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“This guy throws parties after parties,” said Yvonna Kopacz-Wright, motioning to her husband, Brett Wright, during a Zoom interview from their Oak Tree Road home. “He throws the biggest party in Martha’s Vineyard where there’s a thousand people there. I love the idea of it, but he’s really the closer.”

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14TH ANNUAL MOTHER'S DAY PLANT AND GIFT SALE

Saturday, May 7,
9:00am to 2:00pm
Palisades, Community Center 675 Oak Tree Road in Palisades, NY

Rockland Center For the Arts
“See, Observe, Think, Reflect, Internalize”
April 2 - June 11
ROCA hosts an exhibition of award winning photographer Collette V. Fournier’s search for intersections between her personal history, modern day Africa, and the African American experience. Fournier’s photo- graphs of a classroom in Senegal, the Million Man March in Philadelphia, post-Katrina New Orleans, and a Queen Mother ceremony in Ghana invite the viewer to absorb the resilience, beauty and hope of her subjects. Admission is free.

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117 Washington Spring Road,
PO Box 687 Palisades, NY 10964
Phone: 845-359-3147
Email: ppc10964@gmail.com
Website: www.palpresny.org
Pastor: Reverend Erin Moore
Office Hours: Tuesday and Friday: 10:00am to 3:00pm

As a 30-plus year resident of Palisades, I’ve seen dramatic changes in the landscaping in our area. Where once elaborate, photogenic, and unfenced gardens flourished, many homeowners’ yards are now surrounded by high deer fences.

The term “peak oil” was coined in the 1950s by Marion King Hubbert, a geologist for Shell Oil. The theory represented a hypothetical bell curve in which our use of oil would decline when discovery of new reserves could not keep pace with our use of existing reserves. Oil after all is a finite resource. However, Hubbert's theory of peak oil has been proven wrong numerous times, even as recently as 2020. Today, however, and unfortunately for the environment, new oil exploration technology and extraction methods continue to increase proven reserves and have pushed a potential peak oil date far beyond our lifetime.

PALISADES FREE LIBRARY
Member of the Ramapo Catskill Library System
19 Closter Road, Palisades, NY 10964
845-359-0136 www.palisadeslibrary.org

Vladimir Putin’s brutal invasion of sovereign Ukraine on February 24 triggered a flow of refugees not seen since WWII. Most are women and children, and all need a numbing list of services. Neighboring countries have been welcoming, but the need will continue for months, possibly years, to come. Residents of Palisades are finding ways to help.

Every year in May, school districts across the state hold annual budget votes and school board elections. This March, the South Orangetown Central School District will be holding an additional vote where they will put before the public a separate bond vote.

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Your friends at the Palisades Community Center wish you and your family continued good health. Are you new to the area? Welcome! We invite those who do not receive our e-blasts to e-mail us at PCC@palisadesny.com to receive Palisades alerts and event information.

Dear editors,
I would like to connect with one of your writers, Blythe Anderson Chase, who wrote a story (May, 2021) called “Palisades Cemetery: Stories Behind the Stones.” My cousin happened to come across the article today in a Google search of our great-grandfather’s name, Max Krawchuk. The article that Ms. Chase wrote was about his tombstone and his life story. I’d like to know where she found out all of this incredible information!

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OLar Noso (“Our Home” in Galician) has left its cozy, pub-like cubbyhole in Piermont. Relocated to Northvale, New Jersey, it is a four-minute drive from Palisades. You can park easily in a big parking lot, and you might actually get a table because it’s much bigger. Many things are unchanged from the old location: the menu is pretty much the same, payment is cash or check only, and the service, mostly provided by the owner’s two sons, continues to be, shall we say, a bit rough-edged.

Volunteers and Thrift Shop Donations Net Library $7,230
We are fortunate to have dedicated volunteers who commit time to the Tappan Zee Thrift Shop. Volunteer hours and donations made on the library’s behalf exceeded our 2021 partnership goals and had the added benefit of keeping many household items and clothing from our landfills.

RoCA celebrates its 75th anniversary:
Initially called The Rockland Foundation, it was re-named Rockland Center for the Arts in 1972. Its goal throughout has been to provide opportunities for all people to experience and participate in the cultural life of our region through classes, exhibitions, performances and camp. Upcoming activities include:

No matter how much I curb my usage, why am I not able to reduce my energy bill? We’ve all tried the different suggestions that come from our local O&R utility: turn down your thermostats, better insulate your homes, fix drafty doors and windows, choose an energy supplier that offers competitive rates. The list is endless and while helpful there is one thing you are not being told and there seems to be nothing you can do about it.

There are private wells in all parts of Palisades. In mid-December some residents, including me, received a letter from the Rockland County Health Department advising homeowners with private wells of a possible Volatile Organic Contaminate (VOC) in their drinking water. The VOC identified is Tetra-chloroethene (PCE). Amy Isenberg, Rockland County Environmental Health Specialist, said the location of the contamination cannot be provided, the law only requires that homeowners be notified within a 1⁄4 mile radius of the identified contamination. This letter also provided a list of companies that will test water at a cost that varies widely and wildly. That’s it. What you do is up to you. Relying on the county to send a letter about something this important via the US mail is not ideal. I know because over the years there have been a couple times we’ve gotten a letter about possible contamination. At that point, I take a deep breath, go to ShopRite, buy gallons of water, call one of the water professionals listed on the letter and hope for the best. It’s a bad approach.

You heard it here—Orangetown now has an easy, clean way for residents to recycle household food scraps. It might just change our notion of what qualifies as garbage. Think about it—most of what gets tossed is food scraps: spoiled vegetables, plate scrapings, bones, peels, rinds, and occasionally, the muck from some weird jar in the back of the fridge. With a food scrap recycling program, that organic material is composted into nutrient-rich fertilizer and returned to the earth. So waste is no longer waste. It’s soil. That change of mindset is a first step towards reducing the amount of waste we generate.

Palisades Community Center
675 Oak Tree Road Palisades, NY

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Your friends at the Palisades Community Center wish you and your family continued health and very happy holidays.

Are you new to the area? Welcome! And to those who do not yet receive our e-blasts, we invite you to e-mail us at PCC@palisadesny.com to receive Palisades alerts and event information.

Marina and Samantha
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Any animal lover will enjoy reading Four Lives + Two, Our Lives with Our Furry Friends, by Marina Harrison, Cristina Biaggi and Gianni Biaggi. The privately printed book is beautifully laid out on pages with colored backgrounds and includes pictures of the family’s pets and their owners and stories of the animals’ lives. Marina, Cristina and Gianno had an idyllic childhood, living in a villa in Italy with a goat named Misti, a cow, a bunch of parrots and an aviary containing countless birds. Lizards, snakes and turtles lived in the garden, and the family had many pet dogs, as well as monkeys.

The famly as chldren with their pets Lady and Liu.
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Zain Ispharazi, who lived in Palisades for seventeen years, obviously loves to write, has a fertile imagination and enjoys traveling. As a child, he spent time exploring and playing in the woods in Tallman Park. He started out studying anthropology in college, which led to an interest in indigenous peoples. That led to visits to tribes in the Peruvian rainforest, where he spent two years in snatches over the five-year period between 2012 and 2017.