• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

The Inside Press

Magazines serving the communities of Northern Westchester

  • Home
  • Advertise
    • Advertise in One or All of our Magazines
    • Advertising Payment Form
  • Print Subscription
  • Digital Subscription
    • Subscribe
    • Subscriber Login
  • Contact Us

mother

Woman

April 18, 2019 by Julia Bialek

I am woman,

my blood a map crafted by

all the strong women that

came before, that fought before.

This copper fuel surges through

my veins, propelling me forward,

compelling me to care.

I follow this map left for me.

It is my guide.

 

I am my mother’s daughter

and for that I am proud.

She is the original owner

of my hazel eyes through which

I see this world and will it to change.

It is her voice in my head that cries

If he can do it why can’t I?

And it is her actions that

provide me with the answer:

I can.

 

I am sewn from a fabric of equality,

with words as the thread that

mends lives and stitches souls.

When woven into hearts

this thread has the power to free

the tethers tying women’s

feet to the ground so we can

climb to the clouds and capture our dreams.

My cloud is waiting.

 

I am indebted to all women that fought,

all women that continue to fight.

Thank you.

The torch is now mine and

I will brandish it with the strength

infused by you into my blood.

It will illuminate the path and

serve as a comfort, for the blood

in my body and the torch in my hand

remind me that I am never alone.

My work begins now.

 

I am continuing this fight

heavy of heart.

Despite all the ground that has been

touched with light, there is still darkness.

Only when there are no more ceilings to shatter,

because we have surpassed every boundary,

explored every frontier and collected jars full

of glittering glass, will the darkness

be eradicated for good.

So I’ll fight.

 

I am woman,

A tapestry of history,

a slate for the future.

One day, when I have the honor

of passing on my blood,

my map,

I hope that it will be an artifact,

rather than a tool,

that the place to which it leads

will have been found and excavated

for its precious treasure.

But if not, I hope to proudly pass

my torch to the next,

knowing that she, too, is dreaming

of following her blood.

 

That is woman.

Filed Under: Et Cetera Tagged With: Art, daughter, feminism, Inside Press, Julia Bialek, message, mother, poem, Poetry, Woman

Reserve Now – Fine Choices for Dining Out On Mother’s Day

April 21, 2018 by The Inside Press

Festive & Farm-to-Table

Whether an intimate dining experience with ‘just mom,’ or an event for the whole family, festive gatherings on Mother’s Day are a long held tradition at the Kittle House.Built as a barn in 1790 and named after local farmer John Kittle, how appropriate it is that the Kittle Barn and Carriage House began its existence with a farm-to-table connection, a philosophy and tradition that has continued throughout the years. Crabtree’s Kittle House established itself as the farm-to-table pioneer in Westchester County and has maintained its excellent reputation as an outlet for the finest sustainable, naturally raised and grown products from small, artisanal farmers located in the Hudson Valley and beyond.

Crabtree’s Kittle House
11 Kittle Road, Chappaqua
(914) 666-8044
www.kittlehouse.com


Eclectic & Inviting

Family gatherings have a rich history inside Chappaqua’s eclectic, new world cuisine restaurant. Here, “New York and Parisian style seating lends a city-like feel to a small town joint.” Though Le Jardin has its origin roots in French cuisine, its many other influences have transformed it into the place where you can get a little taste of everywhere. The interior is cozy and inviting, while the outdoor patio (seasonal & weather permitting) offers patrons a truly inviting dining experience surrounded by a beautiful garden–seemingly plucked from the grounds of Versailles and dropped in the little hamlet of Chappaqua. From French classics and steaks, Classic Latin style tacos done to perfection, onward to nationally recognized award winning BBQ and some of the best burgers around, Le Jardin has it all and does it with service that will bend over backwards for you.

Le Jardin du Roi
95 King Street, Chappaqua
(914) 238-1368
Lejardinchappaqua.com


Signature Dishes

Pleasantville residents and visitors alike have been blessed since the quaint and warm Bistro 146 came onto the scene. Still a local fine dining favorite, Bistro 146 has traditionally offered a pre-fixe menu on Mother’s Day. This year, they are promising to include two signature dishes: a Maine Lobster Clam Bake, ‘our style,’ and their ‘famous’ Premium seafood paella!

