Bruce Apar’s Blog

At my age, it’s not easy to remember senior moments, whether from the last year in high school or in college. What you do recall tends to be the cruise-control, downhill nature of it all. You’ve paid your dues, you’re the king of the hill, you’re champing at the bit to move on to the next phase in life. What, me worry?
Those were the halcyon days, when, unlike today, we didn’t apply to as many colleges as Crayola has colors, and rarely if ever visisted any of them. One thing, however, hasn’t changed. Four decades ago, annual tuition to a private school cost as much as a fairly fancy car, just like it does today.
These are tougher times for college applicants, as well as for those who foot the bills. Before I transferred to Syracuse University, in those days nicknamed the “Miami of the North” for its social scene, I spent freshman year at the “Syracuse of the South,” University of Miami, whose students were mocked as majoring in “Basketweaving 101.” Today, basket cases need not apply to the Coral Gables campus, and good luck getting in at all if you are anything but a top student with special credentials. The competition for the marquee colleges is that fierce, with exceptional scholars from all over the globe vying for enrollment.
Dr. Randall Glading, assistant principal at Yorktown High School, believes secondary school educators can and should be doing a much better job preparing students for the rigors of postsecondary, education. He lays out his prescription in great detail in his book released earlier this year, “Overcoming the Senior Slump: Meeting the Challenge with Internships.” (Rowman & Littlefield Education, $19.95; rowmanlittlefield.com).
The thesis presented by Dr. Glading is that over the course of his nearly 30 years in the system, “The way in which public educators treat their most experienced students [ie, seniors] has changed little … Students are merely completing coursework to accumulate the necessary credits required for graduation. … The student’s social adjustment to college is extremely important, and if it is not managed correctly, it can result in academic failure.”
He proposes that the best way to reverse the do-nothing malaise of “senioritis” — and increase the likelihood not only of acceptance by the student’s college of choice, but also of a seamless transition between “high school adolescence and college adulthood,” as Fordham’s Bruce Cooper writes in his foreword — is to reinvigorate the high school senior’s experience. It starts with schools weaning themselves off the national obsession of teaching curricula that is a slave to mandated state assessment tests.
“The value of state assessments is undeniable,” writes Willard Daggett of the International Center for Leadership in Education in the book’s appendix, adding, “but we cannot view them as the definition of academic excellence. Unfortuantely, many of those in education do.”
Dr. Glading’s antidote is contained in his book’s title: internships. It extends to mentoring and work-study programs. The end-to-end process is examined in close detail, using actual student examples. The goals are to “work, investigate and experience the real world.” He makes the case that, in addition to grade point average and SAT scores, internships should be seriously considered by college admission officers, who express concern about the “inability of incoming students to succeed at the university level.”
Dr. Glading’s recipe for an effective internship requires adult mentors in both academic and workplace settings. Objectives include independent learning, time management and becoming part of a “learning community outside of the classroom.”
He cites the acclaimed WISE Services (Westchester’s Pioneers in Individual Senior Experience) for its central role in refining the internship model, and notes that its founder, Vic Leviatin, who originated the program in 1972 at Woodlands High in Hartsdale, travels the country helping schools “in the establishment of senior alternative programs.”
still is on the case as a consultant.
Dr. Glading also advises parents that it’s wise to “stand alongside your child but do not get in the way.” Regardless of the grade your child is in, few graduation gifts will have more lifelong value than buying a copy of this book now and taking to heart its sage advice.
He further notes that “all adolescents need to develop a sense of autonomy and ability to deal with challenging situations.”
Worth repeating here are his “basic tenets of effective parenting”:
• Communicate with your child
• Listen to your child
• Find your place in your child’s world
• Do not be selfish with your time
• Respect your child’s opinion
• Stress the importance of family time
• Stress the importance of education
• Hold your child responsible
• Teach respect
• Allow your child to gain independence and autonomy
• Love your child

