New Haven January 2010

JANUARY 2010

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New Haven I January/2010

08 Intel

08 A Home at Heart

Danbury gets the jobs; casinos get the shaft?

A Madison Colonial returns to its family-focused roots

08 Life & Loaves

08 The Iceman Carveth

Atticus/Chabaso founder Negaro says all you need is bread

08 Women at War Distaff soldiers travel to hell and back

08 Of Notes A studio-only New Haven band gets national exposure

Sculptor Covitz creates art works in a rare medium

08 Words of Mouth DiMatteo’s back from the brink; Whole Foods is here!

08 Discovered Sweeten your summer golf swing in the dead of winter

08 Onstage New Haven’s newest theater company: Broken Umbrella

08 East Shore Thing Chronicling the history of a neighborhood apart

PHOTOGRAPH :STEVE BLAZO

New Haven

| Vol. 3, No. 4 | January 2010

Publisher Mitchell Young, Editor Michael C. Bingham, Design Manager Larissa Philllips, Design Consultant Terry Wells, Contributing Writers Brooks Appelbaum, Duo Dickinson, Liese Klein, Cindy Marien, Melissa Nicefaro, Tashema Nichols, Joanna Pettas, Steven Scarpa, Cindy Simoneau, Photographers Steve Blazo, Anthony DeCarlo Senior Publisher’s Representatives Mary W. Beard, Roberta Harris

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january 2010

24 29

New Haven is published 12 times annually by Second Wind Media Ltd., which also publishes Business New Haven, with offices at 85 Willow St., New Haven, CT 06511. 203-781-3480 (voice), 203-781-3482 (fax). Subscriptions $24.95/year, $39.95/two years. Visit www.NewHavenmagazine.com to make a secure online purchase or send name, address and zip code with payment. Second Wind Media Ltd. d/b/a New Haven shall not be held liable for failure to publish an advertisement or for typographical errors or errors in publication.

For more information e-mail NewHaven@Conntact.com.

OUR COVER Former soldier Lucia Egas at New Haven’s Vietnam Veterans Memorial. PHOTOGRAPH BY ANTHONY DECARLO..

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EDITOR’S L E T T E R

Women on the Verge

I

n this month’s New Haven (which enters our fourth calendar year — woo-hoo), Melissa Nicefaro reports women soldiers from southern Connecticut — what induced them to enlist, what happened to them when they were posted to war zones, and the difficulty of their re-adjustment to civilian life.

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It’s a remarkable story on a number of levels: the unself-conscious patriotism of these young women who placed service to their country above selfindulgence (not exactly a trend in recent years, we’ve noticed), the soldiers’ bravery in the most difficult and dangerous circumstances imaginable, and the profound and perhaps permanent changes that take place in people and their personalities as a consequence of having endured combat.

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But it’s also a timely tale, inasmuch as researchers at Yale are at this very time embarking on an important study of the relatively recent phenomenon of females in combat. Women’s Health Research at Yale and the Northeast Program Evaluation Center of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs are conducting a study to examine gender differences in how veterans returning from combat are affected by post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Elsewhere in this issue, Susan Cornell writes about a new and groundbreaking exhibition at the New Haven Museum & Historical Society (formerly the New Haven Colony Historical Society), called East Shore Reflections. In images, words and memorabilia, the exhibition documents the history of the neighborhood that most newcomers to the Elm City assume is part of East Haven. (And in fact it once was: The neighborhood was annexed by the bullying City of Elms in 1897 and incorporated in the larger municipality in 1923.) It’s worth a half-day sojourn to Whitney Avenue to learn more about the colorful history of New Haven’s “over there” neighborhood.

And for seasonal fare, it would be difficult to get more “seasonal” than Karen Singer’s profile of Bill Covitz, who crafts magnificent works of art from an unusual (and utterly ephemeral) medium: ice. You may be forgiven for not knowing that there are competitions for this sort of thing, but there most certainly are, and Covitz is a one-time national ice-carving champion and world runner-up. If you attended First Night celebrations in Hartford or Danbury December 31, you likely saw Covitz’s work.

Which reminds us: Shouldn’t New Haven have a First Night to call its own? We used to, in 1990 and ’91. We think that’s a lapsed tradition that deserves reviving in this, the cultural capital of Connecticut.

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january 2010

Stay warm!

— Michael C. Bingham, Editor

I NT EL (Ferries from Connecticut land on the north fork.)

Economic Development DANBURY — If you’re a job-seeker, you might want to consider relocating to Danbury. The upper Fairfield County burg of 75,000 has the lowest unemployment rate of any city in Connecticut — at just 6.7 percent, well below the national average of ten percent (Connecticut as a whole is at 8.2 percent). Of course, if you’re going to move you might as well head to North Dakota, where the unemployment rate of 4.2 percent is the lowest in the nation (but still likely higher than the average January temp.

Has Long Island Got Game?

SOUTHAMPTON, N.Y., LEDYARD — The Shinnecock Indians of Southampton, on the south fork at the eastern end of Long Island, have received tentative approval of their application for recognition as a tribe by the federal government.

The tribe — 1,066 strong and already recognized as a tribe by the state of New York — are hoping to become the 565th Indian tribe to earn recognition from the feds.

Twenty-five percent of slot revenues generated by the casinos are paid to the state as part of a gaming pact signed to allow casinos to be built by the tribes originally.

After final recognition, which is expected to be conferred in May, the tribe’s next step of course is to decide where to site its casino.

On that the tribe is “willing to negotiate,” according to published reports. Connecticut’s Mohegan and Pequot tribes, which operate Mohegan Sun and Foxwoods Resort Casino, respectively, have congratulated the Shinnecocks and appear ready to accept them as potential competitors.

Nevertheless, slot machine revenue continues to drop at Connecticut’s casinos. Foxwoods Resort Casino and MGM Grand at Foxwoods reported that slot revenues for November were down 1.4 percent from November 2008 and down two percent from October of this year.

Mohegan Sun reported that it netted $59.6 million from slots in November — down nearly 11 percent from November 2008 and down about five percent from October.

online. The haul will eventually yield $3 a pack (up from $2 as of October 1). Only Rhode Island’s $3.46 per-pack tax is higher.

Holy Cow

Smoking Out Tax Cheats HARTFORD — More than 900 Connecticut residents are going to be smoking mad when the state’s revenue officers come calling. Tax officials are chasing down online buyers of cigarettes that didn’t pay state sales taxes as required by law.

The state’s Department of Revenue Services (DRS) mailed tax bills to 928 people whose names were compiled from companies that sell cigarettes

STERLING — Perhaps it was the spirit of the Christmas season or guilt over eating meat, but newspapers and television stations across the country were reporting in early December on a calf born in Sterling. The divine bovine was named Moses by his owner Brad Davis after he observed that the Jersey calf had a white cross marking on its forehead.

Davis told WFSB-TV that Moses “has a message he wants to bring — I just hope it’s higher milk prices,” Expected to grow to about 1,400 pounds over the next two years, Moses won’t be sent to slaughter; Davis says he will keep the bull for breeding.

The New Nano Less Talk, More Action NEW CANAAN — Perhaps it’s all the heat that U.S. Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman is facing from the state’s liberals, but radio and Fox television talk show host Glenn Beck has placed his New Canaan home on the market. And apparently Beck wants out now, as he reportedly is prepared to take a loss on the sale. Beck listed his 8,720-square-foot home for $3.99 million, $250,000 less than he paid for the 2.87-acre property in 2005.

NEW HAVEN — If nanotechnology keeps improving, you can expect that your new little iPod may soon be a cancer detector as well as video camera, cell phone and MP3 player. A team of Yale researchers are using nanotechnology (no real relation to the consumer device) to measure cancer “biomarkers” in blood. Led by Mark Reed, Yale’s Harold Hodgkinson Professor of Engineering, the team is using nano-wire sensors in a device to catch “antigens specific to prostate and breast cancer.”

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Atticus/Chabaso pater familias Negaro talks about his life and loaves

PHOTOGRAPHS

Steve Blazo

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JUST RITE Charles Negaro’s Atticus Books & Café has been a downtown New Haven fixture for more than three decades. Less well known is how the bookseller and café morphed into a large scale artisan bakery business, Chabaso Bakery, providing bread throughout the Northeast in leading supermarkets such as Stop & Shop and Big Y Foods. NEW HAVEN Publisher Mitchell Young interviewed the 69-year-old Negaro to learn his recipe for making bread.

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vvv How did you get to New Haven? Did you grow up here?

I grew up in Waterbury. My New Haven venture really started with the first bookstore at the Yale British Art Center in 1976. I had a bookstore business, I had one in Southbury, Glastonbury. I was 36.

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So how did you get into the book business?

I was practicing law from 1969 to ’74… …And you said to yourself, ‘I don’t want to be a lawyer.’

Exactly! Inherently I was a retailer. I grew up in my father’s grocery store. People ask me why am I not a lawyer and I say that’s the wrong question. [The right question is] What the hell was I doing there?’

Because your father was a grocer, did he expect you to become a professional?

I don’t know if it was him so much as it was me. I think he knew I really loved the grocery business. He tried to sell me the grocery store when I was graduating from college. I thought that was a stupid idea — I wasn’t going to [run] a grocery store; I was a hotshot going to law school.

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What was the name of the store?

It was the Handy Dandy Market. It started out as what today we call a green grocer. Little more than a farm stand [when it first opened], it evolved over the years into about 3,000 square feet.

I worked there every day after [high] school.

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more. Actually, New Haven was really key to the whole business.

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Why? Right after I opened the bookstore, the then-treasurer [of Yale University, who at the time handled the institution’s real-estate transactions] leased me the space and introduced me to the then-head of the Yale Co-op (Harry Berkowitz, general manager of the bookstore and retailer succeeded by Barnes & Nobel in 1997], who introduced me to a guy named Trumbull Huntington, who sold me his bookstore at Wesleyan, the university bookstore, and that was a base for us.

The second thing about New Haven is we opened a café there in 1981. It changed everything. The bookstores were ultimately on the wane; the café led to the bakery. Today the store is 2800 square feet and more than half is café. A Barnes and Nobel big box store is over 20,000 square feet now.

Did you go into the food preparation business right away?

At the time we opened, we hired someone [Arthur Fisher] to [prepare food] outside the facility. [Later] he got out of the business and we took it over.

So why did you get mostly out of the bookstore business?

’People and organizations are really different. You have to find away to get outside of your ego problems and other relationship problems and be an objective manager.’

What did you learn from working in the store?

I guess I learned I really liked the interaction with people. I learned a lot of my father’s entrepreneurial spirit. He was a classic entrepreneur; he was an entrepreneur/gambler. If he had his way, he would have tried to make his money playing cards.

Was he a good card player?

By reputation he was an excellent card player. His entrepreneurial spirit was in gambling. My current wife and I remarried [married each other for a second time]. She reminds me that when we were getting divorced, my mother apparently said to her, ‘Get your hands on the money.’

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That’s what your mother said?

She was concerned about my gambling instincts. My father before he married my mother he was reputed to be making a very good living running a crap game over in the Brooklyn section of Waterbury.

From lawyer to bookseller — how did that happen?

It happened by accident. But if you look at it, [running a bookstore] is an intellectual version of having a grocery store. I was in a restaurant with a client, and someone I met said, ‘Are you interested in buying a bookstore?’ I didn’t know anything about the business, I wasn’t really looking for a business. I just fell into it. It was a bookstore in Southbury [the first Atticus].

I bought it, loved it and began to open

About five years ago we sold all the bookstores — except Atticus in New Haven — that were remaining to support and build the bakery. The Wesleyan one was sold to Wesleyan [University, which] brought in [as operator chain retailer] Follete Books.

What did you learn from retailing books?

SMOWS — ‘Sell More Of What Sells.’ Everybody used to think you have a discount on the New York Times bestsellers, and you put them in the back so everybody will walk through the store to get them. You still have to make money on it, [so why not instead] put it right in the front of the store? That applies to bread, too. We make some wonderful specialty breads, but people really want to buy baguettes and chiappatas, maybe some whole wheat. But [we also bake] chocolate cherry bread, which maybe you’ll buy once a year. We‘re geared to selling a lowpriced everyday product. That’s our goal.

How did you get from having a café to owning this bakery?

We were making a baguette in 1980, when we took over the kitchen. We had these incredible, talented Yale-related

kids who were making the food. Among them was a very talented woman name Kyle Staver, who is a very accomplished artist now in New York. She was a baker who had worked in Minneapolis and came to us with some techniques. She was a very talented baker.

She had this weird idea of fermenting dough in big buckets — we thought it was weird then, but it’s what we do every day now. We had this very flavorful baguette and some other products out of that kitchen for ten years.

But making things is very different from retailing.

Somewhere around 1993 it was clear there wasn’t a future in the book business and the artisan bread business was just catching on. I started to learn about it and decided to take a plunge into it. When we opened the first bakery it was a 5,000-square-foot facility on East and Grand Avenue in New Haven. We had no real existing customers other than ourselves. In the business plan we said we had a connection to Starbucks and we would be selling to Starbucks, [but] we never sold anything to them. I don’t know what else the business plan said, but little by little I went out myself and opened up every single account.

What was that like?

I loved it. When I was leaving the practice of law, I took one of these test [that indicate] what are you supposed to be when you grow up. What the [test suggested] was that I would be a good salesman. I thought that was another low-life idea, just like when my father said I should be a grocer. I wasn’t smart enough to understand it yet, [but] it was the right idea.

When I went out and did the selling for my company, [I did it] because I had to. I should have been a grocer or a salesman.

Later you began to sell to some pretty big companies, like Stop & Shop and Big Y. Was that good salesmanship, a change in the market, or what?

It was mostly the proverbial the right place at the right time. Once we were going maybe two or three quarters into [selling bread], I tried to call Stop & Shop, they had a headquarters in North Haven. I get in touch with a guy and I give him my bread. He doesn’t get back for two or three months. He finally says, ‘I love it, this is really great, [but] we can’t sell it — we’re afraid it will compete with our other stuff.’

He says, ‘Why don’t you try the grocery aisle?’ It takes me six months to get the guy on the phone. He says, ‘Well, we have slotting fees,’ he tries to tell me how tough it is to do business. I had no idea what he was talking about. He says, ‘All right, come in.’ I bring the bread and he says, ‘You know, we’re looking for something [like this.’ What had happened was somewhere in the last two or three days, someone had turned on a light bulb — ‘We need artisan bread in our stores’ — and I happened to walk in that day with this beautiful looking stuff.

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What’s the current footprint where you sell?

Realistically we sell within a 300-mile radius, but we sell bread outside [of that].

We sell bread as far away as Florida. We’re in [Floridabased grocery chain] WinnDixie, we’re in some stores in the mid-Atlantic, but we’re not really strong yet. We haven’t gotten down there with enough critical mass.

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Postcard depicting the ‘Ferry Landing at Light House Point,’ c. 1915.

A Neighborhood Apart N.H. Museum’s East Shore Reflections reconnects visitors with Elm City’s ‘other’ community

By SUSAN E. CORNELL

T

his winter, the next time you want to transport yourself to a place with salt air and seaside resorts as well as a different time period, you’ll need neither a DeLorean time machine nor happy hour. All that is required is a visit to the New Haven Museum & Historical Society where East Shore Reflections is on view. The new exhibit, up through February 28, “celebrates the history and unique identity of one of the Elm City’s most tightly-knit and distinctive neighborhood communities, as well as its evolution from agrarian farm area, to seaside resort, to modern day family enclave and residential setting,” explains Jason Bischoff-Wurstle, the museum’s photo archives director and curator of this exhibit.

The direction the museum is taking,

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Bischoff-Wurstle says, is to feature more and more frequent exhibits, including covering city neighborhoods. The East Shore is the first of the series.

“Each time I would go out there, it didn’t feel like you are in New Haven,” says Bischoff-Wurstle of the land across New Haven Harbor that once belonged to East Haven. “It was appropriate to start with that and then go back to the nine squares, covering the neighborhoods.

“It’s one of those things where I feel like New Haven is concentric around the downtown area, so just to be able to uncover the stories of each neighborhood, and especially the more far-flung ones, is exciting.”

The exhibit is a brief overview of roughly 400 years of history, beginning with the Quinnipiac tribe, “who had basically the

first reservation in the country — on the East Shore,” says the curator.

Maps, renderings, paintings, postcards, photographs, furniture and other historical artifacts are featured in a chronological view dating from the Quinnipiac settlers to the mid-20th century.

