 18 meals — 13 from the Old Testament and 5 from the New.

For the profligate young man returning after his travels (see Luke 15:11-32), there are veal kebabs and honey-baked goat with mint sauce. As for the feast — based on what Abigail cooked for King David and his troops, after her husband, Nabal, had insulted him (I Samuel 25:14-25) — the offerings might include sautéed lamb with walnuts and pomegranate juice, along with baked sheep’s milk cheese and fresh dates.

Dr. Hesse, the pastor at St. John’s Episcopal Church in New Rochelle, and Mr. Chiffolo, the editorial director of Praeger Publishers, a Connecticut publishing house, share an interest in religious studies as well as a passion for home cooking, which seemed to dovetail naturally into a Bible-based cookbook.

But making sense out of 1,000 years of cooking turned out to be no small task. While the Bible is filled with passages that depict meals and hospitality, there is only one recipe in all of its verses: for bread made by the priest Ezekiel, and you will not find the recipe in the cookbook.

“It’s made from dung,” Dr. Hesse said. “Ezekiel bread is something you never want to eat.”

But there are plenty of things in the cookbook you would want to eat. “Cooking With the Bible” reads for the most part like a Middle Eastern cookbook, with a lot of lamb dishes and many recipes that feature tomatoes and eggplant. For every oddball item — locust soup, anyone? — there are many appetizing dishes like rosemary pita bread, artichokes in lemon sauce and lamb with figs and red wine.

To recreate the meals described in biblical passages, the authors studied the texts, scoured books, searched the Internet and visited local Middle Eastern grocers to query them about spices and cooking methods. Then they played around a little. So when the Bible mentions that Abigail took raisin cakes to David’s troops, Dr. Hesse and Mr. Chiffolo developed a recipe for raisin cake, and then suggest in the book that it be served with whipped cream or vanilla butter cream frosting. Did they really prepare butter cream frosting back then?

“It’s nice to have an historical cookbook, but if it’s not going to taste good, what’s the point?” Dr. Hesse said.

Nor is there a call to stay faithful to biblical cooking methods — you don’t have to dig an open pit in the backyard to prepare the meals. The recipes have been adapted to assume that the modern cook uses a stove, a blender — even a microwave.

The book also has essays describing the religious and cultural significance of the referenced biblical passages. The authors studied many versions of the Bible, and — as far as food goes — they are convinced that certain words got confused in translation. They say they believe that John the Baptist did not dine on “locusts and wild field honey,” as the King James version insists, but on carob and honey. This, they suggest, might explain why John the Baptist was such a wild man.

“If he was eating wild carob and honey, he was probably on a sugar high all the time,” Dr. Hesse said. “That makes much more sense.”

For that matter, it was unlikely that Eve tempted Adam with an apple, Mr. Chiffolo noted. There were no apples in the Middle East then, and the tempting fruit — metaphorically or not — was more likely an apricot.

The authors did not try to recreate the Last Supper. “We don’t know what was served other than bread and wine,” Dr. Hesse said. “And we thought it was just a little too sacred.”

Initially, the authors expected the book to be of interest to church and synagogue groups, but its popularity has extended to other audiences; “Cooking With the Bible” has been translated into German, and translation rights have been sold in Korean and Chinese. Last month, a Russian TV crew traveled to Hartsdale to film the authors cooking and then dined on a meal from the book.

Dr. Hesse and Mr. Chiffolo are now back in the kitchen developing recipes for their next venture — a cookbook based on meals in the movies.

But since this is Easter, and Passover began last Wednesday evening, it seems appropriate to go straight to the biblical cookbook for inspiration. There is a complete Passover menu, including a recipe for haroset, a sweet paste made of fruit, wine and nuts, that recalls the mortar between bricks that the Egyptians forced the Israeli slaves to make. As for an Easter meal? The authors recommend Grilled Mackerel on a Stick, particularly appropriate if cooked on an open fire at a sunrise service. It’s from a Galilean Breakfast. (See John 21:1-14.)

Shrines to Childhood

By KATE STONE LOMBARDI
Published: April 2, 2009

MY son’s room has been described more than once as a shrine. The object of his homage? The New York Rangers.

We are not just talking about a few posters on the wall. Nearly every square inch trumpets Paul’s support of the team.

A huge Rangers banner that hangs from the ceiling dominates the room. In the corner is a larger-than-life cardboard cutout of Wayne Gretzky, hockey stick outstretched, waiting for a pass. The bed has not only a Rangers cover and a Rangers pillow, but also sheets with hockey pucks on them.

There are signed hockey sticks over the windows, which themselves are decorated with Rangers decals. The computer mouse pad has the team logo. There are framed, signed Rangers jerseys above the computer.

It goes without saying that the walls are covered with posters, photographs and calendars that celebrate the team. (Ticket stubs from games are kept in a separate box, memories too precious to stick on the wall.)

I think you get the picture. My son is the kind of fan whose spirits rise and fall with the performance of the team, who follows every blip of Rangers news, remains highly opinionated about the strengths and weaknesses of each player, and who sounds to me at this point as if he’s ready to step up to the coach’s job, in the event that the latest one doesn’t work out.

This room didn’t come together overnight, of course. The memorabilia was collected from the time he was an early fan — back in his elementary school days — until now. Today he is a college sophomore. He still lives and breathes hockey. But he doesn’t really live in that room anymore.

I am careful about going in there while he’s at school, because it makes me miss him too much. Just standing in the doorway sets me back. That’s because to me this room is more than a monument to a hockey team. It’s really a shrine to the little boy who grew up there.

Paul was placed in a crib as a newborn in that room. He spent endless hours of his childhood in there, playing with his Matchbox cars, painstakingly organizing his hockey cards, reading and, as he got older, studying, cramming for SATs, logging hours on Facebook with his friends and, finally, packing for college.

When I look past all the Rangers stuff, I can still see remnants of other parts of Paul’s childhood. High up on a shelf is the stuffed penguin he once slept with. There are a few little cars on the shelf — and of course, a few mini-Zambonis. There are class pictures from elementary school, team pictures from high school, soccer trophies and a program from a jazz concert he played in.

Recently, I spotted a brochure about a college study-abroad program — he hopes to spend a semester in Spain next year. There was also a pile of clothes he had outgrown. As it is, he can barely fit his long frame in that childhood bed.

This, I know, is a room in transition. His sister’s room is just down the hall, and farther along in the process of transforming from a child’s room to the room of someone who once lived there.

Jeanie graduated from college two years ago. Her room, too, mirrors the girl she once was. The canopied bed still has a Laura Ashley spread, and there are matching curtains on the windows. But there is also a Zebra-patterned throw that appealed to her in middle school. At one point she balked at her pink walls and carpets — now the carpet is a moss green and the walls a sky blue. It feels as if you are outside and it also feels very much like a reflection of Jeanie’s spirit.

Photos of laughing groups of friends are tacked on the wall, spread on the bureau and tucked into the corners of her mirror. There are half-melted candles and countless hair accessories. The shelves and the desk are crammed with dozens of books, ranging from childhood favorites to Michel Foucault’s “Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth,” with plenty of trashy novels and great literature in between.

But things are also starting to disappear from that room. A lamp went to her apartment in the city. So did some sheets and blankets. And a small painting that used to hang on her wall. And some framed photos. It’s still my daughter’s room, but as she settles more deeply into her independent life, her essence gets more and more stripped out of those four walls.

I would be lying to say that I miss the disorder — the scattered papers, the piles of clothes, the dirty tea mugs — that were also very much a part of Jeanie’s occupancy. But I do miss the girl who lived there.

On a recent college vacation, Paul brought a friend home, and as they entered his room, it seemed like the Rangers shrine had for the first time become slightly embarrassing. “It’s sort of a little boy’s room,” he said with a small smile.

Paul will probably always root for the team and follow its fortunes. In the years to come, he will see great players rise and fall, playoffs come and go, and coaches hired and fired. And if all the stars align, he will see the Rangers bring home another Stanley Cup, something that will bring him enormous joy no matter what age he’ll be. But the little-boy adoration that was reflected in his room has already been replaced with a more nuanced understanding of professional sports.

I suspect, over time, his monument to the hockey team will slowly be dismantled. A poster here. A signed photograph there. I doubt that the Rangers bedspread will make the move to an adult apartment, though you never know. If it doesn’t, I doubt I will ever remove it.

A Covenant to Do More Than Coexist

                                                                                                    Alan Zale for The New York Times
David Juhren, executive director of the Loft, left, with the Rev. Joe Agne of Memorial United Methodist Church.

By KATE STONE LOMBARDI
Published: April 2, 2009
WHITE PLAINS

WHEN David Juhren gives directions to the new headquarters of the Loft, the region’s well-known community center for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people, he says, “Look for the rainbow flag out front.” Then Mr. Juhren, the Loft’s executive director, likes to add, “And it’s not ours — it’s the church’s.”

The rainbow flag, known as a symbol of diversity and inclusiveness, has been flying in front of the Memorial Methodist Church here for many years, long before the Loft moved onto the church campus in January from a higher-priced site downtown. To the Rev. Joe Agne, pastor of Memorial Methodist, welcoming the group is a natural extension of the hospitality his congregation offers to people who have been shunned by the parent church. To Mr. Juhren, the center’s new home represents an opportunity to reach out to a faith-based organization.

They’re calling the relationship a covenant. To be sure, the Loft has a lease and pays rent. But the arrangement goes beyond a financial agreement. The Loft and the church have promised to “commit to mutual hospitality, respect and support of each other’s missions” and to work toward “inclusiveness of our shared communities.”

If it all sounds warm and cozy, keep in mind that the 8.2 million-member United Methodist Church prohibits same-sex marriage and the ordination of gay clergy members and holds that same-sex relationships are “incompatible with Christian tradition.”

As in most mainstream Protestant denominations, the larger membership is deeply divided over these issues.

Mr. Agne has been arrested twice for protesting what he saw as homophobic policies at a General Assembly meeting of the United Methodist Church. He has long advocated the inclusion of gays and lesbians in Christian life. Last month, Memorial Methodist introduced Rainbow Vespers, a service specifically designed to be welcoming to gays and lesbians and their families.

“The Bible has been used as a weapon to exclude every targetable population in history,” Mr. Agne said. “What we look for in the church is the heart of the message in scripture. And from my perspective, the heart is that wherever Jesus was, he looked around to see who was the most marginalized person, and he said, ‘I am with that person.’ ”

(Mr. Juhren described himself as “a person of faith,” and he has also studied the scripture. “The Bible has been translated twice already, and there’s a lot lost there,” he said. “In its current translation, it’s an abomination for two men to sleep together, but it’s also an abomination to go down to the Red Lobster and order a shrimp cocktail.”)

The United Methodist Church has not protested the arrangement with the Loft. “It’s really a matter of renting space, and we’re pretty open in terms of hospitality,” said the Rev. Noel Chin, superintendent of the Metropolitan District of the New York Conference of the United Methodist Church. “We look at it in that vein; it represents the church’s intention to reach out.”

Mr. Agne said that some members of the congregation might be skeptical, but “we decided somewhere along the line that our niche as a congregation is to be welcoming and inviting to those who have rejected the church for understandable reasons.”

Some members of the Loft’s board of directors were concerned about the move to the church campus, Mr. Juhren said. Many members of the Loft have been hurt by their own denominations. In a church service to welcome the Loft, the Rev. Sara Thompson Tweedy, a staff member of the church who is leading the Rainbow Vespers, voiced their anxieties rhetorically: “Why are you seeking refuge in the lion’s den of a homophobic institution that is the United Methodist Church?”

Mr. Juhren said that the Loft wasn’t looking at the Methodist church in its entirety, but rather at this specific church, where the group’s members knew they would be welcome.

“One of the things that the L.G.B.T. community understands is that if we are going to get anywhere on gaining our equal rights, gaining marriage equality, on further acceptance of us, we know we have to reach out to the faith-based organizations,” Mr. Juhren said. “Many of us are individuals who were raised in churches and who early on were given a faith, and that faith sometimes has to be so strong to weather the spears and arrows of the hostility that are often thrown our way.”

The Loft, he stressed, is not “a gay club,” but an advocacy and community service organization, financed by state and federal grants.

One program, for instance, provides support to gay senior citizens, who often do not have children to help to care for them, and who do not receive benefits when their long-term partners die. The new space has meeting rooms, a lounge with a large TV, a library and cyber-center, room for the Loft’s help line and administrative offices.

The space was most recently occupied as a day care center for people with Alzheimer’s disease. Before that, it had been used as the regional offices of the United Methodist Church. Mr. Juhren’s office, which is flooded with natural light, was once the office of the United Methodist bishop of New York.

“For the Loft to trust enough to come to the campus of Memorial, that was an incredible witness to us,” Mr. Agne said. “It’s not lost on us that we’re part of a bigger system that has got some real problems. This was a risky move on the Loft’s part and a real testament to the people of this congregation.”

For Young Inmates, Judgment's The Theme

By KATE STONE LOMBARDI
Published: March 20, 2009

PLEASANTVILLE
THE images in the movie trailer come fast and furious. Orange prison garb. Tight shots of young men’s faces — some expressions blank, some guarded, some defiant. A strongly built inmate, standing, fists clenched. A close-up of a tattoo.

“So you want to know what you get when you leave nine inmates in a room with a camera?” asked Stefano DeMicheli. “Hold your judgment.”

“Judgement” is the name of a new movie created by nine inmates at the Westchester County Jail in Valhalla. It is also a complicated subject for these young men, ages 16 to 21, who are part of the Incarcerated Youth Program. Certainly it was a judgment that landed them in jail — a decision made at a point in their young lives that led to their incarceration. And another judgment was made upon each of them, literally, in their conviction and sentencing.

But there are judgments of a different kind, too. The young men in the movie worry about how they will be judged by the movie’s audience.

“Will they understand?” asks one in the film.

“Will they just see wild kids who are trying to get rehabilitated?” asks another.

“How can you make a judgment when you haven’t lived my life?” asks a third.

The movie was made through a pilot program that the Jacob Burns Film Center here offered at the jail in partnership with the county’s Department of Correction. (It was financed by a private grant.) Two staff members from the film center went into the jail to present the digital media class that they have also offered to dozens of high schools in the area. The goal is to teach students how to use video cameras and editing equipment, with the larger intention of what the film center calls visual literacy.

This time, of course, the film teachers were working under unusual constraints. For starters, the entire production had to remain inside the jail classroom.

“Your challenge is to make a film, and you can’t leave the room,” said Mike Kraus, a professionally trained video journalist who was one of the teachers. “You hope these people are going to be excellent talkers.”

Mr. Kraus said he had his own prejudgments about the project. He doubted that young men in that age group would have much to say. He made assumptions about the kind of movie they would want to make, too.

“I thought it would be some kind of rap film or cop chase,” he said. “We got it totally wrong.”

On the first day of class in September, the inmates expressed their own concerns. One suggested that they jettison their prison uniforms for street clothes. “If we’re in jail and we’re in orange jumpsuits, people in Pleasantville are going to judge us,” he said.

Another student saw it differently. He brought up the idea of exposing prejudgments — their own and others’. And so the young men decided to turn the cameras on themselves and explore this very subject. The 18-minute film took about 20 hours over 12 weeks to make. In it, the inmates also grapple with the type of judgment they hope to show in the future.

“I’ve been coming here every year since I was 16,” said one inmate. “You see old people in here. I don’t want to be like them.”

A second said, “When you’re alone in that cell, you do a whole lot of thinking.”

Another said, “There’s not going to be a Part 2 of this movie with me in it.”

The movie had its premiere before a packed house at the film center this month. Two of the inmates in it, Dekwan Clark, 20, and Mr. DeMicheli, 21, have since been released from jail and attended the screening. Two others watched the proceedings from inside the jail, by live video feed. Others in the movie have been transferred to other jails. (County officials would not disclose the charges against the inmates.)

“This is history in the making,” Mr. Clark said, looking around at the audience. Sporting a leather jacket and Yankees cap, he said he was now working, writing poetry and taking technology classes. Mr. DeMicheli said that he was not interested in pursuing film— he is doing drywall construction — but said he enjoyed the experience. “I just hope from the movie people just get a better understanding of who we are.”

County Executive Andrew J. Spano and other county officials also came to see the film, as did teachers and staff members from the jail. Mr. Spano said that the county was committed to education inside the jail and that the jail had the highest high school equivalency pass rate of any county jail in the state. He also said that the film program would continue.

Stephen Apkon, the executive director of the film center, emphasized that the film project was not “an extra” but a vital part of learning.

“The bar between the have and the have-nots has always been about literacy,” he said.

“Judgement” ends with a cameo from each inmate, explaining a little about himself. Jeffrey Lightfoot talks about wanting to be a physical therapist.

Nico Perry discusses his love of astronomy. “I’m probably not all that different from you,” he says.

And after Rory Rohan finishes his clip, he takes off his orange top and tosses it at the camera. “One more thing,” he says. “Don’t judge me by this.”

At Manhattanville, A President Prepares For His Next Move

By KATE STONE LOMBARDI
Published: February 12, 2009
PURCHASE

Susan Farley for The New York Times
LEARNING EXPERIENCE In 14 years on the job, Richard Berman, who is leaving as Manhattanville’s president, has seen the college enjoy a resurgence.

