WAG Magazine July

oh-la-la Lamont Connecticut’s Annie Lamont: Our 2019 Most Fascinating Woman

FASCINATING WOMEN LAURA BENANTI Actress, singer – and faux ‘Melania Trump’

LADIES FIRST… Michelle Obama, Jacqueline Onassis… plus Meghan & Kate

WESTCHESTER & FAIRFIELD LIFE JULY 2019 | WAGMAG.COM

TV’S NATALIE MORALES AND SAGE STEELE Messengers on a mission

JUDGED A

TOP

MAGAZINE

IN NEW YORK STATE 2014, 2015, 2016, 2018

ARTISTIC VISIONS Susan Obrant and Michele Oka Doner

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CONTENTS J U LY 2 0 1 9

16

Why women still have a long way to go

20

The mystique of Jackie O

22

Going higher

52

True giver

54

For the love of Laura

58

When bad is good

62

24

Party ready

28

Advantage Allaster

The merry wives of Mountbatten-Windsor Playing with food

32

One with nature

36

A daughter-in-law’s mission

40

Tough as Steele

66

68

Elevating women, one story at a time

76

Rosy outlook

77

WAG's Fascinating Women

44

One woman, endless talent

48

View finder

72

COVER STORY

WAG’s MOST FASCINATING WOMAN 2019 – ANNIE LAMONT, Businesswoman in her own right.

THIS PAGE:

Laura Benanti. See story on page 54. Photograph © Jenny Anderson.

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FEATURES HIGHLIGHTS

104

HOME & DESIGN 86 Sophisticated in-town living 90 The women of 9th Street 94 Design influences 96 Sitting pretty 98 Florence Knoll: Designing woman

TRAVEL 104 Into the hills 108 Breath-taking walks 110 Cruise longer

FOOD & SPIRITS

36

112 Soulful passions 114 Great food, but turn down the volume 118 All in the family

HEALTH & FITNESS 120 On the go, go, go with Myrna Brady 122 Are you worried about your breast implants? Understanding your options

WHERE ARE THEY NOW? 100 A time of transition

PET OF THE MONTH 124 Johnny Blue Eyes

PET PORTRAITS

126 From foster to forever

WHERE & WHEN

128 Upcoming events

WATCH

100

32

132 We’re out and about

WIT

144 Who or what is your idea of a fascinating woman?

oh-la-la Lamont Connecticut’s Annie Lamont: Our 2019 Most Fascinating Woman

FASCINATING WOMEN LAURA BENANTI Actress, singer – and faux ‘Melania Trump’

LADIES FIRST… Michelle Obama, Jacqueline Onassis… plus Meghan & Kate

WESTCHESTER & FAIRFIELD LIFE JULY 2019 | WAGMAG.COM

TV’S NATALIE MORALES AND SAGE STEELE Messengers on a mission

JUDGED A

TOP

MAGAZINE

IN NEW YORK STATE 2014, 2015, 2016, 2018

ARTISTIC VISIONS Susan Obrant and Michele Oka Doner

COVER: Annie Lamont.

Photograph by John Rizzo.

See story on page 72.

86

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WHAT IS WAG?

Billy Losapio ADVISER

Irene Corsaro ADVISER

Some readers think WAG stands for “Westchester and Greenwich.”

We certainly cover both. But mostly, a WAG is a wit and that’s how we think of ourselves, serving up piquant stories and photos to set your own tongues wagging.

HEADQUARTERS A division of Westfair Communications Inc., 701 Westchester Ave., White Plains, NY 10604 Telephone: 914-694-3600 | Facsimile: 914-694-3699 Website: wagmag.com | Email: ggouveia@westfairinc.com All news, comments, opinions, findings, conclusions or recommendations in WAG are those of the authors and do not constitute opinions, findings, conclusions or recommendations of the publication, its publisher and its editorial staff. No portion of WAG may be reproduced without permission.WAG is distributed at select locations, mailed directly and is available at $24 a year for home or office delivery. To subscribe, call 914-694-3600, ext. 3020. All advertising inquiries should be directed to Anne Jordan at 914694-3600, ext. 3032 or email anne@westfairinc.com. Advertisements are subject to review by the publisher and acceptance for WAG does not constitute an endorsement of the product or service. WAG (Issn: 1931-6364) is published monthly and is owned and published by Westfair Communications Inc. Dee DelBello, CEO, dee@westfairinc.com

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COVER STORY: PHIL HALL, PAGE 72

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AH, WOMEN…

WAG launched 2019 — our themed “Year of Fascinations” — with an issue devoted to men.

Now, of course, we kick off the second half of the year with this celebration of women. The pages that follow feature stories about women, those who are tough and tender, hard-working and play hard — each with a personality and spirit of her own.

It wasn’t easy narrowing down the list for this issue. After all, most every woman is worth a moment in the spotlight.

Here, we salute those in WAG country who inspire us — and look forward to featuring more fascinating women (and men, of course) in future issues.

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Live in a Slice of Scarsdale History Built in 1927 on the original Obry Estate of M. M. and L. M. Obry, Obry herself was a well-known New York City dry cleaner operating under the name of Madame Obry—a truly fascinating woman! This home exquisitely maintains a lot of its initial integrity. The custom stonework has been restored and replicated throughout the home. And although the entire home was renovated, the new design includes beautiful nods to the past with special touches like coffered ceilings and custom trim.

A City to Scarsdale Compass Partnership This home is represented by award-winning Scarsdale agent Dawn Knief and NYC agent Brett Mitchell of Compass. Dawn has built her career and raised her family in Scarsdale, while Brett lives in Scarsdale and services his primary business in New York City. They're merging their talents and experience to represent 4 Obry Drive and are thrilled to celebrate fascinating women such as Madame Obry and the amazing women who continue to push the real estate industry forward.

For a complete list of features and details visit 4ObryDrive.com.

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EDITOR’S LETTER GEORGETTE GOUVEIA

“What’s good for the goose is good for the gander,” as my beloved Aunt Mary always said. And so half a year after our January “Fascinating Men” issue, we take a break from our annual July food/hospitality issue to offer instead “Fascinating Women.”

What makes a woman fascinating? According to our Wits, who were gracious enough to speak with us at the American Heart Association’s “Go Red for Women” event in May, part of it is her ability to balance service to others with being true to herself. And that certainly will resonate with readers in our “First Ladies” section.

Cover subject Ann Huntress Lamont, wife of Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont, is perhaps best known as a successful venture capitalist.

But in this she has focused on helping women entrepreneurs — while raising three children, now grown, and caring for her mother in the end stages of dementia — as Phil discovered when he sat down to talk with her.

In her new role as a first lady — more like first partner — Lamont has said she looks to the quiet grace Michelle Obama brought to family life at the White House. She might as well have been talking about Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, whose 90th birth anniversary we’ll remember July 28. Each of these icons served the nation in her own inimitable way, transforming the American culture and lifestyle in the process. We salute their unique contributions. And because we like to be a bit cheeky, we include in this section two of Great Britain’s “first ladies” — Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex — along with Tony Award-winning singer-actress Laura Benanti, who’ll appear at Caramoor in Katonah July 6 (Gregg’s story). (No, she’s not an actual first lady, but she’s played one, Melania Trump, on TV.) The richness of womanhood is such that women have always worn many hats, as you’ll see in our list of “Fascinating Women.”

That they have always had as many opportunities has not been as apparent. It is a measure of how far women have come, we discuss in our opening essay, that 50 years after NASA put a man on the moon — July 20, to be exact — the space agency has announced it is planning to send a woman there in Project Artemis, named for the Greek goddess of the moon.

We’re not there yet. Few understand the chasm between female aspirations and actual accomplishments better than Stacey Allaster, chief executive, professional tennis at the White Plainsbased United States Tennis Association. The child of a single mother, she worked her way up from three paper routes to a career with oversight of the US Open, among other tournaments and responsibilities. What is needed, Allaster says, is more women helping other women and that requires women in leadership positions.

Women like Juanita James, president and CEO of Fairfield County’s Community Foundation, whose Fund for Women & Girls strives to ensure the educational and economic viability of low-income women and families.

With opportunity comes transcendence. Nancy White — who had a long, successful career in sales and marketing for everything

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One of the “Pursonalities” auctioned off at the American Heart Association’s “Go Red For Women” event, held May 31 at the Hilton Westchester. Photograph by Robin Costello.

from auction houses to national magazines to nonprofits — reinvented herself as the owner of the “The Flower Bar” in Larchmont.

Michele Oka Doner — artist in residence at Manitoga/The Russel Wright Design Center in Garrison and at the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx — resurrects the bark of felled hemlocks in artworks. Angélica Negrón, NYBG’s composer in residence, has such a way with electronic music that she even “plays” vegetables.

Talk about the music of the spheres.

When you give a woman a chance, you don’t just transform the woman. You transform the world.

A 2018 Folio Women in Media Award Winner, Georgette Gouveia is the author of the “The Penalty for Holding” (Less Than Three Press), a 2018 Lambda Literary Award finalist, and “Water Music” (Greenleaf Book Group). They’re part of her series of novels, “The Games Men Play,” also the name of the sports/ culture blog she writes at thegamesmenplay.com. Readers may find her novel “Seamless Sky” and “Daimon: A Novel of Alexander the Great” on wattpad.com.

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w

hy women still have a long way to go

BY GEORGETTE GOUVEIA

AS YOU PROBABLY KNOW BY NOW, WE’RE GOING BACK TO THE MOON. THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION HAS SET A GOAL FOR NASA TO GET THERE BY 2024. AND THIS TIME, IT WON’T BE JUST ONE SMALL STEP FOR MAN — WHICH WE’LL REMEMBER ON THE 50TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE APOLLO 11 MOON LANDING JULY 20 — BUT ONE GIANT LEAP FOR WOMANKIND.

A woman astronaut will walk on the moon as part of Project Artemis, named for the Greek goddess of nature, the hunt, childbirth and oh, yes, the moon.

“It turns out that Apollo had a twin sister, Artemis. She happens to be the goddess of the moon,” NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine told reporters after Project Artemis’ May 13 social media announcement. “Our astronaut office is very diverse and highly qualified. I think it is very beautiful that 50 years after Apollo, the Artemis program will carry the next man — and the first woman — to the moon.”

All we can say is, what took so long? When casting about for a name back in the early 1960s, NASA thought Apollo had a nice, manly ring to it — even though Apollo was the sun god and technically Artemis’ kid brother.

It’s a measure of how far women have come — sociopolitically and financially — that a lunar mission is finally named for the appropriate (female) Olympian and will involve women astronauts. But to paraphrase the old Virginia Slims cigarette slogan, we’ve still got a long way to go. A half-century after the Equal Pay Act, a woman working full time earns 80.7 cents for every dollar a full-time male worker makes. Women’s median annual earnings are $9,909 less than men’s, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Perhaps more insidious — and thus more invidious — is the inequality that can’t be measured in dollars and cents. The #MeToo movement has exposed the ugly, long-held secret of the workplace: That women are often expected to play for pay. A new abortion law in Alabama — which makes no exception save for a pregnancy that endangers the life of the mother — has many wondering if women are valued as anything but baby incubators. It’s no surprise, then, that “The

JULY 2019

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17

Handmaid’s Tale,” the Hulu TV series based on Margaret Atwood’s 1985 dystopian novel about women’s subjugation and forced childbirth in a patriarchal society, has hit such a raw nerve.

But not every woman in “The Handmaid’s Tale” is oppressed. Some participate, even benefit, in

and impede them. Or of backstabbing female colleagues and relatives.

Why should this be? It may be a function of being a minority. In any minority, there are members who derive their status from identifying and serving the majority. Members of a minority might also think they have to scrounge for advantage and therefore aren’t in a position to help others.

This situation is compounded by the roles many women play as wives and mothers.

They’re not only working for themselves but for the husbands they want to support emotionally and the children they have to nurture. They could very well see another woman as jeopardizing that.

But a crucial factor in women’s inability to help other women is their lack of leadership experience. Only 6.6 percent of Fortune 500 corporations have female CEOs. Women make up only 40 percent of managers, according to Inc.’s website, with higher numbers in people-centered

It’s a measure of how far women have come – sociopolitically and financially – that a lunar mission is finally named for the appropriate (female) Olympian and will involve women astronauts. the exploitation of members of their sex. And that, too, has echoes in the everyday world.

Speak to women privately — away from the big events in which they talk a good game — and you’ll hear stories of insecure female bosses who do not mentor them but instead misuse

companies than in production-centered ones.

“Women need to help women,” says Stacey Allaster, chief executive, professional tennis at the United States Tennis Association. “We need men in leadership, but we need women in leadership positions, too.”

In this the goddess Artemis may be instructive. She could be implacable in the face of women and men who violated her code of conduct, turning them into wild animals to be hunted and killed. But she could also be generous and merciful, helping women through childbirth as she once did her mother and rescuing maidens from human sacrifice.

It is this face of the goddess we see in such organizations as the American Heart Association’s “Go Red for Women” campaign; Badass Women, the Stamford-based professional women’s group; the Greenwich-based Breast Cancer Alliance; Fairfield County’s Community Foundation Fund for Women & Girls; Girls Inc. of Westchester and Professional Women of Westchester — many of which you’ll read about in these pages.

They are about women helping other women — to serve humanity.

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THE MYSTIQUE OF JACKIE O

BY GEORGETTE GOUVEIA

In “The Editor,” Steven Rowley’s new novel, struggling writer James Smale finally gets the break he’s been seeking in 1990s New York. A major publishing house has bought his book, and Smale has been assigned to the editor who pushed for the purchase — Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. All would seem to be golden except that Smale can’t bring himself to finish his brutally autobiographical tale for fear of exposing the family whose dysfunction he has depicted all too well.

As their working relationship evolves into a friendship, though, Jackie — known as “Mrs. Onassis” about the office — urges him homeward to confront the truth about his past that will enable him to write the book’s authentic ending. That’s when Smale begins to suspect that “Mrs. Onassis” is more than an editor and an icon.

The real Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (1929-1994) was, of course, both. At Viking Press and then at Doubleday, she would prove to be as passionate about authors — Michael Jackson, Bill Moyers and Martha Graham, among them — as she was about their books.

“She had a deep engagement with literature, history, plays and poetry,” daughter Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg once said of her. “They gave her strength even in the difficult times.”

They would inspire a 20-year career in the last act of a life that haunts us still. This month — July 28 — marks the 90th anniversary of Jackie’s birth. This year marks the 25th anniversary of her death, on May 19, 1994. It also marks the 20th anniversary of the death of her son, John F. Kennedy Jr.; his wife, the former Carolyn Bessette, and her sister, Lauren Bessette, in a July 16 plane crash off Martha’s Vineyard.

Anniversaries are times of reflection as we consider lives that have served as rich metaphors through the years, and the lives of the various Kennedys are certainly no exception. People magazine has put out a commemorative issue, “Jackie: A Life in Style,” while Town & Country has a special edition on “Jackie & John F. Kennedy Jr.: A Mother’s Love.”

But Jackie in particular would seem to need no

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such remembrances, for she’s always with us. Nine decades after her birth and a quarter-century after her death, she remains an enticing, enigmatic avatar of American womanhood.

Part of it was artistic, a strong suit of hers.

Tartly witty, she was quoted in her Miss Porter’s School yearbook as saying her ambition was “not to be a housewife.” Later, the lifelong equestrian would remark that the title “first lady” reminded her of a horse. Yet she set a standard of cultural

excellence for every aspect of the White House — from its French-flavored cuisine to its classical entertainment to a renovation that restored the “People’s House” to its Federal (turn of the 19thcentury) roots.

With a bouffant hairdo created by Kenneth (Battelle) framing her wide bone structure and clothing by Cristóbal Balenciaga, Christian Dior, Hubert de Givenchy and, especially, Oleg Cassini draping her 5-foot, 7-inch frame, Jackie established a look

President John F. Kennedy and first lady Jacqueline Kennedy pose for a portrait with their children, Caroline Kennedy and John F. Kennedy Jr., on a porch in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts. Courtesy Cecil Stoughton. White House Photographs. John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston.

that serves as a muse to the style influencers of today — be it shifts with pearls (Michelle Obama), demure coats and pillbox hats (Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge), cape dresses (Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, Angelina Jolie), black Ts with white jeans (Amal Clooney), dramatic, high-waist belts (Melania Trump) or Grecian goddess gowns (Jennifer Lopez, Gwyneth Paltrow).

Jackie’s style, however, was always more than skin deep. Underpinning it was a singular self-pos-

session, a steely determination to chart her own course on life’s often tempest-tossed seas that has characterized some of America’s greatest icons, including Muhammad Ali and Marlon Brando. It’s a quality we can’t get enough of, even as it holds us at arm’s length.

In Jackie, it was probably born of being an introvert cast into the public arena whose genteel circumstances were not as plush as they seemed. Her adored father, John Vernou Bouvier III, nicknamed

“Black Jack” for the striking dark looks his older daughter would inherit, suffered from alcoholism, adultery and the vagaries of Wall Street. Her controlling mother, the former Janet Lee, set the standard for her daughters to make wealthy matches by divorcing Black Jack and marrying Standard Oil heir Hugh D. Auchincloss.

Was Jackie’s self-containment a defense mechanism against richer step- and half-relations? Or was it just her way? Look at her as she strides across the grounds of the Southampton Riding and Hunt Club in a now classic photograph, her 5-year-old self leading her pony, Buddy, her mouth turned down at the edges as she peers hard at the photographer.

It’s a look that says, “I am complete in myself.”

I experienced that impenetrable integrity covering the 1981 premiere of Twyla Tharp’s “The Catherine Wheel” in Manhattan. As I went to exit the Winter Garden Theatre, a man rudely pushed me out of the way. I soon saw why, for there was Jackie, radiant in shimmering couture, jewels and paparazzi flashbulbs. It was like a religious apparition or the deus ex machina at the end of a Greek tragedy. As the crowd parted, she swanned by — the patented middle-distance gaze and vague smile firmly in place on her masklike face — part goddess, part ghost.

Jackie’s Jackie-ness — her aura of aplomb and aloofness, her love of history and theater — would come together in the 1963 assassination of her first husband, President John F. Kennedy. As her family — particularly sister Lee Radziwill — held her together, she held the nation in thrall as a study of unbelievable poise in the face of overwhelming grief.

In the year that followed, she returned to the place she knew first — New York, the place of reinvention — where she reimagined herself. She had already embodied so many stages of womanhood — child, student (Vassar College, George Washington University), working girl (the Washington Times-Herald’s “Inquiring Camera Girl”) and, especially wife and mother. To these, she would add divorcée, after a brief marriage to shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis, career woman and “Grand Jackie” (to Caroline’s three children).

What would she be like at 90? Still editing?

Writing a memoir to be sealed for 100 years? Greatgrand Jackie?

You can bet she’d have none of our 24/7 digital celebrity culture but would instead be peering at us now as she did then, sphinx-like, daring the world to intrude, still guarding her secrets.

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GOING HIGHER

BY GEORGETTE GOUVEIA

On Oct. 13, 2016, first lady Michelle Obama took the stage of Southern New Hampshire University to support a former first lady, Hillary Clinton, in her bid to become the first woman president of the United States.

Obama looked terrific in a fitted blue outfit, so together. But she didn’t feel together. Obama has never been afraid to share what she’s thinking and feeling, and now she spoke from her shaken core to let everyone know it amid revelations of candidate Donald Trump’s infamous “Access Hollywood” tape — in which he suggested that it was OK to grab women by the privates, because hey, when you’re famous, they let you do that kind of stuff.

Her voice throbbing with the hurt and pentup rage of the blood memories of women who’ve been violated, Obama described “that feeling of terror and violation that too many women have felt when someone has grabbed them, or forced himself on them and they’ve said no but he didn’t listen — something that we know happens on college campuses and countless other places every single day. It reminds us of stories we heard from our mothers and grandmothers about how, back in their day, the boss could say and do whatever he pleased to the women in the office and, even though they worked so hard, jumped over every hurdle to prove themselves, it was never enough.”

She added: “This is not normal. This is not politics as usual. This is disgraceful. It is intolerable.

And it doesn’t matter what party you belong to — Democrat, Republican, independent — no woman deserves to be treated this way. None of us deserves this kind of abuse.”

That speech — along with the passion and courage Obama brought to it — galvanized the audience and electrified the country. As national affairs correspondent John Nichols wrote in the conservative publication The Nation: “Michelle Obama spoke a

Michelle Obama speaks at the ribboncutting ceremony for The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Anna Wintour Costume Center in Manhattan on May 5, 2014.

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interests and experiences, yet it’s all woven together with stories that are relevant to our daily lives.”

Few lives have resonated more in recent years than that of Obama herself — the first African-American first lady, descended from slaves on both sides of her multiracial family. Much has already been written about Obama’s solid upbringing on Chicago’s South Side; her success at Princeton University and Harvard Law School, decrying the naysayers; her work for nonprofits and in academic administration at the University of Chicago; and her mentoring of a certain charismatic summer associate at the law firm Sidley Austin L.L.P., where they both worked — Barack Obama.

First ladies, however admired, are often damned if they do and damned if they don’t. Obama was criticized as too fashionable, edgy and opinionated on the one hand and too conservative — with her establishment of the White House Kitchen Garden as part of Let’s Move and support for military families — on the other. But she charted her own course, mixing off the rack with haute couture, a little bit J. Crew, a little bit Jason Wu, whom she put on the map by wearing one of his gowns to each of her husband’s two inaugural balls.

Taking another page from Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, who said, “If you bungle raising your children, I don’t think whatever else you do well matters very much,” Obama made sure that daughters Malia — Michelle Obama and Natasha (Sasha) were nurtured and protected in the White House, drawing on the quiet strength of her mother, MariHigher Ground-Netflix acquisition — is being an Shields Robinson, a homemaker turned Spiegel made at the Sundance Institute. It tells the story of catalog secretary who moved into 1600 Pennsyla rundown camp for disabled teens that spurred vania Ave. (Obama’s equally adored father, Fraser the disabilities movement in the 1970s.

Robinson III, a Chicago water plant employee and Also in the works is a nonfiction series based on Democratic Party precinct captain, died in 1991 of Michael Lewis’ book “Fifth Risk,” which considers complications from multiple sclerosis, underscoring Trump’s effect on government agencies; “Bloom,” his daughter’s desire to do something meaningful a period drama about women and people of color with her life.) in post-World War II New York; “Overlooked,” an Today elder daughter Malia attends Harvard anthology series about people whose deaths were University. Younger daughter Sasha, a senior at Sidnot originally noted in The New York Times’ famed well Friends, set social media afire recently, looking obituary column; and a feature film of David W. soignée in a black spaghetti-strapped gown for the Blight’s Pulitzer Prize-winning biography, “Frederprom — and making the rest of us feel old. ick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom.”

Their mother strives to balance support with inFans of Obama will not be surprised to learn dependence. As she wrote in People magazine for that rounding out the lucky seven is the preschool Mother’s Day: series “Listen to Your Vegetables & Eat Your Par“It’s up to us, as mothers and mother-figures, to ents” — about the origin stories of various foods give the girls in our lives the kind of support that — that reflects the Let’s Move campaign Obama keeps their flame lit and lifts up their voices — not launched as first lady. necessarily with our own words, but by letting “We love this slate,” she said at the time of the anthem find the words themselves.” nouncement, “because it spans so many different truth that must be recognized, and embraced, by everyone who cherishes the American experiment.”

Like her husband, Obama is a gifted speaker and storyteller. Her memoir, “Becoming,” sold enough copies in the first 15 days of its November publication last year to become the bestselling American book for all of 2018. With more than 10 million copies sold, “Becoming” is on pace to be the best-selling American memoir to date.

Her post-White House ventures have not been limited to the page. Together with her husband she has formed Higher Ground Productions, which has a content deal with Netflix. The aptly named Higher Ground — which evokes the Michelle maxim, “When they go low, we go high” — has announced seven projects in various stages of development that reflect the range of the producers’ interests. The first, “American Factory,” a documentary shown at the Sundance Film Festival, explores the cultural clash between a factory’s Chinese billionaire owner and some 2,000 blue-collar employees. “Crip Camp” — another

“This is not normal. This is not politics as usual. This is disgraceful. It is intolerable.

And it doesn’t matter what party you belong to — Democrat, Republican, independent — no woman deserves to be treated this way. None of us deserves this kind of abuse.”

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24 WAGMAG.COM JULY 2019 Top: Meghan Markle. Right: Kate Middleton.

Photographs by Chris Jackson|Getty Images.

t

he merry wives of Mountbatten-Windsor

BY GEORGETTE GOUVEIA

DURING ONE OF THE MANY DRAMATIC MOMENTS IN THE UNENDING FREEFALL THAT IS BREXIT, AN OBSERVER NONETHELESS SAW REASON FOR OPTIMISM.

“Those girls are going to save us,” he noted — or words to that effect.

The “girls” in question are their Royal Highnesses Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, better known in media circles as Kate Middleton and Meghan Markle.

Salvation maybe too heavy a mantle for the duchesses’ slender, fashionable shoulders. Kate and Meghan are — in the words of yet another People special edition, “Royal Women” — “making the monarchy modern.” Well, there again, that might be a teensy-weensy bit of a stretch. Princesses come and go. The crown is, well, if not forever than at least 1,133 years old.

Still, we get the optimist’s meaning. In a 24/7 digital world where more than ever narrative drives perception, Kate and Meghan have personal stories that have captivated the public, much as their beloved mother-in-law — Diana, Princess of Wales — did when she married Prince Charles on July 29, 1981, four weeks after her 20th birthday.

Diana is the unseen but deeply felt presence, the bridge in the Kate-Meghan narratives. The two have proved most faithful daughters-in-law to a woman they never met. Diana is there in their engagement rings. (Kate sports the sapphire surrounded by diamonds that was Diana’s actual engagement ring, while Meghan wears a Botswana diamond flanked by two diamonds that belonged to the princess.) She is there in their fashion choices, as in the periwinkle polka dot and red dresses that Kate wore after giving birth to sons George and Louis, respectively, echoing the green polka dot and red dresses that Diana wore post Prince William’s and Prince Harry’s births. And she is there in poignant little touches. For the American celebration of Mother’s Day, Meghan posted a photograph of her hands holding the exposed feet of newborn son Archie Harrison Mountbatten-Windsor. Prominently displayed in the background were forgetme-knots — Diana’s favorite flower.

Though the former Diana Frances Spencer was more aristocratic than the Mountbatten-Windsors, the official name of the ruling royal family, she was something of an outsider in that world, as Andrew Morton’s “Diana: Her True Story” — based on his

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series of 1991 interviews with the princess — attests.

That outlier status links her to her daughters-in-law, both of whom have been looked down on at different times by press and public. Remember when Kate was dubbed “Waity Katie” for her long courtship with William and decried for working in her parents’ lucrative party supply company? Though the family was upper-middle class with aristocratic connections, some sniggered at mother Carole Middleton’s former career as a flight attendant.