“It also features a room dedicated to highlighting the important roles played by Captain Amos Morris and William Pardee in East Shore history,” says BischoffWurstle. “Pardee-Morris was built circa 1670 by the Morrises, but was burned

by British troops July 5, 1779, when they invaded New Haven. Capt. Amos Morris rebuilt it a year later, recycling materials from the original structure.”

The story of Lighthouse Point likewise receives significant attention.

“Actually, it was owned by the Morrises and then sold to the government, and they built a lighthouse and a second lighthouse and the third that we use today on the breakwater,” says Bischoff-Wurstle. “That nearly became a subdivision and instead became an amusement park, and then the city acquired it.”

Other parks such as Fort Hill Park are covered, as well as Beacon Hill, which the

curator describes as “another really cool little corner of New Haven.

“One of my favorite things about New Haven are the nooks,” he adds.

A room is dedicated to the Pardee-Morris House, “which features the furniture that was in the house when William Pardee bequeathed it to the Historical Society upon his death.”

Among Bischoff-Wurstle’s favorite pieces are the architectural blueprints given to the museum from the Library of Congress (the originals are in storage at the Library of Congress).

Explains Bischoff-Wurstle: “They were part of the HAB [Historical American Building] survey of 1937. It’s exciting to know that this was part of the New Deal initiative and one of the first American building surveys done by the government.”

Lighthouse Point intrigues him “with the different changes in the park and the fact that the park exists. It’s such an incredible little piece of New Haven that is loved by those who know it and discover it, but

Photograph of the Pardee-Morris House, c. 1899

then there are so many people who don’t know about it still.”

For Bischoff-Wurstle, the most rewarding part of curating the exhibition was going out and learning hands-on — “really identifying with East Shore completely.

“It furthers my excitement to do that with other neighborhoods because I have a preliminary understanding,” he says.

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For example, there’s Fair Haven. “I ride my bike to there, it’s a place I like to go and I can actually get down to the nittygritty of a block of a street.”

Walter Miller, president and CEO of the museum, observes that visitors to East Shore Reflections fall mainly fall into one of two groups.

Continued on 39

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Even four years after she left the military, Bennet has recurring nightmares about her experiences in Iraq.

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Connecticut women warriors return home bearing indelible images of life and death under fire

By MELISSA NICEFARO

W

hen Erica Bennet’s baby was just weeks old, the new Hamden mom did what most new mothers do: she settled in on the couch, cuddled her baby for an afternoon feeding and she closed her eyes, drifting off for a few minutes of much needed sleep.

probation officer.

Since she returned home, Bennet has gotten married, bought a house and given birth to two children (in that order).

But even with all the intervening life milestones, the memories of her time in Iraq refuse to fade.

“It took a while to get used to being back For most women, that kind of downtime in the civilian world,” she acknowledges. is a blessed oasis of peace and quiet — to “Coming back was hard. I wrapped my get away from the to-do lists that haunt us. life up before I left and closed everything But for Bennet, there is no escaping what off. When I came home, I had to start haunts her: indelible images of war. everything over and I didn’t know where On that afternoon, cuddling with her son to start. It took a while to get back on on the couch, she had a dream that Iraqis track.” with shark teeth were swimming after Like many returning veterans, Bennet here and trying to bite her. found coming home simply overwhelming “I was swimming, trying to get away and — physically and psychologically. just as I was ready to get my foot out of “Everyone wanted to know how it was the water, I started to bite down on my — if it was really ‘that’ bad, if I saw a lot son’s head. I thought I was biting what of gruesome stuff,” she recalls. “It was had my leg,” Bennet recalls. When she difficult at first. I also had a hard time reawoke, her teeth were closing in on her regulating my hormones and cycles. That son’s scalp. “I was so scared, I told my happens when you changed everything husband that my first reaction was to bite about the way you’re living: the climate, to get away. It was the scariest thing ever. the food, the time zone.” Even the I was tired and delirious.” medication she was on to protect herself Bennet, now 30, has been out of the from malaria had an adverse effect on her military for almost four years and her son body. She attributes the miscarriage she is now two, but she still has dreams that had shortly after returning home to the haunt her in the night. medication.

“I still have dreams about rape and about being ambushed or overrun,” she says. “I thought I would be safe in my own home.

I’m still so easily startled if I don’t see or hear someone coming. That is my PTSD [post-traumatic stress disorder]. It’s bad and I hope that over time I can become more comfortable, calm and trusting.”

She returned stateside in 2005 after a yearlong deployment in Balad, Iraq. There she worked as a petroleum fuel specialist, running convoys to FOBs, (forward operating bases) and transported supplies — water, fuel, MREs (meals ready to eat) — in convoys back and forth to cities and towns around Balad.

Bennet initially joined the Army reserves because she wanted to go into police work when she returned home. She thought that the military discipline and background would make it easier for her to transition into police training.

PHOTOGRAPH:

Steve Blazo

“And of course college would be free,” she says. Along the way her career path changed a bit, and she’s now a student at Southern Connecticut State University working toward a degree in sociology.

She hopes to become either a counselor of school-aged children or a parole or

“It happened to a few other women I know when they got home, too,” Bennet says.

“They warned us about getting pregnant too soon after taking it.”

She characterizes her experience in the military as “awesome” — but at the same time terrifying. “There are no words I can use to describe the feeling when you walk outside the military gates” for the last time following her discharge, she says.

“Even though we have it so well here, I was bummed to come home. We do take the simple things for granted. They [Iraqis] don’t have some of the most basic things that we rely on here: clean, filtered water, food and clothing.”

Bennet says thinks the reality of war and where to store disturbing images upon return is harder for females than males, in part because women are more emotional by nature.

“We say it’s sad, what’s going on, but guys build up a wall and just see it as their job. Anyone can dehumanize over there because whether you’re a man or a woman, you have to protect yourself first.

Women have a mothering nurture and it took me a while to find that again when I came home. I told myself, ‘This is the

PHOTOGRAPH BY ANTHONY DECARLO

new haven

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Bansley (foreground) on station in Iraq, where she helped to train Iraqi police in anti-insurgent tactics.

United States, we’re not there anymore, so we have to take it with a grain of salt,’” Bennet explains. Easier said than done.

As if the images of death and destruction weren’t haunting enough, Bennet has to cope with another disturbing recollection she says will haunt her forever: the sexual abuse she both witnessed and experienced on the part of a male soldier who she says raped female soldiers in her unit and touched her inappropriately.

“They try to take care of it in a hush-hush way, and they try to isolate the soldier from the victim, but there’s not much else they do about it,” Bennet says of the male sergeant in her unit who committed the acts. “It’s always your word against theirs.

It happened to a couple of females in my platoon and it’s really sad. It happened to my roommate all the time.”

Bennet says the alleged abuser died while running on a track as part of a physical fitness test a few years ago. At the time, she recalls, she didn’t know whether to be sad or relieved to hear of his death.

“I was ashamed for thinking I may be a bit relieved, but he did some horrible things,” she says. “I was not violated like others were, but I knew the treatment I’d get if I told: isolated and looked at as ‘the soldier that told.’”

Today, Bennet spends her days with her two-year-old and ten-month-old. She 16

january 2010

met her husband in the military before deploying to the Middle East — they were in the same reserve unit and deployed together.

“The experience was amazing,” she says upon reflection. “I got to see a different side of the world. To compare it to how we live, how we have things, to experience [and not just hear about] different cultures and religions, it was very educational.

“What an experience.”

vvv

girls my age talking about their weekend and thought their world was quite a bit smaller than the real world is. It’s about more that dance, hair and what people are wearing.”

“I’m still a girl and I do have an appreciation for those things like reality TV, but it’s laughable to hear them go on and on and on,” Bansley says. “It was an eye-opener for me.”

She considers herself unabashedly patriotic, having grown up in a military family. Bansley’s father spent 20 years and her brother four years in the Marine Corps. She also had uncles and a grandfather who served in the armed forces.

Branford native Julianna Bansley feels much the same way following her period of service to her country. She was in the Connecticut Army National Guard for six years and was deployed to Iraq in 2006 and 2007, stationed in the city of Mazule.

“We grew up with the morals and values of military life, and I do feel like it’s in my blood,” says Bansley, who became the first female in her family to serve her country.

Bansley, who returned home at the ripe old age of 22 with the rank of sergeant, was a military police officer responsible for training Iraqi police. She came home and went to college — and that’s when reality hit.

“I wanted to join the Marine Corps., and it was the only time my dad has ever said, ‘No way,’” Bansley recalls. “He did let me join the National Guard. He probably didn’t think we were going overseas at that time, either.”

“I wasn’t that much older than other [students] in school, but I felt older,” Bansley says. “I guess it was the life experience that I went through. I remember my first class when I started back to school, I just looked at the other

Bansley was one of the few females who “left the wire” — ventured beyond the gates of the FOB. Out in the countryside, she says, it was “game on.”

For the first six months, she was a gunner

was a child who was hit. It was just unfortunate. I saw my fair share.”

Barely old enough to drink, Bansley went on armed patrols outside ‘the wire,’ where encounters with some 100 IEDs left her with permanent hearing disability.

Although Bansley says she does not suffer from PTSD, she came home with a ten-percent hearing disability from the 100-plus IEDs she encountered.

“IED is an Improvised Explosive Device,” she explains to a civilian. “It’s the bombs that we have the ‘pleasure’ of experiencing over there. Most of them are jerry-rigged and others are more intense.”

Despite the dangers of working outside the safety of a U.S. military base, Bansley was motivated by a fear of being perceived as weak. She didn’t want her unit to take slack for her being a female.

“I wanted to [carry] my own weight, and for me to go through four years of getting 300-plus [a perfect score] on my PT [physical fitness] scores, benching and going to the gym, I tried so hard to get on the same physical fitness level [as male soldiers], that for me to say I had PTSD would hurt my credibility,” she says. “A few things trigger memories, but I never want to seclude myself. I like to talk about it, and I think coming from a military family helps. They understand.”

Like Bennet, Bansley found romance in the military. Her boyfriend is in the Navy.

“He spent six years in a submarine and he’s on a flight tour right now to become a pilot,” Bansley says. “Even though he hasn’t seen combat, he still understands the military lifestyle, and how to deal with some of the situations we’re put in.” She hopes for a career in military contract work in intelligence and counter-terrorism.

vvv Linda Schwartz, Connecticut’s commissioner of veterans affairs, explains that many people come home from combat with a world of military experience, but face tough career decisions.

PHOTOGRAPH BY ANTHONY DECARLO

and then for the second six months, she was promoted to a key leader. She had her own Humvee, a gunner, an interpreter and would go out and work with Iraqi policemen. It was a dangerous job for a young woman from Branford who was barely old enough to drink.

“Our unit didn’t lose anyone, but we did take a couple of [wounded] casualties,”

Bansley says. “If there wasn’t a firefight, there were snipers taking shots at us.

Several Iraqi army divisions were hit pretty badly and when we were on patrol with the Iraqi police, [insurgents] were trying to hit the police. The Iraqi police are not armored as well as we were, so not only were they getting hit, civilians were also. In one unfortunate case there

“The experiences they’re coming home with are hard to put on a résumé that’s going to get you a job at Pfizer,” she says.

Schwartz served as a U.S. Air Force flight nurse during the Vietnam War. It was a time when most women in the military didn’t carry weapons or find themselves in direct combat situations — as female soldiers today do almost routinely in Iraq and Afghanistan. new haven

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Drum, N.Y. to greet a unit returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. She told the young women that she was there to help them transition back to civilian life, and four women who had just returned home asked Schwartz if Veterans Affairs offered counseling.

“I said ‘No, but we can certainly get you the care you need,’” recounts Schwartz. “I was thinking that maybe we were talking about sexual trauma, because that is an issue in the war zone today.

Researcher Desai: ‘Women may feel socially isolated and women in the military are far more likely to be victims of military sexual abuse than men.’

“When I first joined, I was not even allowed to be married and stay in the military,” says Schwartz. “A woman with a child could not stay in the military until late 1976. At the time, it was [policy] to not have women in the military encumbered with family.”

That has changed, and as the number of female veterans and active military grows across the country, states are upping their efforts to provide services to women.

“Many [female soldiers] have families and they’re coming from civilian life, since they’re in the reserves and National Guard,” says Schwartz. “Women coming home today are not so much daunted with the fact that the VA [Veterans Administration] or the system is geared toward men. That was an issue years ago.”

Schwartz speaks about the fine line between safeguarding gender equity but at the same time giving women the special help they need when they return home from combat.

“These women are side-by-side with the men and they pull their own weight,” she says. “They’re a very integral part of our military mission today, all the way up to being pilots of jet aircraft, commanding vessels at sea, and commanding units. The one thing I’ve noticed about women in this generation is that they do not want to do anything to jeopardize the respect that the men might have for them.”

When Schwartz first became veteransaffairs commissioner in 2003, she traveled with then-Gov. John G. Rowland to Fort 18

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“They were out on a convoy one day and there was a big explosion and it blew off a guy’s arm and it landed in woman’s lap,” Schwartz explains. “The woman said, ‘I keep seeing it, but I don’t want them to think we’re weak and they can’t depend on me.’ That’s a legitimate concern. It’s a normal reaction to a non-normal situation.

“They go out on patrols, they carry weapons, they shoot people and people shoot at them — they’re in combat,” she says. “Forever, the American public and makers of laws have tried to minimize what women do in combat, but the truth is that we’ve always been in combat. Even the nurses in World War I, they were gassed and they were shelled. It’s all in the eyes of the beholder.”

vvv Of the two million Americans who have fought in Afghanistan and Iraq since 2001, some 220,000 have been female soldiers, and many of these women have been in combat.

the director in charge of evaluating PTSD treatment programs in the Veterans Administration nationwide.

Desai will work with Carolyn M. Mazure, a professor of psychiatry and psychology and director of Women’s Health Research at Yale, and Sherry McKee, associate professor of psychiatry. The research program’s Women and Trauma Core, which previously has partnered with NEPEC to examine gender differences in male and female veterans in treatment for PTSD, will collaborate on the pilot study.

Fifteen male and 15 female veterans from Connecticut are taking part in an initial study, which is intended to be an introduction to a much larger research project. The veterans served in the Air Force, Army, Navy, Coast Guard, Marines and National Guard.

“It’s a long-standing idea, but we only now [since the start of the Iraq War] have our first large cohort of returning veterans who are women,” Desai explains.

While Desai says she is unsure what the results will show, she says several factors may make female soldiers more susceptible than their male peers to PTSD and other anxiety disorders.

“We know based upon previous research that women going into the military are more likely to have suffered childhood traumas than men,” Desai says. “They’re also at risk for military sexual trauma, sexual harassment and assault.”

Desai said if the study shows high rates of PTSD in both men and women, it

A number of researchers assert that female soldiers are more susceptible to post-traumatic stress disorder than men with similar experiences. There are also concerns that the trauma women experience in combat may be compounded because women on average enter the military having experienced greater civilian trauma than men and may suffer trauma at the hands of their comrades more than male veterans.

Based on these concerns, Women’s Health Research at Yale and the Northeast Program Evaluation Center (NEPEC) of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs are conducting a study to examine gender differences in how veterans returning from combat are affected by PTSD. Principal investigator for the study is Rani Desai, an associate professor of psychiatry at the Yale School of Medicine who is also on the staff at NEPEC, where she is

Yale’s Mazure is investigating whether female veterans have a more difficult time readjusting to civilian life than their male counterparts.

would make doctors more aware of how widespread the anxiety disorder is.

“There’s no reason to think that women and men function any differently in combat positions,” says Desai. “However, the civilian trauma literature might suggest women might be more vulnerable to developing poor mental-health outcomes in response to trauma. Women with a history of trauma are much more likely to develop PTSD if they have a history of trauma.”

The fact that men still comprise the vast majority of American fighting forces compounds the pressure on women in the service,” Desai says. “Male soldiers work in units where most of the people around them are of the same gender. As a result, women may feel isolated and women in the military are far more likely to be victims of military sexual abuse than men.

“There have been some anecdotal stories that have indicated very high rates of military sexual trauma in women who are in Iraq and Afghanistan,” she adds.

“There is some concern that this particular high-pressure situation may possibly be resulting in higher numbers of these kinds of incidents than you might normally expect.”

For women in the military, the trauma of sexual assault may carry different implications than it would in civilian life.

Since the women and men live in close proximity and rely on one another, they develop a deep sense of camaraderie and mutual protection. Over time soldiers in dangerous postings come to regard one another as like family.

Thus sexual assault may create a psychological experience that is akin to incest in that the person perpetrating the trauma is a person who is supposed to protect you, according to Desai. That violation is different than even date rape or a stranger rape.

The ultimate goal is to design the methodology for a study that’s going to enroll ideally about 1,000 veterans.

