THE WORLD READS WHITE PLAINS CITIZENETREPORTER — 8,324,077 VISITS IN ONE YEAR | 2,905,611 VISITORS VISIT 8,324,077 TIMES 3 TIMES EVERY DAY IN ONE YEAR. HIGHEST ACTIVITY IN WPCNR HISTORY.White PlainsCitizeNetReporter lifted its worldwide visits from unique visitors to wpcnr.com to 8,324,077,a 1,306,419 increase in visits in one year from 7,017,658 visits to the site last year which covers White Plains and Westchester County. The 8,324,077 visits were made by 2,005,611 unique visitors who visited wpcnr an average of 3 visits a day. ON JULY 20- -2026 visitors have accessed wpcnr and made 3,072 visits an average of 1.6 visits. In the last week 33,495 individual vistors made 54,458 visits, averaging 1.6 visits. In the last month, 152,940 visitors recorded 229,338 visits (1.5 visits)

Eileen Earl, City Budget Director, to Retire February 7

Posted on January 13, 2003 by John Bailey

WPCNR HIGH NOON NEWS LEADER. From The Mayor’s Office. January 13, 2003 UPDATED 2:25 PM E.S.T.: The Mayor’s Office today announced the retirement of Eileen Earl, City Budget Director for the last 14 years, which will be effective February 7. No immediate announcement of a successor was forthcoming. George Gretsas, Executive Officer, said the Mayor would be making a statement about the next city Budget Director “in the next few days.”

TAKE A BOW, MS. EARL. Eileen Earl has announced her retirement reports City Hall. Here Ms. Earl, in her familiar, impeccably professional style is shown addressing the Common Council last April presenting the city budget.
Photo by WPCNR News

COMPREHENSIVE, CLEAR, RATIONAL BUDGETS STRIKINGLY PRESENTED, were the hallmark of the Earl Era at City Hall. Here Ms. Earl is shown last April, presenting the graphics that sold her budgets and left little room for ignoring the facts. Her budget books have won national awards for years for best budget presentation.
Photo by WPCNR News

Gretsas said that the 2003 City Budget was approximately two-thirds of the way completed, and that Ms. Earl had “gotten us through the capital budget.” He said that Ms. Earl had worked for the city 23 years, and will be missed very much.

Asked if there was plans to do a national search for a successor to Ms. Earl, who is assisted by Ann Reasoner (Assistant Budget Director), Gretsas said the Mayor will be making a statement on this matter “in the next few days.”

Benerofe Recalls the Earl Legacy

Jim Benerofe, White Plains Week commentator, editor of Suburban Street for over twenty years, now editor of the website, suburbanstreet.com, an observer of White Plains governments coming and going for the last forty years, said this of Ms. Earl’s contributions to the city:

“She’s probably one of the best of the financial people the city’s ever head,” the editor said. “Her contribution to the city is going to be hard to replace.”

Benerofe credits her to contributing greatly to the city’s financial health today: “Her work here as Budget Director is probably the reason why the city is in the best financial shape of any city in Westchster, and that is due to her.”

White Plains Week Begins Third Season Friday Night at 7:30

Posted on January 12, 2003 by John Bailey

WPCNR WHITE PLAINS VARIETY. January 13, 2003: The White Plains news remuda rides again Friday night on TheSpirit of 76, White Plains Public Access Television, as John Bailey, Jim Benerofe of SuburbanStreet.com, and Alex Philippidis, Editor of Westchester County Business Journal are back in the saddle again on White Plains Week on Channel 76 at 7:30 PM. It will be the first show of 2003, wrapping up the New Year’s celebration, the first meeting of the Common Council, the Andy Spano-Albany budget brouhaha, the highly entertaining White Plains plumbing code , the latest on the perils of JPI, and loads of other good stuff. Get together with all those rowdy reporters on Friday night at 7:30 on The Spirit of 76.

Leo McCarey’s Films at The Burns This Week: Bing Goes Your Way Monday.

