The Inside Press

Magazines serving the communities of Northern Westchester

Chappaqua library

Making Holiday Memories: Inspiring Ideas for Families

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The holiday season is upon us and it’s time to shop, plan celebrations and also enjoy all our communities have to offer at this special time. Here are a few ideas to help celebrate and enjoy the season all while having fun locally:

1. From Friday, Dec. 13, to Sunday, Dec. 15, in Chappaqua, shop artists’ special pop-ups between the King Street Studio and The Art Closet Gallery in the loft at Family Britches. The kickoff will take place in conjunction with the downtown Chappaqua Wine Around Town event on Dec. 13 from 5-8 p.m.

2. For a break from all the preparations the holidays entail, check out the Jane Condon Holiday Comedy Show at Armonk’s Whippoorwill Theater on Saturday, Dec. 7 at 7:30 p.m. Rabbi Josh Strom of Congregation B’nai Yisrael will emcee the evening, which will also include a performance by Boston-based comic Kathe Farris. Tickets are available at eventbrite.com.

3. Westchester’s Winter Wonderland returns this year to Kensico Dam Plaza in Valhalla. Hours and days vary now through Jan. 4, winterwonderland.com for more info. There’s a circus, ice skating, rides and more. Tickets are $20 for ages 3 and up.

4. While the menorah lighting as well as a tree lighting already took place in Armonk on Frosty Day, before this issue went to press, the details of Chappaqua’s menorah lighting ceremony had not yet been firmed up. Ike Kuzio, superintendent of New Castle Recreation and Parks, said residents can keep abreast of this important annual event at Chappaqua’s community center by checking in on the town’s website.

5. Enjoy a screening of a Big Band Holiday program from Jazz at Lincoln Center in the New Castle Town Hall Assembly Room. The program runs from 6:30-9, p.m. Friday, Dec. 6 starting with refreshments provided by the Friends of the Chappaqua Library and will feature songs both “sacred and secular.”

6. Or attend The Movies’ Greatest Christmas Songs on Sunday Dec. 8 at 2 p.m. at the New Castle Community Center on Senter Street. Jon Reichman will use film clips, photos and piano performance to explore the history of famous holiday tunes White Christmas, Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas and Silver Bells.

7. Have yourself a historic Christmas. Visit the Horace Greeley House on Saturday Dec. 7, where a crafts workshop will be held from 4 to 6 p.m. and a tree lighting at 5 p.m. will be accompanied by the Horace Greeley High School Madrigal Choir leading carols, and a visit from Santa.

8. Why not spend some time in early December learning about the traditions of various cultures, communities and religions? Besides boasting many resources for learning about Christmas and Chanukah, the North Castle Public Library has several books about Kwanzaa (Dec. 26-Jan. 1) and a CD of Kwanzaa music for loan. The Chappaqua Library also offers a book about the Hindu festival of Diwali (this year, celebrated already in October), titles about Chinese New Year, and more.

9. To offset the effects of kugel and cookies, give snowshoeing a try. Skip Beitzel, owner of Hickory & Tweed in Armonk, said “Snowshoeing is great. My adage for snowshoeing is, ‘snow and they will go.’” Beitzel, whose shop sells snowshoes for all ages, said his customers snowshoe on local golf courses or on the bike path that runs through Millwood. Those seeking a more arduous experience may even take their snowshoes to ski areas to use them when climbing uphill. “Why not snowshoe as a family?” Beitzel said, since after all many families ski together, and snowshoeing can be done easily and locally–providing there’s snow.

10. Or plan a family hike to The Eugene and Agnes Meyer Preserve, a 247-acre spot with more than six miles of color-coded trails. Spanning New Castle and North Castle, the preserve has kiosks at each entrance to help visitors plan their hikes. For more outdoor appreciation, make the Christmas Bird Count a part of your family’s December traditions (find dates and locations on audubon.org) – or even closer to home, join Cornell’s Project Feeder Watch (join.birds.cornell.edu) and find out how families can contribute meaningfully to important statistics on birds and migration patterns. It’s not too late to join this information-collecting effort, which will get you through the winter and into spring.

Year Round Programming and Access at the Chappaqua Library

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The Library’s mission is to provide information, programming, and access to resources and materials for the community’s educational and recreational needs. Our catalog, online resources, and downloadable books, movies and music are available to patrons 24 hours a day either through our website, chappaqualibrary.org. or our mobile app.

The library is open seven days a week during the school year: Monday-Thursday 9-8, Friday 9-6, Saturday 9-5 and Sunday 1-5. The library is closed on Sundays in the summer.

Your Library–24/7!

