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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Typical local bat asleep in a venetian blind.

 WPCNR HEALTH ISSUE. From the Westchester County Department of Health. August 14, 2014:

Bats are back, making their way into Westchester homes this month, and the Westchester County Health Department wants residents to know what to do if these unwelcome visitors drop in.

“We’d like everyone to catch the bat,” said Health Commissioner Sherlita Amler, MD. “Most of the time, the bats tested are not rabid, so you and your family can be spared unneeded treatment. But rabies is fatal, so without the bat to test, you will most likely have to get rabies shots.”

During the first week in August, 43 bats were brought to the health department for testing because they were found in a home. Since none of those bats tested positive for rabies, none of these residents had to be treated preventively for rabies. However, so far this month, 17 people who were exposed to a bat but did not catch it for testing had to begin preventive treatment for rabies.

There is a better way. If you find a bat in your home, don’t panic and never let the bat fly out the window. To learn how to safely capture a bat in your home, watch the video on the health department website at www.westchestergov.com/health. If there’s a chance that a person or pet in your house had contact with the bat, catch that bat and call the health department at 914-813-5000 to arrange to have it tested for rabies.

For those who capture the bat, 97 percent of the bats tested do not have rabies, so those residents are spared the series of rabies shots. As long as the bat is not rabid, no one will need rabies shots. But if the bat is rabid, a series of life-saving vaccines must begin soon.

For each of the past five years, about 148 Westchester residents have required rabies treatment after being exposed to bats that could not be caught for testing.  In most cases, treatment could have been avoided if the bat had been caught and tested for rabies. Whenever a bat is found in a room with a sleeping or mentally impaired person or with a young child or pet, contact with the bat must be suspected and it is essential to call the Westchester County Health Department at (914) 813-5000.

Here’s how to safely catch a bat:

1.       Close windows and doors so the bat cannot escape.

2.       Wear thick gloves and grab a container (such as a coffee can), a piece of cardboard and some tape.

3.       Wait until the bat has settled on a wall.

4.       Place the container over the bat, trapping it against the wall.

5.       Slide the cardboard between the wall and container to trap the bat inside.

6.       Tape the cardboard to the container

7.       It’s critical to keep it on ice in a cooler or double-bag it and place it in the freezer.

8.       Call the Health Department at (914) 813-5000 for advice on submitting the bat for testing.

It’s also a good idea to learn how to bat-proof your home, by adding screens to your eaves and attic openings. Another favorite place for bats to hang out is inside your closed patio umbrella, so beware when you open it.

From 1995 to 2011, 49 people died of rabies in the U.S; 35 of them had been exposed to bats, according to the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention.

For more information on rabies, Like us at www.Facebook.com/wchealthdept, Follow us on Twitter @wchealthdept, call the Westchester County Health Department at (914) 813-5000, or visit our website at www.westchestergov.com/health.

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The Look

“You know you don’t have to act with me, Steve. You don’t have to say anything, and you don’t have to do anything. Not a thing. Oh, maybe just whistle. You know how to whistle, don’t you, Steve? You just put your lips together and… blow.
Bacall as Slim to Bogey in To Have and Have Not (1944)

WPCNR DEPARTURES. By John F. Bailey. A remembrance. August 12, 2014:

Tinseltown nicknamed her “The Look.”

“The Look”   made Howard Hawks, the producer sign her to a contract at 18 after seeing her face on the cover of Harper’s Bazaar.

I first saw The Big Sleep in the early sixties or late ’50s on a late night movie. She was my first screen crush. I modeled myself after Bogart. The Bacall attitude,  the product of great script writers who included Wiliam Faulkner, she had the moxie, “that thing”  that Cole Porter wrote about, that made  lines live and you believed her hook, line and sinker.

Like all great stars  she was a star from the first and played herself in every movie. That’s what we wanted.

Her movies with Bogart (whom she fell in love with) are classics that still capture the timelessness of attraction between man and woman. Their focus on each other electrified their scenes together. Men wanted to be Bogart.Women wanted to be Bacall.

They said all the right things. You and I need writers to give us those great things to say.

