Joyce McFadden, an author and psychoanalyst who lives in East Hampton and will give a book talk at East Hampton High School on Wednesday, did not set out to write a book about young women and sexuality.

    But a series of 1,300 questionnaires spanning women’s subjects from relationships to sexual abuse to marriage and children, answered by women ages 18 to 105, led to “Your Daughter’s Bedroom: Insights for Raising Confident Women.”

    Ms. McFadden’s Web site, womensrealities.com, offers women a chance to answer a myriad of questions anonymously. “I find that a lot of women feel shameful about totally normal responses in their lives,” she said. When asked about what in particular, she said, “Feeling angry at a girlfriend, for example. A woman wondered, ‘Does that make me a bitch?’ Or losing desire for sex.”

    She started the survey, and the book, because “I wanted to find a way for women to reduce their level of shame,” she said. “I wanted to create a reference book, the emotional and psychological companion for ‘Our Bodies, Ourselves.’ ”

    According to Ms. McFadden, sexuality isn’t just about sex: It defines who we are, and affects our identity.

    When it came time to narrow down the subject matter to book form, “I let the women decide,” she said. The three subjects chosen for a book for teenaged girls were: menstruation, relationship with mother, and the “M” word — masturbation.

    In her book, Ms. McFadden refers to an episode of “Oprah” featuring Dr. Laura Berman and Ali Wentworth, also an East Hampton resident: “In particular, Berman spoke about the benefits of teaching our daughters about masturbation so that they could have a sense of ownership over their sexual response cycle. Many of the women in the audience literally stammered with discomfort at the thought of how to take this professional recommendation. Some women couldn’t say the word at all . . . It was like the sexual equivalent of saying ‘Voldemort.’ ”

    That may be true, but surely getting your period is something that a girl learns about from her mother? Not according to Ms. McFadden, who shared a startling statistic that over 50 percent of women under 30 do not learn about menstruation from their mothers.

    “Women intellectually know they should talk to their daughters about these things,” she said. “They’ll leave books around, but not speak directly about their own experience. You know what my mother said to me? ‘Don’t get pregnant.’ That’s it.” She refers to “the pawning off of our daughters’ sex ed” onto the school system.

    “My parents handled it all so poorly,” reads a quote from Ms. McFadden’s book from an anonymous participant in the survey. “It’s really, really shocking. I was completely mortified of my body — for most of my life — and it totally started me on a path of disconnection with my sexuality.”

    One of the problems is “we wait until they’re teenagers to talk to them about this stuff, when they want nothing to do with us.” Discussing a subject like sexuality can be difficult enough with your mother, or with your daughter, if you come from a place of shame, said Ms. McFadden, and teenage rejection compounds the problem and continues the cycle of embarrassment and shame.

    “I wish my mother had been more comfortable with her body and had been able to instill that in me,” reads another quote. And still another: “I wish it had been taught to me in a way that made me excited and proud rather than anxious.”

    Ms. McFadden suggests teaching about sexuality in stages. Children of elementary-school age are not too young to start learning. “You don’t not teach your daughter the letter ‘A’ because you’re scared she’ll read ‘Mein Kampf,’  ” she said. “But you don’t teach your daughter about her vulva because you’re scared she’ll be a slut.”

    About “Your Daughter’s Bedroom,” Ms. McFadden said she is not a fan of the title or the cover art, which is pink and depicts a pink bra with bows on it substituting for the letter “B.”

    “I’m mortified by the cover art,” she said, and spoke of “silent weeping in the car.”

    “It’s misleading at best . . . and creepy at worst.”

    The book is about sexuality, “which does not just take place in the bedroom. It grounds you in a sense of yourself. A skewed identity cripples our relationships — we spill all kinds of crap onto our daughters about hating our bodies, but don’t explain to them how our bodies work. If we have a warped sense of our sexuality, it doesn’t just affect us in the bedroom, it affects us in algebra class.”

    She maintains that “it’s not the confident girls out there, who feel ownership of their bodies, who are cyber-sexting and posting naked pictures of themselves.” Ms. McFadden is hoping her book will help to change that, assisting mothers in making their daughters feel beautiful and normal.

    “I want to help raise the next generation of women to not feel shame about being human,” she said.

