The Inside Press

Magazines serving the communities of Northern Westchester

The Inside Press

Inside the Theatrical World of Pia Haas

by

By Heather Skolnick

Pia Haas
Pia Haas

Finding ways to express oneself is an individual journey. No surprise, I found my personal outlet in writing.  For others, there are a myriad of creative outlets that exist. For Pia Haas, Director of The Armonk Players, her outlet was always the theatre–acting and directing.

Pia began developing her love for the theatre at a young age, starting her acting career in elementary school. By high school, her interest in acting had grown significantly, but her love for Biology reigned supreme. Pia intended on majoring in Biology. Before matriculating though, she met someone who would become her mentor who changed all that.

Lend Me A Tenor
Lend Me A Tenor

Pia met Mort Clark who gave her a taste of the life in the theatre. He was the chairman of the Arts Department at SUNY Westchester Community College and he exposed her to the many exciting aspects of theatre as her teacher and mentor.  Based on those experiences, Pia chose to pursue theatre as her major in college. After graduating from Sarah Lawrence College, she started teaching part time at the college, while also performing. She succeeded in landing a variety of roles from commercials, to soap opera appearances (The Guiding Light and One Life to Live!) to plays.  She sought a steadier form of income so Pia next went back to school to get a Masters in Educational Theatre at NYU.  With Masters in hand, she began to teach both Acting and Directing at Westchester Community College as an Associate Professor. At the same time, Pia directed the theatre group called The Theatre Connection and was also freelancing as a Director on the side. Pia was one busy lady!

Fools
Fools

After 10 years of teaching at Westchester Community College, it became too much to manage along with raising her three children. Pia gave up teaching and focused on freelancing. In 2000, Pia was approached to work for the newly formed Armonk Players.

The Armonk Players was an idea conceived by Barbara & Hal Simonetti and Susan Geffen. The Armonk Players is a not-for-profit organization supported by Friends of the North Castle Public Library and is made up of mostly North Castle residents. This symbiotic relationship benefits both organizations–the library raises money for the Players and allows the Armonk Players to utilize Whipporwill Hall as a stage. Any money earned by the Players goes right back to the library–all the while enriching the Armonk community. In fact, Pia said that the people involved in The Armonk Players “think of the Players as a gift to the community.”

The Armonk Players annually does two main stage productions and three to four staged readings where the actors carry scripts. The Players just wrapped Mothers and Sons, and will be doing a one day staged reading on 12/16 called Looking at Christmas, a light hearted fun comedy. Next up is Love, Loss and What I Wore in February, also a staged reading.

A Flea in Her Ear
A Flea in Her Ear

Their next main stage production has not yet been determined. Now 15 years as the Director, Pia speaks fondly of The Armonk Players. She said that her fellow actors and peers “became like a family.” She continued to say that “working with such a great group of people made it fun, made it my outlet.” While Pia predominately directs the productions, she occasionally acts as well–something she called “the ultimate creative outlet.”

Pia’s three children have “all dabbled in acting and directing”–as middle schoolers, campers and then as counselors.  Pia’s eldest daughter leverages some of those skills and techniques learned when she was younger with her students at a New York City Montessori charter school where she teaches.

CAST AFOOT 2

Want to express yourself but acting isn’t your forte? There are many ways to be involved with The Armonk Players without being an actor. Pia suggests that creative involvement can include set building, costume design, building /designing props, make up, gathering music, social media/publicity, poster design and execution, programs. If interested go to the website: www.armonkplayers.org

As if she weren’t busy enough serving as the Director of the Armonk Players, Pia also does all Public Relations for the Westchester Broadway Theatre, and most recently helped promote a stellar production of Showboat. For those of us who may not be theatrically inclined but still enjoy watching productions, there are two great options to see the fruits of Pia’s labor!

Heather Skolnick, husband and three children reside in New Castle. She works for a major retailer on their Omnichannel Strategy. While Heather is not theatrically inclined, she enjoys writing for Inside Chappaqua and Inside Armonk as a vehicle for self-expression. 

Kittle House: A Traditional & Fun Gathering Spot

by

Story and Photos By Karen Talbot

kittlehouse

John Crabtree and his family purchased this European-style country manor house and restaurant in 1981. The structure originally built in 1790 as a barn has an illustrious history dating back to the origins of Chappaqua. Farm-to-table dining literally started here and Kittle House maintains an excellent reputation as an outlet for the finest sustainable, naturally raised and grown products from small artisanal farmers in the area.

