WHITE PLAINS CITIZENETREPORTER SETS RECORD VISITS FOR YEAR 7,017,658 VISITS! 2,098,003 VISITORS MADE 6 VISITS A DAY EVERY DAY. 63,330 UNIQUE VISITORS MADE 133,730 VISITS IN DECEMBER. WPCNR AVERAGED 17,284 VISITORS A WEEK, VISITING 31,270 TIMES.

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White Plains Public Library is the cool place to be this afternoon to come and meet Maria Tavares and see her her big, glorious colorful paintings bigger than life that grab you with intense bold colors and make their subjects just leap out into your soul. The prolific Ms. Tavares is bold, emotional, her paintings of people make them personalities you want to meet, her paintings of objects you know extend them out of their landscape and captures the spirit anew. See these catch-the-eye paintings that you’ll want to linger with awile.

Why do I write this? When I left the White Plains TV Studios Friday the exhibition was just being prepared and the out front and look at me charisma STOPPED ME. I had to look.  On this sweltering afternoon coming up the exhibition is the coolest place you can feel cool and see cool too.  These are portraits that show how the artist felt about her subjects as she painted them which  gives her brush the spirit of the living.

Wow. You have to see them, folks, and with a cool refreshment in your hand, what better thing to do on  a hot summer’s day. You do not even have to use sun blocker…but the art will uplift your souls.

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WPCNR CAMPAIGN 2024. News & Comment By Professor Stephen Rolandi. June 20, 2024:

 By this time next week, we should know the outcome of the Democratic Party’s marquee primary that has received national interest and has been estimated to be one of the most expensive primaries to date (over $ 20 million).

The primary pits the incumbent Congressman, Jamal Bowman against Westchester County’s popular and term limited County Executive, Georg Latimer. One could say it is almost a “referendum” between the centrist Democrats (Latimer) and the progressive wing of the Democratic Party (Bowman).

As a result of re-apportionment, New York’s 16 C.D. looks somewhat different from the prior 16 C.D. The bulk of the district lies in southern Westchester County, with a small portion contained in the Bronx (county and borough) of New York City.

The ethnic make-up of the 16 C.D. is approximately 40% white, and 60% persons of color — Spanish speaking persons account for 29% and African-Americans 21%. In the Democratic primary, approximately 40% of voters are of the Jewish faith.

The District’s configuration is strongly Democratic, but not as overwhelmingly Democratic as other congressional districts in New York City.

In my view, County Executive Latimer has run a textbook campaign, while Rep. Bowman has had to defend his two term record; and advocate strongly held views on the conflict in Gaza.

Mr. Bowman received only 54% of the vote against several opponents in the 2022 primary.

Mr. Latimer has a strong record as County executive and prior legislative experience in southern Westchester; Rep. Bowman enjoys significant support from younger voters in the 16 C.D.

Bottom line: I forecast George Latimer winning the primary 55% to Bowman’s 45%.    

(Professor Stephen Rolandi previously served as Deputy Commissioner for the New York State Division of Human Rights. A political scientist, he is an Adjunct Professor of Public Administration at Pace University and John Jay College of Criminal Justice, CUNY).

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White Plains, NY (June 2024) The Hudson Gateway Association of REALTORS® (HGAR), along with six other REALTOR® Associations, recently held their 3^rd  Annual Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DEI) Summit at the Newark Liberty International Airport Marriott in Newark, NJ.

HGAR teamed up with the National Association of REALTORS®, the New York State Association of REALTORS®, the New Jersey REALTORS®, the North Central Jersey Association of REALTORS®, the Greater Bergen Association of REALORS® and the Greater Rochester Association of REALTORS® to create this two-day presentation.

The goal of the Summit was to build curiosity while exploring understanding of diversity, equity, and inclusions within personal and professional careers. It was also designed to help attendees develop the skills needed to be successful and create actionable steps towards impactful change.

This year’s keynote speaker, Thasunda Brown Duckett, Time Magazine’s “100 Most Influential People of 2024” and President and CEO of TIAA, shared the stage with Michelle Mills Clement, CEO of Chicago Association of REALTORS®, where they discussed financial inclusion, retirement, building generational wealth, and importance of financial inclusion.

Duckett is determined to put more underserved Americans on a path to financial health and resilience. She helped launch Advancing Black Pathways, an initiative to help more Black Americans achieve sustained economic success. She’s also striving to help the 40% of all Americans at risk of running out of their retirement savings.

