I just began as a Trustee of the Stephentown Memorial Library, attending my first meeting on June 2, 2020

Recently retired, I formerly worked in New York City and Newark, NJ as a Market Research professional in the Financial Services industry with a concentration on brand and advertising research.

After buying our house on the Kinderhook Creek in 2014 while still working and living in Queens, NY, my partner Toby and I moved to Stephentown full time in 2017. I’m a voracious reader, currently in two book clubs (including SML’s recently formed book club.) To add light during these dark times the SML book club choice of the month is The Five, an account of the lives of Jack the Ripper’s female victims! I am currently a volunteer and Secretary for the Stephentown Food Pantry] and a member of the Stephentown Volunteer Fire Department assisting primarily with their marketing efforts. I’m thrilled to be a part of this small rural community, to have met such interesting and involved people, and to have the opportunity and luxury of hiking, birding, and enjoying the natural world every day.

One of my greatest lifelong joys is reading books. I remember getting a library card in my hometown of Montclair, NJ at the age of 8 and plowing through the Narnia Books, The Hobbit and the other Tolkien books, as well as Beverly Cleary’s Henry Huggins, Ribsy, and the Romana series to name a few. What better role for an inveterate book lover than library trustee?

Aside from the tremendously important role of opening the world of ideas to children that books and libraries provide, libraries (especially in small towns with fewer services) also provide critical opportunities for community contact and support, for engaging children and others in the kinds of civic activities that help bind us to one another and help democratize opportunity. Since moving to Stephentown I’ve been amazed at how large a role SML plays, and how resourceful and committed the Library staff is to finding ways to engage, and enrich the Stephentown community through things like yoga, knitting, circle, movie night, origami, to name just a few. I view the Stephentown Memorial Library as the heartbeat of the town.