BY BRUCE APAR
MAYOR, PENNYSAVER COMMUNITY
This world is riddled with some perverse predators. This time, for a change, I’m not referring to the slithery creatures – cybopaths -- who bog down blogs with their cowardice, ridiculing others anonymously so they can flaunt their taunts without being seen for who they are, though it’s clear what they are: sad, mad, bad, glad to hide from the bright light of honesty.
The best that can be said about such faceless grownups whom maturity forgot is that their verbal abuse is relatively harmless and easy to ignore as inconsequential.
BY BRUCE APAR
MAYOR, PENNYSAVER COMMUNITY
[Full disclosure: Bruce Apar chairs a Community Affairs initiative under Town of Yorktown Supervisor Michael Grace, and Tom DeChiaro chaired the Transition Committee for Supervisor-elect Grace between Election Day and New Year's Day Inauguration.]
What a difference an election makes. For Tom DeChiaro, it translates to accomplishing in six weeks what he's been trying to do for more than six years: receive from the Town of Yorktown a Certificate of Occupancy (CO) for his business, The Winery at St. George.
The vintage moment finally arrived approximately 9:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Feb. 7, 2012 at a town board meeting, when a resolution was passed to grant him the coveted document. He purchased the building in August 2005. What's that old Gallo commercial line about not serving wine before it's time?
BY BRUCE APAR
MAYOR, PENNYSAVER COMMUNITY
Do people in Occupy Wall Street’s hyperbolic 99% not own iPads, while those in OWS’s equally simplistic 1% are the only ones who own iPads?
In no way am I part of an economically advantaged 1%, yet I can’t see eye to eye with the blur and caricaturization of America that is the collective conceit of the 99%. As one who used to work on the periphery of Hollywood, the shallowness of the ramshackle OWS movement resembles a not-so-slickly produced reality show on wheels in search of a coherent story line and compelling lead characters.
By Bruce Apar
Mayor, PennySaver Community
When decades ago The Mamas & The Papas sang about “words of love, so soft and tender,” the ‘60s group wasn’t harmonizing about death. But never are words of love more heartfelt or necessary or comforting than when mourning comes.
It came without warning and with horror recently to the Yorktown family of young Patrick Werner, whose life ended tragically Jan. 15. The immediate outpouring in tribute to the rookie officer who had just finished working his way through the New York City Police Academy included long lines of mourners outside Yorktown’s Clark Funeral Home, standing in frigid temperatures to pay their respects to parents Jacquelyn and Paul and sister Danielle, and to console each other as best they could manage.
BY BRUCE APAR
MAYOR, PENNYSAVER COMMUNITY
Most motorists have the brights to appreciate there are at least two good reasons vehicles have headlights: 1) so the operator can illuminate the road ahead when natural or street lighting isn’t enough; 2) so other operators easily can see your vehicle, especially in a rear view mirror or with peripheral vision when visibility is less than ideal, such as inclement weather, early morning, late afternoon and what skiers know as “flat conditions,” where lack of sun obscures details in your line of sight such as contours under foot or moving objects at a distance.
Resolution today is never to fully accept, and to point out persistently, that there still exist too many dim bulbs on the road, those being vehicles with headlights stubbornly not turned on even when visibility warrants otherwise.
Dim bulbs wait at traffic light in Croton-on-Hudson at Rte 129 + Riverside Avenue.
Take today, in Northern Westchester County (N.Y.), where my sojourn to a train station in Croton-on-Hudson, to fetch my 21-year-old daughter Elissa and her friend Colette, brought me headlight to deadlight with a smattering of vehicles inexplicably flaunting dim bulbs, despite snow falling and very flat visibility. You need to be able to know there’s a vehicle in your rear view mirror even without looking directly in that mirror. Today’s the kind of day when a car without illumination easily blends into the background, thus dangerously camouflaged.
Adding to my resolve not to understand how such motorists think (or don’t) is the fact they must notice others have headlights burning bright. Do they think it’s just an affectation, a conceit, an errant use of battery power?
Oh, there’s another, third good reason worth adding to the couple aforementioned. In the state of New York, having headlights on when windshield wipers are needed — as is the case with any form of precipitation — is a law.
Eh, what the hey, you know how that pesky government sometimes can be: always trying to get in our grille.
Dim bulbs, wake up and smell the tungsten, halogen or what have you! The time for enlightenment has alit on the dashboard of your consciousness.
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