Greeley

Spotlight on Community Day 2018: A Yearly Tradition Courtesy of the Rotary Club Filled with Fun for All

October 24, 2018 by Madeline Rosenberg

Greeley senior Andrew Kassin said the event was a great opportunity to fundraise and raise awareness for the Matthew Larson Foundation, as he and other students sold T-shirts and sweatshirts in remembrance of their classmate, Casey Taub.

The aroma of roasted hot dogs and cotton candy competed with the sounds of guitar strums and cheering children at the 2018 Community Day. The Rotary Club-sponsored event brought more than 70 organizations to the heart of Chappaqua. Kids sporting butterfly face paint and their parents interested in various local groups lined the train station parking lot. The September 15th event served not only as a community gathering but also as a chance for organizations to network and fundraise.

“We are here to support the community of Chappaqua,” attendee and Chappaqua resident Dara Dubs said. “It is also great to see old and new friends and our kids love going on the rides.”

While groups including the Chappaqua School Foundation and Chappaqua First Responders return to Community Day each year, Tea Town, and the Matthew Larson Foundation for Pediatric Brain Tumors were a few of several organizations who participated in the event for the first time. This year’s Community Day also featured new activities for children, including a pony ride and a scavenger hunt.

But not only did little kids take advantage of what the 2018 event had to offer, Greeley students also attended, performed and volunteered at Community Day. Executives from Greeley’s largest community service organization, S.H.A.R.E, distributed T-shirts for A Kids’ Brain Tumor Cure, adding to the bracelets, pins and flying discs that various non-profits and local businesses also circulated.

(L-R): Barbara Klein, George Furman, Donald Roane, Peter Davidson PHOTO BY MADELINE ROSENBERG

Greeley senior Andrew Kassin said the event was a great opportunity to fundraise and raise awareness for the Matthew Larson Foundation, as he and other students sold T-shirts and sweatshirts in remembrance of their classmate, Casey Taub.

“Jonathan Taub’s message has been to keep Casey in everyone’s mind, to keep honoring him and to never forget him,” Kassin said. “Being here is a great way to carry that on.”

As community members of all ages enjoyed the activities that local groups sponsored, Rotary Club of Chappaqua president Eileen Gallagher said Community Day also serves as a natural way to bring attention to the Rotary Club itself.

“We look forward to more and more people coming each year,” Gallagher said. “We really want people to know we are here for them.”

(L-R): Sarah Platkin, Catherine Zhu, Jordan Rattner, volunteers from S.H.A.R.E.
PHOTO BY MADELINE ROSENBERG

Greeley Alum Shapes a New Era of Theatre

October 24, 2018 by Ella Ilan

Carly Brooke Feinman, a Chappaqua native and Greeley alum, is making a splash in the theatre world just two years after graduating Wesleyan University. This past summer, her original musical co-written with Cassie Wilson, If Sand Were Stone, made its Off-Broadway debut as part of the New York Music Festival. As if that wasn’t enough, her play Reflux was selected to premier Off-Broadway a few weeks later as part of the Broadway-Bound Theatre Festival.

Feinman loved growing up in Chappaqua. She always enjoyed poetry and writing and assumed that would lead her to a career in journalism or poetry. Her favorite teacher at Greeley was her creative writing teacher, Mrs. Chadwick. She “was the first teacher to really take interest in me and encouraged me to continue writing. I’m so grateful for her,” Feinman says.

Feinman’s road to musical theatre began when she took a class in college with the Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Quiara Alegría Hudes, who wrote In the Heights with Lin Manuel Miranda. “She changed everything for me… She is an epic human and one of my dearest friends and mentors. She showed me that the things I love about poetry and the fun language gymnastics I get to do really do lend themselves to theatre. She pushed me to dig deeper and take more classes and I found that I loved it,” recalls Feinman.

