ROUND LAKE NEWSLETTER
June, 2016
From the Mayor:
SCHOOL’S OUT!!!!! Remember 20 MPH speed limit in the village.
Auditorium brochures are in with a variety of events. Please support your
auditorium.
We are still working on Landmark status for the organ and the auditorium.
It is a long and tedious process but we are determined to continue.
Special thanks to Lydia Hoffman and Heather Elford for all of their research
and hard work putting the narratives together.
Special thanks to the Veteran’s committee for a great Memorial Day Service
and picnic. Thanks to guest speaker Assemblywoman Carrie Woerner.
From the Village Board:
For the Auditorium’s Summer 2016 season, public parking will be allowed on the
lawn around the Auditorium. This additional parking is permitted only during
Auditorium performances. Cars must be completely off the road and on the inner
circle grass (not private property outside the circle). Cars may not park around the
triangle north of the Auditorium, where there are “no parking” signs. All other
Village parking rules are still in effect. Auditorium patrons will still be able to park
west of the Village (basketball court and Zim Smith Trail/Leah’s), but this
experiment gives us a better understanding of the parking needs directly around the
Auditorium.
From the Clerk:
For new residents and anyone who has recently changed phone numbers or email
addresses, please be sure to keep the Village office updated so we can reach you in
case of an emergency. We respect your privacy and do not give out any personal
information from the office.
Around the Village in photos
www.roundlakenaturenotes.blogspot.com
by: Diane Shapiro
A new addition to the Newsletter is an interview series by Ken Rawley
A conversation with… Sana Muir.
She lives across from Lance and Norma Spallholz in a house surrounded with an amazing garden. She is
Iraqi by birth but a Round Laker by choice. She was born in Baghdad “in the 20th Century” to a
Mandaean family (Mandaean is an ethnic religion, a minority that really is not part of any other
organized religion). Her mother was an elementary teacher and her father was an internationally known
physicist. He taught at a college at the University of Baghdad, where he eventually became president, in
1958.
Sana went to her undergraduate studies in Baghdad, including the College of Education, where she
specialized in English as a second language. Mid-way through college there was a coup in Iraq. Her
father’s post was a political appointment so he was a target of the new regime. One day a caravan of
soldiers came to her house and asked to see her father. He was to be taken away. (Sana carried his bag
out and her father recognized one of the soldiers, who admitted that he had been a student in one of his
physics classes). At which point her father disappeared for a year into a military prison and later, a
civilian prison where he made her a bead necklace, which she still has. Sana would visit him and report
that the military prison was very bad; “they were jammed so tight into the cell that they could not all lie
down to sleep at a time; a group would stand while others slept, then switch places.” When she visited
there would be a soldier with a machine gun standing behind her at all times. Every day during that time
a list was published of people who had been executed. Each day was tense as they waited to see if her
father was one of the unfortunate. He was not, he was released with no charges against him.
Her father lost his post as a result of the coup but received job offers from around the world. He
accepted a post at the National Atmospheric Center in Boulder, Colorado, Sana says he was desired
there due to his theories on the atmosphere (she saw two letters from the US government stating that
all red tape was to be waived so he arrived in the US quickly). Later he went on to teach physics at SUNY
Albany. Sana and her family stayed in Iraq until she finished college. In June, 1966, the day after she
graduated, “without even waiting for transcript papers, we left the country”.
After Sana arrived in the US she got several jobs until she decided on what she would so. She worked at
the SUNY library, the YWCA, a furniture store, HANYS (Health Association of NY State)…all while taking
various classes. She was married in 1969; they had two children: a son, who works in the UAE (United
Arab Emirates) as a drama coordinator and also teaches philosophy, literature and theater. Her
daughter is an economist at the Research Foundation of SUNY.
She left the USA for a year to live in Gaberones, the Capital of the then newly formed African nation of
Botswana. She taught elementary school. It was a rural environment with few cars and pitch black at
night. She would come home in the dark to find frogs all over her lawn eating insects. “The biggest
traffic danger was hitting a cow sleeping in the road. Goats also ran into cars”. She loved it; “a slice of
heaven”.
On her return from Africa she lived in Latham, NY. One day in 1974 or 1975, when taking sewing lessons,
her teacher said, “I want to show you one of the most interesting places in the area.” You know where
she took Sana. It was winter. She was fascinated with Round Lake. In 1989, when she was ready to buy a
house, she thought, “Round Lake. That’s it.” “I didn’t look anywhere else”. She says that she has lived
here longer than anywhere else and it is “where I feel most at home; I am blessed because my neighbors
are incredible…I can count on them, feel close to them, and can really get to know them”. In other
words: not suburbia.
She has gorgeous gardens. “My love of gardening started in Botswana. We had a large property and two
gardeners and I created gardens there”. But she considers her RL garden her first real effort at the craft.
Sana retired last year. She paints; after an altercation with her brother who took back two paintings he
had given her, “I simply took up a brush and started painting” to fill the empty walls. “A dealer calls my
work “Picasso-esque. I call it Sana-esque”. She reads philosophy, religion and mysteries. She only
watches escapist movies, she also loves the old Rock Hudson/Doris Day movies.
Sana recently put an amazing addition onto her house designed by the late and former Village resident
Paul Marchand. Bruce Johnson, husband of Paul’s daughter, Sarah, built the addition. Of the
workmanship, she says, “I cannot have asked for better”. As I write this Bruce is putting a new roof on
the house next to Sana.
Of Round Lake, Sana says, “it has bizarre street layout, the lots are dissimilar…as though the village grew
organically and was not planned. The architecture is so aesthetically pleasing, which makes it more
humane and inviting…almost magical. I have lived on three continents and wouldn’t live anywhere else”.
Enough said.