    The Wednesday event, the first in a series of library talks hosts by East Hampton High School, will be held at 6:30 p.m., and is free and open to the public. Ms. McFadden encourages parents who have daughters of any age, from kindergarten to adult, to attend.

Two Student Art Shows

    Guild Hall will once again host part one of the Student Art Festival, with art by students in kindergarten through eighth grade from Bridgehampton to Montauk. The exhibit will open on Saturday with a performance on the John Drew Theater stage and a reception from 2 to 4 p.m. The show will run through Feb. 26 and can be seen on Fridays and Saturdays from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sundays from noon to 5 p.m. Admission is free.

    In Southampton, the Parrish Art Museum will feature the next generation of East End artists when its School Arts Festival opens to the public with a reception on Saturday at 5 p.m. Young artists will show work in a variety of mediums, from painting to drawing to mixed media to sculpture. The students are from high schools in East Hampton, Southampton, Sag Harbor, Bridgehampton, Southold, Hampton Bays, Riverhead, and other points west, as well as the Eastern Suffolk Board of Cooperative Educational Services. This show, too, will be on view through Feb. 26.

Singing Chicken

    Meet Henrietta, a singing chicken who learns how to escape the dinner plate, when Liz Joyce and a Couple of Puppets perform “The Chicken Show” at the Goat on a Boat Puppet Theatre in Sag Harbor on Saturday. The musical will be performed at 11 a.m. and 3 p.m. Tickets cost $10, $9 for members and grandparents, and $5 for kids under 3.

Storytelling Sundays

    A free storytelling series, Sundays With Sima at Sea, starts this weekend at the Montauk Playhouse Community Center. Sima Freierman’s first story, “The Sea That Surrounds Us,” will begin at noon in the gymnasium, followed by crafts and treats.

Fast Reading

    Kate and Jim McMullan will spend Saturday morning at Canio’s Books in Sag Harbor presenting their latest children’s book, “I’m Fast,” starring a speedy train. The McMullans, a well-known author-illustrator team, live in that village, and “I’m Fast” represents the latest in their children’s picture book series, which also includes “I’m Dirty,” “I Stink,” and “I’m Big.” Kids, grandkids, and train lovers will be welcomed at the 11 a.m. talk, which will be followed by a book signing.

Once More Unto the Stage

    Hayground School students will perform scenes from Shakespeare’s “Henry V” — known in theater circles as “Hank Cinq” — at the Bay Street Theatre in Sag Harbor today as the culmination of a three-week residency by Shakespeare and Company of Lenox, Mass. In literature, art, math, and science, students have been immersing themselves in Elizabethan culture. The artwork for the show’s poster was by Travis Deuel, 5, Kendra Tatkon-Kent, 12, and Lily Clendinen, 13.

    The production can be seen at 1 p.m. and again at 6. The suggested donation of $10 will go to support programs at the Hayground School, which is in Bridgehampton.

Jazz Band Benefit Concert

    Crossroads Music in Amagansett Square is sponsoring a night of music on Friday, Feb. 3, in the East Hampton High School auditorium to raise money for the high school’s jazz band, which is heading to Florida to compete and needs to pay for travel and lodging.

    The evening will feature the sounds of local teen bands, including Assuming Descent, Method 2 Madness, and the Feign, as well as the jazz band itself. The performances start at 7 p.m., and the suggested donation is $10.

    The Montauk School Board on Tuesday learned of the biggest expenses that will hike up the 2012-13 budget proposal, which is expected to be released in full by March. Jack Perna, the district superintendent, said he was releasing the numbers early this year because of the 2-percent property tax cap that was initiated by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, much to the dismay of schools across the state.

    The Montauk School will be able to work within the tax cap for this year, Mr. Perna said, “but over the next five years it will not be sustainable — for any district.” He explained to the board that a portion of the budget comes from the school’s fund balance, state aid, and unexpected revenues. But the bulk of the funding comes from taxpayers.

    Going over the numbers, Mr. Perna said the district would have to pay $4.44 million to East Hampton High School, from which 39 Montauk students will graduate in June, while 29 will start as freshmen in September.