  • Free wi-fi, public computers and wireless printing
  • Study and conference rooms
  • A wide assortment of books (including audiobooks and large print), popular and classic DVDs, and music
  • Art gallery with curated exhibits
  • Museum passes
  • Extensive adult, teen, and children’s programming, with book discussions, lectures, concerts, storytimes, movies and more
  • Online research databases
  • Downloadable e-books, audiobooks, movies and music
  • Extensive online archive of filmed library programs

The friendly and knowledgeable library staff will help you with all your research needs. The Chappaqua Library is part of The Westchester Library System, a consortium of 38 libraries in Westchester County with a shared online catalog and daily delivery service. Your library card gives you borrowing privileges at each, plus the ability to reserve an item and have it delivered locally for your convenience.

Board of Trustees

The Library is governed by a five-person board of trustees, elected by the voters of the Chappaqua Central School District. All meetings are open to the public, and generally take place at 7:30p.m.on the third Tuesday of each month.

Friends of the Chappaqua Library

This non-profit organization promotes financial support for the Library through various fundraising events, donations, and membership fees. Meetings to discuss programs and funding are held monthly at the Chappaqua Library. The Friends hold an annual used book sale, which promotes reading throughout the community. They also sponsor the Young Writers Contest every spring for middle school and high school students.

The Chappaqua Library hosts many exciting and engaging programs throughout the year, all free and open to the public. Following are some highlights of recurring and ongoing events:

Big Truck Day

Held annually every spring, Big Truck Day is exactly what it sounds like. Come see an exciting display of “big trucks”–including, but not limited to, Chappaqua and Millwood firetrucks, Chappaqua Volunteer Ambulance Corps van, Chappaqua Transportation school buses, motorcycles, and assorted construction vehicles–right outside, in the Chappaqua Library parking lot! The event is free of charge and open to the public, and all ages are welcome!

Computer Help

Confused by your computer or smart phone? Our knowledgeable students can help you figure them out. One-on-one sessions let you focus on what you need.

Foreign Policy Discussion Group

Meeting at the Library once every other week for 16 sessions, this group listens to an expert guest speaker discuss world affairs. Discussion and questions follow. The topics offered vary from session to session and year to year.

Friday Hangout

Held every Friday during the school year (September through June, except for school vacation days), the library hosts a different drop-in program each week for students in grades 7-12. Past offerings have included author visits, book discussions, poetry readings, arts-and-crafts projects, and healthy snack cooking demonstrations.

Great Books

Read thought-provoking essays, poems and excerpts from longer pieces of literature and philosophy by great thinkers throughout the ages, classic to contemporary. Participants use the “shared inquiry” method of discussion to deepen and explore their understanding of the readings.

Jazz at Lincoln Center

Wynton Marsalis is your guide in this film series that explores the many facets of jazz.

Museums at the Library

This open house-style event, held every spring, features booths from local museums where participants can learn about each museum and take part in creative and fun hands-on activities. Science, art, nature, history, music and more; all ages welcome!

Rising Stars Concert

Held annually in April or May, this music festival features young student performers. Classical and contemporary works from West to East are performed, followed by light refreshments. Co-sponsored by the Organization of Chinese Americans of Westchester/Hudson Valley.

Teen Study Hours

The Library extends its hours until 10 p.m. for high school students during exam weeks in January, May & June. Cooperative study groups encouraged!

Yale Alumni Lecture Series

Expert teachers present their most popular lectures. Recent offerings have included The Six Films That Changed America and Psychology and the Good Life.

Other Events

Themed film series, author talks, poetry readings, writing workshops, gardening lectures, book signings, health and wellness programs, and more!

For dates and registration information, go to the Events tab on the library’s website, chappaqualibrary.org.

 

Courtesy of the Chappaqua Library

Local Poet Scott Mason’s New Haiku Book Celebrates the Wonder of the World

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PHOTO COURTESY OF SCOTT MASON

Listening to Scott Mason wax poetic (pun intended!) about haiku, a traditional form of Japanese poetry, it is clear that he has a true passion for the subject having published close to 400 haiku in edited literary journals or anthologies. And that passion has helped him earn more than 150 awards, including more than 20 first place finishes in international competitions– more than any other North American, in the genre. To coincide with National Poetry Month coming in April and the launch of his latest book, The Wonder Code, Inside Press had the opportunity to sit down with this prolific poet and learn more about this art form.

Mason claims writing and also reading haiku (it is the same in both singular and plural form) has changed his outlook on life. Admitting that it sounds grandiose, Mason claims that haiku has made him “more attentive and more appreciative.” The Chappaqua resident though never intended to become a haiku poet. “If you told me twenty years ago that I would be doing this, I would have looked at you like you have three heads,” he chuckles.