Bistro 146
146 Bedford Road, Pleasantville
(914) 495-3992


Classics Elevated

Mother’s Day and any day at Amore in Armonk means experiencing the spirit of seasonal simplicity in Italian cooking. Proprietors Mark & Joe Mazzotta describe the menu as “a nod on traditional classics infused with modern-innovation… thus, resulting in the classics elevated to new levels.” An aroma of brick oven pizza and roasted garlic permeate the room. It is comfort food that is truly palate pleasing… “a simple joy.”   The original building was rescued from a dusty, decades old roadhouse and reincarnated into a cozy trattoria–resembling a Tuscan style farmhouse eatery with a rustic elegance inside & out. Established in Armonk almost 20 ago, the new ‘reinvented’ setting is centered in the heart of downtown.

Amore Pizzeria & Italian Kitchen
1 Kent Place, Armonk
(914) 273-3535
amorearmonk.com


A Different Experience

An exciting newcomer promises a “different dining experience this Mother’s Day.” Inka’s Seafood Grill is inviting you to reserve soon to “celebrate all the Moms in our lives.” A special three-course prix fixe menu is being offered, with both Peruvian and American selections. $55 per person. Limited outdoor patio seating, weather permitting. Reservations recommended.

Inka’s Seafood Grill
465 Main Street, Armonk
(914) 730-1122
Inkasseafoodgrill.com

Filed Under: Lifestyles with our Sponsors Tagged With: Area Restaurants, Dining Out, Food, mother, Mother's Day brunch, Mother's Day reservations, mothers day, Reservation

Scarlett Lewis to Deliver Keynote at HHREC’s March 15 Human Rights Institute

March 6, 2018 by The Inside Press

17th Annual Human Rights Institute
for High School Student Leaders
hosted by
The Holocaust & Human Rights Education Center

DATE: Thursday, March 15th, 8:30 a.m. to 2 p.m.

LOCATION: Iona College, New Rochelle

KEYNOTE SPEAKER

 

Sandy Hook Victim’s Mother, Scarlett Lewis,  will Present Keynote at Human Rights Institute for High School Student Leaders.  Lewis is Founder and Chief Movement Officer of the Jesse Lewis Choose Love Movement

Held annually, The Human Rights Institute for High School Student Leaders promotes student awareness of human rights issues on both local and global levels, and empowers students to become Upstanders by creating and implementing Action Plans of their own.

“Scarlett Lewis emphasizes the importance of empowering youth by choosing love over angry thoughts, inspiring bravery, and being an Upstander. This message reflects what we try to promote through our annual Human Rights Institute, to inspire students to make a difference and to take positive action for change,” said Julie Scallero, Co-Director of Education at The Holocaust & Human Rights Education Center.

The Holocaust & Human Rights Education Center hosts the Institute to enhance the teaching and learning of the lessons of the Holocaust to support the right of all people to be treated with dignity and respect.

Expected attendance includes 480 high school students and 45 teachers, from 44 high schools.*

Keynote Speakers Include:
Scarlett Lewis, Founder and Chief Movement Officer of the Jesse Lewis Choose Love Movement –
www.jessielewischooselove.org

Judith Altmann, Holocaust survivor and member of the Speakers Bureau at the Holocaust & Human Rights Education Center

Special Guests Include:
George Latimer, Westchester County Executive
Shelley Mayer, Assemblyperson

Student facilitators will lead small-group workshops on a wide-range of human rights issues.

Students and teachers implement Upstander programs during Upstander Week, May 21 – May 25, 2018, (as proclaimed by Westchester County Executive George Latimer).

Teachers will also participate in two workshops, one with our keynote speaker, Scarlett Lewis, and the second one with Judith Altmann, Holocaust survivor.