U.S. Representative John Hall, of New York’s 19th Congressional District, may not have been visible on TV Monday night at the Denvercratic Convention, but his residual handiwork was very much on display. As soon as Senator Edward M. Kennedy finished what felt like his swan song, Hall’s Top 40 song from his old Orleans days, “Still the One,” filled up the Pepsi Center with pop.
Notably, when Republican Senator John McCain’s campaign earlier this year co-opted “Still the One,” Hall heard a sour note. “The only one John McCain is ‘Still the One’ for is George Bush,” he told an NBC interviewer. That’s show biz – and politics.
In a phone interview with Congressman Hall on August 28, as he was riding a shuttle back to his hotel from the Pepsi Center in anticipation of the climactic evening at Invesco Stadium, where 80,000 will cheer Barack Obama’s acceptance speech, he said, “I was halfway down the stairs where the New York delegation sits when the song started playing and went, ‘yeah!’ It was an honor and a thrill.”
Conventions for the most part play like a failed invention of P.T. Barnum’s boring brother, the one without a wry sense of humor and theatrical panache. At times, the Dems’ lineup of yawn-inducing speakers pontificating at the podium seemed like a reality show parody, “American Idle.”
Still, I’ve been entranced by these leaden spectacles, along with show business and professional sports, since my prepubescent days. Makes sense: politics combines the artifice of entertainment and the irrational behavior of sports fans.
We lustily boo the best player on the other team because he used to be on your team but jumped ship for a better pay package. Imagine that. No boofan (that’s an archaic form of buffoon) would ever do such a disloyal thing as pine to make more money. How gauche.
It reminds me of an email I received the other day from a pen pal on the left coast who called Democratic Senator Joseph Lieberman “a traitor” because the Connecticut legislator is supporting John McCain in the Presidential Stakes, which is analogous to a horse race, except for the dignity and grace of the thoroughbreds.
In the irrational realm of politics, the man’s deemed a traitor because he’s sticking to his beliefs in spite of broad, virtually meaningless party labels. Therein lies the dilemma, to put it kindly, of our outmoded two-party system. There are those across the political spectrum who think it’s more important and responsible to vote your mascot than your conscience. Elephants and donkeys, yea. Beliefs and individualism, nay.
Somebody with a bird’s eye view of next week’s Republican National Convention is David Grill, who chairs the TheaterDesign/Technology Department at Purchase College and is lighting designer for the massive McCain pep rally descending next Monday on the Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul, Minnesota.
Grill told me in a phone interview from the convention floor this week that the live audience in the hall – a few thousand – is incidental to the millions of TV viewers. “You have to be more concerned about television than the live audience,” he said, adding, “You want everyone on the lectern to look as good as possible,” and how that’s accomplished varies according to the subject’s hair color and complexion.
If there is a theme for both of the conventions, it might be frugality. Grill said “they are worrying a lot more about budgets than in the past.”
So are you and me. We’re worrying big about the economy and property taxes.
I finally got to spend some time last week with Congressman Hall’s Republican challenger this fall, Kieran Michael Lalor, who hosted a fundraiser in Somers. Politics aside, I’ve been impressed with Rep. Hall’s command of policy matters and his presence in the community as a freshman congressman.
Spending some quality time with Mr. Lalor for the first time, he proved to be as advertised: a regular guy with a lot of passion, a tour of duty in Iraq with the Marines, a teaching career, and a law school education.
In a minor twist of irony, the Lalors and Obamas seemed to be kindred spirits in a familial way. In a uniquely spontaneous and un-conventional moment Monday night in Denver, with shades of an early scene in “2001: A Space Odyssey,” Senator Obama’s visage is seen on a live satellite feed making small talk with his 7-year-old daughter, on the podium, as millions watched. In that same time frame, Mr. Lalor issued a disarming press release announcing his wife Mary Jo as his “running mate for the election and for life,” featuring a photo of the couple and their infant daughters.
If this is the new politics of real people acting naturally, and even employing casual humor in reaching out to people, that’s good news.