This turned out to be nothing compared with what greeted former “Suits” star Markle. At least, critics scoffed, the former “Waity Katie” was a true English rose. Meghan was not only an actress and divorced but she is — horrors — an American, with all the opinionated, ambitious directness inherent in our nationality. You could practically hear the former Wallis Simpson, Duchess of Windsor — the American divorcée for whom Edward VIII, the Queen’s uncle, gave up his throne — howling with laughter from her grave.

And one more thing: Meghan is biracial with a dysfunctional family, something that has played no small role in scurrilous comments on both sides of the Atlantic. It has also set up a Kate vs. Meghan scenario, with the hometown girl coming out on top and rumors of feuds among the women and their hubbies, who were formerly known as the new “Fab Four.”

But why must it be either/or? The two women are complements. Kate, the United Kingdom’s fu-

ture queen, is the traditionalist as befits her role as the wife of the heir to the heir and the elder, more structured brother. Her charitable concerns reflect this — children, gardening and the arts. She was an art history major at the University of St. Andrews and is an accomplished photographer, with her own brood — including daughter Charlotte — among her most cherished muses.

Meghan is a passionate feminist with commitments to environmental issues and anti-poverty programs that predate her marriage to Harry.

Her casual, hands-on style suits his freewheeling, heart-on-his-sleeve nature. (To see his over-themoon announcement of the birth of his son was to know what true love is.) A former devoted blogger, Meghan has lent her voice and her hand in the couple’s new, informal Instagram account.

The couples are also complements. Again William and Kate are the traditionalistic heirs — meeting the press hours after the births of their children, looking polished. (Kate’s ability to color-coordinate everyone is unparalleled.) In photographs, Kate holds the babies; William does the driving. There’s little public displays of affection between them in public. Their children have historic family names.

Harry and Meghan opted out of the just-gavebirth-and-had-a-blow-dry sweepstakes, meeting the press two days after their son was born. Harry held the baby. Meghan put a protective hand on his back. Their choice of the name Archie and de-

cision to forgo a title for him says, “We aren’t the heirs and we’re OK with that.”

In some ways, though, the two women have a lot in common. They both love fashion and tennis.

(Will we see them together again at Wimbledon this year?) And they both draw strength from the women in their families. Meghan’s mother, Doria Ragland, a California yoga instructor, went to England for the birth of her first grandchild. Carole Middleton is a big part of her grandchildren’s lives.

Along with their husbands, Kate and Meghan have been patrons of The Royal Foundation, a charity that the brothers established in 2009 to support such organizations as the mental health initiative Heads Together, the Invictus Games for wounded warriors and United for Wildlife. Even here, though, the two couple’s have different roles in and approaches to nonprofits. That’s reflected in reports that Meghan and Prince Harry are leaving the foundation to pursue their more flexible interests.

Ultimately, Kate and Meghan’s bond will undoubtedly be their children. Recently, Kate visited a D-Day exhibit at Bletchley Park, where her paternal grandmother and great-aunt, twins, worked as codebreakers during World War II. While there, a group of schoolchildren gave her four stuffed animals for her three children and new nephew, whom she was to meet for the first time later in the day.

“They love wild animals,” Kate told them. “They will look after these.”

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laying with food

BY GEORGETTE GOUVEIA

COMPOSER ANGÉLICA NEGRÓN APOLOGIZES FOR THE POOR CELLPHONE CONNECTION. BUT YOU SEE MIDI, HER BOSTON TERRIER, JUST COULDN’T RESIST THE SUNSHINE, LEADING HER DEEPER AND DEEPER INTO THE PARK NEAR THEIR BROOKLYN HOME, WHERE THE RECEPTION WAS LESS THAN OPTIMAL.

Quickly, the pair circled back to their apartment and cell civilization, but not before it became apparent that Midi and his mistress have a good deal in common. Hailing from Puerto Rico, they both revel in nature, particularly the warmth of the sun.

It’s an occupational love as well. As a composer, Negrón uses technology to unlock the music in nature. You’ve heard of the “music of the spheres”? Turns out there’s music in vegetables, too.

“We often think of technology taking us away from nature, but I’m using technology to enhance nature, not take us away from it. … That’s really at the core and the heart of the piece I’m writing, how we’re connected.”

No doubt this is why the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx selected Negrón as its first composer in residence. The fruits — no pun intended — of that residency will be the November premiere of the tentatively titled “Chorus of the Forest,” showcasing the sounds of NYBG’s Thain Family Forest, a 50-acre old-growth forest that is the largest remaining tract of old-growth trees in New York City. For the performances, Negrón will use four different choruses, including that of Celia Cruz Bronx High School of Music, with electronic sounds created by attaching probes to plant leaves. (The probes measure the electrical currents in the plants that are translated to musical notes.) The audience will experience these in sound vignettes, four to six stations set up throughout the forest. Each listener’s experience will be different, depending on where you start, but a middle station near the Snuff Mill, a wedding venue overlooking the Bronx River, will offer the heart of the composition, which will also feature mechanical chimes and bells that play themselves, created by Nick Yulman.

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Angélica Negrón “playing” assorted vegetables at the New York Botanical Garden. Photograph

by Ben Hider.

Courtesy NYBG.

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There will also be a transitional element of tree and insect sounds, recorded by biologist David Haskell, author of “The Forest Unseen.”

“The idea is that this is a really immersive experience,” Negrón says.

As a child in Puerto Rico, she was curious about sounds both natural and manmade. She studied the violin, cello and harp and taught herself how to play the accordion. At the Conservatory of Music of Puerto Rico and the University of Puerto Rico, “I started to investigate other ways to make music,” she says, discovering composition and electronic music. She came across Ototo, “a synthesizer that turns anything that conducts electricity into musical instruments. I can play an apple … just by touching the object.”

Negrón earned a master’s degree in composition at New York University and is working on a doctorate at CUNY Graduate Center. However, that doctorate will have to wait, due to the demands for what WQXR/Q2 called her “wistfully idiosyncratic and contemplative” compositions, which have been heard everywhere from the 2016 New York Philharmonic Biennial to the Tribeca Film Festival.

When she does get back to that thesis, she’ll be exploring the music of the Sarah Lawrenceeducated Meredith Monk, a composer who’s also a choreographer, performer and filmmaker. Other

Angélica Negrón.

Photograph by Quique Cabanillas.

influences include her teacher Tania Léon, Björk and Pulitzer Prize winner Caroline Shaw.

“I find I’m listening to music made by women,” she says. “It’s what’s speaking to me most at the moment. There’s an inherent sensibility to their music

that connects to me. And they’re also telling stories we don’t often hear in classical music.”

“Chorus of the Forest” will be performed at 1 and 3 p.m. Nov. 2 and 3 at the New York Botanical Garden. For more, visit nybg.org.

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For artist Michele Oka Doner – a modern-day Hestia, goddess of the hearth – home is truly where the heart is. She’s seen here in her lucent SoHo loft-studio. Photograph by Gerald Forster.

O

ne with nature

BY GEORGETTE GOUVEIA

PICTURE IF YOU WILL, A STRETCH OF BEACH, YOUR TOES WIGGLING INTO ITS SINKING, SILKEN WARMTH AS YOU WALK ALONG, SKIRTING THE VEGETATION AND CRUSTACEANS. OCCASIONALLY, YOU’RE STOPPED BY THE ENTICINGLY PINK POSSIBILITY OF A PRETTY SHELL OR THE SHEER FRISSON OF ICE-COLD SEA FOAM TEASING THE SHORELINE AT HIGH TIDE.

Now imagine all of this crystallized inside — on Level 2 of Miami International Airport — images of flora and fauna cast in bronze along a mile and a quarter of gray terrazzo flooring from which froths mother of pearl.

You don’t have to imagine it.

It’s there for some 40 million travelers to tread upon annually in Michele Oka Doner’s “A Walk on the Beach” (1995-2005). For Oka Doner, who is artist-in-residence at both the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx and Manitoga/ The Russel Wright Design Center this year, art and nature are one. Just as Modernism meets bucolic Garrison at Manitoga — the onetime home of industrial designer Russel Wright — civilization serves and volleys with the Earth in Oka Doner’s thought processes. In conversation, she flows from a discussion of blighted hemlock trees — an inspiration for “Michele Oka Doner: Close Your Physical Eye,” through Nov. 11 at Manitoga — to one on the Italian Renaissance, stopping along the way to quote the garden-glorying Roman statesman Cicero.

For Manitoga, Oka Doner has created a series of larger-than-life hemlock gods and goddesses — the bark of felled hemlocks culled on an autumnal woodland walk becoming the deities’ textured skin in monoprints of paper handmade from kozo (mulberry) bark. Meanwhile, an ancient tree trunk becomes a bronzed “Burning Star” with 16 points of candlelight in the living room of Dragon Rock, as Wright’s home is known.

“The fireplace is literally the burning heart of the house,” she said in a May press release for the show. “I make a ceremony of lighting a fire in the hearth, serving a meal.”

At her airy, white studio loft in SoHo, she’s not allowed to have a hearth, so the hearth, or heart of her home, has migrated to her library.

“I’ve always had a hearth,” Oka Doner said. So it comes as no surprise to learn in Gregory Volk’s essay on her work, “A Knit of Identity,” that she created a terra-cotta sculpture

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named “Hestia” (2010), after the Greek goddess of the hearth, in which roots are transformed into the body’s circulatory system.

What fiery work will she conjure for NYBG? While Oka Doner doesn’t want to make any premature announcements, she’s thinking of a sculpture with solar panels.

She is captivated by NYBG’s Thain Family Forest, which its website describes as the “largest uncut expanse of New York’s original wooded landscape,” and by the wildness of the Bronx River there where water meets stone. She said it reminds her of Eric W. Sanderson’s 2009 book “Mannahatta: A Natural History of New York City” — half of it skyscrapers and half of it the lush forest that explorer Henry Hudson would’ve seen in 1609.

Oka Doner has always been intrigued by the natural world, especially the sea. Growing up in Miami Beach, she was fascinated by the objects she found along the shoreline. But her curiosity was by no means limited to nature. Hers was a challenging family — her grandfather, Odessa-trained artist Samuel S. Heller, did frescoes in the old Metropolitan Opera house and convents throughout New York state. Her father, Kenneth Oka, was a judge and mayor of Miami Beach; her mother, Gertrude, a Latin teacher. Both parents were musicians — her mother, a pianist; her father, a violinist. Oka Doner’s

sister, Barbara, was an outstanding student.

“So the bar was set high,” Oka Doner recalled. “It wasn’t the easiest of families. You had to work. At the dinner table, you were expected to sit up and carry on a conversation.”

It was her mother who arranged for her to study with a woman down the street who had a master’s of fine arts degree from Yale University.

Oka Doner went on to get her undergraduate and MFA degrees from the University of Michigan, from which she also received an honorary doctorate. You can find her works there; in the collections of Harvard, Princeton and Yale universities; The Museum of Modern Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art, to name a few.

You can also find her work where you might not necessarily expect it — at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport (“Flight”) and the MTA station at Manhattan’s Herald Square (“Radiant Site”) — and in jewelry, costumes, sets and artist books. Oka Doner is also the author or subject of numerous books, including “Miami Beach: Blueprint of an Eden” (2005), which tells in part the story of her family’s prominent role in the development of the place; and “Everything Is Alive” (Regan Arts., 2017).

There’s no question that Oka Doner will bring

“Galaxy,” a detail of Michele Oka Doner’s “A Walk on the Beach” (1995-2005). Each year, some 40 million travelers at Miami International Airport tread this mile and a quarter floor made of gray terrazzo with images of flora and fauna cast in bronze and mother of pearl sea foam.

Photograph by Nick Merrick.

all this to bear on her creation at the New York Botanical Garden — which will definitely be a handson experience.

“I need to get the lay of the land, to be in the garden in the sun,” she said. “What a wonderful way to work.”

For more, visit micheleokadonner.com, nybg. org and visitmanitoga.org.

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36 JULY 2019 Photograph by Kyle Norton.

a

daughter-in-law’s mission

BY GEORGETTE GOUVEIA

NBC’S NATALIE MORALES HAS NEVER BEEN SHY ABOUT LENDING HER SKILLS AND TALENTS TO A CAUSE. AN AVID RUNNER, SHE COMPETED IN THE BOSTON MARATHON IN 2014 AS PART OF THE “TODAY” SHOW’S “SHINE A LIGHT” CAMPAIGN, RAISING MORE THAN $70,000 FOR VICTIMS OF THE 2013 BOSTON MARATHON BOMBING, WHICH SHE REPORTED ON.

Recently, Morales was honored by the Alzheimer’s Association Connecticut Chapter at its “Celebrating Hope” gala at Greenwich’s Belle Haven Club.

There are more than 78,000 people living with Alzheimer’s in Connecticut and more than 178,000 caregivers. The annual gala raises funds for research and helps support not only those with dementia but the critical caregivers who are faced with such a daunting challenge.

“Watching my mother-in-law, a loving, active woman, decline to the point where she did not know her husband, her children or grandchildren was heartbreaking,” Morales has said. “I am very passionate about raising awareness of this disease and the toll it takes on caregivers both emotionally and financially.”

On her website, the West Coast anchor of "Today" elaborates on the personal toll of this abysmal disease, which affects more than 5 million Americans, a number that is expected to triple in the coming decades, she writes, adding: “My mother-in-law, Kay Rhodes, was diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s in her mid-50s. She had shown some symptoms for years before being diagnosed, but what we all mistook for absent-mindedness clearly and quickly progressed into the devastating disease. Though my father-in-law had long saved for their golden years, with plans of travel and great adventures, instead he found himself acting as a caregiver.

“He did it bravely on his own for the first 10 years but saw his own health suffer (as most caregivers do with the stress and difficulties of providing care for others). He finally put her in a specialized Alzheimer’s facility, where Kay continued to decline progressively. She did live more than 15 years, though her quality of life was zero. She could not walk, talk and had long lost any recognition of her loved ones. It was devastating to see the decline and heartbreaking to see a once beautiful, vibrant and very social woman, disappear before our very eyes.”

That’s why Morales has been a champion of the association for years.

“The more we learn now the better we are at planning for our future and doing all that we can to better educate and prepare for ourselves or our loved ones.”

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Morales’ caring nature, which has served her well in an Emmy Award-winning career that has taken her across NBC’s platforms to cover everything from Hurricane Katrina to the election of Pope Francis, is the result in part of a peripatetic childhood. The self-styled Air Force “brat,” was born in Taiwan and raised in Panama, Brazil and Spain, learning Portuguese and Spanish in the process. She graduated summa cum laude from Rutgers University with a bachelor’s degree in journalism and Latin-American studies and was a member of Phi Beta Kappa.

Recently, Morales — who has been reporting from the red carpet on NBC’s “Golden Globes” for six years — was host of NBCU’s entertainment magazine “Access” and co-host of “Access Live.” She announced her departure from these programs in April, reminding her “Access” family that she’s just “a few studio gates away” on the Universal lot. While she remains a key part of “NBC Nightly News,” “Dateline” and MSNBC hosting “Dateline” in syndication, she’s also enjoying the more breathable pace of West Coast life with her family.

“I don’t want to have regrets from not experiencing other things and having other opportunities,” she told Working Mother magazine. “So, for me, the change of living a life that was perhaps a little more fulfilling and fun and being home more often with the kids, rather than being on the road covering tragic breaking news stories all the time, (was a no-brainer).”

Morales was gracious enough to answer a few questions for WAG about her involvement with the association and her relationship with her motherin-law: Would you tell us a little more about what was your mother-in-law like?

“Kay had the most beautiful soulful blue eyes, that my husband also has, so I feel like I still see her in his eyes. She was the kind of mother that lived for her kids and their accomplishments. Whether driving her kids to golf, basketball, football, cheerleading, ski lessons, she was always there for them and wanting them to have the best of everything.

Kay’s family was from Midland, Texas, and she was salt of the earth. Her family always came first. She was also one of the first in her town to go off and travel the world out of high school, because she was interested in broadening her horizons and she was curious about the world. …When I first met Kay, she was obsessed with the stock market and CNBC and she got me interested in my own stock portfolio and gave me some good stock tips. So Kay taught me a lot about life and was a wonderful example of a loving mom and supportive wife.”

July is our Fascinating Women issue. Is there a female role model who particularly influenced you?

“My own mother, of course, is one of my greatest role models. She grew up with very little in Minas Gerais, Brazil. Her grandmother, who was raising 13

kids of her own, helped raise her. My mother put herself through college and learned English, because she knew it would open doors for her. She is strong, passionate, loving and supportive — the kind of woman I try to be.

“But there are also so many women whom I have worked with who are wonderful examples to me who helped pave the way and have encouraged me to ask for what I want and to speak up for myself more like Katie Couric and Meredith Vieira.”

What advice would you give to young women and men seeking careers in journalism?

“Make sure you are passionate about being a journalist first and foremost. Do you love talking to people, telling powerful stories, witnessing world events? That’s the easy part. Here’s the hard part: Are you willing to work all hours of the night, holidays, etc.? Miss out on vacations and significant events? This is not a career for those who think of it as glamorous. I wake up at 3 a.m. still many times a week in my now 20-year career. Work very hard and don’t worry about what everyone else is doing.

You do you and find the kinds of stories you like to tell and make them yours. And finally, trust your gut. If that inner voice is telling you something isn’t right or doesn’t add up, it’s probably right. We live in a day and age where real ‘journalism’ is being lost in 140 characters or less. So do your homework and know your facts.”

For more, visit alz.org/ct and nbc.com.

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40 WAGMAG.COM JULY 2019 Sage Steele. Photograph by Kyle Norton.

t ough as Steele

BY GEORGETTE GOUVEIA

SAGE STEELE HAS NEVER BEEN ONE TO CHOOSE THE EASIER WRONG OVER THE HARDER RIGHT. IN APRIL, THE ANCHOR OF ESPN’S “SPORTSCENTER” DREW HEADLINES FOR EXPRESSING HER CONFLICTED FEELINGS COVERING THE MASTERS TOURNAMENT AT THE AUGUSTA NATIONAL GOLF CLUB IN GEORGIA, WHICH HAS PREVIOUSLY DENIED ADMITTANCE TO WOMEN AND MEN OF COLOR.

“It isn’t the prettiest history, for sure, and that is putting it very, very kindly,” she told the Indianapolis Star. “Therefore I feel pressure, maybe selfinflicted. I’ve been nervous. I was nervous about it from the moment I got the assignment.

I’m nervous out of responsibility for what it means.”

But Steele is not one to shirk responsibility, particularly when it comes to lending others a hand. She is a member of the board of the Pat Tillman Foundation, named for the former safety for the Arizona Cardinals and Army Ranger who was killed by friendly fire in 2004. The foundation works to empower veterans and their families to become tomorrow’s leaders. And on May 19, Steele, a Bristol resident, emceed the Alzheimer’s Association Connecticut Chapter gala at Greenwich’s Belle Haven Club.

“I think the key word is honor,” she said in her remarks that night. “It is to honor the people who have been diagnosed with, who are suffering from and the supporters of those who have been diagnosed with dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. There are so many people. But here’s the thing: The bravery, the courage that comes with the people who have been diagnosed and the caregivers as well, it's something that hits home to probably everyone….The name of the gala to me says everything — ‘Celebrating Hope.’ They are two very different words. We are celebrating the lives of those people who have been affected and we are never losing that hope.”

For Steele, dementia and Alzheimer’s, a specific type of dementia, are personal as her maternal grandmother, Philomena Lena Dipratola O’Neil, was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s in 1986. O’Neil was a feisty, glamorous Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis lookalike, the kind of woman who wore pearls and red lipstick to the grocery store.

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“And to see that disappear was heartbreaking especially as a young teenager,” Steele told an audience that included her mother, Mona Steele, and Aunt Margie, O’Neil’s daughters. “The last time I saw her was in 1999. She was in a home in Westfield, Massachusetts. My mom and Aunt Margie took me to the nursing home. And they said, ‘Listen: It’s been a few years since you’ve seen your grandmother. You need to realize that things have really changed. She’s not that vibrant personality she once was. You need to be prepared.’ I said, ‘I got this.’ I didn’t have it.

“So I walked in that room and I’ll never forget the fear because I didn’t know really what to expect. So what did I do? I started talking, which I do too much of, and talk too fast. Just ask my boss.

Twenty-four years in the business and I still talk too fast. But I was uncomfortable, so I just started talking and telling her stories: I had graduated from Indiana University. I was about to get married. But there was no focus. She was looking at me but right through me. So I kept talking. At one point though, I was wrapping it up and I just looked at her and said, ‘I love you, Grandma.’ For a split second, something changed. Something came back and I saw this sparkle in her eye. It was literally 2½ to three seconds and it was gone. She went back to staring at the window and chewing on her lip. And that was

it. I walked out and I’ll never forget that moment.

“As an Army brat, we lived all around the world, and I didn’t get to see her much, but when I did it was meaningful. So for that to be the last time I saw her, that was devastating. What it did was it made me mad; it made me angry; it made me sad. It was literally, at that young age, what can we do so no one else has to go through this? And I was just the grandkid. What happens if you’re the daughter, what happens if you’re the son, what happens if you’re the spouse?”

That’s why it was important for Steele to support the association and Alzheimer’s research in other ways as well, like taking her three children on an Alzheimer’s Walk some years ago.

“Sometimes it’s easier to run away when it’s a little uncomfortable and it is, it’s uncomfortable. But is that the right thing? I don’t think so.”

Running away was not part of the code of the Steele household where football and the military were deeply entwined. Born in the Panama Canal Zone, an unincorporated territory of the United States from 1903 to 1979, Steele is the daughter of Col. Gary Steele, the first African-American to play varsity football at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. In the Steele home, there were weekend morning room inspections, with infractions for violations. Clothes under the bed

would mean 10 pushups.

“My dad made us memorize part of the cadet prayer at West Point….Part of that prayer is ‘Help me to choose the harder right instead of the easier wrong. And never to be content with a halftruth when the whole can be wrong.’ The easier thing is to say ‘Peace out, I’m leaving, I’m done.’

This hurts. The harder right is to dive in feet first and keep going….”

Steele has kept going — growing up in Belgium and Greece before landing in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and finishing high school in Carmel, Indiana. It was in South Bend that she began a TV reporting and producing career that took her to Tampa, Florida, and “Comcast SportsNet” in the Baltimore/Washington, D.C. area, anchoring the flagship “SportsNite” for six years and serving as a beat reporter for the Baltimore Ravens from 2001 to ’05. She joined ESPN in 2007.

It’s not all sports for her, though. Steele has been co-host of ABC’s telecast of the Miss America pageant since 2016, a guest host on ABC’s “The View” and a mommy blogger on the Walt Disneyowned Babble.

Family is “the reason,” she wrote on Twitter, “I’m able to choose happiness and maintain perspective on everything that comes my way.”

For more, visit alz.org/ct and espn.com.

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o

ne woman, endless talent

BY MARY SHUSTACK PHOTOGRAPHS BY BOB ROZYCKI

FASHION, ACCESSORY AND COSTUME DESIGNER, PAINTER, ILLUSTRATOR, MUSEUM EXHIBITOR… SUSAN OBRANT BASICALLY EMBODIES THE WORD CREATIVITY.

Stepping into her Cortlandt Manor home, an eclectic, expansive space on the former grounds of a fabled hotel and spa, one quickly realizes these are also surroundings like no other.

Dressed in fashions of both her own design and making, Obrant offers first a warm welcome and then a tour, which seems quite natural.

After all, her home is where she meets potential — and many repeat — clients by appointment. But it’s also home to her studio, an airy space that anchors the three floors that serve as both informal art galleries and, taken together, a de facto career retrospective.

There is, it must be said, not an inch of unadorned space — and that’s not a complaint.

A walk through her home is a walk through her history, each painting, drawing, shawl or dress telling a story.

Together, it might trigger a remembrance of “A Serious Art Discussion,” Obrant says in reference to her two-year installation at Hudson Valley MOCA in Peekskill in which mannequins wearing Obrant’s crochet designs studied her paintings on the wall.

Such an integrated display is clever and unexpected and totally works, drawing one completely into Obrant’s life in art.

Born in Philadelphia and growing up in its suburbs — though she’s been “in Westchester forever” — she would start out as a psychology major but transferred to Parsons School of Design “based on a summer’s worth of (art) classes.”

In her 20s, Obrant would work as an illustrator, one whose work would go on to include a nomination for the 1971 Grammy Award for Best Album Cover for “The Music of Erik Satie: Through A Looking Glass.”

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Susan Obrant is known for her one-of-a-kind wearable art, crocheted work that she will showcase at Fall Crafts at Lyndhurst in Tarrytown.

Artist Susan Obrant in her Cortlandt Manor studio, not only surrounded by her own work but also wearing fashions of her own making.

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Her art would come to encompass countless other media, from magazine illustrations to T-shirts for the Metropolitan Opera to paintings, including portraits by commission.

Her paintings are continually inspired by family, travel, history, music and even sobering subjects such as the terrorist attacks of 9/11.

Local scenes are no exception, such as a work devoted to the Croton Dam: “I knew it was done when I could hear the roar of the water.”

Movement and depth are key to her fine art.

“I like the idea of a video camera, for a painting to do what a still camera cannot.”

That sense of movement, of vibrancy is found in her fashion and costume work, which is noted for its daring use of colors and textures.

Obrant pauses as we walk through her home to show off a particular purse: “This is the bag that began my business.”

She was asked about its origin — and then asked to start making them. From then, it’s been a whirlwind of dresses and vests, shawls and bags, hats and gloves, all one-of-a-kind yet clearly of her signature approach.

“Performers love them because there’s no seams. It’s like wearing air,” she says.

She knows what works from experience.

“I trained as a dancer, which is why I dress dancers. Everything has to move.”

Obrant has dressed Audra McDonald and her dancers for the musical movie “Hello Again,” creates performance wear for classical-rock violinist Daisy Jopling and has worked with numerous dance companies.

She credits her grandmother for teaching her “one stitch” when Obrant was 8 that was the seed for her work in yarn, which she calls “couture crochet.”

“I have no fashion training,” she says, before adding with a laugh, “I couldn’t follow a pattern to save my life.”

Though fashionable, her work is hardly created with trends in mind.

“They’ll never be out of style. They’ll never be in style. They just are.”

And they are for anyone, young or old, male or female.

“There’s no appropriate age or style,” Obrant says. “If you put it on and you feel good,” as she says, then it’s for you.

While Obrant sees many clients one-on-one, she enjoys showcasing her designs in shows, as well.

A favorite is Crafts at Lyndhurst, which gathers

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some 300 of the nation’s leading contemporary craftspeople, artists and makers twice a year to the grounds of the historic mansion in Tarrytown.

Laura Kandel, director of Artrider Productions, which is the longtime producer of the show, shares that Obrant has been participating in Artrider events since 2007.

“Susan has found a way to take the very traditional and often undervalued craft of crocheting and make it modern, hip and wearable by women and men of all ages,” Kandel says, also recognizing her work in fine art.

And, Kandel adds, Artrider shows are designed to offer the unexpected.

“I feel that we are able to blow our customers’ minds because of artists like Susan who take traditional media and turn it on its head.”