—

For more information please contact Millie Jasper, Executive Director at The Holocaust & Human Rights Education Center. mjasper@hhrecny.org

 

Filed Under: Inside Westchester Tagged With: Holocaust and Human Rights, Human Rights Institute, Jesse Lewis Choose Love, mother, Sandy Hook, Scarlett Lewis, student leaders, upstanders, victim

Lasting Legacies

April 24, 2017 by Dana Y. Wu

Four young women share what they learned or inherited from their mothers and grandmothers.


KRISHNA PATEL

Krishna Patel

A Horace Greeley High School junior, Krishna Patel realizes that she has a very different reality than her grandmother’s experience at 16-years-old. “My life consists of scurrying from one extracurricular to the next, staying up late to get my homework done, and spending the weekends with my friends. My grandmother dropped out of 10th grade to get married and start a family of her own, as was common in the 1950s in rural India.

I will never forget when she presented me with two thick silver anklets.  I was 14 and she was visiting from San Francisco.  She called me into the kitchen of our house in Millwood.  She said she had something for me.  “The same ones I wore on my wedding day, 60 years ago,” she said.

“I wasn’t much older than you.”

Krishna’s grandmother

Krishna appreciates how her grandmother found the courage to break from tradition to become a strong, outgoing, powerful woman, and set the precedent for the other women in the family to do the same. “When my grandfather, a prominent Assemblyman, was imprisoned due to his political views, my grandmother continued to be an activist for reform, against his wishes due to concerns for her safety. My grandmother was very brave when, at 40, she had the chance to join her brother in the United States.

She taught herself English and took up a job at a perfume factory to finance a new life here.”


MADDY CHEN

Maddy Chen

Similar to Krishna’s grandmother, Maddy Chen’s grandmother also had little to say about her marriage. Both her grandmother and her grandmother’s identical twin sister, who was born first in 1938, had arranged marriages in Hainan, China.  The firstborn was promised to a village boy who became a rice farmer. Maddy’s grandmother, was also betrothed in 1940 to a village boy, but he later immigrated to America and became a doctor. “This two minute difference between my grandmother and her twin has extended across the generations.” Maddy, a senior at Centennial High School in Maryland, reflects.

“My grandmother’s twin had a son who became the local village butcher. Every day, he wakes up at 4 a.m. to slaughter a pig. He spends the rest of his day selling pieces of meat in a hot, crowded, smelly, open air market.  My mother is a dermatologist who uses her hands only to perform delicate skin surgeries. I often ponder what would have happened to my grandmother, my mother, and me if the second born twin married the rice farmer.”

Maddy Chen and her family

HANNAH FENLON

Our author, Hannah Fenlon and her Great Grandmother, Yuan Lau Chan Man

It is possible be both the same and wildly different from the women in one’s family. In Hannah Fenlon’s family, Hannah learned cultural traditions by cooking with her great grandmother and grandmother, just as her mother and aunts did. “Whatever the size or shape or “mistakes” my little hands made when we gathered to make dumplings, I also saw my great-grandmother’s expert, lovely hands pinching the dough just so, plopping them in boiling water and then, scooping the delicious dumplings as they floated to the top of the pot.”

Hannah, a junior at Horace Greeley High School, also inherited creative abilities and attention to detail from her grandmother and great-grandmother who were talented seamstresses. “Ever since I was a little kid, I liked arts and crafts.” says Hannah. “And I loved learning to quilt.”


ALEXIS DRAPER

Alexi Draper

Teaching yoga, sharing a laugh and traveling are among the many things that connect Alexis Draper and her mother, Susan, of Armonk. Alexis, now a freshman at Texas Christian University, recalls a special summer in Todi, a small village in the hills of Umbria, Italy.

This trip was in preparation for Alexis’s first year of Italian study at Byram Hills High School.  Each morning, Alexis said, she and her mom “left their little apartment and walked down the cobble stone steps to the pastry shop in town, and then went to our classroom to learn Italian. Though we lived there for only two weeks, we progressed from just waving “hello” to having small conversations with the lady who would feed the stray cats, with the woman from our favorite boutique, and with the servers in the restaurants.”