“We’re going to look at family issues, whether or not they can communicate with others, employment issues, issues around self-medicating stress symptoms such as nightmares, depression and guilt,” says Desai.

Women’s Health Research at Yale was founded in 1998 with a $6.5 million grant from a Connecticut medical research foundation called the Donahue

Foundation. So far more than $4 million has been used to fund new studies in women’s health. The grant funds pilot studies that lead to large grants — $40 million so far — from the National Institutes of Health or the Centers for Disease Control.

Says Yale’s Carolyn Mazure: “One of the concerns that’s coming up is that all combat veterans have difficulty readjusting after deployment. We’re investigated whether women are having a more difficult time with adjustment when they come back. They may have more addictive behaviors like smoking, depression, problems adapting back to the environment again. Gathering that information may help lead to some intervention.”

“A little-known fact is that women who served in Vietnam and were the nurses taking care of casualties, because they did not carry a gun they were not considered to be in ‘combat,’” explains Schwartz.

Because of that, “The VA did not acknowledge their eligibility for diagnosis of PTSD.” Now, we may be getting there. v

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ATH OME

S

uburban living in America has evolved dramatically from when America (including Connecticut) was a subsistence farm-based economy to a place where almost everyone works away from the home. Prior to the 20th century families often built farmhouses with their own hands, creating the most intimate bond imaginable between them and where they lived.

But the family farm gave way to a manufacturing economy where people left home to work. Given that break it only made sense to make homes that turned their back on the workplace. With the advent of the automobile and later the interstate highway system following World War II, entire towns grew up as “bedroom communities” where people hung their hats, positioned to travel great distances to work.

Around the time Leave It To Beaver was cancelled, American culture turned on a dime and many American families now have to migrate from job to job, hopping around the country. Married couples now seem to bond for a finite number of years only to separate and recombine — creating the “blended-family” phenomenon by which children are simultaneously housed in separate homes and sibling and parenting relationships get extremely complicated.

As a result of these societal transformations, the American home itself has had to become quite fungible.

Homes are coldly bought and sold just like any other commodity and were used as ATM machines when bizarrely increasing property values were leveraged to finance everything from vacations to boats.

But as we now know only too well, everything changed a few years ago.

When the housing bubble burst, homes that were once seen as instantly swappable, one for another, became millstones around the necks of many families. Houses could no longer be changed as easily as underwear. Many families are trapped in homes they hate with unfulfilled dreams of having a place to live in that they love.

It’s becoming undeniable to many homeowners that the place where they live has more impact on their day-to-day 20

january 2010

PHOTOGRAPHS ANTHONY DECARLO

An historic Madison Colonial returns to its family-focused roots

By DUO DICKINSON

new haven

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The dining room is anchored by a salvaged corner cabinet from Rhode Island (right).

But the room remains connected to the home’s central hearth (left).

The master bedroom was built over a 19th-century extension of the 1803 house. The added fourth bedroom enabled a family of six to settle in during the decade of full occupancy before children began to fly off to college. The room’s vaulted ceiling springs from walls just over six feet high to keep its mass lower than the original house.

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lives than any other possession. Unlike an automobile, there is no longer an easy trade-in for a misfit house — it has become time to think about where we live more along the lines of how our grandparents envisioned their homes — as a permanent locus for their family life, not this year’s backdrop for family events.

There have always been families that naturally gravitate toward hearth and home much in the way earlier generations did. Encouraging this devotional relationship, the Internet revolution has brought work back into the home for many people, and many Americans now choose careers where work and home life are not just under one roof — the one roof is a beloved center of both family and career.

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Physicians Lori and Tom Richardson have just such an integrated life locus. About two years into their own chiropractic practice Lori and Tom realized that they were ready to find a place where their life together, both professional and familial, could have a single center-stage.

The Richardsons had the throwback idea that they could create a home where children had one place to live for the entire duration of their childhood, and sometimes even actually shared bedrooms.

It would be a home where not everyone who live there had a private bath and where the landscape was richly integrated by the homeowners themselves into how family members lived their day-to-day lives.

With that old-school sensibility, Lori and Tom reclaimed an antique home from its converted status as a typical suburban home to its roots as the central hub for a family. In 1990 they happened upon a classic 1803 center hall Colonial built by the fabled Chittenden family of Madison — the third in a row of homes the family built on the Boston Post Road.

Before 2008, 1990 was the last time when a cascade in property values allowed young couples like the Richardsons to be able to afford the house that could fully realize their deepest hopes and dreams. As Lori recounts: “Tom and I envisioned having a home/office with a fireplace in the waiting room. The house in Madison had been on the market for two years empty, had good bones, five fireplaces with two beehive ovens, an in-law apartment with a fireplace in the main room that was perfect for our office. But needed lots of work.”

The house sits augustly on a wonderful

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A backyard barbeque that grew to be a full chimney — and both a barrier to the street and a focal point for a completely designed site.

House and garden as seen from the east. The original 1803 center-hall house (left) address the street with the new master suite built over a later extension (center) and 1970s office wing (right), all fully exposed to the extraordinary gardens, paths, hedges, terraces, arbors and trees the Richardsons have installed over the years — a design so strong it ‘reads’ in mid-winter.

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corner lot on 0.8 acres in a prominent stretch on the main drag of a classic coastal village. With one child in full ower (Kyle, born in St. Louis during the couple’s time in chiropractic school) and newborn Colin, they moved in early to the two-bedroom ground oor in-law apartment that was to become their ofďŹ ce. They had committed themselves to an antique home that needed every possible update.

Although most any house can be thought of as an “investment,â€? the Richardsons clearly did not believe this was a boot-strapping economic vehicle to “surfâ€? some cresting wave of economic value. Diligently focused on earning the money to build their dream, the couple’s ďŹ rst construction project was to transform the downstairs twobedroom “apartmentâ€? into an ofďŹ ce — eliminating 40 percent of the home’s bedrooms and one third of its bathrooms dedicated to family use.

Once they were installed professionally in the dwelling, Lori knew the need to provide safe harbor for their growing family was paramount. “In 1991 I was pregnant with our third child [daughter Taya],� recalls Lori, “so we started some work in the kitchen area and waited to upgrade at a later date.� But almost instantly they discovered one of the major liabilities of owning an older home: lead.

Not only in the paint, but ubiquitous to the point where, with little children fully exposed, the toxicity forced Lori and her brood to move out for nine months of leadabatement. That mandatory detoxing meant the plannedfor future renovation was pushed into the here and now.

(Fortuitously, the renovated apartment that became the Richardsons’ ofďŹ ce was built in a post-lead entrained world — the 1970s — so the pair’s chiropractic practice continued

uninterrupted.)

An unforeseen beneďŹ t of removing so much of the house’s interior surfaces due to lead contamination was the opportunity to reinvent the entire second oor of the home to allow three bedrooms to be built where two had been before. The potential for tightness was overcome when the full gutting of the home to literally “get the lead outâ€? opened up the possibility of permanently removing the existing at ceilings to reveal the full timber frame structure of the dwelling.

Fortunately, a previous occupant had added a layer of roof framing over the original timber frame shell that serendipitously allowed the timber posts and beams be fully exposed and yet maintain an insulation level that made expansion into the attic space energy-efďŹ cient. Skylights were installed in several locations and ultimately colors and furniture and lighting took full advantage of these newly vertical spaces to create a sense of openness in a potentially tight oor.

vvv Following these emergency repairs, a signal event took place. In 1994 Tom Richardson fell through the roof. “He was cleaning the leaves in the gutters and fell through the roof into the kitchen,� recalls his wife. “We realized that even though we were going to make repairs to the roof when I became pregnant with our fourth child, Ian, once the damaged happened to the ceiling we decided we had to really do the kitchen.�

Like the discovery of lead, Tom’s fall gave the couple courage to immediately embrace the next major expansion. The original kitchen was in the one story “ell� that was added onto the original home in the 19th century.

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A collapsed ceiling combined new haven

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Kitchen, new windows and several careful renovations make a tight space built in the 19th century come alive with detail and openness.

with a new pregnancy to beg the question of how the home actually fit the family.

The Richardsons were forced to confront the stark math: four kids and two parents don’t go into three bedrooms and one bath terribly well.

So a new master bedroom suite with its own bath was constructed over the singlestory “ell,” kept low to maintain the integrity of the lines of the original house.

Lori and Tom gave the construction crew a real deadline, as they planned for Ian to be born in the space they were building — the new master suite. Through the diligence of the construction crew and the encouragement of the Richardsons, Ian was born 14 years ago in Lori’s and Tom’s bed.

The last major piece of construction was likewise precipitated by a structural collapse. The original 19th-century barn next to the home had been expanded in the 20th century to include a car port, and the structure’s imminent collapse due to rot in 2000 meant that they could rethink the site, as the removal of the barn that had been tight to the office wing opened up the entire north side of the lot. The Richardsons hired Salem Country Barns

26

january 2010

to create a post-and-beam three-car garage rotated 90 degrees from the original barn, positioned to address a saltwater pool that the Richardsons had installed. The garage’s lofted second-floor rec room created a virtual paradise for teenagers — nearly a 20-year window for a family with four children. It’s a space removed from Mom and Dad being “in your face,” but still close enough.

All throughout almost 20 years of sporadic construction projects, the home’s interior has received some extraordinary enhancements and inspired rethinking.

Several ground-floor walls have been removed to open up the interior and the kitchen has been the subject of several serial renovations. Large-scale windows were added facing the side yard (while maintaining the “correct” symmetrical street-facing pattern surrounding a front door that over time ceased to be much used).

Built-in furniture was continually insinuated including a salvaged corner cabinet from Rhode Island, a layering of cabinetry around the central fireplace and the creation of a small home office desk area — transforming the first floor interior

into series of crafted events. Extraordinary lighting is used throughout, often eclectically dazzling in its crystalline modernity. The most recent artful devices employed by the Richardsons are wall appliqués of calligraphed quotes throughout the entire first floor. The words of ancient and unexpected authors using a new technology of computergenerated sticky-backed cut plastic sheets effortlessly illuminate each room’s function, provide unexpected art, and delight in the spoken word.

As part of their roaming eye for home renovation opportunities, Lori and Tom found an exquisite mahogany glass door/ sidelight/transom array salvaged from the estate of actress Stephanie Mills’ father in upstate New York. This unique piece became the central feature of the home’s entire first-floor interior — a portal to a wonderful back yard that galvanized the love affair the Richardsons have had with their house and land.

Almost more than any other home, the surrounding landscape has benefited from the tender loving care and extreme devotion of its occupants. Virtually every corner of its 35,000 square feet has been

developed with a degree of thoughtfulness and composition that is exceptional for a single-family house.

Using a French design sensibility of axes, grid, line and plane, hedges, arbors, garden beds and an exceptional free-standing chimney barbeque were all executed by Tom. In endless after-hours devotion (mirroring Lori’s interior obsession) working with a doggedness that astonished his neighbors, Tom channeled a bygone generation’s personal devotion to the land. Virtually every interior space looks out upon his composition, bringing its large scale design into everyone’s appreciation year round.

When you view a home as the fundamental focus of a family’s life, that rejects jumping from home to home in search of a place to live in favor of changing the place you live in to fit how your family evolves. So six people live in a four-bedroom, two-bath house, one doorway away from the location of their life’s work — not exactly the suburban norm in Madison, where isolated McMansions typically have more bathrooms than human within their walls.

This is a perfectly modern family where Taya goes to college on a soccer

down south to earn a degree in advertising.

All this diversity of activity has a rocksolid base of operation, physically as well as emotionally, in a home rebuilt to last for more than the passing fancy of the opportunistic migrations lived out by so many other families.

Before 2008, 1990 was the last time when a cascade in property values allowed young couples like the Richardsons to be able to afford the house that could fully realize their deepest hopes and dreams.

An essentially quality of the human condition has been lost in the last generation or two, when the ascendance of career-focused serial house inhabitors makes all of our roots ever shallower. It’s a new era where a better deal always seems to be over the next horizon or on the next cul-de-sac — where movement is prized over commitment. What’s lost is the sense of an inside-out life, where a family is bonded to a place called home.

scholarship, Mom is a full partner with Dad in a medical practice, and children are encouraged to find their muse, whether working at SARAH in Guilford or going

How can you be sure they are safe in their home?

Here in an ancient home, thoroughly reinvented and invigorated by a vibrant family, the old traditions have a vitality and life that is mirrored in the (seemingly) spontaneous effervescence of its spaces, surfaces, furniture and art that give this archetypal Colonial a lightness of being that is both active and loving. A house always reflects its family’s values, one way or another. v

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There’s no shortage of ice in Alaska, where in 2006 this gargoyle carved from a single 4,000-pound block of ice was runner-up in an international ice-carving competition.

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Bill Covitz crafts ephemeral sculptures from a rare medium

T

he Nutcracker was emerging from a 300-pound block of ice.

Chips sprayed the air, covering Bill Covitz’s waterproof outerwear as he used a chain saw to hew the familiar bearded figurine from an outline etched on the block. With grinders and chisels he deftly carved epaulets, buttons and other details, adding the final touches with a blowtorch.

The Nutcracker joined a group of elves, Santas, reindeer, Christmas trees and other holiday sculptures that Covitz and his helper, Matt Terzano, were putting the finishing touches on a few days before Christmas. They worked in an 18-degree walk-in freezer in an ice supply house in Naugatuck, where Covitz leases space for his company, Ice Matters, (icematters.com), which creates decorative and functional works of ice art for functions ranging from weddings to corporate events.

A couple of weeks earlier, Covitz delighted Ridgefield residents while carving penguins and other creatures for the town’s annual Holiday Stroll, and he was gearing up for more crowd-pleasing demonstrations at year-end First Nights in Hartford and Danbury.

“I’m not good at drawing,” Covitz acknowledges. “But I see three dimensional real well.”

He’s not just boasting.

Covitz won the grand champion award at the 2004 National Ice Carving Association Championship (NICA) with an elaborate Cat in the Hat sculpture. In 2009 he came in second in the contest for a giant preying mantis.

Other accolades include placing second at the 2006 World Ice Art Championships with an 8,000-pound gargoyle towering nearly 12 feet tall.

“He’s a great competitor and he always does beautiful pieces,” says Greg Butauski. president of the Oak Brook, Ill.-based

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NICA, which has more than 400 members and organizes ice carving competitions around the world.

outlines on ice blocks, enabling them to assemble complex designs made of multiple blocks with great accuracy, taking the art form to new heights.

Covitz also excels at making musical instruments from ice. In 2006, he created his first, a playable marimba, for an ice music festival held during the first full moon of the new year on a mountaintop in Geilo, Norway (icefestival.no). He has returned every year since, and this month plans to create an ice guitar and ice harp.

The instruments contain some string and wood parts.

The son of a veterinary ophthalmologist, Covitz grew up in Ridgefield, where he pursued a penchant for food preparation while working in local restaurants.

After graduating from the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, N.Y., in 1991 (the curriculum included a single day on ice carving), Covitz honed his skills on chopping blocks at fine dining establishments including La Chateau in South Salem, N.Y. and the Lodge and Spa at Cordillera in Vail, Colo., and as a private chef in Belgium for a shipping magnate.

In 1997, Covitz moved to Newport, R.I. to work for an old friend Ð Albert Bouchard, former La Chateau chef who was opening his own fine dining place, Restaurant Bouchard and Inn. While seeking a venue to sculpt ice, Covitz met Steve Rose, owner of Ice Effects in Boston and NICA national champion.

“I thought I knew how to carve ice, but when I walked into his shop I realized I was a real beginner,” Covitz says. “Steve showed me around, and I asked if I could help him out, for free, on weekends.” So Covitz agreed.

“After a few months, he said he had to start paying me and asked if I wanted a fulltime job.”

Covitz spent nearly two years working for Rose before “finally deciding it was time for me to be my own person and go out on my own.”

Returning to the U.S. in the mid-1990s, Covitz and his girlfriend (now wife), Jen, settled in Stowe, Vt., where he became chef at Ten Acres Lodge and buffet chef at the Trapp Family Lodge.

“My job all week was to prepare a grand buffet for Sunday,” he recalls. “They asked if I could carve ice [Covitz optimistically said ‘yes’], and I did some carvings once a week, things like lobsters, sailfish, swans and a bear standing next to a lamp post. I would draw a template drawing that fit the block of ice, freeze that piece of paper on the block, carve the silhouette with a chain saw then go threedimensional. With a lot of repetition and practice, it came real natural to me.”

Nowadays Covitz and others use computer-controlled machines to etch

So he moved back to Connecticut, opening Ice Matters in 1999. ÐMy wife came up with the name. She felt ice mattered and it would matter to everybody once I got it going.Ð (The couple have two sons Ð Liam, seven, and two-year-old Joshua.)