We have a feeling Obrant would appreciate those words, since her life in the arts has been all about creating her own path.

As she tells us, “The main thing is to trust yourself as an artist.”

Susan Obrant is scheduled to exhibit at Fall Crafts at Lyndhurst Sept. 13-15 in Tarrytown.

For more on the show, visit artrider.com. For more on Obrant, visit susanobrant.com.

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Allyson Monson. All images courtesy Allyson Monson Photography.

v iew finder

BY MARY SHUSTACK

THE ARCHITECTURAL DIGEST DESIGN SHOW DRAWS SOME 400 EXHIBITORS AND 40,000 VISITORS TO THE PIER BUILDINGS ALONG MANHATTAN’S HUDSON SHORELINE EACH YEAR.

It’s a dizzying marketplace of products and services, innovations and ideas, all of which can sometimes blur together.

It takes something special, then, to stand out — and this past March, Allyson Monson did just that.

The Fairfield County photographer’s booth was an explosion of bold and powerful images that combined to create a singular statement about the power of art.

“I felt I was fresh,” Monson says in agreement, as WAG catches up with her after the fanfare of the show had died down. Having her own Allyson Monson Photography booth at AD for the first time was, she says, “rewarding on so many levels,” especially as she strives to move her business forward.

“I’m at that step when I do want to go big,” she says.

And she has clear ideas of how to do just that.

“I’ve learned that galleries are not where I want to be. My background is interior design. I love to see that process of a home coming together.”

Art, she says, offers “that little extra something.”

Monson says she loves working directly with designers and also showcases her work in a handful of home-décor boutiques, including Nest Inspired Home in Rye, Current Home in Scarsdale and Manhattan and Tusk Home + Design in Westport.

It’s been about five years since Monson began to get serious about photography, something she studied during college days at the University of Rhode Island.

Keeping up with the constant innovations in photography — from exploring camera technology to the printing process to framing options — has Monson considering herself “self-taught” at this point.

But it’s truly been the culmination of a lifetime of experiences and influences.

“People always say ‘What kind of photography do you do?’ and I always say ‘Everything.’”

From its street art to its lights, New York City remains a favorite subject, but Monson will not simply photograph someone’s mural and turn it into her own image.

“It’s Going Down” by Allyson Monson.

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“BILLY no. 3” by Allyson Monson.

“That’s their artwork,” she says of the original. But if there’s someone in the shot — or some additional graffiti that turns the original into a social commentary, for example, that’s when it becomes “a little more interesting.”

These days, she says, people are embracing color in life and décor — and she often finds that on her global travels. Sometimes it’s found on the streets of Barcelona, the coastline of Portugal, the heights of Machu Picchu, which she found surprisingly moving, or in the random moments of a solo road trip from Utah to California.

Monson says that she strives to create work that makes people look at their world more closely — “that’s when it speaks to people.”

Though she often has her camera, Monson does make a point not to take it everywhere, such as days when she has back-to-back meetings. But yes, she admits with a ready smile, she’s always thinking of shots, even, for example, when sitting around a fire pit at a friend’s house.

Monson can find inspiration in the now — as in a gift from her husband of an Annie Leibovitz MasterClass — or in the past.

Growing up between Putnam and Westchester counties, Monson says she has always been creative.

“I knew I wanted to be an artist by the time I was 5 years old,” she says, noting she was inspired by both her father’s work in the creative side of the entertainment field and her mother’s taking her to museums and galleries. “My mom was notorious for taking that Saturday drive to Cold Spring.”

That spirit of adventure has served Monson well.

“I’m a wanderer, so I don’t ever go to a specific place to shoot, other than the beach. I typically go to a city to wander and look and find.”

And she’s clearly pleased that she took the steps to transition from interior design into photography. It was, she says, when some work for Pimlico Interiors in New Canaan proved successful that she felt ready to give it her all.

“I needed somebody else in the creative world, not just friends and family,” to validate her choice.

And Monson seems poised to receive much more validation as her work continues to develop, from subjects to techniques.

But for her, it seems to all come back to the basics, encapsulated in the way Monson signs off each email: “With light and color.”

For more, visit allysonmonsonphotography. com.

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TRUE GIVER STORY AND PHOTOGRAPH BY PHIL HALL

Prior to sitting down for her WAG interview, Juanita T. James returned to her office at Fairfield County’s Community Foundation as the newly minted winner of the Martha S. Newman Award, the highest honor presented by the Connecticut Council for Philanthropy.

“It is overwhelming, humbling and affirming to know that people want to appreciate and recognize the work you do,” says James, who became the philanthropic foundation’s president and CEO in 2011. “One of the things I said in accepting this award is that I don’t come from philanthropy — I am new to the field of philanthropy.”

But, then again, she adds upon reflection, she had a lifetime’s education in the value of philanthropic outreach via her mother.

“We come from very humble beginnings in British Guiana, which is now Guyana,” she recalls. “Her father died when she was 13 years old.

She ended up quitting school and supporting her entire family because she had the ability to sew, and she made a living out of her sewing. As a result, she was able to educate her brothers and sisters. When she migrated to the U.S. pregnant with me — I’m a first-generation American — she stressed the importance of education as a way to be successful. She taught me that my job was to go to school, learn and get good grades. Growing up, she ended up sponsoring many of her brothers and sisters to come to the U.S. And she sponsored my cousins to come over and get an education so they could make a living and change their economic well-being.”

Also key to her mother’s life lessons, she says, was the importance to “share one’s blessings with others, how important it was to give for the sake of giving and not for recognition or asking from others in return. She didn’t have financial resources, but she gave of her time and her wis-

dom, and most of my cousins and I were raised with that discipline about the importance of hard work. And what she gave of them was the access to opportunities and to be able to do for themselves.”

James earned a bachelor’s degree from Princeton University and a master’s degree in business policy from Columbia University. Entering the private sector, she was cognizant of seeking out companies that shared her values and principles.

“I started out my career at Time Inc., which later became Time Warner, and that was all about ideas,” she says. “Time Inc. encouraged all of its employees to volunteer and be active parts of the community. I started serving on my first nonprofit board in 1977. When I left Time Inc., I went to Bertelsmann for a few years and then I went to Pitney Bowes — I completely changed careers and sectors, but one of the reasons I chose Pitney Bowes is because of its reputation as a major community citizen involved in making a difference and an impact.”

James served as Pitney Bowes’ vice president and chief marketing and communications officer until 2010. In the decade that she has been away from the private sector, she has been enthusiastic at how the corporate world and the next generation of leaders have embraced philanthropic ideals.

“I came up with the generation of GE and Pitney Bowes and these big corporations that were philanthropic and engaged in their communities,” she says. “Now we’re seeing the private sector really stand up for influencing and being involved, whether it is community economic development or education. And I think our generation of millennials is very, very interested in the impact they are going to make, both socially and financially, on the world. They may not be in a position to volunteer the way previous generations did — we’re all sort of strapped in terms of time — but from what I am observing, they want to use their time wisely and they want to know they are making a difference.”

One of James’ key triumphs in her leadership role at Fairfield County’s Community

Foundation is the annual Giving Day event, which generates donations to the region’s nonprofit organization. This year’s sixth annual Giving Day event raised a record $1.71 million, a 17 percent increase from last year, with total of 16,576 gifts from 11,742 donors and funds going to 415 local nonprofits.

James heralded the record-breaking results by praising “the determination of thousands of our neighbors to create a thriving region for the people and places that are served so admirably by our nonprofit sector.”

James’ leadership skills have been sought repeatedly by nonprofits and private-sector firms.

She is now a director for Asbury Automotive Group, First County Bank, Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors and Community Foundations Leading Change. She is also a vice chairwoman of the board of trustees at Lesley University, a trustee emerita of Princeton University and a former trustee of the University of Connecticut, as well as a former board member for the Connecticut Council for Philanthropy. Beyond the foundation, James serves as a deacon and elder at the First Presbyterian Church of Stamford. Even on Sunday, she is reminded of the importance of giving back to the wider world.

“The Presbyterian Church’s founding principles are religious education and a mission component to the work we do,” she says. “Most of my church colleagues are involved in the community, and our church has an afterschool program that we call creative learning — and the students we serve, we see a significant improvement in their grades and commitment to school.”

Clearly, James is a very busy woman, and she admits she is “trying to see if I can allocate my time a little better, in terms of thinking that I try to squeeze less activity into a 24-hour day — or, in my case, a 30-hour day.” But despite the demands on her schedule, she acknowledges that she wouldn’t have it any other way.

“I find being around people energizing. I find the work I do energizing. In some ways, the reason I can commit so much time to it is because it gives me so much joy in doing that.”

Juanita T. James.

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54 WAGMAG.COM JULY 2019 Laura Benanti. Photographs © Jenny Anderson.

AP IR O SH

f

BY G

RE GG

or of th La e l uraov e IT’S NO EXAGGERATION TO SAY THAT AWARDWINNING ACTRESS, SINGER AND MOTHER LAURA BENANTI CAN DO IT ALL. CURRENTLY ON BROADWAY AS ELIZA DOOLITTLE IN THE TONYNOMINATED REVIVAL OF “MY FAIR LADY,” BENANTI HAS A HISTORY OF APPEARING IN REVIVALS AND MAKING WELL-KNOWN CHARACTERS, INCLUDING LOUISE IN “GYPSY” (FOR WHICH SHE WON A TONY AWARD) HER VERY OWN. In addition to regularly appearing on Broadway in musicals as well as comedic roles, Benanti is probably familiar to TV viewers from shows such as “Nashville,” “The Detour” and “Nurse Jackie” among others. However, for the last few years, she has found a new niche, appearing as first lady Melania Trump in a series of sketches on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.” On July 6, Benanti brings her show “Tales from Soprano Isle” to Caramoor in Katonah. Benanti was kind enough to take time out of her schedule to answer a few questions about her career and Melania.

Laura, I’d like to begin by asking you to please say something about the challenges and rewards of playing classic stage musical roles, including Eliza Doolittle in “My Fair Lady,” Maria in “The Sound of Music,” Louise in “Gypsy,” Claudia in “Nine” and Cinderella in “Into The Woods.”

“I think the challenge is that people might already have preconceived notions about that

character based on someone else’s performance. The rewards are that they’re classic for a reason; they’re beautifully written.”

You have also had the distinction of originating a role, as in the case of Julia in “The Wedding Singer” and Candela in “Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown.” What does that kind of experience mean to you?

“It’s very meaningful to me. To be able to put your stamp on a role that no one else has played before is gratifying. It’s interesting, I actually approach revival and character that have been previously played in the exact same way that I approach a new one. I try to come from my own being as opposed to trying to emulate anyone else. It’s funny, I guess I don’t think of it as that much of a difference, but I suppose there is.”

“The Wedding Singer” and “Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown” are musicals based on movies. Are there any movies you think would make good musical adaptations?

“I think (the 1989 Shelley Long movie) ‘Troop Beverly Hills’ would be wonderful. I would love to play that part. I think it would be so much fun.”

That’s a great idea!

“Wouldn’t that be so funny? And I think it lends itself to music. I think that would be funny.”

With your extensive Broadway background, is there a style of music that you personally enjoy on your own time that might surprise your fans?

“I like country music. That might surprise people. I like classic country. Not like Blake Shelton.”

Do you mean like Patsy Cline and Loretta Lynn?

“Yes, Patsy Cline. But also Brandi Carlile.”

Kacey Musgraves?

“Kacey Musgraves! I love her! I actually got to sing one of her songs on the show ‘Nashville.’ That was really exciting for me.”

I’m glad you mentioned “Nashville” because in addition to your award-winning stage work, you have also performed in several TV series, including “Younger,” “The Detour,” “Supergirl” and “Nurse Jackie” to mention a few. What do you like best about series work?

“I like that it lasts forever. Although that could be a mixed bag, too. Although I’m proud of the work I’ve done. I like that it requires a different skill. It requires a different concentration, which I appreciate. It’s a different energy. In film and television, you’re drawing people in instead of extending your energy towards them, as we do onstage. I like being able to flex those very different muscles.”

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What was involved in selecting “Arroró Mi Niño,” the song you recorded for the benefit album “Singing You Home: Children’s Songs for Family Reunification”?

“Mary Mitchell Campbell and I produced that album together.

All the proceeds go to reuniting the families separated at the border. There are some new songs, like ‘Singing You Home,’ which Jason Robert Brown wrote for Audra McDonald, and ‘Lullaby’ written by Josh Groban and Dave Matthews. We wanted to have some traditional Spanish songs such as ‘Arroró Mi Niño’ and ‘Cielito Lindo,’ which is what Lin-Manuel (Miranda) and Mandy Gonzalez sing. And we did ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star,’ which is sung by Ana Villafañe and Ingrid Michaelson. We wanted to incorporate traditional children’s songs in Spanish and English just to show we are not ‘other.’ We are all human beings and deserve to be treated as such.”

'We are all human beings and deserve to be treated as such.'

— Laura Benanti

What can you tell me about the process of putting together a concert such as “Tales from Soprano Isle” that you will be performing in July at Caramoor in Katonah?

“It’s honestly one of my favorite things in the world to do. I want people to feel like they’ve just come into my home and I’m singing them songs and telling them jokes. I really want it to feel laid back and fun and enjoyable. For me, it’s a chance to do a little bit of stand-up between singing my most favorite songs. It’s everything I love to do. Sing. Connect with people. Embody a character through the songs. And tell jokes. That’s my happy place.”

Earlier we talked about the fascinating women you have portrayed onstage. Can you please say a few words about women who you consider to be role models and mentors?

“My mother has always been a role model for me. Patti LuPone and Chita Rivera. Their work ethic is astonishing to me Connie Britton who I worked with on ‘Nashville;’ she’s just a remarkable human.

Rosemary Harris, at 91, is an absolute beacon of light. I aspire to be like her. I love Amy Schumer’s wit and humor and her kindness and love for her family and her friends. Oh, my gosh, there are so many! Rebecca Luker, the first person I ever understudied, who always treated me with kindness and

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respect. Sarah Ruhl, who I think is a beautiful playwright and a beautiful human. Celia Keenan-Bolger who is one of my dearest friends. She’s a remarkable mother and actress. The list goes on and on.

But I think that’s a pretty good start.”

This interview would be incomplete without talking about your portrayal of Melania Trump on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.”

(Laughs) “Yes.” How did that come to be?

“Honestly, I was on the Colbert show promoting ‘She Loves Me.’ They put up a photo of me and a photo of her and pointed out our physical resemblance. That was kind of it. After the famously plagiarized Michelle Obama’s speech at the Republican National Convention, I got a call from them asking me if I would come on (the show) and do an impersonation. I only had a few hours to pull it together because I had never thought about it before.

It’s sort of taken on a life of its own from there.”

Have you heard from her or her husband?

“I have not; which is interesting. I think she likes to stay under the radar, which I appreciate about her. I think she’s done an incredible job of keeping her son out of the spotlight, as well. But (Trump’s) such a narcissist. He doesn’t know that it’s about him. He just sees that I’m making fun of her and he could probably care less.”

In a way, the Melania Trump sketches and your involvement in the “Singing You Home” album are kind of political statements. Do you consider yourself to be political or an activist in any way?

“I do! I think that so many of us became complacent during the Obama administration. It felt like everything was going to be fine. I think that part of the difficulty of white privilege is that you do live in a bubble. I was absolutely shocked about the racist and deeply disturbing snakes that were popping up their heads. All of my friends who were people of color or indigenous people or Asian. They were like, ‘Yes! This is the world. Welcome.’ It made me realize that we have quite a bit of work to do. I have become increasingly political as it felt more and more like a dire emergency.”

We’re grateful for your work.

“I appreciate that. Thank you!”

Tony Award-winning actress and singer Laura Benanti performs her show “Tales From Soprano Isle” on July 6 at Caramoor’s Venetian Theater. For more. visit caramoor.org/events/ laura-benanti.

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Mia Shipani.

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w

hen bad is good

BY JENA A. BUTTERFIELD

NOT TO BE VULGAR, BUT MIA SCHIPANI IS A BADASS. AND IT TAKES ONE TO KNOW ONE. SO, WHEN SCHIPANI FOUNDED THE ORGANIZATION BADASS WOMEN FAIRFIELD COUNTY AND LAUNCHED IT BY CELEBRATING SIX LEADERS IN — TO EMBRACE THE SLANG — BADASSERY, PEOPLE TOOK NOTE.

At a recent kickoff breakfast for the organization at J House in Greenwich, 100 inspired audience members turned out to honor the first-ever crop of multitasking, community enriching, entrepreneurial award winners.

“These are unsung heroes who don’t get the recognition they deserve because they are not tooting their own horn,” says Schipani, president of Schipani PR. As the head of her own business, Schipani often crosses

paths with badass women business owners.

“In order to be an entrepreneur, you have to reach out and create a network,” she says. “You can’t grow without partners. You can’t do it by yourself. That’s the whole thing. It’s a collective effort. It’s a community that supports each other.”

Impressed by the stratospheric accomplishments of so many local women, Schipani felt compelled to bring them all together; to create a web of successful leaders that could have an even greater impact on the community than the sum of its parts.

Schipani started by compiling her first board of advisers, six honorees she thought deserved recognition and who fulfilled the rigorous criteria that listed social responsibility and community involvement at the very top. “When we wrote their bios, they were so long,” Schipani says. “They’re such doers. There’s not a minute of their day that’s not productive.”

But that could be a double-edged sword.

“So many entrepreneurial women are amazing but don’t get their story out there because it’s so costly and time consuming,” she says. “These are highly motivated women and I wanted to tell their stories.”

Stories like that of Layla Lisiewski who founded The Local Moms Network (now in 20 states) after pioneering a financial advisory business at Merrill Lynch and launching local resource guide Greenwich Moms. She is a chair for the Greenwich United Way, fundraises for various organizations, including the Breast Cancer Alliance, and has been a Division 1 lacrosse player.

“She’s created jobs for over 200 women,” Schipani says. “She has three babies under 5. She’s insane.”

Maureen Clark Newlove, owner of Noble Salon in Stamford, has donated more than $200,000 to local initiatives for women’s health and wellness through the Noble Cause outreach program. She has been a motivational speaker, educator, editor for Color and Design Magazine and her salon has been awarded Best Salon of Fairfield County every year since it opened 2007. She’s a mom of two.

Dermatologist Kim Nichols changed career track after a degree in art history from Harvard University.

She now employs and mentors an all-female staff, has been featured on “The Dr. Oz Show” and “Megyn Kelly Today,” serves on the board of the Greater NYC American Red Cross, volunteers for the Skin Cancer

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The 2019 nominees for Badass Women Fairfield County. Clockwise, from top left: Alessandra Messineo Long, Dr. Kim Nichols, Laurie Stefanowicz, Rabbi Deborah Salomon, Maureen Clark Newlove and Layla Lisiewski.

Foundation and has been honored as one of 100 Influential Women of Color by the state of Connecticut.

She has three children.

Attorney Alessandra Messineo Long launched a law firm, ran a nonprofit of “700 Women,” served as the first working Junior League president, first female board member of The Greenwich Old Timers Athletic Association, is on the board of the American Red Cross Metro NYC Chapter and co-founded a networking group for professional women. She runs marathons, is a mentor and a mom of three.

Rabbi Deborah Salomon founded the Hebrew Wizards School. Her curriculum is used in 50 schools worldwide. She founded community service program, Better2B, where students work with senior centers, homeless shelters and pet rescue centers; received two Parent’s Choice awards for music albums by her Hebrew Wizards Family Band, was awarded a silver medal playing for the USA Tennis Team in the Maccabiah Games in Tel Aviv and formed the 200-member, nondenominational congregation, Kehilat Shalom. She’s a mom of three.

“The rabbi brings this whole other spiritual element to the table,” Schipani says. “And she used to work on Wall Street. She became a rabbi at 50.”

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Laurie Stefanowicz is a managing partner of Catamount Wealth Management in Westport. She has been a Division 1 soccer player, the youngest player drafted to the first U.S. women’s professional soccer league, completed two marathons, helped raise almost $500,000 as vice chair on the school board for her two children and coaches their soccer teams.

Of the Badass Women, Schipani says, “I got it off the ground with an incredible group of women.

Don’t you want to hear from these women? They are the real deal.”

Again, it takes one to know one.

Schipani herself initially co-founded a fashion company; then founded a wellness company; launched a support group for more than 100 HR women; went on to lead dozens of charitable causes, including as chair of the American Heart Association’s Go Red campaign; she mentors young women; runs marathons; started her own marketing agency and is now growing this special community of women.

She says if she had a dollar for everyone who told her that she — or women like the honorees — must be made from different stuff in order to accomplish so much, she’d be rich. “You’re not born like that,” she says. “You’re putting in effort.”

The J House event was led by author and found-

er of Activate Worldwide, Lucinda Cross. “The emcee was phenomenal,” says Schipani. “She created the whole vibe in the room.” A room was adorned with paintings by abstract expressionist painter, Moshgan Rezania, who donated 10% of the proceeds in support.

The driving purpose for the event was getting people to connect to the group’s mission of inspiring other young women. Schipani has aligned with a nonprofit, Girls with Impact (GWI), a Greenwich based organization that teaches entrepreneurship skills to high school girls. Founder and CEO Jennifer Openshaw was in attendance.

Schipani’s goal is to raise $50,000 the first year in order to enable girls from GWI to participate in a six-week program designed by Harvard Business School. The cost is $495 per girl and includes an MBA influenced, virtual program. Girls leave with a mini business plan and an ongoing mentor.

“We want to put 100 girls through the program,” Schipani says. The J House event raised $8,000. “To date we are able to put 16 girls through the program.”

Schipani is already looking to next year and says she has “some incredible nominees,” all badasses.

For more visit schipanipr.com and girlswithimpact.com.

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PARTY READY

BY JENA A. BUTTERFIELD

The three Cartwright sisters may have separate passions and personalities, but luckily for the family business, their differences converge under one glorious tent (rental company, that is).

Today, Jill Weis, Tracey Sherwood and Laura Dalrymple are the “daughters” at the helm of Cartwright & Daughters Tent and Party Rentals based in Mahopac and serving Westchester, Fairfield, Dutchess, Putnam, Orange and Litchfield counties.

Their varied expertise plus an uncanny synergy help the sisters strike the perfect formula for a family business: separate plus together equals longevity. “It’s great because we get to see each other every day,” says Weis, acknowledging the romantic ideal may have its limits. “You also have family dynamics.”

Parents Jerry and Pam Cartwright started the company in 1981 as Cartwright Catering, a business with a few rental tents. Eventually everyone got involved.

“Tracey would wait tables, I would help on the buffet line and Laura was in the playpen in the back room,” Weis says. “There were many times when dad dropped us off to school in the company truck. And we couldn’t get in trouble after school because we always had to report to work.”

The catering part of the company was gradually phased out and the rental side grew rapidly along with the sisters. Over the years, they learned the ins and outs of the business and helped the company evolve.

In the early ’90s, Jerry Cartwright added “Daughters” to the company name to honor his girls’ work and increasing involvement.

“Dad is still active but has definitely stepped back,” Weis says. “And mom was very instrumental when the business started.” But as the sisters took on responsibility then began raising families of their own, Pam Cartwright’s role advanced. “Mom’s an important person that keeps it going for us,” Weis says. “She helped us with watching the kids and allowed us to be (working) moms.” And it gave them the ability to hone their expertise.

“We all tried every position,” Dalrymple says. “And we evolved to what best suits our personality. Jill’s a great people person, Tracey likes to get in there with whatever power tools she can and I like to say I have an The Cartwright sisters, Tracey Sherwood, Jill Weis and Laura Dalrymple.

Photograph by Bob Rozycki.

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organized chaos. I’m good with numbers.”

So now, much like their tents, the women’s positions in the company are planted firmly in the ground.

“Each one of us has our own department,” says Weis, who runs the wholesale marketing and tabletop division. Sherwood is warehouse manager and loadmaster and Dalrymple is in charge of dispatching and accounting.

There’s a lot of pieces that have to come together but Jerry Cartwright had a rule that continues to keep the family close and business strong. “We cannot talk about work outside of work,” Weis says.

And that extends to the larger family. “We’ve got employees that have been with us for 25 years,” Weis says. “They’re family.”

Out of the 45 employees they have right now, some have been with the company since the sisters were children and some started when they were also as young as 16. The sisters feel they grew up together in the business. But it doesn’t constrain their leadership roles.

“There’s a lot of respect for us,” Weis says. “They know we will get our hands dirty.” We’re all in this together.” Often Sherwood is happy to load up cars on her own. “Because I know what to do,” she says.

After all these years, their knowledge and experience extend to any event conceivable. Weis says the current rental equipment aesthetic trends toward the farm-to-table style. “Vintage and boho is starting to trickle in,” Weis says. “People love bringing nature in. Nobody’s banging down our door for sequined linens.”

The business has five-star reviews on both The Knot and Wedding Wire.

“That’s all Jill,” Sherwood says.

“I want to make sure it’s perfect,” Weis says. “You’re really building your own venue. You have to be in constant communication (with the client and other vendors). Our customers value that. If you add a soup to your menu and we don’t know, you’re not going to have bowls.”

Above all, the sisters pride themselves most on their customer service and say their staff’s personal touches show. “They all care a lot,” Weis says. That feeling of familial camaraderie and deep-rooted experience

'And we evolved to what best suits our personality. Jill’s a great people person, Tracey likes to get in there with whatever power tools she can and I like to say I have an organized chaos. I’m good with numbers.'

— Laura Dalrymple

translates to their clients. “People say we are the nicest on the phone to work with,” Weis says.

Next, the family has plans for expansion both physically and generationally. “Our kids are working in (the company) now, too,” Weis says. “It will be the third generation.” And there will be exciting things for them to do. “We’re going to be opening a tented venue location.”

Kindred Creeks is in the town of Poughquag, seven miles from their warehouse in Patterson.

The property includes 80 acres with streams, a barn and rolling green fields. “The streams are stunning,” Weis says, who was inspired by a spot where the water meets and two streams become one. She sees it as a perfect metaphor for marriage.

Plans are progressing quickly and the family will soon be able to start booking events for 2020. The new property gives the women a chance to honor their children like their parents honored them.

“We’re implementing all the grandkids,” Dalrymple says. “Each grandkid is going to have something (at Kindred Creeks) named for them.” Examples so far are Tucker’s Trail and Jake’s Jalopy.

“And we’ve got plans to branch out,” Weis says.

With nine grandchildren so far, that’s a lot of branches on the Cartwright family tree.

For more visit rentaparty.com.

An event featuring Cartwright & Daughters. Courtesy Cartwright & Daughters.

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ADVANTAGE ALLASTER

BY GEORGETTE GOUVEIA

You don’t need Forbes to tell you that Stacey Allaster is a powerful woman (though the magazine has named her one of the “Most Powerful Women in Sports”).

You can see this in the way she looks directly into your eyes when you meet. You can feel it in her firm handshake. You can hear it in her strong voice and choice of words. “(Tennis) has given me everything,” says Allaster, chief executive of professional tennis at the United States Tennis Association. “I’m highly passionate about giving back to the sport.”