RICHARD BERMAN never planned on a career in higher education. But 14 years ago, when he headed the search committee to find a new president for Manhattanville College, he faced a problem. No one wanted the job.

Prospective candidates looked at an institution that had dwindling enrollment, deteriorating buildings, a small operating budget and an endowment of less than $1 million and was in default on its loans. Some predicted that the college would have to close its doors in 18 months.

To the surprise of many, including himself, Mr. Berman left his position as president and chief executive of an executive search and management consulting firm and stepped into the job at Manhattanville. Now, as he gets ready to step down from the presidency at the end of the school year, he is widely credited with turning the college around.

Its finances are stable, and the endowment has grown to $21.3 million. Enrollment has nearly tripled, to 1,700 undergraduates and 1,200 graduate students, and the college’s profile has been raised locally and nationally. Manhattanville has climbed into the Princeton Review’s 2009 rankings of best colleges and is known for its global reach — it attracts students from all over the world.

Still, Mr. Berman’s tenure has not been without controversy. There has been faculty resistance on issues ranging from abolishing assigned parking spaces to introducing new athletic teams. Last year, the faculty delivered a “no confidence” vote after he fired a popular administrator who worked in student affairs. The trustees backed Mr. Berman, but the incident, he said, influenced his decision to move on.

“It’s obviously more fun to come to work when everyone is pleased with what you’re doing,” he said. “But if everybody is pleased with you, you’re probably not pushing the envelope hard enough.”

As he sat in his office, which is decorated with hockey jerseys, plaques and trophies, Mr. Berman, 64, said he was proud of his tenure and believed his vision of a college that creates self-confident students with a global vision and a sense of community purpose had been largely realized.

One of his missions was to transform the college from an isolated suburban campus into a vibrant part of the wider community. Mr. Berman noted that 500 students performed more than 30,000 hours of community service last year.

Manhattanville is now home to the Westchester Holocaust and Human Rights Education Center. Every year, the campus hosts Westchester’s breast cancer walk and autism walk. My Soldier, a pen pal program that seeks to lift soldiers’ spirits with letters and packages, was started at Manhattanville by a student who had been deployed to Iraq during his sophomore year; it now has more than 400,000 volunteers.

The college sometimes feels a bit like the United Nations; a trip to the cafeteria reveals a babble of languages. Thirteen percent of the students are international, and 14 percent identify themselves as Hispanic. Currently, 15 students from the Seeds of Peace program, which focuses on educating children from war-torn areas, are studying on campus. They represent, among other places, the West Bank, Israel, Jordan, Egypt, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

In addition to attracting a more diverse student body, Mr. Berman had hoped to build the representation of another group on campus — men — in part by reinvigorating Manhattanville’s sports program. That included starting a hockey program.

Though that goal was less successful — 33 percent of the students at the former women’s college, which became coeducational in 1969, are male — Mr. Berman said he is pleased with the overall outcome. On average, he said, athletes have higher grade point averages, higher retention rates and greater community service participation than students who do not participate in sports.

As for the hockey program, both the men’s and the women’s teams have been consistently ranked in the top 10 of Division III.

Mr. Berman has also taken a special interest in Manhattanville’s Graduate School of Education, which developed a “jump start” program to help people interested in second careers become certified to teach more quickly than traditional programs do. The college has also established formal relationships with public schools around Westchester, providing faculty development, helping to prepare teacher candidates and working to improve classroom instruction. There is a special focus on districts with large Latino populations.

“Our relationship with Manhattanville has really evolved over the years,” said Eileen Santiago, principal of the Edison School in Port Chester, where 84 percent of students are Hispanic and 10 percent are African-American. “The college has taken a significant leadership role, and it’s because President Berman really understands the value of partnership and community.”

Mr. Berman, who lives on campus and eats his meals in the cafeteria (“I don’t cook,” he said), says he has no specific plans for what he will do next. Before his job at Manhattanville, he worked in the business world and in government. He says he hopes his next position will have a global focus and involve “fixing something.”

“I don’t have a house, I don’t have a wife and I don’t have a dog,” he said. “I’m free to go anywhere and do anything, and I’m trying to explore all the options.”

Bald Eagles Turning Heads at Festival of Fans

ALOFT A bald eagle flying over the Croton-Jarmon boat launch.

By KATE STONE LOMBARDI
Published: February 12, 2009
CROTON-ON-HUDSON

IT looked as if paparazzi had descended on the Croton Dam Bridge. Clusters of photographers with tripods and telephoto lenses conferred excitedly when they got the subject in their sights. Dozens of others had binoculars and telescopes trained on their elusive prey.

The celebrities they were pursuing? Bald eagles, which were spotted on the ice of the partly frozen Hudson River and nestling in trees on the shoreline. It was all part of Eagle Fest, an event that has been held annually for the last five years to celebrate the return of the bald eagle to the lower Hudson Valley.

“It’s such a success story, we wanted to share it with the public,” said Fred W. Koontz, the executive director of Teatown Lake Reservation, an Ossining-based nonprofit environmental organization — with an 834-acre nature preserve — and a co-sponsor of the event. “The bald eagles in the area are recovering, and they have been coming back.”

Bald eagles, among the largest birds of prey in North America, were once plentiful in New York. Before the 1900s, they used as many as 80 nesting sites, primarily in northern and western New York, according to the State Department of Environmental Conservation. But by 1976, only one pair of eaglets remained. Environmentalists blamed pesticides, particularly DDT (which was banned in 1972), for interfering with the raptors’ ability to reproduce.

In 1976, the state began its Bald Eagle Restoration Project in an attempt to re-establish a breeding population. Over 13 years, 198 nesting bald eagles were collected, mostly from Alaska, and taken to New York. They were reared in cages in towers in the mid-Hudson region and released.

Today, roughly 500 bald eagles winter in New York (they migrate here when the waters begin to freeze in Canada and Nova Scotia), and 143 pairs remain in the state during the summer. Dr. Koontz said that eight pairs had stayed year-round in the lower Hudson Valley.

The Eagle Fest, which was held on Feb. 9 and based at Croton Point Park, included heated tents with educational displays and talks by conservationists. But the wild eagles were the main event, and a white board kept visitors up to date on the latest sightings.

At 9 a.m., 6 bald eagles had been spotted from the boat ramp at the Croton-Harmon train station, 21 had been seen at George’s Island Park in Montrose, 9 had been spotted at the Croton Dam and 3 had been seen at Annsville Creek Paddlesport Center in Peekskill.

By 11 a.m., 25 eagles had been spotted at the dam, some of them feeding on a deer carcass on the partly frozen Hudson. Meanwhile, a peregrine falcon was perched on a street lamp at the train station.

Still more eagles could be seen from the shoreline of Croton Point Park. Frank and Patty Clark of Tarrytown saw two bald eagles flying about two miles out, over the Hudson. The Clarks were at the festival with their 3-year-old son, Frankie. All three had binoculars around their necks.

“I’ve never seen an eagle in the wild before,” Mr. Clark said. “It was exciting. They were both bald eagles. One was mature and one was immature.”

Mature bald eagles have the distinctive white heads and tails; the word “bald” in the eagle’s name comes from an Old English word that means white-headed. Younger bald eagles have brown heads.

Among the presentations at the festival was “Close Encounters With Birds of Prey,” a kind of Raptors 101 given by Bill Streeter of the Delaware Valley Raptor Center.

Mr. Streeter explained that the term raptor refers to any birds of prey — including hawks, vultures, falcons, owls and eagles. Raptors have hooked beaks, strong talons and feet that are disproportionately large for their bodies. The center where Mr. Streeter works treats sick and injured raptors. Most are set free when they have recovered, but some could not survive if released into the wild.

It was some of these birds that Mr. Streeter introduced as they perched on his falconer’s glove, including Ace, a peregrine falcon that had been hit by a car. Falcons, when healthy, can fly at 200 miles per hour and can kill birds four times their size, Mr. Streeter told his audience. Peregrine falcons are now nesting on Hudson River bridges from Manhattan to Albany.

Mr. Streeter also displayed a red-tailed hawk, a great horned owl and a saw-whet owl, but it was when he lifted Benson, a bald eagle, from his cage, that the audience let out a gasp of admiration.

Benson, though unable to fly because he had once been shot in the chest, still looked majestic. He was restless, and Mr. Streeter struggled to keep him perched on the glove.

He also displayed Julia, a 14-pound golden eagle, with 3 ½-inch talons and a 7-foot wingspan, “one of the most powerful birds in the United States.”

Festival visitors — some 4,000 by the end of the day — made their way from the heated tents to the various viewing sights. Dan and Carol Carhart of Denville, N.J., came to the festival on a bus tour. Self-proclaimed bird lovers, they have seen eagles all over the country.

Steve Brown of Manhattan came because his son Matthew, 7, had been studying birds in the first grade.

“We’ve taken up birding this year,” Mr. Brown said. “I knew eagles were on the Hudson, but I didn’t know they were this far south. We’re trying to get out and learn as much as we can.”

Hector DeLeon of Cortlandt Manor attended the raptor show and then made his way up to the Croton Dam. He was sporting a baseball cap with an eagle insignia and a sweatshirt with an image of a large bald eagle.

“I just really do like eagles,” he said. “They’re our national bird. They fly into a storm. They represent something."

From Grandpa, Missives Treasured Through Time

By KATE STONE LOMBARDI
Published: January 30, 2009

A FEW weeks ago I was sorting through a box of old papers and came across a group of letters from my late grandfather. Grandpa Bill, who lived in Texas, was a faithful correspondent. The letters, dozens of them, are almost all typewritten on a thin, delicate onionskin paper. Sometimes he wrote to all four of his grandchildren at once, making copies by sticking shiny sheets of carbon paper between each piece of stationery. How old-fashioned it seems today.

The letters were affectionate and newsy and would update us on my grandparents’ health and travels, which rarely took them farther than the Texas hill country, about an hour from their home in Austin. I have only one handwritten epistle from my grandfather, and it begins with this: “Ordinarily I would use a typewriter for legibility if for nothing else, but Grandmother Lawson is asleep and the clatter of the typewriter would disturb her. I don’t like to do that as she needs all the rest she can get.”

Even in mundane descriptions, my Grandpa Bill’s manner of speaking came through on the page. “The weather down here right now is awful,” he wrote one July. “It is Texas-hot. And I’ve heard it said that is hotter than the hinges of hell.” Or this, when he heard I had broken a bone: “I know a lot of sorry old people that I would not care a whit if they broke their arms, but you are certainly not in that class nor one of them.”

I don’t know if he meant to make me laugh with this line of comfort, but he did, because it sounded so much like his irreverent self. Or there was this, after a lengthy description of someone he was worried about: “If I were a religious man I would pray for him. But I’m not.”

When I got married in New York, my grandparents were not well enough to travel to our wedding. But I so wanted my new husband to meet them that not long after returning from our honeymoon, we traveled to Texas to see them. Austin in August, while it might not be quite “the hinges of hell” that my grandfather described, was not for the faint-hearted. It was unbearably humid, yet my husband insisted on wearing a tie and jacket on the plane ride down. He wanted to make a good impression. And sure enough, there was my grandpa at the gate, himself in a suit and tie, but with the addition of a Stetson. He shook my husband’s hand vigorously, announcing, “I like the look of you, boy!”

There were moments on that trip when I thought we would have the shortest marriage on record, and I am referring specifically to those times when my grandfather was driving us around Texas to show us the countryside. He was about 84 then, and his vision and reflexes had deteriorated considerably. Once, when we were careening down the highway, he commented randomly, “I love those red cars,” and after a pause added, “ ’cause you can see them.” After that, either my husband or I would pipe up: “Look, Grandpa! A blue car!” or “Here comes a green one!”

Sometimes my grandfather would veer off the highway completely, bumping his big sedan along the shoulder, all the while swearing about how they just didn’t maintain the roads like they used to. Once he got us on some bumpy dirt road that had multiple warning signs that we were trespassing on private property and to turn back. “I love these old country roads,” he pronounced serenely. “You never see another car on them.”

My grandmother wasn’t well enough (or in retrospect perhaps she was too wise) to accompany us on these car trips, but she did rally for Mexican food at night. We had long talks on their front porch in the evenings. At the end of our visit, my grandfather pulled me aside to tell me he very much approved of my “young man,” even if he was a Washington Redskins fan — although he found that somewhat excusable. “The boy doesn’t know any better,” I remember him saying. “He was raised that way. It’s his people.”

That was the last time I saw my grandfather. My husband and I returned to New York, and we were soon busy with our jobs and then with starting a family.

But the letters back and forth continued. Grandpa Bill was thrilled to hear I was expecting a baby, though nervous. “When it comes to my family, I am a regular worrywart and I am never at ease until I hear everything is well,” he wrote. He was thrilled to hear all went well with the birth and especially delighted that I gave my daughter the middle name of Lawson, which was his surname.

The very last letter I got from him contained a message for her. “Since we do not get to see that beautiful, precious little Jeanie I can assure you we nearly eat pictures of her on sight,” he wrote. “Some of these years after Jeanie is old enough to understand, please assure her she had two great-grandparents who adored her, even as they love and treasure her parents today.”

My grandfather died when my daughter was 2 months old. Because I only recently found the trove of letters, I delivered his message some 23 years later. Both my daughter and I cried. How grateful I am that he and I corresponded before the Internet was invented. Had we written e-mail messages, they would be gone, ephemeral things, lost in cyberspace. Instead, I have these old-fashioned letters — fading and delicate on their thin parchment but oh such a solid piece of my grandfather.

Girl Scouts Volunteer, Helping Young Patients

By KATE STONE LOMBARDI
Published: January 16, 2009
VALHALLA

THE little boy was strapped into a wheelchair, with a helmet on his head and a tube taped to his throat. Tiana Shippa, 12, was patiently helping him string beads onto a pipe cleaner. Mackenzie Kelly, 12, sat nearby playing with another child, also in a wheelchair. This boy’s hands were bandaged, and his body was covered with burns.

The boys had each suffered traumatic injury. One had been in a car accident; the other had survived a fire. They are patients at Blythedale Children’s Hospital, which serves children with complex medical and rehabilitative needs. Both girls, volunteers from Girl Scout Troop 2746 in Chappaqua, seemed oblivious to the boys’ injuries.

“When I first came here, I was not knowing what to expect, but after five minutes you realize they’re kids just like you,” Mackenzie said. “It’s no different than talking to your best friend.”

Julia Desmarais, 12, who was making paper snowflakes with an 8-year-old girl who had a feeding tube in her throat, said of the medical equipment, “After you work a little bit with the kids, you just don’t see it anymore.”

The troop has been visiting Blythedale Children’s Hospital here for eight years. What began as a modest effort — as 5-year-old Daisy Scouts they planted flowers on the grounds — has expanded into a commitment not only to volunteer at the hospital, but also to promote understanding about people living with disabilities.

The girls in the troop have designed their own badge, called Challenges to Opportunities. It is meant to help Girl Scouts understand physical and mental disabilities — what they are, how they happen and how they can be overcome. The idea is to demystify disabilities and to promote understanding that people living with such challenges are not very different from themselves, with their own hopes, triumphs and disappointments.

Among the badge’s requirements: Girls are asked to try activities that will help them imagine what it feels like to have difficulty performing everyday tasks. For instance, they may wear a blindfold and try to walk, button a sweater, tie shoes or count change.

SCOUTS are also asked to research disabilities and to talk to someone living with a physical or mental challenge about their lives.

And they are encouraged to volunteer. Some of the girls remember the first few times they visited the hospital.

“I remember being outside and seeing a boy waving from the window and we all waved back,” said Emily Simon, 12. “I was scared at the beginning, but I was just in first grade and I really didn’t know as much. Now it’s just not a big deal.”

As the girls got older, their activities expanded. Eventually, troop leaders and hospital administrators judged that they were ready to work with patients. Over time they began playing with toddlers and doing craft projects with older children. Last year, they began a Reading Buddies project at Blythedale, meeting once a month with preschoolers to read stories and do craft projects with them.

“We started with small steps,” said Lena Cavanna, director of community relations at the hospital. “We met with them several times. We would tell them about our kids, show them pictures of the equipment, have them experience walkers, wheelchairs and canes.”

The girls also decorated hospital rooms for the holidays, hosted a Valentine’s Day party, made fleece blankets for infants and held a fund-raiser to buy a Nintendo Wii system for older children in the hospital.

When they became junior scouts in the fourth grade, the troop decided to work toward their Bronze Award. They wanted to continue their commitment to Blythedale but soon discovered that there were no badges related to people living with disabilities.

“To the girls, it seemed like a shocking omission, and they said, ‘Why don’t we make our own badge?’ ” said Laura Desmarais, a troop leader and Julia’s mother.

The troop decided the badge should focus not only on raising sensitivity for the challenges disabled people face, but also on learning what people who work in the field do. The local council, Girl Scouts Heart of the Hudson, approved the badge, and the girls earned it.

But then the council had a request for Troop 2746. Could its members put together a workshop that would allow other girls to earn the badge? The troop worked with Blythedale, and the hospital has now hosted two half-day workshops for Girl Scouts throughout Westchester and Putnam Counties.

At the workshops, girls were able to meet with occupational, speech and physical therapists. They worked with therapeutic equipment. They tried walking blindfolded, using canes. The girls also attended talks on subjects like injury prevention, where therapists talked about the fragility of the brain and emphasized the importance of wearing helmets when bike riding. More than 100 girls attended the last conference on Nov. 4, with a waiting list of 15 Scouts. Another workshop is planned for the spring.