A decade later, the business is weathering the recession. Covitz says strong year-end holiday orders and a number of lavish occasions helped to offset the slowdown in country club events during 1999.

Recently, Covitz sculpted several life-sized nudes, Roman columns and serving bars for an airline executive’s 40th birthday party.

He makes his own ice with machines that turn out ten-inch thick, crystal clear blocks. Most work requires a single block, and popular requests include a bride and

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groom dancing, functional martini luges, with a spigot for dispensing, and corporate logos.

Covitz’s competition entries are more elaborate and fragile than his event sculptures, which are thicker and sturdier so they will last six to eight hours at room temperature.

“I like taking chances with really fragile delicate pieces,” he says, citing entries such as his award-winning Cat in the Hat, which held a teapot, saucer and tray and balanced on an angle long enough for the judging. “I’d rather have it break than lose,” he admits.

Covitz seems little bothered by the impermanence of his art.

“A lot of it is about the picture [photograph],” he says. “The picture will last forever. “The ice is just made for the event. I like the fact it’s taken from the ground, made into something special, then goes back into the ground.”

You can see Covitz sculpting dragons and other medieval creatures during an ice carving event at this year’s Lyman Orchard’s annual Winterfest, which runs February 20-21. For details, visit lymanorchards.com. v

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This three-block, 12-foot high praying mantis is a practice piece for the scupture that won a gold medal at the NICA competition in Stowe, Vt. last January.

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EXHIBITIONS Opening Traces of Things That Are Living & Dead. New Haven sculptor Phil Lique is known for his fantastical, hybrid-style animals and other imaginative figural works. He frequently subverts the functionality of ordinary materials while pushing the conceptual boundaries between renewal and decay, nature and artifice, and stability and chaos. This exhibition marks this emerging artist’s first solo exhibition in the Elm City.

January 14-February 20 (artist reception 6-8 p.m. 1/14) at Artspace, 50 Orange St., New Haven. Noon-6 p.m. Tues.-Thurs., noon-8 p.m. Fri.-Sat. Free. 203-772-2709, artspacenh.org.

New Haven painter Anna Daegle will exhibit new work using unconventional materials that engage in her longstanding investigation into the sublime and the grotesque. January 14-February 20 (artist reception 6-8 p.m. 1/14) at Artspace, 50 Orange St., New Haven.

Noon-6 p.m. Tues.-Thurs., noon-8 p.m.

Fri.-Sat. Free. 203-772-2709, artspacenh. org. \cutline\Anna Daegele’s ‘Untitled’ (2007, mixed media on canvas), from the New Haven painter’s solo exhibition opening January 14 at Artspace.

The distinctive, stylistically varied textiles in Splendid Details are richly colored and detailed. Examples include Chinese silk jackets, Japanese robes and Mongolian horsemen’s gowns, intricately embroidered in vibrant floral patterns, Chinese characters and symbols, and woven dragons. All the pieces are from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. January 27-March 5 at Mansfield Freeman Center for East Asian Studies Gallery, Wesleyan University, 343 Washington Terr., Middletown. Open noon-4 p.m. daily except Mon. Free. 860685-2330, wesleyan.edu/east.

Recent work by Kevin Van Aelst features photographs and constructions of common materials and images of everyday life rearranged and reassembled to reflect and soothe the fancies f the artist’s mind. Van Aelst attempts to impose order on the uncontrolled and discover large ideas in the minute details of our surroundings. Van Aelst currently teaches art at Quinnipiac University and the ACES/Educational Center for the Arts. January 28-February 16 at Seton Art Gallery, University of New Haven, 300 Boston Post Rd., West Haven. Open 1-5 p.m. weekdays except Mon., noon-3 p.m. weekends. Free. 203-931-6065, newhaven. edu.

Continuing More than 100 works of 22 Kehler Liddell artists comprise Size Matters.

The salon style exhibition celebrates art and giving through individually and collaboratively conceived pieces large and small, in several media and price

brackets. A portion of the exhibit’s proceeds will benefit the Child Life Arts and Enrichment Program as Yale New Haven Children’s Hospital. Through January 10 at Kehler Liddell Gallery, 873 Whalley Ave., New Haven. Open 11 a.m.4 p.m. Thurs.-Sun. & by appt. 203-3899555, kehlerliddell.com.

A Latino Christmas: Nativities of Latin America is the fifth annual crèche exhibition at the Knights of Columbus Museum, this year presenting some 120 crèches from the southwestern United States and 17 Latin countries. Authentic ethnic Nativity scenes representing a wide variety of interpretations and artistic skill. The crèches were borrowed from several private, public and academic collections. Through January 31 at the Knights of Columbus Museum, One State St., New Haven. Open 10 a.m.-5 p.m. daily. Free. 203-865-0400, kfcmuseum. org

10 a.m.-2 p.m. Wed., noon-5 p.m. Thurs.Fri. and by appointment. Free. 203-7722788. newhavenarts.org.

What We Learned: The Yale Las Vegas Studio and the Work of Venturi Scott Brown & Associates is really two exhibitions. The Yale Las Vegas Studio documents photographically the 1968 Yale “field trip” to Las Vegas examining commercial vernacular architecture, aiming to capture “unconscious moments” of the historic studio’s leaders before “theory formation” made the Las Vegas trip into a

ART Small Works — Big Voices is an exhibition of eight-by-ten-inch works in several media — photography, oils, collages, water color — by female artists from the shoreline.

The exhibition is the result of a new

The Studio Art Quilt Associates present Transformations ‘09: Reflections, which coincides with the Guilford Art Center’s annual holiday Sale. The show features 34 quilts made by artists from around the world, exploring the theme of reflection. “A reflection can be something reflected, such as light, sound or an image. It also refers to the act and result of careful consideration or meditation,” says Laura Cater-Woods, a mixed-media artist who is jurying the exhibition. “The quilts in this show represent a variety of interpretations of the theme, as well as diverse ways of thinking about image, surface and space.” Through January 31 at Guilford Art Center, 411 Church St., Guilford. 203453-5947, guilfordartcenter.org.

Call of the Coast: Art Colonies of New England. Art colonies in Connecticut communities such as Old Lyme and Cos Cob as well as in Ogunquit and Monhegan, Me. played a key role in the creation of a regional identity in the early 20th century. They also provided inspiration for nationally recognized artists including Edward Hopper, Childe Hassam, Robert Henri, and George Bellows, among others. Call of the Coast chronicles the development of Impressionist Connecticut and Modernist Maine and features 73 works drawn from the collections of the Portland Museum of Art and the Florence Griswold Museum. Through January 31 at the Florence Griswold Museum, 96 Lyme St., Old Lyme. Open 10 a.m.-5 p.m. daily except Mon., 1-5 p.m.

Sun. $9 ($8 seniors, $7 students, free under 12). 860-434-5542, flogris.org.

Out of House and Home is the second half of Work/Place, a two-part series which explores the environments on which our survival depends. Here, the Arts Council of Greater New Haven presents an exhibit that explores the comforts and securities of home and the uncertainties and anxieties brought to bear by the recent mortgage crisis, record foreclosures and plummeting real-estate values. Curated by Debbie Hesse and Joy Pepe. Through February 5 at the Parachute Factory, Erector Square, 319 Peck St., Bldg. 1, New Haven. Open

Anna Daegele’s ‘Untitled’ (2007, mixed media on canvas), from the New Haven painter’s solo exhibition opening January 14 at Artspace. watershed architectural event. What We Learned, the second part of the exhibition, focuses on Venturi and Scott Brown’s critical contributions to the urban landscape and our understanding of it. Organized around five themes — context, mannerism, communication, automobile city and urban research — the installation is a collage of drawings, posters, photographs and text as well as furniture and fragments from early buildings designed by the architects.

Through February 5 at Paul Rudolph Hall, 180 York St., New Haven. Open 9 a.m.5 p.m. Monday-Friday, 10 a.m.-5 p.m.

Saturday. Free. 203-432-1345. architecture. yale.edu.

collaboration between the Shoreline Arts Alliance and the Women & Family Life Center. The intention is to celebrate the work of local visual artists through providing them free gallery space while bringing visitors to Guilford’s historic district. Proceeds of the sale of artworks will benefit both sponsoring organizations. Through March 21 at the Carriage House Gallery, Women & Family Life Center, 96 Fair St., Guilford. By appointment only. 203-453-3890, shorelinearts.org, womenandfamilylifecenter.org.

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O F N OT E S

Tracks with Long Legs

A New Haven band’s quirky sounds get unexpected national exposure

By MICHAEL C. BINGHAM

Cover illustration for Call of the Wolf Peach by artist TS Rogers.

“Wistful” and “reflective” are two pretty good words to describe Pale White Moon, a band — no, make that “collection of friends” — who hail from the City of Elms and make music that defies categorization. PWM’s MySpace page calls it “Ambient/Alternative/Classical” but of course there’s no such thing.

Or is there?

Maybe the “classical” handle derives from the generous use of strings (violin, viola, cello and double bass) on its new CD, Call of the Wolf Peach. There’s also clarinet, piano, sundry and strange-sounding electronic organs and even, of all things, a tuba.

The result is an odd but affecting pastiche of sounds that straddle musical boundaries and evoke images suggestive of some quirky documentary.

Which is a good thing, because Pale White Moon’s music in fact can be heard on a

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january 2010

documentary soundtrack — This American Life on the Showtime cable channel, based on an National Public Radio show of the same name.

The prime mover behind Pale White Moon is guitarist and principal songwriter Doug Slawin. In its initial incarnation PWM was known as the Secret Ink, whose personnel included a female vocalist and the usual guitar/bass/drums — but also violin and cello.

“The real focus of that band was bringing the violin and cello out into the live setting,” Slawin explains. “There are a lot of records that people love — the Beatles, Motown — that feature strings very prominently, but they’re usually reserved for the studio and not a live setting. Part of the focus of the group was to bring those instruments into a live setting and have [audiences] really hear those instruments. And also for the players involved to be not just add-ons but

to be a regular part of the band and really contribute to the compositions.”

After about five years in the trenches, the Secret Ink disbanded when the lead singer moved to Texas. The band had been working in the studio at the time of the breakup, “So I had this half-finished record,” Slawin recalls. “Because I care about the music I wanted to finish [the songs] and share them with other people.”

As such, Pale White Moon isn’t a “band” in the sense of an entity that plays out live.

“It’s really a studio ensemble,” Slawin confirms.

Strings are front-and-center on Call of the Wolf Peach — indeed the first thing the listener hears on opening track “Heirlooms” is a long, legato viola melody line over pizzicato (plucked) cello and violin accompaniment. We don’t even hear conventional rock instrumentation until “Rabbits Run,” which is the only

conventionally “rock”-sounding number on the disc — guitars, bass and drums beneath Lauren Fay’s girlish, ethereal vocal track.

PWM’s “regular” vocalist is Ilona Virostek, who sings on three numbers (a conventional rock and then “chamber” version of the same song, “Stars Hollow Days,” and “Frost Flowers”). But Call of the Wolf Peach is predominantly an instrumental outing, which helps to explain its utility as soundtrack material.

tempi and instrumentation.

It’s interesting stuff, made more interesting by the fact that these Elm City musicians are getting their work heard nationwide. This American Life

is what we do — do you think you’d interested?’”

They were, and the upshot is that the producers of the Showtime This American Life used ten Slawin pieces as part of the soundtrack of the series. Not only is the exposure nice (“It’s kind of like New Haven busting out a little bit and getting heard throughout the rest of the country,” Slawin says) — but there are royalties, too, “which basically allowed us to finish the record,” he adds.

One thing the listeners notices right away about Call of the Wolf Peach are its languid tempos.

Some Slawin songs are also part of an upcoming documentary LaPorte, Indiana

by Emmy-winner Joe Beshenkovsky, who became familiar with the music through This American Life.

The film tells the progression of postwar American through the individual lives captured in over 18,000 portraits found in the back of a small-town diner.

“The Seven Year Cicadas” features Slawin’s guitar against the backdrop of the chirp of crickets (or perhaps cicadas). To any guitar player brought up on Page or Van Songwriter Slawin plays guitar and a handful of unusual organs, Halen or any number of other including one made by vacuum-cleaner manufacturer Rheem. “shredders,” Slawin’s restraint and sense of space would seem impossible. But his playing embodies the Heady heights for a project born in the on Showtime is adapted from Ira Glass’ concept of “making fewer notes do more.” studio. But Slawin plans to play out live popular National Public Radio program soon, too. The 39-year-old guitarist and of the same name.

The ethereal texture The weirdest of a weird lot is “Sir Basil songwriter says he intends to create a new of PWM’s music seems a welcome Humphrey’s House on the Hill,” which band in 2010 “that’s going to incorporate a complement to Glass’ quirky storytelling. sounds like a circus calliope on Quaaludes. lot of these same instruments as well as a Even in the midst of this strange musical The marriage was pure serendipity. Slawin lot of these same colors and feels,” he says. stew, this number sticks out as proudly and his musical pals “always really liked But until then, he adds, “I’m just writing.” eccentric.

This American Life,” he says. “One day I And we’re glad he is. was listening to the show and they were An interesting thematic device Slawin reading through the credits and they employs is that, of the nine tracks on Call of the Wolf Peach is available now mentioned that a woman named Jean Call of the Wolf Peach, the last three are from iTunes. Physical copies of the CD will Feltus was the music supervisor, and I reiterations of the first three — same keys be available March 1. Visit myspace.com/ thought maybe I should just give her a and chord progressions, but different palewhitemoon. v call. I just cold-called her and said, ‘This

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MUSIC Classical Enjoy readings, choir carols and hymns for the season of light sung by the Trinity Choir of Men & Boys in A Procession of Lessons & Carols for Epiphany. 5 p.m. January 10 at Trinity Church on the Green, New Haven. Free.

203-776-2616, music@trinitynewhaven. org.

Yale School of Music faculty artist Wendy Sharp performs a violin recital with guest artists. 8 p.m. January 16 at Morse Recital Hall, 470 College St., New Haven. Free. 203-432-4158, music. yale.edu.

As part of Yale’s Horowitz Piano Series, Turkish pianist Idil Biret performs in recital. Program: BACH/BRAHMS Chaconne (for left hand); CHOPIN Nocturne Op. 55, No. 2; Tarentelle Op. 43; Mazurkas Op. 50, No. 3, Op. 59 Nos. 1-2; Andante Spianato et Grande Polonaise Op. 22; LIGETI Three Études; LISZT Gondoliera, Tarentella (from Venezia et Napoli); WAGNER/LISZT Overture to Tannhäuser. 8 p.m. January 20 at Morse Recital Hall, 470 College St., New Haven. $20-$11 ($6 students). 203432-4158, music.yale.edu.

Guest conductor Peter Oundjian leads the Yale Philharmonia in a program including: RIMSKY-KORSAKOV Capriccio Espagnol; WALTON Violin Concerto (with Woolsey Competition winner Katherine Hyun); VAUGHANWILLIAMS Symphony No. 5 in D major.

8 p.m. January 22 at Woolsey Hall, 400

College St., New Haven. Free. 203-4324158, music.yale.edu.

Guest violinist Dan Zhu joins the Waterbury Symphony Orchestra for a performance of VIVALDI The Four Seasons. Also, BACH Brandenberg Concerto No. 3, HANDEL Concerto Grosso Op. 3, No. 3. WSO Music Director Leif Bjaland conducts. 3 p.m. January 24 at Naugatuck Valley Community College Fine Arts Center, 750 Chase Pkwy., Waterbury. $40-$15. 203-5744283, waterburysymphony.org.

As part of the Yale School of Music’s Faculty Artist Series, guitarist Benjamin Verdery performs music of Bach, Bresnick, Janacek and a work of his own. 8 p.m. January 25 at Morse Recital Hall, 470 College St., New Haven. Free.

203-432-4158, music.yale.edu.

The world-renowned Tokyo String Quartet, artists-in-residence at the Yale School of Music for the 2009-10 academic year, perform: HAYDN Quartet in B-flat major, Op. 76, No. 4 (“Sunrise”); BARBER String Quartet, Op. 11 (the second movement of which Barber’s Adagio is arranged from); BEETHOVEN String Quartet in E minor, Op. 59, No. 2. 8 p.m. January 26 at Morse Recital Hall, 470 College St., New Haven. $31-$27 ($14 students). 203-4324158, music.yale.edu.

