Lots to update here, clearly.  So stay tuned for more photos and tidbits…

Love,

The White-Stern Girls

So go on over to Hulu.com to catch up if you are behind: you still have a week left!

Love,

The White-Stern Girls

Ashley, Sarah and Camille said farewell to their beloved grandfather, Irving B. Stern, last Tuesday, February 23.  He passed away peacefully in his Medina, WA home.  Ashley was in attendance and Sarah and Camille arrived shortly thereafter.  He was a remarkable man and a fabulous grandparent.  His obituary can be read in the Seattle Times.

But, for all that sadness, lots of good news too!

Camille has been accepted to a study abroad program for next fall and so will spend the first half of her junior year in Paris, as her father did, decades ago.  Yay, Camille!!!

AAAANNNNDDDD…. now that it is MARCH, it is officially the month that Sarah’s episodes of 24 begin to air!  Look for her playing Susan, the President’s Aide, starting March 22 on your local Fox channel.  So exciting!!!

Till our next update… xoxo

- The White-Stern Girls

Camille is on break from college, gallivanting about Boston.  She spent a week in Los Angeles visiting Sarah, and they celebrated Christmas together.  She’s been singing lots in the house, which is a total treat, and is hoping to get a few more songs recorded so that we’ll have more content for this site. 

Sarah is working hard and working well.  She’s booked a total of six episodes for a TV series that should start airing February or March.  Deets to come when she let’s me release them!

I (Ashley) have moved 3,000 miles away from my comfortable life in California.  I have taken over the third floor of my parent’s home in snow-laden Boston.  I’m reconnecting with my New England roots, and, despite needing to adjust to the levels of friction that only family can impose, am really loving being home and getting to reconnect with my folks and with Cammy. 

So to all of our lovely readers out there, we thank you for checking us out in ’09.  Keep stopping by in 2010 — we have faith it will be a big year for the three of us!

Lots of love,

The White-Stern Girls

Camille: I am thankful for my family and friends, and for the everything they add to my life.

Sarah: So many things to be thankful for this year. My family for one; simply put, the best family a girl could come from. My friends who nurtured me through some of the hardest 6 months of my life (Rob and Suz who received the brunt of it… thank you especially for constantly being there for me, even when I wasn’t pleasant). And last but certainly not least, God. In a time of my life where I felt the most lost, He was there as my best friend and greatest confident, to deliver me into a new mind and my rebirth; and ultimately gave me what I needed the most: my acting.

Ashley: I’m thankful for everyone who has spoken up and supported me through the difficult decision I’ve made to forge my own path. I’m thankful to the community of creators and innovators out here in the Bay Area that I have come to know — such an inspiration. I am thankful to everyone this year who has taught me what love is, who has helped me love better, more fully, and with less fear: especially my family, for showing me every day what it means to practice unconditional love.

Sarah has been shooting a third episode of a very popular television show — which we can’t wait to tell you more about but won’t publicize till closer to the airing date. YAY!!!

Camille has been struggling with her desire to transfer from Gallatin to Tisch and study music professionally.  It’s a difficult decision and one that has exposed a lot of conflicted thinking in the family.

Our Mémé and our maternal grandmother

This post is dedicated to the sacredness of sisterhood, which unites me, Sarah, and Camille and links us with the generations of sisters who have come before us, the generations of sisters to come.

We three girls grew up under the loving and watchful eye of our Mémé, the Orthodox Jewish Tunisian nanny who was waiting for us nearly every day when we got home from school, the woman who cooked us tagine and couscous several nights a week, the woman who cried “s’millah binchi“* when we fell down, the woman who drew us baths when our parents had to work late.  The woman who prayed for our health and safety, aloud, daily.  A woman who only stopped working for us when her husband passed away and she left Boston to live in a retirement home outside of D.C. — when Camille was in high school and well after we “needed” a nanny.

That’s Mémé, on the left, pictured next to our maternal grandmother, Charlotte, a few years ago.

Mémé’s 80-something birthday was yesterday, and her younger sister died.  I called her today to talk to her about it, and to wish her a belated happy birthday.

“Elle était si doux, elle aimait tout le monde,” she said of her sister (we speak mostly in French).  ”C’est une maladie terrible,” she said of cancer.

