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SEPT 18– NO WESTCHESTER DISTRICT ATTORNEY FORUM. SUSAN CACACE DECLINES TO PARTICIPATE
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The League of Women Voters of Westchester announces that a proposed Candidates Forum for Westchester District Attorney will not be held.
Democratic Candidate Susan Cacace has declined the League’s invitation to participate in the proposed October 24, 2024 forum at the White Plains Public Library. However, Republican candidate, John Sarcone, has accepted the candidates forum invitation.
A candidates meeting with only one candidate present is an open or empty chair meeting, and is not permitted under League rules and its policy of nonpartisanship. The League regrets that this important educational event for voters has to be cancelled.
“This is a lost opportunity for the public to hear directly from candidates in person and to address their own questions to them,” stated Westchester County League President Kathy Meany. “We strive to run forums in a respectful, non-partisan environment that encourages civil discourse and allows candidates to communicate with the people they are seeking to represent. It is a disappointment that there will be no such opportunity for voters residing in Westchester County.
SEPT 17 –GOVERNOR HOCHUL: MORE KID PROTECTIONS FROM INTERNET INFLUENCES ON THE WAY
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STATEMENT FROM GOVERNOR KATHY HOCHUL AND ATTORNEY GENERAL LETITIA JAMES
Following the news today that Instagram will introduce new safety features for minors on its platform, Governor Hochul and Attorney General James jointly released the following statement:
“Our kids are facing a mental health crisis fueled by addictive social media feeds – and the changes announced today by Instagram are proof that New York’s nation-leading laws are already making a powerful impact to protect kids online.
“In June, we enacted the SAFE for Kids Act – our first-in-the-nation law to restrict addictive feeds and stop late-night notifications for minors in New York. Just three months later, Instagram said it will shut down late-night notifications for all minors nationwide, along with creating more supervision tools for parents. By taking strong and decisive action, New York has helped ensure that millions of kids across the nation will have greater protections.
“Let’s be clear – our fight to safeguard kids online is far from over, and Instagram’s announcement is just one step in the right direction. The SAFE for Kids Act will also combat addictive algorithms and our Child Data Protection Act will restrict online sites from collecting and selling our kids’ data. Every social media platform – including Instagram – will need to play by these rules in New York, just as they should across the nation. We’ll never stop fighting to protect our kids – and we look forward to continuing this vital work.”
SEPT 17–White Plains Library Announces New Director.
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WPCNR MARTINE AVENUE JOURNAL. From the White Plains Public Library. September 17, 2024:
The White Plains Library announced today that Laura Eckley has accepted the position of Director of the White Plains Public Library effective October 28.
Ms. Eckley comes to White Plains from Larchmont Public Library where she has served as Director since 2012. While there, she supervised a major renovation of the Library. Prior to that, she was the Director of the Bronxville Public Library (2009-2012) and Head of Children’s Services there (2003-2009).
She received her MLIS from the Palmer School of Library and Information Science at Long Island University in 1999 and a certificate from the Harvard University, Graduate School of Design, Executive Program on The Future of Library Design in 2014.
She holds professional memberships in the American Library Association, New York Library Association, Westchester Library Association and the Westchester County Public Library Director Association, She was honored with the New York Times Librarian Award in 2004.
Ms. Eckley resides in Bronxville, New York and in her spare time enjoys crossword puzzles, needlepoint and of course, reading. Join me us in welcoming her to the White Plains Public Library.
Ms. Eckley follows Brian Kenny who retired this summer.
Photograph of the Day : One Sycamore Lane and Rosedale. To Varry or Not to Varry that is the question.
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One Sycamore Lane: the Zoning Board of Appeals is considering a request to build a Buddist Temple on this corner property at the junction of Rosedale Avenue and One Sycamore Lane.
NEW! THE MASTER OF CIDER INTRODUCES THE HARD CIDER TOUR
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THE SAME GREAT THOMPSON CIDERS YOU LOVE ARE BACK AND A NEW DIFFERENT BOLDER CIDER EXPERIENCE DEBUTS
WPCNR GETS AROUND. By John F. Bailey. September 14, 2024:
It’s Autumn in New York Cider Time in Westchester County with the greatest apples in the world
The Cider Master of Westchester County, Geofrey Thompson creator of the famous Thompson’s Cider Mill and orchard in 1976 opens today Saturday and tomorrow Sunday, 10 TO 5 at the 334 Binn Road off Route 134. My son and I have been going there since 1976.
