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The silver gelatin prints in the show range from the ultimate New York sophistication of mid-20th century fashion to dusty gray cityscapes as seen through the windows of the New York’s old elevated subway trains. Pellegrini’s subjects included evening gowns for Harper’s Bazaar, L & M cigarettes, actress Tippi Hedren, and elegant corsets and “foundation garments” in fantasy settings that she invented and set up herself.

Throughout her career, Frances worked at the top of her profession, shooting editorial and advertising material for clients including McCalls, Glamour, Seventeen, Modern Bride and Woman’s Day at a studio on 40th St. between Park & Lexington Aves. During this time, Frances, her husband Bruno, and two children, Roger and Nina, lived in Palisades before moving back into New York City in 1961.

Frances recalled that the Harper’s Bazaar evening gown shoot required a party in the background. She invited all their friends to get dressed up and come to a “party” in Palisades and she purchased a beautiful chandelier from Tippie O’Neil’s that was used as a prop, that is still in the family. “It was a wonderful party,” she recalled, “and the photographs came out well too, by the way!”

In the same era, Betty and Carl Friedan were renting a house in Palisades. Frances got to know Betty as she was starting to work her way up in the world by writing family-oriented features for Redbook and Parents Magazine and later Frances took the author photo for the book jacket of Betty’s groundbreaking feminist work, The Feminine Mystique, published in 1963.

Whenever children were required as “props” for scenes, such as Christmas ads and family gatherings, Roger Pellegrini (Frances’s son and the former Orangetown Town Supervisor), remembers being a part of many shoots, along with the Field kids. Their mother, Nancy Field Hyatt, also recalls running into Frances over at Rosie Kenison’s house. Rosie was Buckminster Fuller’s sister, and he came for Sunday lunch on a regular basis. “He was always talking,” she recalls, “but you couldn’t understand anything.”

In 1956, Frances’s editor at McCalls asked her to do a 2-page photo feature aimed at instructing young housewives to fix themselves up with make-up and a manicure each day so that their home life would run more smoothly and to please their hard-working husbands. It was a last-minute rush job, and Frances quickly turned to her friend Caroline Lalire, whose children were 6, 4, and 2 years old at the time and asked her to pose for the shoot. Although the gist of the topic was diametrically opposed to Caroline’s own values and style of life, she gamely assembled her kids at the breakfast table, put them in the bathtub, and posed them rushing to greet their father after work, etc. as a model for young mothers all across America. That’s friendship in action!

by Greta Nettleton

For those interested in viewing more images from Frances’s work or making a purchase, please call Margaret Grace at 359-1417.

Palisades Scientists Honored

On September 12th, scientists Dennis Hayes and Lynn Sykes were among seven distinguished retiring Columbia University faculty members honored by the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences. Five of the seven arrived at Lamont as graduate students in the early 60s and played an important role throughout its early years. In 1949, the widow of Thomas Lamont donated a 155-acre property called Torrey Cliff to Columbia where a research center devoted to geology and geophysics, then known as Lamont Geological Observatory, was established under the direction of Maurice “Doc” Ewing, a colorful and demanding leader.

Dennis Hayes, a native of St. Joseph, Missouri, graduated summa cum laude from the University of Kansas in 1961 and in 1966 received his Ph.D. in marine geophysics at Columbia University. Like many of the young Lamont scientists, Denny headed to sea aboard Lamont’s research vessel the Vema in 1965 on his first oceanographic expedition. From 1965 to 1993 he served as chief scientist on 20 such expeditions. Dennis’s research includes studies of the tectonic evolution of the circum-Antarctic region and the Southeast Asian marginal seas and the segmentation of the global mid-ocean ridge system. In 1977 Denny became a full professor and received a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship in 1980-81. In 2002, during a sabbatical, Dennis was a Visiting Professor at Ecole Normale Superieure in Paris. He has recently completed “A Guide for the Construction of Circum-Antarctic Paleobathymetry to 30º South,” to be published in the October/November EOS, American Geophysical Union’s weekly newspaper.

Lynn Sykes who grew up in Virginia headed to Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a five-year scholarship in hand, graduating with a masters degree in 1960. In 1965 he received a Ph.D. from Columbia University in geology. Lynn’s specialties include earthquakes, natural hazards, and tectonics. Active in the control of nuclear weapons, Sykes was a member of the U.S. team sent to Moscow in 1974 to negotiate a Threshold Test Ban Treaty and testified on numerous occasions before Congress on the verification of nuclear testing.

Named as Higgins Professor in 1973, he became a member of the prestigious National Academy of Sciences in 1979. Among his numerous awards he was presented with the Vetlesen Prize in 2000 for his groundbreaking work in establishing the existence of plate tectonics. Lynn’s most recent work, a three-year study entitled, “Observation and Tectonic Setting of Historic and Instrumentally-located Earthquakes in Greater New York City—Philadelphia Area” was published in the August 2008 issue of the Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America. He is currently working as a consultant to New York State regarding the relicensing of Indian Point Nuclear Energy plants.

While these two talented scientists have relinquished teaching, they have no intention to rest on their laurels. Lynn and Denny continue to actively work on numerous research projects.

