As a mom, though, "She’s just like any other mother," said her son Nathan Lee, a 10th-grader.
Cricket Cookies
Allison Mignone is not like every other mother when she attends the American Museum of Natural History’s Family Party. She’s the party’s chairman, the one who got the funding to make many of the activities possible: securing Tiffany & Co. as a sponsor has allowed for more showcasing of the museum’s research activities.
Paleontologist William Harcourt-Smith answered questions from a 7-year-old boy in a blazer about his latest discovery, Homo naledi, as a 3-D printer re-created a piece of the fossil. Kids in a sandbox dug for plastic gems. Guests were invited to identify which of four skulls wasn’t a carnivore (the answer was the warthog).
"I wanted children and adults to engage in really meaningful ways with the scientific content," Mignone said.
The preppy crowd ate a lot of hot dogs, and crickets served plain or blended into cookies at the Cricket Cantina. And Mignone found a way to enhance the bar offerings beyond organic milk. The sign on each bar read, "Drinks on Roberto Mignone."
The event drew more than 1,000 guests and raised more than $800,000.
Bridge Tournament
On Tuesday morning, Amabel James sat down in the gymnasium of Lenox Hill Neighborhood House to play bridge. James helped found the tournament as a fundraiser, one that brings donors into the building to see what goes on there.
Carrying Goyard and Gucci bags, guests saw parents drop off kids for the Head Start program. In the pool, students of the Lycee Francais were taking swimming lessons. The school rents the facility, which provides money for programs like legal counseling and English-as-a-second-language courses. Across the hall from the gym, cooks were preparing sausages: the kitchen makes 400,000 meals a year for seniors and others.