The Chappaqua troop, meanwhile, is working on expanding the badge for older girls, which they hope to have included in the national handbook. Blythedale administrators described the Girl Scouts’ involvement as a “win-win” situation.

“We can provide our children with all the therapy, all the medicines, but these girls provide something else,” Ms. Cavanna said. “Being with other children from the community, where they will eventually return, gives our children a chance to be comfortable.”

The girls in the troop are in middle school now, an age at which the slightest difference can be fodder for cruel teasing. But these 12-year-olds seem to be gaining more than a badge from their hospital work.

“Kids who have problems are just like us on the inside,” said Kate Hawthorne, 12. “We’re just a lot more fortunate.”

Volunteer at Sing Sing Makes A Difference For Visitors

HELPFUL Marion Farrell, who runs the Ossining Prison Ministry.

 

By KATE STONE LOMBARDI
Published: December 23, 2008
Ossining

THE trailer where visitors are processed at the Sing Sing Correctional Facility can be a bleak and forbidding place. Family members who come to visit inmates wait on long wooden benches that line the peeling linoleum floors. Large metal signs on the walls warn visitors that an electronic drug detection system may be in use; others caution that those wearing inappropriate clothing will be turned away. Prison guards stand behind a large barrier, checking forms and deciding whether visitors may proceed to the next security screening.

In the midst of all this dreariness is a tiny island of pleasantness. Marion Farrell, who has been volunteering at Sing Sing for more than 25 years, stands beside a small table covered with a blue tablecloth decorated with a design of daisies. On the table is some basic breakfast food — coffee, tea, hot chocolate, juice, cereal and muffins. A sign in both English and Spanish announces that breakfast is free, courtesy of the Ossining Prison Ministry.

To understand why something as simple as a free breakfast is a big deal under these circumstances, you need to think about what the visitors have probably gone through to get this far, said Ms. Farrell, the executive director of the prison ministry.

Many inmates come from some of the poorest communities in New York City. To visit them, their families often must walk to a bus stop, take a bus to a subway stop, the subway to the train station, the train to Ossining and then a taxi to the prison. Many mothers are lugging babies, toddlers and packages. They might leave their apartments at dawn and still be going through processing hours later.

“It’s a hard, frustrating time,” Ms. Farrell said. “People try to get there by 8 a.m. — that’s when they open the processing trailer — and they can only visit until 2:30 p.m.”

Once visitors finally get their turn at the processing desk, guards check first to see if the inmate is still at the prison. Ms. Farrell has witnessed women who made the trek only to discover that their husbands or fathers had been transferred to another prison. Children’s birth certificates are checked, adults must present identification, and all metal objects — rings, watches, keys — must be put in a small box.

If a guard decides that an outfit is too revealing — mostly a problem in the summer — the visitor will be denied entrance. Spaghetti straps, low necklines, exposed midriffs, shorts, short skirts, and skirts with slits are all against the rules. Here again, Ms. Farrell saw a need and stepped in to meet it. Next to the cabinet where she stores the breakfast food, Ms. Farrell keeps several boxes of clothing. Sweatshirts, long skirts and baggy pants in various sizes are available to be worn into the prison.

Not everyone is thrilled with the selection. Many women have made an effort to look as attractive as they can for the visit, and when shown the shapeless items to wear over their own clothes, some can be rude. Ms. Farrell said she had learned to “roll with it.”

“To be told, ‘I’m sorry, you can’t come in,’ some are reduced to tears,” Ms. Farrell said. “Some find it more than they can handle. They’re already frustrated and nervous, especially if it’s the first time and they don’t know what to expect. It helps just to have somebody friendly there.”

Ms. Farrell may not seem like someone who has logged countless hours inside the maximum-security prison and who counts several inmates among her good friends. White-haired, and clad in black sweat pants and a sweatshirt, at 74 she gives off the air of a kindly but no-nonsense, highly competent grandmother. She began volunteering in the prison in 1982, through the First Presbyterian Church in Ossining as the church began a Bible study with the inmates. Over time, the men in the group were asked if there was anything else that the church volunteers might to do help. The inmates’ answer: help our families.

The breakfast program and the clothing distribution grew from that suggestion. In 1992, the Ossining Prison Ministry became incorporated as an ecumenical nonprofit group.

Ms. Farrell runs another program as well. Once inside the visiting room, family members, including small children, must sit at tables with the inmate. The prison ministry keeps three large chests containing toys, games and puzzles there. Children may choose something and take it to the table to play with their father.

Ms. Farrell is sometimes asked why she volunteers in a maximum-security prison, a place that houses violent criminals, when there are so many other opportunities among “more deserving” people. On this subject, she has strong feelings.

“First of all, there are a lot of innocent people in there,” Ms. Farrell said. “And second, why would we penalize the families of anybody — innocent or guilty? The families should not be punished, and they should not be treated in any shape or form as something less than regular citizens.”

Charities Fear Cuts Will Wound the Needy

SUSTENANCE Volunteers pack frozen potatoes at the Food Bank for Westchester, in Millwood, which supplies pantries, shelters, soup kitchens and other programs that try to relieve hunger.

By KATE STONE LOMBARDI

TALK to people who are running nonprofit agencies in Westchester about how they are faring in this slumping economy, and the same phrase keeps coming up: “the perfect storm.”

Most of these groups — those that feed the hungry, serve children in need, provide medical care to the uninsured, protect victims of domestic violence, and more — rely on a combination of financing sources, all of which are threatened.
First, there is government money, and nonprofits’ administrators are keeping a wary eye on state and county budgets.

Next is corporate and foundation support, and with Wall Street’s troubles, many agencies say they have already received word from businesses not to expect the kind of financing they once enjoyed.

Last are individual donors, many of whom have indicated that in these leaner times, they cannot donate as generously as in the past.

Completing this gloomy picture is the growth of need at the same time financial resources are dwindling, nonprofit officials say. More people require help feeding their families. More people have lost their medical insurance. Financial stress creates more violence at home and more mental health problems in general.

“You’ve got to shrink your organization at the same time there are more people out there needing care,” said Lindsay C. Farrell, executive director of Open Door Family Medical Centers, which is based in Ossining and provides affordable medical care to the uninsured at sites around the county. “October was the busiest month we’ve ever had, and the doctors and staff are attributing it to anxiety due to the awful economy and job layoffs, which manifests itself in physical symptoms.”

Ms. Farrell said that many state grants that support Open Door’s programs have been reduced by 8 percent and that she expected further cuts. Earlier this month she got word that state funds were being reduced for a breast cancer screening program, leaving her scrambling to figure out how to handle scheduled appointments.

“Were we going to continue to do breast exams, and if someone has a suspicious lump, refer that person to a surgeon to determine whether they need a biopsy?” Ms. Farrell said. “What do we do if the patient has no money? Should we cancel the patient or tell them to bring $1,000 for a needle biopsy, which they’re probably not going to have?”

After intense lobbying by a coalition of advocates, the money for the screening program was reinstated. But potentially on the chopping block now is grant money that supports cervical cancer screenings, prenatal care and WIC, a federal nutrition program for women, infants and children. Ms. Farrell said she was particularly concerned about financing for uncompensated health care, which supports the agency’s sliding fee scale.

Amy Kohn, the executive director of the Mental Health Association of Westchester, is worried about the safety of children in foster care. The agency has a contract for roughly $900,000, now threatened by a cut of nearly half, to independently review records of children living in residential care and group homes. The agency’s charge is to make sure that all recommended services are in place and to alert the county when there is a problem.

“We read in one record that a mother is reuniting with a boyfriend and he’s coming to live in the home, and it’s being portrayed as a good thing because there’s more income and stability,” Dr. Kohn said. “Only our reviewer has read this record for a year or two and knows this guy is also a sex offender and has charges against him, and he should not be in a home with these children.”

Such catches are not uncommon, she said.

Christina Rohatynskyj, executive director of the Food Bank for Westchester, which supplies pantries, shelters, soup kitchens and other programs that alleviate hunger, said the agency, which has a $3.5 million operating budget, had deliberately shied away from relying too much on government and corporate financing because of potential fluctuation. Still, she is worried.

“We have heard from several corporations that they will not be providing in 2009 what they had last year,” she said. “They had been very generous in the past. Fortunately, the majority of our funding comes from individuals, but there’s a trickle-down effect.”

The government money the Food Bank does get is likely to be cut, she said. One state grant of nearly $1 million finances Kids Cafe, which helps provide hot nutritious meals for children after school, along with nutrition education and simple cooking skills, at six sites around the county. Meanwhile, she said that based on the number of calls the Food Bank is receiving, demand is increasing.

My Sisters’ Place, which serves victims of domestic violence, recently lost state financing for a program that provides women with legal services in Family Court. Karen Cheeks-Lomax, the executive director, is hoping to restore that money and avoid further cuts. But the outlook for her agency is worrisome.

“We’re looking at our forecast, and we’re seeing a downturn in terms of the foundation and the corporate support that we enjoyed last year,” she said.

Before the agency’s annual luncheon last month, donors said they would not be able to provide as much as they did last year, Ms. Cheeks-Lomax said. “Some gave 50 percent less and some even less than that from what they gave last year,” she said. “It’s really going to be important for us to pound the pavement.”

Directors of nonprofit agencies said they were drawing up contingency budgets in anticipation of less income. At the Westchester Children’s Association, an advocacy group based in White Plains, Cora Greenberg, the executive director, said she was preparing two budgets for next year: “The budget that we need to continue to do what we’re doing, and the budget that we need if we have to cut back 10 to 20 percent.”

Administrators said they were performing line-by-line analyses of their budgets and cutting back on everything from travel to supplies. Many are deferring capital expenditures. Most said they already run lean operations and could reduce little in terms of overhead. Executives at nonprofits said they were loath to cut programs and were hoping to avoid layoffs.

“When a not-for-profit starts laying people off, there are real ripple effects in the local economy,” Ms. Farrell said. “People get evicted. They spend less money on local businesses.”

Planning is made difficult by state budget uncertainties. Last week, legislative leaders and Gov. David A. Paterson were having trouble reaching a deal on closing the budget deficit, which will not be tackled until 2009. “My fear is when cuts do come, they will be of huge magnitude and they’ll be immediate, and that’s going to be really hard,” said Kathy Halas, executive director of the Child Care Council of Westchester.

James A. Krauskopf, director of the Center of Nonprofit Strategy and Management at Baruch College’s School of Public Affairs, is hosting a seminar for nonprofit agencies on Tuesday titled, “Capacity Building in Times of Financial Stress.” He said organizations needed to plan for what is likely to be a cumulative impact over time.

“Organizations are looking at what they can reduce without affecting their most important services,” Mr. Krauskopf said. “Executive directors are trying to deal with both their boards and their staffs to get everyone to try to develop a common approach, so that the organization comes through this as strongly as possible, but it’s a tough time.”

Agencies are also looking at revenues. Officials say they are considering more affordable events, instead of gala fund-raisers, hoping to make up for smaller donations by expanding donor lists and keeping pressure on government officials not to cut services for the poorest and most vulnerable.

In his Nov. 14 budget proposal, County Executive Andrew J. Spano kept contracts with nonprofit agencies at 2008 levels. But much government aid to nonprofits is allocated by the state and only administered by the county.

“New York State cannot cut their way out of this crisis, and I’m not going to be able to cut my way out of this crisis,” said Dr. Kohn, of the Mental Health Association. “It’s got to be about increasing revenue. We’re going to look for new ways of expanding what we do well, and we’re going to have to be smarter about capturing the dollars. Every time there’s a cut, there are real individuals getting hurt.”

10 Years On, Spanish-English Newspaper Is Bridging Worlds

ALL THE NEWS El Aguila del Hudson Valley, a bilingual newspaper, was founded by a Honduran immigrant.

 

By KATE STONE LOMBARDI
Published: November 7, 2008
White Plains

EL AGUILA DEL HUDSON VALLEY has something of a split personality. Every story in the newspaper runs twice, side by side — one version in Spanish and the other, slightly shaded, in English. It’s not only bilingual, but also biproduced. The paper’s advertising and marketing offices are in White Plains; the layout and design in Honduras. It is published in Poughkeepsie, but edited in Honduras.

Recently El Aguila celebrated its 10th anniversary, and Miguel Blanco, the associate publisher, said its success was a result of its role as a bridge between different worlds. The paper, which is free, speaks to both newly arrived Latino immigrants as well as to those who have been in this country for many years, he said.

“Most of my friends are people who are acculturated; they grew up here,” Mr. Blanco, 38, said. “That experience is completely different from the guy who just got here six months ago or even a year ago. I wanted something that was going to span the already fragmented Hispanic community.”

The articles in English also serve as a window for non-Spanish speakers into Latino concerns, Mr. Blanco said. And he noted that not every Hispanic person speaks Spanish.

While a bilingual Spanish-English newspaper may seem like a natural in an area like Westchester, where Hispanics are the fastest-growing group of immigrants, it was still a hard sell at the beginning. Norma Maximo, Mr. Blanco’s mother, started the newspaper on her kitchen table in Fishkill.

“When I decided to do the newspaper, there was nothing in the area,” said Ms. Maximo, 64, who immigrated from her native Honduras in 1965 and became a citizen in 1972. She had never worked for a newspaper; her background was in banking and she worked at the United States Treasury Department before starting the paper. “I always knew Westchester was the place, because the population there was more educated and that was where we would grow,” she said.

She moved the business to White Plains in 1999 and recruited her son, who was working as an account executive in Houston, to help run the paper. El Aguila covers politics, the economy, education, the environment, health and other general news topics. Mr. Blanco said that he did not want to separate readers from the same information that other Americans were using to make their decisions.

But there is a focus on news from Central and South America, and to a lesser extent the Caribbean. Culture and sports pages play to more Latino interests. Cultural stories recently included coverage of a Brazilian who won a children’s literature prize and an article on the Pulitzer Prize-winning author Junot Díaz, a Dominican-American writer. The sports pages include extensive soccer coverage.

“Before El Aguila came to Westchester, we had several failed attempts to establish a newspaper that addressed the needs of immigrants and Latinos in the Hudson Valley,” said Graciela Heymann, executive director of the Westchester Hispanic Coalition. “El Aguila followed and highlighted the topics that were important to Latinos, like the impact of federal legislation on their lives and local community efforts to address the needs of Latino immigrants.”

An online version (www.elaguilanews.com) was launched in 2006. (The Web version appears only in Spanish, but the front page can be translated through Google.) The print version has two editions — a lower Hudson Valley edition, with a circulation of roughly 30,000, and a mid-Hudson edition, with a circulation of 10,000. Local news and advertising are tailored to each area.

What you won’t find in El Aguila are stories about crime or sensational coverage of the Latino community.

“We’re not looking for breaking news on who robbed who,” Mr. Blanco said. “Our stories are to help those who are newly arrived navigate the system and for more established citizens to get to know more about the community.”

Westchester’s Latino population is far from homogenous, which can make producing a newspaper that appeals to a broad readership difficult. According to the 2007 American Community Survey of the Census, Westchester’s Hispanic population was 180,819, or about 19 percent of the county total. Readers differ in education, literacy, achievement and culture.

“The Mexican community is totally different from the Puerto Rican community, which is totally different from the Dominican community or the Cuban community,” said Maria Muñoz-Kantha, president of Hispanic Women Leaders of Westchester County. “Hispanic communities come in all different sizes, colors and shapes.”

Dr. Muñoz-Kantha was speaking in White Plains at the Latino Business Symposium Expo, an event that Mr. Blanco organized to celebrate the newspaper’s anniversary. He said that instead of planning the usual recognition of such a milestone — a dinner with awards given to supporters — he wanted to put together a symposium that would draw attention to the Latino consumer market. Forums addressed health, education and business.

Mr. Blanco said that the mainstream press had done a poor job covering the success of immigrants, focusing instead on negative coverage. In Westchester particularly, he said, many immigrants are fully acculturated, professionally successful and relatively untapped as consumers.

“I describe my reader as an upwardly mobile individual, not someone who is just here passing time, but someone who is trying to advance his situation,” Mr. Blanco said. “I know myself I’m always looking for opportunities to become a better newspaper executive, a better father and a better man.”

In Westchester, Economy Is The Number One Concern, But Agreement Stops There

By KATE STONE LOMBARDI
Published: October 24, 2008

DECIDED Howard Chung with his son, Marcus, at the Galleria Mall food court in White Plains, said he would vote for Senator Barack Obama.

“I thought the last debate would help me make up my mind, but I turned it off about three-quarters of the way through because there was too much bickering,” said Ms. Trumpbour, 42, who lives in Bedford and writes for her own beauty Web Site.

Ms. Trumpbour, a registered independent, remains undecided, which was unusual among about three dozen people who were interviewed recently in Mount Kisco and White Plains. Most of those interviewed said they were supporting the Democratic ticket headed by Mr. Obama. That’s not surprising in a county where 44 percent of registered voters are Democrats, 27 percent are registered Republicans and 29 percent are registered independents, unaffiliated or registered with minor parties.

But Ms. Trumpbour’s ambivalence about the candidates was typical, even among those who said they were committed to a candidate.