Welton Gersony Receives Award

On September 19, Welton, a pediatric cardiologist who serves as the Alexander Nadas Professor of Pediatrics at the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University and as Professor of Pediatrics at Weill Medical College of Cornell, was awarded the Distinguished Alumnus Award by SUNY Upstate Medical University. The award recognized his outstanding research and distinguished teaching career, as well as his service to the medical community.

He has received numerous honors and awards in his medical career, delivering the T. Duckett Jones Lecture at the 1999 annual meeting of the American Heart Association (AHA) and receiving the AHA Distinguished Service Award in 2003 and the American Academy of Pediatrics Founders Award in 2007. He has been a visiting professor and lecturer at many medical centers throughout the world.

Prior to his current posts, Welton served as director of Pediatric Cardiology at Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital New York Presbyterian Center and directed the combined Pediatric Cardiology Program at Columbia/Cornell. Over the past 35 years he has supervised the training of 110 fellows in Pediatric Cardiology.

Dakota Green in the Arctic

Dakota Green of Palisades went on an expedition to the Arctic this August with Students on Ice, an organization he learned of from his good friend Palisadian Milbry Polk, the explorer. After a long and arduous application process, he was accepted and awarded a $10,000 sponsorship.

Dakota Green
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At home after his trip, Dakota related that it was an experience like no other. Although he traveled with students from Canada, Afghanistan, Monaco, Austria, Norway, and Mexico, it was the Inuits on the trip who exposed him to the most striking cultural differences he encountered through a game called High Kick. In this game one demonstrates strength and agility by kicking with both feet a ball hung from a pole at increasing heights. Dakota himself was able to reach 5 feet 10 inches.

He said that we need to be aware that global warming is really happening. The glaciers are receding rapidly; his group had to hike one and a half hours to get to one that had been at the water’s edge until recently. They filled their water bottles with glacial run-off, the freshest, cleanest water he has ever tasted. The melt is affecting the plant and animal life at the poles. Polar bears are beginning to drown from exhaustion as they are forced to swim longer distances between ice floes. The trip has also heightened his awareness of the downstream affects of our use of non-biodegradable materials. Already, he has persuaded his mother to stop buying plastic containers of water. She has switched to reusable stainless steel at his urging.

He feels a connection now across the world. His new friends keep in touch. They are writing for their student newspapers and giving presentations to their fellow students and communities on the importance of stewardship of our planet. Dakota himself plans to write an article for his school newspaper this fall and to give a presentation to the Palisades community in the near future.

For videos and diaries of Dakota’s trip, including a demonstration of High Kick, go to www.studentsonice.com.

Naomi Katz

Born in Connecticut on March 29, 1937, Naomi Katz grew up in Hartford and then went on to study philosophy at Vassar College where she was elected president of her freshman class. She took her junior year abroad at the University of Edinburgh, and graduated from Vassar in 1959 with a BA in philosophy.

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In 1965 she moved to Palisades where she lived and loved with Polly Cameron for over thirty years in the little house in the woods on the big curve of Washington Spring Road. Here her dog Woofer would, by turns, either terrorize or amuse the children and some of the adults of Snedens Landing.

Many people know Naomi in wildly different ways and yet we all experienced similar feelings from being in her presence. When I was around Naomi, I felt, sometimes, as if I was kissed by the sun on a crisp autumn day, blessed by the fulsome moon illuminating the landscape she loved or just simply drenched with a kind of delirious, sweet happiness. Naomi was a tender woman of wit and wonder and wisdom who could charm the pants off of you with her beautiful smile. She was a woman who had the remarkable ability to multi-task. She could simultaneously undertake a serious study of string theory, nod to Nietzsche and throw herself passionately into a bowl of really good ice cream!

Her accomplishments were many, but more than being just merely the sum total of her parts, Naomi was that most rare of birds—she was a truly gentle and supremely kind human being. Some of you might have had occasion to see the little worlds of beauty Naomi created in the tiny two square inch boxes she was fond of making—always paying close attention to the most infinitesimal of details in her art. She paid the same attention to the quality and nature of her spiritual life, her intellectual and philosophical pursuits, and her thirst ALWAYS for knowledge so that she could understand the complex external world around her and gain an ever deeper and more meaningful understanding of her own inner landscape and direction. In conversation and in her writing, Naomi had the diligence, determination and intellect to seek and find thoughtfully honest answers. Naomi was a different being to different people. Some people feel that she was a complex creature or a soul striving for understanding or just a human being getting through each day. For me, Naomi was pure love. Naomi Katz passed away on August 11, 2008. Those of us lucky enough to have been her family, her neighbors, her friends, her colleagues and her intimates will carry her forever in our minds and hearts.

by Jocelyn Drechsler-DeCrescenzo

Paul Prisco

As 10964 went to press, we learned of the death of Paul Prisco on Sept. 17. A resident of Palisades since 1962, Paul was a founding member of the Palisades Civic Association. He represented Palisades faithfully at countless Town Board meetings. His last meeting was Sept. 8 where he spoke passionately against the proposed O&R substation on Oak Tree Road.