Talks, Workshops and Just for Fun

Jeff Gottlieb will present a program about Native Americans and primitive living skills at the Rye Nature Center Saturday, January 24, from 2 to 3:30 p.m. Gottlieb is an expert at recreating the Long House used by Eastern Woodland Indians and will show participants how to knap flint to make arrowheads and other useful tools. You can practice some of these skills while learning about the lives of Rye's earliest human residents. Gottlieb is author of the forthcoming "Teaching Primitive Skills to Children” and a frequent presenter at the Nature Center.

This program is suitable for all ages. The program fee is $10 per person, $25 per family. Pre-registration is required.

The Rye Women’s Interfaith Committee will host its annual conference Sunday, January 25, in the Resurrection Church Parish Hall. Guest speaker Dr. Elena Procario-Foley will give a talk entitled “Obliged to Tell the Truth” at 4 p.m. Dr. Procario-Foley is the Driscoll Professor of Jewish-Catholic Studies and an associate professor of Religious Studies at Iona College.

The Parish Hall doors open at 3 p.m. Conference registration ($10) will be accepted at the door. Pre-registration is required for attendance at the supper and conference ($15). Make check payable to Rye Women’s Interfaith Committee and mail to Mrs. Janet Meyers, 10 Sherman Place, Rye, NY 10580.

For more information, contact Maria (967-5878) or Emily (698-3718).

The topic is the unique issues facing female student-athletes; the speaker is Dr. Jordan Metzl, co-founder of the Sports Medicine Institute for Young Athletes at the Hospital for Special Surgery. He will speak at School of the Holy Child Tuesday, January 27, at 7 p.m. in the Memorial Library.

Holy Child’s Athletics Director, John Pizzi Jr., said, ”At an all-girls school where close to 80% of students participate in sports, it is important to offer our community the opportunity to learn about the specific health and injury risks that adolescent girls face. Given the troubling research and the alarming rate of sports injuries — especially ACL injuries — for female athletes, it is imperative that competitive athletes in high school, and even middle school, learn the appropriate exercises and training practices to support healthy growth and development.”

Dr. Metzl is a nationally recognized leader in the field of pediatric and adolescent sports medicine. He has also spearheaded a number of prevention programs, including ACL and running injury prevention programs in New York City. The author of “The Young Athlete, A Sports Doctor’s Complete Guide for Parents” and “Sports Medicine in the Pediatric Office”, he has also written numerous articles on the issues of healthy sports.

Community Synagogue of Rye is sponsoring a three-part series featuring a lecture and interactive discussion on the traditions of three Abrahamic religions: Christianity, Judaism and Islam, led by Dr. Peter Gardella, Ph.D., a professor at Manhattanville College. The sessions will be held three consecutive Thursday evenings: January 22, January 29 and February 5, all at 8 p.m. The lectures are free of charge.

Dr. Gardella was educated at Harvard College and Harvard Divinity School, and earned his doctorate from the Department of Religious Studies at Yale University. He has published three books on diverse religious topics, and during his tenure at Manhattanville has been instrumental in helping to establish Holocaust and Genocide Studies as a program in the college, as well as recruiting the first Muslim professor to teach at Manhattanville. He has a special interest in the interactions of religions with each other, and the secular aspects of culture.

At the January 22 talk, Dr. Gardella’s topic will be “War and Peace”; on January 29, he will discuss “Sex and Gender”, and on February 5, he will review “Economics and Ecology”. For more information on this series, contact the Synagogue office at 967-6262.

Wainwright House resolved to start the new year off with two new meditation classes. Join their drumming circle with facilitated chanting and guided meditation every Thursday at 11 a.m. for an hour. Bring a drum if you have one.

Beginning February 12, you can join a facilitated practice of Mindful Meditation group the second and fourth Thursday of each month from 7 to 8:15 p.m.

Meet noir author Ira Berkowitz at the Rye Free Reading Room Saturday, January 31, at 2 p.m. He will talk about his powerful new crime novel, “Old Flame”, and his hero Jackson Steeg’s most recent exploits. Set in Hell’s Kitchen, “Old Flame” features a complex, fast-action plot, gritty, clever dialogue and a memorable cast of seedy characters.

Get a glimpse of the wondrous world of Junot Díaz at the Rye Free Reading Room Sunday, February 8, at 4 p.m., right after the library’s annual meeting. When “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao” exploded onto the literary scene in 2007, it catapulted first-time novelist Junot Díaz into the limelight and earned him the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for fiction.