Carnival Returns After a Three Year Hiatus
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- Written by Adam Katcher
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For the first time since April 2019, the Scarsdale High School Carnival made its much-anticipated return. The town tradition is always a hit, as the two-day event sees thousands of Scarsdalians flooding the Brewster Road parking lots to eat carnival food, make purchases from Scarsdale High School Clubs’ fundraising stands, test their fears on high-thrill rides and try their luck in games to win prizes.
It was hard to fathom that three years had gone by since the 2019 carnival as the scene on Brewster Road felt very familiar.
The carnival functioned as per usual: pre-paid wristbands could be purchased for unlimited rides prior to the carnival’s commencement, or tickets could be bought at a booth on the day of (as well as the wristbands but for a higher price). All of the typical games were on show: giant basketball, whack-a-mole and shooting games. Many hit rides were in attendance, though there were three notable omittances: the Ferris wheel, the drop tower, and the “Zipper.”
The Ferris wheel was always an enjoyable ride for anyone, whether it be two high school sweethearts sharing a gondola, first graders trying to conquer their fear of heights, or even parents who have been dragged to the high school by their children. The drop tower was a hub for brief gut-wrenching excitement, though its absence was not detrimental. The “Zipper” not being on offer was noticed by the majority: there was a common consensus among all Scarsdale students, from Kindergarten to 12th grade, that the “Zipper” was the scariest ride of all. The ride, which has cages loosely hung on a rotating central ovular axis, sends riders flipping in all sorts of directions from multiple different focus points. The “Zipper” was truly the cream of the crop of carnival rides when it came to the fear factor.
Nonetheless, the carnival did not lose any potential visitors: if anything, it was busier than ever. Lines for every ride, whether it be the wild rocking boat ride or zero-gravity-simulating Alien Abduction or even tea-cups, were long. There was a novelty about the carnival, even though there were not necessarily new attractions. Everyone simply just wanted to have fun and feel the rush of adrenaline that was missed due to COVID-19 restrictions.
Of course, not everything ran smoothly. Lines were often cacophonous clusters, so people waiting the longest did not always get priority. Perhaps the large turnout, compounded with the absence of three-hit rides, did not help.
Still, people were just glad the carnival could make its long-awaited return, an attraction that signals the beginning of the end of the school year for all.
The Scarsdale High School Carnival had some charitable profits which helped the Trevor Project, the student government, high school clubs, and much more.
Documentary On the History of Quaker Ridge to be Shown on April 19
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The one room school house on Griffin Avenue is where children from Quaker Ridge went until the Quaker Ridge Elementary School was built and expanded in the fifties. It is now the caddy headquarters at Quaker Ridge Golf Course. Credit: Scarsdale Public Library Collection.The Scarsdale Historical Society is pleased to announce its newest documentary titled, ‘Scarsdale's Quaker Ridge: Its Heritage and History.’ The film traces the untapped history of Quaker Ridge’s Quaker legacy, leading abolitionists, hidden stories and transformation to a modern community. The screening will be at the Quaker Ridge Elementary School Auditorium on Tuesday, April 19th at 7:00 PM.
The 35-minute film explores this section of Scarsdale through archival photography, documents and present-day footage. There is also expert commentary from Westchester historians Barbara Shay MacDonald, Jordan Copeland, Barbara Davis and Patrick Raftery. The film is directed by Lesley Topping, an award-winning editor and filmmaker who grew up in Scarsdale.
“In this documentary, we are pleased to feature the unique history of Quaker Ridge and shine a light on its important past,” said Randy Guggenheimer, President of the Scarsdale Historical Society. “This is the latest in a series of films about Scarsdale’s neighborhoods, and we hope the community will join us to discover the rich history that led to the establishment of Quaker Ridge.”
Following the 35-minute film, there will be a Q&A session with Topping and special guests. Admission is free. The event is co-sponsored by the Scarsdale Historical Society and the Scarsdale Public Library.
Register for the premiere here:
Joseph Carpenter with an orphaned child. He was an influential abolitionist originally from Scarsale who advocated an end to slavery and sheltered fugitives and runaways prior to the Civil War.
The crew filmed at the historic Colonial Acres Cemetery -- John Sears camera, Jordan Copeland with Iphone. Nicolai Gorden holding screen is the Narrator of some of our films and helped on the crew that day.
First Print Issue of Scientific Scarsdalian Shows Professionalism and Direction
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After months of researching, writing, editing, designing, printing, and much more, Cindy DeDianous, Matthew Barotz, Simone Glajchen, and other members of the Scientific Scarsdalian STEM publication finally got the opportunity to distribute their first in-print issue. The science focus, literary aspect and artistic appeal made the magazine the talk of the school. The relatively-young club has a fruitful future ahead of them, as shown by the present progress.
DeDianous, Barotz, and Glajchen are scientists and journalists who might be mistaken for professionals, though they are still in high school.
At the beginning of March, when members of the Scientific Scarsdalian club stood at the entrances handing out copies of their first issue, people were in for a pleasant surprise. Rather than receiving a nice-looking magazine student publication, they were handed a scientific magazine of a special quality. This issue, centered on psychology, discussing topics such as illusions, dreams, seasonal depression, optogenetics, the bystander effect, and much more. The complex crossword puzzle cannot be forgotten either.
Editor-in-chief DeDianous was proud of how the first edition came out and has high aspirations for the future of the club/STEM-based magazine.
“One thing that was really important,” explained DeDianous, “is that the articles are engaging and accessible because a lot of times, people don’t read about science; it can be super dense and hard to get into if you don’t have background knowledge. We wanted to make sure everyone, no matter what knowledge they had, could gain something from it and find it interesting and want to come back to it.”
