SMS Sixth Graders Discover that Writing Can Sing
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- Written by Midori Im
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Musician and Instrument Builder Terry Dame
Ms. Dame explained to the students how she has been building instruments for many years, a result of her love for making things combined with the desire to be original. Since the beginning she incorporated a recycling component in her work by building instruments out of found objects. One large instrument she demonstrated for the students was built from a bike pump and parts of old instruments. Not only were the parts found, but so in a sense were the musical elements themselves, such as NASA recordings made in outer space. This instrument is an example of how she could achieve her objectives of having instruments that are interactive and also digital, through the use of Arduino. Arduino is an open-source electronics platform based on hardware and software . It receives inputs from many sensors and affects its surroundings by controlling lights, motors, and other actuators. Ms. Dame showed how her instrument could actually be played with a "light touch" - depending on the presence or absence of light, sound is
generated.
Her final demonstration involved her "singing pencils" instrument, which uses graphite and resistance to create sounds. Movement of the pencil and completing of the circuit resulted in the emission of various sounds.
What Ms. Dame has learned through her work is that one should not be afraid to make a mistake, which may even result with in something you never anticipated.
Student Eli Cohen described Ms. Dame's work to be "cool and unexpected." He was amazed at how a simple pencil and graphite could be used to make beautiful music. Alan Xiong found it so interesting and unique to be an inventor. The opportunity to hear about Ms. Dame's work was the perfect segue to the next assignment for the students, making their own instruments using a device like the Arduino. Stay tuned!
SMS Students Confront Hurricane Godzilla in Emergency Response Exercise
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- Written by Joanne Wallenstein
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Mayor John Harrison holds a press conference during Hurricane Godzilla
That's what students in Maggie Favretti and Fallon Plunkett's City 2.0 class at SHS explored as they confronted Hurricane Godzilla in a 4-hour storm simulation as a part of a public policy class focusing on urban issues and community-based design and problem solving.
At Storm Headquarters in the Board of Education Rooms at SHS on the morning of March 15, students divided into agencies to confront the rain, 120 mile per hour winds and a 20 foot storm surge that were bearing down on the city. They began by researching how each agency prepares in the 48 hours before a storm and formulated an action plan for the coming event. Here are must a few of the factors that were considered:
- Evacuation and shelter
- Transportation infrastructure including subways, streets, bridges and tunnels
- Water, sewage and sanitation
- Freight transport by sea, rail, air and trucking
- Power and energy including electricity, natural gas and steam
- Communications, phone lines, wireless networks, emergency networks and mail
During each portion of the three-hour simulation, each operations group prepared two-minute briefings for Unified Command. They outlined their priorities, protocols, obstacles and opportunities for coordination with other agencies.
There were two live press conference Noah Goldberg from the Westchester Office of Emergency Management explains storm consequences
Noah Goldberg from the Westchester County Office of Emergency Management told the teams that it could sometimes take up to eleven days to restore power and communications. He advised the teams to prepare to shelter people for weeks and to expect sanitary issues and structural problems. Bridges and tunnels might be washed away, looting could be an issue and storm debris would need to be cleared.
Also on hand to assist the students with their simulation were Gerry Stoughton, who has retired from the Port Authority and Ira Tannenbaum, from the NYC Office of Emergency Management. Two officials from the Coast Guard also helped to formulate the event but were not present: Mark Sennick and Bill Grossman were both involved in a real-life emergency. They were called away to assist in the lifting of a sunken tugboat from the Hudson River where three crewmembers died.
Stoughton told one group, "Communication is essential to any crisis. Most people do not realize how complicated the process of emergency management is since it is crucial to make sure that every agency is aware of the situation and on the same page."
The students were released from their regular Students formulate a plan
experience a real "table-top exercise." According to Maggie Favretti, "These exercises are indispensable to the Office of Emergency Management and the US Coast Guard in order to facilitate community awareness, as well as teaching the skills and habits of mind we would like our young citizens to carry with them out of high school."
Scarsdale Native Curates Exhibit at Fairfield University
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- Written by Joanne Wallenstein
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Passage, 1993 Cast bronze on concrete base
The exhibit is a major survey of Gummer's works and includes more than 50 drawings, watercolors, cardboard and bronze models, wall reliefs, and free-standing bronze and steel sculptures by the artist. Gummer's richly-layered, cerebrally composed drawings incorporate color, encaustic (an ancient technique in which pigment is suspended in wax) and collage. In scale, they range from quick, small sketches, to elaborate monumental panels that are tapestry-like in their grandeur and proportions. Although all Gummer's drawings typically have the character of finished, autonomous creations regardless of size, many are in fact stages of a genesis: they are preliminary ideas and studies for sculptures, which show him working out, evolving, and testing different vantage points or compositions. The essential role of drawing in his creative process as a sculptor, and the fluidity of forms and ideas that mutate and migrate between media, are among the central themes explored in the selection of works on view.