Is it a violin or a fiddle? Find out in Fiddle Faddle, when fiddling and singing duo Paula Bradley and Bill Dillof of Moonshine Holler will take attendees on a journey of American fiddling traditions both old and new, accompanied by New Haven Symphony Orchestra bassist Jim Andrews. Children will sing, dance, and clap their way through this fun-filled

experience. Then meet the modern violin, leading lady of the symphony orchestra, and hear the astounding beauty of its sound as played by NHSO Assistant Concertmaster Artemis Simerson. 2 p.m. January 30 (Discovery Zone begins 1:30) at Omni New Haven Hotel, 155 Temple St., New Haven. $15 ($12 seniors, $5 children). 203-865-0831, newhavensymphony.org.

Popular The monk bought lunch: Those semilegendary Doors-channelers, Riders on the Storm, return to Toad’s for an all-ages show, supported by 3-Speed Overdrive, Highfield, Total Hacks and Scarzaster. 7:30 p.m. January 2 at Toad’s Place, 300 York St., New Haven. $10 ($8.50 advance). 203-624-8623, toadsplace.com.

Founder, songwriter, singer and bassist for the seminal band the Dictators, Andy Shernoff weaves his songs into a narrative — telling tales of New York, England and the late ‘70s rock scene when sex was safe and drugs were cool (relatively speaking). Shernoff’s intimate stories of the famous and not-so-famous are a colorful memoir from the glory days of rock ‘n’ roll. 8 p.m. January 5 at Café Nine, 250 State St., New Haven. $5. 203-789-8281, cafénine.com.

Blond on blond: Here’s a real legend for ya — master guitar slinger Johnny Winter in an all-ages show with Remember September and the Bonesmen. 8 p.m. January 9 at Toad’s Place, 300 York St., New Haven. $20 ($17.50 advance). 203-624-8623, toadsplace.com.

Go Kat Go! presents Sean Kershaw & the New Jack Ramblers. These purveyors of high-octane honky tonk and described as the hardest working band in Brooklyn, have just released their long-awaited debut CD Coney Island Cowboy and are ready to take on the world. 9 p.m. January 9 at Café Nine, 250 State St., New Haven. $5. 203-7898281, cafénine.com.

You could find plenty of easier things to do with your life than to try to recreate the music of Frank Zappa in a live setting (or even a dead one). But that’s what Project/Object, featuring Ike Willis and Ray White, is all about — and that sounds a pretty worthwhile undertaking to us. With Don’t Tell Muddy. 9 p.m. January 10 at Toad’s Place, 300 York St., New Haven. $20 ($18 advance). 203-624-8623, toadsplace. com.

Come hear the fresh sounds of this band out of Moodus: Vintage Notion.

Chris DiSalvo, Johnny Barbi and Massimiliano Nikita Barbi form this trio of cutting-edge progressive rock music. All original material, all the time.

7 p.m. January 15 at Green Street Arts Center, 51 Green St., Middletown. $8 ($5 members/students/seniors). 860-685-7871, greenstreetartscenter.org.

After the year she just had in 2009, if you don’t know who Lady GaGa is, it’s seriously time to go crawl back into your cave. The pop/fashion avatar has graduated from clubs in New York, London and Paris to concert venues in places like, well, Wallingford. 7:30 p.m. January 17 at Toyota Presents the Oakdale Theatre, 95 S. Turnpike Rd., Wallingford. 203-265-1501, livenation. com.

Having toured for about a decade now, Beatlemania Now probably has more performing experience than the original band. More than 30 much-loved songs from the Fab Four’s 1964 U.S. debut to 1970’s farewell “Let It Be.” 8 p.m.

January 22 at Shubert Theater, 247 College St., New Haven. $58-$15. 800228-6622, shubert.com.

Like their pseudo-sister role models the Davis Sisters, the Sweetback Sisters sing country songs in close, surrogatesister harmony and matching dresses.

Their repertoire combines several of the Sisters’ passions — country music from before they were born and new interpretations of those traditions — to create a fresh take on what it means to be country. 9 p.m. January 28 at Café Nine, 250 State St., New Haven. 203-7898281, cafénine.com.

It’s not just a concert but a multi-media extravaganza. Rain is the acclaimed Beatles concert, “an adoring Valentine to the Beatles” (Washington Post). 2 & 8 p.m. January 30, 7 p.m. January 31 at Toyota Presents the Oakdale Theatre, 95 S. Turnpike Rd., Wallingford. $75.50$25.50. 203-265-1501, livenation.com.

Is it just us, or does referencing Lady Gaga and Wallingford in the same sentence seem a little weird to you, too? Nevertheless, the pop/fashion avatar will be at the newly re-renamed Toyota Presents the Oakdale Theatre January 17.

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january 2010

Under a Spreading Umbrella

From Windy City to Elm City come a pair of theatrical provocateurs

By BROOKS APPELBAUM

Ian and Rachel Shapiro Alderman are the core collaborators behind the still-wet-behind-the-ears A Broken Umbrella Theatre.

PHOTOGRAPH:

I

Beja B.

f you haven’t yet noticed that a theater renaissance is taking place in New Haven, you will soon be seeing ample evidence. A Broken Umbrella Theatre has joined other companies, all dedicated to making this area their home and serving their communities in imaginative ways. Rachel Shapiro Alderman and her husband, Ian Alderman — core ensemble members of Broken Umbrella, along with Ryan Gardner, Chrissy Gardner, Ruben Ortiz and Kenneth Baldino — celebrate this renaissance with special enthusiasm and warmth. There were practical reasons for Rachel and Ian to move from Chicago to the area three and a half years ago. But finding so many other theater artists here has given Rachel and Ian even more reason to call New Haven home.

To say that Ian Alderman is no stranger to New Haven means more than it does for many of us. “My family has been here since the early 1880s,” he says, “and my brother and I are the fourth generation working at our family business.” That business is the Alderman-Dow Iron & Metal Co. Inc., New Haven’s oldest scrapyard (motto: “Four Generations of Regeneration”). “We recycle iron and metal,” explains Ian. “It started out as a pushcart,” adds Rachel. “That’s a show for later.” In 2006, Ian was invited to join the business, and the couple decided to move East.

Long before he began working in the business, though, Ian knew that he had a special love for theater. “Ian made his theater debut at the Shubert Theater in

downtown New Haven,” recalls Rachel with a warm laugh. In the third grade, he and several classmates were selected to perform in the chorus of the Mascagni opera Cavalleria Rusticana, paired with Pagliacci. “It was a really wonderful experience,” recalls Ian. Fast-forward to the beginnings of A Broken Umbrella Theatre, which grew out of a comedy troupe called the Uninvited Guests. “Ian, Ryan and Kenneth were part of the Uninvited Guests in college, and they always worked together by jumping in and creating together: everybody wrote, everybody improvised, and it was a fluid kind of creation,” explains Rachel. The group toured professionally throughout their college years, and then they decided to branch out. “When they expanded to new haven

35

Beja B. PHOTOGRAPH:

Broken Umbrella’s most recent production at Edgewood Park, Thunderbolt, told the story of a real-life pirate of the same name who ravaged 18th-century Westville.

form A Broken Umbrella, it was a way for those performers to work with other artists and to do drama, theater and other art forms,” she adds.

“So the idea was that we were all creative individuals and our energies all worked really well with each other,” says Ian. “We were able to bounce ideas off of each other and — like a married couple, truthfully” — (here Rachel chimes in on cue) “finish each others’ sentences. And as we grew Uninvited Guests into A Broken Umbrella Theatre we gathered other artists along the way who shared a similar aesthetic.

And luckily we have found such people in New Haven.”

More than luck brought Ryan and Chrissy Gardner to New Haven in 2008. Ryan was offered a job as a scenic carpenter at the Yale Repertory Theater, where he now works. Having the Gardners here reunited a solid part of the core ensemble and their presence, says Rachel, “continued a wonderful progression of events.”

This confluence of events has led to three public productions to date. A Broken Umbrella Theatre first created Read Big as part of the May 2008 celebration of Big Read New Haven, a community project that focused on Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit

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451. The company’s next production took place in May 2009 as part of Westville’s ArtWalk. In what Rachel calls “a great climbing tree” in Edgewood Park, the company created their first original musical.

Ian describes the concept: “We had musicians around the tree and in the tree, and we used some very large umbrella flowering puppets.” The umbrellas were planted upside-down in flower pots, and ultimately they began to grow. In the story, says Rachel, a small boy “has an heirloom umbrella that breaks, and he’s terribly upset until he realizes, with the help of the children in the audience and his friend in the show that the umbrellas can take on a whole new life.”

The company’s most recent production was Thunderbolt, also inspired by the features of Edgewood Park, especially its tunnel, river and arches. With the help of Westville historian Colin Caplan, the group collaborated on a story with music based on a real pirate, Thunderbolt, who ravaged 18th-century Westville. Thunderbolt was performed for free this Halloween.

Despite a large sandwich board listing names too numerous to count, Ian says that even more people made the project possible. “The idea inspired a community

to come together, and it wasn’t just us,” he says. “The project couldn’t have happened, for example, without the support of Ian’s former drama teacher, Hamden Hall’s Michael Smith and his wife Mary Jane — both of whom have been Ian’s friends since he graduated — and Hamden Hall’s theater department.

Ian becomes passionate when he talks about Thunderbolt as the true beginning of the New Haven incarnation of A Broken Umbrella Theatre. “Along the way we have gathered all these people who were so important to making this project happen, including a partnership with Friends of Edgewood Park and the [city] Parks Department,” he explains. “The creation of Thunderbolt really has solidified our voice, and there is not one person who worked with us on this project who we don’t want to work with again. That’s how good we felt about the experience and about the whole production team.”

Rachel and Ian plan to create new Halloween shows every year, and to that end, they hope to find a sponsor. For now, though, they are finding exactly the people they need. Clearly, they are home, and New Haven theater is the better for it. v.

ONSTAGE create solo and ensemble pastiches.

Directed by David Drake. Approximate 90-minute performance followed by a talk with the artist. (Strong language.) 8 p.m. January 28-30 at University Theater, 222 York St., New Haven. $35-$25. 203432-1234, yalerep.org.

Acrobats, athletes, musicians and artists populate the phantasmagoric realm that is Cirque Dreams Illumination, coming to Waterbury’s Palace Theater, January 15-16.

Aging and love are the themes of Lili’s 90th, a new play by Darci Picoult that makes its world premier at Long Wharf. The excitement of a momentous birthday celebration is interrupted by a surprise intended to be happy that tests loving bonds. Playful and touching, Lili’s 90th stars veteran actors and life-partners Lois Smith and David Margulies. Directed by Jo

Bonney. January 6–February 7 at Long Wharf Theatre Stage II, 222 Sargent Dr., New Haven. $65-$30. 203-787-4282, longwharf.org.

First it was a film by the king of outthere auteurs, John Waters, then a musical and a movie and now Hairspray is coming to a venerable Brass City stage. Set in Baltimore (where else?) in 1962 — the era of big hair and teens rocking ‘n’ rolling on TV — the musical is part satire and part a tale of rollicking triumph of social outcasts. 7:30 p.m. January 10 at the Palace Theater, 100 E. Main St., Waterbury. $60-$45. 203-346-2000, palacetheater.org.

to American audiences. Mandy Patinkin stars, while Rinne Groff directs. January 29-February 28 at Yale Repertory Theater, 1120 Chapel St., New Haven. $67-$35.

203-432-1234. yalerep.org.

This Yale Repertory Theatre production promises to be raucous, genderbending, pointed and hilarious. In The Be(a)st of Taylor Mac, the solo performance artist sings about love, mermaids, subway safety and revolution. All material written and composed by Taylor Mac. Hailed as “the most distinctive and brilliant performer in ages” (The Scotsman), Mac is a theater artist who blends performance art, playwriting, acting, musical composition and direction to

At the fifth annual Goodspeed Festival of New Artists, three brand new musicals will be presented on consecutive days in staged readings in a gathering of actors, playwrights, artists and fans of the genre. The first work is Hello Out There, about financially and electronically astute teenagers, with book and lyrics by Eric Price and music by Frank Terry. ReWrite is actually three musicals in one, with book, music and lyrics by Joe Iconis.

Finally, Lincoln in Love explores the 16th President’s romance with Mary Todd.

7:30 p.m. January 15-16, 1 p.m. January 17 at Goodspeed Opera House, 6 Main St., East Haddam. $15-$10. 860-873-8668. goodspeed.org.

Is Orlando a man or a woman — and what does it matter in the face of equally uncertain time? Virginia Woolf’s imaginative, sensual, even baffling novel was adapted for the theater by Sarah Ruhl. This Yale School of Drama production is directed by Jen Wineman, a third-year directorial student at the school. (Nudity and adult content.) 8 p.m. January 26-29, 2 & 8 p.m. January 30 at Iseman Theater, 1156 Chapel St., New Haven. $25-$10. 203-432-1234, yaledrama.edu.

The magical world of Cirque Dreams Illumination comes to Waterbury’s Palace Theater this month.

Inspired by the story by Meyer Levin, Compulsion concerns the singular determination of a man to translate Anne Frank’s diary into English and adapt it for the stage. His passion becomes lifelong obsession, intensified when he learns a publisher is also intent on bringing the diary

PHOTOGRAPH: Brigitte Lacombe.

Cirque Dreams Illumination features an international cast of acrobats, athletes, musicians and artists inhabiting in an imaginative, colorful city.

They hang from wires, leap tall buildings and defy gravity. Original music and more than 100 dazzling costumes enhance the magic. 8 p.m. January 15, 2 & 8 p.m. January 16 at Palace Theater, 100 E. Main St., Waterbury. $59-$49. 203-346-2000, palacetheater.org.

Mandy Patinkin stars in the Meyer Levin-inspired Compulsion, tracing the singular determination of a man to translate Anne Frank’s diary into English and adapt it for the stage. Production runs through February at the Yale Rep.

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CALENDAR BELLES LETTRES The Mystery Book Club meets the first Wednesday of each month to discuss a pre-selected book. Books available for loan in advance of discussion. 3-4 p.m. January 6 at Blackstone Library, 758 Main St., Branford. Free. 203-4836653, events@blackstone.lioninc.org, blackstone.lioninc.org/booktalk.htm.

Author talk and book signing for Blessed Are The Peacekeepers: The Bob Nappe Story. East Haven police officer Nappe will discuss his book regarding his year of service in Iraq and the years since his return. Culled from journal entries over a span of five years, Nappe addresses the sacrifices made by the men he served with during his tour of duty, his legal battles to be reinstated as an East Haven police officer, and he provides an insightful look at the Iraqi people that shows we are not so different. Book available for purchase. 7 p.m. January 7 at Hagaman Memorial Library, 227 Main St., East Haven. Free. 203-468-3890, hagamanlibrary.info.

The Writers Group of the Milford Fine Arts Council meets the second Thursday.

All are welcome and participants are encouraged to bring works in progress or even completed manuscripts. Share poems, essays, or just sit and listen.

Workshops and word play possible if time allows. 7:30 p.m. January 11 at Center for the Arts, 40 Railroad Ave.

South, Milford. Free. 203-878-6647, milfordfac@optonline.net.

New members are welcomed to the Blackstone Library Second Tuesday Book Club. The group meets on the second Tuesday of every month to discuss a pre-selected book. Books available for loan in advance of discussion. 6:45-8 p.m. January 12 at Blackstone Library, 758 Main St., Branford. Free. 203-488-1441, ext.

318, events@blackstone.lioninc.org, blackstone.lioninc.org/booktalk.htm.

Chocolate lovers take note! New Haven author Katherine Weber reads from her new novel True Confections. A mouthwatering story of a family owned Elm City chocolate candy factory facing financial crisis. Hosted by the New Haven Review and Westville Village Renaissance Alliance. 6:30 p.m. January 13 at Mitchell Branch Library, 37 Harrison St., New Haven. Free. 203-9468117, sharon@nhfpl.org The Book Remembers Everything: The Work of Erica Van Horn. As electronic readers rise in popularity, Erica Van Horn stages an engaging exhibit exploring the book as a valued object and how we use it to make sense of the world. In her humor-filled work, Van Horn reflects on the relationship between text and image as the books in the exhibit “remember” everything including the importance for being.

January 13 through March 27 at Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, 121 Wall St., New Haven. Open 9 a.m.-7 p.m. weekdays (until 5 p.m.

Fri.), noon-5 p.m. Sat. Free. 203-4322977, beineke.library@yale.edu.

Meet author Chesa Boudin, author of Gringo: A Coming of Age in

Latin America. A “travel book with a difference” that helps to explains the leftward tilt of Latin American politics (“An extraordinary debut” — Russell Banks). 6-7 p.m. January 14 at New Haven Free Public Library, 133 Elm St., New Haven. Free. 203-946-8835, gringo. eventbrite.com

promises to be one hilarious and thought-provoking night. 8 p.m. January 23 at Shubert Theater, 247 College St., New Haven. $75-$45. 203-562-5666, tickets.com.

