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To meet the challenge of providing the highest possible standard of service, The Desmond-Fish Library created the Associates Program to assist with the program development and the continuing need to maintain and upgrade the facility and the beautiful grounds that surround it.
Associates make annual individual membership contributions of $500 or more and sponsor an annual gala fundraising dinner. This year's Associate's Dinner will be held on Sunday, June 7 at Monte Verde at Oldstone Manor in Cortlandt.
Honorees
ALICE WATERS Alice Waters was born on April 28,1944, in Chatham, New Jersey. She graduated from the University of California at Berkeley in 1967 with a degree in French Cultural Studies, and trained at the Montessori School in London before spending a seminal year traveling in France. She has a daughter, Fanny, who was born in 1983.
Alice opened Chez Panisse in 1971, serving a single fixed-price menu that changes daily. The set menu format remains at the heart of Alice's philosophy of serving only the highest quality products, only when they are in season. Over the course of three decades, Chez Panisse has developed a network of mostly local farmers and ranchers whose dedication to sustainable agriculture assures Chez Panisse a steady supply of pure and fresh ingredients.
The upstairs café at Chez Panisse opened in 1980 with an open kitchen, a wood-burning pizza oven, and an à la carte menu. Café Fanny, a stand-up café that serves breakfast and lunch, was opened a few miles away in 1984.
Alice is a strong advocate for farmer's markets and for sound and sustainable agriculture. In 1996, in celebration of the restaurant's twenty-fifth anniversary, she created the Chez Panisse Foundation to help underwrite cultural and educational programs such as the one at the Edible Schoolyard that demonstrate the transformative power of growing, cooking, and sharing food.
Among Alice's many board affiliations, she is the Founder and Director of the Chez Panisse Foundation, an International Governor of Slow Food, a Visiting Dean at the French Culinary Institute, an Honorary Trustee of the American Center for Food, Wine and the Arts in Napa, and Board Member of the San Francisco Ferry Plaza Farmers Market.
Alice is author and co-author of eight books, including Chez Panisse Vegetables, Chez Panisse Cafe Cookbook, Fanny at Chez Panisse, a storybook and cookbook for children, and most recently, the encyclopedic Chez Panisse Fruit. Chez Panisse restaurant was named Best Restaurant in America by Gourmet magazine in 2001. Alice has received numerous awards, including the Bon Appetit magazine's Lifetime Achievement Award in 2000 and the James Beard Humanitarian Award in 1997. She was named Best Chef in America by the James Beard Foundation in 1992 and Cuisine et Vins de France listed her as one of the ten best chefs in the world in 1986. Angeles.
IRENE O’GARDEN has been included in Who’s Who of American Women since 2006. Her critically acclaimed play, Women On Fire, starring Judith Ivey, was twice extended and played to sold-out houses Off Broadway at the Cherry Lane Theatre. It was nominated for a 2004 Lucille Lortel award for Best Solo Show,and is published by Samuel French. Two of its monologues are published in Best Women’s Stage Monologues 2004. Her new play, Little Heart, won her a Berilla Kerr Playwriting Fellowship and was awarded full development at the 2005 New Harmony Play Project. The play has had readings in New York, at Harvard’s Loeb Theatre and The American Film Institute in Los Angeles.
O’Garden’s writing is anthologized with Eleanor Roosevelt, Maya Angelou, Gloria Steinem and others in The Greatness Of Girls (Andrews McMeel) Included is an excerpt from her book/theatre piece, Fat Girl, which describes how she came to peace with food and body after a decades-long struggle. Harper San Francisco published it in hardcover with her drawings, and O’Garden has performed it throughout the US and Canada.
O’Garden won the Gold Oppenheim Toy Portfolio Best Book Award 2004 for her latest children’s book, The Scrubbly Bubbly Car Wash (Harper). Her first children's book, Maybe My Baby, (Harper) has sold over 86,000 copies.
Irene’s poetry is found in literary journals and anthologies such as CALYX, College English, Skylark, The Rockford Review, Whiskey Island Review. She has taught poetry workshops at New York City schools (including Trinity and Wadleigh) as well as schools in the Hudson Valley, and has presented at Children’s Literature Conferences at NYU and Vassar College. Poets and Writers has awarded her several grants for poetry performance throughout the Hudson Valley. She has also performed her poetry at the Bowery Poetry Club, Nuyorican Poetry Café and with actress Ruby Dee as one of four “Exceptional Women Poets” at The Player’s Club in Manhattan. Irene has been awarded several residences at artists’ colonies throughout the country, most recently at The Millay Colony. In 1987, she created a performing literary magazine called The Art Garden. She has continued to produce, host and write for it ever since. She is a member of The Dramatists Guild, The Authors Guild, and Actor’s Equity Association.
She also enjoyed playing a cameo in “The Capture of the Green River Killer” which recently on Lifetime Movie Network.
She lives joyfully with John Pielmeier, her husband of thirty years. Most known for his play Agnes of God John also writes movies for television. They make their home in Garrison, New York.
Betty E. Green has made an invaluable contribution to numerous organizations in this community, notably the Putnam County Historical Society, the Chapel Restoration, the Philipstown Garden Club, the Friends of Boscobel, and, of course, the Desmond-Fish Library. She is treasurer of her class at Simmons College. Betty has a great gift for making and keeping friends