The few times I’ve spent in Carmel have been chasing a little white ball at Centennial Golf Course, a great, if pricey, place to play.

As part of my ongoing efforts to become educated about all the communities in North County, including those not currently part of our coverage area of more than seven towns, I was eager to get to Carmel’s VFW headquarters on Route 52, opposite Lake Gleneida, on Tuesday night (August 13).

The attraction for me, and more than 100 others present, was a debate between incumbent 99th District Assemblyman Greg Ball and his challenger, John Degnan, former Mayor of Brewster. They are both running in the September 9 Republican Primary for the privilege of holding that line in the November election.

The two combatants — and those present would attest that is not as much hyperbole as it looks on paper — traded accusations, barbs, insults and denials of the other’s allegations of inaction or, worse, acting against the public’s interest. The agenda bullet points are familiar enough by now: unregistered immigrants, property taxes and the state of state government as practiced in Albany.

Here’s a sampling: Ball — “This is a horrible, nasty campaign.” Degnan (not responding to that Ball remark but to a question from audience): “He’s a liar.”

The crowd was passionate, with at least three-quarters of them cheering on Assemblyman Ball vociferously; that was to be expected, as one resident put it, because “this is his home base.”

The moderator, Karl Rhode, of VFW, a Vietnam veteran, was not shy about holding both the candidates and outspoken audience members to account for stepping outside the lines of debate decorum.

He cautioned both candidates about what he deemed improper remarks or disruptions.

Rhode admonished Ball more than once about interrupting Degnan while the latter had the podium, one time even threatening to end the debate altogether, but then relented. One Ball supporter blurted out, “You’re denying democracy,” to which Rhode replied, “You’re our guest here.”

Rhode also chastised Degnan to not address remarks to anybody in the audience by name after the candidate made caustic remarks about Southeast Supervisor Michael Rights, who was present.

Nevertheless, Ball did make references to New York State Senator Vincent Leibell, also on hand, who has created quite a buzz in this race by funneling substantial financial support to the Degnan campaign. The Ball remarks were not about that fact, but painted the popular Senator as part of the “good ol’ boys’ club in Albany” that Ball has made a virtual political career, in a very short time, of tweaking and challenging to change its profligate ways.

The debate did not so much end as disintegrate into a crossfire of salvos among candidates and their respective supporters. It started with a question posed by the moderator to Assemblyman Ball that the candidate for re-election took exception to, because it besmirched his military service. There followed a heated exchange between Ball and Rhode alluding to whether the moderator was a Leibell partisan and therefore trying to embarrass Ball with such questions. One Ball campaign worker whispered in my ear that Rhode used to be on the payroll of Senator Leibell. The one-word response from the Senator’s office: “Never.”

Ball began persistently demanding to know of Degnan, “What are you, John — Democrat or Republican?” [A registered Republican, Degnan was endorsed for Assembly by the Putnam County Democrats and Republicans. Ball was endorsed by Westchester County Republicans. Pawling Republicans in Dutchess County issued no endorsement.]

The inquiry to his opponent by Ball seemed to be the final straw for Moderator Rhode, who stepped to the mike to signal the end of the session, which was in effect at its end anyhow because, as Rhode himself allowed, the only audience questions left to ask were obviously partisan statements with question marks attached at the end.

Then the supporters joined in, with a Degnan loyalist decrying a Ball remark while Degnan was speaking with, “This is an outburst!” A Ball person behind him replied, “Oh, be quiet.” Then the Degnan person said to Ball, “That’s inappropriate.” Ball: “You’re inappropriate.” Degnan person: “So’s your conduct, sir.” Ball: “So is yours.” And so it went.

The climax to the noisy dispersal of the audience came when Degnan supporter Robert Buckley left the hall repeating the refrain, “Greg Ball’s a fraud,” and throwing in a remark that “He’s anti-union.” That Buckley is an imposing figure did not deter a middle-aged woman on Ball’s side from confronting him as he exited.