As an undergraduate at Dartmouth College, Mason majored in art and did a minor in math and physics. He obtained his MBA at Harvard Business School and worked in advertising at Prudential. Following that he consulted for advertising agencies to help them strategize and win new business opportunities. “My background isn’t what people typically think of when they think about poets.”

Always an avid traveler, Mason and his wife Carla Gambescia (the former owners of the now defunct Via Vanti in the Mount Kisco train station) took a hiking trip to Japan in the early 1990s with a company called Wilderness Travel. The tour guide challenged the group to write their own haiku over dinner one evening in the traditional Japanese format of three lines with, five syllables in the first line, seven syllables in the second and five again in the last line. Mason wrote one but didn’t think much about it at the time.

Fast forward a decade later and Mason found himself wanting to express himself poetically. As he took his first attempts at writing, he noticed that his poems were short and resembled haiku.

He later learned that haiku poems in English do not need to conform to a 5-7-5 structure since English and Japanese word sounds are not comparable in duration. On a whim, he sent some of his poems to Modern Haiku magazine and they accepted one of his haiku for publication.

Since then he has become the co-editor of The Heron’s Nest, an online and print haiku journal with an international readership. Having an analytical mind, Mason sought to figure out why this form of poetry resonated with him so deeply and what characteristics the best haiku have in common. He poured through 9,000 haiku that had been published over the years in The Heron’s Nest and eventually chose his favorites writing each one on index cards. He sorted through them and found to his surprise that the poems wound up naturally being organized into five piles. “Each poem had one common denominator and that is wonder. Now wonder is both a verb and a noun and they operated on me in both ways. These poems brought me to wonder in some ways but also caused me to wonder in a verb sense,” explained Mason.

The five groups also had some imperative that eventually formed the five chapters of The Wonder Code. So for example, think small was an imperative and the haiku in that particular pile all focused on things like small animals or bugs. It struck Mason that this was the “diametric opposite of our culture and our times. Each haiku seemed to offset some aspect of our Western culture that tend to estrange us from wonder. Americans want big cars, big restaurant portions. Bigger is better is our credo but there is so much wonder and beauty in small things.”

Mason is gratified that this book has been so well-received in the haiku community but hopes to expand its readership to a wider audience. Kirkus Reviews magazine noted that is “ a superb haiku collection for readers who thought they didn’t like poetry, richly expressive and very accessible.” The first five chapters feature haiku written by various authors and the last chapter features haiku written by Mason. The book also received a Kirkus Star which signifies a book of exceptional merit.

As we wrap up the interview, Mason reminds us that “haiku is the people’s poetry. It is the opposite of elitist and truly treasures the everyday.” Mason will be giving a presentation on “Looking at Nature the Haiku Way” on March 27 from 7-8:30 pm at Teatown in Ossining–a place where he enjoys hiking and of course has inspired many of his haiku. Tickets are available at teatown.org/events/haiku-way where his book will be available for purchase at the event.

Haikus

By Scott Mason

how deer
materialize
twilight

Venetian canal –
lifting fog reveals
another mask shop

summer moonglow
the crescent
of toe prints on sand

A Transformational Journey

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Jodi Baretz, author of the new ‘Mindful is the New Skinny,’ shared her personal growth experiences at the Chappaqua Library

By Amanda Kraus

Earlier this summer, I sat among an excited, eager crowd in the Chappaqua Library’s auditorium to listen to Jodi Baretz, psychotherapist, health coach, and author, speak about her new book, Mindful is the New Skinny: 10 Transformational Steps to a Lighter You Inside and Out. Baretz discussed the book itself as well as her personal experiences that compelled her to write it, in which she transformed “Junkfood Jodi” to “Baretz for carrots.”

Baretz began her talk with silence; she had the audience try a short meditation so that we could understand how she started her own transformational journey with mindfulness, except the first time she meditated at the Omega Institute five years ago, it was for forty-five minutes.

For Baretz, this was a torturous experience, and she wasn’t afraid to vocalize this–in fact, about half of the group felt the same way. However, over the following five days, the meditations became easier the more she practiced. Baretz explained that meditation isn’t effortless and that it requires focus. Meditation is a brain exercise by which one must acknowledge the thoughts that clutter one’s mind, and let them drift away, focusing purely on the breath.

Much like meditation, mindfulness is being able to feel and process one’s emotions in order to let them go, rather than immediately pushing them away. Baretz explained that we need to be able to deal with being uncomfortable rather than avoiding it altogether.