If Sand Were Stone Actors (L-R): Mari Uchida, Jhardon DiShon Milton, Jennifer Reed , Alexis Floyd and Tabatha Gayle PHOTO BY HAYIM HERON

It was in Hudes’ musical theatre class where Feinman was paired together with Wilson for an assignment. They immediately clicked and became great friends and collaborators. “To find someone that you want to work with for the rest of your career is such a gift to receive at a young age. We’ve been working on the musical for two and a half years. There will be future iterations of it and it’s more fulfilling every time we touch it,” says Feinman.

If Sand Were Stone is a musical that follows a poet as she and her family grapple with her early onset Alzheimer’s Disease at the peak of her career. It’s based on a true story about Wilson’s grandmother. Despite the sad subject, there is joy to be found in the moments on stage between family members. In preparation for writing this musical, Feinman and Wilson volunteered at an assisted living facility for memory care. “Just as many times as we would leave crying, we would leave laughing. Where there’s sadness, there’s joy. That’s a fundamental belief of ours,” says Feinman.

Feinman is proud of the fact that the musical’s creative team was all female, under 25, and included women of color. “Cassie and I are from very lucky backgrounds, we are hyper aware of the advantages we’ve had, and we have no interest in doing anything besides trying our best to be inclusive and to use what we’ve been given and share,” she explains.

Her other production this past summer, Reflux, is an absurdist comedy in a dystopian world where a man and woman are paired together randomly, and sent by boat to navigate the ocean to the honeymoon island where they must have sex. They try to figure out what sex and marriage is and how it fits into society’s expectations spoonfed to them since birth.

In Reflux, the couple is played by two gender non-conforming people of color. “We have all seen the man-woman romantic comedy and I was really interested in disrupting that whole Adam and Eve archetype… I’m interested in centering historically marginalized places and including people who have historically been disenfranchised by the institution of theatre. That’s not something that I’m looking for applause for. I just think it needs to be more of the norm,” says Feinman. Generally, she is drawn to art that disrupts and is different than anything she has seen previously. She was greatly inspired by the musicals Hamilton, In the Heights and Fun Home.

Feinman is not afraid of laying bare her creative work. “I don’t think you could fail if you try. This summer, if both of the shows were flops, that wouldn’t have been a failure to me. The failure would’ve been chickening out and saying that it would be too much to do in one summer,” she contends.

Feinman is living her dream career. “I’ve only ever wanted to be a writer. To be a songwriter was one of my early goals as a young girl but I don’t know how to play any instruments. In writing musicals, I’ve been able to call myself a songwriter. I’ve always wanted to be a poet and in writing plays, I’ve been able to do that. I’ve always wanted to collaborate with artists I admire and I’m getting to do that now. I’m so happy,” she concludes.

3rd Annual Bedford 2020 Greenlight Award Finals

April 21, 2018 by The Inside Press

Will Showcase Students’ Big Green Accomplishments

The third annual Bedford 2020 Greenlight Award Finals on May 1^st will feature high school contestants with big green ideas at the newly restored Bedford Playhouse in Bedford Village. “This is an exciting opportunity to see our future environmental leaders in action,” said Midge Iorio, Executive Director of Bedford 2020.

The theme of the Greenlight Award contest this year, Changemaker, challenged participants to not only come up with a big green idea, but also to prove that it could change behavior. “Behavior change is an important theme because causing people to do things differently is critical to the success of many environmental challenges,” Iorio explained. “The Finalists have caused people to change their behavior to address a variety of environmental problems – from greenhouse gas emissions to water pollution and waste.”

Several teams from Horace Greeley High School have advanced to the Finals and will present their projects before the judges and audience. The Greeley STOP Club worked on an anti-idling campaign, another student installed a kiosk where people can take or leave reusable bags, and a third team tapped into people’s interest in donating to charity to improve recycling habits.