Someone in the Degnan camp I spoke with was not pleased with Buckley’s over-the-top behavior. Even less pleased was a Ball supporter who, watching Buckley wend his way through the crowd to exit the building, expressed concern for the safety of others.

Another debate between the two candidates is scheduled for Wednesday, August 13, at 8:00 p.m. at the Somers Library in Reis Park on Route 139 (between Routes 202 and 100). It is sponsored by the Somers Republican Town Committee and the Somers Republican Club. Early Wednesday afternoon, Rey Solano, head of the Somers Republican Club, told me his group had not heard back from John Degnan or his camp confirming his attendance.

Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, the kings of news parody, must be crestfallen. All the real politicians are stealing their acts by performing their own self-parody.

Can the level of election campaign discourse sink any lower on a national scale, or local? That’s a rhetorical question. Apparently there is no bottom to the cesspool of ethical snubbery, another way of saying ethics don’t matter any more in public life. The only rule for how far to go is whether you can get away with it.

Let’s face the music and wince: The sanitized term “spin” has replaced that not very nice word “lies,” but who is kidding whom? Voters who want to be duped will be. Others will just shake their heads in a mix of disbelief and disgust, and mutter that now, heaven knows, to quote Cole Porter, anything goes.

The same goes for some media outlets, including certain local papers.

On Fox News, jingoism has replaced journalism. On MSNBC, Keith Olbermann fancies himself Edward R. Murrow. How humble of him. His screeds against the President, no matter what you think of the latter, are like listening to chalk screeching across a blackboard. They are pedantic, self-important and plain badly written. As for CNN, I haven’t tuned in since “AC” (Anderson Cooper) came after “AB” (Aaron Brown). The CNN brass reportedly though AB was too low-key and lacking in sex appeal, yet I find AC flat-out boring, so off with this talking head, at least in my media room!

How do you really know that the cable news nets, of which I am admittedly a junkie, are not practicing any form of journalism known to earthlings? That’s not a rhetorical question. It’s because when was the last time you saw a newspaper that quoted the same so-called expert every day in articles covering the same story. Or continue covering a story every day when there is nothing new to report? Or having the reporters (read: Bill O’Reilly or Olbermann or Geraldo Rivera or AC) insert themselves into the story, or proclaim, as O’Reilly is wont to do, “I’m going to git you, sucka!” (he does not say it in so many words, but I did recently see Mr. T on one of those shows as a guest, if that counts).

The same political “analysts” are hauled out every evening on the cable newscasts, but they really are not analysts. They are paid flacks. Gee, I can’t imagine what position the campaign manager for John McCain or Barack Obama is going to take when asked about something their man said earlier in the day. It’s a joke.

Peekskill plays jazz & blues
Something I didn’t have room to include in my Talking Points column this week in the print edition of North County News, as I sang the praises of Peekskill’s many charms, is the Jazz & Blues 2nd Annual Celebration this Saturday night at Division and Park streets (site of the gazebo). It’s quite a lineup of diverse talents and genres on stage from 5:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m., including a quartet fronted by Peekskill’s “finest” policeman-musician, Andy Polay, a familiar figure about town on his bicycle. I’m a big band buff, so Greg Westhoff’s Westchester Swing Band also catches my eye (and ear). And you never can go wrong with Tommy Dabbs & A Little Bit of This & That, a very Peekskillful group. Plus there’s lots more. Guest of honor is Carmen Leggio “for his contribution to music and the arts over the past 60 years.” Check it all out, because Saturday night’s alright for groovin’.

Who’s the yank-ee?
Watching the 2008 edition of the professional baseball club formerly known as the New York Highlanders (if you don’t believe me, just ask your grandfather, if you can, and if you’re past 60) can give a fan whiplash. (And the prices of seats in the new Yankee Stadium can give a fan bankruptcy.)

They get within 1 game of 2nd place Boston and three behind front-runner TB Rays, then fall back to their current slot of 6 games behind the leader and a trey behind Fenway’s faves. And the season sure ain’t getting any longer.