Ms. Trumpbour, working on her laptop at a Starbucks in Mount Kisco, said that she worried that Mr. McCain was “an extension of Bush in many ways” but that “there is something I don’t trust about Obama.” She is concerned about Mr. McCain’s age (he is 72) and believes that while Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska “sets a wonderful example, especially for girls, I really don’t think she is ready to be the vice president or to govern.”

She said she would decide after immersing herself in Time magazine and other publications. Ms. Trumpbour said she would probably have regrets, whomever she pulled the lever for.

Some voters were confident with their decision.

“Why am I voting for Obama? Have you got an hour and a half?” asked John Rodner, a retired math teacher who lives in Yorktown Heights. “It could be the foreign policy. It could be education. It could be the economy. It could be Sarah Palin. They all stand out.”

Suyapa Olivo, 38, who lives in Yonkers and is a patient caseworker for a New York City hospital, is a longtime supporter of Mr. Obama. She said she believed he would help middle-class voters like herself by cutting taxes and giving students tax breaks. Though Ms. Olivo has health insurance through her employer, she said she was concerned for those who are unemployed.

“It feels like the middle class won’t benefit from McCain,” she said. “And $5,000 towards health care is just not enough.”

Anne Miller, 73, cited concern about the direction of the Supreme Court as the main reason she is voting for Mr. Obama. Ms. Miller, a White Plains resident and retired preschool teacher, said she also worries about health insurance. She has coverage, but her grown daughter does not.

“Roe versus Wade and the whole shift of the court, health care, the economy, global warming — you name it,” Ms. Miller said, taking a break from shopping at Sears. “McCain comes across as a cranky old guy who doesn’t speak to the issues and raises phony issues like Joe the Plumber and William Ayers. I used to like him, too. He used to seem to have integrity.”

Doug Geddes, a real estate consultant and registered Conservative, is a strong McCain supporter. Mr. Geddes, 46, of Lewisboro, said he believed that McCain’s policies reflected his own views of fiscal and social conservatism.

“I’m worried we’re on a path to an extreme movement to socialism,” said Mr. Geddes, who was reading The Wall Street Journal at Starbucks. “Barack Obama thinks I’m rich and I’m not rich. I live in a condominium. I drive a Honda Accord.”

He said his taxes were already far too high and he worries that they will climb even higher if Democrats control the White House and Congress. “Pelosi, Reid and Obama — it’s just going to be a disaster,” he said. “What are they going to ask — another $20,000 from me in taxes? I don’t have it to give.”

Others expressed ambivalence about their choice. Khamar Maitland, 24, was shopping at the Galleria Mall with his mother and younger brother. Mr. Maitland, who works at Morgan Stanley in Purchase, recently decided to vote for Mr. Obama, but not without giving Mr. McCain’s candidacy serious thought.

“There were some things that McCain was saying that made sense,” Mr. Maitland said. “I’m pro-business, and for us to raise taxes on business, that would diminish the creation of jobs. But I’m against the war, and the middle class definitely needs tax breaks.”

Nearly every voter cited the economy as a major concern.

“I’m definitely not voting for McCain and trying to talk myself into voting for Obama,” he said. “It’s more likely that I’ll write in Barry Goldwater. I’m fiscally conservative and socially liberal.”

Mr. Walker said he was very angry about the Iraq war and was shocked that it took the economy to shake people up.

“It’s like, you can kill our sons in Iraq, but don’t mess with our 401(k)’s,” he said. “Honestly, I can’t believe that people don’t seem to hold the Republican Party responsible for the current situation. If the election is close, I’ll vote for Obama.”

Many voters said they were concerned about Mr. McCain’s age, and others objected to his choice of running mate.

“I’m voting against Palin,” said Nancy Torrellas, 45, a lawyer from Ardsley. “I was originally going to vote for McCain because I think he’s very pro-Israel, until he picked Palin as his running mate.”

Ms. Torrellas said she would vote for Mr. Obama, but wasn’t happy about it. She said she was worried about his affiliation with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, but believed Mr. Obama had “the smarter ideology and understanding with respect to my family’s needs.”

Her friend Deborah Notis, with whom she was having a cup of coffee, has decided not to vote at all. Ms. Notis, 38, of Chappaqua, called Mr. McCain “an American hero,” but she also objected to Ms. Palin.

“If you could guarantee me he’d live for four years, I’d probably vote for him,” she said of Mr. McCain. “But Sarah Palin is too extreme, and she doesn’t come across as someone who has any capacity of leading this country.”

Ms. Notis, who is not registered with either party, also refuses to pull the lever for Mr. Obama, who she says is not strong enough on terrorism. She said she was living in Battery Park in downtown Manhattan on 9/11; her husband was on the ground floor of one of the towers but escaped.

“Israel and terrorism are my biggest concerns,” she said. “It’s my perspective that he is not pro-Israel enough. I also think that as much as everyone in Westchester County wants to vote for him, after their taxes go up after $250,000, people are not going to be happy. But the most important thing to me is that whoever gets into office keeps this country safe.”

Howard Chung, 36, said, “If I voted with my wallet it would definitely be for McCain, but without the Democrats I wouldn’t be where I am now.”

Mr. Chung, a stay-at-home dad who was sharing some fries with his son Marcus at the Galleria food court, said he would vote for Mr. Obama. Mr. Chung said he grew up on welfare and was grateful for the opportunities it provided him. He recently sold his shares in a restaurant business; before that he worked in finance. His wife is an investment banker on Wall Street.

“We have benefited from the boom for the last nine years or so,” Mr. Chung said. “But at this point I am really concerned. I’m a huge believer that the existence of a middle class is absolutely critical for the United States. From a pure tax situation, I would think that most Westchester residents would benefit from McCain, but are we going to worry about short-term tax breaks or about the bigger picture?”

Many voters said they did not see any quick relief from their worries, no matter who is elected. Linda Serkin, 62, a registered Democrat who lives in Katonah, said she was voting for Obama but not enthusiastically.

“I don’t see a clear person who can lead this country out of trouble,” she said. “I’m worried about taxes. I’m about retirement age. I can’t give away my house, let alone sell it. I don’t see either one of these guys getting us out of this mess.”

When Taking the Keys Turns Real

By KATE STONE LOMBARDI
Published: October 10, 2008
White Plains

Susan Farley for The New York Times
CHECKING THE REAR VIEW In the Car Fit program, Herbert Zelman, 80, checks his mirror to see how many fingers a volunteer holds up.

EVERYBODY had a story to tell about trying to take the keys from an elderly driver. Paul K. Schwarz, a retired Scarsdale Middle School teacher, described meeting with angry resistance from his father, Herbert, every time he brought up the subject of driving.

“My dad was born in 1907 in White Plains,” Mr. Schwarz said. “He would have been 101 and he might have made it, because he took really good care of himself, but his one real blind spot literally was the car.”

There were small accidents, tickets and excuses — the senior Mr. Schwarz once claimed that a police officer must have been colorblind to ticket him for running a red light. Another time he blamed a faulty brake pedal for an accident. After he exited his driveway in reverse and crashed into a tree, Mr. Schwarz lost his insurance. Undaunted, he looked in the Yellow Pages and got reinsured.

Paul Schwarz and his brother tried unsuccessfully to get their father’s doctor to intervene. They even talked about disabling their father’s car but ran out of time. His last accident, on the Hutchinson River Parkway, landed him for eight weeks in the intensive care unit, where he died in 1997 at the age of 90.

“It was an awful two months,” said Mr. Schwarz, who is involved with several nonprofit groups that work with the elderly. He was speaking at a recent conference here for Westchester police commissioners and chiefs, part of an effort to address the issue of older drivers in the county.

Ken Donato, the police chief in Ossining, recalled reporting a 90-year-old military veteran who worked in his building to the Department of Motor Vehicles, but not until after the elderly man had had three accidents in three weeks, one of which totaled Chief Donato’s car.

Even County Executive Andrew J. Spano shared the story of his father, who called to see if his politically connected son could arrange for the Department of Motor Vehicles to cut him some slack on his eye examination. Mr. Spano refused and then asked his father how he was managing to drive if he had trouble seeing.

“And he says, ‘Your mother tells me what the sign says,’ ” Mr. Spano said. “I went to the house, and I took the keys away. He didn’t speak to me for two months.”

These experiences have a familiar ring to adult children of elderly drivers. They were shared at the conference, developed by the Older Driver Family Assistance Network, which is part of the county’s Department of Senior Programs and Services.

“Westchester County is among the three leading counties in New York State that provide a good and practical action plan for dealing with older drivers,” said Tamar Freund, manager for the State Department of Motor Vehicles’ newly created Office of the Older Driver.

More than 20 percent of Westchester’s population is older than 60, and the fastest growing segment comprises people older than 85. Statewide, one in seven drivers is 65 or older.

Elderly drivers are not inherently unsafe but have a wide range of abilities, Ms. Freund said.

Dr. Cathryn Devons, director of geriatrics at Phelps Memorial Hospital in Sleepy Hollow, said that aging can affect response time, depth perception, tolerance for alcohol, and, in cases of dementia, judgment. Medications can compound such issues.

A chart distributed at the conference that graphs the driver fatality rate is shaped like a U, with 16-year-olds at one peak and drivers 85 and older at the other. (Elderly drivers are frailer, compounding the mortality rate.)

Police officers described elderly drivers who appeared confused and lost or could not negotiate curves in the road and drove onto lawns or did not notice an officer’s flashing lights for more than a mile or appeared to be drunken drivers, but after being pulled over were found to be simply disoriented.

In a survey of 21 Westchester police officers conducted in 2007 by the Older Driver Network, all of them said they had observed older drivers in their community who they believed were at risk of an accident. More than 90 percent said they had seen accidents caused by older drivers who were unaware of traffic surrounding them, and 76 percent said they had encountered older drivers who could not see signs.

With such obvious risks to themselves and public safety, moving elderly drivers off the road would seem to be an obvious solution. But even police officers can be hesitant to act, particularly if the driver reminds the officer of his or her own grandparent.

“How am I going to tell a guy who fought for this country and has two Purple Hearts that I am going to take away his license and take away his freedom?” one police chief asked at the conference.

New York State does not mandate that elderly drivers be retested. An older driver may be subject to license review, but only after a written report from a police officer, medical professional or concerned citizen. Most requests for reviews come from police officers, said Frank Vega, a license examiner in the Yonkers District Office of the State Department of Motor Vehicles.

Not only do families hesitate to report their loved ones, but doctors and occupational therapists are also torn between their ethical responsibility to protect public safety and their duty to protect patient confidentiality. In short, they worry about liability. “If I make a report to the D.M.V., I’m not protected,” said Kathleen Golisz, an associate professor of occupational therapy at Mercy College in Dobbs Ferry. “What I do instead is say, ‘It’s in your medical chart, and it could be summoned in a court of law.’ ”

At the conference for police chiefs, cue cards were distributed to be given to officers throughout the county. They included a checklist on identifying at-risk older drivers, procedures for documenting the encounter and local resources to help elderly drivers.

The county’s Family Caregiver Support Program can help families begin a conversation with older drivers about their abilities and can make referrals to driver evaluation programs. The group also offers transportation to doctor’s appointments, grocery stores and other destinations, said Mary Edgar-Herrera, the program administrator. She noted that in the suburbs, where public transportation is limited, there was a risk of elderly people becoming isolated when they lose access to their cars.

Westchester has also initiated a “Car Fit” program, where experts evaluate whether an elderly driver’s car is properly adjusted and recommend changes and adaptations. For instance, with some couples, the husband may have been the sole driver for 40 years. His wife may then take over the driving, but never readjust the seat or mirrors.

The Older Driver network also plans a series of talks this fall at several senior centers and libraries.

The issue is not an easy one to address, the advocates said.

“Based on voting records, people would rather drive than vote,” said Ms. Freund, of the Motor Vehicle Department. “Driving in America is so much tied up with personal identity. We will take action with elderly drivers, but we would rather all these matters be voluntary.”

Developmentally DIsabled Team Up for Movie Scene

By KATE STONE LOMBARDI
Published: September 19, 2008
Yorktown Heights

Rose Rothe
EXTRAS From left, Adam Stein and Yaniv Gorodischer, with Regina Healy, right, and Nicole Holofcener, their director in a movie.

TAKING THE COURT The actress Catherinie Keener, left, stars in a still-untitled Sony Pictures Classics movie that used Regina Healy, 19, and other developmentally disabled recruits from the Yorktown- based agency Sparc in a basketball scene shot in Brooklyn.

JASON KINGSLEY, cast as an extra in a major motion picture, had an idea for the director and approached her during filming.

That’s not exactly business as usual on a Hollywood set. It is even less common for a director to accept an extra’s suggestions. But Nicole Holofcener, who was directing the movie for Sony Pictures Classics, decided to try the scene the way Mr. Kingsley suggested it.

Originally, the script had the actress Catherine Keener watching a basketball game. But soon, cameras were rolling as Mr. Kingsley put his arm around Ms. Keener, walked her to a basketball hoop and showed her how to do a layup.

“I did one scene with Catherine Keener,” Mr. Kingsley said. “I wanted to make that scene touching.”

Mr. Kingsley, along with nine other men and women from Westchester ranging in age from 18 to 34, was cast as part of a basketball team with special needs. The actors themselves have developmental disabilities.

The participants were recruited from Sparc Inc., a Yorktown-based nonprofit agency that provides social, therapeutic and recreational services to people with a range of disabilities, including Down syndrome, autism and other neurological impairments. The agency’s name stands for Special Program and Resource Connection.

In the movie, which is still untitled and is scheduled to come out next year, Ms. Keener and Oliver Platt play affluent New Yorkers who have purchased the apartment next door to their own. An elderly woman is living there, and they are waiting for her to die so they can expand their apartment.

Ms. Holofcener explained the context of the basketball scene.

“Catherine’s character is trying to find the right place to volunteer to assuage her liberal guilt, and she visits the kids with Down syndrome to see about helping them out,” the director said. “When she gets there, however, she finds herself overcome with sadness and pity — something the kids neither ask for nor require. They’re fine — it’s Catherine’s character who is a mess.”

On a recent fall evening, the actors from Sparc talked about their experience making the film. Their scene was shot in one day last May, but their enthusiasm was still fresh.

“When I first heard about the movie, I got so excited,” said Yaniv Gorodischer, 30, of Hartsdale.

The professional actors “looked like regular people,” said Stephen Capurso, 24, of Peekskill, and Caroline Brescia, an 18-year-old from Somers, said that Ms. Keener was “very nice.”

Mr. Kingsley, 34, who has Down syndrome, was the only one in the group who had significant professional acting experience. As a child he appeared frequently on “Sesame Street,” and he has also been on the television programs “Touched By an Angel” and “The Fall Guy.”

“This was my first experience as a movie star,” he said.

The group talked about the hot lights, the snack buffet and the tedium of having to repeat the scene over and over. It wasn’t easy for them to take time off from their daily responsibilities; most have jobs. Raymond Frost, 30, who works at a pet store in Hartsdale, said that at first his boss did not want to let him go.

That angered Mr. Gorodischer. He said he wanted to call Mr. Frost’s boss and yell at her, but realized that might get his friend fired. Mr. Frost, Mr. Gorodischer and Mr. Kingsley are such good friends that they call themselves the Three Musketeers and have shared an apartment in Hartsdale for six years.

Mr. Frost’s boss relented — “She had never had an employee in the movies before,” he said — and everyone was able to travel to Brooklyn for the shoot.

Regina Healy, 19, who graduated last spring from Somers High School, got a speaking part. As Ms. Keener cries in a bathroom stall, Ms. Healy asks her if she is all right and if she can do anything to help.

“It took seven times,” Ms. Healy said. “I was really tired.”

Adam Stein, 18, a classmate, was also in the movie, and according to Ms. Healy he bragged about it in school. “You talked about it all day long,” she teased him. “You told people 10,000 times.”

Ms. Holofcener heard about Sparc through Mr. Kingsley’s mother, Emily Perl Kingsley, a writer for “Sesame Street” and an advocate for people with disabilities.

Rose Rothe, Sparc’s executive director, said she initially had concerns about how the group would be portrayed.

“We wanted to make sure their lives would be celebrated and not denigrated,” Ms. Rothe said.

After reading the script and talking to the director, she was reassured. “It was all about portraying the kids with dignity and respect for their lives,” she said.

The actors in the group also have strong feelings about how people with disabilities are sometimes portrayed in movies. The movie “Tropic Thunder” came under particular criticism.

“That movie, they talk about people with disabilities,” Mr. Capurso said. “Ben Stiller says something really negative about people like us. I know another one — ‘Something About Mary’ — where they use ‘the R word.’ ”

“The R word,” Mr. Kingsley said, “is for a person who is retarded.”

“It’s not right,” Mr. Frost said. “It’s not nice.”

Several of the actors said they would like to do something to fight that kind of language. They might make it a project in “Sparc on YouTube,” a program in which they conduct interviews, create fictional scripts, do movie reviews and develop skills in camera work.

Mr. Kingsley described his favorite movie, “The Hunchback of Notre Dame.”

“The reason why it’s my favorite is because Quasimodo and I both have a disability,” he said. “We live in isolation. I long to be out there and counted in the community just like Quasimodo longs to be out there.”

Mr. Kingsley is hopeful about the new film. “In the scene, I accept Catherine Keener to be a friend,” he said. “People who watch this movie, strangers, will become our friends. That message might happen.”

