The Hudson Independent: News for Tarrytown and Sleepy Hollow, NY

Gardening Basics 101: Part 2

Mark Gilliland
For The Hudson Independent

In last month’s installment we covered getting to know your garden environment so that you can design and grow with success by putting the right plant in the right spot. In Part 2, we will get down to business and get some dirt under our nails.

When to Plant
For most perennials, shrubs and trees, planting when dormant (without leaf) or just as new buds are appearing in early spring seems intuitively the best time to plant. However, planting in the late fall might be the optimum time of the year since it allows new plants to continue their root growth until the ground freezes. They thus get a substantial head start on spring plantings. This is one reason why dividing perennials in the fall makes sense. Another reason is that in the fall you can clearly see how big the plant has become and can therefore make easier decisions about next year’s bed density.

The ‘Invisible Culture’ is Alive and Well in Irvington

A community finds its focus at the village’s Town Hall Theater.

Peter Royston
For The Hudson Independent

Stroll down Main Street in Irvington and, along with the many shops, restaurants and a breathtaking view of the Hudson, you’ll come across a beautiful old building, 85 Main Street, Irvington’s Town Hall. Circle the building and you’ll notice that this one structure, adorned with a clock tower, serves as headquarters for the village’s offices — police, building department and justice court — all the services you’d expect and all in one building. Oh, and one more that perhaps you wouldn’t expect: nestled on the top floor, a theater.

The actor and director Laurence Olivier once said, “I believe that in a great city, or even a village, a great theater is the outward and visible sign of an inward and invisible culture.” For more than 100 years, the Irvington Town Hall Theater has been a showcase for both professional artists and community-based performances, ensuring that Irvington’s “invisible culture” remains alive and well.

Built in 1902 as a multipurpose hall and patterned on Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C., this versatile 432-seat space has seen Eleanor Roosevelt stump for FDR and Ted Mack audition contestants for “The Original Amateur Hour.” Town trustees have even met on the stage, but they didn’t like it, according to theater manager Pamela Rapp. “Our acoustics are so good, when they whispered to each other on stage, everyone in the audience could hear what they were saying!” Rapp said.

Tradition! Tradition!

“Fiddler on the Roof” will be Michael C. Penta’s 72nd production in Irvington.

Morey Storck
For The Hudson Independent

Michael C. Penta has had a passionate desire to direct “Fiddler on the Roof” since he first saw it on Broadway soon after it opened in September 1964. But there never seemed an appropriate time, until now. It will be Penta’s 72nd production in Irvington since he came to the village in 1967. But it won’t be the Zero Mostel model, which Penta dismissed as “Catskill shtick.” Penta said, “He [Mostel] performed that Tevya role as [Jerome] Robbins directed it, only once. Thank God, it was opening night. After that, Zero was Zero. Completely undisciplined.”

To research the original “Fiddler,” Penta was allowed to view a reconstruction at the Lincoln Center archives, an unusual achievement since Robbins was extremely protective of his work, and permission is rarely granted by his estate’s attorney.

Rehearsals for the Irvington Town Hall production began June 19, and would continue with five months of organization, including eight weeks of rehearsal. “Once rehearsals start,” Penta said, “everything becomes much easier. It’s all that backstage stuff that can really get you down.”

Flying Together with the Greatest of Ease

Swinging on a trapeze, an Irvington family loves to take daring leaps of faith.

Andrea Kott

What gives you a rush? That first sip of morning coffee? A shopping spree? New love? All “rushworthy” items for most folks. But the Decrems of Irvington are not like most folks. How could they be, when they get their rush by swinging on a trapeze?

“It’s excitement big time,” said Peter Decrem, who, along with his wife, Carol, and children Danielle, 13, Nicole, 10, and Andrew, 6, has become hooked on doing trapeze since discovering it four years ago. The Decrems carve out quality time by cheering each other on as they perform tricks under the big top, over a very sturdy net.

The Decrems first tried trapeze while vacationing at a Club Med in 2001 in the Caribbean. The children did it first. A year later they convinced their mother to give it a try, and eventually — four years later — their father. It came more easily to some than to others.

“When I started, tears were coming into my eyes I was so scared,” recalled Danielle, a competitive swimmer who is at The Masters School in Dobbs Ferry. “I’m like, ‘What am I getting myself into?’ ”

Nicole, a gymnast and student at Irvington’s Main Street School, said, “The first time you do it you feel a blank.”

Running in Iraq

Jackals, searing heat and races delayed due to incidental fire presented a very different running experience from one in the Rockefeller Preserve. And yet, some things remained the same.

Benjamin Cheever

My wife told me that while I was in Iraq, I must not eat while walking: “They’ll know you’re an American and kidnap you or kill you.” She also said, “Don’t tell people that you flew all the way to Baghdad to run a 10K, because they’ll know it’s a lie, assume you work for the CIA and kidnap you or kill you.”