The first day of the Summit launched with Bias Override, an approved continuing education course to combat bias in the industry led by certified instructor Matt Difanis. The next day included close to 20 speakers and panelists on various topics.

“With over 200 attendees from several associations mainly from New York and New Jersey, this year’s DEI Summit was our best yet,” said Freddimir Garcia, HGAR’s DEI Officer. “It was uplifting and invigorating to hear a strong support of DEI from our keynote speaker, Thasunda Brown Duckett and Michelle Mills Clement, among others.” The topics covered included advocacy, appraisal bias, advancing DEI, and on the field challenges with the “-isms.”

“This powerful and innovative summit is the leading Realtor DEI event in the Northeast,” added HGAR CEO Lynda Fernandez.  “It engages members of participating Associations, while advancing DEI throughout the region’s real estate markets through collaboration and by securing top speakers and industry leaders who address the latest topics and issues impacting DEI.”

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(White Plains, NY) – The National Weather Service has issued a Heat Advisory for Westchester County effective from noon on Tuesday, June 18 until 8 p.m. on Wednesday, June 19.

The heat is also expected to continue through the end of the week. During this period heat index values are expected to reach between 95 and 100 degrees, and the Westchester County Health Department is warning residents that high temperatures post significant health risks.

Residents are urged to take precautions to protect themselves and their families from the effects of the heat. It is important to stay hydrated, avoid strenuous outdoor activities, and check on vulnerable family members and neighbors.

Residents who need a place to cool off can check the Cooling Center Finder. When it is too hot at home, senior centers, libraries, community centers and indoor malls offer a respite from the heat. Call before you go to be sure of the hours.

A Heat Advisory is issued when the combination of heat and humidity is make it feel like it is 95 to 99 degrees for two or more consecutive days, or 100 to 104 degrees for any length of time.

Seniors and those with chronic health problems are at an increased risk. Homes without air conditioning can be much hotter than outdoor temperatures. Use air conditioning to stay cool at home or go to a place that has air conditioning. If you don’t have home air conditioning, continue to seek out cool spaces each day as long as it remains hot.

To reduce risk during outdoor work, the Health Department recommends scheduling frequent rest breaks in shaded or air-conditioned environments.

·         Heat stroke is a serious and life-threatening condition that claims many lives nationwide each year. Symptoms include hot red, dry skin, shallow breathing, a rapid, weak pulse and confusion. Call 911 if you suspect heat stroke and immediately cool the overheated person while waiting for emergency help to arrive.

·         Another concern during a heat wave is heat exhaustion. Signs include headache, nausea or vomiting, dizziness and exhaustion, as well as cool, moist, pale or flushed skin. Anyone suffering from heat exhaustion should move out of the sun and apply cool, wet cloths to their skin.

Westchester County Commissioner of Health Sherlita Amler, MD said: “People who are most vulnerable to adverse effects from the heat include the very young, seniors, people who are obese and those with high blood pressure, heart disease, diabetes or lung conditions. Heat stroke and dehydration can surprise you. High humidity, chronic health conditions and some medications can also increase a person’s risk for heat stroke.”

Amler reminded residents never to leave children, pets or people in a closed car, no matter how brief the time. Closed vehicles can quickly rise to a life-threatening 140º F or more.

Amler continued: “During a heat wave, seniors, young children and people with compromised immunity especially should avoid vigorous outdoor activity, seek the shade, spend time in air-conditioned locations and drink lots of water throughout the day. Especially when they’re swimming and playing in the water, children often forget to drink, so parents and caregivers should prompt children to take breaks to hydrate.”

Those who plan to travel by car should prepare their vehicle before hitting the road. Always travel with a spare battery and avoid leaving radios, phone chargers and other accessories running when the engine is not. Check to make sure your air conditioning is properly functioning and coolant is at the proper level. If you plan to travel in less populated areas, bring water and an umbrella for shade if it becomes necessary to leave the car. Always keep air flowing throughout the vehicle, and try to park in the shade. 

For tips to prevent heat-related illness and places to stay cool, residents can visit the Health Department website at www.westchestergov.com/health.

Residents who need a place to cool off can check the Cooling Center Finder. When it is too hot at home, senior centers, libraries, community centers and indoor malls offer a respite from the heat. Call before you go to be sure of the hours.