Westchester Intends to Be Prepared

By KATE STONE LOMBARDI
Published: August 29, 2008

NINE years ago, County Executive Andrew Spano was in his White Plains office when word came that Tropical Storm Floyd was hitting the northern part of Westchester pretty hard. He decided to go home, change out of his suit and head over to some of the areas that were worst affected.

Getting to his Yorktown home proved a challenge — all the main roads were flooded or blocked by trees. Mr. Spano’s driver finally made his way on back roads, dropped the county executive off at his house and departed. Mr. Spano then got on the telephone to begin coordinating the county response to the storm.

About 45 minutes later, his driver returned, soaking wet. His car had gotten caught in flooding on Underhill Road, and the man had swum out of his car window to safety. Meanwhile, Mr. Spano had lost power at his home, along with his landline phone service. He was basically running the county from his cellphone.

“It was horrendous,” Mr. Spano recalled in an interview. “When I got back in the next day, I said, ‘We’ve got to do something to be better prepared.’ There was no organization countywide, and everything was piecemeal.”

After Floyd hit Westchester in September 1999, disrupting power for thousands, leaving roads impassable and causing major flooding, the county created the Department of Emergency Services. Among the crises that come under its umbrella are hurricanes and other severe weather conditions that have the potential to bring Westchester to a standstill.

Emergency managers have been preparing for a potential major storm, one that might leave the county struggling on its own for days or even weeks before outside assistance arrived. In June, emergency responders conducted a six-day drill, simulating a major hurricane hitting the area.

“We’ve learned a lot of really valuable lessons,” said Anthony Sutton, the emergency services commissioner. “If the storm is a really widespread thing, it will be awhile before the state or the federal government can come to help, and we have to be self-sufficient, both people and the county.”

Westchester officials worked with officials from the state, New York City and Nassau and Suffolk Counties on the drill, playing out what would happen if a Category 2 hurricane made landfall on Long Island. The exercise began with a simulated briefing from the National Weather Service. Over the next few days, the drill included alerting the public, communicating with municipalities, setting up shelters, managing roads, establishing evacuation routes, coordinating county departments, including Health and Public Safety, and working with utilities like Con Edison, nonprofits like the Red Cross and several faith-based organizations.

County planners have also been working with officials from Fort Lauderdale, Fla., which endured Hurricane Andrew in 1992. Emergency planners from that city came to Westchester to monitor the drill and offer feedback.

The drill simulated a storm taking a path similar to that of the 1938 one known as the Long Island Express, a Category 3 hurricane that came ashore on Long Island and traveled up the coast of New England. All told, more than 600 people died in the storm, which produced surges of 10 to 12 feet on the coast from Long Island and Connecticut, eastward to Massachusetts.

Since Floyd, Westchester has had its share of wild weather, including a 2006 Level 2 tornado that tore through parts of the county, a powerful 2007 northeaster, severe flooding in Mamaroneck and, earlier this month, a microburst in Mount Vernon that uprooted trees and caused other damage. During the 2007 storm, one community hospital had so much flooding that it nearly had to be evacuated.

The county has purchased equipment and supplies including electric pumps to clean flooded buildings, portable traffic signs to use in power outages, barricades for traffic control, and cots, blankets, pillows, toiletries and towels to be used at emergency shelters. The county has worked with nursing homes, hospitals and other places with vulnerable populations to ensure generators are in place, as well as with municipalities to establish shelters.

Construction is also under way to allow portable fences that the police can deploy at each entrance ramp on the Bronx River Parkway. Currently, if sections of the parkway are closed, police cruisers or highway trucks act as barriers, diverting them from other tasks.

The county also wants residents to prepare for any storm. A program called “Ready Westchester” urges residents to develop a household disaster plan. That includes having on hand what is needed to survive at home for several days without electricity, as well as preparing a “go bag” should residents have to evacuate. (Lists for both are available at westchestergov.com/keepingsafe.htm.) What emergency planners fear most is complacency.

“Our biggest concern is for people to be believers,” said Mr. Sutton, the emergency services commissioner. “We’re really trying to sell this personal preparedness.

“We don’t want people to think about this for the first time when we’re telling them to evacuate.”

Looking for Salvage in the Rubble of an Old Firehouse

The Centennial Hose Firehouse in Peekskill collapsed during an attempt to move it down the street earlier this month.

By KATE STONE LOMBARDI
Published: August 29, 2008

Peekskill
LAST Sunday, members of the Centennial Hose Company gathered to lay a memorial wreath on a pile of rubble. They were commemorating a shocking loss — that of the Centennial Firehouse, a two-story red brick building built in 1890.

The firehouse collapsed on Aug. 21, as it was being maneuvered for a move down the street. It was to be restored and renovated into a museum, part of a planned historic district here. Normally, fire company members lay memorial wreaths at the graves of fallen firefighters, but to many, the loss of the building felt personal.

“To us, even though it was a building, the firehouse was like an old friend,” said Pat Esposito, president of the Centennial Hose Company. “It was our dream that it would become a museum for our town. Now that dream is ended for us.”

The 118-year-old building, which had not been used since 1980, was being moved to accommodate improvements to Route 9, which included replacing a bridge over Central Avenue. The firehouse had been nestled directly under that bridge.

It collapsed in a shower of dust and rubble after the contractor hired to move the building slid it onto a mobile platform and was attempting to rotate it so it could clear some power lines. The cause of the collapse is under investigation, but preliminary reports indicated that a hydraulic component of the platform malfunctioned.

Virtually all that was left of the building was part of one wall and a pile of bricks, many of them broken. No one was injured.

“To say we are upset over the collapse of the Centennial Hose Firehouse would be an understatement,” Mary Foster, the mayor of Peekskill, said. “This was a 19th-century building with deep roots in the community and a long history of service.”

Whatever is salvageable from the site will be recovered, city officials said. A nameplate, as well as rosette cornerstones and several shamrocks that were part of the building, were mostly intact, though the nameplate was broken. Contractors cleaning the site have also been surprised to find other memorabilia, like old bingo cards and even some furniture that had been temporarily stored on the roof, undamaged.

For now, all bricks that can be salvaged, as well as the rest of the facade pieces, are being removed and stored at the contractor’s warehouse, their future undecided. Ms. Esposito said that the company hoped to recover the facade pieces and use its own funds to build a monument at Centennial’s current headquarters on Water Street.

Ms. Foster said that she wanted to work with the company on how to preserve and maintain what is salvaged. Several other possibilities have been discussed.

Before the collapse, the firehouse was ultimately supposed to have been moved to Lincoln Plaza and placed near the old train depot, where Abraham Lincoln gave a short speech in 1861. One option now is to build a smaller building on the plaza, using the old firehouse’s bricks. Another idea is to use the bricks as part of a walkway at a memorial that Peekskill is building on the riverfront green to honor firefighters who were killed on 9/11.

The city spent more than $150,000 preparing the firehouse for the move. It had also received a $1 million state grant to rehabilitate it, and Ms. Foster said that the city was working with state officials to see how the grant money might now be used for projects that would reuse material salvaged from the site.

“We really do want the Fire Department as a whole to weigh in on how all the pieces of the historic building get incorporated into the city,” she said.

Peekskill Firehouse On The Move

GOING PLACES Peekskill’s Centennial Firehouse, built in 1890, is being relocated to become part of a historic district.

By KATE STONE LOMBARDI
Published: August 9, 2008
Peekskill

IT doesn’t look like much now. The Centennial Firehouse, a two-story red-brick structure built in 1890, is tucked under a large metal bridge and has been abandoned for more than two decades.

Weeds are growing up the sides of the building, the windows are covered with sheets of metal, and crumbled bricks litter the floor.

But next week, the 118-year-old building will be ready for its second act. The firehouse is being moved, and if all goes as planned, it will ultimately be renovated to become a museum and part of a historic district.

The firehouse’s history is still fresh to some of the firefighters who worked there. Deputy Chief John Esposito not only remembers off the top of his head the day the firehouse closed — Oct. 19, 1980. He also knows by heart the names of the two members of the company who died in the line of duty on Aug. 1, 1918, while battling a fierce fire at the Fleischmann plant.

“They were John Torpy and Walter Cole,” Mr. Esposito said. “Walter Cole was 18. He had just been elected to the company in July. That was his first major fire, and unfortunately his last.”

He wasn’t certain of Mr. Torpy’s age but speculated he was about 21, because he had just gotten out of the Army. (Five members from the Cortlandt Hook and Ladder Company were also killed in the Fleischmann fire.) The men died when a brick wall collapsed on them.

Mr. Esposito, a 44-year veteran of the Peekskill Fire Department, can tell you about the company’s first fire apparatus — it was called a jumper, and the water was hand-pumped. The firemen responded to fires by pulling the wagons themselves, sometimes running up the steep hills surrounding the station.

Mr. Esposito even knows the names of the two horses — Homer and John — that pulled the company’s first horse-drawn wagon, purchased in 1908. The horses were kept in a stall on the side of the firehouse.

Fond as he is of the firehouse’s history, Mr. Esposito was delighted when the company moved to its current quarters on Washington Street.

“We were ecstatic,” he said. “When you got torrential rains, the old firehouse would get flooded out. We’d have three feet of water in the building. And it happened all the time.”

After it was closed, the building and surrounding property were sold to a developer. But the area was mostly abandoned, and over time, the vacant firehouse became home to vagrants and began to deteriorate.

It wasn’t until the State Department of Transportation made plans to reconstruct Route 9 here that the firehouse got back on the city’s radar.

The $72.9 million project will replace four bridges in Peekskill, including the bridge over Central Avenue, where the old firehouse sits.

To make the improvements, which include additional lanes and wider shoulders, the firehouse had to go.

The Transportation Department condemned the property.

This is not the first time the Centennial Firehouse and Route 9 have gotten in each other’s way. In 1932, when the original bridge was constructed, workers had to shave off part of the firehouse’s roof to accommodate it.

This time, however, the Transportation Department, the city and the New York State Historic Preservation Office worked together to devise a plan to relocate the structure.

The cost of the move is part of the highway project budget (there is a cap of $400,000), and the city also received a $1 million state grant to rehabilitate the building.

Moving a brick building that is more than a century old is a delicate task. Workers begin by cutting two-foot by two-foot holes around its base. Steel beams are then slid through the holes to help create a new foundation. The building is lifted up, and rollers are slid underneath.

The firehouse will have to be rotated 90 degrees before it is moved, to avoid utility lines and the existing bridge pier, said Sandra Jobson, a Transportation Department spokeswoman.

It will be rolled about 500 feet to a corner of a parking lot, its temporary resting spot. The ultimate plan is to move the firehouse in about 10 months to Lincoln Plaza, about a block away, where it will be restored and placed near the Lincoln Depot, where Abraham Lincoln gave a short speech in February 1861.

Lincoln visited Peekskill during his inaugural train journey, on his only stop in Westchester.

City officials envision a small visitors center, the Lincoln depot and the firehouse all linked as a mini-historical area on the waterfront. Peekskill has other historic neighborhoods, including the Fort Hill Historic District. Mayor Mary Foster said the city was accepting proposals for the design and use of the plaza.

The public will be given an opportunity to weigh in on the proposed designs, she said.

“You need to balance the economic possibilities of revitalization while preserving our history,” Ms. Foster said. “The fire companies would clearly like to have a museum aspect to the firehouse.

“Since it’s a two-floor firehouse, you could also do some sort of food part — firehouse cooking maybe. But whatever we do, we want the full community’s support.”

A Drive Back in Time

By KATE STONE LOMBARDI
Published: July 27, 2008
South Salem

Scott Mullin for The New York Times
IN THE SAME SPOT Chuck Tator in Tator’s Dodge, a dealership he inherited.

THERE’S no fancy showroom. High-pressure sales people will not swoop down to push the latest models loaded with options. You’d be hard pressed to find a glossy brochure.

In fact, Tator’s Dodge, an automobile dealership on a country road in the northern reaches of the county, is housed in an old barn. A small cupola sits on the roof, topped by a weathervane. The car bays were once horse stalls. And Chuck Tator, who owns the franchise, is the sole member of the sales force. Like his father before him, he closes a deal on a handshake.

Mr. Tator, 51, described his business plainly, “My place is like stepping back in time.”

Indeed, the car dealership has a long history behind it. It was one of the original 25 franchises awarded by the Dodge Brothers Motor Car Company. The other 24 have since either closed or been sold, but Tator’s Dodge not only stayed on the same spot as it was when it was founded 94 years ago, but it also stayed in the family.

Mr. Tator’s grandfather, George T. Tator, bought the franchise in 1914. At the time his capital consisted of $800 and a horse. He sold the horse to raise the extra money he needed to become a dealer, and he became the third person to sign an agreement with John and Horace Dodge.

Today, Tator’s Dodge is an anachronism, a small, family-owned franchise in an era in which consolidation in the retail auto business has created huge dealerships with corporate, not individual, ownership. On a hot summer afternoon, Mr. Tator walked around the service area, pointing out where his grandfather had expanded the shop. A breeze from the meadow that abuts the shop blew in through the windows. An old belt-driven machine shop, once used to mend parts and fix farm equipment, is tucked in a back room.

“Today everything is replaced, but back then, if a part was broken, we’d fix it,” Mr. Tator said.

He not only works on contemporary Dodge cars and trucks, but also services antique cars and motorcycles, which he classifies as anything built in 1970 or before. He often has the antique parts and the antique tools needed for repairs.

Once, the owner of a 1937 Dodge truck came in looking for a part, he said. Sure enough, it was listed on one of the thousands of index cards Mr. Tator keeps in rows of cardboard boxes. Another time, someone needed a seal for a 1932 Packard’s brake system. It, too, was on the shelf.

The first Dodge Brothers car was the Model 30, introduced to compete with Ford’s popular Model T. George T. Tator sold seven cars his first year in business. By 1921, sales reached 50 cars, and by 1928, he sold 250 cars, according to an article about the dealership that ran in a 1931 edition of Motor magazine.

George T. Tator died in 1952, and the business went to his twin sons, Charles and George Jr. George Jr. died of pneumonia in 1953, and Charles took over. He developed a reputation for closing a deal on good will, not proof of a down payment. Charles Tator died in May, after battling cancer.

Chuck Tator began working for his father in the shop when he was 12, sweeping, carrying car parts and helping the older mechanics with small tasks like tightening bolts. “I was weaned on grease,” he said.

While he keeps samples of each basic model on the lot, Mr. Tator’s business for the most part is in repairs, not sales. He has developed a niche market that has garnered him the nickname the Viper Wizard. He has an international reputation for servicing Vipers, sports cars that Dodge began making in 1992.

Viper owners from the Mid-Atlantic states up to Canada regularly send their cars to Mr. Tator. He services 200 of the sleek, sporty Vipers annually, but far more Viper owners come for parts, advice and special service.

Last week, a Viper with Texas plates was on the lot. Another Viper was on a hydraulic lift; Mr. Tator was assessing its value for a potential buyer in Switzerland. He regularly travels to England to hold seminars for the United Kingdom Viper Club. Calls for advice and parts have come from Japan, Kuwait and New Zealand.

Mr. Tator doesn’t advertise. He has an 80-hour workweek. He has a staff of three: a father-and-son mechanic team, Rob Hoellman Sr. and Jr., and Roseann Stenz, who runs the office.

Despite hanging on for nearly a century, Tator’s Dodge was recently threatened with closing. The dealership has among the smallest sales volumes in the country, 40 to 50 a year. Last December, when Mr. Tator routinely checked his orders in the computer, he found they had all been canceled. He said that when he contacted the parent company, Chrysler L.L.C., he was told he had to have a minimum working capital of $250,000 “or they were going to take my inventory.”

He hired a lawyer, but the fight turned into more of a public relations battle than a legal one. Once the international Viper community got wind of Mr. Tator’s troubles, they rallied on his behalf. Petitions were circulated, “Save Tator’s Dodge” T-shirts were sold, and Chrysler was inundated with letters supporting the franchise. Not only did Chrysler relent, but it also offered to take Mr. Tator out to dinner, he said. He declined the meal but invited corporate leadership to his shop.

“I said, ‘Why don’t you guys come by and visit the last original Dodge dealer and find out who I am and what I do?’ ” Mr. Tator said. “Trying to get rid of one of the original dealerships is like throwing your grandmother down the stairs.”

Storied Team Faces School Budget Knife

By KATE STONE LOMBARDI
Published: July 20, 2008
Mount Vernon

WHEN members of the Mount Vernon High School varsity basketball team attend a press conference, it’s usually after securing another championship. The Knights have won 8 New York State championships, 4 New York State Federation Class AA championships and 25 Section 1 titles.

But the student athletes who came to City Hall to hear community officials speak on a recent morning had an agenda even more urgent than clinching the top spot. They wanted to know whether their team — or any other team in the Mount Vernon City School District — would have a season at all.

In the spring, Mount Vernon residents twice voted down the school budget. By state law, the district must now operate on a contingency budget. Nearly $5 million has been slashed from the $192.3 million budget originally proposed; it now stands at $187.4 million. Along with some teaching and administrative staff members, the entire interscholastic sports program was cut.

“I honestly couldn’t believe it,” said Mark Cole, 17, a shooting guard for the Knights who will be a senior. “I’ve been playing basketball all my life in Mount Vernon. If they get rid of it, I don’t know what I’d do. I want the chance to get a scholarship and go to college.”

Another senior, Odayne Clarke, 18, a power forward for the team, described basketball as “a one-way ticket to college.”