As a child, Baretz was a terrible eater, leading her to acquire the nickname “Junkfood Jodi.” Her diagnosis of celiac disease in 2003 triggered her transformational journey with food and nutrition, as well as mindfulness and well-being. In 2003, Baretz explained, people didn’t really know what celiac disease was, and gluten-free diets weren’t very common.

As a social worker, Baretz tried to help others with their own gluten-free eating, but soon realized that she knew nothing about nutrition. In 2010 she attended the Institute for Integrative Nutrition where she learned about the mind-body connection, and was exposed to spirituality. For Baretz, being spiritual is a holistic approach to healthy living and being while keeping up with our fast-paced lifestyles and society.

In order to portray this philosophy to others, she decided to write her book, Mindful is the New Skinny: 10 Transformational Steps to a Lighter You Inside and Out. Although Baretz discusses healthy eating and nutrition in her book, she uses the word skinny as a metaphor for perfection — external, unsustainable, and never good enough. Instead of striving for skinny, Baretz encourages being mindful, which entails accepting imperfections and the present moment. Even though the manuscript only took three months for her to write, Baretz hit a mental roadblock, dwelling in the very anxiety, stress, and frustration that she was writing about. She took a short break, acknowledged this, and started writing again with a new mindset.

Much like her book-writing process, Baretz helps women on their nutritional journeys by redirecting their focus from losing weight by dieting to mindful eating and living, which is sustainable and effective. In today’s society, social medias omnipresent and overwhelming influence fosters perfection, stress, and anxiety, mindfulness is more important than ever. “Mindfulness,” said Baretz “is the antidote.” And she’s right. Meditation is being extensively studied medically, and has been proven to affect the brain. Meditation and mindfulness make us more productive, as they allow our minds to reboot and recover from our daily stresses and tribulations. In a sentence, Baretz’s book is all about “Nourishing the inside so you can change the outside.”

Jodi is also a psychotherapist at The Center for Health and Healing in Mt. Kisco. Her book is available on Amazon and at Scattered Books in Chapapqua. Visit http://www.jodibaretz.com for more information about her various programs and events, including her mindfulness bootcamp, her meditation sessions, and speaking engagements.

Inside Press summer intern Amanda Kraus is a rising senior at Tulane University.

Bill Clinton Delivers at Chappaqua Library Signing for ‘The President is Missing’

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July 16, 2018, Chappaqua, NY — Is life mirroring art or is art mirroring life, Bill Clinton was asked–his attention diverted ever so briefly in the midst of signing hundreds of copies today of  ‘The President is Missing,’  a newly acclaimed and reportedly ‘page turner’ political thriller. (I have not read it yet.)

Bill Clinton signing ‘The President is Missing’ at the Chappaqua Library        Photo by Grace Bennett/Inside Press

It is a first novel for Clinton, one that he wrote together with master storyteller James Patterson.* 

Clinton didn’t miss a beat: “Well, a lot of people are saying that a lot of what is going on today is more realistic than my book,” in that fact may indeed be stranger than fiction.

While that may be hard to argue, the event was most decidedly not about the most current events. It was instead a chance for many to simply appreciate and support Chappaqua resident Bill Clinton, our nation’s 42nd president, and his latest writing, as he took time out to meet groups of neighbors and out of town fans who had patiently lined up–each excited for their turn to receive a handshake, to exchange a few words, and of course, receive a signed copy.
 
The Chappaqua Library produced the event in collaboration with Chappaqua’s Scattered Books Bookstore and the Town of New Castle. — Grace Bennett
 The Chappaqua Library’s Rebecca Rogan, Joan Kuhn and Larry D’Amico

*The information below was received earlier from the Chappaqua Library:

Bill Clinton was elected President of the United States in 1992. After two successful terms as president, he left the White House and established the Clinton Foundation, which improves lives across the United States and around the world by working together with partners to create economic opportunity, improve public health, and inspire civic engagement and service. He is the author of several nonfiction works, including MY LIFE, which was a #1 international bestseller. This is his first novel.

James Patterson is the world’s bestselling author, best known for his many enduring fictional characters and series, including Alex Cross, the Women’s Murder Club, Michael Bennett, Maximum Ride, Middle School, I Funny, and Jacky Ha-Ha. Patterson’s writing career is characterized by a single mission: to prove to everyone, from children to adults, that there is no such thing as a person who “doesn’t like to read,” only people who haven’t found the right book. He’s given over a million books to schoolkids and over forty million dollars to support education, and endowed over five thousand college scholarships for teachers. He writes full-time and lives in Florida with his family.