    Special education services will cost the district $648,000, which includes the cost of an aide who might be needed for students who are physically disabled. Even if those students attend other schools, the district is required to pay for any extra services they might need until they reach the age of 21 or graduate, Mr. Perna said, adding that the figure could easily change if a student were to move into the district.

    Tuition to the Child Development Center of the Hamptons for six special education students and an aide is expected to cost $576,000, which includes an amount set aside in case another student moves into the district. Tuition, a full-time aide, and other related services, including summer school, physical therapy, and vision services, offered through the Board of Cooperative Educational Services will cost $416,774.

    “And that, ladies and gentlemen, are your biggest expenses other than payroll, which we are still negotiating,” Mr. Perna said.

    Budget workshops will continue through February and March right up until the final budget proposal is released and then rehashed. “This is January, so we’re nowhere close to giving that out,” Mr. Perna said.

    During the regular meeting before the budget workshop began, Karen Brown, the school’s internal claims auditor and secretary, told the board that things were running smoothly for the system that was put in place several years ago. She explained that staff members and teachers now understand the process through which they must file requisitions for approval before any work is done in the building or materials are purchased. “They know the drill,” she said.

    The term “action painting” may have been coined to describe Jackson Pollock’s style of working, but it could be just as apt a description of a 4-year-old’s natural exuberance when faced with a blank white sheet, a vivid selection of paints, a turkey baster, and some sticks.

    That was the scene last week when Ruby Jackson of the Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center in Springs led 4-year-old prekindergartners in a Pollock-inspired painting session at the East Hampton Day Care Learning Center, one of many school visits she will make this year on the occasion of Pollock’s centennial birthday.

    “Kids relate to him in a way they don’t relate to Rembrandt, or Degas, or Van Gogh,” Ms. Jackson said Tuesday. While adult painting students might need to overcome all sorts of inhibitions to tap into the raw energy and emotion that Pollock brought to his canvases, “children are able to get to that space more easily,” Ms. Jackson said. “It’s a very authentic, primal, uncensored painting. . . . Kids do that naturally.”

    The younger they are, the truer that is.

    “I don’t think people understand how important the arts are to this age group,” said Maureen Wikane, the center’s executive director, who oversees a student body ranging in age from 18 months to 5 years. (The East Hampton School District contracts with the not-for-profit center to provide prekindergarten for district residents.) Art is a big part of the curriculum for all the students. “We’re nurturing these young learners to have a joy in the arts.” And whether in paint, glitter, song, or dance, she said, “Nobody hesitates to express themselves here.”

    Since Ms. Jackson’s visit, students in Sandra McLaughlin’s pre-K class have talked a lot about the experience, “about how to interpret the feelings in art: What do you see? What does it make you feel?” Ms. McLaughlin said. “Ruby Jackson was very good at making her explanations kid-friendly.”

    Looking at the still-drying paintings on Tuesday, three of those prekindergartners, Ryan Darrell, Lila Gabbard, and Edmar Gonzalez, talked about their artwork and what they saw in it.

    “That’s dinosaurs walking around,” Ryan said, pointing to a spot of green, then added, “They’re fake.”

    “I see blue,” Lila said.

    “And that’s the ocean,” Ryan explained.

    “And the ocean has monsters,” Edmar said. And soon there was Halloween, and volcanoes, and the school, and two water slides, and unfolding stories that evolved the longer they looked at their work, and then were just stories unto themselves.

    “They were just so into it,” said Maureen Burns, another of the center’s prekindergarten teachers. “A nice messy project is perfect at this age.”

    Ms. Jackson’s next stop, tomorrow, will be in Irene Tully’s fifth-grade class at the Springs School, just around the corner from the Abstract Expressionist’s Springs studio. Pollock’s 100th birthday would have been on Saturday.

Winter Theater Camp

    Over the winter and spring breaks, the Bay Street Theatre in Sag Harbor will play host to thespians in training with a school vacation theater camp. Incorporating acting, singing, dance, and theater games, the two separate camps will be held from Feb. 20 to 24 and April 9 to 13. Murphy Davis, the theater’s artistic director, will lead the one in February.

    The camps are recommended for children 8 to 12 years old. The cost for each 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., one-week camp is $375, and the size is limited. Those interested have been encouraged to call Mary Ellen DiPrisco at the theater as soon as possible.