The Johnny Appleseed of Westchester County, Mr. Thompson’s cider is known throughout the county and the Northeast, Fresh-pressed by Mr. Thompson personally every weekend and you can pick it up today at the old cider place 135 Binn Road
After this weekend the ciders will be at the new Tasting Room 1311 Kitchawan Road, off Route 134.
This fall, The Professor of Cider is introducing his unique one-of-a-kind local apple creations of historic flavored ciders of the past to appeal to wine enthusiasts, beer aficionados and persons looking for the taste of cider with his famous traditional ciders at the local Cider Site giving adults another year-round way to enjoy cider Americans drank in the late 1800s and first 20 years of the 20th Century.
HARD CIDER TOUR AT THE RIVERMARKET, TARRYTOWN THURSDAY.
In what his leading public relations and marketing business, the renowned Thompson & Bender firm, would call a soft opening Mr. Thompson and Dan O’Brien of Yorktown and Liz Bracken-Thompson have been introducing the new cider kids on the block: his hard cider creations.
INTRODUCING THE NEW HARD CIDER CHORUSLINE AT RIVERFRONT.
I ran into this Hard Cider Tour at Sam’s of Gedney Way Bar Wednesday and then Mr. Cider invited me to Rivermarket in Tarrytown to try the new “HARD CIDER LINE”.
Brenda Starr tastes the Antique Apple Rose’
Hard cider is a different cider experience – it’s hard,uses westchester apples, tastes dry and semi-dry catering to wine enthusiasts deliciously mellow and refreshing the autumn drink of the past you can enjoy all year responsibly because it has a more refreshing taste than wines in this reporter’s opinion, a smooth cidery finish, (if cider can have a finish), without the sweetness of the exuberant traditional autumn, non-alcoholic ciders which are creatively pressed the old-fashion way weekly at the traditional Thompson’s Cider Mill presses on 335 Binn Road.
The Hard cider line are ready now after 7 years of development in the cider labs and traditional presses at the Thompson Cider Mill. Mr. Thompson (right) and Dan O’Brien (left), who keeps records of the apples and blends and combination results of each blend of apples used in each “ciderage” (my word), report the Hard Ciders let you experience the refreshing hard cider of the 19th and early 20th centuries, the ciders that built the railroads, towns cities. Hard Cider was the working man’s refresher.
The alcohol content is 6.8% and are gluten-free. They come in 750 ml. bottles with screw off, screw-back in tight caps. Apple Rose’, Semi Dry and Dry Hard Ciders also come in handy convenient 4-packs of 12 oz. bottles and in 5 gallon kegs.
Starting next week the ciders, traditional sweet and unique you remember and love welcome the new Thompson Hard Cider line to the Cider Stage. Here are the flavors
The mellow new hard ciders may be tasted 10 to 5 Saturdays and Sundays at the new Thompson’s Cider Mill at Sundial Farm 1311 Kitchawan Road (Route 134). The phone number is 914-271-2254.
WHITE PLAINS WEEK TONIGHT 7:00 PM THE SEPTEMBER 13 REPORT. FIOS CH 45. OPTIMUM CH 76 OR WWW.WPCOMMMUNITYMEDIA.ORG
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THE 9-11 REMEMBRANCE
BENJAMIN BOYKIN ELECTED PRESIDENT OF NEW YORK ASSOCIATION OF COUNTIES
THE DEBATE
LAWLER SKIPS DISTRICT 17 CONGRESSIONAL FORM
COLD SPRING SHUTS TOWN HALL FOR 2 WEEKS BECAUSE OF COVID
WESTCHESTER NEW COVID CASES DECLINE FOURTH STRAIGHT WEEK.