Community members are encouraged to attend. “Our hope for the future will be elevated by these students who have taken on this challenge,” said Sarah Douglis, Bedford 2020 Board member and Pound Ridge resident. “I bring my kids, who are in elementary school, to the Greenlight Finals so that they are inspired first hand by these high school role models and become part of this important movement of their generation of environmental leaders”

The eight teams of Finalists were selected from 19 initial teams from Fox Lane, Horace Greeley, Somers, Harvey, John Jay, and Rye Country Day high schools. Finalists received up to $1000 in seed funding and worked with community experts to develop and carry out their big green ideas. At the Finals, the teams will show how they worked with stakeholders, created and carried out a strategy, catalyzed behavior change, and measured their results. The most impactful project will win the Greenlight Award and a $500 cash prize.

The presentations will be scored by judges Kitley Covill, Westchester County Legislator, Dale Akinla of Morgan Stanley, and Caela Murphy of the Endeavor Foundation.

The 2017-2018 Greenlight Award is sponsored by PepsiCo.

The Greenlight Award Finals will take place on Tuesday, May 1^st at 6:30pm at the Bedford Playhouse, 633 Old Post Rd, Bedford, NY.

For more information about the Greenlight Award visit www.bedford2020.org/greenlight

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Bedford 2020 is a non-profit organization leading a community-wide effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to create a sustainable community that conserves natural resources. More information is available at www.Bedford2020.org.

Civic Lessons from Chappaqua’s Historic Women

March 8, 2018 by Dana Y. Wu

Gabrielle Greeley Clendenin (1857-1937) & Carrie Chapman Catt (1859-1947)

2017 marked the 100th anniversary of women’s suffrage in New York State. The New Castle Historical Society celebrated this centennial with an exploration of the women’s suffrage movement and the life of Carrie Chapman Catt, a leading suffragist and former New Castle resident. Visit the Horace Greeley House to view this special exhibition with displays of photographs and artifacts until May 26, 2018.

In honor of Women’s History Month, The Inside Press focuses on the contributions of these two historic Chappaqua women residents.

In her book What Happened, Hillary Rodham Clinton reflects on “the roles that gender, race an class play in our politics and the importance of empathy in our national life.” This commitment to equality and moral dignity connects her to two other famous women in our town whose civic actions years ago required fortitude, then as now. Like Secretary Clinton, Gabrielle Greeley Clendenin and Carrie Chapman Catt each shared a hope for future generations and harnessed her creative and emotional power in different ways to make tangible differences during her lifetime.

Gabrielle Greeley Clendenin: A Generous Citizen

When Horace Greeley and his wife Mary both died in 1872, their youngest child, Gabrielle, was only 15. In 1882, her sister Ida died suddenly from diphtheria and Gabrielle became the sole owner of all 78 acres of the Greeley farm in the center of Chappaqua. Gabrielle lived as an independent, educated woman who chose to live in Chappaqua from 1881 until her death. She resided first in the Side Hill House which burned down in 1890 and then moved to a small house where the New Castle Town Hall is now. After she married Rev. Dr. Frank Clendenin, the rector of St. Peter’s Westchester (now in the Bronx) in 1891, they remodeled the concrete barn that Horace Greeley had proudly built 35 years earlier and gave their permanent home a biblical name, Rehoboth. Located on Aldridge Road, it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979.

Gabrielle could have had a socialite’s cosmopolitan lifestyle in New York City or capitalized on the celebrity legacy of being the attractive daughter of Horace Greeley, the influential New York Tribune founding editor/statesman/presidential candidate. Instead, Gabrielle was a charitable and generous neighbor, particularly to young women “in trouble” who were shunned by others, and personally aided her fellow citizens. She gave open house barn parties featuring traditional games and dances, held outdoor Sunday afternoon readings and book sharings under her father’s beloved evergreen grove and volunteered at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Pleasantville.