For All That Jazz

    Crossroads Music in Amagansett Square is sponsoring a night of local music as a fund-raiser for East Hampton High School’s jazz band tomorrow evening. The money raised will offset the band’s travel costs to compete in Florida.

    Featuring performances by Assuming Descent, Method 2 Madness, and Human Errror, the show will take place in the high school auditorium. Admission is $10, and the festivities begin at 6:30 p.m.

    The Concerned Citizens of Montauk announced this week a new paid internship open to six East Hampton High School students interested in learning how to lead bilingual outdoor education walks. Selected through an application process open to sophomores and juniors, the students will each receive a $500 grant made possible through the Andrew Sabin Family Foundation.

    “C.C.O.M. believes the key to preservation is education,” Robert Stern, the environmental organization’s president, said in a release. “Our goal is to ignite the interest of high school students and engage them in reaching out to East Hampton’s diverse community.”

    The students, who do not need to be bilingual, will be trained by National Park Service rangers who will lead them through a full-day outdoor education workshop and share their own experiences and interpretive techniques that have inspired park visitors throughout their careers.

    Over the course of the internship, participants will learn how to research and write trail brochures. Working with mentors, they will be trained to lead a series of walks conducted in English and Spanish to explore Montauk’s natural areas.

    Applications, which are available online at preservemontauk.org/publications or at the principal’s office at the high school, must be filed with the organization by Feb. 13. The trail walks are open to the public, and a schedule will be posted on the Web site.

    Monday night’s Springs School budget workshop was dominated by the word “daunting,” as the board reviewed the potential gap between revenue and expenses in the proposed 2012-13 budget and discussed how the school might work within new constraints.

    Like municipalities throughout the state, the Springs board is coping with a mandated 2-percent maximum increase in next year’s tax levy. The estimated budget proposed by the school board on Monday allowed for a slight increase in mandated expenses, such as contracted “steps” in teachers’ salaries, and it shows a gap of $1.09 million. The gap would increase to over $1.5 million if the budget were defeated twice and the district had to adopt a contingency, or austerity, budget.

    “We have less than a month to calculate this, and still no advice from the state,” Colleen Card, the district treasurer, said. The tax levy calculations are to be sent to the state by March 1. “Whatever we send in March, we’re tied to. If there’s a mistake in the calculations, too bad. If we collect too little, too bad.”

    “The key is to get the information out there,” Tim Frazier, a member of the school board, said. “Taxpayers need to see how the playing field has changed and what it means for them.”

    “I think most people think it means that when they get their tax bill, it won’t go up more than 2 percent, but that’s not what it means,” said Kathee Burke Gonzales, the school board president. She called the new law “misleading” and “a middle-of-the-night deal.”

    The 2-percent cap has been imposed on the amount of money that has to be raised by taxes in all municipalities. That is not to be confused with the total budget or the tax rate, which is based on the value of taxable property. Given a particular budget, tax rates go down if property assessments increase, and vice versa.

    “Unless you come to a meeting like this, how can someone understand? It’s up to us to educate the community,” Ms. Gonzales said.

    The next meeting will be a community forum, on Feb. 11 at 9 a.m., and board members stressed the importance of attendance “given the many difficult choices ahead of us this budget season,” according to a statement on the school’s Web site. The forum will focus on instructional programs, special education, extracurricular activities, sports, and field trips.

    Parents, students, staff members, and district residents will break into small groups to discuss to what items might be priorities and which are not.

    “Closing this budget gap is daunting,” Ms. Gonzales said. “We as a community need to identify which programs and services the community is most concerned about losing, and which items we might be willing to ‘re-think’ or sacrifice.”

The board expects a large turnout when the budget vote takes place in May. Last year, 998 voters went to the polls, compared to 459 the year before.

    “Our job as board members,” Ms. Gonzales said, “will be to listen carefully and craft a thoughtful budget that will be in the best interest of the entire Springs community.”        

    On Saturday morning at 9 a.m., the Springs School Board will hold a community conversation, offering parents, students, staff, and district residents an opportunity to participate in small-group brainstorming sessions. The topic? Identification of programs and services that may need to be sacrificed in order for the district to work within the constraints of the tax-levy cap imposed by Albany.