Elevated heat and humidity can also lead to unhealthy levels of ozone, a gas produced by the action of sunlight on organic air contaminants from auto exhaust and other sources.  For air quality updates, go to https://www.airnow.gov. The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation forecasts daily ozone conditions at (http://www.dec.ny.gov), or call the New York State Air Quality Hotline at 1-800-535-1345.

The County’s Department of Emergency Services is monitoring the weather forecast, tracking the opening of local Cooling Centers, and is in contact with Con Edison and NYSEG concerning the potential for power outages.

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MY PARENTS: CHARLES F. BAILEY AND MILDRED PINNEO BAILEY

WPCNR THE SUNDAY  BAILEY. By John F. Bailey. Republished from The CitizeNetReporter of June 17, 2007:

This week celebrates a great American Father, mine and the other fathers across time who provide an eternal legacy their sons and daughters rely on every day and think about their fathers every day.

Charles F. Bailey.

He is my father. He was born November 17, 1918.

My father gave me four pieces of advice in life: Always drive an air-conditioned car. Always central air-condition your home. Stay out of court.

And, oh yes, don’t sit in traffic. Take the next exit and wing it.

Always take the service road on the Long Island Expressway. (He would have loved a Garmin.)

In retrospect, his advice has served me well.  I am always comfortable. I sit out traffic delays in comfort. I have not made lawyers rich.

He was not an emotional man. He was a banker and always wore suits crisp white shirts with French Cuffs to work. Starched.  To work. I have fond memories of going to meet him in the days of steam engines in Pleasantville – when train tracks were at grade with Manville Road at the old stone station.

I was most impressed as a young child by how he always smelled of coal cinders when he got off the train – like commuter’s cologne.

Sadly on today’s electric trains you do not get that. You always heard those steam engines coming. Chuffing doing serious work.

You could see them coming around the bend but you heard then first. Bell ringing ,chuffing, puffing : Clouds of very busy, inspiring industrious black smoke streaming at the horizon down the line.

He’d get off the train.

My mother would move over and he’d drive the old Hudson Hornet home. He always spoke quietly. Never raised his voice. Drank scotch and soda in the winter. “G & T’s” in the summer, martinis with George and Howard two close friends. He smoked Chesterfield, Philip Morris, Marlboros, Kents with the micronite filter.

He set up a Lionel train set in our basement – perhaps our unspoken connection.

When I was sent in by train for the first time to meet him at the office during Christmas time, he’d have his secretary Margie greet me at Grand Central Terminal which still is a very big and scary place to me .

He would take me to lunch at Jack’s Monte Rosa Restaurant on 49th Street – which I thought was a very great place. Hub bub, tinkling glasses. Sharp-dressed waiters in white jackets black bow ties.

When I first went to it with him, I was a little disappointed that it was not more glamorous but I was really impressed that Jack the owner greeted him by name.

“Hi, Mr. Bailey. Howe are you doing?”

I thought that was great that my Dad was greeted with respect.

When I first started working in Washington, D.C. in 1968 I ate regularly at a restaurant below the television station WMAL-TV where I worked, it was called Marty’s Italian Village.

Marty, the owner (who looked like Humphrey Bogart, the only thing missing was the white sport coat) started calling me when I came in around 7 PM, ‘Hi John, how are you?” People would look at me. They thought I was big.  I liked that. Feeling big in my small world at $90 a week.)

When my father came to visit me in Washington where I worked. I took him around town. I told him when he got off the plane. “Hi, Dad, welcome to my town.” I wanted to impress him. We’re always trying to impress our fathers. At least I was.

Another Father time was when my Dad came out for Dad’s Day at college.

I mean this was a big thing to me. He watched me do play-by-play of a football game from atop the press box in 15 degree weather. It was cold. But he watched. Acted impressed. He hated cold weather. No watching from the warm press box for him.

Another time he impressed was when I lost a job where I was working at the television station that I was being considered for. I told him how unfair it was, he put things in perspective:

“Puggy, he said,  “The film manager wasn’t going to put you in as his Assistant if you were going to be bucking him all the time.”

It put things in perspective. No false sentiment. No making me feel better, he was tough enough to teach by being realistic while telling me not to feel sorry for myself. It was one of my first lessons in how telling the truth puts situations in perspective. You know the truth, should we recognize it when it is told to us is a way to stop feeling sorry for yourself, that whatever event happened to you it happened not because you handled it wrong, but because others were weak.

Then later in my career, I was fired out of a job completely blindsided. He again intervened, saying to me he thought what the agency head had done was a terrible thing. I needed that at the time.