That means in particular inspiring girls and women in tennis and in leadership positions.

Recently, she was honored by Girls Inc., a White Plains-based nonprofit that seeks to empower underserved girls through a holistic approach to education and mentorships. As she listened to the stories of those who’ve been encouraged by Girls Inc., she realized, “I was one of those girls. I could’ve used an organization like this.”

You’d never know it from her surroundings, including a large front office on the second floor of the USTA’s sleek White Plains headquarters.

Horseshoes and a beanbag-toss game accent the spacious common area. Near the elevator are large color photographs of Naomi Osaka and Novak Djokovic, winners of last year’s US Open singles championships — a reminder that the tournament is the engine of the USTA’s numerous programs benefitting everyone from children to seniors. In her role as chief executive of professional tennis — a position that was created in 2016 — Allaster is charged with setting the strategic vision for the USTA’s pro tennis division, with oversight that includes the US Open, the Emirates Airline US Open Series and the Western & Southern Open, among other tournaments. It’s a demanding job that finds her dividing her time among the White Plains headquarters; the USTA National Campus in Lake Nona, Florida, home to USTA Player Development and USTA Pro Circuit staff; and her own home in St. Petersburg. Still, it’s a position in which she is determined to mentor young women. On this day, Rachana Bhat sits in for the interview. A recent master’s graduate in sports administration and former college player, Bhat will ultimately move to Lake Nona, where she’ll join the USTA’s Player Development team full time.

It’s the kind of opportunity that’s increasingly

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Stacey Allaster, chief executive, professional tennis.

Photograph by Jorge Alvarez.

open to women. But while they have made significant strides in recent years, they still lack parity with men in everything from pay to the C-suites, Allaster says. Society and the media’s sexualizing of them does not help, she adds. Would a male player, she wonders, be asked to twirl on the court the way commentator Ian Cohen asked Eugenie Bouchard to do at the 2015 Australian Open?

Allaster acknowledges, however, that women have played a part in keeping themselves down — expecting to be all things to all people and viewing other women as competition rather than as allies.

“Women need to help women,” she says. “We need men in leadership, but we need women in leadership positions, too.”

The former Women’s Tennis Association chairman and CEO, Allaster says she was blessed to have tennis legend Billie Jean King as a mentor, a woman who has fought for equality for all but especially for equal opportunities and pay for female players, which she helped achieve at the 1973 US Open.

“We stand on her shoulders and on the shoulders of those who do not have that recognition,” Allaster says.

She herself has come a long way from Welland, a city in Ontario, Canada, a half-hour drive from

Niagara Falls, where she was raised by her single mother, a nurse. When her mother was injured, there was little money. Yet Allaster not only survived but thrived, thanks in part to her own initiative. She had not one but three paper routes, delivering 150 flyers. Then fate gave her a helping hand.

When she was in eighth grade at St. Kevin Catholic Elementary School, the Ontario Tennis Association had a recruitment program across the province to provide boys and girls in her grade with an introduction to the sport. One girl and one boy were chosen from St. Kevin, based on academics and all-around athletic ability. Allaster was the girl. She received a racket, six weeks of lessons and a membership to the Welland Tennis Club, where she also helped clean the clay courts. “That was the beginning,” she says.

Rising through the ranks — and earning a law degree from the University of Western Ontario along the way — Allaster eventually became the tournament director of the Canadian Open in Toronto, now the Rogers Cup. In 2006, she became WTA president, followed by chairman and CEO three years later, generating $1 billion for the organization and expanding its reach in Asia.

Now the Canadian-American is overseeing the US Open. “I pinch myself to this day,” she says.

Allaster continues to share her good fortune.

She and husband, John Milkovich, a special education teacher who’s now in residential real estate, adopted two Siberian children — Jack, now 16, and Alexandra, 14. Theirs is the quintessential modern family, with Milkovich being the stay-athome parent.

“We say dad works in the home and mom out of it.”

Allaster wants to inspire her children as well as others through the USTA Foundation, the National Junior Tennis League, educating kids on court and in the classroom; Net Generation, motivating teachers and coaches in turn to motivate their charges; and, now, Girls Inc., with which she’s collaborating on a day for its youngsters at the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center, the Open’s Flushing home.

Allaster says, “I want to help educate, inspire and build confidence so that they believe they can achieve any dream.”

For more, visit usta.com, usopen.org and girlsinc.org.

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Rose McInerney.

68 WAGMAG.COM Photograph courtesy Rose McInerney.

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e

levating women, one story at a time

BY GINA GOUVEIA

I WOULD DESCRIBE MY INTRODUCTION AND ENSUING MEETING AND INTERVIEW WITH ROSE MCINERNEY AS SERENDIPITOUS. THOUGH MY OWN RESEARCH ON ANOTHER WAG SUBJECT (CLAIRE MARIN, “BUILDING BUZZ,” DECEMBER 2018) INITIALLY LED ME TO AN ARTICLE BY MCINERNEY, WERE IT NOT FOR MARIN’S SUGGESTION TO CONNECT US, WE WOULD HAVE NEVER MET. You see, women are particularly good at this — turning one like-mind onto another and creating a ripple effect whereby new ideas are exchanged and percolated.

Like Marin, spreading seeds of rye to sustain pollinators and fuel a significant portion of rural, upstate New York communities, McInerney is spreading seeds of her own. Since 2016, she has been finding her voice and using it to forge a new path in writing, one that casts a fresh light on the stories of women, via her online platform, “Womanscape.”

McInerney tells me she is building the foundations of an enterprise, “brick by brick,” which will harness its energy and focus on the power of women and celebrate the beautiful results of collaborative networking and mutual elevation. It’s a process, much like the process she chose when she started writing in earnest and more recently, through her foray into the world of public speak-

ing and female empowerment.

Elevating the discussion, and women in the process, is a concept that comes off McInerney’s tongue during our second encounter, when we talked formally for this story. Coincidentally, she mentions the segment “On a Pedestal” from “CBS Sunday Morning,” one that we had both watched earlier in the day. Its focus was on the lack of monuments to women in public places.

McInerney’s approach is a thoughtful one, and one she has developed over time. She points to examples of women like Rachel Carson who, in 1962, “blew the lid off DDT (and the adverse effects of ) pesticides in her book, “Silent Spring.” McInerney wrote about Carson and tells me that “at the time, (her book) made a lot of noise and all kinds of change happened. You can trace the beginning of the EPA back to Rachel Carson.”

McInerney tells me she grew up in a traditional household back in her native Canada — moving from the small town of Manitouwadge, population 2,100, when she was just a year old to Toronto. Her mother was a nurse and her father a teacher. “I was the girl who looked out the window when I was young,” McInerney says. She pursued her studies, nonetheless, obtained her degrees and for a period of time she was a high school teacher. She purposefully sought out the “classrooms other teachers

didn’t want.” She loved the coaching aspect of her work and relished in seeing the transformations of her students, many of whom presented challenges.

With her husband, Barry, and their three young girls, eventually the family moved to the United States and settled in Connecticut. This was just before 9/11, McInerney says, and that changed everything. She found her focus solely on being present for her family then.

Fast forward to 2016, the genesis of “Womanscape” took root following several years in Chicago where McInerney sought out opportunities to engage with professional women and became immersed in their stories. “It was a time when we were questioning where we were headed (as a country),” McInerney says, “and when you feel like someone isn’t driving the car very well, you want to get in and drive it yourself.”

She began attending the meetings of a New York-based enterprise for women called Ellevate Network, a side venture of Ellevest, a digital investment platform geared toward women, co-founded

by Sallie Lee Krawcheck. It’s where, she says, that she met our mutual friend, Claire Marin, who came to a meeting to share her products and the story of building her business. McInerney wrote an article about her, telling me “I will buy and sell a product made by a woman to support that woman — I met Claire, I liked her product, but I

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also believed in her and what she’s doing.”

McInerney has had a busy spring; in April she set off on a fundraising trek to Baffin Island, a remote wilderness way up north in Canada that sits on the cusp of the Arctic Circle. It is a terrain for intrepid travelers. What sold McInerney on the grueling journey was really the opportunity to join and bond with a band of 16 other fearless females — ranging from women entrepreneurs and executives to members of the military.

In addition, through the successful completion of the expedition, the group raised funds for a foundation called True Patriot Love (TPL), a Canada notfor-profit that provides relief and services to military veterans and their families.

This was, according to McInerney, the first-ever all-women expedition established to target programs specifically geared for women veterans getting back into civilian life. It was also a chance for McInerney to do something completely out of her comfort zone. “It became less about me and more about doing something for those who sacrifice their lives,” she says.

Each participant had to commit to raising $50,000 for the organization, and paid for their own supplies and the $15,000 cost of the trip itself. “I understand what a massive gift and luxury it was (to participate in the trek). I was going for all the people that couldn’t have this experience, to share what I

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Ching Tien and Rose McInerney.

saw and how nature can heal all of us.”

Together with corporate sponsorships, she says that the group was on track to raise upwards of $800,000.

“The experience itself,” she says, “changed me in a way that is hard to even put into words — the landscape of our north, the awe-inspiring mountains and the untouched, natural world up there.”

In June, she says, she would be heading up to Canada to attend the Women Deliver 2019 Conference in Vancouver — the world’s largest conference on gender equality and the health, rights and well-being of girls and women. She was looking forward to the opportunity to network and

learn about opportunities to help elevate women and invest in them financially.

“When I go, I will, for the first time, meet a woman I have been in touch with, who started an all-girls school in rural China,” she says. “I hope to see how they are doing and find out how I can be of help.”

McInerney mentioned that she had the pleasure of meeting Doe Thornburg, the founder of IWA, International Women Associates, also during her time in Chicago. Well into her 90s when the two met, Thornburg subsequently passed away at the age of 96 in 2018. On the organization’s website, her obituary stated, “Her vision was one of world unity in the face of cultural, political and social conflict. She believed that bringing women of diverse backgrounds together created opportunities for understanding and appreciating what makes us world citizens. (IWA’s) quest to put global understanding into action is inspired by Doe’s mantra, ‘to see the sacred in everyone.’”

McInerney says that through IWA she met women from each decade of life, all of whom “had something really cool to share.” She decided then, she says, that the 50s are the time to “do it.” From what I’ve seen of McInerney, she is on course to be a formidable champion in her own right, whose passion and commitment are propelling this rising star upward.

For more, womanscape.com.

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ited on a gorgeous Bedford property overlooking Bedford’s horse farms and open space. it sits perfectly on a private, level property to capture the first morning light and last evening sunshine. This impeccably renovated bedford village antique is equipped with all new appliances, new furnace, high-velocity A/c system. Sparkling new kitchen has radiant heat, Thermador appliances and Quartz Lg viatera countertops, stylish cabinets and a farmhouse sink. All the windows throughout are new energy efficient. The architectural detail of the house (and exquisite hardware) reflects an age of elegance yet totally updated for today’s living with an open floorplan to unite all rooms. walking distance to bedford village’s new independent film center with dining and shopping in the historic village. complete with a rocking-chair porch and 4-board country paddock. MLS#4921322 Price: $1,099,000

Tapestry Brick Flemish Cottage

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his stunning 1935 3 BR, 3.1 BTH tapestry brick Flemish cottage is sited on 3 park like acres. The lush landscape is a mix of lawn, colorful perennials, mature trees, and a brook fed pond. The home blends original details with state of the art updates. Additional features include a slate roof, 3 stone fireplaces, leaded glass windows, hardwood floors, wood beams, french doors and a gourmet kitchen. Exterior amenities consist of a 1 BR, 1BTH guest cottage, kidney shaped pool with waterfall, an expansive bluestone terrace, and a large hot tub. Whole house generator. MLS# 4839437 Price: $2,300,000

Windrush

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ocated on 24 acres in the estate area of Bedford Hills, “Windrush” is a stunning 1927 brick Georgian manor house inspired by the English residence, “cassiobury”. The ancestral home of the earls of essex , dating back to the 16th century. This gracefully restored 7BR, 5.1 Bath home recovered elements from the celebrated “cassiobury”. Authentic architectural components include reclaimed Tudor bricks, 18th century paneling, antique brass hardware,& millwork. Additional amenities include10 fireplaces, oak floors, french doors & a free floating staircase. The park like setting has a terrace, an enclosed courtyard, 2 gate houses, a 20’x40 pool, barn, 5 car garage, & frontage on the Beaver Dam River. The property is contiguous to the Beaver Dam Sanctuary, which has hiking & horseback riding trails. “Windrush” has something few other houses in NY State have, a tangible link w/Great Britain & one of its prominent historic houses! MLS#4839501 Price: $8,350,000 JULY 2019

o n t h e g r e e n , b e d f o r d, n e w yo r k • 9 1 4 . 2 3 4 . 3 6 4 2 • v i n w h i t. c o m

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Annie 72 Lamont.

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nnie

amont Businesswoman in her own right (and WAG's Most Fascinating Woman)

BY PHIL HALL PHOTOGRAPHS BY JOHN RIZZO

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But unlike a certain Chappaquabased former first lady of the United States, Lamont is not eager to follow her husband’s lead into elected office.

Annie Lamont.

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IT WAS THE EVENING OF NOV. 6, 2018, AND ANNIE LAMONT WAS ON PINS AND NEEDLES IN A HARTFORD HOTEL SUITE. HER HUSBAND, NED LAMONT, WAS THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY NOMINEE FOR GOVERNOR OF CONNECTICUT, BUT THE RACE BETWEEN HIM AND REPUBLICAN RIVAL BOB STEFANOWSKI WAS TOO CLOSE TO CALL. “It was a very long night,” she recalls, noting the final results took forever to be tabulated. “There were people who were confident we were going to win, but at one point we were down 50,000 votes. My husband, being my husband, went to bed at midnight and I, of course, I stayed up. At 3:30, I got a text from the campaign manager that said we’re good. I woke up Ned, and then in two hours Bob Stefanowski called to concede.”

The old adage of the third time being the charm rang true for Ned Lamont, a Greenwich business executive who unsuccessfully sought a U.S. Senate seat in 2006 and the 2010 Democratic nomination for governor to Dannel P. Malloy.

“I was so proud of him to take the risk again,” Annie Lamont says. “It is a weighty responsibility that my husband is up to and relishing.”

While Ned Lamont is in the political spotlight, Annie Lamont is a star in her own right within the business world. A threedecade veteran of the rough-and-tumble venture capital world, she joined Patricia Kemp and Andrew Adams in 2014 to launch Oak HC/FT, which focuses on early- to growth-stage companies in the health care information and financial technology industries. For Lamont, her attention is aimed at innovators who are making a bold yet holistic impact.

“I am looking at those who are eager to lower costs and improving care in health care,” she says. “I have to feel they are doing it because they care about the mission. You don’t want people coming into health care thinking they have some great scheme to make money off of — you’re dealing with people’s lives.

Fintech (financial tech) is the same characteristics. The exciting thing is that we have five times as many new companies on the fintech side than you had five years ago. It is extraordinary — the new version of online banking is beginning to take hold.”

Lamont first made her mark on the venture capital world in 1980 when she was Ann Huntress from Whitebay Fish, Wisconsin. She graduated from Stanford University in 1979 with a degree in political science and serendipitously wound up in the best cliché of them all: the right place at the right time.

“When I got out of Stanford, it was the dawning of the era of Silicon Valley,” she says. “In 1980, I joined Hambrecht & Quist, one of the leading investment banks/venture firms of that time in San Francisco, and I became incredibly excited about working with entrepreneurs. They envisioned the world the way they felt it should be and they took me on a fascinating journey.”

After starting that job, Lamont quickly crossed paths with someone who would do nothing less than change the world.

“The first entrepreneur that made an impact on me was Steve Jobs,” she says. “I carried his bags on the Apple IPO road show. He scared the hell out of me. When I learned he was a yearand-a-half older than me, I couldn’t believe it.

He had so much conviction and intensity that you literally felt the sparks off his body. I remember the head of the firm, George Quist, brought me in so he could have somebody else present when he was debating with Steve Jobs whether he should wear an Apple T-shirt and jeans or a suit during the IPO road show. I sat there while the two of them screamed at each other for one hour. And I have to say Steve gave in on that front. But he had that amazing ability to sell you anything and you just believed. He was messianic in that way.”

When a job offer came in from a venture capital firm in Westport, Lamont chose to leave Silicon Valley for the Gold Coast.

“Luckily, I moved in about six doors away from Ned Lamont, and the rest is history.”

In Connecticut, Lamont is not a full-time first lady — she estimates 80% of her time is involved with her business and 20% is spent with her husband. The Lamonts, who have three adult children living in New York City, are together at least one night per weekday and over the weekend, either at their Greenwich home or at the governor’s mansion in Hartford.

While Lamont acknowledges that she is a “sounding board” for her husband’s policy proposals, she does not act as a power behind the throne.

“We absolutely discuss everything, but he’s the decision maker and I’m not,” she says. “He bounces things off me and I know that helps.”

Still, that’s not to say she is an absentee first lady. During the first months of her husband’s administration, she has made her herself available as a brand ambassador for Connecticut’s importance as a business mecca.

“I feel like my life has been about supporting entrepreneurs and we are showing entrepreneurs what the state of Connecticut can do for growing business,” she says. “That feels like a very natural role for me: working with the angel community in Connecticut, engaging people, having the business community know we are business friendly. I am a lead cheerleader.”

But unlike a certain Chappaqua-based former first lady of the United States, Lamont is not eager to follow her husband’s lead into elected office.

“Definitely not,” she says with a laugh. “I’m definitely having enough fun as his sidekick and partner in all of this. I will do my part to support him, but I don’t see that role for me. I absolutely love, love, love what I’m doing.”

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ROSY OUTLOOK

BY GEORGETTE GOUVEIA

It’s almost closing time late on a Thursday afternoon at The Flower Bar in Larchmont and the customers are still coming in. As one of six staffers helps them, others finish lavender table arrangements for an event.

The steady hum is partly about Thursdays being half-price day at The Flower Bar, but mostly about the quality of the flowers. It’s something we recently experienced when the florist handed out free bouquets of sherbet-colored roses at Lord & Taylor in Eastchester as part of a Mother’s Day promotion.

The large blooms remained fresh for almost two weeks — a record for us.

“We feed our flowers a special nutrient mix,” says Nancy White, The Flower Bar’s confident owner. “It’s not just how the flowers are grown but when and how they’re being handled every step of the way.”

Being in deep lust with botanicals, we couldn’t resist buying a bouquet of pale pink-graduating-to-fuchsia roses. They were placed in a wet foam pouch that was placed in a plastic bag and only then wrapped in the traditional tissue and plastic and tied with a gray ribbon. (Colors are important at the shop, which is decorated in coral, the Pantone color of the year.)

When it comes to her fresh blossoms — White also has artificial flowers — the Larchmont resident thinks globally but acts locally.

“Our flowers come from all over the world, but I buy through local wholesalers,” says White, who carries such unusual blooms as South Africa’s dubium, or star of Bethlehem and parrot and peony tulips.

She also participates in the Netherlands’ Aalsmeer Flower Auction, as half of the world’s flowers come from that country. This gives her access to Israeli, Italian and South African blooms, among others.

Different countries have different floral strengths, of course. The best tulips? The Netherlands, naturally, White says. The best roses?

Ecuador. The best hydrangeas? Colombia. The best flowers overall? Japan, though the cost is prohibitive. Still, there are those willing to pay top dollar and those looking for a bargain on a Thursday. White serves them all, her business tripling since she bought the shop in 2011, with 50% call-ins, 40% walk-ins and 10% online customers. She’s also seen a boost since she was accepted into the Small Business Administration’s

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Nancy White. Photograph by Kelly Campbell.

Emerging Leaders Initiative, supporting entrepreneurs such as herself.

White’s success can be attributed to what she describes as a right brain/left brain mindset — a creative side and business acumen respectively, honed during what she calls the first act of her life, a career in sales and marketing.

Growing up in Larchmont, White loved to draw and sail. After graduating from Mamaroneck High School, she wanted an experience different from New York suburbia so she went off to Sweet Briar College, a women’s college in the foothills of Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains. White can’t say enough about the school.

“I was a printmaking student and it had a fabulous printmaking faculty. The facilities were amazing with 24/7 access to everything.”

Her Sweet Briar education placed her in the professional art world, producing catalogs at Sotheby’s auction house — 200 a year. (“I’m very organized,” she says.)

She’s also very savvy. Good with numbers — there’s that left-brain side — she tracked costs, saving Sotheby’s $3 million in 1982. However, she says, “I always had a dream of having my own magazine, which I would call IP for Infinite Possibilities.”

She would go on instead to run The Aircraft

Bulletin, serve as Northern advertising manager of Power & Motoryacht magazine and produce catalogs for The Royal Oak Foundation, the American Hospital of Paris and The Mount, author Edith Wharton’s Lenox, Massachusetts, home.

White started Showhouse magazine, which lasted five years. “We won all kinds of creative awards, but I was doing everything and I couldn’t outsource the advertising.” Independently, she sold ads for Sierra and Preservation magazines.

“The problem is no one has figured out how to make advertising money off the internet but Google.”

In the meantime, White had married, divorced and met her second husband and business partner, John Feldtmose, at the Larchmont Yacht Club.

Ten years ago, she decided she couldn’t see herself remaining in sales and marketing. She took one of Larchmont psychologist Jacqueline Plumez’s career counseling surveys, which underscored her creative and analytical complements.

“I’d always loved flowers,” she adds. White received a certificate from the New York Botanical Garden Floral Design program, which required an internship that she did at The Flower Bar. The rest is if not history then a story that keeps coming up roses.

For more, visit theflower-bar.com.

FASCINATING WOMEN If there’s one thing we quickly learned in the search for Westchester and Fairfield’s most fascinating women, it was that we were going to be hard put to keep the list to 40. And while the women who made the cut undeniably have a great deal in common – dedication, tenacity, self-belief, altruism and passion, no matter their field – what they have most in common is their diversity. Each is unique in her particular sphere.

Put another way: fabulous, fired-up and faithful = fascinating. Throw in a pinch of fun, because what is life without humor? and the whole “fascinating” personality of each of our exceptional women becomes a characteristic greater than its constituent parts. From dyedin-the-wool feminists to new converts to a cause; from longtime Westchester or Fairfield residents to recent arrivals; from politicos, corporate heads and legal eagles to writers, actors, artists and freethinkers – each has forged strong ties with WAG country.

So here it is: our list of 40 Fascinating Women, as diverse in our community as our community itself is diverse. To these women who give so much to the region and in doing so enrich the lives of all of us, WAG salutes you.

Carole Haarmann Acunto There’s not much that vivacious Tuckahoe High School graduate, producer Carol Haarmann Acunto, doesn’t know about good food and hospitality. She’s a publisher at Greenwich-based Food &… magazine, which explores the world of chefs and restaurants across the US and Europe. And as we learned in our interview with her in April WAG (see also Avril Graham), Greenwich-based Acunto is totally at home in the world of luxury too: as a cable and network TV producer, her upcoming show “Platinum Eye” will focus on “curated luxury.”

Georgina Bloomberg Susan Brown and Michael Bloomberg’s daughter, Georgina, looks as poised on a horse (she’s been riding since she was 4) as she does at the Met Ball — as elegant in Under Armour pants and T-shirt as in evening Prada and Jimmy Choos. An accomplished horsewoman, she’s also the owner of the equestrian team New York Empire, and between her horses and philanthropy has found time to co-author a clutch of young-adult novels about the equestrian show circuit. She divides her time between New York City and North Salem, where she lives with her son Jasper, 4, four rescue dogs, a rescue goat, two rescue mules and two mini-horses.

Ursula Burns The first African-American woman CEO of a Fortune 500 company, who calls New Canaan home, believes that education, along with courage and a strong work ethic, are the keys to making your dreams come true. Which is why, when she gets a moment away from her desk — she’s chairman and CEO of digital services provider giant, VEON, senior adviser to Teneo, a nonexecutive director of Diageo and a member of the board of directors of Uber — she works with organizations that help minorities and women get the education and self-respect they need to “someday pay it forward.”

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FASCINATING WOMEN

Silvia Baldini “Chopped” Champion in 2015 — she was the first woman in Connecticut to win the culinary TV competition — and co-founder of The Secret Ingredient Girls, an online store centering on women’s health, food, and cooking, Silvia Baldini has nothing if not energy. Founder of Strawberry and Sage, a think tank about food and a member of New York women’s Culinary Alliance, the Italian-born chef and mother of two who calls New Canaan home, is also a prolific food and recipe writer. Her cooking series on FabFitFun.com attracts more than 7 million viewers.

Elizabeth Bracken-Thompson Winning the “Miss Westchester” crown when she was 19 and competing as "Miss New Jersey" in the 1974 "Miss America" pageant, the perfectly-coiffed Elizabeth BrackenThompson has gone on to wear another crown. The Croton-On-Hudson resident, the undisputed queen of Westchester advertising, a founding partner of the public relations and advertising wizards, Thompson & Bender — think Mad Men and then fast forward 50 years. An original and inspired publicist, if there’s a Westchester community project Liz is not involved with, or a professional local board she has not sat on, we want to know about it.

Paula Callari Talk about girl power and being in the driver’s seat — when car connoisseur and businessman Felix Callari passed away in 2008, it was his daughters Paula and Flavia who stepped in to the breach. Now president of the hugely successful Callari Auto Group, with four dealerships in Fairfield County, when she’s not behind the wheel or selling cars, the “driven” Paula gives her time as a committee member of the Stamford Health Foundation Dream Ball and is also a committee member of GO Red Corporate Leadership Council of Fairfield.

Gina Cappelli It’s been 21 years since Mercy College graduate and Port Chester resident Gina Cappelli founded Formé Urgent Care and Wellness Center, single-handedly transforming urgent care by taking pressure off hospital emergency rooms, providing rehabilitation services and doing it all at a reasonable price.

Big on aesthetics such as trending vampire facials (hint: it’s all in the plasma), education on health and preventative care is also key at Formé centers, where — whether insured or not — no individual is ever turned away.

Glenn Close There’s life beyond Hollywood and Broadway for the acclaimed producer, singer, and actress, seven times Academy Awards nominee, Bedford Hills resident Glenn Close. (She’s also a winner of three Tony awards, three Golden Globes, and three Primetime Emmys). An active Democrat, Close has also contributed generously to the cause and in 2019 was declared one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time magazine.

FASCINATING WOMEN

Mary Calvi As the author of “Dear George, Dear Mary: A Novel of George Washington’s First Love,” a co-anchor on CBS2 and a winner of no less than 10 Emmy Awards, Mary Calvi has taken all the honors in writing and journalism.

But don’t think this historical novelist is all wrapped up in the past. As wife of Yonkers Mayor Mike Spano (she’s often referred to as the first lady of Yonkers) and with three children to keep her busy, Calvi is a hardworking and very contemporary mom.