The beautiful grounds and gardens provide an idyllic setting for both dining and special occasions. The Kittle House offers 12 guest rooms for overnight stays, and dining primarily in either the main dining room or the historic Tap Room which are open every day for lunch and dinner and Sunday for their famous brunch.

Chef Jay Lippin creates noteworthy food using traditional French techniques. For lunch, the Maine lobster roll is a favorite with avocado, tomato, firecracker slaw and roasted garlic potato chips. Jay specializes in game dishes for dinner such as Highland Farms Venison Osso Buco with creamy wild chive polenta, broccolini in a red wine sauce, or Helder Herdwyck Farms Guinea Hen with scarlet blush corn, local bean and sweet pepper hash in a red sorrel sauce. The Kittle House’s dessert classic is the “Chocolate Gift” which combines pastry and cake shaped like a gift box. The Holidays are especially festive at the Kittle House and the restaurant has been a traditional and fun gathering spot for family members over many generations.

The Kittle House has a wine cellar of over 60,000 bottles. It has been the recipient of The Grand Award from The Wine Spectator since 1994 and the Award of Great Distinction from The Wine Enthusiast since 2006.

11 Kittle Road, Chappaqua
914-666-8044
kittlehouse.com

Karen Talbot is a Westchester-based personal shopper and restaurant reviewer. The love of cooking runs in her family! Karen’s son Alex and his wife Aki Kamozawa started a food blog “Ideas in Food” in early 2000, and they have just opened “Curiosity Donuts” in the Stockton Market in Stockton, New Jersey.

A Personal Tribute to Jan Karski

by

circle pixBy Francesca Hagadus

When I left the exhibit “One Man Who Tried to Stop the Holocaust” describing the courage of Jan Karski, I couldn’t help but be struck by how much of my life I owed to him.

The exhibit, sponsored by the Holocaust and Human Rights Education Center, ran in November and early December at the Iona College Art Center. It illustrates the life of Jan Karski with period photos, and is supported by exhibits of haunting art by Sheila Kimmelman and political cartoons lampooning Roosevelt for ignoring Karski’s warning and pleas for help to stop the Nazi genocide plan.

Karski was born in Lodz (pronounced WOULDGE), Poland in 1914. My mother, Maria Rozenberg (Hagadus) was born 13 years later, also in Lodz, a multi-cultural city with a population of one-third Polish Catholic, one third Jewish and the last third German and Russian citizens. My mother attended the Ursuline Academy, run by the Ursuline order of nuns, along with other Jewish girls. When Hitler invaded Poland in 1939, he overtook Lodz a few weeks later on Sept. 14.

My mother, at 12 years of age was no longer allowed to attend school. My grandfather owned and operated a textile factory, one of the main industries in Lodz. Sometime after the occupation, my grandparents were “taken away,” as my mother put it. She never elaborated. However, she had Catholic identity papers issued by the Polish Underground State of which Jan Karski was a key figure. He had infiltrated ghettos and concentration camps at great personal risk. He pleadingly reported to Franklin D. Roosevelt the dire situation of the Jews in Poland. He was ignored.

My mother, by then 15 years old, used her identity papers to hide in plain sight. She made her way to Germany as a displaced person, to France, and finally to the United States. She married my American father, Ronald Hagadus, in 1950 and lived in Westchester County until her death in 2014. As a fellow citizen of Lodz, my mother went with my father to New York to meet Jan Karski at the hotel where he lived and had written his memoirs, Story of a Secret State, published in 1944.

My mother considered herself both a Pole and an American. She and my father became trustees of the Kosciuszko Foundation in New York City. An artist in her own right, she exhibited her work worldwide, and promoted young Polish artists.

The profits from her exhibits were used to organize food and medicine to be sent to Poland during the Solidarity movement. She very much reflected the multi-cultural city into which she and Jan Karski had been born.

Visitors to the Jan Karski exhibit at the Iona College Art Center
Visitors to the Jan Karski exhibit at the Iona College Art Center

Jan Karski received his Ph.D. from Georgetown University in 1952, where he taught Eastern European Studies in the School of Foreign Service until his retirement in 1992. I began my university studies at Georgetown in 1971, receiving my B.S. and M.A. in Foreign Languages and Russian Studies, in 1975 and 1977. Students fought to register for Karski’s classes.

Upon his death in 2012, Georgetown University Press reissued Story of a Secret State. A bench with a lifelike seated figure of Jan Karski was erected on the Georgetown campus so that students could continue to be seated with Professor Karski.

Jan Karski was not able to stop the Holocaust. Nevertheless, his tireless, often terrifying effort with the Polish Underground State allowed my mother to survive, flourish and raise her children to embrace education, freedom, service and tolerance.