Writers Out Loud: Literary Open Mic. Green Street offers writers a night to share works-in-progress, socialize and seek out constructive comments.

Readings are limited to prose short stories or excerpts under ten minutes, with feedback and sharing to follow.

7-9 p.m. January 14 at Green Street Arts Center, 51 Green St., Middletown. $3 members, $5 others. 860-685-7871, greenstreetartscenter.org.

City Farmers Markets New Haven.

Eat local! Enjoy seasonal fruits, vegetables, and herbs from local farms including seafood, meat, milk, cheese, handcrafted bread and baked goods, honey, and more. Please note new winter hours. 10 a.m.-1 p.m. Saturdays through January 16 at Wooster Square Russo Park, corner Chapel St. and DePalma Ct. 203-773-3736, cityseed.org.

The Elm Street Book Group meets to discuss Inheritance by Natalie Danford.

When Olivia Bonocchio’s father dies she discovers a deed to property in his hometown of Urbino, Italy. She travels to the town, where what she discovers about her father and his family during the war is shocking. 6-7 p.m. January 20 at New Haven Free Public Library, 133 Elm St., New Haven. Free. 203-9468835, novelmst.eventbrite.com.

Release your inner poet. Time Out for Poetry meets third Thursdays and welcomes those who wish to share an original short poem, recite a dearly loved stanza or simply to listen. Ogden Nash, Robert Frost, William Shakespeare, Dr. Seuss and even the Burma Shave signs live again. 12:30-2 p.m. January 21 at Scranton Library, 801 Boston Post Rd., Madison. Free. 203-421-1961.

Book Discussion: Away by Amy Bloom led by Toby Zabinski. This exciting story revolves around invention, reinvention and dreams. Grab a copy and bring your thoughts to share about this novel.

7:30 p.m. January 26 at Case Memorial Library, 176 Tyler City Rd., Orange. Free.

203-891-2170, orange.lioninc.org.

2010 Thornton Wilder Writing Competition. This annual competition is open to all Connecticut high school students with a chance to win $600. Entries of 2,500 words or less and can be one-act plays, TV scripts, essays, stories or poems (check Web site for details). Deadline February 3.

Miller Memorial Central Library, 2901 Dixwell Ave., Hamden. 203-287-2680, hamdenlibrary.org.

Blogging Workshop. Learn how to blog, refine skills, or jump in and start a blog from scratch. Class taught in a PC lab. Students can bring their own laptops to class. 1-4 p.m. January 16 at Green Street Arts Center, 51 Green St., Middletown. $30. 860-685-7871, greenstreetartscenter.org.

COMEDY

Minneapolis’ Morgan Thorson & Company makes its Connecticut dance debut with a new work, Heaven, January 29-30 at Wesleyan’s CFA Theater.

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The Bowery presents Bill Maher who brings his special brand of humor and political commentary to New Haven.

From Politically Incorrect to Real Time, Maher’s comedy and honesty have garnered him 21 Emmy nominations.

No subject is off limits and this show

CULINARY

DANCE Neighborhood Music School’s Winter Dance Concert is an exciting and entertaining evening of dance. All ages and levels perform a variety of dance forms from modern and jazz to tap and hip-hop. 7 p.m. January 29 at ACES ECA Arts Hall, 55 Audubon St., New Haven. $10. 203-624-5189, nmsmusicshool.org.

Sixth annual Martin Luther King Jr. Day of Dance 2010: All That Jazz celebrates the history of jazz dance from the perspective of AfricanAmericans. Master teachers include Karen Hubbard, Iddrisu Saaka and Darlene Zollar. Presented by ACES ECA and Connecticut Dance Alliance, this performance showcases vintage jazz dance, tap with Dan Mitra, hip-hop and swing with Equilibrium, and the Shari Caldwell Dance Center. 3 p.m. January 18 at ACES ECA Arts Hall, 55 Audubon St., New Haven. $30/$5 students CDA members; $40/$17 others. 203-777-5451, smatheke@aces.org.

Morgan Thorson & Company.

Minneapolis-based Morgan Thorson makes her Connecticut debut with her newest work, Heaven. This sensory work explores the nature of ecstatic perfection by synthesizing vocal and physical rapture (body) with omnipresent lighting effects (spirit).

Heaven features shape-note singing by the dancers and is set to music by Low, a Minnesota-based indie rock group. 8 p.m. January 29-30 (pre-performance talk 7:15 p.m. 1/29) at CFA Hall, Wesleyan University, Middletown. $21 ($18 seniors, non-WU students). 860-685-3355, wesleyan.edu/cfa.

FAMILY EVENTS Creating Readers Saturdays at 2 Program. A fun, interactive program that engages young readers by bringing books to life utilizing theater, dance and music. Each family that attends receives a copy of the book to take home. 2 p.m. Saturdays at Connecticut Children’s Museum, 22 Wall St., New Haven. $5. 203-562-5437, childrensbuilding.org.

Sea Squirts! CAS’ new one-hour nature series designed for 3- to 5-year-olds and their parents or guardians. Program features walks, live animals, stories, songs, and crafts. Learn about sharing

nature with your child. 10:30-11:30 a.m.

January 14 & 28 at CAS Nature Center at Milford Point, 1 Milford Point Rd., Milford. $10 CAS members, $15 others.

203-878-7440, ctaudubon.org.

Let it snow! Make Your Own Snow Globe. Build your own snowy scenario with figurines, glitter and other decorative materials. Young people of all ages accompanied by an adult.

1-3 p.m. January 24 at Creative Arts Workshop, 80 Audubon St., New Haven. $32 members, $35 others. 203-562-4927, creativeartsworkshop.org.

Become a disease detective at Betty Baisden’s Roxi Fox Disease Detective Puppet Show. Help Roxi Fox figure out what is ailing Billy the Pirate as you investigate ticks, mosquitoes and mysterious microbes. January 30 at Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History, 170 Whitney Ave., New Haven. $7 adults, $5 children (under 3 free). 203-432-5050, peabody.yale.edu.

Chinese New Year: Tiger! Celebrate the Chinese New Year by learning how to write the character for the tiger or make a tiger puppet, paper lantern and Chinese yo-yo. Ages 6 and up. 1-4 p.m. January 31 at Creative Arts Workshop, 80 Audubon St., New Haven. $30 members, $33 others. 203-562-4927, creativeartsworshop.org.

LECTURES Branford Land Trust LectureSeries presents A Sense of Wonderful, a movie about environmentalist Rachael Carson. Discussion to follow.

The Land Trust’s goal is to protect Branford’s natural resources. 7-9 p.m.

January 27 at Blackstone Library, 758 Main St., Branford. Free. 203-488-1441, blackstonelibrary.org The World Performance Project presents The Gentrification of Freakishness, a talk by Tavia Nyong’o, author of The Amalgamation Waltz.

Held in conjunction with the one-man performance of The Be(A)st of Taylor Mac in production January 28-30 at the Yale Repertory Theatre. 5:30-7 p.m.

January 25 at Whitney Humanities Center, Rm. 208, 53 Wall St., New Haven. Free.

203-432-1234, yalerep.org

Mind, Body, Soul Led by Nelie Doak, Yoga promotes a deep sense of physical, mental and emotional well-being. Classes are designed to help cultivate breath and body awareness, improve flexibility, strengthen and tone muscles, detoxify the body and soothe the spirit. All levels welcome. Bring a yoga mat. 56:15 p.m. Fridays at Blackstone Library, 758 Main St., Branford. $10. 203-4881441, ext. 313, yogidoakie@earthlink. net or events@blackstone.lioninc.org, blackstone.lioninc.org.

Have you always wanted to give yoga a try? Here’s your chance. Introduction to Yoga with Debbie Kahn. Bring a mat and wear comfortable clothing. 5-6 p.m.

January 7 & 14 at New Haven Free Public

Library, 133 Elm St., New Haven. Free.

203-946-8130

Hikes

Full Moon Gong Relaxation. Deep sound healing with Kundalini yoga and meditative gong vibrations promise to bring you awareness and balance, physically and spiritually. 4 p.m. January 29 at Your Community Yoga Center, 39 Putnam Ave., Hamden. $20/session. 203287-2277, yourcommunityyoga.com

New Year’s Day Hike. Join the Sleeping Giant Park Association as they hike in the 2010. Wear comfortable shoes, bring snacks, water and be ready for any kind of weather condition. No pets, please. 1:30-3:30 p.m. January 1 at Sleeping Giant Main Entrance, 200 Mt. Carmel Ave., Hamden. Free. 203-7897498, sgpa.org.

SPORTS/RECREATION

Road Races/Triathlons

Cycling Elm City Cycling organizes Lulu’s Ride, weekly two- to four-hour rides for all levels (17-19 mph average).

Cyclists leave at 10 a.m. from Lulu’s European Café as a single group; no one is dropped. 10 a.m. Sundays at Lulu’s European Café, 49 Cottage St., New Haven. Free. 203-773-9288, elmcitycycling.org.

The Little Lulu (LL) is an alternative to the long-standing Sunday morning training ride. The route is usually 20-30 miles in length and the ride is no-drop, meaning that the group waits at hilltops and turns so that no rider is left behind. The LL is an opportunity for cyclists to get accustomed to riding in groups. Riders should come prepared with materials (tubes, tools, pumps and/or CO2 inflators) to repair flats. 10 a.m. Sundays at Lulu’s European Café, 49 Cottage St., New Haven. Free. 203773-9288, paulproulx@sbcglobal.net, elmcitycycling.org.

Tuesday Night Canal Rides. Medium paced rides up the Farmington Canal into New Haven. May split into two groups based on people’s speed but no one will be left behind to ride alone.

Lights are essential. 5:30 p.m. Tuesdays at Café Romeo, 534 Orange St., New Haven. Free. william.v.Kurtz@gmail. com Critical Mass. Participants meet at the flagpole on the New Haven Green at 5:30 p.m. on the last Friday of each month for a slow-paced ride through New Haven streets. The ride ranges from 30 minutes to over an hour depending on weather. Critical Mass is not an organization; it’s an “unorganized coincidence” — a movement of bicycles in the streets as traffic. After the event, everyone is invited to a potluck dinner at the Devil’s Gear Bike Shop. 5:30 p.m.

January 29 at Temple and Chapel streets, New Haven. Free. elmcitycycling.org.

Elm City Cycling meets the second Monday of every month. ECC is a nonprofit organization of cycling advocates who meet to discuss biking issues in New Haven and are dedicated to making New Haven friendlier and more accessible to cyclists and pedestrians.

6 p.m. January 11 at City Hall Meeting Rm. 2, 165 Church St., New Haven. Free. elmcitycycling.org.

Make the Guilford Rotary Club’s New Year’s Day Frosty 5K your first 2010 resolution. This is a USATF-certified race that starts and finishes on the picturesque Guilford Green. A flat and scenic course, championship chip timing, and long sleeve T-shirts for pre-registrants. Register at Guilford Community Center on Church Street.

11 a.m. January 1 at Guilford Green, Guilford. $20 advance; $24 day of race.

203-453-8068, guilfordrotary.org.

Chilly Chili Run to benefit the Amity Teen Center. Highlights of this 5K run/ fitness walk are computerized timing

by HI-TEK Racing, long sleeve T-shirts, and a chili brunch following the road race. 10:30 a.m. January 1 at High Plains Community Center, 525 Orange Center Rd., Orange. $17 run, $10 walk advance; $22/$12 race day. 203-387-0205, chillychilirun@hotmail.com.

Spectator Sports Catch the USA Olympic Women’s Hockey Team on its Qwest Tour before heading into the Olympics as they take on the ECAC Hockey All-Stars. 2 p.m.

January 3 at TD Bank Sports Center, 305 Sherman Ave., Hamden. $10-$5. 203-5823905, tickets@quinnipiac.edu QU Bobcats vs. CCSU Blue Devils.

Quinnipiac University men’s basketball team hit the court against rivals Central Connecticut State University. Noon January 29 at TD Bank Sports Center, 305 Sherman Ave., Hamden. $13-$2. 203-5823905, tickets@quinnipiac.edu Yale Intercollegiate Track Classic. Yale plays host to Quinnipiac University, University of New Haven and Southern Connecticut State University who compete in this indoor track event.

Come watch greater New Haven’s best male and female collegiate track & field athletes compete and admire the beautiful Mondo track. 9 a.m. January 9 at Coxe Cage, 73 Derby Ave., New Haven.

Free. 203-432-4747, yalebulldogs.com.

The Yale’s Men’s Ice Hockey hits the Ingalls Rink ice as the team faces ECAC rivals RPI. 7 p.m. January 30 at Ingalls Rink, 73 Sachem Ave., New Haven. $11-$4. 203-432-1400, athletic.tickets@ yale.edu University of New Haven Women’s Basketball Chargers host Northeast10 rivals Merrimack College. 2 p.m.

January 30 at UNH Charger Gymnasium, 300 Boston Post Rd., New Haven. 800342-5864, newhaven.edu/athletics.

HERITAGE Continued from 13

“The group that came from the East Shore, when they saw the photographs and mementos, ‘ooo’d’ and ‘aaah’d.’ It was a wonderment type of reaction from the audience who knew the area but had never seen some of the older pictures of the buildings that were there,” says Miller.

“It was exciting, particularly for kids, who were enchanted,” he adds.

As others come through, he says, “They are not understanding how unique New Haven was and really is because people just don’t go to that area consistently, even though we have a lot out there.”

Miller believes the exhibit will bring more visitors to the area. He says he too felt the same “wonderment” reaction as museum visitors. “I didn’t know how many big farms were out there, and I’ve always been curious about the Quinnipiac Indians,” he explains.

The museum, Miller says, “is trying to bring the past up to the present and look to the future.” This includes employing a number of new media such as sound and visual. “We’re even introducing a computer program where you can enter, for example, where your great grandmother used to live and you can pull the area up and show you what it was from postcards.”

The museum’s new motto — “Preserving the Past, Illuminating the Present and Helping Shape the Future” — places the former New Haven Colony Historical Society — in a new perspective, Miller says.

Located at 114 Whitney Avenue, the New Haven Museum & Historical Society is open 10 a.m.5 p.m. weekdays except Monday and noon to 5 p.m. Saturday. v

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WO RD S of MOUT H

By Liese Klein

JUST A TASTE: Di Matteo’s Pizza Restaurant

Shuttered for a year by a 2008 Hamden Plaza fire, Andrew DiMatteo and his eponymous eatery are back and better than ever.

T

he restaurant business is tough enough, but few eateries face a disaster like the one that befell Di Matteo’s Pizza Restaurant in Hamden two years ago. A favorite pizzeria and red-sauce joint since 1972, Di Matteo’s was gutted in a 2008 Hamden Plaza fire that also claimed a bowling alley and several neighboring businesses.

Di Matteo’s reopened in February 2009 with an expanded dining area that promised the same favorites in a more elegant setting. The new room’s flattering light, comfy booths and excellent service, plus top-notch Italian food, makes Di Matteo’s a great pick for both date night and a family outing.

Fresh-from-the-oven rolls made from pizza dough start a meal at Di Matteo’s on a high note, with the yeasty aroma

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arriving before the basket hits the table.

Salads are also fresh and simple with iceberg lettuce and vegetables dressed by tangy balsamic vinaigrette.

Our appetites awakened, we dug into the clams oreganato appetizer, a sizable portion of shellfish over parsley-flecked toast. Save some of the rolls to sop up the rich, garlicky broth. Seafood shone again in a cavatelli pasta entrée with shrimp, zucchini, tomato and garlic.

Although the shrimp were small, they delivered on flavor and texture. Entrées range from veal to steak to a sizable seafood selection, with most in the $15$20 range.

An eggplant parmesan entrée showcased the restaurant’s signature red sauce, with deep tomato flavor and an herbal kick. Sliced thin and skillfully batter-

fried, the eggplant delivered a hint of nutmeg and a satisfying richness. The sauce starred again in a pizza, studded with perfectly cooked vegetables set on a crisp crust of medium thickness.

For dessert you might be better off crossing the parking lot to get a cone at the Hamden outpost of Ashley’s ice cream: A ricotta cheesecake had nice notes of lemon but had been in the refrigerator case a bit too long.

Di Matteo’s sophisticated flavors and good-humored, attentive service could fool you into thinking you were in a much pricier restaurant. This neighborhood favorite has emerged from its crisis bigger, and better, than ever.