“Je peux même pas imaginer,” I said.  I couldn’t.  I can’t imagine what it is like to lose a little sister, even at the end of life, to a ten-year battle with cancer.  To lose a younger sister on your birthday.  To lose a younger sister who is thousands of miles and a difficult plane ride away.  Yesterday, on her birthday, Mémé sat in her one-bedroom apartment at the Jewish retirement home outside of Washington D.C., hoping for a phone call from her little sister.  Her sister, in Israel, on the other side of the world, would pass away before making that phone call.  The grief in Mémé’s voice when we spoke today brought her pitch from it’s normal chipper range down to a gravelly quiet.

“Oh, Mémé, I’m so sorry,” I said, still speaking in French.

It did make me realize how much I adore my sisters, how lucky I am to have them with me, far away as they each are.  It was Cammy last night who texted me, telling me what happened, saying I should give Mémé a call.

And so, in life as in death, we sisters are there for each other.

*I have no idea how to transliterate that.  I’ll have to ask someone.

Sarah: My relationship with my artwork?  That’s kind of difficult, because I think the whole point of a great actor is that the relationship is ever-changing.  Everyday I feel something different about where I am with my acting, especially since “breaking into the industry” is not reliant on your ability to act, but really who you know and the way you look.  So, as of now I try to read plays to keep my actors brain turned on.  I draw inspiration from my everyday life.  I think the best way to describe it was a quote I heard somewhere: “value the process more than the destination.”

Camille: My relationship to my artwork is very personal. I think many artists feel this way. The songs I’m writing about are coming my life, my relationships with different people in my life, my fears, my goals, and really just anything that’s on my mind. I try to pin point my emotions, and invoke those feelings in my songs, whether I’m feeling happy, sad, scared, frustrated, etc.

2.  What is your biggest fear right now?

Sarah: Wow.  Biggest fear… I think my fear is finding a way to balance my love, passion and motivation of acting with my passion and desire to find love.  In every actor’s life, there is always difficulty finding a way to make sure that you have both.  I’m scared that this will be my biggest challenge–to not get swayed to one more than the other.

Camille: One thing I’m scared of right now is just not knowing how people will react to my music. I have yet to really put my own music out there for everyone to judge, and while I’m really excited to do that its a little scary at the same time. By putting my songs out there I’m making myself vulnerable, in a way, because people could say or think anything about my music. They could like, dislike, love or hate my songs. But I see that as just part of the life I want to live. I comfort myself by knowing that there will always be people who are haters, or don’t support me or my music, but as long as I believe in myself and I’m making myself happy those negative people don’t affect me.

3.  If you could ask anyone anything, who would it be and what would you ask them?

Sarah: I would ask Martin Scocese to make me the lead in his next film.  Case closed.  Oh, and to have him put someone amazing like Johnny Depp opposite me.

Camille: Hmm, there are so many questions I’d love to ask a lot of different people. But I’d want to ask the Obama daughters if they’ve had slumber parties in the White House, and if so how was it?…and can I be invited to the next one.

4.  What is one thing you’d really like to save up for?

Sarah: I am currently paying off my SAG (Screen Actor’s Guild) union fees off… they’re pretty expensive so, I would love to have that done.  Also, there is this amazing photographer named Paul Smith.  His headshots are really pricey, but I would love to shoot with him.  So, I’m saving for those, too.

Camille: A new pair of Cesare Paciotti shoes! I looove them!

5.  Is there anyone in your family you wish you were closer to (alive or not)?

Sarah: Hmmm, that’s a tough one.  On an emotional level?   Not really… I wish my Uncle Sol (my grandmother’s cousin) was still alive.  He seemed pretty cool when I was younger, and lived in San Diego, so it would have been nice to have him live close to me.  I really wish Camille lived on the West Coast, because I find myself missing her pretty much everyday.

Camille: I definitely wish I could have known my Uncle Doug (my mother’s brother) and my Grandmom Pearline (my father’s mother).  I feel like I would’ve been really close to both of them. They both passed away before I was born, but I think about them a lot.

THANK YOU and MUCH LOVE,

~ Ashley Paige, Sarah Hollis, and Camille Elizabeth

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