Posted on January 12, 2003 by John Bailey

WPCNR WHITE PLAINS VARIETY. From The Jacob Burns Center. January 13, 2003: Going My Way, Bing Crosby’s classic from 1944 is the second of 4 classic Leo McCarey films showing at The Burns this week.
Der Bingle performs his famous role as Father O’Malley at 5 and again at 7 PM at the classic old “Alamo” in Pleasantville, the former Rome Theatre, now the distinguished Jacob Burns Film Center.

The Burns is located at 364 Manville Road, Pleasantville convenient to the Saw Mill Parkway. For more info, go to the Burns website, www.burnsfilmcenter.org. Or dial 914-747-5555.

Going My Way plays again at 5:15 Tuesday.

The classic Bing Crosby vehicle, filmed in 1944 features the great crooner as a priest who works miracles with some boys from the wrong side of the tracks. It received 10 Oscar nominations and an Academy Award.

Marx Brothers cavort in Duck Soup

On Wednesday evening at 6 and 8 PM, the Marx Brothers best movie, the spoof of Adolf Hitler, filmed in 1933, featuring Grocho Marx as the dictator, Rufus T. Firefly. It is according to Burns’ preshow publicity, “the greatest antiwar farce ever made.”

THE CINEMAFANATIC: See The Pianist. Remember it Forever. Searing.

Posted on January 12, 2003 by John Bailey

WPCNR’s WHITE PLAINS VARIETY. Presents THE CINEMAFANATIC, Rob Barabee. From The Yonkers Tribune. January 12, 2003: The Pianist is one of the year’s best movies. It is a haunting, horrifying portrayal of a Holocaust survivor, and it pulls no punches.

Adrien Brody stars in the film as Wladyslaw Szpilman, a piano player, a Polish citizen, and a Jew. Szpilman’s journey through Nazi-occupied Warsaw is shocking, appalling, and magnificently brought to life on the big screen by Brody, screenwriter Ronald Harwood, and director Roman Polanski (who is himself a Holocaust survivor).

After all that has already been made about the Holocaust, creating another film about it is a supremely difficult and daring task, but these three men are more than up for the challenge.

Szpilman’s survival is based, above all else, on luck, and the film wants to make this clear. The Holocaust, Polanski and Company dutifully report, was not survival of the fittest. Strong, brilliant, beautiful people were executed along with everybody else.

They were shot in the head for asking a question or beaten to death for helping a pregnant woman. They were stabbed, blown up, gassed, burned, and starved, for no reason at all.

Wladyslaw Szpilman is intelligent, well-liked, and well-known. He is shrewd, resourceful, and possessing of a remarkable will to stay alive. While these traits often aid in his survival, only luck ultimately spares him. The Holocaust was too terrible for superheroes, and Szpilman, although awe-inspiring in so many ways, is no exception to this rule.

People with a cursory knowledge of the Holocaust often ask, “Why didn’t anyone fight back?” This is an important question to the filmmakers (as much so as the notion of luck), and they address it carefully.

Some of the film’s characters angrily ask each other why they are not putting up a fight; why they are sitting back and letting themselves be slaughtered. Others do indeed fight, actually proving the initial question false, but these fighters, in their fighting, also provide reasons why so many remained passive, even up to the moment of their deaths.

Fighting, we see in the film, was basically futile. The only thing it did was turn near-certain death into absolutely certain death.

But hold on, you may say, what about honor, bravery, and all that? Those asking this will not be disappointed, because the movie addresses these points too.

It tells of Jews traitorously volunteering to aid the Gestapo as “Ghetto Police,” but then, once in power, helping to save a few lives. It tells of brave, loving men mounting their escapes while leaving their families behind to die. It tells of these things and many others, and in so doing, it forces viewers to reevaluate their ideas of honor, of bravery, of heroes.

Because of this, and all the rest of it, The Pianist proves to be quite an education not only in our past century’s most unimaginable horror, but also in the basic human value systems around which we base our lives.

Many say that Holocaust-themed art must be created, so that none of us will ever forget. The Pianist, I can tell you, is a film that I’ll remember for as long as I live.

The Pianist, directed by Roman Polanski. Written by Ronald Harwood. Based on the book by Wladyslaw Szpilman. Starring Adrien Brody, Emilia Fox, Thomas Kretschmann, Frank Finlay, and Maureen Lipman. Running time: 148 minutes. Rated R (for violence and brief strong language).