Francesca Hagadus recently retired after 32 years of teaching French and Spanish at the Robert E. Bell School and at Horace Greeley High School. In her early years of teaching, she led numerous tours to France and Spain with her 8th grade students. She continues to travel as much as possible. She currently hosts international students studying  English at EF Language School in Tarrytown, and teaches English online to EF students. She has numerous free-lance jobs involving both French and Spanish. She is an avid skier with the Swiss Ski Club of New York, and a frequent visitor to MOMA. She lives in Pleasantville with her two sons, Timothy and Thomas.

From the intro to Bill Ravies’ new book: “The Way of the Entrepreneur”

by

Bill Raveis Book Cover“I was having breakfast with a friend one winter day earlier this year at Jane’s, an outdoor café in Naples, Florida, a few blocks from my winter house in Port Royal. This enclave of 600 estates–ten and 20, 30, even 40,000-square-foot temples to capitalism at the edge of the Gulf of Mexico–is a tropical Newport, Rhode Island, and the only place of its kind on the continent. It also happens to be home to some of the wealthiest individuals and families on the planet. Many come from the world of finance and big business–investment bankers, retired corporate CEOS and CFOs, hedge fund guys–but as many are entrepreneurs, men and a few women who have built business empires (as I have) and made their fortunes in highly individual, innovative ways. They’ve all hit it out of the park.

Which is one of the main threads that run through this book: The way entrepreneurs determine their success by virtue of individualism and an unwavering belief in themselves and their passions.

The subject appears to be timely. More than ever, America is a land of limitless entrepreneurial opportunity. At the same time, it remains the immigrant’s dream, a country in which you can do anything and be anyone you want. All you have to do–aside from working really, really hard–is embrace the immigrant-like ideals of belief in oneself and one’s vision and be embraced, in turn, by family and extended family and friends.

In the end, in fact, it is that community of believers and supporters who help make American entrepreneurs what they are, not only business schools or MBA programs or investors.

It also helps, by the way, to reside outside the corporate mindset. As you’ll see, the distinction between entrepreneurs and corporate executives matters. A lot.

I’ve been out to breakfast and lunch with other business people, some of whom never make eye contact with the servers, much less engage them in conversation. But like entrepreneurs in general, I seem perpetually interested in learning about other people (and, if I’m reading Malcolm Gladwell’s David and Goliath accurately, which admittedly may be iffy, the majority of entrepreneurs are like me in another respect: We tend to be dyslexic).

So I view encounters with a waiter or waitress as an opportunity to connect not just with another human but, more often than not, with a young person who has his or her own passion, vision and dream.

Our waiter at Jane’s that sparkling, sunshiny morning was a young man in his early-to mid-20s with Slavic features and a strong Eastern European accent. His name was Piotyr–Peter, for convenience in America, he told my breakfast companion and me–and had come from Moldavia three years earlier. After hearing from a Ukrainian friend about life in Naples, he had driven 1,000 miles from Maine with his girlfriend on the dream of one day opening a restaurant of his own, and he had stayed.

“Why leave?” Peter told us. “Is so beautiful!” Then–perhaps taking in our clothes, or the Bentley parked in front, or the fact that we were free to take a late breakfast in the middle of the workweek–he voiced a sentiment that either hasn’t been uttered, or I haven’t heard, in a very long time: “Thank you,” he said, “for building this country!” He was speaking to us but he might as well have been talking to the founders of the nation and the heroes of the American Revolution, who were entrepreneurs in the truest, fiercest sense of the word.

My entrepreneurial journey happens to have been mapped through real estate and a family-owned company, but it could just as easily have been in any industry and any entity. What counts is what you bring to a business–vision, passion, imagination, determination, sheer courage–not what it brings to you.

Our young waiter is on his journey, as I was 40 years ago, practically to the day. Although I live the rest of the year in an equally exclusive community in Fairfield County, Connecticut (one of the richest communities in the United States), I grew up a town away in one of the poorest and roughest sections of one of the poorest and roughest cities in the Northeast…”

Bill Raveis’ The Way of the Entrepreneur is distributed by National Book Network (NBN) and available through Amazon, Barnes & Noble in-stores and online, and independent book stores nationally.

In 1974, Bill Raveis opened the first William Raveis Real Estate office in a room above a grocery store. Today, William Raveis Real Estate, Mortgage & Insurance is one of the top companies in the nation and a full service real estate, mortgage and insurance brokerage with over 3,600 sales associates and 114 offices throughout the Northeast, annual real estate sales of nearly $8.1 billion, 3,000 corporate relocation transferees a year and a total mortgage volume of $10 billion.