Hillary Clinton Lawyer, New York senator and 2016 Democratic presidential candidate, Hillary Rodham Clinton’s no slouch when it comes to public life. But it’s not all presidential shenanigans and political slog for Chappaqua’s most well-known female resident — HRC has also written a very charming children’s book, “Dear Socks, Dear Buddy: Kids’ Letters to the First Pets,” featuring pictures of her own dogs. And when it comes to downtime, there’s nothing the former first lady of the U.S. likes more after a hard day’s work than to sink into the couch for an episode of “Love It Or List” on HGTV.

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Megan Fairchild A principal dancer with the New York City Ballet and winner of the prestigious Mae L. Wien award and a clutch of others, Megan Fairchild may dance like a dream but life for the Dobbs Ferry resident isn’t all adagios and arabesques. She took time out from the ballet in 2014 to star in “On The Town” (to prove to herself she could do it) and when she ends her dancing career in five years time as she intends doing, taking a French immersion course in Bordeaux, France, and attending Stern at NYU to get her MBA are on her bucket list.

Eileen Fisher The Irvington-based clothing designer and founder of her eponymous company, Eileen Fisher Inc. — 35 years old this year — has made a profound impact on the world of fashion. The simplicity of her designs has always won her plaudits. With 70% of the cotton used in her clothing certified organic, and a recycling scheme for “gently used” garments (some of the profits of which go to business grants for young women), Fisher has long been ahead of the sustainability game. Meditating and yoga keep this exceptional Westchester lady “anchored.”

Kirsten Gillibrand Although she no longer sleeps with a gun under her bed, the U.S. senator from New York, and former member of the House of Representatives has lost none of her feistiness. She has spoken out on sexual assault in the military and supports the abolition and replacement of the U.S. Immigration and Customs enforcement. In March she declared her candidacy for the Democratic nomination for U.S. president in the 2020 election. Home for this hardworking senator is upstate Brunswick, where she lives with British-born husband, Jonathan, and sons Theodore and Henry.

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FASCINATING WOMEN

Kendra Farn Former news anchor and CBS reporter Kendra Farn, who along with her husband, sports director, Noah Finz, calls Old Greenwich home, has had plenty of experience speaking on camera and in front of others. These days, the couple head up a highly successful video company, P Garyn Productions, producing captivating videos for businesses and nonprofits, but Kendra still finds time to volunteer at schools, churches and with civic groups.

Susan Fox The first female CEO of an acute-care hospital in the country, White Plains Hospital President Susan Fox, herself a resident of Larchmont, has made an enormous impact since taking the reins four years ago. Her achievements include expanding a cancer care clinical research program, orchestrating a $100 million upgrade to the hospital’s campus and implementing a vital affiliation with Montefiore Medical Center. She’s also one of the visionaries behind the new White Plains Family Health Center and Pediatrics Center.

Leslie B. Gordon CEO and President of Feeding Westchester, the Elmsford-based nonprofit whose mission is to end hunger throughout Westchester, is the highly personable but no-nonsense Leslie Gordon, a woman who has the knack of getting things done. Formerly at City Harvest in New York City, since taking over at Feeding Westchester, fourth-generation Tarrytown resident Leslie has doubled the food the organization distributes annually, from 30 million to 60 million pounds.

Hélène Grimaud Piano may be the first love of the scintillating Hélène Grimaud, who started playing when she was 9 and by the age of 12 had entered the Paris Conservatoire. But it was her interest in the social behavior of primates — and meeting one wolf in particular — which led to her founding the Wolf Conservation Center in South Salem. With a countenance as iridescent as her piano playing — listen to her interpretations of Brahms or Rachmaninov to be entirely transported — and her love for the natural world, “fascinating” barely begins to describe the remarkable Grimaud.

Audra McDonald The Croton-on-Hudson-based actress and singer with six Tonys to her name — and the first performer to win in all four acting categories — along with two Grammys and an Emmy, the multitalented McDonald refuses to be stereotyped. She was the first black actress to play traditionally white roles (such as Carrie Pipperidge in “Carousel”) and is equally at home in musicals, drama and even opera — although many who heard it claim that her greatest performance of all was when she sang “Smile” at Joan Rivers’ funeral in 2014.

FASCINATING WOMEN

Avril Graham The Scottish-born, polo-loving executive fashion and beauty editor of Harper’s Bazaar — she of the winning smile and translucent skin — is also a regular TV commentator and public speaker. Her upcoming show “Platinum Eye,” with Carole Haarmann Acunto — with whom she was profiled in April 2019 WAG — is slated to launch in the fall. When not writing about beauty or talking “luxe,” CosCob-based Avril waves the flag for the British Royal Family and Formula One racing, of which she is a keen follower.

Janet T. Langsam “Art for art’s sake but money for God’s sake” (as the line in the 10cc song goes,) might just be Janet Langsam’s mantra — the longserving ArtsWestchester CEO knows you can’t have one without the other. During the Koch administration she successfully used federal stimulus funds to help cultural institutions get through the city’s fiscal crisis, and during her time at the top in Westchester she has seen her organization grow nearly fourfold to a $4.5 million agency. A brilliant administrator, fundraiser and promoter of the arts, the Armonk-based Langsam is no mean artist herself — though when she finds time to paint is anybody’s guess.

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Linda McMahon A former Girl Scout who has lived in Greenwich for more than 35 years, Linda McMahon seems to have been well-prepared for anything and everything. As co-founder (with husband Vince) of Titan Sports Inc. (now WWE), McMahon has seen the company grow from a small regional business to a huge multinational corporation. After two years as head of the Small Business Administration in Washington, D.C., she stepped down in April to become chairman of America First Action, a pro-Trump Super PAC. McMahon’s support of the Special Olympics, arts education, the Make-a-Wish Foundation and the Starlight Foundation, to name but a very few, has earned this tireless grandmother of six, honors across the board.

Indra Nooyi Type ‘Indr’ into Google and the first response that pops up is Indra Nooyi — not surprisingly, perhaps, since Indian-born businesswoman Nooyi has been on the Forbes list of The World’s 100 Most Powerful Women multiple times, and was named the second mostpowerful woman on The Fortune list in 2015.

A former CEO and president of PepsiCo, the Greenwich resident and former all-girl rock band member currently serves on the board of directors of Amazon and in 2018 became the first independent female director of the International Cricket Council board. For relaxation, a spot of karaoke does the trick.

Fran Pastore The CEO and founder of the Women’s Business Development Council, Stamford resident and mother of two grown girls, is one of life’s givers, someone who — motivated by her own hardships as a young single mother — has done so much for women in Connecticut.

The WBDC offers classes, mentorships and financial training for women, helping them create a better life and be role models for their children. “It’s okay to depend on a man but not be dependent on a man,” says Pastore, wisely.

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FASCINATING WOMEN

Josie Natori The Philippines-born designer, who divides her time between New York City and Pound Ridge, is no stranger when it comes to awards, having received, among other prestigious gongs, the Order of Lakandula, one of the Philippines’ highest awards for civilians, and the Peopling of America award, given by the Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation. A former pianist who once considered a McDonald’s franchise as a career, Natori, who is known for her distinctive lingerie, sleepwear and home accessories, enjoys downtime with husband, Kenneth, and taking her grandkids to school each day before her own workday begins.

Pam Pagnani What public-spirited Greenwich resident Pam Pagnani doesn’t know about real estate, insurance and the law isn’t worth knowing.

Among many other distinguished positions, Pagnani has been COO for The Hartford, an insurance and investment company, and on the general counsel of Vanderbilt Properties, a real estate company, while currently serving on the board of directors of the Greenwich Land Trust. Her “day job,” however, is vice president of Sotheby’s International Realty, where she brings her experience, insight and formidable knowledge of the industry to bear on a daily basis.

Melissa Prospero If you want to learn about Italian wine there can’t be many regions better to visit than Montepulciano, Tuscany, just one of the places Melissa Prospero’s travels took her before she joined her parents’ Pleasantville winery more than a decade ago, and where she is now vice president. A great ambassador for the wine trade generally, Melissa travels all over the U.S. and internationally, buying grapes and promoting the various brands. The winery’s Sweet Melissa (red wine) is named for her, but as she says, “Every girl named Melissa can relate to the wine.”

Virginia Rometty The extraordinary Ginni Rometty worked her way up from systems engineer at IBM to become chair, president and CEO, the first woman to head the company. On the way up, the Armonk resident has served on the board of directors of AIG, and remains on the boards of overseers and board of managers of the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. Ranked in the top 10 of Fortune’s Most Powerful Women in Business for the last 10 years, on the international scene Rometty cochaired the Davos Economic Forum in 2017.

What’s that they say about all work and no play? This American powerhouse is a scratch golfer, as well as an avid scuba diver.

Rabbi Deborah Salomon The charismatic Deborah Salomon founded her religious school, Hebrew Wizards, in 2004, first operating out of her house and then a variety of rented locations until finally snagging a permanent home in a former rug showroom in Cos Cob in 2017. The school waves goodbye to traditional Jewish teaching methods, instead aiming to captivate the minds of its young students through song and dance, field trips and games. And the school is not limited to Jewish kids, but offers activities for children of all denominations. If anyone can bring communities together, it is surely Rabbi Deborah.

FASCINATING WOMEN

Trish Regan Author, television personality and Fairfield County resident Regan was a host for CNBC and Bloomberg Television before moving to Fox News, where she hosts “Trish Regan Primetime” for the Fox Business Network. A former Miss New Hampshire, the glamorous mother of three studied voice in the New England Conservatory of Music and has a Bachelor’s Degree in history from Columbia University. Her 2007 documentary “Against the Tide: The Battle for New Orleans,” won her a Best documentary Emmy Award nomination in 2007.

Avideh Safaei Executive director and financial adviser at J.P. Morgan Securities, a wealth management division of J.P. Morgan, mother of two and Scarsdale resident, Avi has been recognized

by Forbes as one of America’s Top Next-Gen Wealth Advisors. The highly approachable Avi was recently a guest speaker at a WAG spring event luncheon, where she encouraged more women to invest, but tempered her enthusiasm with a cautionary note about the high possibility of an upcoming recession.

Don’t say you haven’t been warned.

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Esmeralda Santiago The Puerto Rican writer, journalist and essayist, who lives in Katonah with her husband, the filmmaker Frank Cantor, is also a poet and editor. Her most well-known book is perhaps her 1993, biography, “When I Was Puerto Rican,” the first of a trilogy, which she followed up with “Almost a Woman” and “The Turkish Lover.” Alongside her work on behalf of public libraries and community-based programs for adolescents, the seemingly tireless Santiago is vociferous about Puerto Rico in the aftermath of Hurricane Irma, and is the founder of a shelter for battered women.

Martha Stewart The former model and stockbroker is living proof that a strict upbringing can be a very good thing — the all-round domestic goddess is said to be worth in excess of $600 million.

Schooled in perfectionism by her disciplinarian father, Stewart channeled the household skills acquired in childhood to become a one-woman, multimillion-dollar industry, across a host of disciplines. It’s hard to believe that nearly 30 years have passed since Martha Stewart Living first hit the stands, or that 15 years ago her conviction for obstruction of justice and lying to investigators led to a prison sentence. But that was in another country, as the saying (from Christopher Marlowe) goes, and Bedford resident Martha Stewart remains, indeed will always be, an American icon, representing self betterment and gracious living.

Julia Takeda It’s up, up and away with the Chappaqua native and Columbia graduate Julia Takeda, who founded Fly Louie, an affordable air service that uses private planes to create a faster alternative to commercial travel, after a phone call to a regular airline allowed her to spot a gap in the commercial airline market. But lest you think it’s all hot air, you should know that Fly Louie (named for Takeda’s Great Uncle Lou) is proving a very successful business, with more routes in the offing. “Fly Louie restores dignity to air travel,” says Takeda, something which passengers on flights from the private terminal at Westchester County Airport to Nantucket and Pittsburgh — and vice versa — will undoubtedly attest.

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FASCINATING WOMEN

Bonnie Saran If you want to eat out in Mount Kisco, you’ll be hard pressed not to end up in a Bonnie Saranowned restaurant. The Indian-born chef, who calls Beford Hills home, and whose motto is — or was —“keep it small, keep it all,” is now the owner of four “Little” eateries on East Main Street, as well as Little Mumbai Market in Pleasantville, while the just-opened branch of Little Drunken Chef in White Plains has moved Saran’s culinary compass south. The easy-going, self-effacing Saran — who counts Martha Stewart and the Clintons as customers — takes inspiration from her late father, whose last words to her she has tattooed on her forearm: “Let no-one steal your dreams.”

Andrea Stewart-Cousins Most people know Andrea Stewart-Cousins, mother and grandmother, is an educator, politician and Democratic Party member, but only some people know she was the first female Senate majority leader and the first woman (and first African-American woman) in New York to lead a conference for the legislature of the state. Even fewer know that she was an early proponent of gay marriage, and hardly anyone at all knows that the Yonkers native and resident had her first child at 19 and as a single mom still managed to earn a college degree.

Maggie Timoney Last year Connecticut-based Maggie Timoney became the first female executive to lead a major U.S. beer company when she was named CEO of Heineken U.S.A. A former Iona basketball star (she graduated in 1989 and was inducted into the college’s Goal Club Hall of Fame in 2001) the single-minded Timoney, who is Irish by birth and the mother of two teenage boys, will now be concentrating her efforts on maintaining and increasing Heineken’s annual U.S. revenue, which is in the region of $7 billion, as she continues to fight alcohol abuse at home and abroad. Who wouldn’t say sláinte to that?

Emily Weiss It’s amazing what you can do between the hours of 4 and 8 a.m. That was the time during which Vogue styling assistant, Emily Weiss, who grew up in Wilton, worked on Into the Gloss, a blog about women’s beauty products and regimes that launched in 2010. Three years later, she raised $2 million in seed funding to launch Glossier.com, an e-commerce platform.

After three further rounds of funding, Glossier — which has expanded to include shower gel, body lotion and fragrances among other products — is today valued at $1.2 billion, and Weiss no longer works at Vogue.

Vanessa Williams The first African-American Miss America — actress, singer and fashion designer —Vanessa Williams never seems to stand still. Her second album, “The Comfort Zone,” sold 2.2 million copies in the U.S. when it was first released and has since been certified triple platinum; she has had a successful career in television; co-authored a book with her mother, Helen, which discuses the struggles of her childhood; launched a clothing line, V. by Vanessa Williams and is involved with a swath of good causes. In 2018, the indefatigable Chappaqua resident announced she was working on a new studio album.

FASCINATING WOMEN

Yonni Wattenmaker Executive director of the Greenwich-based Breast Cancer Alliance since 2011 and a member of the National Council for Arts & Sciences at The George Washington University, Yonni Wattenmaker insists that her son Max, now aged 19, comes first. But the tireless Wattenmaker is still utterly devoted to the BCA cause, which includes supporting scientists looking for cures, funding fellowships for young men and women to become breast surgeons, and, of course, improving survival rates and quality of life for breast cancer patients.

Fran Weissler With seven Tonys and four drama Desk Awards under their belt, you’d think National Theatre Company founders Barry and Fran Weissler would be sitting pretty. They’re not.

Their production of “Chicago” ran for 20 years in London’s West End, ending its run only in January this year, while their Broadway musical, “Waitress,” transferred to London in February and is playing to packed houses.

“Barry is really the driving force behind our business,” the then-octogenarian Fran, who has a home in Waccabuc, told The New York Times in a 2014 interview. “I work in creative.”

With a partnership that has lasted more than 50 years, she can say that again. Broadway royalty.

JULY 2019

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HOME & DESIGN

THE WOMEN OF 9TH STREET

BY LAURA JOSEPH MOGIL While it’s only July, some things are worth waiting a few months for. One such example is the upcoming exhibition, “Sparkling Amazons: Abstract Expressionist Women of the 9th Street Show” at the Katonah Museum of Art. Opening on Oct. 6 and continuing through Jan. 26, 2020, “Sparkling Amazons” will present the often overlooked contributions by female artists to the Abstract Expressionist movement and the significant role these women played as bold innovators within the New York School during the 1940s and ’50s.

Michele Wije, the show’s curator and associate curator at the Katonah museum, says, “Our staff was looking at past exhibitions that changed the course of art history and one of the main ones in America was the '9th Street Show,' which was a kind of ‘Salon des Refusés’ for New York artists who were being shut out of exhibition spaces in the uptown galleries and whose artwork was not being purchased by museums.”

Wije said the museum decided to give their upcoming exhibition a unique spin by focusing on the 12 women featured in “9th Street Show,” which took place in 1951 and was organized by then fledgling gallerist Leo Castelli.

“This is the first time works by these revolutionary women will be brought together since the “9th Street Show” took place 68 years ago,” Wije says. “Some 30 works of art, alongside documentary photography, have been selected to capture an important moment in the history of Abstract Expressionism and the women who contributed to it.”

At the time, the women were reputedly referred to as “Sparkling Amazons,” a tongue-in-cheek designation that underscored the patronizing attitude of the time. Wije believes these women would neither have viewed themselves as “amazons” nor as feminists. “They simply worked and lived as artists, pursuing their professions with the same dedication as their male counterparts even though the social stakes were much higher for them at the time,” Wije says.

Among the most well-known artists in the museum exhibition is Helen Frankenthaler. “Frankenthaler was the youngest of the women artists in the ‘9th Street Show’ and became most famous for the invention of stain painting, a technique of diluting her paint so that it saturates the raw canvas. She had seen the gestural paintings of Jackson Pollock and took it one step further,” Wije says.

Among Frankenthaler’s works in the show is “Mount Sinai” (1956), a piece on loan from the nearby Neuberger Museum of Art in Purchase. “This piece shows the transition Frankenthaler was making from a painted to a saturated canvas. If you look at it very carefully, you can see both of those elements at 90

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Grace Hartigan (19222008). "Showcase," 1955.

Oil on canvas, 69 3/16 x 80 ¼ in. (175.7 x 203.8 cm).

Metropolitan Museum of Art. Purchase, Roy R. and Marie S. Neuberger Foundation Inc. Gift, 1956 © Estate of Grace Hartigan

work,” Wije says. Also included in the show is Frankenthaler’s “Seascape with Dunes” (1962). Inspired by a trip to Cape Cod and awash in beige, red, blue and black, the artwork is a great example of stain painting.

Another highly recognized artist in the Katonah show is Elaine de Kooning, wife of the Abstract Expressionist Willem de Kooning. Wije says, “Elaine de Kooning worked on both the heroic scale that male artists were working at but also in this very intimate scale.”

The show presents a very small, untitled work from 1949, which measures approximately 10 x 8 inches and is purely abstract alongside her huge mural titled “Bull Fight” (1959), which is the largest in a series of paintings and measures over 6 feet high by 10 feet wide.

“While it’s an abstraction, it’s almost a little figural because if you look very closely you can see the bull,” Wije says. She adds that the choice of bright hues in “Bull Fight” can be attributed to the time de Kooning spent in New Mexico, where the light is completely different and the vivid nature of being out west informed de Kooning’s color choices.

Many visitors will also recognize the work of Lee Krasner, who has three pieces in the exhibition. One of the works is ‘The Seasons,’ which is on loan from the Whitney Museum of American Art. “This painting is the culmination of a series of seven that Krasner did called ‘The Earth Green’ and was painted in 1957 after her husband Jackson Pollock’s death,” Wije says. “It’s a really tremendous painting, both in terms of its scale (92 ¾” x 203 7/8”) and it’s subject matter. You can see that it’s very lyrical, sexual and female in the way that evokes a confirmation of life coming out a very grief stricken period.”

Also part of the “Sparkling Amazons” show is a work by the esteemed artist Joan Mitchell called “Slate” (1959). A native of Chicago, Mitchell came to New York and became very involved with the Abstract Expressionist group in the city before moving to Paris. “She, too, abstracted things in her canvases. You can see the way she has made large, gestural marks on the canvas and allowed the paint to drip,” Wije says.

Grace Hartigan is another important Abstract Expressionist painter who has been selected for the show. At a young age, Hartigan was singled out by prominent art critics such as Clement Greenberg. Her piece “East Side Sunday” (1956) was bought by the Brooklyn Museum very early on in her career. According to Wije, it is part of a series by the artist that was broadly known as the “City Life” paintings and was based on pictures taken by the artist from her windows on Essex Street in Manhattan.” “‘East Side Sunday’ is an abstracted version of a fruit vendor that used to work down below the artist’s apartment. Overall it’s an abstract image, but Hartigan was still very much rooted in the real world in her artwork. She really went back and forth between doing figural painting and purely abstract works,” Wije says.

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Helen Frankenthaler (19282011). "Seascape with Dunes," 1962. Oil on canvas, 70 x 140 in. (177.8 x 355.6 cm).

Grey Art Gallery. New York University Art Collection. Gift of the artist, 1963.2 . ©Helen Frankenthaler Foundation/ Artists Rights Society (ARS).

Other female artists in the show did not receive as much critical acclaim, yet were very important in the Abstract Expressionist movement. Works chosen for the show range from the plaster sculptures of Austrian-born artist Day Schnabel to the surrealistinspired paintings of Swiss-born artist Sonja Sekula. Other unsung artist in the exhibition include Perle Fine, Anne Ryan, Yvonne Thomas, Jean Steubing and Guitou Knoop.

“These women have been overlooked and undervalued as contributors to art history, a fact that this exhibition addresses,” Wije says. “Everyone knows who the famous women of Abstract Expressionism were, but it was interesting for me to tease out what these other women were making and how they fit into the context of the female artists that we know so much about.”

For more, visit katonahmuseum.org.

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HOME & DESIGN

DESIGN INFLUENCES

BY CAMI WEINSTEIN

Design is not merely decorative. Designers are influenced by many things. But the spark of creating is often started by the need to solve a problem.

Designers have the ability to think in innovative ways and to see situations differently and provide solutions. Designers are responsible for almost everything we do and touch today. There are product designers who create everything in our lives from fashion, furniture, fabric, cars, household tools, phones and computers.

Many are overlooked because the items they design are not so glamorous but they are important to making our daily lives easier.

As an interior designer, clients not only come to me to design a beautiful space for them but often to solve a design problem. An awkward, poorly functioning kitchen or living space needs to be addressed before you can begin to decorate.

Voila — a beautiful beautiful powder, left, was created from an ugly laundry room (inset).

Photographs courtesy Cami Weinstein.

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Finding storage solutions in small spaces is a function that often needs to be solved. How do we make these spaces beautiful and functional? Many times thinking outside the box and looking at creating design solutions from a different perspective takes the living space to another level.

For example, a client had a laundry room next to her family room on the first floor, but she really needed a powder room. We moved the laundry to an unused office off the master bedroom and put in a delightful, spacious powder room in its place. Not only did we create a beautiful room, but we solved the problem of needing a powder room on the first floor.

To start solving these problems I start by asking what are the end goals for this space. Who is going to use the space? What feeling should the space evoke? How does the client like to live? Are there storage concerns, do the clients entertain a lot? Who lives in the house? Are there pets? What colors do they like?

Often the space is influenced by the architecture; is it modern, traditional, transitional? Can we push the architecture into a more modern look? Sometimes it’s the complete opposite, can we bring a space back to its original bones and then build on that? Once we determine the groundwork we can set the parameters and then build upon that foundation to create the home that you really love living in.

When visiting homes, I am often surprised at the selections that were made. Poorly scaled furniture and carpets, artwork not hung correctly, lack of window treatments or poorly made ones, bland paint colors and fabrics. All of this adds up to uncomfortable living. We feel better in beautiful surroundings that function.

As a designer I am influenced by my surroundings, travel, art, architecture, gardens, nature and other designers who work in different mediums. A professor once said to me, “Everything that you learn no matter how unrelated to your career can be processed and distilled into your own personal work and over time something that you learned long ago can be applied to a current problem-solving situation.” I did not quite understand that at 18, but I certainly understand that now.

Inspiration is abstract. That concept is often the springboard for my work. When I am starting a new project so many ideas start to pour into my creative process and occupy my thoughts as I sift through various creative solutions. Sometimes the solutions are not practical, but this tangle of thoughts and ideas bounce around for a while before I even start to sketch out the options. When that spark and clarity hits the practical and beautiful then the design falls into place.

It is a complex process to explain but talking with other designers that spark and inspiration is a huge part of the design process.

Some influential women designers and artists include: architect and artist Maya Lin; architect Zaha Hadid; furniture and product designers Ray Eames and Florence Knoll; jewelry designer Paloma Picasso; and fashion designers Coco Chanel and Miuccia Prada. All of these women created many beautiful objects and not only made or make life decorative but functional.

We often don’t realize that the everyday objects we use were often designed by designers who thought about how we were going to use that product. And how it could be made to be both functional and beautiful. All of us should live life beautifully. Take the time to add well-designed beauty to your surroundings and life. It doesn’t necessarily mean huge costs to do that. It could be as simple as garden-picked flowers in a beautiful vase on a kitchen table.

For more, visit camidesigns.com.

I FEEL SO POWERLESS. WE HAVE TO WATCH HER EVERY MINUTE. FAMILY AND FRIENDS STOPPED COMING AROUND. HE KEEPS SAYING: “THERE’S NOTHING WRONG WITH ME.” IT’S DESTROYING OUR FAMILY. I FEEL SO GUILTY WE HAVE TO MOVE HER INTO A HOME. IT’S SO HARD TO CARE FOR SOMEONE WHO’S MEAN TO YOU. HE HIDES THINGS ALL THE TIME. I’M GRIEVING THE LOSS OF SOMEONE WHO’S STILL ALIVE. WE DON’T EVEN KNOW WHERE TO START.

LIVING WITH FTD IS HARD. LIVING WITHOUT HELP IS HARDER. THERE’S COMFORT IN FINDING OTHERS WHO UNDERSTAND. WE FINALLY FOUND A DOCTOR WHO GETS IT. I GOT SO MUCH ADVICE FROM OTHER CAREGIVERS. UNDERSTANDING MORE HELPS ME DEAL WITH HER SYMPTOMS. SEEING THAT OTHERS MADE IT THROUGH, I KNEW I COULD TOO. WE HONOR HIM BY ADVOCATING FOR A CURE. NOW I’M BETTER AT ASKING FOR HELP. NO MATTER HOW BAD IT GETS, WE KNOW WE’RE NOT ALONE. It can feel so isolating and confusing from the start: Just getting a diagnosis of FTD takes 3.6 years on average. But no family facing FTD should ever have to face it alone, and with your help, we’re working to make sure that no one does.

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HOME & DESIGN

Wendell Castle's unique chair, "Tell the Trees," 2013, sold $175,000.

Courtesy Rago Auctions.

SITTING PRETTY

BY JENNIFER PITMAN

The works of Wendell Castle (1932-2018), one the foremost names in American studio craft furniture, are viewed as increasingly significant in 20th-century design. With Castle’s recent death, the increase in value of his works has accelerated; examples of his organic and sculptural furniture have recently achieved $380,000 at auction.

Kansas-born Castle enjoyed a prolific career spanning more than 50 years. He studied industrial design and sculpture at the University of Kansas before moving to Rochester in the early 1960s. He set up a studio nearby in Scottsville, and taught at the School for American Craftsmen at the Rochester Institute of Technology.