“Unlike her father, Gabrielle appears to have never involved herself in politics,” says Gray Williams, the town historian of New Castle. Gabrielle’s civic actions were aligned with her strong moral values and she concentrated her efforts to benefit the community where she lived. Starting in 1883, she donated part of her land for a right-of-way to connect Pleasantville and downtown Chappaqua along what is now South Greeley Avenue. In 1902, she provided the site for the current railroad station and its adjacent town park (Woodburn Avenue is named for her paternal grandmother). She supplied the four-acre property for the Church of St. Mary the Virgin to be the first Episcopal Church in Chappaqua after the 1903 tragic death of her 5-year-old daughter, Muriel, from tubercular meningitis. A Celtic cross commemorates both Gabrielle and her husband in the family’s burial plot at the back of the Church, just north of the grove of majestic evergreen trees that her father planted a half-century earlier.

Creating A Strong Educational System

Gabrielle’s commitment to local affairs influenced New Castle’s transformation from a farm town to a suburban commuter hamlet with a prized school district where students are encouraged to think critically and actively engage in the community. Most significantly, in 1926, Gabrielle either donated or sold on easy terms 10 acres of land which fundamentally changed the “common school” system of small one and two room buildings that only offered up to 8th grade instruction into a comprehensive school for elementary to high school instruction. Completed in 1928, the Horace Greeley School was a visual centerpiece of the town, built in native fieldstone like the Church of St. Mary the Virgin next door.

Source: NYS Museum http://www.nysm.nysed.gov/biographies/carrie-chapman-catt

Carrie Chapman Catt: A Leading Women’s Suffragist

Carrie Chapman Catt came to New Castle seeking a less hectic lifestyle as President of the National American Women’s Suffrage Association (NAWSA) following its greatest success, the passage of the 19th amendment by Congress. Having relentless determination and perseverance with the women’s suffrage movement since 1887 in Iowa, Catt was a leading activist, a dynamic organizer, fundraiser and a brilliant strategist. Catt founded the League of Women Voters in 1919, to provide women with the tools and knowledge for meaningfully exercising their right to vote. Believing that the political process should be rational and issue-oriented and dominated by citizens, not politicians, the League of Women Voters remains true to her ideals and promotes issues of public interest over partisan politics.

In 1919, Catt purchased Juniper Ledge, a 16-acre estate between North State and Ryder Roads in the west end of New Castle and was able to pursue her great love of gardening. An article in the New York Times on June 21, 1921 described a tradition Catt had established at Juniper Ledge of dedicating certain trees to famous suffragists. One tree, for example, was dedicated to Esther Morris, a leader in the passage of the Wyoming suffrage amendment. Another was dedicated to Maud Wood Park, who was instrumental in securing the passage of the 19th Amendment and the first president of the League of Women Voters. Juniper Ledge is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and was designated a town landmark in 2011.

While 2017 did not bring the inauguration of a first female U.S. President, lessons from 1915, when a proposed suffrage amendment to the NYS constitution was defeated, remind us that the struggle for equal rights up through the present day requires active participation of countless individuals at local, state and national levels. When women gained the right to vote in New York State in 1917, Catt said, “I regard the New York victory as the very greatest victory this movement has ever had in any country.” Catt’s successful “Winning Plan” of a state-by-state approach used New York’s win to propel the federal amendment forward.

“It’s a great connection for New Castle that such an important figure in the suffrage movement lived here. As the leader of NAWSA, Catt was instrumental in putting political pressure on President Wilson to support the 19th Amendment and then mobilizing support for ratification in three-fourths of the states. She is part of a long tradition of women’s rights leaders from New York from Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton to Betty Freidan and Gloria Steinem,” says Mary Devane, Horace Greeley HS Social Studies Department Chair.

Pursuing Justice and World Peace

Though she enjoyed her country retreat, Catt remained politically active and pursued her twin interests of women’s rights and world peace. In 1927, to be closer to the regional headquarters of the League of Women Voters in New Rochelle, Catt left New Castle and moved to a home on Paine Avenue in New Rochelle where she continued to garden enthusiastically. In her last years, she founded the National Committee on the Cause and Cure of War, actively supported the League of Nations and championed the newly formed United Nations.

