You never know who you’ll run into at the Larchmont Tavern, one of my faviorite all-time haunts. The walls are filled with photos of local celebrities and personalities, and you never know when one of them will be there in the flesh.

(Owner Arthur Jacobson even has MY picture, strategically placed near the cash register. This is an honor. I mean, anchorman-savant Ernie Anastos has an autographed mug, too, but his doesn’t get such choice placement.)

Anyway, last night, we had a late dinner at the L.T. and spotted Mamaroneck’s own Matt (“Crash,” “Drugstore Cowboy” “There’s Something About Mary”) Dillon, who was home for the Christmas holiday. He was there with an entourage of boisterous pals, and seemed to be having a great time.

In Thursday’s (Dec. 21) column I wrote about the hard-luck life of Michele Bell of Tuckahoe.

Since that column appeared in The Journal News and lohud.com, several people have either called or sent me e-mails asking how they may give Bell monetary assistance for the holidays. I’ve been telling readers that Bell was not necessarily seeking charity when she contacted me, but really wanted to tell her story out of a need for catharsis.

However, so many generous people have come forward to offer help that I decided the best thing to do was to give out her e-mail address so that she may be contacted directly.

Her a-mail address is: mimma31206@optonline.net

Happy holidays to all.

PLF%20Amicus%20on%20Petition%20for%20Cert%20%20%28IJ014849%29.pdf

Today’s column was about a legal battle between a pair of Port Chester businessmen who alleged that the G&S of Old Bethpage, Long Island, the “preferred developers” of the village’s downtown, tried to extort them. Bart Didden and Dominick Bologna have claimed that G&S said it wouldn’t press for condemnation of their 35,000-square foot property under the power of eminent domain if they gave them a cash payment of $800,000.

On Jan. 5, the U.S. Supreme Court will review the case for consideration. In the column I quoted from a lengthy amicus brief field with the court by the Pacific Legal Foundation, a 30-year-old nonprofit organization that litigates matters affecting the public interest.

Click on the above for a full reading of the brief.

My son who is senior at SUNY Albany sent and who, like his father, is fan of fiction having to do with the living dead, sent me some excerpts from a new science fiction book about zombies, called “World War Z.” The author is Max Brooks.

I haven’t read it yet, but apparently the plot includes a desperate battle against an army of ghouls in Yonkers. This will certainly go over big with the city’s chamber of commerce.

Page 93: “That how I first saw Yonkers, this little, depressed, nut-collar burb just north of New York City. I don’t think anybody ever heard of it. I sure as hell hadn’t, and now its up there with, like Pearl Harobr…no, not Pearl…that was a surprise attack. This was more like Little Bigh Horn…”

This is great stuff. Zombies! What an image builder. I wonder how they feel about the Ridge Hill development project?

Page 104: “Yonkers was supposed to be the day we restored confidence to the American people, intstead we practically told them to kiss their ass goodbye.”

Ain’t it the truth. And here we thought the zombies were confined to City Hall.

Westchester County was thwarted!

The regime of County Executive Andy Spano was stopped from a bait-and-switch land deal, thanks to an alert legislator and a motivated group of homeowners. What the heck, I’ll take a little credit, too.

As reported on this bog and in The Journal News, the county originally had offered to sell a half-acre of vacant county-owned land to the city of New Rochelle for one dollar. Whenever surplus land is to up for disposal, the county must first offer it to the host community—that’s the law.

The parcel, which had been virtually forgotten for 80 years, sits in the middle of a residential neighborhood on Flandreau Avenue. Locals had turned it into a kind of wild-garden park.

The New Rochelle City Council seized on the offer and voted 7-0 to accept the property. But it turned out the county really didn’t want to give it way. Not by a long shot!

What it really wanted to do was sell the property at auction to a developer (an insider, no doubt) who would then shoehorn in two or three houses. The property is believed to worth at least $250,000.

So the county turned around and pressured the city council to vote again, and TURN THE DEAL DOWN. The council complied with a 4-3 vote.

But Jim Maisano, the Republican legislator from New Rochelle cried foul, and so did people living near the property. Maisano blew the whistle through my column, researched the law and helped mobilize the neighbors. Then he lobbied his fellow county legislators and presuaded them last night to table the auction of the property. The park was saved.

Also credited with an assist were Councilwoman Marianne Sussman and state Assemblywoman Amy Paulin.

Maisano said today that he will draft legislation to add the Flandreau property to the county-run Nature Study Woods which is across the street.

This just in from Don Debar, the peripatetic Ossining activist. Don passed this bit of doggie news onto to me as a favor to a friend. Check it out.

These little characters are just two puppies out of a litter of 10 that are up for adoption. Their mother, Maisey, was found pregnant and abandoned on a back road.

Her rescuers tried to find her owner, but gave up after four weeks. The poor dog had really been left to fend for herself.

Not long after that, Maisey gave birth. Ten babies! There are five males and five females. Anyone who wants to give them a good home should call 203-222-8157.

Tonight’s Westchester County Board of Legislators meeting is all about the bloated budget, but there’s a number of little items they were hoping to slip by….and it looks like we stopped the Spanoistas on one of them.

The Democratic administration had hoped to push through a resolution to put a half-acre of county-owned property up for auction sale. Located in the New Rochelle, the property was supposed to be used in a parkway project 80 or so years ago and was all but forgotten and virtually abandoned.

The only thing is that over the years the New Rochelle homeowners on Flandreau Avenue had turned the little parcel into a kind of park, on their own and at their own expense.

The county wanted to dispose of the property, but by law had to offer it to the city for a $1, which the city council embraced in a 7-0 vote. But it turned out the county really wanted to sell the land, worth at least $250,000, so that a developer could squeeze some houses on it. They pressured the council into rescinding the vote.