While the students coped with their shock, Mayor Clinton Young announced the formation of Save Our Sports, a group to raise private funds to pay for school sports. Mr. Young, the Mount Vernon Board of Education, the PTA Council, the Mount Vernon Educational Foundation and others have united to rally residents, high school alumni, foundations and anyone willing to help restore athletics to the city’s school district.

The district spent $1.1 million on athletic programs last year, but the group hopes to raise $950,000 to finance the entire sports program for the coming school year, including seventh- and eighth-grade teams, and boys’ and girls’ modified, freshman, junior varsity and varsity high school teams. More immediately, the district needs $300,000 by Aug. 10 to finance fall sports, including football.

Mount Vernon is known for its standout athletics. Seven of the high school’s athletes have gone on to play in the National Basketball Association, most recently Ben Gordon of the Chicago Bulls. Mr. Gordon is helping to raise money for Save Our Sports.

But the high school is also plagued by low graduation rates — 55 percent of students graduate in four years. Nineteen percent of students live below the poverty level. The community has a high-need population but insufficient resources, said W. L. Sawyer, Mount Vernon’s school superintendent. He said he recently discovered social studies books being used by seventh to 12th graders that listed Jimmy Carter as president.

Dr. Sawyer said he understood the benefits of the sports program but had to put academic needs first. By cutting sports, he said, the district could retain a prekindergarten program that was critically needed for at-risk children.

“You should never be in a situation where you have to decide between throwing out into the water your mom or your brother,” Dr. Sawyer said. “But the reality is that when it comes to children and their capacity for learning, logic dictates that you try to make those decisions that keep you far away from harming the instructional classroom.”

Charles Stern, president of the Board of Education, said that eliminating interscholastic sports had been a difficult decision. The board, he said, was “deeply aware” of the implications of the cuts, noting that children who participate in sports tend to perform better academically and that children who have structured activities between 3 and 6 p.m. tend to stay out of trouble.

Several coaches at the high school stressed the far-ranging benefits of organized athletics.

“People need to realize that athletics is a great motivator,” said Patrice Moore, coach of the girls’ basketball team. “When I look at the basketball players that participated with me at Mount Vernon High School, we are some successful women doing successful things.”

Ms. Moore said that for many children, coaches acted as surrogate parents and had the opportunity to positively influence students’ lives. She noted that none of her players had ever gotten pregnant.

Ric Wright, the boys’ varsity football coach, said that even before the current budget problems, athletics had been underfinanced at Mount Vernon, pointing out that the school had no lacrosse, hockey or field hockey teams.

“Every coach understands we’re dealing with student athletes, and the student comes first,” he said. “But in this particular community, kids need extra help. Everyone knows that sports are the heart and soul of Mount Vernon.”

Mayor Young, who ran track as a student at Mount Vernon High, said that the issue was not a debate between athletics and academics. He emphasized that sports were critical to the vast majority of young people who would not play professionally, but who would gain leadership skills, learn teamwork and develop self-esteem through their participation. Mr. Young said half his staff at City Hall are former varsity athletes.

Dr. Sawyer said the challenge to the Mount Vernon schools was far bigger than sports financing.

“Other schools are looking at whether they can afford new scoreboards, while I’m looking at textbooks,” he said. “Urban school districts face specific challenges, and the needs of our children by far outweigh the allocations.”

Indeed, the only other school district in Westchester to defeat a school budget twice this year is Bedford, one of the county’s wealthier districts. (In that case, voters were disgruntled over the decision to give Debra Jackson, the outgoing superintendent, a $650,000 separation agreement and health care coverage for life.) Among the cuts in Bedford’s contingency budget: delays in buying new desks, equipment and buses, and delays in financing capital projects, including a refurbished high school track and an expanded play area at an elementary school.

In Mount Vernon’s case, budgets in the last few years were passed by increasingly thin margins. This year, school board officials said, the economy and gas prices heavily influenced beleaguered taxpayers.

Mr. Stern, the board’s president, said that while the board was committed to helping to raise private funds to restore interscholastic sports, the more pressing issue was why Mount Vernon needed charitable fund-raisers to provide programs that other students in Westchester receive routinely.

“The underlying issue is an inherently unfair funding formula for public education,” he said. “Historically, Mount Vernon schools have suffered under an antiquated system of funding from the state and federal level. It is pitting children against property owners, and right now, both are suffering.”

Program Aims to Curb Violence in Inmates

By KATE STONE LOMBARDI
Published: July 6, 2008
Valhalla

CLARENCE LOVELACE was describing a moment he called “fatal peril.” It is that crossroads, he said, when a man can go into a violent rage or when he can instead hold up his hands — palms open — and back away from the situation that provokes him.

Mr. Lovelace, 49, knows something about violence. An inmate at the Westchester County Jail here, he has a 34-year criminal record, including three felony convictions and 25 misdemeanors, most of them stemming from his years as a drug dealer in Mount Vernon. He is back in jail for parole violations after convictions on assault and drug charges.

“I’ve been stabbed, cut and shot,” Mr. Lovelace said. “I didn’t know how to process my emotions properly, so I would violate back. The only thing I knew was violence.”

Mr. Lovelace, a strongly built man clad in the standard orange jail jumpsuit, was speaking about a new program at the jail to help violent inmates better deal with their aggression.

Currently 44 men — all with a history of violent behavior — are enrolled in the four-month program, called Resolve to Stop the Violence. Some have volunteered, while others have been mandated at sentencing to participate. They are housed together — an unusual approach at the jail.

The program’s approach is peer-based. The idea is that men will help other men understand their violent behavior and help them curb it. Ultimately, jail administrators hope that released inmates will take their training back to their communities.

On a recent visit inside the prison, a group of 16 inmates in the program sat in a semicircle on plastic chairs in a meeting area in the unit where they live, facing a white board. A leader was diagramming an incident that had sent one of the men into a violent rage. The inmate, who was not identified, had walked into his apartment and found it crowded with people he wasn’t expecting. His girlfriend also gave him a look he didn’t like.

“If I’m going to pay the bills, when I come home, I want my meals done and my laundry done,” the inmate told the group. “You understand, that’s part of my violence.”

The men in the group talked about the event and the feelings leading to it. They discussed the inmate’s image of himself as a man and the notion that he had to protect it. They asked if he could remember feeling anything before becoming angry.

“I was hurt,” the inmate said. “And that went to anger. Hurt people want to hurt people.”

The body language in the group revealed the mixed reactions of those participating. Some men were animated, leaning forward and eager to join in the conversation. Others leaned far back in their chairs, arms crossed over their chests, legs stuck straight out in front of them.

But even those who have resisted the program are starting to respond, said Eddie Concepcion, senior counselor at Resolve to Stop the Violence.

One inmate said he didn’t understand why he had to participate, because “all I did was smack my wife.”

Mr. Concepcion described a 20-year-old inmate who was so violent that he had developed a reputation for trouble inside the jail.

“This young man has been in every gang, and all he knows is violence,” Mr. Concepcion said. “You tell him he’s going to lose 30 days, and he doesn’t care. The second week in the program, he felt so violent, he’s holding himself in, and his face is wet. Tears are running down his face, and he goes, ‘I’m not crying.’ It’s hard, but he’s learning.”

Resolve to Stop the Violence is based on a program in San Francisco. Of the men who participated in that program, Westchester officials said, 87 percent did not resort to violence during a three-year period.

As it is developed, the Westchester program’s curriculum will also include visits from victims of violent crime, who will come into the jail and describe in detail to inmates how that crime affected their lives. A theater component will also be introduced.

In Westchester, the program, which began in mid-May, cost $336,564 for the first nine months and is projected to cost $448,768 for the next year. It is financed by the inmate commissary.

The county has contracted with St. John’s Riverside Hospital in Yonkers to oversee the project. The hospital also runs a drug rehabilitation program inside the jail.

“Violence and drugs are really the two things that bring people through our doors,” said Rocco Pozzi, commissioner of the Westchester Department of Corrections.

Andrew J. Spano, the county executive, said the county offered many rehabilitative programs in the jail, to help inmates turn around their lives and to protect the public. “This is a correctional facility, not a prison,” he said.

Mr. Lovelace acknowledged that over the years, he had participated in many such programs. He was asked how this one might be different.

“I’m 49 years old,” he said. “It’s time for a change. This program — it just took a hold of me.”

The Joy of Graduating

By KATE STONE LOMBARDI

Published: June 29, 2008

DANIELLE GORMAN was musing about what it takes to secure the No. 1 spot at her highly ranked, competitive high school.

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Parenting: So Ready to Send the Kids Off to College (June 29, 2008)

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Selected Speeches by Valedictorians From Around Long Island (June 29, 2008)

Selected Speeches by Valedictorians From Around New Jersey (June 29, 2008)

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Janet Durrans for The New York Times

Ridgefield High graduates at their commencement at Western Connecticut State University in Danbury.

“Valedictorians are the type of people who take on too much and are unwilling to fail,” she said.

She should know. Danielle is this year’s valedictorian at Moorestown High School, in Moorestown, N.J. She often studied until 2 in the morning.

Danielle, 18, took one Advanced Placement class in her sophomore year, five her junior year and four senior year. Why not five? Because her math class, “Multivariable Calculus and Differential Equations,” covered material beyond what the A.P. tests measure.

On top of her studies, there was mock trial, model congress and the debate team, along with four years on the track team. Oh yes, and there were those relaxing summers, like the one after her sophomore year, when she took a course on international law at Harvard Summer School, while at the same time completing a 50-hour internship with a law firm.

Danielle, who will attend M.I.T. this fall, said she chose challenging courses and pushed herself because she wasn’t sure what she ultimately wanted to do. She wasn’t shocked to find out she had been named valedictorian — she knew she was one of the three top students — but tried to keep herself from wanting the honor too intensely.

“I really conditioned myself to not want it or expect it,” Danielle said. “I take things pretty stoically. It didn’t set in for a while, and then I was really happy.”

Another valedictorian season has come to a close, with students throughout the region having proudly stepped up to the podium to deliver their graduation speeches and receive the accolades that come from being the highest academic performer in their school.

But as the path to that honor has intensified over recent years, some administrators are beginning to question the valedictorian tradition. Several factors — including the increase in the number of high school students, grade inflation, intense competition for college acceptances and a savvier student body — have changed the game.

Some students strategize to win, taking on a heavy load of A.P. courses, which are weighted when grade point averages are calculated. Some avoid more creative courses, like art or photography, where grading can be subjective, and a B could ruin their shot at the top spot. There have been conflicts about how to measure the transcripts of transfer students who come from schools with different grading systems. In a handful of cases, the zeal for valedictorian honors has led to lawsuits.

Take Danielle’s high school in Moorestown, which landed in the national spotlight five years ago, when a high school senior sued the district in an effort to be named valedictorian. Blair L. Hornstine was awarded $60,000 by the Moorestown School District to settle a federal lawsuit that she filed after the district tried to name a student with a lower grade point average as co-valedictorian.

Ms. Hornstine had been home-schooled, and her lawyer said she suffered from chronic fatigue syndrome. Critics claimed she manipulated the system, and her lawsuit caused an uproar in the community. Ms. Hornstine was so vilified — there was even a Web site that chronicled her case called the “Blair Hornstine Project,” a play on the film “The Blair Witch Project” — that she skipped her graduation.

Later that summer, Ms. Hornstine’s acceptance to Harvard was withdrawn, after accusations that articles she had written for the local newspaper were plagiarized. She ended up going to St. Andrews University in Scotland, where she graduated in 2006 with a degree in classics.

Danielle remembers the controversy and has some sympathy for her predecessor.

“I felt really bad for her,” Danielle said. “She ended up being valedictorian but losing a lot of other things. I remember everyone said she shouldn’t care so much because it ended up hurting her.”

This year at Horace Greeley High School in Chappaqua, N.Y., Susannah Rudel and Brett Rosenberg are co-valedictorians, and share the honor with apparent grace. Though no one would speak for the record, the stories circulated about contested grade point averages and smothered resentment, yet Susannah and Brett presented a united front, describing how delighted they were that as best “study buddies” they would both be honored.

“I would have felt terrible if it was just me,” Susannah, 17, said in an interview that included her co-valedictorian at the school. “I genuinely don’t believe I would have succeeded as much without Brett. I spend hours on the phone going over math problems with her.”

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Phil Marino for The New York Times

Graduates from Division Avenue High in Levittown.

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Parenting: So Ready to Send the Kids Off to College (June 29, 2008)

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Selected Speeches by Valedictorians From Around Long Island (June 29, 2008)

Selected Speeches by Valedictorians From Around New Jersey (June 29, 2008)

Selected Speeches by Valedictorians From Around Westchester (June 29, 2008)

In the Region

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Brett, 17, said that if she alone had been named, “it definitely would have been empty in a way, and it wouldn’t have been fair because it was such a collaborative relationship.”

Those words are balm to high school administrators, who had to calculate the top grade point averages to the third decimal point to determine the girls were tied. Nineteen students at Horace Greeley High had perfect 4.0 grade point averages or higher; Susannah and Brett each had a 4.1.

Each girl took seven A.P.s in high school. Susannah was captain of the varsity swim team, placed in the state championships, earned her Gold Award from the Girl Scouts and plays the flute. Brett was captain of the cross-country team, captain of the nationally ranked academic challenge team, and plays the bass clarinet. Susannah will attend Amherst College this fall; Brett will go to Harvard.

“The two of them had an exact numerical tie,” said Andrew Selesnick, the high school principal. “It’s pretty remarkable. You just want to be sure, you don’t want to make a mistake.”

The high school has reason to be cautious. Five years ago, the valedictorian and the salutatorian were named at a cum laude ceremony in the fall. But a week later, the students were called to the principal’s office and told a mistake had been made in calculating the grade point averages. A teacher, who traditionally changed final class grades based on students’ performance on the A.P. test, had delayed reporting an upgrade. The new grade — a fraction of a point — changed the equation for several students in the tight competition at the top of the class. The students were told, based on recalculations, that there would be two valedictorians and two salutatorians. All four students gave speeches.

“I remember thinking it was a little odd,” said Dan Adler, the originally named valedictorian. “But I clearly appreciated it when I was given the honor, so for someone else who deserved it not be granted it was a little absurd.”

When the differences between the top student and the 10th come down to hundredths of a point, some administrators are questioning how meaningful the valedictorian distinction is.

“We have had valedictorians and salutatorians when it’s less than a hundredth of a point apart,” said Carol Burris, principal of South Side High School in Rockville Centre.

South Side, like many schools in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, has eliminated class ranking on transcripts, because administrators believe a rank reduces students to a number and prefer that colleges take a close look at student transcripts and consider the broader student. Still, they maintain the grade point averages to determine the No. 1 and No. 2 spots. “Our community has been happy with eliminating ranking, but naming the valedictorian is a strong tradition,” Dr. Burris said. “If you’re going to have student speakers, it really is an honor and you have to have some objective way of choosing them.”

Given all the drama over the honor, how do valedictorians fare in the long term? Karen D. Arnold, an associate professor of higher education at Boston College, spent more than 15 years studying valedictorians who graduated in 1981 from high schools across Illinois. Dr. Arnold found that high school valedictorians consistently did well in college and were generally well-rounded, successful people. They were not a group, however, who were particularly creative or who would achieve great distinction in life.

“They’re kind of like wonderful organizational achievers,” Dr. Arnold said. “They’re hard workers. They’re not going to remold your organization, but they might lead it.”

Dr. Arnold said she was familiar with the arguments in favor of eliminating valedictorians but believed the tradition should be maintained. “There aren’t many academic honors, and it is one of those labels that follows you through life, like the Heisman Trophy or Rhodes scholar,” she said. “To get rid of the one meaningful designation for what school is really all about seems like something we should do only with great caution.”

Mr. Adler, Horace Greeley’s 2003 co-valedictorian, works in management consulting. He graduated last year from Yale, where he found himself in the company of hundreds of other valedictorians. (“I think I dated at least two of them,” he said.)

“I’m still extremely proud of the honor, but if I were to give someone advice about how to think about it in the right way, it’s that you have to think about this as a validation of what you’re capable of and keep it in the back of your mind as a motivation,” he said. “But you can’t be haughty about it, because there are so many people who you are going to meet who are just as smart as you.”

Districts Look To Hire Chinese Teachers

By KATE STONE LOMBARDI
Published: June 1, 2008
MOUNT VERNON


THE second graders were playing patty-cake while chanting in a singsong: “I love reading. You love writing. I am going to help you. You are going to help me. You are my friend. We are very happy!”

If that sounds pretty simplistic for a group of 8-year-olds, bear this in mind — the class was speaking in Chinese. Every one of the 549 students who attend the Grimes Elementary School here began learning Mandarin this year, after the school received a three-year grant to begin the program.

The district’s Mandarin curriculum is one of the newest in Westchester public schools, but it won’t be for long. Horace Greeley High School, in Chappaqua, plans to introduce the language next school year. And the Scarsdale School District will embark on an ambitious Mandarin language program in the 2009-10 academic year, beginning in the sixth grade and continuing through high school.

Several districts already teach Mandarin, including Croton-Harmon and Briarcliff. Mamaroneck has the oldest Mandarin program in the county; the district has offered it since 1988. Other districts, including Hastings, Rye and Blind Brook, are exploring adding Chinese to the curriculum.

