Bee Bee strikes again!

AMENIA — What’s a good way to tell that it’s summer?

Multiple Bee Bee the Clown sightings.

 Bee Bee stopped by the Amenia Free Library on July 30, hot off her performance at the Pine Plains Free Library earlier in July. Her show was part of the library’s summer reading program, which started July 16 and will run every Friday until the end of August.

Bee Bee was up to her usual bag of tricks, which includes stuffed animals, balloons, books and puppets. There were jokes for the kids, jokes for the adults and jokes thrown out for anyone to shake their head at and chuckle. All were told in her patented rapid-fire delivery, bouncing off visual and verbal puns with the dexterity only a veteran clown could possess.

All of Amenia’s summer reading programs have been held under a special tent set up earlier this season in the library’s backyard, and it’s come in handy to block out the sun on the hot days and keep families dry during bouts of wet weather.

“We’ve had very good attendance this summer,†said librarian Miriam Devine. “There were 25 children and 20 adults here today, and the tent helps us. Last week it was drizzling but everyone stayed dry.â€

While Amenia’s summer program chugs along, the library’s Story Hour continues as well. As Lesley Gyorsok, the library’s children’s activities director, mentioned before the show, Story Hour is being held every Thursday this summer at the Beth David Synagogue, just up the road from the library. It’s a free program that starts at 10 a.m. and includes stories, songs, arts and crafts and snacks. In the fall, Story Hour will revert back to its Tuesday/Thursday schedule.

For a full schedule of library events, log on to amenia.lib.ny.us. And although Bee Bee won’t be back to Amenia until next summer, there are plenty of kids who are willing to wait patiently.

“I come here every year!†exclaimed Kiara Carman. Her favorite Bee Bee routine?

“Hmmmm … when she made that big squid,†she finally settled on. It was obviously a tough decision.

Latest News

South Kent School’s unofficial March reunion

Elmarko Jackson was named a 2023 McDonald’s All American in his senior year at South Kent School. He helped lead the Cardinals to a New England Prep School Athletic Conference (NEPSAC) AAA title victory and was recruited to play at the University of Kansas. This March he will play point guard for the Jayhawks when they enter the tournament as a No. 4 seed against (13) Samford University.

Riley Klein

SOUTH KENT — March Madness will feature seven former South Kent Cardinals who now play on Division 1 NCAA teams.

The top-tier high school basketball program will be well represented with graduates from each of the past three years heading to “The Big Dance.”

Keep ReadingShow less
Hotchkiss grads dancing with Yale

Nick Townsend helped Yale win the Ivy League.

Screenshot from ESPN+ Broadcast

LAKEVILLE — Yale University advanced to the NCAA men’s basketball tournament after a buzzer-beater win over Brown University in the Ivy League championship game Sunday, March 17.

On Yale’s roster this year are two graduates of The Hotchkiss School: Nick Townsend, class of ‘22, and Jack Molloy, class of ‘21. Townsend wears No. 42 and Molloy wears No. 33.

Keep ReadingShow less
Handbells of St. Andrew’s to ring out Easter morning

Anne Everett and Bonnie Rosborough wait their turn to sound notes as bell ringers practicing to take part in the Easter morning service at St. Andrew’s Church.

Kathryn Boughton

KENT—There will be a joyful noise in St. Andrew’s Church Easter morning when a set of handbells donated to the church some 40 years ago are used for the first time by a choir currently rehearsing with music director Susan Guse.

Guse said that the church got the valuable three-octave set when Harlem Valley Psychiatric Center closed in the late 1980s and the bells were donated to the church. “The center used the bells for music therapy for younger patients. Our priest then was chaplain there and when the center closed, he brought the bells here,” she explained.

Keep ReadingShow less
Picasso’s American debut was a financial flop
Picasso’s American debut was a financial flop
Penguin Random House

‘Picasso’s War” by Foreign Affairs senior editor Hugh Eakin, who has written about the art world for publications like The New York Review of Books, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker and The New York Times, is not about Pablo Picasso’s time in Nazi-occupied Paris and being harassed by the Gestapo, nor about his 1937 oil painting “Guernica,” in response to the aerial bombing of civilians in the Basque town during the Spanish Civil War.

Instead, the Penguin Random House book’s subtitle makes a clearer statement of intent: “How Modern Art Came To America.” This war was not between military forces but a cultural war combating America’s distaste for the emerging modernism that had flourished in Europe in the early decades of the 20th century.

Keep ReadingShow less