County Legislator Jim Maisano, a New Rochelle Republican, seized the issue and has vigorously lobbied his fellow legislators to block the Spano gang from getting their way on this highly suspicious deal. It’s been a park….and it should stay a park.

The early word is that Maisano will succeed tonight.

It’s been four years since the Ossining School District ditched the Indians as a team mascot in favor of the RiverHawks, a politically correct fit of pique which angered the old guard. The hard feelings bubbled to the surface last week when the name was changed (again!) to the O’s.

In a couple of columns on the issue I mentioned an alternative mascot on the thematic order of Sing Sing Prison.

Mike Reynolds, a town resident and sometime candidate for local office, seized on this.

“I have met a lot of Indians and have even been cured by a Navajo medicine man.” he said. ” I’m also a member of the Native American Legal Rights Fund.
“I’ve never met an Indian who resented being called an Indian. The only reason the Native American Rights Fund is called that is not to offend Politically Correct white donors.”

Reynolds then suggested some Sing Sing-style mascots that I hadn’t heard before.
The Slammers, The Singers, The Wardens, The Guards, The Shanks, The Punks, The Rats, The Salad Dressers (Don’t ask) The Cagers.

(Anthony Coschigano of New Rochelle sent me this poem. It was written by Jeff Giles, a Navy serviceman in Iraq.)

A DIFFERENT CHRISMAS POEM

The embers glowed softly, and in their dim light,
I gazed round the room and I cherished the sight.
My wife was asleep, her head on my chest,
My daughter beside me, angelic in rest.
Outside the snow fell, a blanket of white,
Transforming the yard to a winter delight.
The sparkling lights in the tree I believe,
Completed the magic that was Christmas Eve.
My eyelids were heavy, my breathing was deep,
Secure and surrounded by love I would sleep.
In perfect contentment, or so it would seem,
So I slumbered, perhaps I started to dream.

The sound wasn’t loud, and it wasn’t too near,
But I opened my eyes when it tickled my ear.
Perhaps just a cough, I didn’t quite know, Then the
sure sound of footsteps outside in the snow.
My soul gave a tremble, I struggled to hear,
And I crept to the door just to see who was near.
Standing out in the cold and the dark of the night,
A lone figure stood, his face weary and tight.

A soldier, I puzzled, some twenty years old,
Perhaps a Marine, huddled here in the cold.
Alone in the dark, he looked up and smiled,
Standing watch over me, and my wife and my child.
“What are you doing?” I asked without fear,
“Come in this moment, it’s freezing out here!
Put down your pack, brush the snow from your sleeve,
You should be at home on a cold Christmas Eve!”

For barely a moment I saw his eyes shift,
Away from the cold and the snow blown in drifts..
To the window that danced with a warm fire’s light
Then he sighed and he said “Its really all right,
I’m out here by choice. I’m here every night.” “It’s my duty to stand at the front of the line,
That separates you from the darkest of times.
No one had to ask or beg or implore me,
I’m proud to stand here like my fathers before me.
My Gramps died at ’ Pearl on a day in December,”
Then he sighed, “That’s a Christmas ‘Gram always remembers.”
My dad stood his watch in the jungles of ’ Nam ’,
And now it is my turn and so, here I am.
I’ve not seen my own son in more than a while,
But my wife sends me pictures, he’s sure got her smile.

Then he bent and he carefully pulled from his bag,
The red, white, and blue… an American flag.
I can live through the cold and the being alone,
Away from my family, my house and my home.
I can stand at my post through the rain and the sleet,
I can sleep in a foxhole with little to eat.
I can carry the weight of killing another,
Or lay down my life with my sister and brother..
Who stand at the front against any and all,
To ensure for all time that this flag will not fall.”

“So go back inside,” he said, “harbor no fright,
Your family is waiting and I’ll be all right.”
“But isn’t there something I can do, at the least,
“Give you money,” I asked, “or prepare you a feast?
It seems all too little for all that you’ve done,
For being away from your wife and your son.”
Then his eye welled a tear that held no regret,
“Just tell us you love us, and never forget.
To fight for our rights back at home while we’re gone,
To stand your own watch, no matter how long.
For when we come home, either standing or dead,
To know you remember we fought and we bled.
Is payment enough, and with that we will trust,
That we mattered to you as you mattered to us.”

The team mascot for Ossining schools used to be the Indian. Then the squishy wimp-ocracy, i.e. the state Education Department, shoved a politically correct edict down the school district’s throat and the mascot was changed to RiverHawk.

Now, it’s changed again. As we’ve reported at lohud.com and in The Journal News it’s now the “O,” short for Ossining.

When I wrote about this in today’s paper, I mentioned that whenever the mascot issue comes up in Ossining, the discussion invariably turns to Sing Sing Prison and tongue-in-cheek suggestions for team names that are thematically linked to the fabled “Big House.” I listed a few of them… “The Convicts,” “The Executioners,” etc.

Of course, the prison theme is only laughed at. But there is a precedent for it.

It seems that back around 1910, the Yuma Union High School in Arizona took over the vacated buildings of the territorial prison which was moved to another location. The high school was quartered in the old jail for four years. When the school’s football team played Phoenix, the rivals derisively called them “criminals.”

Yuma won the game and the name “criminals” became a source of pride and was kept. They shortened it to “Crims” and adopted a mascot image of a tough-looking convict. The student store is called the “Cell Block.”

And as for the sensitive and politically correct—guess what? There’s a team mascot at Northern Colorado University called the “Fighting Whities.” The team mascot is a middle-aged white guy. The team slogan is “Everythang’s gonna be all white!”

If that doesn’t upset you, then the “Indians” shouldn’t upset you either.