Castle had a clear vision of how his work could be distinguished from his contemporaries. He knew both sculptors and furniture makers, but saw a niche in combining the two. Castle said “I wanted my work to have the same qualities as sculpture, and be accepted on the same terms. I gave up making sculpture in 1962 to devote myself full time to making furniture …

I felt furniture of a certain type is the same as sculpture, just as important in every way.” And, indeed, it is seen as such. Today, Castle’s work can be found in more than 40 museums worldwide, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

Success and recognition came early to Castle. In 1964, his Music Rack 96

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was selected for the American section at the 1964 Milan Triennale, a seminal event in the design world. The work was inspired, in part, by the music stands of artist and furniture maker Wharton Esherick (1887-1970).

Esherick is considered the father of studio craft and the only studio furniture maker by whom Castle was apparently influenced. Jad Attal, Rago’s Modern Furniture Design specialist, has likened Castle’s work to a musician who reinterprets a genre of music – the result was a new expression of craft.

While the sculptural aspect of Castle’s work sets it apart from most of his woodworking contemporaries, Castle’s also challenged convention by opting for new techniques and materials. His oeuvre differed greatly from other major craft woodworkers, such as George Nakashima, who embraced centuries-old woodworking techniques and showcased wood’s natural properties such as its fissures and free edges. Instead, Castle questioned even the basic structure of a piece of furniture, asking, for example, why a chair leg had to rest on the floor. Could it not extend from a wall instead?

Castle developed a stack-laminating process by gluing layers of wood into a rough shape, then carving it back to its finished form. This process freed Castle from the limitation of size of a piece of timber and the strength of the laminate meant that and Castle could create shapes that were impossible when using a block of wood. Late in his career, Castle again used new technology, employing 3-D scanning and computerized milling to reimagine old forms and to create laminated works with much greater accuracy, sophistication and scale.

Castle was likewise drawn to the possibilities of fiberglass technology in the 1960s, creating furniture and lighting in brightly colored pop art hues. His aptly named Molar chairs were an immediate success in the design world and remain highly collectible today. Later in his career, Castle returned to fiberglass, this time applying automobile paint or gold or silver leaf to the fiberglass base, the latter creating an ironically luxurious finish.

Trompe l’oeil sculpture and an extensive foray into post modernism were other facets of Castle’s career. Running through it all was Castle’s exceptional workmanship.

Castle promoted his work in a manner more akin to a fine artist, again setting him apart from his contemporaries. Throughout his career, Castle was represented by galleries, presenting his work in gallery settings and museum exhibitions. He focused his production on signed limited editions and even documented his works in a catalogue raisonné, which was most unusual in studio furniture production.

In today’s market, Castle’s fiberglass pieces are the most accessible of his works, available in the low $1,000s. Smaller sculptural works – mirrors, boxes, and other conventional forms – and Castle’s post-modernist works are the next step up in value. The more unconventional, sensual, and provocative the works are, the greater their value. Attal sees continued demand for Castle’s work. His easily recognizable style, continued gallery representation in the primary market, and the thorough documentation of his works gives buyers a high level of confidence in the authenticity of his pieces. All these factors combine to sustain strong value for Castle’s works in the secondary market.

For further reading: “Wendell Castle, A Catalogue Raisonné, 1958-2012”

by Emily Evans Eerdmans.

Jennifer Pitman writes about the modern design, jewelry and fine art she encounters as Rago Auction’s senior account manager for Westchester and Connecticut. For more, contact jenny@ragoarts.com or (917) 745-2730.

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FLORENCE KNOLL: DESIGNING WOMAN

Florence Knoll’s work was pioneering. Here, a woven cane door credenza. Courtesy Skinner Inc.

BY KATIE BANSER-WHITTLE It’s fair to say that Florence Knoll was the most influential figure in corporate interior design in America from the 1940s to the 1970s. The principles she championed created the efficient, open-plan, user-friendly environment that characterizes most office environments, and many homes, today.

Long before the term “holistic” became a buzzword, Knoll pioneered the concept of total design. She created environments that integrated architecture, furnishings, lighting and textiles. She herself designed many of the elements, especially furniture, that were needed to fulfill her concept of how an architectural space should function.

When Knoll died in January of this year, she left a legacy of functional beauty that has been called “humanized modernism.” The spaces she created grew out of a concern for logical problem solving: What is the best way to use limited square footage? How can architecture and furnishings be integrated in a seamless whole?

Knoll’s imaginative, superbly practical answers to design dilemmas were rooted in her widely varied and often unconventional life experiences. Born Florence Schust in Michigan in 1917, she was orphaned at 14. Starting at the progressive art-oriented Cranbrook schools, she furthered her formal education studying architecture at Columbia University, the Architectural Association in London and the Illinois Institute of Technology.

Along the way, she made friends with and learned from the leading figures of what is called today mid-century modern. Knoll was once a summer houseguest of architect Eero Saarinen and his wife in Finland, where Eero tutored her in architectural history. Mies van der Rohe was one of her professors and a lifelong influence on her approach to design. Marcel Breuer and Walter Gropius connected her to the Bauhaus movement.

Knoll’s primary interest throughout her long career was architecture. She rejected the label “interior decorator,” at that time primarily thought of as a genteel and barely serious occupation for socially connected women. Knoll described herself as an interior space planner, a professional specialist in creating a total workplace environment.

In 1941, she was working in the New York office of architectural firm Harrison & Abramovitz when she met a young furniture manufacturer named Hans Knoll. She persuaded Knoll that even in the difficult wartime economy he could expand his business by working with architectural firms and providing design 98

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services, as well as furniture, to clients.

Florence joined the Knoll Furniture Co. full time in 1943. She quickly established the innovative Knoll Planning Unit, the influential design service that transformed the American office from ponderous Victorian dark wood desks and tables to light-filled spaces with ergonomic task-oriented pieces.

One of her most influential innovations in the Planning Unit has become standard in the design field. The paste-up, as Knoll conceived it, was a flat plan of a proposed space that showed clients the proposed architectural space, renderings of the furniture and fixtures, and actual samples of the fabrics, woods and finishes that would be used.

Knoll Associates was a team effort on several levels; Florence married Hans in 1946 and became a full partner. The furniture designers worked closely with clients and architects to create the modern, efficient corporate spaces required by the booming post-World War II economy.

When Hans Knoll was killed in a car crash in 1955, Florence Knoll carried on as president and expanded the company’s success. It was an extraordinary accomplishment, especially in an era and in a field — industrial design — where women were rare.

Many of the iconic Knoll furniture designs were created by people Knoll knew from her Cranbrook days, including Harry Bertoia and Ralph Rapson.

Van der Rohe, Jens Risom and Saarinen were among the many towering figures of the International modern style whose designs were produced by Knoll.

It is a tribute to Florence Knoll’s genius that many of Knoll’s sleek, geometric tables, desks, sofas, chairs and other seating pieces are still in production today.

Vintage examples from her years at Knoll Associates bring premium prices.

Knoll’s comfortable, practical forms that combined spare lines with rich textures and colors was influential far beyond such famous corporate projects as the Connecticut General Life Insurance building in Bloomfield and the CBS headquarters in New York.

After her retirement from Knoll Associates in 1965, she worked with many private clients and had the satisfaction of seeing her designs and design philosophy adopted nationwide in private homes as well as public places.

For more, contact Katie at kwhittle@skinnerinc.com or call 212-787-1114.

And visit Skinnerinc.com to explore available 20th-century design.

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time of transition

BY MARY SHUSTACK PHOTOGRAPHS BY BOB ROZYCKI

FOR ALL SHE HAS GOING ON, CARLA GOLDBERG IS SURPRISINGLY CALM, NOT TO MENTION DECIDEDLY UPBEAT.

Artist Carla Goldberg’s retrospective includes this work from her “Bodice of the Goddess” series.

WAG is catching up with the Hudson Valley mixed-media artist and independent curator on a recent afternoon as she is putting the finishing touches on her latest exhibition at BAU (Beacon Artist Union).

She pauses from hanging the last works at the gallery — and sweeping the floor — to chat with us about “Ten Years Gone,” which will open the following day to continue through July 7.

It’s a solo exhibition that offers a glimpse into her work at BAU, specifically celebrating her decade of experimentation.

It’s a bit of a career milestone, a stopping point to both look back and look ahead. And it also coincides with a time of transition for the artist first profiled here in June of 2015.

Goldberg, a Palm Springs, California, native who has made the Hudson Valley home since the early 1990s, is also finalizing the relocation of her home — and studio.

With the younger of two daughters graduating high school, Goldberg and her husband’s empty-nester move takes them from Putnam County’s Nelsonville to Beacon, just a short jaunt up the Hudson River into Dutchess County.

The change, though, is not simply a matter of a few miles; it will challenge Goldberg’s longtime way of working.

“I miss having the whole third floor of the Victorian,” Goldberg says of early days in her new 11-by-11 foot studio. “It’s getting used to a new space.”

But, those who know Goldberg know she is all about mixing things up — evidenced in her unique sculptural paintings and drawings on Plexiglas.

As a member artist of BAU, she has mixed things up every year. Like all BAU members, Goldberg has the opportunity to present an annual exhibition both of her own work and of her own choosing, a broad freedom that has allowed her to experiment.

As she says in the advance materials for “Ten Years Gone,” that freedom has found

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Carla Goldberg pictured within “Ten Years Gone,” an exhibition of her work that continues through July 7 at BAU gallery in Beacon.

her “chasing ideas that culminate into one whole new series per year.”

And, she adds, “It’s the process that is important to my constant need to reinvent.”

As she tells us, the gallery supports the idea of “every year being able to experiment with no other restrictions.”

It can result in singular efforts or signature series such as her “sea foam” sculptural drawings; her designer-friendly “ripple effect” panels, a popular commission (“That series, it pays for all of my other work,” she notes); and “aqua marine.”

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“I always present new work here,” she says of BAU. As she walks WAG through this latest show, she traces her own development touching on themes, methods and materials while sharing behind-thescenes stories of the works. She sees both an evolution — and a common thread in the theme of water, an enduring inspiration.

In fact, our first feature on Goldberg explored her series directly inspired by visits to the Connecticut coast, work completed through a Connecticut Sea Grant awarded as a way to encourage healthy coast and marine ecosystems.

Even the way Goldberg has written of her signature ink-and-resin method acknowledges the influence: “The fluidity of line meandering through deep layers of watery, pooling resin is my visual language.”

Looking again over her collection on this day in Beacon, she observes the way that has played out over the years.

“It just keeps getting more and more in light and shadow. …Water holds it all together.”

How people react to — and interact with — her art is important.

“While I’m gallery-sitting for my shows, I tend to not tell the people right away it’s my work,” she says with a sly smile. That’s the best way, she says, to really gauge what is connecting with people.

While the region clearly means home to Goldberg, she exhibits internationally with works in

permanent collections in museums and public, corporate and private spaces across the globe.

Travel, nature — and even studio “accidents” — continually inspire her.

“You never know where a kernel of a new idea is going to happen.”

Goldberg seems to be savoring this chance to look back — but also constantly looks ahead, supporting the next generation of creativity. She shares that she is mentoring a young Beacon-based artist, Lukas Milanak, whose “The Institute of Paraphysics” is on view in The Beacon Room at BAU. Goldberg also speaks warmly of her two daughters, both creative young women — the older is studying special effects makeup, while the younger will soon pursue her writing career at college. Though addressing their career paths, Goldberg’s words seem to reflect her own life and art, as well.

“It’s really important to support your passion.

If you really do what you love, you will find a way to live.”

“Ten Years Gone” continues through July 7 in the Main Gallery at BAU (Beacon Artist Union), a gallery at 506 Main St. in Beacon. The schedule continues with Elizabeth Arnold’s “Plant Spirit Medicine” and Sam Beste’s “Aeromantic,” which open July 13 with a 6 to 9 p.m. reception and continue through Aug. 3. For more, visit carlagoldberg.com or baugallery.org.

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INTO THE HILLS

TRAVEL

BY JEREMY WAYNE

Sardinia’s Costa Smeralda, or emerald coast, was developed and brought to prominence 60 years ago by Prince Karim Aga Khan.

It conjures up images of superyachts, supermodels, supermoguls and minor European royalty — a saturnalia of summer decadence, which can be yours too, albeit at eye-watering prices.

But there is another Sardinia, a more authentic, more intense Sardinia, deep in the hinterland of this ravishing Italian island, the second-largest island in the Mediterranean. The Med may sparkle tantalizingly in the far distance as I leave Olbia Airport and hit the main highway, but I’m ignoring signs to the coast, heading inland instead, to the rugged hills and thick forests of the Barbagia region, a 90 minutes’ drive away.

For once in my life (to partly echo Stevie Wonder), I feel I am not going to miss the ocean.

My home for the next three days is Su Gologone, a hotel named for the celebrated spring nearby. Established in 1967 by Pasqua and Peppeddu Palimmodo, it is now owned and run by their daughter, Giovanna, who apart from being a gifted hotelier is also a very talented and recognized artist and a woman who is passionate about preserving the traditions of her native Barbagia.

While it is not luxurious in the regular sense, Su Gologone exudes old-fashioned hospitality and good breeding. It is warm

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and welcoming and supremely comfortable, not merely a hotel but also a living museum and art gallery. Giovanna’s art is everywhere, but Su Gologone is a showcase too for other Sardinian artists and artisans. Wandering the hotel’s winding indoor corridors and outdoor paths, there are vivid ceramics, porcelain figurines, woven textiles, embroidered cushions and paintings all over. There’s also a unique collection of dolls (some, it must be said, a little spooky), dressed in local costume, hidden away in alcoves. In the hotel’s dedicated art center, guests can learn traditional local skills, such as embroidery and pottery, from the artists in residence, while for the cack-handed or just plain lazy like me, the ceramics and soft furnishings made in the craft studios can all be bought in the studio shop.

As much as a hotel, too, Su Gologone is a state of mind, a place of refuge, where life is a little calmer, “experience” more real, your senses somehow heightened. That’s why it has become a place of near-pilgrimage not only for artists, but also archaeologists, geologists, hikers, food lovers and just plain tourists, all with something to discover in these magic mountains. And that’s why if you are minded to visit, especially in high season, I have two words of advice for you: book early.

My bedroom, number 40, was utterly charming, brimming

Swimming pool at Su Gologone.

Photograph by Jeremy Wayne.

Baking carasau at Il Nido del Pane Photograph by Merel van Poorten.

Bedroom at Su Gologone.

Photograph by Merel van Poorten.

with light, a small iron-framed “letto matrimoniale” (double bed) made up with cool linen sheets and a locally woven bedspread in cheery blue and white. A small balcony overlooked the village rooftops toward the valley. The bathroom, by contrast, was fascinatingly hideous, by which I mean no discourtesy — it’s well known that the Italian aesthetic flies out the window when it comes to bathrooms. The Jacuzzi bath and shower in a molded plastic compartment resembled some kind of particularly sadistic airport scanner, while the bathrobes were a dispiriting shade of industrial blue. Nevertheless, the bathroom was spitspot clean and the hot water ran properly hot. More to the point I hadn’t come to Su Gologone to mooch around the bathroom in a towelling robe. There were hills to climb, natural wonders to behold, local wine to chug.

One morning I set off with Gianni, a local guide, for a hike in the Supramonte, the dramatic mountain range of central Sardinia. The ground was stony, the air was fresh and the views were dizzying. Over a rustic lunch of prosciutto, salami and tomatoes, roughly cut up with a penknife and washed down with lashings of local Cannonau red wine, Gianni told me how only 80 years ago the entire area was forest, the trees cut down for timber for use as sleepers on the Italian railways. Another morning, we walk to the great spring of Su Gologone itself, just a few hundred yards from the hotel, where water gushes out from a deep, vertiginous ravine. It’s a mystical place, which seems as old as time. In the early evening in the local bar in Oliena, Abba blaring their greatest hits, we knocked back shots of brandy with a handful of shepherds who, discovering I was a foreigner,

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refused to let me pay for a single drink. (Only Italian shepherds, by the way, can wear white chinos with pink or purple Ralph Lauren polo shirts and still be taken seriously.)

Back at Su Gologone, gastronomy looms large. In the hotel bars, the olives are so fresh they almost squelch. I eat a bowl of them before dinner, sipping a local white Vermentino so dry it squeaks. In the rustic-chic main dining room, locals pour in on Friday and Saturday evenings to rub shoulders with hotel guests. Pan Brattau, crisp, pizza-type bread, spread with tomato and topped with a fried egg and pecorino, is a dish you could eat as your last meal and die happy. Next up are antipasti of fried offal, far more delicious than they might sound, and pasta dishes like culurgiones, ravioli filled with ricotta. The house speciality is porceddu (suckling piglet), spit-roasted before your eyes on an open grill in the corner of the restaurant.

Alternatively, if at dusk you climb what seems like half a mountain, ascending via steps and steep terraces, you will eventually come to Il Nido del Pane, another of the hotel’s restaurants (though restaurant seems too formal a word for this outdoor space.) Here, you sit in an enchanted sloping courtyard under the stars, while two ladies of advanced years in full local dress bake traditional carasau bread in a woodburning oven, and you feast from a groaning buffet of typical local dishes. Dinner goes on long into the perfumed, velvety Sardinian night.

On my last day, after an indolent morning spent painting, and later swimming in the hotel pool, I headed into Oliena in search of ice cream, but the village’s single gelateria was closed. Disappointment must have been written all over my face, because a complete stranger approached me and asked me what was the matter. “But sir,” he said, when I explained my plight, “for the best ice cream in Oliena, you must surely go to…Su Gologone!” I might have known. Back at the hotel, I tucked into home-made ricotta gelato with pine nuts, riotously good, before packing my bags for an afternoon departure and saying a fond farewell to this blissful corner of the world. And as the sparkling Mediterranean once again hove into view as we approached the airport, I realized my premonition had been right: For once in my life I hadn’t missed the seaside one bit.

How to get there: Air Italy, a new airline, or at least new in name — the company was formerly known as Meridiana — has more than 50 years flying experience and will fly you from New York to Milan and then on to Sardinia (its home base) with a minimum of fuss. With just 24 seats in its luxurious business-class cabin, expect cocktails (or mocktails) before take-off, an excellent dinner and full turn-down service of your nearly flat-bed, with pajamas provided for you to change into for the short overnight flight. “Buona notte” and “buon viaggio” — I’m hooked on Air Italy before we’ve even reached our cruising altitude of 40,000 feet.

For more on Air Italy and its routes from the USA to Italy, visit airitaly.com For more on Su Gologone, see sugologone.it/en/

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PRINCE WILLIAM HAS PRINCE HARRY, SNOOPY HAS SPIKE – YOU KNOW, THE BAD-BOY BABY BRO WHO’S A CHUNK OF CHARM AND A TON OF TROUBLE. That’s what WAG Weekly is to WAG. In our e-newsletter, we let down our hair (and occasionally, our grammar) to take you behind behind-the-scenes of the hottest parties and events, offer our thoughts on the most controversial issues of the day, share what couldn’t be contained in our glossy pages and tell you what to do and where to go this weekend – all while whetting your appetite for the next issue.

If you can’t get enough of WAG — or you just want to get WAG unplugged — then you won’t want to miss WAG Weekly, coming to your tablet.

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BREATH-TAKING WALKS

BY BARBARA BARTON SLOANE

TRAVEL

The hills were alive with the sound of … cowbells! As we hiked up the mountain trails of Austria, Liechtenstein and Switzerland, the clang of hundreds of cowbells announced the presence of those sweet creatures long before we saw them. We’d come around a grassy bend and there they’d be, cows dotting the hillside and looking a bit startled as we interlopers stood before them, squealing with delight.

These are very pretty cows, taupe colored with great, soulful brown eyes. Our guides explained that they graze on the mountains until October, when they’re brought homeward from the high pastures in a celebratory parade, decorated with crowns and garlands of wild flowers, and the prettiest among them is chosen Queen.

When I was invited to take part in this mountain hiking trip, I didn’t hesitate for a moment. I’ve always been fascinated by mountain climbing and though I’m hard-wired for cowardice when it comes to extreme sports, simply hiking mountain trails strewn with cows and wildflowers? I’m there.

Finding myself in Lech, a cozy town of 2,500 inhabitants in the Arlberg region of Austria, I felt drawn to the mountains, its hollows, the valley floors and wooded Alpine hills. The landscape simply would not let me rest. So up I went with my group, to walk and walk — and walk — up hills, down dales, around and around till we reached the top. What I came to realize was that to walk is a great form of enlightenment — of one’s surroundings and one’s emotions and feelings.

Actually it’s not widely known but ancient Greeks also valued the benefits of walking. Aristotle’s students, for example, kept walking back and forth in their classroom as an exercise in enlightenment. My Alpine hikes proved to work in much the same way.

Lech is one of the most glamorous and expensive resorts in Austria and has been awarded “The Most Beautiful Village in Europe” by the Best of the Alps organization. Hiking there was like entering a different world. I felt somewhat breathless and not because of lack of oxygen or exertion. No, the air is actually a feast for the lungs. Instead, it was the mountain landscape that intoxicated with an explosion of sensual impressions. When the sunlight broke through the cloud cover and I spied an ibex on the rocky ledge opposite and then another and another, well, it happened. Mountain fever of the very best kind.

The next day we traveled to the neighboring village of St. Anton. The sight of majestic mountains, untouched valleys, green slopes, roaring mountain torrents and the ubiquitous grazing cattle was a comfort for the soul. Not quite as comfortable, however, was this day’s hike. Now we picked up the pace, the hills were higher, the descents steeper. On this hike, I clearly lagged behind the rest of the group. I, a veteran of five New York City Marathons, was last. Heart pounding, gasping for breath, I tried to speed it up, but whether it was the altitude or the fact that I hadn’t tested my endurance in a marathon for several years, I simply could not keep up and the ego-shattering realization hit me that, on all of our upcoming hikes, I was always going to be last.

Once this realization settled in, a most lovely thought came to me. So what?

When I stopped staring longingly at my companions’ backs as they blazed the trail, I began to notice the otherworldly beauty of my surroundings and even picked some Alpine flora that covered a nearby meadow. I knew that

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High-altitude cows in the Alps.

this was OK. In fact, it was better than OK. To be here, now, every hill-climbing, boulder-hopping, root-tripping moment was to be experienced and cherished.

Enlightenment? You could call it that.

Then we were on to the neighboring country nestled between Austria and Switzerland: Liechtenstein. It is a principality that in 2006 celebrated 200 years of sovereignty. It is one of the smallest countries in Europe, composed of just 11 regions and 35,000 inhabitants. Vaduz, its capital, has several fine museums including a huge black cube that is the Kunstmuseum, home to a collection of artwork of international renown.

We hiked to Malbun from the flat tracks along the banks of the Rhine through marked trails with thick pine forests and wild landscapes peppered with rare orchids. At the Galina Falconry Center we lunched on a typical Tyrolean dish called kasknopfle, a kind of spaetzle made with flour, butter and cheese. A nononsense looking peregrine falcon took off, circled majestically and returned, swooping just a few feet over our heads at 185 mph to land on the glove of the falconer and happily enjoy his very own lunch.

Our last stop — Switzerland, Zurich to be exact. We had a very short hike on Mount Uetliberg, challenging and still long enough for me to capture a few iconic Swiss images. Just in case you thought that this city was all about banking and high finance, let me update you. This is now one of Europe’s style capitals, a world city. We found the shopping unbeatable, spent some fun evening hours in a couple of their many clubs, and if it’s high culture one seeks, Zurich’s opera house and art galleries are nothing short of world-class.

In thinking back over my Alpine mountain trip and I know one sure thing: I will not say farewell to hiking. I learned a valuable lesson on this trip, and that is hike to one’s own drummer. One’s personal drumbeat is good and true and will allow you to most definitely be there now.

If you go: Austria, austriainfo/us; Liechtenstein, tourismus.li; Switzerland, MySwitzerland.com.

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CRUISE LONGER

BY DEBBI K. KICKHAM AND WILLIAM D. KICKHAM

TRAVEL

Take it from us. When you’re sophisticated travelers, you soon discover that the more you go around the world, the more you want to be away more than just one week or two.

That is especially true with cruising. With all of the extra energy and effort required to plan your trip — and complete all of your professional work, personal and financial matters and general chores before your trip — it only makes sense to make all this planning and effort worth it. That means going away for more than a week. If you’re considering a cruise, extended luxury cruising is the best way to make your “bon voyage” even better. This is so because it makes the creation of newfound friendships even easier and enhances the experience of upscale personal service, which only gets better the more time you are onboard. In fact, according to cruise industry experts, extended cruising is a hot new trend, especially among baby boomers, many of whom retire with more time and money on their hands.

On our recent 32-day Mediterranean voyage on Regent Seven Seas Cruises Explorer, we met many well-heeled passengers who almost all told us that they would never cruise for just seven days.

We met one affluent couple from Australia who have taken more than 100 cruises in 30 years, almost all of them extended itineraries, and they told us, “The worst thing about cruising is the day you get off. The second-worst day is when you embark. And the more space you can get between those days, the better. We would never do a seven-day cruise.”

Regent Seven Seas Explorer is widely acknowledged as the world's most luxurious cruise ship.

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As travel journalists, we speak from experience when we say that the entire experience gets better the longer you stay on board — especially on an awardwinning, all-inclusive ship such as the Explorer. It just can’t compare with other premium lines. For one thing, the ship holds 750 guests, which means that unlike mass-market huge cruise ships (frequently of 4,000 or more passengers), Regent is in a class all by itself. And in keeping on trend, the entire cruise line also has some of the most extensive plant-based cuisine at sea. If you’re vegan, you’re going to be very pleased.

As we sailed for more than one month, we can honestly say that as time went on, the crew became more than friends — even similar to our family on board, in the way they looked after us.

For example, Deb, the perennial dieter, even embarked with her own diet salad dressing, low fat mayonnaise and butter substitute she presented to the executive chef, after having a special dietary meeting with him. Every crew member on board looked after her — from the culinary staff to the housekeeping staff — and made sure that she had all three items at all dinners. Deb found herself feeling completely taken care of and thrilled that she had, in a sense, her own private chef.

But more than that, as time goes by onboard, you can develop great fondness and friendships with many of the crew members. For example, Daniela, one of the maître d’s, was beyond helpful whenever we sat down for lunch, so much so, we made plans to meet Daniela and her sister when she travels to Boston next winter.

On an extended cruise, you will also form great friendships with the other guests too, as more time onboard makes this possible. We made wonderful new friends on this trip — and on previous extended cruises — and it has made life back home even more fun and interesting. With its country-club atmosphere, the Explorer is a great place to trade everything from investment advice, exclusive travel tips, world-class shopping recommendations and more. You can even host a party in your own suite — and of course, it’s automatically catered by the food and beverage team.

Nothing in life is perfect, and in the interest of being fair and balanced, we also need to point out some areas of the Explorer that we wish had been different on our cruise, and where it could be improved even more, especially for guests choosing extended cruises. One area is the enrichment lectures. While there was principally one such lecturer on each cruise segment during our stay, primarily speaking on destinations, we feel that Regent could provide added benefit by expanding the number and range of guest lecturers. These could include areas of politics, world affairs, the news media as well as entertainment. We feel this expanded range of lectures could make the onboard experience more varied.

