Happy 80th to Cinema Arts Centre's Vic Skolnik

June 23, 2008

Last evening's scheduled 80th birthday party for Vic Skolnick, co-founder with his beloved Charlotte Sky of the anti-multiplex known in these parts as the Cinema Arts Centre, actually was a belated celebration. Officially, Skolnick waded into his four score years on April 25. June, however, seemed a more favorable date for throwing a party, what with potential partygoers all hyped over flowerings of landscape and sunnier skies.

Recent columns

• The lure of LI’s folklore

  June 9, 2008

  More often than not, when Nancy Solomon informs the casual listener that she is educated and professionally tenured as a folklorist, the reaction is one of unconcealed puzzlement. "They think I tell stories and sings songs," says Solomon, holder of a master's degree in folklore from George Washington University.

• Katti Gray: Honoring a plus amid a racial divide

  May 26, 2008

  When Abraham Krasnoff's name is proclaimed during a June 4 affair spotlighting race-based strides, strongholds and setbacks in what was his own proverbial backyard, the proclamation will have several aims. For one, it will again hail Krasnoff, a white CEO and man-about-the-community, for hiring black people into suited-up desk jobs at a time when they were overpopulating the mailroom and janitorial staffs.

• Katti Gray: Being the aunt to sick friend's kids

  May 19, 2008

  Iam, at this writing, homeward-bound. I am coming down from eight days as a partial stand-in for a convalescent girlfriend, who, when in optimum health, runs her blended household of four school-age children and one 2 1/2-year-old as only the über-mother can.

• On the train, not missing the plane

  May 12, 2008

  In the fifth hour of the Carolinian's humming and jolting along the rails, my left eye leads me to distraction. Without my willing it so, the eye catches a glimpse of water running hard and muddled toward a bridge our passenger-packed train is crossing over.

• Gearing up for life beyond Wyandanch

  May 5, 2008

  When Frank Pomata considers the possibilities, he points to ambitious Lasheca Lewis as Example A of what a kid from the proverbial wrong side of the tracks can achieve with a nudge here, a little assistance there. Completing the research and legwork on her own, Lasheca, a ninth-grader at Wyandanch High School, which has a relative handful of scholars and go-getters, settled on an exchange program that sent her to Australia for 21 days during the summer of 2007. Through car washes, other solicitations and several benefactors who see her potential, she raised $6,000 to journey to the land down under, be hosted by an Australian family and affirm her capacity to do, lead, explore.

• Katti Gray: Human footprint treads on our planet

  April 28, 2008

  If the 6.6 billion human beings on Earth each lived part-time, as I do, in a modest single-family house of roughly 1,200 square feet, it would require the resources of multiple Earths to accommodate those 6.6 billion individual living arrangements. This alarming hypothetical, deduced by an interactive Internet game, is mitigated by certain realities: Many a household is, in fact, shared on this planet. A whole lot of people have no home whatsoever, which is a fact of another sort.

• Katti Gray: Payday's still an unequal day for women

  April 21, 2008

  In preparation for National Pay Equity Day, set for tomorrow, Fran Medaglia was tooling around in a car packed with leaflets, brochures and 1,000 candy bars. "PayDays," she said, noting the proper name of those old-fashioned peanut and caramel clusters. Gimmicky, yes, but also an entry point on the still-not-dead issue of how to achieve something approaching absolute parity between women's paychecks and men's.

• Chilly feet as I shrink my carbon footprint

  April 14, 2008

  If, as I did, you purchased a newfangled tankless water heater that converts your shower, among other alluvial activities, into a more environmentally responsible affair, but then turned on the faucet and stood there agog while the water took its sweet time warming up, never you mind. Your miscalculation, thinking you'd have hot water on the spot, is so very minor.

• Katti Gray: Can we talk? Yes we can

  April 7, 2008

  A friend who has settled nicely into her third marriage told me that a necessary tool for surviving the adventure is learning to talk with a spouse in a manner that encourages his response and opens him to further conversation on the tough subjects.