What is happening in Westchester reflects a national trend. The number of Chinese programs in prekindergarten through 12th grade in the United States has grown by almost 200 percent since 2004, according to the Asia Society, a nonprofit group that promotes education about the continent.

“This has just exploded all over the country,” said Rosemary G. Feal, executive director of the Modern Language Association.

The burgeoning interest in Mandarin reflects the recognition of China’s emergence as an economic and political power, administrators say. About 1.3 billion people worldwide speak all dialects of Chinese. The proliferation of programs has also been stimulated by the availability of federal grant money to encourage Chinese language instruction.

But starting a Chinese language program is not as easy as simply winning school board approval. First, there is a gap between interest in Mandarin instruction and the availability of certified instructors.

“With more and more programs springing up, there is a dearth of certified teachers right now, especially compared to the demand,” said Robin Harvey, coordinator of the Developing Chinese Language Teachers project at New York University.

To become accredited, it is not enough for teachers to be fluent in the language. They also need a total of 30 college credits in the language they will teach, Ms. Harvey said. Many natives of Taiwan and mainland China lack such credits.

At N.Y.U.’s education school, about 20 people will be certified this spring to teach Chinese. Pace University, in White Plains, also has a Chinese language certification program. Only two people are being certified this year, but Pace is working on a new program, which it plans to introduce in January, to fast-track native Chinese speakers for certification. Administrators are exploring ways to document language competency in ways that would count toward college credits.

Ms. Harvey, who worked as a consultant to the Scarsdale School District, said that districts contemplating new Mandarin programs also express concern about how much children will be able to master.

“Because we are so culturally distant from China, it seems that Chinese will be insurmountable to learn,” she said. “In fact, the first three or four months, when you’re looking at characters, they do seem totally alien, but all of the sudden, a switch will flip. It doesn’t take longer to learn to speak or listen than other languages, but it does take longer to read and write.”

In a recent 11th-grade Chinese language class at Mamaroneck High School, teenagers play-acted a dialogue of a doctor’s examination under the direction of their teacher, Rong Rong Le. Looking down at the rows of Chinese characters, Alexandra Rudansky, 17, and Kate Rainey, 17, took turns as doctor and patient as they conversed in Mandarin about temperatures, blood tests and X-rays.

BOTH girls have studied the language since the seventh grade and can now converse and understand native Chinese speakers. On a recent class trip to Chinatown, they bargained over prices of store goods and ordered meals in Chinese. Both tutor eighth graders in Mandarin and plan to continue Chinese study in college.

The Mamaroneck program has grown in popularity. Jordan Gratch, 17, began studying Chinese in seventh grade and is one of 28 people in his grade to study the language. His younger sister is in the eighth grade, which has 100 children taking Mandarin.

Croton-on-Hudson and Briarcliff offer Mandarin instruction as part of a continuing exchange with Chinese high schools. Last summer, 45 foreign students lived with families in Croton, and last month a group of seniors from Croton and Briarcliff traveled to Shanghai, Beijing and Xian, visiting schools and staying in homes and dormitories.

“The community has really embraced this,” said Joel Adelberg, the principal at Croton High School and one of the leaders of the trip. “For a small town, we are doing some exciting work.”

In Chappaqua, a history teacher and a Chinese teacher will jointly teach the new high school course. It will include not only Mandarin instruction, but will also examine the historical and cultural foundations of modern Chinese society.

“We thought it might be better to start with this course that contains both contemporary culture and a language, because that might generate an interest,” said Lyn McKay, deputy superintendent of curriculum in Chappaqua.

In Scarsdale, parents pushed for Mandarin to be included in the curriculum, and the district formed a committee to study the issue last fall. After considering several languages, including Arabic, the group recommended Mandarin, citing China’s strategic importance, community interest and the sustainability as a program.

Michael V. McGill, the superintendent of Scarsdale schools, said: “To me, the broader goal really has to do with sensitizing students to cultures that are different than their own. Learning the language is important, but understanding how language and culture and politics and personal behavior all interact is also very important.”

Frances Lightsy, the principal at Grimes Elementary School, agrees. She said most of the children in her school, which is 98 percent African-American and African-Caribbean, had never seen a Chinese person, except perhaps in a restaurant. When Chun Li, a native of China, arrived to teach a special education class a few years ago, some of the children mocked her.

“We really needed to expand their horizons to accept someone different,” Ms. Lightsy said.

Ms. Li volunteered to teach an after-school program to expose the children to Chinese culture. Now, she teaches Mandarin full time at the school. As she entered Tanya Douglas’s second-grade classroom, the students called out “Good morning, teacher” in Mandarin. For 30 minutes, she kept the children engaged — writing Chinese characters on the board, having the children speak, gesture and dance.

“This is an exciting thing for me to do,” Ms. Li said. “We started from scratch. And now they are beginning to communicate.”

Struggling to Prevent Suicides at the Tappan Zee Bridge

By KATE STONE LOMBARDI
Published: May 11, 2008
TARRYTOWN

SIGNS on the Tappan Zee Bridge tell motorists, “Life Is Worth Living.” They direct people to suicide hot lines on the span, where above each callbox another sign reads, “When it seems like there is no hope, there is help.”

But since they were installed in August, the four phones have yet to be used by anyone contemplating suicide. Despite the efforts of the New York State Thruway Authority, which manages the Tappan Zee, the bridge continues to be a lure for would-be jumpers. April was the worst month in the recent memory of authority officials. Three people leapt to their deaths from the bridge, two within one hour of each other. A fourth person was talked down from the railing.

The rash of suicides has led the authority to consider whether to take further steps to address the problem. Officials are now considering whether bridge maintenance workers, tow truck operators and others, who are often the first on the scene of a potential suicide, should be trained in how to handle such situations.

“Those are the people who have their eyes and ears on the bridge all the time,” said Ramesh Mehta, a division director of the authority.

Nonetheless, Mr. Mehta said, the authority was unsure whether bridge workers should be counted on to intervene in such situations. He said that the state police and emergency workers, who are called to the scene of potential suicides, already receive such training.

Thirty people have leapt to their deaths from the Tappan Zee Bridge in the last 10 years; others have been talked down, and a handful have been rescued from the water.

Bridge workers come across potential suicides in the course of their everyday duties. Sometimes they arrive just in time to grab someone around the waist and pull him or her back to safety. Other times, they try to talk the person down.

On April 24, a Thruway Authority electrician came upon a suicidal man at a railing. The electrician told the man that he had problems of his own, showed him family photos and implored him not to jump. Eventually the man was lifted over the railing and back to safety.

Ernie Feeney, a tow truck operator for the authority, has dealt with four suicidal people in the last four years. He has saved three people, but the man he lost still haunts him. A few years ago, Mr. Feeney said, he approached a man standing in front of his stopped car on the bridge, which at its peak rises about 150 feet above the Hudson River. He assumed that the man had a flat tire or had run out of gas.

“I pulled in front of him, and I asked, ‘What’s wrong with your car?’ ” Mr. Feeney said. “And all he says to me was, ‘Tell my brother the keys are on the front seat.’ And I said, ‘Well, what’s wrong with the car?’ And he went to jump.”

Mr. Feeney grabbed the man but lost his grip when his own arm hit the railing.

Compounding the problem for bridge workers is the fact that the suicide hot lines are positioned at either end of the span, but people tend to jump from the middle of the three-mile-long bridge. But Mr. Mehta said that installing boxes in the middle of the bridge would endanger other motorists.

April and May are the peak months for suicides, said Gary L. Spielmann, former director of suicide prevention for the New York State Office of Mental Health and now a consultant to the New York State Bridge Authority. He said that the Tappan Zee happens to connect two counties with the lowest annual suicide rates in New York State. (Westchester has a suicide rate of 4.0 per 100,000 residents; Rockland’s is 2.6.)

Mr. Spielmann speculated that at this point, “the notoriety of the bridge may be feeding on itself.”

He said that educating people on simple changes in the use of language could sometimes prevent a suicide. For instance, “help is on the way” is far less threatening to a suicidal person than “the police have been called.”

Mr. Spielmann said he had sympathy for Thruway Authority workers and officials.

“Given the situation, I hope they take the opportunity for training,” he said.

Local Officials Again Raise The Idea of Sharing Services

By KATE STONE LOMBARDI
Published: April 27, 2008
Cortlandt Manor

Linda D. Puglisi, supervisor of Cortlandt Town, which relies on the county and state police after disbanding the local force.

WESTCHESTER is a crazy quilt of 6 cities, 17 towns, 22 villages and dozens of hamlets, with a patchwork of overlapping school, police and fire districts. These 45 municipalities are home to 46 school districts and 42 police departments — 43, if you count the county police.

If Westchester were a private corporation, management consultants would have long since been called in to address what critics say is the duplication of services and inefficiency that all these entities have spawned. Reorganization, proponents say, would provide relief to Westchester residents, who pay some of the highest property taxes in the country.

In fact, the idea of streamlining local government has been kicking around for more than 20 years. A public-private commission that studied the issue wrote a report in 1985 called “Westchester 2000.” The idea was that by the beginning of the millennium, the recommendations to consolidate services and abolish some local fiefs would already be in place.

Instead, the report was shelved, said Alfred B. DelBello, former county executive and current president of the Westchester County Association, a business group that was a sponsor of that study. “It was an excellent report, but it didn’t deal with implementation, and none of it was realized,” he said.

But with today’s weakened economy and soaring local taxes — total property taxes in Westchester grew by 67 percent from 1995 to 2005 — the idea of breaking down local boundaries and sharing services to save money is again beginning to gain currency.

Earlier this month, Sandra Galef, a state assemblywoman who represents parts of Northern Westchester and Putnam County, was host to a forum on this topic at Cortlandt Town Hall here. The meeting drew about 100 town officials, school board members and representatives of county and state governments.

Mr. DelBello, who serves on the State Commission on Local Government Efficiency and Competitiveness, was one of the panelists. The commission’s final report is expected soon.

“These ideas have been around for a long time, but people had a sense you couldn’t do anything,” he said. “But with the downturn in the economy and the tax burden, there is a surge to get government to act differently. In politics, everything is timing.”

According to the Westchester County Association, Westchester has 23 city and town taxing entities, 21 village taxing entities, 46 school taxing entities and 339 special districts for services like fire, sewer, water and life support. Such structures are costly to maintain and are also inefficient, Mr. DelBello said. He said it would be far more efficient to have one central computer coordinating tax collection.

Thomas P. DiNapoli, the state comptroller, agreed that the time was right to explore consolidation and shared services. The obstacles in the past have not been legal, but political, he said.

“There is already broad authority for doing many of these initiatives,” he said. “The biggest impediment is historical. There’s always a past dispute. For many of our suburban communities, it is an issue of identity. We have a sense of our small-town communities. That’s real, but there are ways to get around that.”

Mr. DiNapoli said the new state budget includes $29.4 million for local grants that encourage consolidation and shared services.

Linda D. Puglisi, the Cortlandt town supervisor, said municipalities need the support. She said that when she proposed disbanding the local police force in 1999 to save money, it was hugely controversial, but the Town Board voted to do so. Today, the town relies on county and state law enforcement, a move Ms. Puglisi says saves taxpayers $1 million a year.

“To gain community support for such initiatives, you need to run it almost like a campaign,” she said.

Ms. Puglisi has also joined with neighboring towns to help pay for unfinanced mandates. Six municipalities joined forces to create one transfer center to meet a federal Environmental Protection Agency mandate on recycling. Cortlandt Town met another mandate — on water filtration — by joining with Yorktown and Somers on upgrading a water-treatment plant. Cortlandt also shares advanced life-support paramedics with Peekskill and Buchanan.

Schools are another matter. The Board of Cooperative Educational Services exists to provide shared services among school districts. But getting the districts even to share snow-plowing equipment can be a challenge.

“It’s not easy to get two school districts to work with each other,” said James T. Langlois, district superintendent of Putnam/Northern Westchester Boces. “It’s not easy to get municipalities with completely different histories and cultures to work together either. There’s a grand conversation that needs to begin and needs to continue.”

Dr. Langlois said schools could maintain their individual academic cultures while sharing back-office functions and equipment, coordinating bus routes for out-of-district students and more.

“If someone gets a great price for rock salt, there’s no reason everyone shouldn’t get in on that too,” he said.

Mr. DelBello suggested that Boces could be strengthened and take on roles in labor negotiations with teachers unions. “Instead of being represented by your local district lawyer, Boces could use a professional labor negotiator,” he said. “If school boards, employers and parents were ever to get as organized as the N.E.A., things would change very quickly.”

In his 11th State of the County message this month, County Executive Andrew J. Spano also proposed several shared service initiatives to save money, including a purchasing cooperative between the county and local municipalities to help buy goods more cheaply and a joint investment fund to help schools and governments make more money.

Mr. Spano’s speech often sounded like a defense of county government itself, as he reviewed the many services the county provides. Recently, Paul J. Feiner, the Greenburgh town supervisor, and Joan Gronowski, a Yonkers city councilwoman, announced the formation of a citizens task force to explore the pros and cons of doing away with county government completely. This idea, too, has come and gone over the decades.

Mr. DelBello said he hoped for a groundswell from taxpayer groups, business associations, PTA’s and others to demand less provincialism and more change for the greater good.

Ms. Galef agreed.

“If everyone says ‘no, we don’t want to change,’ then they can’t complain about their high taxes,” she said.

A Midlife Crisis Doesn’t Have to Be One

By KATE STONE LOMBARDI
Published: April 13, 2008
WE all know the stereotypes about male midlife crises. Men run out and buy red Porsches, get hair plugs and trade in their wives for younger girlfriends.

My husband, Michael, took a different route. He became a weatherman. Or at least, he will be one when he graduates from his meteorology program this spring. Let me explain.

Michael had been in corporate finance for his entire working life. When I met him 27 years ago he was crunching numbers and preparing financial forecasts for a public television station. He rose through the ranks at various media and sports companies, jobs that always sounded glamorous, because of the high profile of the places where he worked. In reality, though, little of the charm of association rubbed off on the spreadsheets and budget projections, even if the product was a professional basketball team or a hot TV show.

His last job was as chief financial officer of a television production company. When that company did a big reorganization, Michael did some soul searching. His discontent had been building. A few years earlier, he had been on a business trip on 9/11 — a 9 a.m. American Airlines flight from Kennedy International Airport to Los Angeles. His plane never left the tarmac. But, like so many others that day, he began evaluating how he wanted to spend the rest of his life.

So when he came to a crossroads for his next professional move, he didn’t follow the usual path of talking to headhunters, networking within the industry and finding another corporate finance position. Instead, he started thinking about the weather.

This was nothing new for Michael. He isn’t one of those people who watch the Weather Channel simply to catch the local forecast. He has always been the kind of viewer who cares about the barometric pressure in faraway places. He monitors the rainfall levels in tropical climes. And in the Northeast, absolutely nothing gets him going like a good storm, particularly a snowstorm.

Every time we are in the middle of a near blizzard, Michael will look up at the yellowish swirling sky and say, in a deflated voice, “It’s letting up.” The storm in question may or may not be letting up, but Michael needs to prepare himself emotionally for the tempest’s eventual end. As much as he wants to believe those 18 to 24 inches may fall, he needs to temper his expectations.

His obsession with weather has been lifelong. As a child he built crude weather instruments. He constructed a hygrometer, which measures humidity, out of an old milk carton and strands of human hair. (His patient mother had to pluck a few strands to get the right length.) He put together an anemometer, which clocks wind speeds, out of a bicycle wheel frame, some funnels and a speedometer.

Over the years, he maintained his love. He subscribed to publications like “Windswept” (published by the Mount Washington Observatory) and “Weatherwise.” Just as some households receive mail-order catalogs that advertise gardening tools or kitchen gadgets, we receive titles like “Wind and Weather” that sell barometers and rain gauges.

Still, Michael had always viewed the weather as an avocation, not a vocation. He is facile with numbers, and after graduating from college and then business school, still saddled with student loans, he went directly into the corporate world and didn’t look back.

Until the day he finally did. Maybe it was a delayed reaction to 9/11. Maybe it was just one too many corporate reorganizations and the cutthroat politics that accompany them. But Michael maintains that far from having a crisis of midlife or any variety, he simply decided to become the person he always wanted to be.

Going back to school after 30 years is no easy thing. The closest meteorology program was at a state university in Connecticut. To apply, he had to dig up his original college transcript, which included 35-year-old SAT scores. When he was accepted, he had to produce his immunization records.

Michael called his mother, who after a pause informed him that his pediatrician was long dead and that she had no idea where his old medical charts were. After further research my husband discovered that he had actually already had the diseases today’s students are immunized for — like measles and mumps. His very age proved his immunity, and the university health department gave him a pass.

Attending school was another challenge. Our children told their father that he had inadvertently bought a girl’s backpack. (“But it’s blue,” he said. “Sky blue,” our daughter told him, as if that explained everything.) When Michael slung the backpack over both shoulders, our son demonstrated the one shoulder backpack slouch.

Then there were the academics. Things had changed considerably since his Ivy League days, particularly the computer technology. Just reactivating the brain cells to do advanced physics was challenging. The professors were his age or younger. His fellow students were our children’s ages or younger. His wife (that would be me) alternated between offering support and nagging about lost income.