Di Matteo’s Pizza Restaurant, 2100 Dixwell Ave. (Hamden Plaza shopping center) (203-288-6655).

NEW EATS: Whole Foods Market

One lesson learned the hard way: Eat before you shop as juggling the store’s plates and containers take (at least) two hands. My compostable container never quite closed right and a dessert that looked sealed leaked sauce all over my produce. The Milford store’s modest size also means you have to take your meal through a regular checkout line, so watch for those leaky containers! Luckily the in-store dining area is just beyond with room for all your packages at long, generously sized tables.

My Indian selections won the night with chicken tikka scoring in both freshness, flavor and texture. Tender chicken was complemented by a non-greasy, complex sauce with a subtle yet assertive heat and crisp curls of curry leaf. A biryani rice pilaf was the perfect accompaniment, supplying a touch of sweetness and spice to the mix. A crunchy, pita-like bread advertised as “naan,” however, was bland and disappointing and had me thinking of the excellent Indian restaurants just down the road.

If you’re too tired to cook and don’t feel like a full-fledged restaurant meal, the new Milford Whole Foods is a healthy alternative.

First, the rumors. Then, permits and a sign announcing a debut months away.

Finally, construction activity and then the word spread like wildfire: “Whole Foods is open!”

Ambitious cooks in the New Haven area have been waiting for years for the gourmet grocery chain to open an outpost on the Post Road in Milford. Yes, we have excellent natural foods stores like Edge of the Woods and Thyme & Season in the area. However, a trip to Hartford or Fairfield County has long been required to find Whole Food’s signature mix of high-end ingredients, sustainable seafood and grass-fed and organic meats.

The Milford store opened in November and is worth a trip just to gawk at sights like the array of fresh mushrooms (blue foots, anyone?), heirloom grains and exotic coffees. But those of us who’ve lived near Whole Foods in the past were also excited about the arrival of another aspect of the markets: the store’s

signature spread of dozens of prepared foods.

With a smaller footprint than the megastores elsewhere, Milford’s Whole Foods still offers a full aisle of everything from sushi to salads to soups and sandwiches. Some dishes survive the buffet treatment better than others, but a satisfying and affordable meal is easy to assemble, especially if you’ve got a group with divergent tastes.

I went for Asian cuisine on a recent night, with a selection of Indian dishes in one plate and Thai and Chinese in another. Both cold and hot menu items are priced by weight at $7.99 a pound and it’s easy to fill up for under $10. Add a few more dollars if you want coffee or an espresso drink, or one of the single-serving beverages in a nearby case, ranging from bottled water to flavored teas and energy drinks. Craft beers are also available in profusion near the back of the aisle.

I was similarly stymied by a “Pad Thai” that used linguini instead of the thin rice noodles commonly seen at local restaurants. However the dish’s bright, sour-hot flavor won me over. Shanghai dumplings were also impressive in their mix of savory cabbage filling and chili-dusted wrapper. The bland Hunan dumplings, however, weren’t worth finishing.

On a second visit, the store really hit it out of the park with healthy, freshtasting soups in interesting flavors like curried squash and Italian wedding.

Whole Food’s offerings are far from the simmering pots of salty mush found at many buffet-style cafes and restaurants, with the squash proffering hints of coconut and ginger and beguiling in its dairy-free richness. A tres leches cake in the dessert case also tasted as if it had made minutes before, enrobed in condensed milk and creamy frosting.

If you’re too tired to cook and don’t feel like a proper restaurant meal, Whole Foods is a great option. The dining room with its ample tables also allows for lunches with picky eaters and studygroup or book-club gatherings. The long wait is over, and Whole Foods delivers.

Whole Foods Market, 1686 Boston Post Rd., Milford (203-874-0883)

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Old-fashioned Southern-style barbecue has a new home — on Saw Mill Road in West Haven.

EDITOR’S PICK: Uncle Willie’s BBQ You see a lot of strange things on Interstate 95, but a jolly pink pig plastered above a barbecue shack really stands out in this neck of the woods. The sign atop Uncle Willie’s BBQ in West Haven has been beckoning travelers since April of last year, and finally I mustered up the courage recently to pay a visit.

A hair-raising left on busy Saw Mill Road takes you into the parking lot, but you might feel like it’s taken you a thousand miles south. Uncle Willie’s has the Deep South barbecue joint look down, from the hand-lettered signs to the wood furniture and friendly service. The only clue you’re not south of MasonDixon Line is the flat-screen with Giants football in the dining area and the New York Post stashed nearby.

Owners Diane and Bill Lombardi hail from Waterbury, the site of the original Uncle Willie’s. Their take on Southern cuisine has attracted attention from national critics like Zagat’s and Roadfood.com, and after a few bites it’s easy to see why.

Order at the counter from a menu that ranges from pitsmoked chicken to St. Louis pork ribs. Pork alone is served in variations including pulled, Carolina chopped and baby back ribs, or as “burnt ends” mixed with chicken. Beef offerings include brisket and Texas ribs. A selection of fried fish, hot dogs, wings, burgers, soups and salads are also listed, although availability varies.

Those new to barbecue or watching their weight will be pleased with the multiple sizes of each dish available: Sandwiches come in large and small, as do dinners. You can also order meat alone in quarter-, half-, three-quarter- and onepound amounts. The truly hungry will love the “BBQ Packs”

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of up to eight servings that combine several meat options with sides and cornbread.

And you’ll want to order big: The pulled pork comes as toothsome shreds of meat coated in a thick sauce that blends salty and sweet with just a touch of heat. The brisket melts in the mouth with a nice hit of beefy flavor and a smoky char.

This brisket lover was in heaven.

For heat-seekers, a dozen or more variations on hot sauce await on a side table or can be purchased to bring home. The pork sizzles with a splash or two of vinegary “Wichita Falls Hot” sauce. Bring your own beer or wine to complement your meal, or sample some of the sweet tea, lemonade or milkshakes on offer.

Sides also sing with a creamy mac and cheese that’s both tender to the bite and satisfying as a meal in itself for vegetarians. The collards are chunkier than the soul food standard but feature shards of pork for flavoring and a succulent, briny broth you’ll want to sop up with cornbread.

Slightly sweet and dense, that cornbread is a perfect foil for the strong flavors of the meats and sides.

Bourbon bread pudding rich with pumpkin custard ended our meal on a down-home note. Fresh, flavorful and creamy, the dessert spoke to the Lombardis’ love of what they do. With its quality, authenticity and home-style goodness, Uncle Willie’s is an exciting addition to the New Haven area’s roster of Southern-style eateries.

Uncle Willie’s BBQ, 403 Saw Mill Rd., West Haven (203-479-4017).

BREAKFAST/DINERS The Pantry, 2 Mechanic St., New Haven (203-787-0392). Lines get long on weekend mornings at this East Rock institution, known for breakfast goodies like gingerbread pancakes, waffles and hearty omelets.

Bella’s Cafe, 896 Whalley Ave., New Haven (203-387-7107). Brunch with flair is the specialty at this Westville favorite. You can’t go wrong with the daily specials or omelets Parthenon Diner, 374 E. Main St., Branford (203-481-0333). Open 24 hours for hearty, well-made Greek and diner fare, with some low-carb and vegetarian offerings. Another location (not 24/7) in Old Saybrook at 809 Boston Post Rd. Copper Kitchen, 1008 Chapel St., New Haven (203-777-8010). Downtown’s most convenient spot for a dinerstyle, affordable fry-up of eggs, bacon and toast. Cash only, but you won’t need much of it.

Patricia’s Restaurant, 18 Whalley Ave., New Haven (203-787-4500). Tasty and very affordable diner basics in an unironically retro setting near Broadway and the Yale campus.

Athenian Diner, 1064 Boston Post Rd., Milford (203-878-5680). This chromeand-glass landmark draws customers from all over the region with its hearty portions and tasty classics.

Great Greek favorites and overstuffed sandwiches. Open 24 hours. Also open all night in New Haven at 1426 Whalley Ave.

SOUTHEAST ASIAN/ KOREAN Bentara Restaurant, 76 Orange St., New Haven (203-562-2511). Supersized noodle soups and spicy curries are good bets at this Ninth Square Malaysian/fusion hotspot. The stylish interior and extensive cocktail list also make it an excellent prenightlife stop. Open for lunch.

Kari Restaurant, 1451 Whalley Ave., New Haven (203-389-1280). Bright flavors and unusual ingredients make this Malaysian restaurant worth the drive up Whalley. The friendly servers are happy to explain the cuisine and highlight the catch of the day.

Pot-Au-Pho, 77 Whitney Ave., New Haven (203-776-2248). Great for a quick bowl of pho, Vietnamese soup, along with tasty noodle dishes and affordable Asian specialties. Limited hours, so call ahead.

Oriental Pantry Grocery & Gifts, 486 Orange St., New Haven (203-8652849). A foodie favorite for its homestyle Korean dishes like soups and

bibimbap. Takeout sushi, breakfast sandwiches and Asian drinks and sweets are also available.

Soho New Haven, 259 Orange St., New Haven (203-745-0960). Right downtown and in an elegant space, Soho draws a diverse crowd for its top-notch Korean fare. Try the mandu dumplings and fiery-hot chicken galbi.

Midori, 3000 Whitney Ave., Hamden (203-248-3322). Big flavors in a small space are the hallmark of this Korean/ fusion restaurant, tucked away in a strip mall. Best bets are soups, the fresh-tasting bibimbap and spicy bulgogi.

THAI Thai Taste Restaurant, 1151 Chapel St., New Haven (203-776-9802). A standout on Chapel’s “Thai Row,” with toothsome basics like pad thai, drunken noodles and green curry.

Bangkok Gardens, 172 York St., New Haven (203-789-8718). Tasty Thai in a charming, light-filled dining area with great service. Wide ranges of classics and vegetarian options.

Rice Pot Thai Restaurant, 1027 State St., New Haven (203-772-6679). Great spot for a romantic dinner and some truly tasty Thai food. Try the impeccably fresh spring rolls, delicately flavored soups and assertive curries.

Thai Awesome, 1505 Dixwell Ave., Hamden (203-288-9888). Tangy curries and rich soups make this Thai eatery worth the drive from downtown, but leave time to find parking on this busy stretch of Dixwell The Terrace, 1559 Dixwell Ave., Hamden (203-230-2077). The chef’s French training shows in this Thai eatery’s above-average plating and seductive flavor combinations.

Ayuthai, 2279 Boston Post Road, Guilford (203-453-2988). Quality Thai in a casual setting. Excellent duck and curry plates, along with aboveaverage papaya salad and desserts.

CHINESE/TAIWANESE Iron Chef, 1209 Campbell Ave., West Haven (203-932-3888). Unusual Taiwanese specialties and wellexecuted classics shine at this student favorite.

House of Chao, 898 Whalley Ave., New Haven (203-389-6624). This Westville institution draws diners from across the region for its bright flavors and eclectic menu.

Lao Sze Chaun, 1585 Boston Post Rd., Milford (203-783-0558). You don’t get much more authentic locally than

this outpost of Szechwan delicacies and tasty dim sum.

East Melange Too, 142 Howe St., New Haven (203-848-3663). Affordable and authentic noodles and Cantonese classics keep this lively eatery near Yale hopping at all hours.

Great Wall of China, 67 Whitney Ave., New Haven (203-777-8886). Its location near downtown’s best Asian market and an affordable, high-quality buffet attracts a multicultural clientele to this Yale-area spot.

COFFEE SHOPS Cafe Grounded, 20 Church St, Guilford (203-453-6400). Tasty sandwiches and coffee drinks star at this aviationthemed cafe that operates inside a quonset hut near the town’s Green.

Publick Cup, 276 York St., New Haven (203-787-9929). Top-notch sandwiches, coffee drinks and teas with a creative flair and a studious vibe that befits its on-campus location. You can even order ahead online.

Kasbah Garden Cafe, 105 Howe St., New Haven (203-777-5053). Quality teas, good conversation and Moroccan treats on New Haven’s best outdoor patio.

Willoughby’s Coffee & Tea, 258 Church St., New Haven, (203-777-7400).

Enjoy both the low-key ambience and the region’s best selection of premium roasts and rarities at this small chain. With Branford and Madison locations.

Bare Beans Coffee, 14 East Grand Ave., New Haven (203-260-1118). A funky new outpost of quality beans and drinks over the bridge in Fair Haven.

Weekday mornings only for drinks; order top-quality organic, Fair Trade and eco-friendly beans online at barebeanscoffee.com.

Cafe Atlantique, 33 River St., Milford (203-882-1602). Visit this neighborhood favorite for creative caffeinated classics, bistro food and wine and a charming indoor/outdoor seating area.

FUSION CUISINE Mickey’s Restaurant & Bar, 2323 Whitney Ave., Hamden (203-288-4700).

This eatery’s sophisticated interior and artful blend of Israeli and Italian flavors bring big-city flair to downtown Hamden. Sip a Mickey’s margarita with your Marrakech salmon and Israeli couscous.

Friend House, 538 Boston Post Rd., Orange (203-795-6888). In a plaza next to Trader Joe’s, Friend House brings together stylish sushi and Chinese and Thai favorites.

Formosa, 132 Middletown Ave., North Haven (203-239-0666). Creative and beautifully presented dishes with pan-Asian panache. Don’t miss the Szechwan “ravioli,” tender chicken dumplings in a delicate peanut sauce, or Taiwanese seafood specialties.

Kudeta, 27 Temple St., New Haven (203 562-8844). Every major cuisine of Asia is represented on Kudeta’s menu, with something for every taste in an evocative interior. Generous and inventive drinks along with good sushi and noodle dishes.

FRENCH Union League Café, 1032 Chapel St., New Haven (203-562-4299). New Haven’s most beautiful dining room and world-class cuisine near the heart of downtown.

Le Petit Café 225 Montowese St., Branford (203-483-9791). Prix-fixe menu features beautifully prepared classics with a modern twist in a casual setting.

Caseus, 3 Whitney Ave., New Haven (203-624-3373). Quiche and onion soup with top-notch cheeses stand out at this charming bistro.

Gastronomique, 25 High Street, New Haven (203-776-7007).Classics like croque monsieur and steak tartare, plus sandwiches and burgers, expertly prepared at affordable prices. Takeout only.

AMERICAN Bespoke, 266 College St., New Haven (203 562-4644). Cutting-edge presentation and flavor combinations take center stage at this successor to Roomba. Latin flavors are featured in the upstairs lounge, called Sabor.

Open for lunch.

Foe, 576 Main St., Branford (203-4835896). The perfect setting for a romantic evening, Foe shines with sublime beef and pasta dishes. A black fig and cherry-glazed duck breast also showcases the chef’s sure hand with poultry. Lunch and bar menu.

Sage American Grill & Oyster Bar, 100 S. Water St., New Haven (203-7873466). The tranquil harborfront view sets off skilled seafood and raw bar selections. Excellent seasonal specials and a full bar add to the attractions of this veteran favorite.

Foster’s, 56-62 Orange St., New Haven (203-859-6666). The chef himself is likely to bring over your meal at this acclaimed newcomer in Ninth Square.

Comfort food with cutting-edge flair like llama burgers on toasted brioche.

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INDIAN Zaroka Bar & Restaurant, 148 York St., New Haven (203-776-8644). Opulent setting for one of the city’s most popular Indian buffets. Enjoy the birayani pilafs, crunchy pappadum crackers and fluffy desserts.

Royal India, 140 Howe St., New Haven (203-787-9493). Tasty North Indian fare in an intimate setting on Howe’s mini-restaurant row. Nice variety at lunch buffet with fresh bread.

Darbar India, 1070 Main St., Branford (203-481-8994). Award-winning shoreline favorite with excellent atmosphere and north Indian classics, run by Royal India owner. Spicy vindaloos and tandooris are a good bet.

Coromandel, 185 Boston Post Rd., Orange (203-795-9055). Great breads and regional specialties from the local outpost of a celebrated Fairfield chain.

Try the shrimp in coconut sauce and unusual lentil dessert.

Swagat, 215 Boston Post Rd. West Haven (203-931-0108). A tiny outpost of south Indian favorites near the University of New Haven. Best bets are the masala dosa and many vegetarian dishes.

Thali, 4 Orange St., New Haven (203777-1177). Sunday buffet, with ample meat and vegetarian selections as well as fresh masala dosa crepes and unusual treats like goat curry and carrot pudding.

ITALIAN Consiglio’s of New Haven, 165 Wooster St., New Haven (203-8654489). Beautifully executed Italian classics and a warm, welcoming atmosphere set this Wooster Square eatery apart. Open for lunch and private parties; also hosts a series of cooking classes.