Feels like your pinstriped heart is being yanked this way and that, raising the question: Just who here is the y anker and who is the yankee?

Whatever and whomever, it sure feels more and more like this will be the first October in a dozen falls where we won’t be watching the Yankees on the field.

What appears to be the first bona fide debate between the two declared candidates for New York’s 99th Assembly District has been scheduled for Wednesday, August 27, at Yorktown Stage, starting at 7:00 p.m. That’s when incumbent Assemblyman Greg Ball and challenger John Degnan will square off in an event hosted by a non-partisan third-party, North County News, which has absolutely no stake in who is elected.

The moderator will be independently selected by North County News, which will ask if the person identified meets with each camp’s approval. The moderator will pose questions derived from the newspaper’s archives of stories covering both candidates and issues of the day. The questions will betray no bias toward one candidate or the other and reveal no prejudicial leaning on hot-button issues. Audience members will be invited to pose questions of their own.

If all the above seems painfully obvious to any reasonable, well-informed person, the need to exercise ethical, fair and thoroughly impartial procedures to justify using the word “debate” is not obvious to everyone, even including those who are holding what they inaccurately call a “debate.”

A local group that has its heart in the right place, but is misinformed about the proper way to stage a debate, is holding a totally partisan event this Friday at Yorktown Town Hall that more accurately should be called a press conference.

It’s quite a feat to announce a debate for two elected offices and work it so that only one candidate for each office shows up. Here’s a preview of how that is accomplished, borrowed from an imaginary primer that might be titled, “How to Turn a Debate into a Duh-Bait.”

Why “duh-bait”? Because people who put on a debate that is set up to explicitly favor one candidate are insulting the intelligence of the candidate on the other side; as if the prey don’t know (duh!) that they are being baited instead of debated.

1) Have the duh-bait hosted by an organization that actively engages in partisan politics and has made known which candidates it favors, ensuring their opponents have valid reasons for staying away. It takes two to debate. It takes one to duh-bait.

2) Schedule and announce the duh-bait date without first consulting all the candidates to confirm they are available.

3) Select a moderator who has campaigned for one of the candidates and collected signatures on a petition required to get the candidate’s name on the ballot.

4) Select a panel of questioners that includes only those who agree with one of the candidate’s agendas and take a hard line against the views of his opponent.

I’m writing this by candle light. Not really. Not at all. But it might as well be that way.

When you’ve lived in the quaint development of Pinetree Estates in the hamlet of Yorktown Heights since its inception in 1993, you become resigned to living a little like a pioneer, after a fashion. It’s not unlike residing in a historical restoration village, except my neighors and my family are reluctant re-enactors. We don’t even play them on TV. (And if these are estates, I’m Tiger Woods. Got to give the developer props, though, for imagination, and gall.)

Churn that butter. Wash that laundry against stones down by the stream in the wetlands buffer zone. Acclimate yourself to the certainties of life, including death, taxes, and loss of power when the barometer so much as hiccups.

Okay, so I exaggerate a tad. In all sincerity, when I speak truth to power companies, I say it with just as much love they show their customers. For the sake of very, very, very momentary forgiveness, and semi-fair play, the companies we have in mind herein remain nameless, if not blameless.

And who the heck are we to complain anyhow about being deprived every now and then, like clockwork, of modern-day extravagances like electricity and light. 21st Century Man, and Woman, have it so cushy compared to our forebears, it’s embarrassing. If Thomas Edison meant for us to have the luxury of lux all the time, he would have invented the sun instead of the tungsten bulb.

You need to do as the song says — look for the silver lining. Deprivation, like membership, has its privileges. The Proud Pioneers of Pinetree are so accustomed to doing without power whenever the weather stubs its toe that we arguably are of hardier stock than other locals who are coddled by the constant comfort of artificial empowerment. We challenge you to a softball game! (but check the standings in our Sports section before you accept — easy for me to say; I haven’t been on the roster since the French were encamped at French Hill.)

