Winters come and go - some bitter, others mild. March in New York always seems to be brown and raw and spring far away. Every morning I looked out of my second-story bedroom window at my wretched lawn - patchy, muddy and all together a mess. Diagonally, in my field of vision, I could see what appeared to be a piece of green velvet. It was Hitsch Albin’s lawn!

(Click to enlarge)

Leslie Price Hayes is starring in The Glass Menagerie, by Tennessee Williams, playing the intense and complex role of the mother, Amanda Wingfield. The play opens Friday, Sept. 11 and will run through Saturday. October 10 at the Elmwood Playhouse in Nyack. Selma Blasenheim directs, and Stephen Kiss and Sandy Gordon are co-producers.

After four months of keeping our bedroom door closed by way of a sock stuffed between the door and the frame, I decided it was time for a pro. I called Wendy Lee MacDowell, otherwise known as the Lady Locksmith, and discovered another terrific Rocklander.

August 8, 1941-March 12, 2009

Karen was born and grew up in California, moving with her family to Rye, New York while she was in high school. She graduated with a BA in History from D.C. Berkeley in 1963. After graduation she became a portfolio manager at Scudder Stevens and Clark in New York City. She married Jack P. Jefferies in 1972 and lived in Snedens Landing, NY while raising her daughter Lizzie. She became an interior decorator in New York, and later an expert insurance broker for long-term care. In 1997, Karen and Jack moved to Newport, Rhode Island, spending winters in Vero Beach, Florida.

Ever since her childhood, Cristina Biaggi has felt the call to be an artist. Her career has spanned decades, in parallel with the modern women’s movement, embracing a diversity of media from cast bronze to paper collage. Inspired by a sense of justice and activism, she has lived a life committed to promoting peace and justice for all living creatures of the world.

Elaine, the daughter of Mildred Rippey, grew up in Palisades. Her book “Road to Damascus” is available on Amazon.com.

My new book, Road to Damascus will be out the end of the month, published by MSI Press. My British friend, the author Mary Lovell, is sponsoring a Book Launch for me in Damascus on May 7th. However, the real audience for the book is in the United States.

Lounging at the top of the gently sloped lawn like a Cor-ten steel cobra, this coiled shape dominates the clusters of smaller spheres and shapes that shelter under the trees further downhill.
(Click to enlarge)

Grace Knowlton is a long-time resident of Palisades, and, as always, she is working on something new. Right now, she is interested in wicker and bones. And sawhorses. These items strike most people as unremarkable; they are some basic elements of every-day life and work, and they are usually overlooked. Grace sees much more. The smallest details in the corner of a bathroom can echo cosmic relationships between light and darkness if the light is right, and if you are thinking like that. She has always been aware of those simple moments— hidden in plain sight—when it is possible to discover a way of feeling by instilling ordinary appearances with profound insights.

Don Bracken, a Palisades resident who decided retirement wasn’t for him, started the History Publishing Company in January, 2007.

The Palisades Presbyterian Church is very happy to announce our new pastor Reverend Angela Maddalone. The congregation unanimously called Rev. Maddalone as our pastor at our candidate Sunday in September. Angela began her call at Palisades on November 3rd.

What do Mother Teresa of Calcutta and Wally Broecker, one of Lamont Doherty’s star geochemists, have in common? They are both recipients of the prestigious Balzan Prize, which is presented by the Milan-based Balzan Foundation to honor outstanding science, culture and humanitarian initiatives that advance world peace. Dr. Broecker, one of four recent honorees, will receive the award on November 21st in Rome, along with $885,000, half of which must be devoted to future work.

The Balzan Prize honors Broecker for his “extraordinary contributions to the understanding of climate change through his discoveries concerning the role of the oceans and their interactions with the atmosphere, as well as the role of glacial changes and the records contained in ice cores and ocean sediments.”

What are your impressions now that you've been in place for four weeks?

I found what the Library is widely known for; it is a well-run organization with a wonderful collection and a professional and caring staff.

Katie Elevitch recently released the online version of her new album, Kindling for the Fire, on November 11, 2008, Veteran's Day, in honor of her father Mort's memory. Morton Elevitch was a WWII veteran, humble recipient of the Purple Heart for Bravery and critically acclaimed author of Dog Tags Yapping: The WWII Letters of a Combat GI.

Frances Pellegrini: Fashion Photographer Extraordinaire

Known to most kids and grownups in town as the wonderful lady who used to own Buttercup, the toy store in Piermont, and as a stalwart soprano in the choir at the Palisades Presbyterian Church, Frances Pellegrini also has a glamorous past career as a fashion photographer that is just now being rediscovered by connoisseurs.
An exhibition of her vintage photography from the 1950s, “In Front of My Lens,” was shown this past summer at the Piermont Library, and now that that exhibit has closed, the prints and contact sheets are for sale through local artist Margaret Grace, who also helped to mount the show.

Photos from a shoot of Judy Tomkins' garden done two springs ago are now posted on Martha Stewart's website.

There is one place, a room in a church on a little road, in which I feel more comfortable that any other. It is cavernous, with skylights and deep brown rafters and it is there, in that room, that I have been a fourteen year-old girl, eager for love. There, too, that I have been the commander of the roman army, a shepardess, a rebellious daughter.

Neal Harris and Cellen Wolk
(Click to enlarge)

Neal Harris and Cellen Wolk, friends, collaborators and business partners of Hey Hoe Garden Design, love abundance. Lushness, Neal explains. Cellen’s mother and aunts were obsessive gardeners, as were their neighbors. They worked in each other’s yards, doing radical things, experimenting together. Her mother has always lived in New England and has had New England gardens. Her delphiniums grow to 8 feet. “You don’t see that here,” Cellen says “so I have adapted.”

This past March, the penultimate event in the second season of the award-winning series (Palisades People) featured the adventurers Cristina Biaggi and Milbry Polk.

A Life Well Lived

Helen Cotthaus and her husband, Harry.
(Click to enlarge)

While we doubt she ever believed us, Helen Cotthaus would always giggle with embarrassment when we teasingly told her that she was our neighborhood “role model” for growing older gracefully, with strength, resilience and mental acuity.

Michael Ludas, of Montclair, NJ, a Customer Support Manager for Verizon Partner Solutions and a former Palisades resident, died on February 7 at his brother Harry's house in Campbell, NY after a long battle with cancer. He was 54. Michael's father, Angelo, worked at Los Alamos as well as at Lamont, where he was in charge of the machine shop for many years. Michael's mother, Lenore, ran the Palisades Country Store for a few years in the 1950s, when it still shared space with the Palisades Post Office. Michael was an avid fisherman and loved singing and playing the guitar.

(Click to enlarge)

My son, Simon Gerard, who had lived in Palisades since 1954, died suddenly at his home on Woods Road on January 22nd. Simon was 55 years old. A memorial party was held at the Community Center on February 16th. Many, many people, from the community and elsewhere, attended the party and shared their memories of Simon.