She and her mom took the afternoons to drive to different ancient towns, exploring places like the grandiose Basilica of San Francesco in Assisi, hiking up the mountain at Cascata della Marmore (waterfalls), and riding a birdcage-like funicular to the top of Gubbio. “All the sites were spectacular, but the magic of the trip was really in Todi itself because my mom and I learned something new together every day.”  On one of their last evenings in town, Alexis and her mom participated in a cooking lesson at a local woman’s home. “We stumbled a bit through our recipes in our new found language but we enjoyed the fruits of our labor, dining under the stars with other travelers from around the world.”


As Alexis, Hannah, Maddy and Krishna shared these formative experiences with me and what they learned from the women in their families, I was reminded of a trip I took in 1995 with my grandmother to Weihai, China. It was the first time I met my great grandmother and my great aunt, who had been sent to a re-education labor camp during the Cultural Revolution.

My grandmother left behind her family at age 20 when she fled Communist China with my mother and her infant son. Her life journey took her from China, to Hong Kong, then Brazil and finally the United States.  When we were returning to New York, my great aunt gave us bundles of seaweed to take home.  She had roamed the shores surrounding Weihai, a city on a peninsula, to collect the seaweed. She dried the pieces in the sun and then wrapped them in scraps of cloth. She didn’t  have much money but arduously gathered these fragments culled from the sea of their hometown. Somehow, we made it through customs with those pungent bundles the size of pillows.

That seaweed connected three generations of women. That gift to my grandmother from her sister’s gnarled hands was my inheritance of courage, love, and hope.

Filed Under: Armonk Cover Stories Tagged With: Family, grandmother, Legacies, Memories of Mom, mother, mothers day

Primary Sidebar

Recent Posts

  • Holocaust Survivor Helga Luden Relates her Story of Escape, Rescue and Survival
  • Four Winters Shines a Light on the Bravery of World War II Survivors Among the 25,000 Jewish Partisans
  • $86K State Grant Awarded to 2023 Phoenix Festival Signals Growing Focus on Tourism
  • Scarsdale Music Festival Gearing Up for a June 3rd Event: Sponsorships, Performers and Vendors Sought
  • Governor Hochul Urges: SHOP SMALL to Help Small Businesses Which Make Up 98% of New York State’s Economy
  • Chappaqua’s Always Magical HOLIDAY STROLL on December 3rd: Ice Sculpting, Tree Lighting, Horace Greeley Encords… and More!

Please Visit

White Plains Hospital
Boys & Girls Club
Compass: Goldman and Herman
Compass: Generic
Desires by Mikolay
William Raveis – Chappaqua
William Raveis – Armonk
Dodd’s Wine Shop
Houlihan Lawrence – Armonk
Houlihan Lawrence – Chappaqua
Lumagica Enchanged Forest
Compass: Miller-Goldenberg Team
Compass: Natalia Wixom
Eye Designs of Armonk
Stacee Massoni
Club Fit
Beecher Flooks Funeral Home
Houlihan: Kile Boga-Ibric
Play Nice Together
Compass: Aurora Banaszek
Houlihan Lawrence: Harriet Libov
Houlihan: Danielle Orellana
Sir Speedy Pleasantville
Terra Tile & Marble
Dr. Briones Medical Weight Loss Center

Follow our Social Media

The Inside Press

Our Latest Issues

For a full reading of our current edition, or to obtain a copy or subscription, please contact us.

Inside Chappaqua Inside Armonk Inside Pleasantville

Join Our Mailing List


Search Inside Press

Links

  • Advertise
  • Contact Us
  • Digital Subscription
  • Print Subscription

Footer

Support The Inside Press

Advertising

Print Subscription

Digital Subscription

Categories

Archives

Subscribe

Did you know you can subscribe anytime to our print editions?

Voluntary subscriptions are most welcome, if you've moved outside the area, or a subscription is a great present idea for an elderly parent, for a neighbor who is moving or for your graduating high school student or any college student who may enjoy keeping up with hometown stories.

Subscribe Today

Copyright © 2023 The Inside Press, Inc. · Log in