Another area where some improvements could be made is the computer center. One of Regent’s competitors in the luxury cruise sector provides classes on computer and smartphone topics. Regent’s competitors usually charge a small, added fee for this, but we highly doubt that guests on any of Regent’s ships would have an issue with that, and we’d recommend that it consider this.

An additional item that could use some possible tweaking is the pool deck. The ship’s architect designed the pool to be framed with a very wide section of raised wooden decking, and while visually appealing in form, in function it prevents pool deck functions in the evening, as there is insufficient space to place tables for dining at such nighttime pool parties.

We raised these suggestions with Regent, and their response was very receptive. Overall, our experience on the ship was extremely positive, and we cannot recommend extended cruising strongly enough.

The Explorer’s general manager Michel Coghlan, put it succinctly when he added, “We have guests that never go ashore. We are a five-star hotel and the ship becomes the destination.”

In fact, all of the suites are designed to be extremely spacious and comfortable. If you want the best room in the house, that would be the Regent Suite, at $10,000 per night. But don’t think that you have to spend that kind of money. No matter where your suite is on the ship, we think you’ll be as pleased as we were.

For more, on Debbi, visit gorgeousglobetrotter.com and marketingauthor.com.

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Free Parking Around Back

SOULFUL PASSIONS

FOOD & SPIRITS

BY GINA GOUVEIA

Selma Miriam, left, and Noel Furie. Courtesy Bloodroot.

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Always on the hunt for interesting restaurants in coastal Connecticut that complement my own particular eating regimen, you can imagine my delight when I discovered the 42-year-old Bloodroot in Bridgeport.

A simple search led me to this hidden, beloved gem that is both a vegetarian restaurant — now vegan for about the last three years — and feminist bookstore rolled into one enchanting establishment.

If not for the colorful, seaside landscape, you would think, based on the feel-good, natural vibe upon entering, that you had stepped into a haven tucked away on a quiet corner in Greenwich Village. Equally engaging are its proprietors, Selma Miriam and Noel Furie, two of the small band of feminists who originally set forth to open a women’s center on this site at the height of the women’s movement of the 1970s; the bookstore and restaurant followed.

“For us it’s not a movement,” Furie says during our formal sit-down in the garden overlooking the peaceful inlet of the Long Island Sound where Bloodroot is perched just opposite Captain’s Cove. “Everything we do is under the umbrella of feminism and is consistent with our values.”

Cruelty of any kind, but particularly toward other living creatures, contradicts their mission to uphold the rights of those who have suffered abuse. They oppose the values of patriarchy, don’t want to see animals or women enslaved or the planet destroyed. They see the imbalance in nature — on the land and in the seas — and believe that following a plantbased diet will help to restore it.

With their shared passions for animals, nature, cooking and feminist literature, this duo has amassed a loyal following, and in my two recent visits — once for Saturday dinner and again for Sunday brunch — I easily see why. Along the way, at each turn and tweak of Bloodroot’s original, creative menus, they have attracted newcomers and longtime fans alike who revel in their thoughtful and caring approach to producing tasty, delicious and lovingly prepared eats. Furie points to a simple housemade poster at the open-kitchen window where the countries of origin of their clientele are listed and continually updated. There are more than 100 nations on the list.

Upon opening the doors at meal times, a patient line of customers forms at the entryway and all are welcomed, usually by Miriam, who also takes their orders. They are the real deal — Miriam and Furie, producing vegan cuisine at perfectly wonderful heights, and sharing their formulas generously. Over the years many cookbooks — vegetarian and now vegan — have been produced including artful calendars with seasonal recipes and inspirations, with all accompanying photography by the talented Furie.

“We don’t keep our recipes a secret,” Miriam says, “we believe in keeping them simple and sharing them for others to create.”

An array of house-made breads — Furie has perfected and produces the legendary whole wheat and the oatmeal, while Miriam is in charge of the sourdough potato rye — are included with many of the offerings on the menu. The more senior of the two, Miriam, seems to take the lead, but clearly Furie is no slouch in the kitchen either. “She’s the instigator,” Furie says of Miriam. Both are inspired by natural and unusual ingredients and finding new methods for producing dishes representative of other lands and cultures. This practice is mostly fueled by the female cooks who gravitate to them, to suggest and share their expertise and native ingredients to make flavorful, vegan dishes.

Take the carrot “lox” offered with vegan cream cheese atop one of the delicious baked breads for Sunday brunch. “Someone had scribbled a basic recipe on a piece of paper,” Miriam says, “and eventually I wanted to get rid of that piece of paper, so I got around to playing with it.”

Through her characteristic trial-and-error approach, she mastered the process of steaming long ribbons of carrots, adding her own unique method of doing it over sheets of wakame — the seaweed imparting the fishy flavor and the process producing the proper texture and taste once

the liquid smoke and seasonings are applied.

“I love lox,” Miriam says, “and I never thought that it could be replicated in a vegan form, but it can.”

For my Saturday dinner I had the Jamaican jerk “chicken” with the perfectly crafted, authentic habanero-based jerk sauce applied during the cooking process and served as a side with flavorful rice and beans, steamed sweet potatoes and avocado slices. It’s appropriately and highly seasoned with a good amount of heat, as I am warned by Furie when I collect my plate at the kitchen window. I finish it off with room to spare for Miriam’s banana-nut cake, not too sweet and perfectly moist.

It’s the skill of execution and passion for bringing it that is packed into every dish — the mushroom and walnut pâté I had as a starter has a substantial structure and harmonious flavors, making it a favorite of their diners and a staple of their repertoire. Also offered as a starter or finisher is a nut-based cheese plate. Both of these dishes pair well with wines offered by the glass or bottle at a reasonable charge — as are craft beers and other interesting nonalcoholic beverages.

A latecomer to the kombucha-craze, at brunch I chose GT’s Gingerade, with its refreshing effervescence complementing my flavorful and rich mushroom quiche. “There’s Forager (plant-based) yogurt in it — that’s what makes it so creamy,” Furie says. The crust — also used for their blueberry pie that debuts in the summer when their own crops of these power berries are at their peak — is golden, flaky perfection. Miriam developed it using basic ingredients she rattles off to me, and coconut oil subbing for the “lard,” producing golden, flaky perfection. I tell Miriam I am intimidated by making pastry and piecrusts and she quickly dismisses my concerns. “It’s so easy,” she says.

There is nothing commercial about this enterprise. There is no restaurant furniture — instead an assortment of vintage desks, tables, chairs and accessories acquired over the years lend a warm and relaxing ambiance.

“Some of the best things we ever did were experiments,” Miriam says.

“We have no waitstaff — that was intentional from the start. We have cooks, not chefs.”

It’s a culinary experience to be enjoyed for all, whether you keep strictly vegan or just want to embrace meatless days and try some of their flavorful culinary creations.

The natural grounds and casual picnic tables invite lingering and savoring the food and landscape alike. Furie says that Miriam, a former landscape designer before this passion project ensued, designed the property’s gardens. They grow an array of fresh herbs, tomatoes, peppers and two bumper crops — baby eggplants and blueberries — prominently featured in their seasonally inspired cuisine during the warmer months.

A mature weeping cherry tree and a majestic pine sit at two corners of the yard and frame the shingled New England-style structure. Inside are many of Furie’s photographs of the property at the time they started developing it in the late ’70s, and on a level just above the dining room is the bookstore cum library just “because we like to read,” Miriam says.

There’s also a “Mermaid Room” for reflection and relaxation whose corner windows encase the idyllic scene outside.

As we wind own our visit, allowing them to complete the day’s tasks to prepare for a well-earned Monday off, I regretfully prepare to take leave of these women who already feel like old friends. Miriam asks if I would like to take some sourdough starter, the not-so-secret ingredient that lends the moistness to their iconic chocolate devastation cake.

The shared “herstories” of Miriam and Furie are delightful to hear — were that we had the luxury of time for all the telling. It would be a treat to cook alongside these two in their inviting kitchen, or occupy the Mermaid Room for about a fortnight in order to hear more tales, but I’ll just have to return again and again to see what these two wise, wonderful women are cooking up in this bucolic New England mainstay.

For more, visit bloodroot.com.

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GREAT FOOD — BUT TURN DOWN THE VOLUME

BY JEREMY WAYNE

FOOD & SPIRITS

Allow me to get something off my chest. I have not, nor have ever been, a member of the noisy restaurants party. Not that I’m a party pooper, on the contrary. I like a loud, raucous wingding as much as the next raver — I just don’t think high-decibel rock or rap is an appropriate accompaniment to good food. Call me stuffy, call me old-fashioned — but don’t call me for a dinner date if earsplitting music is on the menu.

Which brings me to this month’s restaurant — Little Drunken Chef in White Plains, the new opening from Bonnie Saran, the Westchester restaurateur with five “Little” restaurants to her name, including Little Drunken Chef and Kabab Station in Mount Kisco and Little Mumbai Market in Pleasantville.

There are many nice surprises at the new restaurant — including long opening hours with a full menu served all day, heavy cloth napkins, a mezzanine with a chill area and bartenders who know their fizzes from their rickeys. But the biggest surprise of all — and contrary to the rule of inverse proportion, which states that the louder the music, the more desultory the food — is the discovery that with music this loud, the food should be so good.

On a recent Saturday evening, with the sound approaching rock-concert levels, four of us snagged a table along the wall, where the banquette seating is so hard on the derrière that bringing your own pillows would be a smart idea. From the crowded menu (long and chaotic in its staccato Courier font), we started off with tapas of crispy calamari, fiery Padrón peppers and gambas al ajillo, beautifully sourced produce all, authentic flavors which had us right there on the Plaza Mayor in Madrid. Next we traveled east, for paneer rolls with green chutney, tacos of chicken vindaloo — a lovely soft taco with spicy Indian chicken; crisp tostados of pingingly fresh shrimp and avocado; Lasooni Gobi, cauliflower florets in a garlic chilli sauce; and a plate of halloumi fries, made vibrant with a sumac and tzatziki drizzle.

If Little Drunken Chef plunders the world’s larder, leaving culinary solecisms in its wake, then it does so with a joyous insouciance that is hard to mind. I’m actually loving this food, and a few days later I’m back, for upscale pan-fried halibut, ahi tuna with crispy potatoes, channa masala (chickpeas and mango powder, which is one of the many gluten-free and vegan choices) and a glorious West Indian goat curry, heady with ginger and allspice, fried plantain as a welcome, sweet condiment.

Yes, Saran’s food is plucky, a kaleidoscopic mix with a big dollop

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Dave Orsino, cocktail artist at Little Drunken Chef in White Plains.

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Dramatic artwork at Little Drunken Chef.

of chutzpah, and this really is the joy of it.

On another evening visit, the large industrial space is less crowded, although the sound level is still achingly high. If the decoration is a little black — black floors, exposed black ducting, waiters in black jeans and T-shirts and many of the dishes served on black-slate plates, it is softened by the backlighting of the bluelit bar. And pipes, which are suspended beneath the ceiling with cut-out, illuminated stencils spelling words like “cheers,” “salud,” and “santé,” look especially pretty at night.

Add a lot of scribbling on the wall, some blow-up photos and hanging white ostrich feathers — dangling so low they tickle the heads of taller customers — and you have a sense of how Drunken Little Chef looks. “When you don’t have a lot of money you get creative,” says Saran sagely, although personally I think the slightly homespun decoration is appealingly edgy and not without some charm.

At lunchtime in the middle of the week, when a friend and I stop by for an early lunch of jamón and manchego croquetas and a vegetable samosa, the mood is relaxed and the music, to my delight, at a slightly lower volume than on my previous visits. Chef Saran is at the bar. “Well, there’s no need for loud music at all at this time of day,” she says conciliatorily, when I express my only misgiving. Not only is she a great chef, she’s a diplomat, too.

Little Drunken Chef is at 91 Mamaroneck Ave., White Plains.

For reservations and more information, call 914-615-9300.

Discover IL FORNO Italian Kitchen & Bar Where Good Vibes meet Italian Inspired Cuisine!

Enjoy a Classic & Crafty Cocktail.

Have your perfect experience!

LUNCH AND DINNER Tuesday - Sunday 343 Route 202, Somers, NY 10589 (914) 277-7575 www.ilfornosomers.com

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Private Events and Catering

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Monday thrugh Friday from 12:00 pm to 10:00 pm Saturday from 1:00 pm to 10:00 pm Sunday from 2:00 pm to 9:00 pm

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LUNCH Tuesday thru Friday 12:00 pm to 3:00 pm Saturday 1:00pm to 3:00 pm

DINNER Tuesday Thru Saturday 5:00 pm to 11:00 pm Sunday 2:00 pm to 9:00 pm

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ALL IN THE FAMILY

BY DOUG PAULDING

FOOD & SPIRITS

I have known about the Nebbiolo grape, Barolo and Barbaresco wines and Pio Cesare winery for decades, but recently they all came into critical focus for me. I was invited to a luncheon at the Michelin-starred Ai Fiori (Among the Flowers) restaurant in The Langham hotel on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan and was seated beside Pio Boffa, fourth-generation winemaker and owner of Pio Cesare. I had recently returned from a media trip to the Piedmont region of Northwest Italy so the imagery of the area was still alive and fresh.

Pio’s great-grandfather, Cesare Pio, began making wines in 1881 for the family, his friends and a few loyal customers. He realized his home area of the Piedmont region could produce wonderful wines of structure and nuance. He trained and then handed off the operation to his son, Giuseppe Pio, who expanded the winery and extended production and handed it off to his daughter, Rosy, and her engineer husband, Giuseppe Boffa. They promoted sales worldwide and the Pio Cesare name became one of the best and most recognized wine names in all of Italy. Pio Cesare is now controlled and directed by Pio Boffa. I asked him if he went to oenological school to learn the science and craft or if he was homeschooled.

“I grew up in the winery and in the vineyards. My father and my grandfather saw to it that everything I needed to know was presented to me firsthand.”

Pio has bought existing vineyards and made upgrades to the winery while maintaining some on-site ancient winery walls and infrastructure dating back to 50 BCE. Pio Cesare now owns more than 180 acres of planted vineyards. And he is actively training and setting up his daughter, Federica Rosy Pio Boffa, to grab the reins. At 22 years old and just out of university, her passion for the grape and her energy will propel Pio Cesare to the next level.

Global warming has had an effect on grape production in Piedmont.

This far north in Italy in the shadows of the Italian, French and Swiss Alps, proper ripening was never guaranteed and often not achieved. After bottling it could take years or decades for the wine to soften, round out and lose some of its astringency. But when these Nebbiolo wines were properly aged and decanted, they showed complexity and layers, with dark and red fruit and a spiciness for texture and accent. It was rare for the region to create single vineyard wines, as the weather demanded blends to make a more complete and balanced wine. But with warmer weather in the area, the fourth-generation Pio has made it a mission to buy attractive vineyard sites with southerly exposures so proper ripening could happen on the vine and not by many years in the bottle. The wines of Pio Cesare are now lovely and lively and very drinkable upon release but patience will be amply rewarded.

We began the luncheon with a Pio Cesare Chardonnay. Pio Boffa has torn out some red vines to plant Chardonnay, as grape growers in the area cannot plant new vines on virgin land. It was rather controversial to eliminate some red vines for white vines in this historical bastion of reds.

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Pio Boffa, fourth generation owner and winemaker of Pio Cesare Winery in the Piedmont region of Italy.

But it works and the Chardonnay showed citrus, freshness and a creamy oakiness, and was a perfect wine for a meet-and-greet. At the table we found 10 red wines, all poured in Riedel glasses, gently opening up for us to taste. Pio told me, “We consider ourselves to be artisanal producers, because we make many wines but all are relatively small quantities. Our biggest-by-volume wine is only 5,000 cases, which makes us boutique producers of many fine wines”.

The first red wine was a Pio Cesare 2015 Barbaresco. This is a blend of vineyard sites and they know which vineyard will infuse which characteristics and flavors into the subsequent wine. Some sites offer freshness, youth and longevity while others contribute fullness and body.

This wine showed red fruit with a lovely spiciness and mouthfeel.

The next Barbaresco was the Il Bricco 2015 showing spicy dark fruit with a tickly cinnamon and good tannins for structure. We went on to taste eight Barolos, some blends, some single vineyard wines. We tasted three Barolos from 2015, one from 2010, ’08, ’06, ’03, and 2000. All of these wines are wonderful and worthy throwing off delicious flavors of dark and/or red fruit, spice, licorice, with texture, mouthfeel and elegance. The 2015 Ornato Barolo, the ’06 Barolo and 2000 were my favorites but the differences were subtle, as the Pio Cesare winemaking excellence was the common thread here.

Pio said to us, “We live in the winery. We have always felt it’s not a workplace, but it’s our home.” The winery does offer tours but it’s best to call first. All of the Nebbiolo wines we tasted were red and somewhat translucent, similar to a well-made Pinot Noir. The older vintages were a bit darker. Pio finished with “Nebbiolo doesn’t have concentration and complexity. It has finesse and elegance.” Similar to a well-made Pinot Noir.

Treat yourself to a special experience. Pio Cesare is great and only getting better.

Write me at doug@dougpaulding.com.

Camelia

Tapas Bar &Restaurant

Enjoy authentic Spanish & Portuguese cuisine in the cozy splendor of our little house on the hill

Private room for your special occasions

Private Parties • Anniversaries • Family Gatherings • Rehearsal Dinners Business Luncheons • Birthdays • Bridal/Baby Showers • Bar/Bat Mitzvahs

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ON THE GO, GO, GO WITH MYRNA BRADY

BY GIOVANNI ROSELLI

“Shoot for the Moon because if you fall short you will be amongst the stars and you will help to light up the universe.”

— Rondalph S. Taylor Sr.

HEALTH & FITNESS

When it comes to fascinating women, I could think of no one better to highlight this month than my longtime friend and colleague Myrna Brady.

As the daughter of immigrant parents whose own story is fascinating and borders on unbelievable, Myrna was taught at a very young age she could do anything she wanted to in life if she put her mind, heart and hard work into it. The above quote came from Myrna’s father and words like that and many others from both parents were the seeds that helped Myrna grow into the woman, wife, mother and the healthy living and life style brand she is today.

Myrna was born in San Jose, Costa Rica, and did not speak a word of English for most of her primary years. She recalls her dad telling her to watch the news and weather and speak as they do with a universal accent.

She was taught at a very early age the harsh reality of being an AfroCaribbean Latina in this country. She recalls being the only child of color in her ballet school. People often wanted to touch her hair, want to know why she had an accent and her teachers would ask her to do things with her body that were virtually impossible due to her anatomical structure.

Nevertheless, when she would go home and share these stories with her parents she would recall yet another sobering life lesson.

“My father loved baseball and he would always tell me ‘You’re the DH baby girl, so when you get up to bat it’s gotta be a home run.’” This way of thinking allowed Myrna to become the only woman of color Music Education and Performance major at Hofstra University which she entered in 1988. Myrna’s passion for music, art and sports allowed her to sing and perform at some of the most prestigious concert halls and events in the country.

Myrna’s years after college took her through a whirlwind of careers. Myrna has over 24 years of combined music, business and fitness experience. Her eclectic and diversified background has given her opportunities to work in management and or executive positions in each of the following areas: fitness, sales, marketing and human resources management. She has worked for Fortune 500 companies such as Nabisco and Nike, Equinox, Life Time Athletic as well as startup internet ventures. Myrna even spent a season singing with the New City Opera Company and was part of the Tony nominated cast of “Porgy and Bess.”

Myrna now simply calls herself a health living and lifestyle coach. If you were to spend a day in the life of Myrna Brady you will quickly realize this woman does it all. She prides herself on being the heartbeat of her family.

She has been married for more than 21 years and is the mother of two young men who are 12 and 15. Myrna and her husband are up at 5 a.m.

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Myrna Brady

every day. She said even on the weekends it is a struggle to stay in bed past 6 a.m. From the minute Myrna’s feet hit the ground she is working on her lifestyle brand. She listens to motivational speakers while getting dressed in the morning, creates her playlist during breakfast, works on her social media presence, answers clients emails, gets the boys off to school and rides her Peloton bike all before 7 a.m.

Myrna creates programs for all but really focuses her time and energy on products, programs and events that empower and inspire woman between the ages of 18 to 80-plus.

“Women are often forced to concentrate on everyone else but themselves.

We are prepared and groomed for puberty, to be a wife, mother and grandmother. We are encouraged to be supportive of sisters, friends, caregivers, etc. Very rarely are we provided with programs and products that enable us to develop who, what and all we want to be today, tomorrow and in the future.”

As the CEO/founder of her brand Myrna Brady Life Style, Myrna offers proprietary, evidence-based solutions that empower her clients with the ability to be the best versions of themselves. All solutions incorporate fitness, arts and motivational exercises that assist with this process.

Myrna is also an executive district manager for Arbonne and a Cause Entrepreneur for One Hope Wines. Both companies allow her to integrate her services with their products thus providing unique whole lifestyle solutions for her clients. You can also find her teaching group fitness classes at LT Fitness in Harrison and the JCC in Scarsdale.

“I do this to create a world filled with healthy and loving people. It has been proven that people who live healthy and well-balanced lives are more productive in the their daily life and work place. My brand helps to create more productive and profitable workplaces and happy families, thus making the world a better place to exist for all.”

Reach Giovanni on Twitter @GiovanniRoselli and at his website, GiovanniRoselli.com.

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ARE YOU WORRIED ABOUT YOUR BREAST IMPLANTS? UNDERSTANDING YOUR OPTIONS

BY DR. CONSTANCE M. CHEN

HEALTH & FITNESS

Women are increasingly worried about breast implants. In 2016, the American Society of Plastic Surgeons reported that 400,000 women in the United States had breast implant surgery. About 75% were for cosmetic breast augmentation; the rest were for breast reconstruction after mastectomy. While some breast implants last for decades, most are removed well beforehand. Why? Implants are foreign bodies that incite a scar tissue barrier called a capsule. Capsules may be soft, filmy and hardly noticeable, or may become painful, hard and tight, like a shell around the implant that starts to shrink and squeeze. Capsular contracture is uncomfortable and a common reason for implant removal. Other reasons include infection, because the implant lacks a blood supply to fight bacteria; rupture, in which the saline or silicone gel filling leaks; and extrusion, in which the implant erodes out of the skin.

In addition, some women with breast implants report symptoms such as chronic fatigue, joint pains, food allergies, skin and hair problems and other issues that patients call Breast Implant Illness (BII). A 2019 M.D. Anderson Cancer Center study found that women with silicone breast implants had six to eight times the normal population rates of rare diseases like rheumatoid arthritis, scleroderma and Sjogren syndrome. A 2018 Israeli study found a 22% increase in autoimmune or rheumatic disorders in women with silicone breast implants.

While a cause-effect relationship between breast implants and autoimmune issues remains unproven, the association disturbs women who believe they developed unexplained problems after getting breast implants.

Finally, in 2011, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration noticed that women with breast implants had a higher incidence of a rare immune system cancer called anaplastic large cell lymphoma (ALCL).

In 2016, the World Health Organization renamed the disease Breast Implant-Associated Anaplastic Large Cell Lymphoma (BIA-ALCL), a T-cell lymphoma that developed following breast implants in up to 1 in 3,800 women with breast implants. Patients with BIA-ALCL usually have retained fluid around the breast implant or a mass on the implant capsule, which can sometimes be seen on breast imaging and biopsied.

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How are breast implants removed? The quickest procedure involves removing only the implant while leaving behind the entire capsule, because thin, filmy capsules may eventually be reabsorbed by the body. For thickened capsules, the surgeon can perform a capsulotomy by making incisions to break up and soften the capsule. If patients want their capsule removed, most surgeons perform a partial capsulectomy. When implants are underneath the pectoralis muscle, capsular material is fused to the chest wall or ribs, and is very close to the lungs. To save time and avoid lung injury, surgeons routinely leave the chest wall capsule. A complete capsulectomy is a lengthy procedure that removes not just the implant, but the entire capsule that surrounds it, including the portion on the chest wall. In an en bloc capsulectomy, the surgeon removes the implant and capsule in one piece.

If a woman decides to remove her implants without any other procedures, immediately after surgery her breasts will look deformed and empty. Over time, however, the breast skin will contract and any remaining breast tissue will re-expand — much like resolving indentations in the skin after wearing tight clothing. It can take weeks or even months, but the body has a remarkable ability to equilibrate, and for most women with breast tissue their breasts will look normal again without further surgery.

That said, if a woman has minimal breast tissue and proportionally large implants, she may be unhappy with the appearance of her natural

breasts. Some women may want a breast lift, fat transfer, new implants or even natural tissue free flaps. Additional procedures can be performed at the same operation as the implant removal, or later on when a woman sees how her natural breasts look after they have been given a chance to heal.

Extra procedures, however, such as breast lifts, can involve additional scarring and extend anesthesia time, leading to a more difficult recovery. For this reason, women may take a “wait-and-see” approach to keep their post-operative recovery as easy and simple as possible.

Women with implants for breast reconstruction lack breast tissue due to mastectomy. Thus, after implant removal, they must decide whether to “go flat” or undergo breast reconstruction again.

If implant removal is to treat capsular contracture, saline implant rupture, or BII, it may be possible to undergo breast reconstruction again in the same operation. If a woman has a severe infection, ruptured silicone breast implant, or BIA-ALCL, it may be necessary to allow the tissues to heal for several months before considering other breast reconstruction options. Other options include new breast implants or natural tissue breast reconstruction, a more extensive surgery that creates living breasts. Natural tissue breast reconstruction produces soft, warm breasts that can fight infection due to its blood supply, will grow and shrink as the patient gains and loses weight, and nerves can even be reconnected to restore breast sensation.

Whatever the reason for implant removal, women should be fully educated about what to expect. Capsular contracture, infection, rupture, and BII are the most common reasons for implant removal. Women removing their breast implants should consider whether they want some, all, or none of their capsule removed. At the end of the day, a woman’s body is her own, and she should have agency over it.

Constance M. Chen is a board-certified plastic surgeon with special expertise in the use of innovative natural techniques to optimize medical and cosmetic outcomes for women undergoing breast reconstruction. She is clinical assistant professor of surgery (plastic surgery) at Weill Cornell Medical College and clinical assistant professor of surgery (plastic surgery) at Tulane University School of Medicine. constancechenmd.com.

A FAMILY FUN DAY IN THE PARK!

Don’t miss the party on the weekend of Saturday, August 10 and Sunday, August 11, 2019. Putnam County Wine & Food Fest returns for its straight 9th year!

A Tasting ticket gets you a souvenir tasting glass, program guide, sampling of ciders, spirits and wines. Rock to the beat of live music while dining on food as well as shopping at the various vendors. You can also have a cold glass of beer in the Beer Garden sponsored by Manhattan Beer. Face painting and more for the kiddies.

