Wear It Don't Bear It
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This article was contributed by 2010 Scarsdale High School Alumni Toby Milstein: When news of the shootings this past summer in Aurora, Colorado surfaced, I like all other Americans, was devastated. Though I am from Scarsdale and was not personally impacted by the massacre, I felt the sorrow of my fellow Americans as if it were my own and wanted to do something about it. In the fashion and art world, guns have been a perennially popular symbol of status and power. Immediately, we can think of Andy Warhol's pop-art guns and most recently, our twenty-first century's fetishization of guns (and other dark symbols such as skulls) in jewelry such as that of Jennifer Fisher's sold-out gun pistol necklace, and celebrities like Whitney Cummings, Lindsay Lohan and Rihanna who sport gun necklaces. Moreover, in 2008, Chanel produced very popular shoes with the heel as a gun that Madonna wore to a movie premiere.
I struggled to grapple with the dichotomy of this object as a chic, fashion symbol and the gun as a lethal weapon.
With that in mind, I designed a pendant with the slogan, Wear it Don't Bear It. It's one thing to wear a gun as a fashion/art symbol and it's another to use it for what it was intended for-as a killing machine; hence the catchy Wear it Don't Bear it motto. It also functions to say that we should wear and promote the latter statement: Don't Bear It (it being a gun, of course). My charm has unfortunately become even more relevant after the heinous murder of twenty first-graders and six adults at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut on Friday.
In addition from support in the U.S., there has been a lot of interest in the charms from Norway. Ten charms have already been sold to Norwegians who want to show support for grief-stricken American families and those suffering in Oslo after the shootings that left 77 dead last July. Plus I have garnered the support of acclaimed music producer and songwriter, Billy Mann, and The Chancellor of the NY State Board of Regents, Dr. Merryl H. Tisch.
The charms are available here for $25.00 each and 100 percent of the profits from the sales will go to an organization called "The Bereaved Parents of the USA," a non-profit that offers support to grief-stricken family members attempting to rebuild their lives after the loss of a family member
Make a statement about guns by wearing your own "Wear It Don't Bear It" charm and support a good cause. Get yours here:
Scarsdale Kids: A Special Birthday and a Young Author
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Mia Dell'Orto celebrated her twelfth birthday on December 12, 2012. This once in a lifetime date coinciding with Mia's 12th birthday must be a sign of good luck and a bright future! Here's wishing Mia Dell'Orto, a student at Scarsdale Middle School a happy, happy birthday!
Todd Morse, a senior at SHS recently published his first book, The Last Unknown, on the Kindle store. Here's a summary of the book and thoughts on the process of writing and publishing from Todd Morse: The Last Unknown is a young adult novel that follows the adventures of Shawn Gordon, Jackie Summers, Rick Franklin, Peter Williams, Ella Brown, Richard Johnson, and Fate, each from their own points of view. Although the characters seem unrelated at first they soon discover their stories are intertwined when many of them realize they have developed superhuman abilities. These abilities lead them on a perilous journey, escaping and chasing superhuman enemies and a mysterious group that seems bent on their destruction. All the while fate watches over the story, seeing all and providing his comments.
According to Morse, "Publishing the book presented challenges as well. I sent the book to five agents and only one even 
bothered to answer me. I read an article about an author who published to the Kindle all by herself. After reading it, I knew that the Kindle approach was for me. It gave me so much control over my work and bypassed the need to spend months trying to find someone willing to give me a chance."
Morse adds, "Kindle direct publishing is a powerful tool. The 70% royalty rate is almost unbeatable and the widespread access that the internet provides is astounding. In under twelve hours my book was available for sale in Japan, India, the United Kingdom, the United States (of course), and a myriad of other nations. Check it out at www.thelastunknown.net.
Upgraded Website and Historical Archiving Project at the Scarsdale Library
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The Scarsdale Public Library has a new and improved website at Scarsdalelibrary.org. The site has been redesigned to make navigation quicker and user-friendly. The new site provides easier access to lists of new titles, programs and online services, such as databases and e-books. Information regarding the library's hours, access to the online catalog and library account information is more easily accessible.
The Scarsdale Library has been working to ramp up the repertoire of community programs so another focus of the upgrade is the addition of an enhanced calendar that can be sorted by type of event (i.e. kids, adults, Friends of the Library, etc.), with links to additional information.