COLD SPRING NY SHUTS DOWN FOR 2 WEEKS
SUPERINTENDENT OF WHITE PLAINS SCHOOLS ON NEW RULES OF BEHAVIOR THIS YEAR
JOHN BAILEY AND THE NEWS
ONCE A WEEK EVERY WEEK
ON WHITE PLAINS WEEK FOR 23 YEARS
TONIGHT AT 8: “PEOPLE TO HEARD”: DR. JOSEPH RICCA’S BACK TO SCHOOL REPORT ON FIOS CH 45, WP OPTIMUM CH 76 AND www.wpcommunitymedia.org
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SEPT 11—A MORNING TO REMEMBER
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WPCNR LAKE STREET WHITE PLAINS NEW YORK USA. By John f. Bailey:
It was a beautiful morning today.
Like the morning 23 years ago when events made this day, September 11, a day of infamy like Pearl Harbor changed the world and this country forever.
It is the day when the city holds the Community Gathering of Remembrance of 9/11 in Liberty Park.
No one needs pictures to remember that day or needs to watch television replays.
Those who saw the World Center towers fall into rubble like my wife, and I who could not watch the television reports, but listened to the radio reports of the dying of thousands on the site and haunting lives of thousands more since that day, remember it every day
In White Plains New York USA , we lost 6 of those thousands of innocent victims
They are because they will always be our citizens, Sharon Balkcom, Marisa Dinardo, Hemanth Kumar Putter, Joe Riverso, Gregory Rodriguez and Linda Sheehan immortalized in this memorial where wreaths were placed by Mayor Thomas Roach and the Common Couuncil as they do every year this day.
Christine Mann, Cellist began the sensitive prelude music with melancholy mellow notes of sensitive quietly comforting strains across the little glen by the beautiful lake, one of the melodies was Yesterday
Ms Mann’s artistry created a just right atmosphere of loss, strength and courage to go on that is the legacy of 9/11
Phylisha Villanueva, Poet Laureate of Westchester County read a masterpiece of a narrative poem written about that morning 23 years ago that moved the gathering by her striking word pictures of emotions and anguish and message
She began reciting, that beautiful still morning like today’s “A day I will never forget,” images sharply depicting the plane hitting the 24th floor and her father getting out then having to go back the next day.
Images and feelings of that day were movingly created: Workers in the building who stayed behind, throwing themselves out of the building “ twisting and turning, looking like Superman,” and “ a couple holding hands” as they leapt together. Workmen going back every day for three years, and ending with no truer legacy of 9/11, that we “are made stronger than strong,” the last words of this epic: “Be Brave. Be Brave Be Brave”
Mayor Thomas Roach in his Welcome & Reflections observed that today was the nicest day of the summer, cool an beautiful as the day of 9-11. Mayor got right to the point: “Seeing the horror, I thought it is a call to make things better, and what will we do to make things better for the world and a little bit better for other people.” The Mayor also saluted the police and fire personnel attending the Rembrance since ”they serve to make things better for people every day.”
I felt that this was one of the most evocative of the spirit positivity of rememberance of this sad day as I have see.
The ceremony will be rebroadcast on www.wpcommunitymedia.org.
Alex Philippidis Remembers 9/11: HELPING THE HEROES THE LEGACY
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WPCNR NEWS AND COMMENT. From Alex Philippidis of Genome Web Daily News, Mary Ann Leibert, Inc. September 11, 2016:
Editor’s Note:
Alex, well-known local reporter around Westchester County for the last 38 years sent along his remembrance of what happened after the Twin Towers fell this day, 23 years ago today:
Two weeks after 9/11, I wrote this article sharing this story of something good that came from something evil… No link to this story exists any more, so I copy it in its entirety below:
Helping the heroes
From: Westchester County Business Journal, Oct. 1, 2001
“The World Trade Center should, because of its importance, become a living representation of man’s belief in humanity, his need for individual dignity, his belief in the cooperation of men, and through this cooperation, his ability to find greatness.” – Minoru Yamasaki, architect of the Twin Towers
Nearly three weeks have passed, but the memories are as fresh as ever for Jay Martino and 50 of his colleagues about the hell they witnessed at Ground Zero of the terrorist attacks that leveled the World Trade Center.
“It’s an unimaginable site of destruction. You search your mind to come up with the right verbiage, the right adjectives. How can I describe what I saw? It’s a horrific scene,” said Martino, a general superintendent with Granite/Halmar Construction Co. of Mount Vernon.