Derby (203-735-0494). Don’t let the casual pizzeria decor fool you — this Valley favorite makes some serious Italian food. Look for the daily specials and enjoy.

Adriana’s Restaurant, 771 Grand Ave., New Haven (203-865-6474). Meat is the thing at this Grand Avenue favorite, especially veal and sausages. Fresh pasta and classics in a formal setting.

MEXICAN Moe’s Southwest Grill, 46 Whitney Ave., New Haven (203- 776-6637).

Healthy burritos, tacos and other TexMex favorites along with addictive queso cheese sauce. Beer and wine are served, along with margaritas.

Baja, 63 Boston Post Rd., Orange (203799-2252). An expansive salsa bar and fish taco entrée appeal to homesick Californians and big eaters.

Guadalupe la Poblanita, 136 Chapel St., New Haven (203-752-1017). Simple, authentic cuisine from Puebla in a down-home atmosphere.

Jalapeno Heaven, 40 N. Main St., Branford (203-481-6759). Tasty Americanized fare in a cozy setting with excellent margaritas.

Mezcal, 14 Mechanic St., New Haven (203-782-4828). Big portions and wideranging menu with lots of surprises.

No liquor license.

Taqueria Mexico No. 1, 850 S. Colony Rd. Wallingford (203-265-0567). The best tortas — or small sandwiches — in the area, filled with spiced meat and accompanied on the weekends by a lip-smacking posole hominy soup.

Viva Zapata, 161 Park St., New Haven (203-562-2499). Toothsome classics and a killer sangria in a festive pub atmosphere. Open for lunch.

MIDDLE EASTERN

Skappo Italian Wine Bar, 59 Crown St., New Haven (203-773-1394). White truffles and chestnuts are two of the compelling flavors you’ll encounter at this cozy eatery in Ninth Square.

A great place to sample wines and small plate.

Mamoun’s, 85 Howe St., New Haven (203-562-8444). Cheap plates of falafel and Syrian-style specialties like stuffed eggplant keep this student favorite hopping late into the night.

Make sure the fryer’s fired up and stick with the classics like baklava.

Tre Scalini Ristorante, 100 Wooster St., New Haven (203-777-3373). Acclaimed pasta, seafood and antipasti in an opulent Wooster Square setting. Also open for lunch.

Istanbul Café, 245 Crown St., New Haven (203-787-3881). With its airy yet opulent interior, this critics’ favorite has the best ambience in town and flavorful food. A grilled octopus salad and red lentil soup are standouts, along with lamb dishes.

L’Orcio, 806 State St., New Haven (203-777-6670). Outstanding modern Italian in an intimate setting. You can’t go wrong with the pasta specials and perfectly cooked and seasoned steaks.

Roseland Apizza, 350 Hawthorne Ave.,

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Turkish Kebab House, 1157 Campbell Ave., West Haven (203-933-0002). Every kind of kebab imaginable, from doner to minced chicken to cubes of lamb, is on tap at this neighborhood eatery.

Also vegetarian and seafood options.

King Falafel, 240 College St., New Haven (203-848-3076). Follow a trip to the Shubert with a tasty falafel sandwich across the street at this late-night favorite. Large portions of the freshest fried chickpea patties in town, with all the trimmings.

Kasbah Garden Café, 105 Howe St., New Haven (203-777-5053). Moroccanstyle lamb and vegetable dishes prevail on the limited but tasty menu.

Savor mint tea and baklava outside on the patio.

SEAFOOD Lenny’s Indian Head Inn, 205 S. Montowese St., Branford (203-488-1500).

Fried clams praised by national critics and the freshest steamers around make Lenny’s a local favorite. The Shore Dinner covers all the bases with cherrystones, corn on the cob, lobster and steamers.

Lenny & Joe’s Fish Tale, 1301 Boston Post Rd., Madison (203-245-7289). What it lacks in formality it makes up for in taste — the freshest, crispest fried seafood around. The perfect spot for quick eats after beach or a coastal drive, with an ice cream stand onsite.

Guilford Mooring, 505 Whitfield St., Guilford (203-458-2921). Pasta dishes, a stellar chowder and a full range of grilled fish set this Shoreline favorite apart. And where else can you savor Lazy Man’s Stuffed Lobster as you watch lobstermen at work.

YellowFin’s Seafood Grille, 1027 South Main St., Cheshire (203-250-9999).

Flavors are light and bright at this fusion eatery, with a menu that ranges from cioppino to Asian scallop salad to Tilapia St. Tropez. A raw bar and house-brewed beer round out the offerings.

Jimmie’s of Savin Rock, 5 Rock St., West Haven. 934-3212. Take the family out and enjoy the boardwalk view at this West Haven institution, known for its moderate prices and casual atmosphere. All the fried favorites, a full menu of broiled fish and lobster and the famous split hot dog.

SUSHI Wasabi, 280 Branford Rd., North Branford (203-488-7711). Good quality rolls and sashimi at reasonable prices, along with Korean specialties like mandu dumplings and bibimbap rice bowls. The sake flows freely on Monday nights, a favorite with students.

Akasaka, 1450 Whalley Ave., New Haven (203-387-4898). Unusual

specials like baby octopus and blowfish make this veteran eatery worth a visit. Live sea urchin roe and scallops are also a best bet, along with tasty pickled vegetables.

Sono Bana, 1206 Dixwell Ave., Hamden (203-281-9922). Fresh fish, inventive rolls and extensive combo options make this a neighborhood favorite.

Try a fruity saketini with your sashimi “boat” and ask the chef to load up on the catch of the day.

Miya’s Sushi, 68 Howe St., New Haven (203-777-9760). Unusual combinations like rolls with cheese and Ethiopian spices are the draw. Let go of your preconceptions about sushi with help from some of the infused-sake cocktails.

Number 1 Fish Market, 2239 State St., Hamden (203-624-6171). Make your own sushi at home with fresh seafood from this market, which supplies many area restaurants.

VEGETARIAN Claire’s Corner Copia, 1000 Chapel St., New Haven (203-562-3888). This veggie veteran has updated its menu with lots of vegan options, of-the-moment meat substitutes and superfoods like acai berry juice.

Edge of the Woods, 379 Whalley Ave., New Haven (203-787-1055). The natural market offers a superb selection of vegetarian products in addition to a lunchtime buffet with salad bar, hot entrées like lasagna and seitan stirfry and a colorful array of main-dish salads.

Shoreline Diner & Vegetarian Enclave, 345 Boston Post Rd., Guilford (203-458-7380). Non-veg diner fare along with vegan favorites like a tempeh Reuben with sauerkraut on grilled rye and “Twin Towers” of vegetable strudel. Great place for groups with different dining preferences.

Thali Too, 65 Broadway, New Haven (203-776-1600). Tasty Indian vegetarian street food you won’t find anywhere else in the state, if not the region. Try the super-sized masala dosas and exotic yogurt drinks.

Ahimsa, 1227 Chapel St., New Haven (203-786-4774). Wide-ranging vegan fare is featured at this (kosher) eatery that uses no animal products. South Indian-style dals and curries star at the daily $10 lunch buffet, with more offerings at Sunday brunch. v

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preservatives. The definition of artisan is, we talk about something called the ‘clean’ label, no artificial preservatives. In the old days it meant maybe made by artisan bakeries, in their wood-fired ovens, by hand. [Chabaso bread] is not made by hand and it’s not wood-fired ovens, but it still has all natural ingredients. That’s the dividing line.

Where did the name Chabaso come from?

My favorite question! It is named after my children: Charley, Abby and Sophia.

Nothing to do with bread.

And your son works for you. How many people do you employ now?

Yes, only Charley; he’s the assistant manager of production. He’s a good baker, we have a lot of them [good bakers] over there. We have somewhere over 200 employees.

How has the economy affected the company’s growth? People always eat bread, I guess.

Our sales are up pretty significantly in 200,9 but an awful lot of it is by a new footprint we have out there, not more sales per store. We’re not going to do better than the grocery stores we’re in.

Most are doing okay, but not spectacular.

We’re in better shape then many because we’re essentially an in-store bakery grocery store. Those people are hurt much less than food service that sells to restaurants. Restaurants are really down, but we don’t sell to restaurants.

Managing a manufacturing operation on this scale is different from retailing. What have you learned?

Two points: One is what I’ve learned.

Well, the first thing I tell you is about my son, he repeats something I’ve said: ‘I’m 69, and in another 15, 20 years I’ll really get this down, this managing business.

He said, ‘You’re right, Dad, but we need management next year.’ All that is to say I’m not an A-plus manager. What I’ve provided and what’s worked — and it’s taken a while to learn this — is to be caring and concerned about the people who work for you, starting from the bottom up. The top-down people are good and important, but they can take care of themselves.

You’ve been through a few business cycles here in New Haven and Connecticut generally. When you opened on Chapel Street in 1976, more businesses were leaving than opening up. What’s your perspective?

I was from out of town; I didn’t know any different. It looked good. I’ve lived in New Haven since 1983. For us business has been very good. There’s been some ups and downs, but the café has always been sustainable because of the connection with Yale and all the things it brings to town. It’s just a unique environment where there are a lot of people who for one reason or another have a certain affinity for good food. That’s existed for as long as I’ve been here. The feeling of safety [downtown] which I’ve always been a little oblivious to, but it is certainly better. There was a little trouble with the reputation of downtown [in years past].

What’s changed?

I‘m fairly apolitical, but I think that one of the things that makes cities work is having a good long-term mayor. I think we benefit from that. I’m not trying to give a plug to [Mayor John] DeStefano.

He’s been there for a long time and he’s done a lot of great stuff — things like school development over time, openness to immigration and defending people’s rights. I always thought he was an okay mayor, but when they pulled that [ICE] immigration raid about two years ago, I heard him speak about what he really thought. I thought he really gets it in terms of sensitivity to individuals, taking care of the ‘little people.’

A lot of people have a spiritual relationship to making bread. Do you or your son?

Not me. My son has more of a spiritual relationship to business. What I hope I’ve taught him is the only way this works is by making a quality product. There are a lot of guys bigger and stronger than us that can make mediocre or schlock stuff much better than we can. We can’t compete with them. To say we have a spiritual relationship [with bread] isn’t true. We [focus on quality] because it feels good; we also do it because it’s the best business model.

I would never say that chocolate bread was a mistake, if you aren’t unique and different then aren’t you going to be tomorrow’s white bread?

That is a challenge to stay unique and different — and yet be what everybody wants to buy. What everybody wants to buy is good-tasting white bread, ciabattas and baguettes, moving more and more to darker and whole grains. The way to sustain our uniqueness is to produce better product along those lines. The ciabattas we make today are [the best]. No one else of any size does them better; it’s the taste profile.

You got to work with your father. Is it fun to have your son working with you?

Fun is not the way I would describe it. It’s engaging and productive and it’s good for the business, but it’s not fun. He has his own very independent ideas of where I should go; he’s very challenging. Would you say it’s fun working for an alter ego, challenging you all the time about what you’re doing?

So in another words he’s better at busting your chops than anyone else could be in his position?

That’s true. In many ways it’s harder to take. It’s hard to get past having watched him play soccer and then say ‘What does he know about making bread?’ But he does know as much or more than I do.

Looking back over your business career, what’s the most valuable lesson?

In 35 years in business for myself, what I’ve learned is that ideas get you to first base, and not everyone can [even] get there. But you’re not going to get any further than that unless you learn how to develop people and organizations.

And people and organizations are really different. You have to find away to get outside of your ego problems and other relationship problems and be an objective manager. Understand your responsibility to manage by the metrics and understand your responsibility to develop and grow people. And I’ll be good at it in another ten, 15 years. v

But did you decide to make cherry chocolate bread, even if it doesn’t sell well?

You mean how do we make our mistakes?

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No Missing the Links This Winter

By Susan E. Cornell

For a trifling ten bucks jonesing duffers can play all day at Fore Seasons.

T

here’s no need to putt down your clubs and grump around until the greens are once again green.

For those armchair golfers who spend the winter wistfully watching the Golf Channel, flipping through golf mags, and even devising a living room putting green and basement driving range, there’s an easy way to satisfy the craving without flying south. Fore Seasons Golf Club in Bethany is a winter practice facility with everything from sand to simulators.

While a flight to the Sunshine State will run $275 or so, at $10 a day Fore Seasons is a helluva lot nicer on the plastic.

Explains Dale G. Humphrey, PGA Golf Professional and facility instructor, “It’s priced so well — $10 a day and you can stay as long as you want. And, there are other aspects in it — there is virtual golf, where a group can play 18 holes on one of 27 golf courses, hitting balls into a screen and getting information about their flight.”

“It’s part teaching and mostly video games, so that’s appealing for winter when there’s absolutely no place to go,“ Humphrey adds.

With a golf simulator, you play the course just as if you were al fresco. That is, you drive, chip and putt real golf balls with your clubs. The ball reacts with

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images on the screen, bouncing off trees and disappearing behind hills. Without packing a bag or going through security, you can play courses including Troon North in Scottsdale, Az., Ko Olina Golf Club in Oahu, and Teeth of the Dog in Dominican Republic.

Martin Santacroce has owned Fore Seasons since 1994 and, while the facility is open only from November through April, Santacroce truly does cover all four seasons as he also owns the nearby Bethany Driving Range.

Fore Seasons is open seven days a week on a limited basis in November and December, and then full time (9 a.m. to 8 p.m.) from January to mid-April.

“Because it’s a winter venue, we don’t open for summer use because we have the driving range up the street that handles golf practice,” explains Humphrey.

From the pro’s experience, serious golfers who practice year-round comprise about ten percent of the golfing public, “so there aren’t a lot of those folks — but there are lots of kids,” he says.

Four area high schools use the facility to get their players in shape for the spring season, and Yale’s women golfers (and occasionally Eli men) hit a few balls and shake off the rust.

“For the most part, it’s people who are

curious and those getting ready to go to Florida,” Humphrey says.

Games “go all out from morning to night,” Humphrey explains. “There are four different slots for games, or 16 players every two hours.”

Simulators are booked separately from the $10 walk-in rate. Nine holes runs $10, while the 18-hole rate is $15. If you’d like to use the practice facility and then play 9 or 18 holes, there’s an additional charge of $5.

Teaching pro Humphrey has a full instruction area with a computer and cameras, practice toys and training aids.

According to the pro, “It’s the biggest facility of its kind and gives the most amount of practice areas. We have a good-sized putting green that has a good speed attached to it, it’s really nice.”

Fore Seasons is a one-and-only, with no plans to franchise or expand. To create another, “You’d really have to own the property,” Humphrey says. “It would be almost impossible to replicate in a smaller fashion. It has to be done in this particular fashion which would require some heavy outlay and at $10 a head, it would be hard to make anything work.”

Fore Seasons Golf is located at 28 Amity Road (Rt. 63) in Bethany and online at foreseasonsgolfclub.com.

The Foote School

YALE OPERA presents

THE MARRIAGE OF FIGARO FEBRUARY 12–14, 2010 FRI–SAT, 8 PM & SUN, 2 PM SHUBERT THEATER NEW HAVEN TICKETS $19-$41 800-228-6622 www.shubert.com

a co-educational school for grades K–9 where students are challenged every day.

Gladly will I learn and gladly teach. – Foote’s motto

Parent Information Tours

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West Haven, CT (203) 937-7181

North Haven, CT (203) 239-7181

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Mansfield, CT (860) 423-2587

Putnam, CT (860) 963-7151

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Their future

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Find out more about Our Schools at our Upcoming Magnet Fairs: Pre-K to 12th Grade

INTERDISTRICT MAGNET FAIR

Pre-K to 12th Grade

NEW HAVEN CITYWIDE MAGNET FAIR

Saturday, January 9, 2010, 12-2pm (Snow Date: Jan. 16)

Wednesday, January 13, 2010, 6-8pm

Hill Regional Career High School -140 Legion Ave.

New Haven Field House - 480 Sherman Pkwy (next to Hillhouse)

For CT students and families to meet with representatives from all New Haven Interdistrict Magnet Schools.

For New Haven students and families to meet with representatives from all New Haven Schools of Choice.

For More Information: (203) 946-7415

NewHavenMagnetSchools.com Pre-K | K-8 | Middle | High Schools

We make Academic Challenge a Choice!

FREE Tuition n FREE Transportation n FREE Child Care for 3 & 4-year-olds

Over 2,000 suburban students currently enrolled!

Science n Music n Dance n YALE Medical n Leadership n Environmental Science & Advocacy n Int’l Communications n Engineering n Real-Life Studies n Technology n Performing & Visual Arts n Healthcare n Business n Athletics n Writing n Classical Studies n NASA Program