Within Gummer's oeuvre certain themes and motifs recur. The exhibition presents a number of these groups of interrelated works. One is the series "Darwin's Map," which is iterated in collage drawings and wall reliefs. In both media, ribbon-like bars of color, at once fluid and masterfully controlled, form layered kaleidoscopes — suggestive, paradoxically, of stasis and flux.
Another group of work has the Twin Towers South Tower, 2008 Stainless steel
Architecture is a leitmotif in Gummer's art and another focus of the works presented in the exhibition. Building things has always been an impulse for the artist who, early in his career, worked as a carpenter and a construction worker. (Many of his drawings and monumental sculptures have the character of a building erected to the framing stage, a residual and lingering imprint of that experience.)
Gummer's art is full of paradoxes. Movement and repose, exuberance and restraint, emotion and reticence, gravity and weightlessness, volume and void — these antitheses are perfectly synthesized in his compelling, poetic works.
everything he creates.
Atelier Jianshu over R.M. Schindler’s Packard Residence, 2005 Oil on wood
Linda Wolk Simon
In addition to her curatorial expertise, Dr. Wolk-Simon has a strong teaching background, having conducted and co-taught numerous undergraduate and graduate seminars and classes at the Metropolitan and the Morgan on Italian Old Master Drawings and other topics, and lectured extensively on Italian art in various adult education programs.
Dr. Wolk-Simon holds a Ph.D. in history of art and a B.A., summa cum laude, both from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
Raiders Wrestlers are League Champions
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- Written by Joanne Wallenstein
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Wrestling Team Seniors Back Row:Teddy DeLorenzo, Raphael Rogoff, Ethan Raff, Brendan Knaack, Andrew Braun, Liam Haller Front Row: Michael Dabramo, Kosta Bobolakis
The stats for the eight wrestlers that went to Sectionals are: 99lbs Johnny Keltz,25-14,113lbs Michael DaBramo 46-6,113lbs Jack Ortner 16-13, 132lbs Seth Schulman 25-14, 170lbs Raphael Rogoff 17-16, 182lbs Andrew Braun 31-8, 195 lbs Brendan Knaack 25-10, and at heavyweight 285 lbs Ethan Raff 32-9.
The three seniors who were named All Section were Brendan Knaack, Ethan Raff took and Michael Dabramo.
Neighbor Taps Elderly Man's Waterline
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- Written by Joanne Wallenstein
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(This letter was sent in by a Scarsdale10583 reader who asked to remain anonymous) I read the police blotter so I am familiar with the stories about phone scams, home health aide workers procuring money from their elderly charges, and brazen thieves stealing handbags from cars parked on our local streets. Last spring, when my father returned home from Burke Rehabilitation with 24-hour home healthcare I was mindful of the stories I have read over the years and took the proactive step to manage his finances from my home. I reminded him and his aide of all of the phone scams – and made it clear that he should not divulge his social security number to anyone and that his two grandsons were safe and sound in college and did not need their grandfather to send them money at any time. I explained to each aide that they should not leave their handbag in their car when parked outside of my father's home and to always lock the car doors.
It never dawned upon me that my father's neighbors would be the ones to rob him of his dignity and his property.
The moment he returned home we realized he could no longer manage the stairs at the back of his house, which required him to traverse the lawn to enter his home through his front door. His comings and goings are difficult as he is shaky on his feet and fearful of falling. Further complicating the process are the piles of dog poop that he has to navigate on his front lawn. In an attempt to stop the poor behavior of the dog owners who do not pick up after their animals, we placed a cute, plastic sign in the shape of a dog reminding dog owners to curb their dog. It was stolen within one day. Now there are two, not-so-cute signs on his property that say 'keep off the grass'. Still his neighbor's dog(s) use his front lawn as their public restroom and their owners leave it behind.
This past Saturday, on a beautiful day in February, we discovered that his neighbor was taking more from him than his front lawn. It turns out my father's next door neighbor has been instructing her car washing service to use my father's water spigot and hose to wash her cars. It is unclear whether this began when the neighbor turned off her outside water for the season, or if this has been on-going. When I asked the homeowner if perhaps the story had been relayed to me improperly, she told me indeed she has been "innocently" using my father's hose and water. She went further to tell me that her car washer is only at her home monthly - as if it's okay to use his property since its only monthly. I suggested twice that she should have asked first, however she did not acknowledge this with agreement or an apology. She simply stated that her use of his property was an innocent move. It certainly may have been. And I gave her the benefit of the doubt, hoping she would ring his doorbell the next day to take responsibility for her mistake. I was sorely disappointed.
We take all of the precautions to protect ourselves from strangers robbing us. We secure our homes with alarms and cameras. We diligently sign up for identity theft alerts and services. We do background checks on our nanny and home healthcare workers. Somehow, though, we don't suspect that our neighbors will be the ones to rob us of our dignity and our property. Perhaps I am naïve.
I have asked that this story be published anonymously because I am sure my father's next door neighbor will live in Scarsdale for many more years. I want to permit her to walk through town with her head held up high ... something my father can't do because he's too busy looking out for dog poop!