Yeah, that’s the ticket. Without electifrication, I kinda like sitting on my porch on a Wednesday night (this being July 23) with my friend David Steinmetz, sipping some vino – we crushed the grapes ourselves, don’t you know — and puffing on cigars we rolled with our own pampered hands, or maybe they were purchased at the new Doc James store in Katonah opening July 26 under the ownership of Anthony DeVito and Tony Scaglione and Adam DeSiena (how’s that for product placement, guys?). This is the life. And we are powerless to do much about it.

We’ve come a long way since I grew up in the 50s and 60s on Long Island, when power outages were so rare, they actually were newsworthy events. In Pinetreeland, they are mundane, casual occurrences that, from all appearances, seem to barely faze the utility companies that have the remarkable fortitude to tolerate them and act as if they never occur.

Depending on the power supplier, when you call to report the outage and inquire, sheepishly, when power might be restored, they may even imperiously inform you that they do not provide such impertinent information, no doubt muttering something under their breath about the unworthy slackers who happen to be their customers. “Shut up and shop more often at Yankee Candle,” they might as well be saying.

It now is going on three hours that Pinetree has been powerless. But who’s complaining? Not the Energizer Bunny. His batteries never looked so good.

In the age of Internetworked mobile devices, please sir, can we have online updates as to the progress being made toward power being restored? Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Shut up and go to sleep, we imagine being told, and when you are awakened at 4:00 a.m. by the revenge of the TVs and lights and cable boxes, beepers and buzzers, then, and only then, will you know when you’ve been granted the alienable right to have power restored.

Yes, yes, no, no, we are not worthy, we are contrite and, worse, Power Hungry! Please accept the humble suggestions below as a modest token of gratitude for your teaching us the ways of becoming one again with nature by sacrificing the corrupting influence of electricity and light and all that overheated, overrated nonsense that our foredads and moms did without for eons.

If the once-in-a-creation discoveries of wheel and fire were good enough for them, who are we to complain?

We’re truly thankful that the stability of the power grid to which we are so tenuously connected seems to be increasingly vulnerable, and that the keeper of its flickering flame exhibits scant solutions for how to stabilize, let alone improve, the situation. After all, it’s for our own good, and we know it.

How can I ever repay Big Brother & the Power Company for its selfless, patriotic efforts to toughen up a society that has become sickeningly soft in its underbelly? Thought you’d never ask.

Here are the “Top 11 List of Suggestions for the Powers that Be” to shine a light on the ingenious infrastructure that guarantees we will lose power at the flick of a tree switch being snapped in wayward weather. (We add the 11th as a backup just in case one of the other 10 unexpectedly loses power.)

1. Adopt as your new logo a log cabin in tribute to the Spartan lifestyle we all must seriously consider returning to at once, especially if we are chronically powerless customers of a power utility.

2. Enclose some futuristic form of paper-thin flashlight in utility bills each month for the inevitable power outage that is reliably, always just around the corner.

3. Hold free seminars on how the average billpayer can breed a mutant form of giant fireflies, corral them in their own gated community in your backyard, and train them to light up on command during regularly scheduled power outages.

4. Distribute calendars each December published in conjunction with the Farmer’s Almanac that forecast the most likely dates when power outages will occur, and cross-promote it with flashlight, battery and candle makers.

5. Hire Debbie Boone to perform at free concerts that take place when homes lose power, where, in the tradition of a rain dance, she will restore morale, if not power, by leading group sing-alongs of “You Light Up My Life” until dawn, or until your refrigerator food spoils, whichever comes first.

6. Issue rebates of an eighth day of the week – or the cash equivalent of lost revenue of a workday — to compensate those who are deprived of valuable hours of productivity during a blackout, resulting in that lucrative proposal not being ready for the morning meeting with a big customer.