It taught me then, when bad things are done to you, the person doing them was a coward and took the easy way out.

He also, in a very supportive move, told me if I could make $1,000 a night writing a free lance direct mail package, I should keep trying to do that.

I really needed that. It started my career, working for myself. If I did not like a client or they treated me badly or they stiffed me (common behavior in the advertising business). I did not take a job with them again, and with new clients I took half the fee upfront. When I asked for upfront money, the possible clients simpered “don’t you trust me?” I would simply answer “It’s not that I don’t trust you. It’s my policy.”

Dads are there to say the right things to you at the right time. Sometimes it is not always the right thing, but they try. Often, if you’re lucky, as I was, they say the right thing. Always — when you really really really need it. Not the wrong thing.

With my father, who was not really my father, since I was an adopted child, it was never all about him, it was all about you. Making me better, even when it hurt him to say things that were the truth.

When I bought my first house in White Plains. He never criticized the house. But when I sold it, he complimented me, “I think it’s great how you came out of it (the crummy first house).” He was a personal trainer.

The good ones  train you to run a race. If you stumble, no one hurts more than they do. When you succeed, no one is prouder. The good ones push you in front of the cameras, they say interview her or him. They did it.

They know what you should do, but they can’t tell you, because you won’t do it if you’re a kid.

But the more subtler of them tell you anyway in hopes it will sink into the rebellious offspring mind. My dad was subtle.

Another fond memory: My father took me camping once at a friend’s cabin in Pennsylvania. Funny thing was there was such a great comic collection we wound up sleeping in sleeping bags on the porch of the cabin. That was funny.

Another time when I was being threatened in college over a position at the radio station, I asked him if I should just abdicate and assign a play-by-play position to the person who was being forced on me. He advised me to “stick to your guns,” so I reported the threat to the Dean.

The position was compromised, but I was never threatened again.  He never shared my love for baseball and sports.

In fact he never played catch with me all that well or that often.

I mean I could have made the big leagues (pipe dream) if he played catch with me more. But that’s a small criticism.  I wish I had more of his financial acumen. But I do not. I married that.

As you grow into your 30s and 40s, little things they say to you you begin to understand.

My father never struck me.

He always disciplined me with quiet words. I have not always been that way as a parent myself, being somewhat volatile. I wish I had his even temperament. He always asked me to take care of my mother. And the only time he really got mad at me was when I had made my mother upset with me.

He was a little like Humphrey Bogart in movie roles in the way he disciplined, I remember he would say admonitions quietly. Such as when I got an F in an English course at college.

He told me, that was the last F I would get at Ohio Wesleyan, because the next one he would stop paying my tuition.

That had an effect. And that was when tuition was only $3,000 a year.

I have taken to, after my children have grown, telling them always “Be careful,” “Don’t do anything stupid because someone suggests it,” “Do not go anywhere alone without telling people where you are going,” “Don’t lose your temper,” “Don’t tailgate,” “Don’t stand close to the edge  of a sever drop.” In hopes that when I am not with them, they will remember it when they need it.

I think of him every day of my life. I become more like him every day. He is always lingering in the background of my thoughts. I do not know what he would think of what I am doing now.  But, he’d say — “If that’s what you want to do. Do it.” He also would say,

“You have to make yourself happy.”

I also think, even today of what advice (laconic as always) he’d give me in a situation.

I wish I could discuss property taxes with him. Banking today and how it has become a predator system.

I especially have to salute him, because I am an adopted child.

That alone makes me appreciate his love and acceptance with a sense of awe to this day. He loved me like his own son. Because in his mind, I was.

He took responsibility. He did what had to be done.

You never outgrow your need for Dad.

The good ones are immortal, alive and with you in your head when you need them.

They are the  ghosts that comfort always. Haunt you in memory. You’re always  glad when they drop in on you.

You feel them warmly when you do good.

You feel their sympathy when you have done wrong. They are your conscience. They are the God of Judgement in your head. Your trusted advisor.

Immortality is leaving a good memory of you with the ones who knew you.

Because what you give them, lives on for generations.

Your children will talk of you because of the good things and behaviors you gave them when you needed them and you never lose those tools Dad gave you.

I miss my Dad and Mom. They probably have discussions over me to this day.

Charles Bailey. He died in 1986.

His legacy and my mother’s to me keeps me going every day.

I also remember my wife’s parents who welcomed me into their family when I married and who raised an extraordinary woman.

I think their should be another holiday.

Parents’ Day.

Don’t you?