SYRACUSE, NY

Alyssa Raymond:  You say the modeling business is not so glamorous.  Why not?

Ann Marie Stonecypher

Ann Marie Stonecypher:  Ummm….because its really just like any other business. Its a marketing business.  And what I am doing is I am just marketing people.  Somebody calls and they want a model and I send a model.  Its just like ordering pizza or ordering anything else except its people.  So its not really glamy glamy and its Upstate New York so its not runway shows and things like that.  It might just be an ad for a little business to business flyer that no one is going to see but some industrial clients.

Raymond:  When people think of modeling…you usually think of high fashion and extremely skinny and tall females…this is not what your agency is about…why not?  And why might this be a good thing for Central New York?

Stonecypher:  Well to the question why not.  Umm because it is Upstate and we tailor our business to our clients that are here.  And because there’s no Victoria’s Secret or Calvin Klein here we tailor our business to the clients that are here.  The furniture stores.  The industrial clients.  And clients like that so they’re not going to higher long legged 16-year-old girls to be in their ad.  They’re going to hire a 35-year-old that might look like a doctor or a nurse or something like that.  So those are the type of people that I have to have in my business so thats really nice because those people have the opportunity to model.  And its just sideline.  Its not anything they’re going to make their daily bread from.  But its just a nice little extra bit of money.  I call it their shoe shopping, Turning Stone money not their pay their electric bill money.

Raymond:  So why is that a good thing for Central New York?

Stonecypher:  Because it is just another little level of income.  Just a little extra something.  Ummm…you know its not millions of dollars but you know its helping families with a little something extra.  I had a woman for years and years and years that the money that she made with me every year was their vacation money.  Her family of four every year went to Florida and went to the theme parks on the money that she made with my company every year.  That always made me feel great.

Raymond:  The modeling industry has a reputation of causing eating disorders. What are you doing about that and how effective is it? Can you give us examples?

Stonecypher:  We have never ever told any body to lose weight for a job.  The way that someone comes to me is the way I’ve taken them.  I’ve never said well I would take you except you need to lose weight.  Because we are not a fashion market or a catalogue type of market there is no pressure that everyone has to fit a certain size.  Ummm because mostly what we are doing is business to business type of things.  Editorial type of things there’s no one set look.  Ummm…I am very much a proponent of healthy eating and healthy looking people.  I do charity work for Ophelia’s Place, which is a center that helps people with eating disorders.  And we work on their fashion show every year.  They are very good friends to AMS Models and vice versa.  but ya we have never told anyone that they needed to lose weight.  Absolutely not.  We are proponents of healthy living not skinny.  Absolutely not.

Raymond:  Why do you think the modeling industry should exist?  What do you think it brings to society?

Stonecypher:  Ummm its really just another segment of advertising.  And it definitely just helps people brand their product.  If you’re going to sell…like we have a client that has a line of pajamas and if you want to brand that line you’re gonna pick your models that kinda have a look that represents your style.  And if you can pick those models yourself and have the look that you want you’re establishing your brand.  And you’re helping promote the look that you want.  And the same with any type of company, whether its a certain widget you’re selling and you want that widget exposed to the world by certain types of people holding it.  The people looking at the ad are going to identify with the people holding it.  Its all part of advertising.  And if you use models versus stock photos you don’t have to worry about your picture or your brand being diluted and being seen in other places.  And people say, oh wow that photo looks like a photo I saw in someone else’s ad.  You get to choose the model.  You get to choose exactly the look that you want and the people you want.  And we have every ethnicity that there is and we have every age group.  So you really get to pick and choose how you want your add too look.

Raymond:  You are in your sixth year as a breast cancer survivor. What has the experience taught you?

Stonecypher:  Well umm I think that everything we are death teaches us something and if it doesn’t then we need to look at it a little harder or listen a little harder.  Umm…and its taught me that life is so precious and everyday is a gift.  And ummm…sometimes you just need to turn it around and pay it forward and I’m just so happy to be here for my children and the people I love.  Umm…and my way of paying it forward is that I have a pink ribbon circle reminder.  And I send it out to over a 100 women every month to remind them to do their self exams because its still important.  And ummm…I talk to other survivors to try to give them encouragement and tell them that they will get to the other side and this is all the treatments and how awful it is and losing your hair and all that stuff.  Its temporary and you’ll get to the other side and you’ll be back.  And you know I’m just so grateful to still be on the planet and get a second shot at being alive.  I try not to sweat the small stuff because I know I was given a second chance so it really taught me so much really.