The result was a publication that was accessible but at the same time sophisticated enough to provide readers with new information to learn. DeDianous said, “People who like both humanities and STEM and art can join the club and have the chance to write about interesting topics, both on the more technical side and more interesting curiosity about the world around us. It’s a really great place for people of different interests to mix. We have a graphics team, writing team, and all of that.”
The club as it is known today was only founded last year, with a website as the sole hub for their articles, and the goal of producing an issue in print so that it “can be shared with the entire Scarsdale community.” There have been previous attempts to create a “Scientific Scarsdalians,” club, but these were unsuccessful. This new club hosts the website which you can see here, (https://scientificscarsdalian.org/), and is gaining traction through the print edition and articles online.
The next magazine is already in progress, “We are thinking of doing an environmental theme for the next issue. For example, something that is Scarsdale-related is our compost system. There are lots of interesting details behind it, but most people don’t know how it really works,” shared DeDianous.
This ties into the greater them of what makes the Scientific Scarsdalian truly the official STEM magazine of Scarsdale, rather than just another generic science magazine. The club aims to introduce as many local elements as possible to their issues. There are some student-led studies that do not tie back to Scarsdale necessarily, but all of the articles either mention ties to the community or are conducted by the young scientists within the community.
DeDianous describes the club community as a welcoming, interesting place, saying, “I think our teamwork is a really important aspect of encouraging people to work together on articles or peer edit, get feedback from both the officers as well as other writers to really get multiple eyes on something and take different perspectives into account. At meetings, we brainstorm, outline, write, edit, and other times we mix in fun events, such as Kahoots to change things up and test people on their scientific knowledge.”
The budding club will only continue to grow as the years pass and their magazine could soon become the main “resource for Scarsdalians to get scientific information that they might not be able to get otherwise.”
Scientific Scarsdalian Club Officer list:
Editors-in-Chief: Simone Glajchen and Cindy DeDianous
News Editors: Jaden Tepper and Rose Kinoshita
Opinion Editor: Matthew Barotz
Feature Editor: Irene Li
Creative Director: Olivia Liu
Community Read: Believing: Our Thirty-Year Journey to End Gender Violence by Anita Hill
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Scarsdale Family Counseling Service and the Scarsdale Safe Coalition, along with the Scarsdale Public Library and the Friends of the Library are sponsoring a community Book Read and follow up community program. They encourage residents to read Believing: Our Thirty-Year Journey to End Gender Violence by Anita Hill during the April vacation.
On April 19th at 7:30 PM, they will host a Virtual Evening with Anita Hill, with discussion facilitated by Pulitzer Prize winning columnist Nicholas Kristof. The program can be viewed either from home or on the big screen at the Scott Room at the Library. Register here.
The book can be borrowed from the library, or purchased with a 10% discount at the Bronx River Book Store.
Author Dorothy Wickenden at Scarsdale Library
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Dorothy Wickenden, author of The Agitators: Three Friends Who Fought for Abolition and Women’s Rights, will discuss her book at the Scarsdale Public Library on Sunday April 3 at 3:00 pm. The event is hosted by the League of Women Voters Scarsdale and the Scarsdale Public Library, admission is free and all members of the public are welcome. Please RSVP here.
The Agitators tells the story of America before the Civil War through the lives of three women who advocated for the abolition of slavery and for women’s rights as the country split apart: Harriet Tubman, Martha Coffin Wright, and Frances A. Seward.
In the 1850s, Harriet Tubman, strategically brilliant and uncannily prescient, rescued some seventy enslaved people from Maryland’s Eastern Shore and shepherded them north along the underground railroad. One of her regular stops was Auburn, New York, where she entrusted passengers to Martha Coffin Wright, a Quaker mother of seven, and Frances A. Seward, the wife of William H. Seward, who served over the years as governor, senator, and secretary of state under Abraham Lincoln. During the Civil War, Tubman worked for the Union Army in South Carolina as a nurse and spy and took part in a spectacular river raid in which she helped to liberate 750 slaves from several rice plantations.
Wright, a “dangerous woman” in the eyes of her neighbors, worked side by side with Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony to organize women’s rights and anti-slavery conventions across New York State, braving hecklers and mobs when she spoke. Frances Seward, the most conventional of the three friends, hid her radicalism in public, while privately acting as a political adviser to her husband, pressing him to persuade President Lincoln to move immediately on emancipation.
The Agitators opens in the 1820s, when Tubman is enslaved and Wright and Seward are young homemakers bound by law and tradition and ends after the war. Many of the most prominent figures of the era—Lincoln, William H. Seward, Frederick Douglass, Daniel Webster, Charles Sumner, John Brown, William Lloyd Garrison—are seen through the discerning eyes of the protagonists. So are the most explosive political debates: about the civil rights of African Americans and women, about the enlistment of Black troops, and about opposing interpretations of the Constitution.
Dorothy Wickenden
Through richly detailed letters from the time and exhaustive research, Wickenden traces the second American revolution these women fought to bring about, the toll it took on their families, and its lasting effects on the country. Riveting and profoundly relevant to our own time, The Agitators brings a vibrant, original voice to this transformative period in our history.
Dorothy Wickenden is the author of Nothing Daunted and The Agitators and has been the executive editor of The New Yorker since January 1996. She also writes for the magazine and is the moderator of its weekly podcast The Political Scene. A former Nieman Fellow at Harvard, Wickenden was national affairs editor at Newsweek from 1993-1995, and before that was the longtime executive editor at The New Republic.
The paperback edition of The Agitators is available for purchase with a 10% discount at Bronx River Books. For phone, email, and in-store purchases, mention LWVS to receive the 10% discount.
To attend, please RSVP here.
For more information, contact Alissa Baum at lwvspresident@gmail.com.