   As of now, the 2012-13 school budget has a shortfall of over $1 million.

    The forum will focus on instructional programs, special education, sports, field trips, and extra-curricular activities.

Feedback from the forum will guide the school board as the budget discussions proceed.

    Those who are interested in attending have been encouraged to respond as soon as possible to [email protected].

New Edible Garden

    The Child Development Center of the Hamptons Charter School in Wainscott is establishing an edible school garden and is looking for help. The plan of five raised vegetable beds, an herb garden, a berry row, and a butterfly garden will need time and resources — or items from a wish list — to come to fruition.

    Those who may be able to help out have been asked to contact Megan Curren Schmidt at 324-0207.

Theater Camp Encore

    There are still a few spots left for the Bay Street Theatre’s children’s theater camp that will be offered over the winter break, from Feb. 20 to 24. The Sag Harbor theater will hold classes from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. on those days, when children 8 to 12 years old will have an opportunity to play theater games, do improvisation, and learn about acting, singing, dance, and more.

    Those with budding thespians have been urged to contact the theater to sign up as soon as possible. The cost is $375 per week, per child.

Young Writers Workshop

    The Young American Writers Project is pairing seasoned writers with students ages 13 to 18 over the winter break, with a chance to work on pieces of fiction, essay, and poetry.

    Student writers can hone their skills from Feb. 20 to 24 at Stony Brook Southampton, with an end result of several publishable pieces. All student work is eligible for publication in the Y.A.W.P. e-zine and for presentation in the “Sounding Our Y.A.W.P.” event in April.

    The fee for the week is $525, and there are partial scholarships available. More information and applications can be attained by checking the Web site at stonybrook.edu/yawp. A separate weeklong workshop for script and playwriting will be held during the April school break, with the same fees.

Story Slam and King Midas

    King Midas is visiting the Goat on a Boat Puppet Theatre in Sag Harbor on Saturday. In this musical story performed by Liz Joyce and a Couple of Puppets, a greedy king learns lessons of love, and a small raccoon and green witch save the day.

     Performances will be held at the Goat’s space at 4 Hampton Street at 11 a.m. and 3 p.m. Tickets cost $10, $9 for grandparents and theater members, and $5 for children under 3.

    Everyone talks about the weather, but no one does anything about it. Mark Twain’s famous quote could have applied to the first budget workshop session for the East Hampton Union Free School District. Although district residents, parents, staff, and faculty have had plenty to say in the past, the East Hampton School Board began slogging through the proposed 2012-13 budget line by line on Tuesday night to a cold and empty boardroom.

    One of the largest changes is a whopping 133-percent rise in the cost of lawyers, a $200,000 addition, for the 2012-13 proposed budget.

    “It kills me,” said Jacqueline Lowey, a school board member. “It just kills me.”

    When asked by other members to elaborate, Ms. Lowey said, “I feel that the new board members inherited this train wreck.”

    “To say that this has been handled poorly in the past is akin to saying that Japan had a little windstorm,” she said.

    The additional fees are due to the district’s ongoing legal battle with Sandpebble Builders, now in its fourth year.

    “We are being bled to death by a contractor at the expense of our children,” Ms. Lowey said.

    “And we have tried in every way possible to settle this,” added Laura Anker Grossman, the school board president. Alison Anderson, another board member, said that the district is planning to release a statement in the very near future.

    “It’s unfortunate that this is totally out of our hands,” said Liz Pucci, another board member.

    There was some discussion about the superintendent’s salary, which was put in the proposed budget at $200,000. Richard Burns, the interim superintendent, is paid substantially less than the former superintendent, Raymond Gualtieri, whose salary at the time he retired was $256,976.

    The district is currently searching for a superintendent, and a few of the board members expressed concern at starting with so high a number. But it was decided to leave the number as is for now, until the budget workshops progress, with a placeholder to go back and change the number if needed.

    During the course of the evening, several cuts were made, too: an $80,000 secretarial job will not be reposted now that the most recent employee has vacated the position, and $64,000 has been saved in the audit department. A Metropolitan Transit Authority payroll tax, which has been eliminated for this year, will save the district $106,837.

    The next budget workshop is scheduled for Feb. 28.