Elevating Women

Knowing how our lives connect to Gabrielle’s civic actions and Catt’s activism can help us, as current residents, to cultivate a new generation of informed citizens in Chappaqua who combine passions with actions against prejudice and inequality. As these notable women recognized the societal issues in their contemporary culture, today we can speak up, stand firm and act generously each in our own way. Their legacy in civics gives us templates for how to build a better world and elevate the status of women.

Greeley Teachers: Looking Beyond the Classroom

June 3, 2017 by Adam Stein

Adam Stein with Greeley Spanish teacher Isabel Irizarry

In January of my junior year at Greeley, I realized that much to my consternation, I would have no Spanish class to take as a senior. When I explained my plight to Ms. Isabel Irizarry, who had been my Spanish teacher two years earlier, she immediately offered to help me do an independent study. While most independent study classes meet once every six or 12 days, she insisted on meeting twice a week to ensure I had frequent exposure to the language. Over the past year, the two of us have read novels, watched TV shows, and had discussions on American politics, all in Spanish. The immense number of hours she has dedicated to helping me improve my Spanish has left a lasting impression on me and further enhanced the extraordinary appreciation I have for Greeley’s outstanding teachers.

Ms. Irizarry’s incredible dedication to her students is not unusual at Greeley. For example, history teacher Robert Zambernardi is well-known for his gregarious personality and unmatched ability to make historical puns. But the most important thing he has taught me is how contagious passion for a subject can be. His enthusiasm is infectious, and he even encourages students to do historical research on their own through his “History IS” program, an independent-study class in which students spend a semester learning about a historical topic of their choice.

Mr. Zambernardi meets individually with these students every week to provide mentorship as they undertake what for most will be the largest research project of their four years in high school. When I took History IS last year to research the decline of communism, Mr. Zambernardi came to every meeting with an arsenal of obscure facts about both the subject matter and the professors whose work I was studying. During a semester when the stress of junior year was overwhelming, my weekly meetings with Mr. Zambernardi were something to which I looked forward. Mr. Zambernardi always leaves his classroom door open, just in case students feel like dropping by to say hello, ask a question about his course material, or vent about how college applications are taking over their lives.

Mr. Zambernardi and Ms. Irizarry are far from the only teachers who make their students a priority. Math teacher George Benack, for example, holds extra-help sessions before and after school every week for students who need them, and even comes prepared with brownies to encourage attendance.

Once, I found myself struggling with a concept but could not attend any of the sessions he offered that week. Determined to help me, he volunteered to meet with me individually after school, and then sat with me for a full hour until he was confident that I understood the material.

Greeley’s staff members have shown time and again that they will do anything to help the school’s students.

Student Life Coordinator Kristin Spillane, for example, worked tirelessly to create an “Ambassadors” program to give students who feel isolated the chance to socialize with older peers. The language department, hoping to give students more opportunities to listen to and speak their target languages, created a “language lab” with software designed to do just that. And, of course, there are the many teachers who act as advisors to student-run clubs.

Greeley teachers do so much more than ensure that students are prepared to ace their AP exams, though they are admittedly excellent at this too. They create a sense of community in their classrooms, and make their students understand that knowledge has no limits.

Twenty years from now, I probably won’t remember the equation for simple harmonic motion, that the 1720 South Sea Bubble helped Sir Robert Walpole come to power in Great Britain, or the details of the Brønsted–Lowry acid–base theory (OK, I may have already forgotten that last one). What I will remember are Ms. Li’s field trips to Chinatown, Mr. Metzler’s Tibetan singing bowl, and Ms. Plate’s Band-Aid collection.

When September arrives, I will be leaving Chappaqua and heading up I-95 to the place that I will call home for the next four years. Until then, I plan to soak up every last drop of knowledge that my school and community have to offer.