But I did fly to Baghdad to run a 10K.

While writing a book about running, I had discovered that the army is full of runners. Even the generals run. Lt. Gen. Pete Chiarelli, who commands the multinational force, doesn’t run in Iraq. He doesn’t sleep there either. Or rather he is said to sleep for three hours a night. At home he runs nearly every day. “How long has this been going on?” I asked. “About 35 years,” he said. Gen. George Casey, the U.S. commander in Iraq, runs while overseas and while he missed this year’s Peachtree, he has run many races on the base.

More Than Just a Cool Dude

Andrea Kott

What’s a skateboarder? A long-haired, knit-capped, baggy-pants-clad punk rocker who scrapes along any chunk of sidewalk or railing he can find? A gravity-defying acrobat who becomes airborne with his board adhering to the soles of the feet? An athlete? An artist? An outlaw? A kid?
    

Spend enough time at 2nd Nature, the skateboard shop on Beekman Avenue in Sleepy Hollow, and the answer becomes clear: skateboarders defy definition. Take storeowner Doug Brown, for example. At 26, with 14 years of skateboarding to his credit, Brown can land an ollie or heel flip with the best of them. But he looks more like an Ivy Leaguer than a skateboard punk, with his hair closely cropped and his face clean-shaven. His inner rebel notwithstanding, Brown is a savvy, community-minded entrepreneur who has built a successful business with a loyal following of youngsters whom he motivates and inspires.

Mind and Soul: Dance classes in Tarrytown and Sleepy Hollow

Peter Royston
For The Hudson Independent

The truest expression of a people is in its dance … Bodies never lie. 
— Agnes de Mille

Dance is flourishing from one end of our villages to the other, in programs that teach kids and adults about community and responsibility as well as the difference between a pirouette and an entrechat. In the few miles from Tarrytown to Sleepy Hollow there is a world of dance whose teachers, styles and beats would make anyone want to get up on their feet.
     Starting at the southern end of Tarrrytown, the JCC on the Hudson offers pre-ballet, ballet, hip hop, tap and modern. Instructor Aliza S. Piotrowski remembers taking dance as a young girl in France: “It was a struggle for me at first; I was not very good at it. My goal when I teach now is to prove that everyone can dance.” The JCC’s dance programs take this attitude to heart, emphasizing the fun and exercise of dance over a rigorous performance schedule. “Prepping for a performance is an enormous strain,” Piotrowski said. “Kids are already overwhelmed, they want to have fun.” And adults as well: a popular, and unique, program at the JCC is its belly dancing class. Said Aliza, “We all like to eat too much, and belly dancing is a great, great workout!”
   

Leaving Home, Again

Almost 4 decades after coming to America,
Violeta Veliz will say goodbye to Open Door
and her adopted ‘hometown’ of Sleepy Hollow.

Marcy Gray

In her more than 18 years as a lab technician at the Open Door Family Medical Center in Sleepy Hollow, Violeta Veliz has become a familiar source of comfort to the hundreds of people who have come to her small office. She draws their blood, takes their vitals, listens to their stories and always — always — makes them laugh. Vivi, as everyone knows her, does not toil anonymously, an unsung hero of a small town. On the contrary, she is hailed wherever she goes: shopping at C-Town, on the streets of the village, at the summer fairs where she offers her medical services on behalf of Open Door. Family, friends and colleagues in her adopted hometown celebrate Vivi, and now she is leaving.
     Her story is the classic immigrant tale. Vivi and her husband, Oscar, left their native Guatemala in 1969 to come to America for the reason most immigrants share: to make a better life for their family. They left behind all that was familiar, their parents, language, way of life and, most wrenching, their five children to be cared for by Oscar’s mother. Vivi, now 63, trained as a lab technician in Guatemala but needed to start all over again in the Bronx, first by learning English.        After years of studying and working tirelessly, in 1987 Vivi and Oscar were able to reunite the family in America. Their oldest two children, now 31 and 29 years old, graduated from White Plains High School. The Velizes moved to Sleepy Hollow in the 1990s, and the next three children, including the twins, now 25, graduated from Sleepy Hollow High School.
     Vivi’s four sons and two of her four grandchildren live close by, but her only daughter, Brenda, 25, with two little girls, joined the Army and now lives in Alaska. “What was I to say to my daughter?” Vivi asked, a hint of tears lurking behind her warm brown eyes. “I told her not to go, but she wanted to serve her country, so I said ‘good-bye and God bless.’” Vivi laughed suddenly, something one gets used to quickly in her company. “My brother [in Florida] called me, crying about his child moving out of the house.” When questioned as to how far away her brother’s child was going, she said, still laughing, “Just a few minutes away! And I said to my brother, ‘Can you imagine how our parents suffered when we moved to another country?’ ”