He persevered. He studied climate and forecasting, not to mention physics, oceanography, thermodynamics, calculus and more. He did radio and Internet weather reporting. He had an internship with a meteorologist at a TV station. He volunteered at the weather observatory on Mount Washington in New Hampshire. This spring, he will get his degree and continue to pursue his dream.

We live in a competitive town, where one-upmanship is common. Yet time and again, people — usually men — pull Michael aside and say: “Man, you’re my hero. I wish I could do what you did. I always wanted to be a ...” Fill in the blank here — landscaper, sculptor, teacher, whatever.

“You still can,” Michael says.

But he is one of the few who did. I’m not sure what the future will bring. The uncertainty makes me anxious. In any case, my husband tells me that anything beyond a seven-day forecast is speculation.

Report on Children Shows a Diverse County

WESTON REED, 10, had come from his fifth-grade classroom to a clinic in the basement at the Edison Elementary School here. Perched on an examining table, he eyed Alison G. Oesterle, a nurse practitioner, warily.

“Please don’t tell me I’m going to get a shot,” Weston said.

Once assured that his checkup did not include any procedures with a needle (Weston was up to date on his immunizations), he chatted happily with Ms. Oesterle. They talked about how many fruits and vegetables he ate each day, what he did for exercise, how often he ate fast food and how well he was sleeping.

Around the corner, behind a small screen, Kacy Ortega, 9, was having her teeth cleaned and sealants applied. Kacy and Weston were part of a stream of children visiting the in-school clinic, run by Open Door Family Medical Centers, which provides health and dental care for a population of children who are frequently uninsured and underserved.

The two children are among the county’s estimated 235,000 children under 18 who are counted in a new analysis of government data that has been put together by the Westchester Children’s Association, an advocacy group based in White Plains.

The study, “Westchester Children: By the Numbers,” collected statistics from mostly government sources about local children in the areas of economic security, health, child care, education, child welfare and juvenile justice.

Individually, each set of numbers does not add up to much. But looked at collectively, the comprehensive statistical presentation begins to paint a picture of the county’s children and their lives. What emerges is a portrait that underscores a diverse and divided county. Most children in the county live comfortably and are well educated. But there are pockets of children living in poverty, lacking easy access to medical care and attending underperforming schools.

According to the 2006 American Community Survey, 8.2 percent (19,636) of all Westchester children were living in poverty. The rate for children of a minority race or ethnicity was more than double that.

The numbers don’t tell the entire story because poverty guidelines are set nationally. To qualify as poor, a family of four would be living on less than $21,200 a year. With Westchester’s high cost of living, those dollars are stretched even tighter, the study shows.

At the other end, the 2006 American Community Survey also ranked Westchester as having the 13th-highest median family income of any county in the country.

“The upper income is growing, but the poverty rate is still there,” said Cora Greenberg, executive director of the Children’s Association. “There are certainly lots of middle-income people all over Westchester County. What’s surprising is how extreme the ends are.”

Take children in Port Chester, where Weston and Kacy live. Drawing on data from the 2000 census and the State Department of Education, the report notes that 16 percent of children who live in the village are in families with incomes below the poverty line. Some 14 percent speak English “not well” or “not at all.” The median family income is $51,025, and 57 percent are Latino. In 2005, 61 percent of high school students graduated in four years.

Across the county, the statistics gathered for the study tell a different story for Chappaqua, in the Town of New Castle. This is where parents recently gathered at the Robert E. Bell Middle School for a presentation by Suniya Luthar, a professor at Columbia University’s Teachers College. Her talk was titled “Privileged but Pressured: The Risks of Raising Children in Affluent Communities.” Parents heard about how affluent children suffer from high rates of depression, anxiety and substance abuse.

“Material wealth does not imply superior family function,” Dr. Luthar told the audience of more than 300 parents crowded into the auditorium. “Our kids don’t see us as being any more present or nurturing or kind or accessible than kids in the inner city.”

Here are the numbers for Chappaqua: 5 percent live below the poverty line. Six percent struggle with English. The median family income is $174,579, and 91 percent are white. The four-year graduation rate in Chappaqua was 97 percent in 2005.

In Mount Vernon, the numbers tell a different story. This is where Lisamarie Albanese, a social worker at the Hamilton Elementary School, was visiting a bilingual class of third graders to play a board game called Friendship Island, as part of an anti-bullying program.

“True or false?” she asked the class. “Joining a person when he or she is calling someone mean names shows that you’re a good friend.”

The children clambered to explain why name-calling was bad. The program, part of the Safe Schools/Healthy Students Initiative and financed by federal grants, is designed to reduce violence in the school.

The numbers in Mount Vernon show that 19 percent live below the poverty line. Ten percent struggle with English. The median family income is $49,573, and 68 percent are African-American. Mount Vernon’s four-year graduation rate was 55 percent in 2005.

The data is drawn from county, state and federal government statistics, as well as several nonpublic sources; the association did not create any data itself. Some statistics are broken down by municipalities.

“Countywide statistics tend to be misleading because Scarsdale isn’t Yonkers,” Ms. Greenberg said. “People don’t relate to Westchester as the place they live. They relate to their communities and school districts. We wanted to look at that diversity.”

Among the findings in the data book about children’s health: 53 percent of Latino children and 28 percent of African-American children in Westchester receive Medicaid, according to the Westchester County Department of Social Services. For children ages 1 through 12, the top reason for hospitalizations — 23 percent — is respiratory system disease, usually asthma. Roughly 34 percent of elementary school students are overweight or at risk of becoming so, county health numbers show.

On education, Yonkers and Mount Vernon, which together account for more than 24 percent of school enrollment in the county, share the lowest graduation rates — 55 percent in four years. Briarcliff Manor, Bronxville and Scarsdale have the highest, at 99 percent. There is a marked discrepancy on graduation depending on race: countywide, 92 percent of white students graduate from high school in four years, but only 61 percent of African-American or Latino students do.

The association will release its 213-page data book on April 24; a searchable online version will be available in the fall. Ms. Greenberg said she hoped the book would begin a conversation about the most pressing needs for children in the county.

“Children need certain building blocks to develop, to grow in a healthy way,” she said. “Whether they live in Chappaqua or they live in Mount Vernon, kids need the same things. If a family or community can provide those things for you, good for you. But if not, you still need them. We have a ways to go to make sure that every kid has what he needs in Westchester.”

The Joy of Still Cooking

By KATE STONE LOMBARDI
Published: March 30, 2008

“YOU still cook dinner every night?” a friend asked incredulously one day recently. We were talking on the phone, and she could hear me rummaging around in the kitchen.

“Sure,” I replied. “Why wouldn’t I?”

The answer, she told me, is that in many households, the pots and pans are all but retired with the emptying of the nest. The phrase “cutting the apron strings” turns out to have literal meaning. As soon as your children are out the door, you get rid of the apron.

No more countless supermarket runs — just the occasional small shopping trip. No more nightly grind of turning out balanced meals with protein, vegetables and a starch. No more scrubbing pots and pans. You trade all that for freedom.

And that’s the part that baffles me. Freedom from what? Eating tasty, home-cooked meals?

I love to cook and also enjoy pretty much everything that surrounds food preparation. First, there’s the reading — scanning new recipes in newspapers and magazines, visiting food Web sites. Gourmet magazine is my equivalent of Playboy; I pretend to be reading the articles, but I’m really just salivating over the photographs.

Then there’s the shopping. O.K., there’s no great joy in lugging home staples from the grocery store, but I love browsing the aisles to see what looks particularly good that day. There’s also a social aspect; my supermarket has an experienced, friendly butcher who is happy to talk me through the best way to grill a butterflied leg of lamb or share his recipe for marinated flank steak.

Shopping can be an aesthetic pleasure. Nothing signifies spring like the appearance of tender asparagus and new strawberries in the market (as opposed to the thick, woody asparagus stalks that look as if they’ve been sitting in an airport warehouse for weeks, and those huge red strawberries that appear to be on steroids, with their fleshy, tasteless white insides).

I particularly enjoy buying local produce in season. My son still tells the story of accompanying me to the store when he was about 9. When he wandered over to the fruits, he swears I snapped at him, “Didn’t I raise you better than to buy peaches in February?”

Best is the actual cooking. If I am entertaining, making something fancy that will require hours of prep time, I crank up the iTunes in the kitchen. I have put together several playlists with titles like “Music to Cook By IV.” These are almost all upbeat songs, and I live in fear that someone will peer through my window as I belt out the Rolling Stones’ “Start Me Up” at the top of my lungs, using my spatula as a microphone while sautéing onions.

There are two schools of thought about cooking and creativity. One is that cooking is formulaic. After all, you follow a recipe. Nothing could be less imaginative than “add 1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper.” Follow the recipe for a risotto and you’ll produce a risotto.

But there is also a lot of room for artistry in cooking, especially when it comes to dealing with leftovers. Every Sunday night in our home we have Clean Out the Refrigerator Dinner, which inevitably calls for culinary inspiration. Where is the challenge in having on hand all the ingredients you need to prepare a dish? On Sunday nights, I proceed backward: Let’s see, I have two cooked chicken thighs, a couple of steamed spears of broccoli, some garlic that’s going to turn pretty soon...

This lends itself to a lot of pastas and soups. Only occasionally does my husband poke at an ingredient and ask suspiciously, “When did we first have this?”

As to cleanup, my husband, Michael, handles that. The kids pitched in when they lived at home, but now my husband has completely taken over. Naturally this adds to the pleasure I get from cooking for him.

I equate feeding my family with love, which is why I cannot imagine stopping now. What would that say to my husband? What would it say to me? I have a friend who opens the freezer every night and selects a Lean Cuisine to microwave for herself and her husband. They seem very happily married, which remains a complete mystery to me.

Of course there have been adjustments to cooking for two. On our first night back home after dropping our youngest at college, I found myself serving pork tenderloin in a sesame seed glaze. The meal had symbolic significance. Both my kids are adventurous eaters, but they have their limits. My daughter refuses to eat pork. My son has a severe allergy to nuts. So right out of the gate, dinner ventured into formerly forbidden territory.

Slowly, once-shunned ingredients — couscous, lima beans — made their way back to the menu plan. I am also more likely to buy exotic — and expensive — foods now that I’m cooking for only two.

I still tend to overbuy and cook too much, adjusting from the appetites of ravenous teenagers to those of middle-aged people trying to maintain healthy weights. In this phase I am also expanding my cooking horizons. For instance, the local churches and synagogues in our area have joined forces to feed and house local homeless people during the winter season. (There are no nearby shelters.) Last month, I prepared my grandmother’s sour cream enchiladas, a recipe I still have written in her own hand, for 15 men and one woman, along with green salad on the side and coffee cake for dessert. Next week I’m going to try a new dish of chicken, green olives and yellow rice.

There is still plenty to dish out on the home front, too. My husband and I dine each night by candlelight, even on Clean Out the Refrigerator Sunday. We also have a new tradition: the welcome home dinner. Each child has a favorite meal they know I’ll make when they visit. (For my daughter, it’s marinated salmon, basmati rice and lemon broccoli; for my son, steak, mashed potatoes and creamed spinach.) And that, of course, is my favorite cooking of all.

A Hearing on Indian Point That Struggles To Be Heard

Indian Point nuclear power plant.

By KATE STONE LOMBARDI
Published: March 16, 2008
White Plains

THE fight over whether to close the Indian Point nuclear power plant has been a passionate one in the region, where opponents slap bumper stickers on their cars that read, “Nowhere to Run” and “Not If ... But When.” Critics emphasize Indian Point’s potential as a target for terrorists. Concerns have been raised about everything from the emergency evacuation plan to leaking storage pools for spent fuel. Critics say the repeated failures of the plant’s new siren system are a symbol of poor management.

But the biggest drama at last week’s hearings on relicensing Indian Point’s two reactors in Buchanan concerned the acoustics of the courtroom. As Westchester County and the state began to make their arguments Monday to the three-judge panel appointed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, spectators strained to hear the testimony. When Michael B. Kaplowitz, the vice chairman of the Westchester Board of Legislators, complained that a hearing couldn’t be considered public if the public couldn’t hear it, the panel chairman, Lawrence G. McDade, warned that the next person who spoke out would be removed from the courtroom.

By that afternoon, microphones had been scattered at the three tables of lawyers representing relicensing opponents, the commission staff members and Entergy Nuclear, the plant’s owner. And as the hearing became more audible, it became clear it would not be a forum for a general safety review of the reactors, let alone a referendum on nuclear power.

The N.R.C. considers two major factors in whether to extend the licenses: Entergy’s plans for managing the aging parts, and the environmental impact of keeping the plants open, said Neil Sheehan, an agency spokesman. The hearings are part of a multiyear process to determine whether the reactors should be given a 20-year extension of the licenses, allowing Indian Point 2 to operate until 2033 and Indian Point 3 to operate until 2035.

New York, which is the first state to oppose the relicensing of a nuclear power plant, submitted arguments concerning terrorism, emergency evacuation, accidental releases of radioactivity, population density and the danger of earthquakes, among other issues. The commission says those issues are already covered by its regulations and are not particular to license extension.

But the state says they are reasons to let the license lapse.

“The continued operation of Indian Point is untenable: the risks are simply too great,” Mylan L. Denerstein, executive deputy attorney general for social justice, said in her opening statement.

But unless the plant’s opponents, who include environmental groups and municipalities, can persuade the judges to reverse commission precedent, many of these arguments will not be considered.

“There are two tracks — the safety track, which looks at the company’s aging management plan for the plant, and the environmental track,” Mr. Sheehan said. “There have been a number of contentions that fall outside the two tracks and those areas, and they’ve been rejected in the past. These contentions — sirens would be an example, spent nuclear fuel, and emergency planning in general — do not fall under the umbrella.”

Those safety issues are part of the commission’s continuing oversight, he said. During the hearing, lawyers for Entergy repeatedly objected to the state’s arguments as outside the scope of relicensing guidelines.

Roughly 15 municipalities and environmental groups had petitioned the commission to be participants in the hearings, filing 150 motions. The oral arguments heard last week were essentially a weeding-out process. Next the judges will decide who can directly make their cases for or against extending Indian Point’s operation and which arguments will be given a hearing.

Andrew J. Spano, the Westchester County executive, has repeatedly called for Indian Point to be closed. At the hearings, the county petitioned the judges to allow the county to adopt the state’s arguments. Westchester did not submit any of its own, so it is essentially piggybacking on the state’s efforts.

“The plant is old, they’ve had constant problems and it’s far too dangerous to have in the heart of a thriving suburb with the population we have here,” Mr. Spano said in an interview. “I’ve been working with them 10 years, and they still can’t get the hot line to work properly.”

Officials from Entergy say they are confident the licenses will be renewed. Entergy had a chance to review all the arguments raised by the opposition groups and respond to the N.R.C.

“We haven’t seen any contentions that demonstrate or suggest that these plants can’t operate safely through an additional 20-year period,” said Jim Steets, an Entergy spokesman. “We’re confident because these plants are maintained really well.”

Depending on seasonal demand, the 2,000 megawatts produced by Indian Point supply 18 percent to 38 percent of the region’s electricity, he said.

Much of what was discussed at the hearings was technical, and there were references to an alphabet soup of names — the C.L.B. (Current Licensing Basis), the U.f.s.a.r. (Updated Final Safety Analysis Report) and the G.D.C. (the General Design Criteria). Judges asked questions intermittently to clarify the arguments put forward.

ON Tuesday, New York’s two United States senators, Hillary Rodham Clinton and Charles E. Schumer, as well as Representatives Nita M. Lowey, John J. Hall, Maurice D. Hinchey and Eliot L. Engel, demanded an extra day of hearings to make up for Monday’s inaudible proceedings. Mr. Sheehan, the N.R. C. spokesman, said the commission would consider the request.

Before the hearings, the administrative judges as well as the commission staff had reviewed the arguments. The commission staff had made recommendations on which petitions should be admissible and said that Westchester, the Town of Cortlandt, Connecticut Residents Opposing the Relicensing of Indian Point and the environmental group Clearwater should all be excluded, because they failed to file at least one admissible contention.

The staff supported allowing some, but not all, contentions from New York State, the State of Connecticut and Riverkeeper, an environmental group that has been in the forefront of the movement to close Indian Point. Because of a scheduling conflict, a consortium of grass-roots organizations represented by Assemblyman Richard L. Brodsky was given a hearing date in April at the N.R.C. headquarters in Rockville, Md. The staff recommendations have some weight but are not decisive — the agency staff is considered another party in the proceedings.

The N.R.C. , which has never rejected a license renewal, is currently reviewing 11 applications for 20-year extensions of the original 40-year operating licenses for some of the country’s oldest reactors.

“We are fairly pessimistic,” said Phillip Musegaas, a Riverkeeper staff lawyer. “When you look at the challenges that have been raised to other plants in the past, the N.R.C. is an agency that is very resistant to taking a strong position. In environmental law we use the term ‘captive agency,’ as one that tends to support the industry.”

Riverkeeper submitted arguments challenging Entergy’s plan for managing metal fatigue; corrosion in the cooling system; the impact of the cooling system on aquatic life; leaks of spent pool water, which have leaked radioactive strontium-90 and tritium into groundwater; and potential accidents that could cause a significant radiation release.

The judges will decide who will be a direct participant in the hearings within the next two months. After that, appeals would be made to the commission itself, which has five seats (but at the moment, only three members). A further appeal for reconsideration would have to be made in federal courts.