Download - The Nyack Villager

4 The Nyack Villager November, 2012
REPORTER
at large
NAACP Candidate’s Forum
Nyack Branch NAACP Candidate’s Forum
at which all candidates for public office are
invited to speak and take questions from
audience members.
Thurs, Nov 1, from 7-9:30pm at Clarkstown
Town Hall, rm 301, 10 Maple Ave,
New City.
NAACP Meeting
Election of officers and at-large members of
the Executive Committee of the Nyack
Branch NAACP will take place at their
General Meeting. Guest Speaker: Mikail
Sankofa (Thrust Fencing Academy)
Wed, Nov 28 at 7pm at the YMCA, 35
South Broadway, Nyack.
Nyack’s Farmers’ Market comes
in from the cold
In mid-October, Kim Cross, Executive Director
of Nyack Center, announced that
The Nyack Farmers Market, Nyack Center
and The Nyack Chamber of Commerce
have forged a partnership to bring a winter
market to Nyack starting at the end of this
month.
The market will make its transition from
outdoors to indoors at Nyack Center on
November 29. During the winter, the market
will run on its regular Thursday schedule
from 8am to 2pm until May 2.
Winter Market starts 8am Thurs, Nov 29.
Nyack Center is at 58 Depew Avenue,
Nyack, NY. Info: 845.358.2600
Great American Smoke Out
If you are still smoking cigarettes—even
after decades of dire health warnings and
the almost absurd price of a pack of smokes
($8.25 in Connecticut, $8.35 in New Jersey
and a whopping $11.90 in New York,)
here’s your chance to kick the habit.
The Great American Smoke Out says if you
can go one day without smoking, you’re on
the way to quitting for good.
Target day is Thurs, Nov 15. You are urged
to call the New York State Smokers’ Quitline
(1-866-697-8487) to order your free 2-
week supply of nicotine-replacement
patches. Using the patch, gum or lozenge
along with a behavior change program and
a quit plan can double your chances of
being successful.
Nyack resident gets Genius Grant
Nyack resident
Terry Plank has
been awarded
one of this year’s
23 MacArthur
Foundation
“genius grants,”
and will receive
$100,000 a year
for the next five
years—no
strings attached.
The MacArthur Fellows Program awards
five-year, unrestricted fellowships to individuals
across all ages and fields who show
exceptional merit and promise of continued
creative work. It is limited to U.S. citizens
and residents.
There are no restrictions on what the winners
can do, no papers they need to write
and no justification required for how they
spend the money. Recipients usually don’t
know they’re being considered until they get
a call and learn they have been picked.
MacArthur President Robert Gallucci made
this statement about all the recipients:
“These extraordinary individuals demonstrate
the power of creativity. The MacArthur Fellowship
is not only a recognition of their
impressive past accomplishments but also,
more importantly, an investment in their
potential for the future. We believe in their
creative instincts and hope the freedom the
Fellowship provides will enable them to
pursue unfettered their insights and ideas
for the benefit of the world.”
Ms Plank is a professor at Columbia University’s
Department of Earth and Environmental
Sciences. She works as a researcher
at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and
teaches graduate students and an undergraduate
course. She researches why and
how volcanoes erupt. Ms Plank is now
working on information she recently gathered
in Hawaii.
Professor Plank said “It came out of the
blue. I was walking to my car ... to go get
my son and the phone rings and it was the
president of the MacArthur Foundation.”
She added, “It’s definitely the best phone
conversation ever.”
She said she never gave a thought to what
she would do with an endowment and still
has no idea.
Professor Plank has lived in Nyack for four
years; her son just started at Nyack Middle
School.
The Comet
ISON
The newly-discovered comet X/201SI, called
ISON by its friends, appears to be setting
the stage for a show in the night sky that
will blow your mind.
Astronomers expect ISON, a gigantic ice
ball, to pass just 1.16 million miles from
the Sun as it makes its closest approach to
Earth. That’s near enough to the Sun’s heat
to melt off some of the comet’s ice, releasing
dust and gas, forming what should be a
spectacular tail.
As it circles around the Sun, the comet
should pass relatively close to Earth—but
not near enough to cause us to worry. If all
goes as expected, people living in the
Northern Hemisphere could see the comet
glowing as bright as a full moon in the
weeks approaching Christmas, 2013.
We mustn’t let our hopes run away with us.
Astronomers point out that comets have a
habit of disappointing. ISON could be
sucked into the Sun and disappear from
view altogether, or if it survives, it could
grow a less impressive tail.
Comet expert John E. Bortle remains optimistic,
however, comparing ISON with the
Great Comet of 1680, which, according to
contemporary accounts, caused the people
of Manhattan Island to be “overcome with
terror at a sight in the heavens such as has
seldom greeted human eyes … In the
province of New York a day of fasting and
humiliation was appointed, in order that
the wrath of God might be assuaged.”
The little graphic at the top of this column is
Halley’s Comet as seen by the folks who created
the Bayeux Tapestry in the 1070s. It’s called a
tapestry even though it’s really a strip of embroidered
cloth. Along its 230 feet, it depicts
events leading up to the Norman conquest of
England culminating in the Battle of Hastings.
It is told from the point of view of the winner:
William, Duke of Normandy, known to history
as William the Conqueror,
You can see an amusing animation of the work;
Google ‘The Animated Bayeux Tapestry’ ✫