Martino, head of the Masons & Concrete Contractors Association of Hudson Valley Inc., led a team of workers who answered their industry’s call to send volunteers and heavy machines to the tons of wreckage that comprised the Twin Towers and five smaller buildings.
Granite/Halmar was among dozens of construction contractors in and around Westchester that sent resources to the World Trade Center in response to a memo distributed to all 650 members of the Construction Industry Council (CIC) of Westchester and Hudson Valley Inc. of Tarrytown.
Yonkers Contracting Co., which helped build the World Trade Center in the 1970s, donated 100 trucks to the rescue effort, while Tilcon New York Inc. of West Nyack and four subcontractors donated equipment and personnel from their 21 quarry and asphalt facilities in New York and New Jersey.
“I think more than any other industry, construction contractors and workers comprehend the enormity of the task at hand because we understand the magnitude of what it takes to create such magnificent structures and buildings,” said Ross J. Pepe, CIC president.
“Everyone in our industry has a deep and new-found appreciation of the ironworkers, operating engineers, laborers, Teamsters and other union workers now at the site as the world watches these guys on TV doing a job that nobody would ever want to do.”
The World Trade Center took half a decade to build, but only two hours for terrorists to level in the series of attacks that shook the world on Sept. 11.
County construction industry responds
The following day when CIC asked for volunteers, hundreds answered the call. Fifty of them came from Granite/Halmar, which had hired them for its many projects under construction – such as the new international arrivals terminal and an expansion of the British Airways terminal at John F. Kennedy International Airport.
“They said they needed cutoff saws, tools, oxygen tanks, manpower. So I put the call out to all of our foreman asking if any of them would volunteer,” Martino recalled “We loaded a half-dozen pickup trucks with oxygen and acetylene gas tanks, plus dust masks, goggles, safety glasses.”
The Granite/Halmar men joined other CIC member companies in assembling at Yonkers Raceway, then following a state police escort south to lower Manhattan. Authorities have divided the area in and around the World Trade Center into four zones, each overseen by a construction contractor: AMEC p.l.c.; Tully Construction Inc.; a joint venture of Turner Construction and Plaza Materials Inc.; and Bovis Lend Lease and two subcontractors, Grace Industries Inc. and Gateway.
Granite/Halmar entered the site working for AMEC, which controls the northwest zone of the recovery area, Granite/Halmar had worked for AMEC at the Kennedy airport projects.
“We hooked up with a firefighter, a captain. He escorted us to ground zero. Right away we went to work with the firemen. They were elated to see us. They had nothing. They had no cutoff saws we could see. They had one set of torches. They were working their way through the pile of rubble with picks and shovels. Everything was done by hand,” Martino said.
“We were cutting steel into pieces. We took everything we could handle and loaded it into 5-gallon barrels, then kept passing them on down the line,” Martino said. “We worked till late in the evening, 11 or 12 o’clock at night.
“It was just amazing, the amount of debris and structural steel there was around. You stood on steel beams that had just collapsed. You’d look at the steel and it was completely clean.
There was no concrete to be found. You didn’t see any chunks of concrete. The fire was so great the concrete had disintegrated.
“You’d see bits and pieces of carpet, and every once in a while, there would be a bumper to a vehicle. You stood on the steel beams which had collapsed,” Martino said.
Not once during their time at Ground Zero did Martino or his men spot any bodies, or any parts of bodies.
“I was not looking forward to anything like that. I was looking to help and I would have gone anywhere I was told to go. But I kept wondering. What would I do if I saw something? How would I react?”
An especially welcome sight, Martino said, was the hundreds of volunteers who catered to weary rescuers: “Every time you turned around, you heard. Do you need something to drink? Do you want something to eat? They had buckets of water and Gatorade. They had Power Bars.”
Just three years ago Martino and workers from GraniteHalmar’s predecessor, Halmar Builders of New York Inc., transformed the drab exterior public space outside the World Trade Center into World Trade Center Plaza, a public plaza complete with granite pavement and landscaped areas.
Looking at a poster-sized photo of the plaza outside his office, Martino paused. “I feel funny seeing the pictures of it now.”