"We understand the importance of keeping our website up to date," said Elizabeth Bermel, director of the Scarsdale Library. "So many of our patrons rely on looking up information on the go, and we hope that our new and improved website will keep our community members connected and in touch with all of us here at the library."
Preservation: The library has also joined forces with Scarsdale Historical Society to digitize back issues of The Scarsdale Inquirer. The project was kicked off with a $25,000 funding grant from the Scarsdale Historical Society in April 2011. Hudson Microimaging was selected to perform this digitization project and the grant will fund the digitization of the newspaper from 1901 to 1936. Only 18 months after the project began, significant progress has been made, with the years 1901-1928 already digitized and work on the year 1929 is nearing completion. To date, an estimated 10,000 pages have been digitized.
Digitized material can be accessed any time at news.hrvh.org, an online destination housing historical newspapers as part of the Hudson River Valley Heritage (HRVH) service. HRVH is coordinated and managed by the non-profit Southeastern New York Library Resources Council (SNYLRC). The vision of HRVH is to provide access to digitized copies of historical newspapers from the Hudson River Valley region of New York State. Each newspaper will have its own page with information about the publication, including the date range that is available online and information about the history of the newspaper.
In the past, the back issues of the Scarsdale Inquirer, which contain information not available anywhere else, have been made accessible at the library in both print and microfilm. However, many of the back issues are in fragile condition and need to be digitized. Many of these issues are the only known copies in existence and this project ensures they will be preserved for future generations. "Our older copies of the Inquirer are deteriorating, as are our older microfilm copies," said Elizabeth Bermel, director of the Scarsdale Library. "With this grant, we can make these important original source materials more readily available to members of the community in searchable format. In the future, we hope to expand the program and cover more issues of the Inquirer since it is such a valuable resource to our community."
James Traub to Speak in Scarsdale
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Author, journalist and foreign policy expert James Traub will speak on the impact of the election at the Scarsdale Forum's Sunday Speaker Series on Sunday December 16 at 3 pm at the Scarsdale Women's Club. Traub writes the weekly column, Terms of Endearment on foreignpolicy.com. He has written extensively about international affairs as well as national politics, urban affairs and education in the New York Times Magazine The New Yorker and elsewhere. In recent years he has reported from, among other places, Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Egypt, Iran, Guinea Bissau, Congo, Sierra Leone, Angola, Georgia, Kosovo and Haiti. His most recent book is The Freedom Agenda: Why America Must Spread Democracy (Just Not The Way George Bush Did). In 2006 he published The Best Intentions: Kofi Annan and the UN in the Era of American World Power. He is currently writing a biography of John Quincy Adams. He teaches a class on American foreign policy as part of New York University's Sheikh Mohammad Scholarship Program in Abu Dhabi. He is a senior fellow of the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect, a fellow of the Center for International Cooperation and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. A graduate of Scarsdale High School, Traub returns home to engage Scarsdale for a lively discussion.
Scarsdale Woman's Club
37 Drake Road
Scarsdale, New York
The Sunday Speaker Series is underwritten in part by a generous grant from the Irving J. Sloan Education Fund made possible by the
Liz Claiborne - Arthur Ortenberg Foundation.
For more information, please call: (914) 723-2829 or e-mail: [email protected] or visit www.ScarsdaleForum.com
Karen Bergreen at Scarsdale Library Tuesday at 7:30 pm
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On Tuesday, December 4th at 7:30 pm, author and comedian Karen Bergreen will speak at the library to share her insight into her novel, Perfect is Overrated. Also the autor of Following Polly, Bergreen is a regular at the comedy clubs of Gotham and The Comic Strip in New York City. She lives with her husband, two kids, and a varying number of hermit crabs and fish.
Here's what her latest book is about:
What's the best cure for post-partum depression? After years of barely moving, Kate springs back to life when the mothers-you-love-to-hate in her daughter's preschool begin to turn up dead. Murder as a cure for sadness? Sounds evil, but it's not. In Perfect Is Overrated, stand-up comedian and author of Following Polly, Karen Bergreen presents a lovable heroine who is so at sea she's still not sure whether what she suffers from has to do with the birth of her little girl or with the fact that her handsome hunk of a detective husband doesn't live with her anymore. She might fall back in love, she might find a killer, but she sure won't be spending all day in bed anymore.
The Scarsdale Public Library is located at 54 Olmsted Road, Scarsdale, NY, 10583. Phone: (914) 722-1300. Website: www.scarsdalelibrary.org