Home Alone for the Holidays? How To Embrace the Time

by

Grown-up time! Our author (right) takes time away from kids to co-host an annual holiday party with Jennifer Cahill.
Grown-up time! Our author (right) takes time away from kids to co-host an annual holiday party with Jennifer Cahill.

By Miriam Longobardi

Many people experience the holidays alone, and that’s true, whether or not the choice is your own. Perhaps your grown child is spending the holidays with the in-laws or you’re newly separated or divorced and your children will be with the other parent. Those who have experienced the loss of a loved one may be facing the first holiday season without that person. Regardless of circumstances, there are strategies to ensure that holidays can be as peaceful and happy as possible!

As a single parent with sole custody, I am fortunate to have my children with me all the time, holidays included. Our traditions are a combination of those of my own childhood and newly created routines that have evolved over the years. One of our most difficult holidays was the first Christmas without my father, who had been the central father-figure of my children’s lives. We honored him by reliving happy memories of the years we had with him. It did not completely remove our sadness at his loss, but we tried to focus on the loving memories of him that we hold dear. Now that my oldest daughter is off to college, having her back in the house brings an extra energy to our season. I treasure our time together.

Sometimes there are fairly unique circumstances that have a family separated. Last year Shari, a local mother of two, remained home with the children, both high school students, while her husband Mitchell accepted a three-year assignment in Japan. The decision to have the family living apart while he takes advantage of a great business opportunity was not easy, nor was adjusting to their first holiday season apart.

“Being single last year during the holidays was extra difficult because I felt I had to do everything two adults had done in years prior. I thought I’d fail if I didn’t get it all done,” she shared. Succumbing to pressure she put on herself, she stayed up late and woke up early to work, cook, clean, decorate, shop, and bake and wound up run-down and sick through most of the season. “Before that, I had not been sick in nearly four years, so I knew I needed a different approach this year. I started meditating, took courses on mindfulness, and have decided that this is the year I approach that to-do list with a new and reasonable attitude. I have to enjoy the moment, each moment, whether or not my husband is there to enjoy it with me.”

If we feel well physically, we will cope more easily with holiday stress of any sort, suggests Sharon Gilchrest-O’Neill, Ed.S., LMFT, a licensed marriage and family therapist in Mount Kisco and the author of Sheltering Thoughts About Loss and Grief, among other books. Getting enough exercise releases endorphins that help maintain energy levels. For people prone to Seasonal Affective Disorder, head outside for fresh air and whatever sunshine is available for a vitamin D boost.

Staying connected to others is also important and Gilchrest-O’Neill recommends old-fashioned phone calls versus emails or texting, as well as getting enough sleep and eating as healthy as possible despite the many tempting holiday treats.

For families living with divorce, she recommends keeping things as calm and uncomplicated as possible. “This is not the time to deviate from your child custody agreements as consistency over time is critical for children’s sense of security. This is definitely not the time to bring a new person into the mix, someone you’ve been dating for a month or two. Be prepared for the inevitable feelings of loss that you will need to deal with; consider that very often these are not directly about your ex-spouse, but rather about the life you’ve created over the years,” she said. “If you’ve had a favorite custom or special food that makes you happy, be certain to carry on with it.”

Another friend of mine who is single embraces the fact that she does not have to share her holidays with any in-laws. Caroline, now in her 40s, was married briefly in her 20s and is a wonderful hostess who has always loved to entertain.

“I don’t have to worry about someone’s crabby aunt who’s going to complain about everything or putting my family aside to spend time with someone else’s. I have taken trips and flown off to visit friends in faraway places during the holidays,” she said. “I throw parties and gather together people of my own choosing and I really wouldn’t have it any other way.”

If you find yourself alone during the holidays, have a list of fun or interesting things you have been meaning to do or places to go and make sure you do something enjoyable just for you. Indulge in a spa treatment or a bucket of popcorn while watching one of the newly released films.

Reach out to a friend with whom you have lost touch. Staying connected to others, taking care of ourselves, drawing the line on that to-do list and prioritizing obligations are steps we can take throughout the year, but are especially important at a time of year when the pressure to celebrate can overwhelm. Take time for you this holiday season and get the New Year started right.

Miriam Longobardi is a freelance writer, fourth grade teacher and single mother of two daughters living in Westchester. A breast cancer survivor, she volunteers for the American Cancer Society, has completed four marathons and travels the world. Follow her on Twitter @writerMimiLong.