AUGUST 10 & 11, 2019 11am - 6 pm Saturday | 11am - 5 pm Sunday Mayor’s Park, 61 Fair Street, Cold Spring, NY One Day Wine Tasting: $20 advance,$30 at door One Day Designated Driver: $10

Get tickets at:

PUTNAMCOUNTYWINEFEST.COM For Vendors/Volunteers/Sponsors call 800-557-4185, ext. 3, info@putnamcountywinefest.com

WAG

PET OF THE MONTH

JOHNNY BLUE EYES PHOTOGRAPH BY SEBASTIÁN FLORES

Despite the boyish name, Johnny is a 5-monthold female Golden Retriever/Australian Shepherd mix whose stunning blue eyes are mesmerizing. She’s still a pup who will probably be medium size when fully grown. But already the SPCA can see that she’s quite energetic, so a home with a big yard and an active family with older children would be ideal. And since she likes to roughhouse with her doggy friends, a canine companion would be a nice addition.

Johnny is one smart cookie, a special puppy who just needs a little more training to reach her full potential.

To meet Johnny, visit the SPCA of Westchester at 590 N. State Road in Briarcliff Manor.

Founded in 1883, the SPCA is a no-kill shelter and is not affiliated with the ASPCA. The SPCA is open 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Mondays through Saturdays and 1 to 4 p.m. Sundays. To learn more, call 914- 941-2896 or visit spca914.org.

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PET PORTRAITS

FROM FOSTER TO FOREVER

“The Wolfe Pack” – A sweet dog named River, rescued from the floodwaters of Hurricane Florence, finds his “fur-ever” home with the Wolfe family of Carmel, which includes, from left, Nancy, Nate, Norah and Steve. Photograph by Candy Higgins.

BY ROBIN COSTELLO A New Chance Animal Rescue (ANCAR) is a Bedford-based dog rescue started in 2011 by mother-daughter team Sharon and Sophia Silverman that has found a unique way to improve the lives of homeless animals.

Instead of warehousing dogs in overcrowded shelters, the organization uses the “foster-home” model of placing them with a real family in a home that cares for them until a suitable forever home can be found.

The rescue dogs are given constant love and attention by the foster family. They are acclimated to the normal daily activities of a family home environment. This teaches them necessary social skills which promotes and allows the greatest 126

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chance for successful adoption.

ANCAR has a personalized approach to finding the perfect match. Home visits prepare potential adoption families so that they are "rescue-dog ready.” They are provided with detailed information from the foster families about the dog's habits, behavior, favorite things, etc. so the transition is much smoother for dog and new master.

In addition to focusing on foster care, ANCAR also operates under a “no mom left behind” policy where entire puppy litters including the mother are brought in to ensure she is not caught in puppy-mill cycles or simply abandoned. They also have developed “Save a Geezer” and “Fospice” (foster and hospice) programs which provide

care for senior and terminally ill dogs, respectively, which are traditionally very hard to place.

What is remarkable is that ANCAR provides these programs without any government funding and is supported entirely by donations. Fueled by the efforts of a dedicated and active base of foster families, volunteers, donors and community supporters, ANCAR has been able to save the lives of hundreds of dogs placing them in warm, loving, safe, and healthy environments in our area.

Now isn’t that a chance all rescue animals deserve?

To learn more about fostering and to support A New Chance Animal Rescue, visit anewchancear.org.

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WHERE & WHEN Through July 31 Peel back the layers of Southport’s history to reveal a vibrant and thriving harbor town. “Summer by the Sea: Sloop Logs and Ledgers” features 19th-century sloop logs and ledgers from Pequot Library’s Special Collections. 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Mondays to Fridays, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturdays, Pequot Library, 720 Pequot Ave.; 203259-0346, pequotlibrary.org.

Through Aug. 28 The New Rochelle Council on the Arts presents its annual “Emil Paolucci Summer Sounds Concert Series,” featuring an eclectic lineup of musicians who play everything from mellow jazz and classical opera to Latin and reggae. 7:30 p.m., select Wednesdays and Fridays Hudson Park Band Shell, 1 Hudson Park Road; newrochellearts.org.

Through Nov. 3 Hudson River Museum’s “Through Our Eyes: Milestones and Memories of African Americans in Yonkers” exhibition is the culmination of a yearlong project to collect and celebrate important stories in the museum’s diverse community. Noon to 5 p.m., Wednesdays through Sundays, 511 Warburton Ave., Yonkers; 914-963-4550, hrm.org.

July 4 The village of Mamaroneck Arts Council presents a Fourth of July celebration and concert at Harbor Island Park. St. Thomas Orchestra and a capella group The Soundettes will perform musical favorites, followed by a firework display and carnival. 8 to 10 p.m., Harbor Island Park, 123 Mamaroneck Ave.; 917-379-2260, storchestra. org.

July 5 through 28 The Summer Theatre of New Canaan presents “Pippin.”

8 p.m. Thursdays to Saturdays, 4 p.m. Sundays. Christine’s Garden, 56 South Ave.; 203-966-4634, stonc.org.

July 7 Abbie Gardner, an award-winning songwriter and fiery dobro player who has been touring with Red Molly for the past 11 years, is the featured performer in the Bartlett Arboretum’s Summer Sunday Concert Series. 5 p.m., 151 Brookdale Road, Stamford; 203-883-4052, bartlettarboretum.org.

Join artist, activist and educator Luciana McClure for a tour of the galleries of the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, including conversation on the work of artists Harmony Hammond, Sara Cwynar, N. Dash, and the newly installed outdoor sculpture garden. 3:30 p.m., 258 Main

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The New Rochelle Council on the Arts’ “Emil Paolucci Summer Sounds Concert Series” continues on select evenings through Aug. 28 at Hudson Park. Courtesy New Rochelle Council on the Arts.

St., Ridgefield; 203-438-4519, aldrichart.org.

July 11

July 11, 18 and 25

The city of White Plains and ArtsWestchester present the summer tradition of free Shakespeare in the Park.

The acclaimed Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival will perform “Julius Caesar” at Turnure Park. 7 p.m., 26 Lake St.; 914-422-1336, cityofwhiteplains.com.

Westchester Italian Cultural Center presents its annual outdoor summer film festival, Cinema Sotto Le Stelle.

Guests will enjoy free screenings of Italian films, including “Life is Beautiful,” “Mia Madre” and “Cinema Paradiso.” The films will include English subtitles. 8:30 p.m., 24 Depot Square, Tuckahoe; 914-771-8700, wiccny.org.

Madelyn Jordon Fine Art will host an opening reception for its “Between Nightmares and Fairytales” exhibition, featuring works on paper by artist Adam Handler. Handler is recognized for his whimsical style of artmaking. 6 p.m. Exhibit continues through Aug. 24. 37 Popham Road, Scarsdale; 914-723-8738, madelynjordonfineart.com.

July 12

July 11 through 28

An opening reception and artists’ talks for “Diversity,” an exhibition of the artwork of Carol Bloch, Charles Hall, Michele Hubler and Tom Scippa will be held at the Bruce S. Kershner Gallery of The Fairfield Public Library. 6 p.m., 1080 Old Post Road; 203-256-3155, fairfieldpubliclibrary.org.

Thrown Stone Theatre Company presents the Connecticut premiere of “Cry It Out,” by Molly Smith Metzler. A comedy with dark edges, it takes an honest look at the absurdities of being home with a baby, the dilemma of returning to work and how class impacts parenthood and friendship. Times vary, Thursdays to Sundays, Ridgefield Conservatory of Dance, 440 Main St.; 203-442-1714, thrownstone.org.

Katonah Museum of Art presents a series called KMA Block Parties. These events feature live music, drinks and gourmet food trucks. Music includes Brazilian jazz, R&B, indie rock and more. 6 to 8 p.m., 134 Jay St.; 914-232-9555, katonahmuseum.org.

July 13 through Sept. 14

Family band Mariachi Sol Mixteco will perform July 16 at the Greenburgh Public Library. Photograph by Dizzy Chic Gallery Boutique. Courtesy ArtsWestchester.

July 16 Family band Mariachi Sol Mixteco will perform traditional Mexican music at the Greenburgh Public Library. This event aims to preserve Latino culture for the next generation. 7 p.m., 300 Tarrytown Road, Elmsford; 914-721-8235, greenburghlibrary.org.

New Rochelle Public Library presents “International Music and Dance of China,” featuring professional dancers from the Chinese Cultural Center of New York. The series runs through Aug. 6. 7 p.m., 1 Library Plaza; 914-632-7878, nrpl.org.

Connecticut Ballet presents a free performance of “Ballet Under the Stars!” The evening includes four one-act ballets, ranging from traditional to contemporary ballet. 8 p.m., The Levitt Pavilion for the Performing Arts, 40 Jesup Road, Westport; 866-8114111, connecticut-ballet.org.

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July 18 through 27

July 21

LawnChair Theatre and The Rye Arts Center present free performances of Shakespeare’s “Much Ado About Nothing” at various parks in Westchester County. This romantic comedy will be set in postWWII France against the backdrop of a changing world. 6:30 p.m., locations vary; 914-414-1226, lawnchairtheatre.org.

Gin Blossoms plays the Warehouse at FTC. Hear hits from the 1990s such as “Hey Jealousy” and “Til I Hear It from You”. 7:45 p.m., 70 Sanford St., Fairfield; 203-2591036, fairfieldtheatre.org/venue/warehouse.

July 20 ACT of Connecticut presents “Broadway Unplugged with Kate Baldwin.” Baldwin is a Tony Award nominee and recent star of the Broadway revival of “Hello Dolly!” In the Broadway Unplugged series, Bryan Perri plays the piano to accompany the performers. 8 p.m., 36 Old Quarry Road, Ridgefield; 475-215-5433, actofct.org.

July 21 The World Affairs Forum presents Amy Chua, John M. Duff Professor of Law at Yale Law School, speaking on her latest book, “Political Tribes.” 2 p.m. Ferguson Library, One Public Library Plaza, Stamford; 203-3560340, worldaffairsforum.org.

July 23 Our Native Daughters perform at Westport’s Levitt Pavilion. This group is made up of Rhiannon Giddens, Amythyst Kiah, Leyla McCalla and Allison Russell. 8 p.m., The Levitt Pavilion for the Performing Arts, 40 Jesup Road; 866-811-4111, levittpavilion.com.

July 30 and 31 Grammy-Award-winner Lyle Lovett returns to the Ridgefield Playhouse, this time with his Large Band. Coupled with his gift for storytelling, the Texas-based musician fuses elements of country, swing, jazz, folk, gospel and blues. 8 p.m., The Ridgefield Playhouse, 80 E. Ridge Road; 203-438-5795, ridgefieldplayhouse.org.

Presented by ArtsWestchester (artswestchester.org) and The Cultural Alliance of Fairfield County (culturalalliancefc.org/FCBuzz-events).

Summer Season June 15 - July 28

30+ concerts in 7 weeks!

Connect Through Live Music

July 11 Russian Renaissance

July 6 Laura Benanti

July 12 Dover Quartet with Davone Tines, bass-baritone

July 20 Eddie Palmieri Salsa Orchestra

Full Calendar & Tickets: caramoor.org / 914.232.1252 Katonah, NY

July 26 Daniil Trifonov, piano

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MAMMA MIA! The Boys & Girls Club of Northern Westchester hosted a record-breaking fundraiser at its 25th Humanitarian Awards held June 7 at the Rippowam Cisqua School’s upper campus. More than $821,000 was raised by the 420 guests as the club celebrated its 80th anniversary of inspiring all kids to be their very best while giving back to the community. The theme of the evening, co-chaired by Heather and Kristoffer Durst, was Scandinavian Summer Fest.

Guests savored delicacies from the Mount Kisco Seafood raw bar as a live band, The Noiz, played. R. Todd Rockefeller, principal at BNC Agency, was the Humanitarian Award honoree. A highlight of the gala was a spirited performance of a “Mamma Mia!” medley performed by children from the club. The Boys & Girls Club of Northern Westchester in Mount Kisco serves more than 700 children daily and is part of the national organization serving more than 4.3 million children annually. Photographs by Lynda Shenkman.

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Vicki Marwell and Stuart Marwell Hiral Shah and Anil Bhat Chris and Emily Stoddard Kristoffer and Heather Durst Club members Anne and Jacob Citrin Alyzza Ozer, Martha Stewart and Kathy Sloane Kate and Dan Ginnel R. Todd Rockefeller and Lisa Rockefeller Kelley Housman Maggie Kleinsmith and Rachel Townsend Karen and John Aronian Seema Boesky and Muffin Dowdle

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all smiles

www.BlossomFlower.com 914.304.5376 877.458.1709

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SPOTLIGHT ON ALAN The Jacob Burns Film Center presented actor Alan Cumming with the inaugural Life on the Stage Spotlight Award. The awards ceremony at the Pleasantville venue included the screening of clips from Cumming’s stage, screen and television career, as well as a lively conversation moderated by Dori Berinstein. In addition to recognizing Cumming’s career achievements, the program celebrated his unwavering commitment to social justice, diversity and inclusion. Following the program, those in attendance joined Cumming and his husband, artist/illustrator Grant Shaffer, for a seated dinner in the Jane Peck Gallery. At the end of the evening, guests were given a copy of Cumming and Shaffer’s new book, “Honey & Leon Take the High Road.”

Proceeds of the event will benefit the JBFC’s film, media education and artist support programs.

Photographs by Lynda Shenkman.

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Dori Berinstein, Alan Cumming and Edie Demas Brian Ackerman, Heidi Rieger and Rob Harwood Marty and Sheila Major and Sean Weiner Janet Maslin Grant Shaffer Pamela Paul Michelle and Ed Herko Mary and Eddie Johnson and Crista Tucker

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HOUSE PARTY FOR THE ARTS ArtsBash, ArtsWestchester’s biggest house party of the year, once again gave art lovers the chance to explore the artist studios at its White Plains headquarters, tour its gallery exhibit “Modern Families” and sample creative cuisine presented by more than 20 of the area’s hottest chefs and restaurants. The event, which encompassed the historic, 9-story ArtsWestchester downtown building, was co-chaired by Karen and Andrew Greenspan, Pat and Jim Houlihan, Rob Petrone, David DiBari and John Crabtree. Photographs by Leslye Smith.

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Karen Greenspan Rob Petrone, David DiBari and John Crabtree Shari Rosen Ascher and Andrea Stewart-Cousins Janet Langsam and Ken Jenkins Kirk Howell Jim and Pat Houlihan and Froma and Andy Benerofe

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SPORTS. CULTURE. SEX.

Provocative posts on power thegamesmenplay.com JULY 2019

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VNSW GALA HONORS More than 200 friends, colleagues and donors turned out to support the VNSW Foundation Inc. at Willow Ridge Country Club in Harrison, where individuals and organizations that help care for and improve the quality of life for seniors in Westchester and the Hudson Valley were honored. The gala, emceed by Ken Buffa, Westchester reporter for NBC 4 New York, raised more than $110,000. Proceeds from this Spring Benefit Gala directly support Visiting Nurse Services in Westchester’s efforts to provide expanded programs and charitable care for its home health care patients in Westchester, the Bronx, Dutchess, Putnam and Rockland counties.

1. Debbie Flooks, Mary Gibbons Gardiner and William F. Flooks Jr. 2. William T. Smith, Gera Looser, Matthew Anderson and Ken Buffa 3. Tom Milucci, Diana O’Marra, Anne Marie McGrory, Dana Marnane and Chris Connor 4. Peg Nolan, Crista Tucker and Cornelia Crisci 5. Wayne Hoffmann, Martin Considine and Richard J. Davidian 6. David Simon, Nina Schuman-Bronson and Nancy Rudolph 7. Tara Cooke and Michael Klingele 8. Richard Sgaglio, Rita Mabli, Christine Sanders and Bob Knight 9. Stephanie Giroux, Karen Herrero, Tim Leddy, Jamie O’Connell and Raquel Murphy

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POMP AND CIRCUMSTANCE New York Medical College in Valhalla celebrated its 160th commencement ceremony. This year’s graduating class earned more than 400 degrees, including doctor of medicine, physical therapy, philosophy and public health and master of science and public health.

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10. Ronnie Myers, Marina K. Holz, Jerry L. Nadler, Mark Hasten, Edward C. Halperin, Robert W. Amler, Alan Kadish, and George D. Yancopoulos 11. Speech-language pathology graduates of the School of Health Sciences and Practice 12. Members of the School of Medicine Class of 2019

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PEONY PARTY The Friends of the Rockefeller State Park Preserve hosted its 2019 Peony Celebration cocktail event at Rockefeller State Park Preserve. The evening featured an art exhibit and a flower show presented by local gardening clubs. Held annually in the Visitor Center courtyard, the event is a fundraiser for the Friends of the Rockefeller State Park Preserve to help fund carriage-road maintenance.

13. Todd Ruppel and Clare Heskestad 14. Carol Lyden, George Gumina and Lucy Waletzky 15. Herbert Hadad, Keith Austin, Joan Austin and Evelyn Hadad

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BCA TEES UP FOR SUCCESS It was a perfect spring day when the Breast Cancer Alliance (BCA) held its annual golf outing at The Golf Club of Purchase. The sold-out event raised more than $150,000 to fund novel, early-stage research in the field of breast cancer. Highlights of the day included a long-drive contest and the chance to win an Alfa Romeo from Miller Motor Cars for a hole in one, a buffet lunch, cocktails and a buffet dinner. BCA is one of the largest private, noncorporate breast cancer organizations in the country and has awarded more than $27 million in grants supporting its mission to improve survival rates and quality of life for those impacted by breast cancer. Photographs by Elaine Ubiña.

1. Diane Zarrilli, Crystal Stoute, Yonni Wattenmaker and Sue Delepine 2. Audrey McNiff, Carolyn Mercy, Pam Goergen and Mary Bell Case 3. Joe Schlim, Scott Appleby, Berk Nowak and Mark Haranzo 4. Louise Vanderlip, Tim and Suzanne Sennatt and Henrik Vanderlip 5. Ann Quick, Megan Foley, Nancy Mara and Tricia O’Callaghan 6. Alain and Leah Lebec and Kathy and Harry Clark 7. Lisa Skinner, Joy Lautenbach, Susan O’Leary and Mary Helen Holzschuh 8. Mary Quick, Jim Daras and Margaret and Chris Sinclair 9. Chip Skinner, Rob Salem, Conor Kelly and John Jackopsic 10. Libbet Regan, Jean Scannell, Valerie Wilpon, Catherine Marcus, Joy Kaye and Nancy Risman 11. Lile Gibbons, Amanda Baer, Lindsey Wheat and Flo Miller

BURKE RAISES FUNDS Burke Rehabilitation Hospital in White Plains raised more than $150,000 for its new rehabilitation gym and $500,000 overall at its annual Burke Award Dinner at the Brae Burn Country Club in Purchase.

The event is Burke’s largest fundraiser of the year and the Burke Award is the highest bestowed by Burke’s Board of Trustees to individuals, corporations or groups who contributed to the field of rehabilitation.

Photographs by Jesse Rinka Photography.

12. Tom and Bonnie Grace 13. Timothy and Mary Beth Walsh 14. Lawrence Otis Graham, William Null, Ashley Steinberger, Anthony Gioffre, III, Neil Rimsky and Christopher Fisher

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CARAMOOR’S KICKOFF The opening evening of the summer season of Caramoor in Katonah started off on the right note as the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, with conductor Peter Oundjian and cellist Alisa Weilerstein performed Dvorak’s Cello Concerto — considered one of the greatest of cello concertos. This year’s gala festivities honored Peter and Susan Gottsegen for their support of Caramoor’s past and future. The evening began with a pre-performance cocktail reception and dinner then continued long into the night with an after-dark, post-performance party with dessert and dancing under the starts.

Photographs by Gabe Palacio.

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Jeff Haydon Nita and Stephen Lowey and Sean Maloney Jim Attwood Martha Stewart and Chuck Schumer Barry and Mimi Alperin Alisa Weilerstein, Peter Oundjian and the Orchestra of St. Luke’s 7. Peter and Susan Gottsegen

BOUNTIFUL HARVEST Harvest on Hudson, on the banks of the Hudson River, hosted more than 125 students from Hillside Elementary School in Hastings-on-Hudson for its second annual “Garden to Table Experience.”

The event, which reflects the philosophy that the restaurant was built on, featured its staff inviting the students into the gardens to learn about the parts of the plants that are edible. A kitchen tour followed, allowing students to see firsthand how the garden’s bounty would be featured in their pizza lunch.

Photograph by Simon Feldman.

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8. Back row: Angelo Liberatore, Amy Cazes, Jeanne Berry, Robin Farrell and Ben Liberatore; and, front row: Max Caramanica, Alyssa Schlacter, Nora Heilakka, Kameron Moore and Melanie Matos

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SUPPER BY THE SHORE

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The Children’s Dream Foundation held its annual Supper at the Shore Gala at Shenorock Shore Club in Rye, honoring Jennifer Canter, M.D. The 2019 Medical Service Award was presented to the nurses of the White Plains Hospital Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. Funds raised will support their mission of improving pediatric emergency health care in the Hudson Valley. Photographs by Tim Grajek.

1. Kristin Chipoco, Jill Guercio-Niebling, Stephanie Lamonica, Amy Locitzer, Jessica Sullivan, Shari Ammann, Danielle Meany, Melissa Pagano and Kathryn Linehan 2. Michele Goldstein, Owen Ellsworth and Daniel Roseman 3. Connie Coker Larsen and Erik Larsen 4. Carolyn, Meredith and Michael Stevens 5. Donald Murphy, Jr., Nichole Bianco, John Murphy, Donna Murphy, Donald Murphy, Jayne Murphy, Kendal Newman, Ryan Murphy, Catherine Valentino and Matthew Murphy 6. Richard, Peggy and Michael Lichtenstein 7. Jennifer Canter and Timothy Haydock 8. Robert Amler, George Coles, Sherlita Amler and Judith Watson 9. Elaine Allen and Alex Baida

WALKING FOR HOPE A warm morning welcomed hundreds of runners and walkers of all ages in Greenwich for the Breast Cancer Alliance (BCA) annual 5KÂ Run/Walk for Hope. Participants remembered loved ones who lost their lives to the disease and honored those who are surviving. BCA expanded the event further this year, with its inaugural Walk or Run Where You Live initiative, which invited women, men and children throughout the United States to run and walk in their own communities. Photographs by Cara Gilbride.

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10. Rob Yaffa, Tucker, Jess Yaffa and Lois Kelly 11. Whitney Schwarz, Liz Reilly, Stephanie Hoover and Molly Aube 12. Jenn Bogardus, Elizabeth Coelho and Amy Johnson 13. Will Jeffery, Jane Lazgin and Mary and Lily Jeffery 14. Jackson Castelli 15. Scott Perkins 16. Ashley and Elaine Giannetti

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500 REASONS WHY Winston Preparatory School held its annual spring benefit, 500 Reasons Why, with families, friends and professionals from all five campuses across the tri-state area gathering at Cipriani 42nd Street in Manhattan. The evening celebrated more than 500 students who call Winston Preparatory School home and supported the work of the Winston Innovation Lab. All of the funds raised will benefit ongoing research and program development for students with learning differences.

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Zibby and Cory Perkins Jim and Amy Keary Sue and Greg Hendrick Cori and Robert Sargenti

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GOING RED The Westchester American Heart Association’s Go Red for Women Luncheon at the Hilton Westchester drew more than 300 women and men, most wearing the event’s signature red color, to raise awareness and funds to fight women’s number one killer — heart disease. The event featured morning education sessions, health and wellness expo, survivor stories and a keynote address by Suzanne R. Steinbaum. A “PURSEonality” auction featured handbags, wallets and more. Guests also made personal donations to support the American Heart Association’s programs and research through the Open Your Heart campaign.

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1. Christina Rae 2. Patrick Thomas, Keith Churchwell and Johanna Thomas 3. Jennifer Garcia and Gloria LaLuna 4. Judy Melillo 5. Karen Mayo 6. Maria Forlin 7. Lisa LaRocca and Suzanne Steinbaum 8. Marie Venezia and Cindy King

WEDC STARS SHINE

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The Women’s Enterprise Development Center (WEDC) honored three of the region’s enterprising women and a Westchester County businessman and philanthropist when more than 250 guests gathered for its 2019 Spring Gala at Tappan Hill Mansion in Tarrytown. Lisa Salvadorini of News12 Westchester was master of ceremonies and Westchester County Executive George Latimer delivered special remarks.

Photographs by Lynda Shenkman.

9. Stuart Mandell 10. Anne Janiak, Saskia Sorrosa, Barbara von Bergen, Bill Mooney and Paula Mandell 11. Stephen Chase 12. Joyce White, Janet Green and Andrew Green 13. Bob Knight, Toni Ann Rufeh, Carolyn Mandelker and Ginger Siegel 14. Ken Jenkins, Kecia Palmer-Cousins, Debra Fossati and Bridget Gibbons 15. Rachael Gatling, Jessica Mejias and Debra Fossati 16. Amy Paulin, Steve Bulger, Anne Janiak and Beth Goldberger

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WHO OR WHAT IS YOU R IDE A OF A FASCINATING WOMAN? *

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Linda Bretti

nurse manager/nurse practitioner Yonkers resident

Kimberley Ennis

Grace Ferri

executive with United Hebrew of New Rochelle New Rochelle resident

Ellen Hughes

Aaron Kershaw

“I think a fascinating woman is a woman who empowers other women. Today, I had all the women in the office come to the ‘Go Red for Women’ event so they could experience volunteering. You don’t have to give money. You can give your time.”

“What makes a woman fascinating is someone who motivates, inspires and challenges you and wants the best for you no matter what.”

“I think a fascinating woman is not only competent but true to the essence of who she is. And she has great shoes.”

“Beth Oliver. She’s a relatively young woman and has already accomplished a lot.

She started out as a cardiac nurse. Today she is senior vice president of Mount Sinai Health System and president of the board of directors of the American Heart Association.”

“Ellen DeGeneres, because she focuses on wholesome family values even though some may think they are not wholesome family values.”

Lisa LaRocca

senior director with Mount Sinai Health Manhattan resident

photographer Patterson resident

News 12 Westchester reporter Harrison resident

Don Melillo

general contractor Brookfield resident

Shannon Powell

CJ Rummelsburg junior account executive Fairfield resident

co-founder Saving Active Hearts Rye Brook resident

“I find the women in my family, the first generation that came from Italy, so far ahead of their time. My great-grandmother began sewing wedding things and ended up running a textile mill.”

“A woman who can balance all the important aspects of her life. …Men have to do that, too. Often we overemphasize one thing and miss the boat.”

“I would say a fascinating woman is inspiring and sensitive to others while staying true to herself.”

“My mom. She’s always been a great role model, supportive and empowering.”

“It’s been inspiring to establish Saving Active Hearts with another woman (Dana Colasante) to increase access to defibrillators and CPR training in communities.

We live in Rye Brook and have developed a cardiac emergency response plan. It’s the power of us as women.”

junior account executive New York City resident

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*Asked at the American Heart Association “Go Red for Women” luncheon at the Hilton Westchester, Rye Brook. Photographs

by Robin Costello.

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