Jazz Benefit For Whaiv
This Sunday, September 25 at 7 p.m., enjoy a sensuous jazz performance featuring vocal sensation Lindsey Webster with Keith Slattery plus the Perry Beekman Duo in the beautiful garden and gallery of Photosensualis, 15 Rock City Road, Woodstock.
Also, you can also thank a volunteer or group of volunteers in the Appreciation and Memory Book.
This is an opportunity to acknowledge those who have helped during the Irene storm disaster. Go to www.volunteersday.org. All entries for the Appreciation & Memory Book will receive one or more tickets to the jazz performance this Sunday.
Support the Volunteers’ Day Project, thank a volunteer in the memory book and enjoy a delightful concert all at the same time. Tickets for the performance are also available at the Golden Notebook.
Hope to see you there.
Sam Magarelli
Woodstock
Art For Slave Wages
Any price put on the head of ‘art’ is, in a sense, slave-wages. Although Picasso was probably right, ‘All art is political,’ that fact is a world-travesty. All the world is complicated and, in essence, self-imposed pain can be seen through the mind’s eye-of-the-needle: spiritual degradation. Romeo’s and Juliet’s love-tragedy is…universal. Babies can feel it, old men can feel it, transvestites can feel it, carpenters, truck-drivers, even vagabonds and day-dreamers feel it. Animals and trees feel it, too, but only when we heartlessly hurt them, and we do. Everyday. Art-galleries usually make me sick, but I suppose we have to have them, like banks? Art-colonies make me even sicker, but, then, how to escape the mass-fascism of meat-grinder commercial insanity? No wonder ‘artists’ begin to congregate in hordes, create little clubs, cliques, scenarios — blocking, almost, the tender view of the brilliant sky, the pulsation of chipmunks and ants, the silk-saturated rain, the life-giving celestial spirit that comes shining from the stars? (and I don’t mean fancy-pants ‘celebrities’ — pooh-pooh to them and their suffocating self-importance. Give me a homeless inspired vagabond any day of the week, thank God there’s still a few left…).
Ron Rybacki
Woodstock
Curriculum And Teacher Review Workshop
On behalf of the Board of Education, I invite you to attend the first Workshop of this school year focusing on an educational related issue. The Workshop is scheduled for our BOE meeting on Tuesday, September 27 at 8 p.m. in the Bennett Elementary School cafeteria in Boiceville. This workshop, “In Plain English,” will be presented by Marki Clare-O’Rourke and will address the new Federal Core Curriculum Standards and the new APPR (Annual Professional Performance Review) for principals and teachers. We hope you will join us to learn more about what is happening in our school community, and across our State.
In the days since the destruction left by Hurricane Irene, I must say that I am very proud to live in our community. We have banded together in remarkable ways; neighbors helping neighbors who have realized damage and destruction. Please continue to reach out and ask if you need help. And for the rest of us, may we remember this time and continue to help each other as we resume our busy schedules and lives. This makes for a strong community and serves as an important lesson for our children!
Ann McGillicuddy
President Onteora Board of Education
Join the family! 