7. Try to impersonate a competitive supplier instead of a monopoly by mailing a letter of apology to customers with a plan for how you intend to minimize power outages. Do not date it April 1. That would be redundant anyhow, since your customers have long since gotten the hint that you already take us for fools every day of the year.

8. Fire underperforming managers and hold all managers’ feet to the fires that easily can be found in the homes of customers who have lost electricity during the winter months.

9. Invest heavily and immediately in alternate power sources, like solar and nuclear energy.

10. Hold a no-rules contest where the prizes are power generators awarded to any family with infirm children or elders whose medical condition is severely compromised if their electrical assistive devices do not work due to a recurring failure of competency over which they have absolutely no control.

11. Hire ex-Senator Phil Gramm as your spokesman to remind customers to stop whining just because they have to stumble around in the dark for several hours every other Wednesday or so.

[This is an extended version of the July 16 Talking Points column on page 8 of NCN]

As much as I love all types of music, with advancing age has come increasing appreciation for interludes of silence, especially when I am inside the ultimate boom box — a motor vehicle. There, resisting the pull of satellite radio, I can listen to the beat of my heart, the rhythm of my soul and the lyrics of my mind. We’re all composers of life.
Whether it’s Shakespeare’s “food of love” or love of food, moderation in maturity heightens experiences simply because something that becomes more rare becomes more valued.
The same applies to discovering talent who also happen to be your neighbors. Just as there is the rising influence of hyperlocal media – such as this newspaper – there is hyperlocal talent that we will be hearing from more frequently and loudly, thanks to the democracy of digital distribution that is accessible to millions of individuals rather than controlled by a few music and movie moguls.
Hyperlocal talent – or local hypertalent — is everywhere around us. It was in full view and full voice at Travelers Rest last Friday for a fundraiser to support students in the performing arts.
Appropriately enough, in the audience with her family was Angelina Joyce-DiBart, a XX-year-old performer who sang in the Jenna’s Dream Choir and could be on her way to bigger things on the stage. Her parents Kevin Joyce and Patricia DiBart set a great example for both their offspring and for other parents as prominent donors to the schools’ stage productions through the First Nighters of Yorktown, akin to a sports team booster club.
Jenna’s Dream is named in m emory of the daughter of Monica and Craig Schulman, a Broadway leading man who is the fundraiser’s headliner. One audience member remarked to me how remarkable he found it for Craig to shift his whole persona from The Music Man’s “Ya Got Trouble” to the drama of Les Miserables’ “Bring Him Home.” Whatever the song, his voice never fails to thrill both those who’ve heard him and those who haven’t ( CraigSchulman.com).
Barbara Borok is Membership Coordinator of First Nighters and a first-rate vocalist and songwriter with her guitarist-vocalist-songwriting spouse Michael. They perform as New Middle Class and their songs are brilliantly original and entertaining, but are better heard than described, so check them out at NewMiddleClass.com. The couple is working on a second CD they hope to release in the first half of 2009.
Also on the bill at the Cabaret was Spyro Gyra’s Jeremy Wall, whose keyboard playing is magical, and a newly formed Sixties revival band, Not Fade Away., which had the crowd dancing the night away in short order. The group’s frontman sang and played with the legendary Dion of Runaround Sue fame. Both he and another band member are longtime Yorktowners. You also can catch them on some Thursday evenings starting at 9:30p at The Heights Bistro in Yorktown.
The Cabaret Dinner Show was produced by two local organizations, Jenna’s Dream and our family’s Harrison Apar Field of Dreams Foundation, which is closely affiliated with and donates to First Nighters.
There was another kind of star talent in our midst without whom this and many other fundraisers would not be possible or productive: Travelers Rest proprietor Dave Paganelli. It’s no surprise that he and wife Nancy have been honored several times this year alone by local organizations such as Yorktown Chamber of Commerce and Circolo da Vinci, which said it was the first time that the same name was nominated on every member’s ballot. If there are more giving and sincere people than the Paganellis in these parts, I haven’t met them.

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