Building her own personna on a model for the tough savvy woman, first created as a Hollywood type by Jean Harlow, Katherine Hepburn, Claudette Colbert, and Myrna Loy, she brought that style to another level uniquely her own:

She was not scatterbrain or calculating, (the way strong women were portrayed to be accepted before Bacall), but sophisticated, classy,  educated, with an appreciation for a man’s man, who had to meet standards to win her interest. She was pretentious and unpretentious at the same time.

She wasn’t a slummer. Didn’t fall for bad boys. To parapharase a line from a Bogey classic movie she was not in, The Maltese Falcon:

“She was the stuff dreams are made of.”

Her voice was low and smoky as the seductive cigarette spirals backlit in her closeups.

No woman or man ever smoked cigarettes better together than Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart.

When she pretended to be weak, I thought it was just an act to give the Bogart character something to do.  I felt if she wanted to, she’d slug the bad guy and deck him. When she lied in a role, she looked so contrite. Well, you forgave her.

She had the best pout in the movies.

So regretful. A lower lip you wanted to kiss. A sullen smoulder without botox.  Her screen kisses,  I swear you could feel.

Her eyes showed  knowing, an “I see right through you, bud.”

Eyes drew you in. A depth that could hold your interest. Her gaze said substance. A softness that melted anger. A temper you loved. Or at least the scripts did.

She also had great lines:  “You know how to whistle, Steve. You just put your lips together and just blow,” (one of the hottest scenes with all clothes on you will see on film in To Have and Have Not.)

In The Big Sleep with Bogart playing Philip Marlowe and Bacall playing Vivian Rutledge (the best client ever to walk into a private detective’s office and sit on his desk–see picture above) we get this saucy sequence:

Bacall: “…speaking of horses, I like to play them myself. But I like to see them work out a little first. See if they’re front-runners or come from behind… I’d say you don’t like to be rated. You like to get out in front, open up a lead, take a little breather in the back stretch, and then come home free….”

Bogart:“You’ve got a touch of class, but I don’t know how far you can go.”

Bacall:“A lot depends on who’s in the saddle.”

You can read the stats: Two Tony Awards, a special Oscar. Her biography. But, she was one of a kind from the start. She worked hard, auditioned countless times. Modeled in the garment district. Ate date-nut bread with cream cheese sandwiches at Chock Full O’ Nuts. Ushered at theatres. Was strongly supported by her mother in anything she did or wanted to do. Her toughness personna in the movies was formed on the streets, stages and audition stages of New York. She came by it with hard work. She wrote her own autobiography without a ghost writer, (By Myself and Then Some), which is a wonderful read and from the heart, I recommend it.

 She raised three children.

She and Bogart were the toast of Hollywood. They were nicknamed Bogey and Baby. A classic romance.

In the New York Times obituary of Ms. Bacall this morning they include a classic Bacall line. She was frank and outspoken and said it this sounds like a line she might have said in the movies, but it is pure Lauren Bacall:

“You just learn to cope with whatever you have to cope with in. I spent my childhood in New York riding on subways and buses. And you know what you learn if you’re a New Yorker? The world doesn’t owe you a damn thing.”

Bogey is the ultimate  Bacall expert:

“She’s a regular Joe. You’ll fall in love with her like everybody else.”

Lauren Bacall died Tuesday In New York City. She was 89.

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KATZ

BENEROFE

BAILEY

ON

IRAQ WAR RESTART

FASNY RIDES AGAIN

THE NEW MYSTERIOUS CON ED CAPACITY CHARGE 

WHITE PLAINS PROPERTIES WORTH SAVING FOR THEIR HERITAGE–THE LIST.

THE 25% WHITE PLAINS OFFICE VACANCY RATE.

AND ON

PEOPLE TO BE HEARD

THE COUNTY’S MOST RELEVANT INTERVIEW–

“WHERE PEOPLE WHO HAVE SOMETHING TO SAY, HAVE THEIR SAY”

YOU’VE GOT

REVAL ON THE GROUND

MIRIAM LEAVITT-FLISSER

ON THE SCARSDALE REVAL

WHAT IT MEANS TO BE REVALUED AND WHAT HAPPENS

ISSUES WHITE PLAINS MUST CONSIDER IN ANY REVAL  AND MORE