Raymond:  Thank you so much Ann Marie

Stonecypher:  You’re welcome.

Latino students in the Syracuse City School District practice vocabulary with flash cards. The language barriers between them and the teachers make it difficult for them to succeed.

Written and Produced By Stephanie Claytor

This fall, Latino community leaders from Syracuse, Rochester and Buffalo met at the Upstate Latino Summit. The summit– held in downtown Syracuse–  gave Latinos from all over Upstate New York the opportunity to discuss issues in their community, such as education.

Nationwide, Latinos have the highest drop-out rate. And according the latest statistics revealed on the New York State Report card, Syracuse City School District is following that trend– a concern for some local leaders.

” We all know that, based on demographics, if we do not change that drop-out rate… this country is not going to survive,” said Syracuse Common Council President Bea Gonzalez.

During the education workshop, Margarita Reyes, a representative of the Rochester City School District showcased a survey she conducted at Monroe High School in Rochester. She asked the Latino students why their peers failed to finish school. Reyes said work, absence of parental guidance, pregnancies and lack of support from faculty were the main reasons why students said their peers quit school.

And some of the students in Syracuse shared similar sentiments.

“I didn’t like the class scheduling, I didn’t like some of the teachers, they were very rude, “said Keisha Encarnacion, a 21-year old Latina who quit attending Nottingham High school in the last semester of her senior  year. “When you did need help there, it was very hard because the classes were so large.”

“There’s a lot of percent of them that drop out because they get picked on,” said April Keller, a student at Fowler High school.

Social worker Donna Lucente has assisted students at Syracuse’s Fowler High School for more than a decade. She said a lack of vision is the reason students quit school.

“A lot of students don’t have a vision for their future that they could go to college or that college could be affordable for them,” Lucente said.

The Syracuse City School District has around 20,000 students enrolled in school this year. About 1200 of them are Latinos. Fowler High School has the largest percentage of Latinos out of all of the high schools.  There, Latinos make up about a quarter of the student body.  According to the New York State Report card, which gives statistics and evaluates the performances of schools in the state, only 32 percent of the Latino students at Fowler High School in the class of 2007 graduated by August of that year. That’s about 22 Latino students out of the 68 students in the class.

Principal James Palumbo said the school’s dropout rate is “unacceptable.” He states the school’s six-year Latino graduation rate is somewhere around 50 percent. And he said he is willing to bet that if he had more Spanish speaking teachers, the graduation rate for Latino students would rise.

But, year after year, Palumbo said there aren’t any Spanish speaking certified candidates applying.  Syracuse City School Superintendent Lowengard echoed Palumbo’s concern.

“We believe in bilingual education,” Lowengard said. “But, it’s an issue for us, finding teachers that are certified and that speak Spanish. ”

**If you want to learn more about how your child’s school scored on the New York State Report card, click here.

The Westcott Theatre is located on Westcott Street, just blocks from Syracuse University

Written/Produced by Lara Bryn Greenberg

Syracuse, N.Y. – There are many different names for the same building on Westcott Street: The Westcott, The Westcott Theater, The Westcott Cinema and The Harvard Cinema. Nowadays, it’s called The Westcott or The Westcott Theater, and it’s one of the go-to concert venues in Syracuse.

The theater opened as The Harvard Cinema in 1926, and for more than eighty years, it showed independent and foreign films on a single screen.  But in October, 2007, this historical building closed down. Then-owner Nat Tobin kept the theater alive for more than ten years—along with his other building, The Manlius Cinema.

“Between utilities and rent, [The Westcott Cinema] was draining the profits of both theaters, and the only way that I felt that art as a medium in Syracuse could survive is if I gave up that theater and concentrated on Manlius again,” Tobin said.

But it didn’t take long for the space to be picked up by someone else.

Dan Mastronardi is in charge of booking bands in Central New York.  He shares his company, Hollerback Productions, with his partner Sam Levey. The two completely renovated the space themselves.

“It was long and tedious. It was not as expensive as most people would think because we did all the work ourselves,” Mastronardi said. All that work included tearing out seats and installing a 36-by-16 foot stage and a bar. The venue now has a maximum capacity of seven-hundred people. They generally have one hundred to two hundred guests per show, but have sold out at least a dozen times Mastronardi said.

Venue connects S.U. campus with Syracuse community

As a concert venue, The Westcott adds to the neighborhood—providing the “Westcott Nation” with a venue that Syracuse University students and community members can enjoy.

“It’s a big step to open a venue. And they’re taking those steps and they’re still improving things as we go now a year out,” said Ulf Oesterle, owner of Aux Records and host of iROCK at WKRL in Syracuse. He praised the venue for its closeness to the community, explaining that “the fact that you can just head out and see a show just down the street that’s national acts, that’s great.”

Oesterle explained that it’s an all-age venue. Meaning that while it has a bar, most of the shows allow people under the age of eighteen to attend. He said that makes parents feel more comfortable about letting their children go to shows and mingle with students from the nearby SU campus. He said it’s a nice spot where people are “looking out for each other.”

But the theatre is also a launching pad for new talent. Though Mastronardi brings in national touring acts, he usually has local Syracuse and Central New York bands open for them. This gave him his first piece of national press coverage on the music site, Jambase, which has information about bands, concerts, and tours.

Other local venues can’t compare

Adam Gold frequents the theater to see concerts and perform with his band, Sophistafunk. He also owns his own venue called Funk N Waffles on Marshall Street near the SU hill. It’s a coffee shop and waffle restaurant that books bands to play at night. He said he would never be able to book bands like The Westcott because his café is small and simply can’t hold the national touring bands that The Westcott gets.

“I’m really glad The Westcott’s here. You know, there’s really no venue like it in this city. And I think we really need it to help build the music scene,” Gold said.

Adults and teenagers alike packed the theater in early October when Gold and his band opened for the band Soulive. The unusual, yet comforting venue brought a well-balanced combination of young and old music lovers. And that’s exactly what Mastronardi said he aims for.

Syracuse, N.Y. —Patrick D. Aherns is known in the Syracuse community as “a true son of Ireland.” As Grand Marshall of the 2004 St. Patrick’s Day parade, a news report claimed that if you scratched his skin, shamrocks would fly out.

Aherns says Irish cultural is flourishing in Syracuse now more than ever.

“When I was a kid, I’d drive around and I couldn’t find an Irish flag in the neighborhood. I couldn’t find any Irish things,” Aherns said.

He says the growth in the number of Irish dance schools illustrates the change in the attitudes of the Irish people in Syracuse. When his daughters were growing up, there was only one dance school in the area. Now, however, there are nine Irish dance academies to choose from.

“The community always knew it was Irish, but they didn’t know what that meant,” Aherns said. “The local community now, the Irish American community, is getting more involved, sort of knows their history more.”

“And it’s a sad history,” Aherns said. “But their grandparents—the immigrants, they didn’t talk about Ireland because it was so painful. So their families were raised without the Irish culture, basically without the history and things like that”

Aherns said that is not the case in his family. He recalled a story his grandmother told him about how her 15-year-old sister was killed by members of the British military force sent into Ireland to suppress revolutionaries as she was riding her bicycle down the road.

“That kind of bitterness and that kind of hatred doesn’t go away,” Aherns said. “That’s the way a lot of us were raised, with that kind of memory, so we [did] what we could for that situation in Ireland.

Aherns says he’s been involved in these organizations to aid the Irish republicans and to foster Irish culture in America for most of his life.

Among the numerous organizations for which he has held positions, Aherns was an officer in the Irish American Cultural Institute, chairman of the Knights of the Red Branch, and president of the Syracuse chapter of the Ancient Order of Hibernians for four years.

“I was raised in the Ancient Order of Hibernians hall,” Aherns said. “They had dances every Saturday night and all the immigrants would come there and find out about America.”

But, Aherns says because there are far fewer Irish immigrants coming into the area than in the past, Irish culture in Syracuse has changed.

“There’s no Hibernian hall anymore, you know,” Aherns said. “Those days are gone. The younger generations don’t have to go to a certain place to find a job from other immigrants. They don’t have to go to another place to find friends, and socialize, and dance, and things like that.”

Aherns is confident that although the reason for Irish cultural pride has changed, the renewed pride and involvement in the culture is not going anywhere.

“You can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube anymore,” Aherns said. “I think it’s only going to grow and grow and grow.”