New Haven magazine April 2008

w w w .new havenm agazine.com

Blue collar. White collar. Any collar.

No matter what type of small business you manage, it just got easier to offer employees the health benefits they want.

Presenting BlueOptions®, a package of health plans that: • Lets each of your employees choose the coverage they want • Has great vision benefits built into each plan • Offers affordable rates for small businesses in Connecticut To learn more, talk to your insurance agent/producer, or call Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield at 1-866-637-2537.

MEDICAL

D E NTA L

VISION

LIFE

DISABILITY .com

2

In Connecticut, Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield is the trade name of Anthem Health Plans, Inc., an independent licensee of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association.

® Registered april 2008marks of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association. Life and disability products are underwritten by Anthem Life Insurance Company.

AD-8 Rev. (9/06)

203 468 9200 or visit MedWeightLossCenters.com Visit MedWeightLossCenters.com to see more actual success stories.

Medical Director Mark Perrotti, MD Associate Medical Director Andrew Rodican, PA-C 836 Foxon Road, Planet Fitness Park, East Haven s -ED7EIGHT,OSS#ENTERS COM

East Haven, CT

New Haven I April/2008

PHOTOGRAPH:

12 ONE2ONE

Steve Blazo

In which a certain former governor discusses his fall from grace and hope of redemption

16 A Bright Idea New Haven’s most famous maritime landmark

18 Greening the Scene The Elm City gets serious about the environment

28 God’s Commandos Inside the Legionaries of Christ

33 Living History In ATHOME, a Stratford saltbox, lovingly restored

40 Silent Spring Is there life after pro baseball in the City of Elms?

46 Me & My Sisters A downtown boutique that’s a family affair

48 Snap Judgments Michael Harvey reviews Images 2008 in Guilford

OUR COVER Photograph by Steve Blazo. Model Sophia Katz.

Hair and makeup by Laura Brereton. Apparel by the “Group W Bench”. Cover Design by Richard Rose.

CORRECTION: Due to an editing error, credit for a photograph of Richard Ziemann in the March NHM was omitted. It should have been credited to Caryn B. Davis Photography.

4

april 2008

18

E. Thomas

•

Audi Q7 Starting at $42,500*

Audi R8

Audi TT

Audi A3

Available Now

Starting at $34,800*

Starting at $25,930*

Audi A4

Audi A5

Audi A6

Audi A8

Starting at $28,900*

Available Spring 2008

Starting at $42,950*

Starting at $70,690*

The 2008 Audi Model Line Up Audi of Wallingford 800 S. Colony Road Wallingford, CT (203) 294-9000 www.audiofwallingford.com sales@audiofwallingford.com

©2008 Porsche Cars North America, Inc. Porsche recommends seat belt usage and observance of all traffic laws at all times.

•

Fe

rru

cci

Hand Made...

From Cut To Finish

Holland & Sherry

•

•

• Loro Piana

Scabal

•

Taylor & Stewart

Ermenegildo Zegna

Dormeuil

Vitale Barberis

•

53 Elm St. Mon–Sat: 9–5:30

(corner of Orange)

New Haven 203.787.2928

Complimentary Parking Across the Street

Your dream isn't going to fulfill itself.

The new Cayenne Tiptronic. Starting at $46,400.

Porsche of Wallingford 800 S. Colony Street (RT-5), Wallingford, CT 06492 203-294-9000 www.wallingford.porschedealer.com sales@porscheofwallingford.com

ONE OF TH E L A R G E ST G R A D UATE PROGRAMS IN NEW ENGLAND

SCHOOL

OF

GRADUATE STUDIES

O P E N H O U S E T H U R S D AY A P R I L 17 , 2 0 0 8 3:00 - 7:00 PM

ADANTI STU D E NT C E NTE R SO UTH E R N CO N N ECTI C UT STATE U N IV E R S IT Y

o Meet with graduate faculty from more than 40 areas of study, including many programs offered with Connecticut teacher certification o Find out about financial aid and graduate assistantships o Get details on career services and living on campus SCHOOL OF ARTS & SCIENCES SCHOOL OF COMMUNICATION, SCHOOL OF EDUCATION o Sociology o Women’s Studies MASTER’S PROGRAMS o Art INFORMATION & LIBRARY SIXTH YEAR PROFESSIONAL DOCTORAL PROGRAM o Education o Bilingual/Multicultural DIPLOMA o Science Education SCIENCE MASTER’S PROGRAMS Ed.D. Educational Leadership Education o Biology o Chemistry o Computer Science o Instructional MASTER’S PROGRAMS o Media and Technology o Library o English o Environmental SCHOOL OF BUSINESS Counseling o Elementary Education o History o Education o Exercise Science o MASTER’S PROGRAM o Business Science/Library Information Mathematics o Political Science o Administration SIXTH YEAR PROFESSIONAL Reading o Research, Statistics & Psychology o Science Education DIPLOMA o Library Science/ Measurement o School Health Library Information Education o School Psychology

1-800-448-0661 or 203-392-5240 o

gradinfo@SouthernCT.edu o

o Special Education SIXTH YEAR PROFESSIONAL DIPLOMAS o Classroom Teacher Specialist o Counseling o Educational Foundations o Educational Leadership o Reading o School Psychology o Special Education

SCHOOL OF HEALTH & HUMAN SERVICES MASTER’S PROGRAMS o Communication Disorders o Marriage and Family Therapy o Nursing o Public Health o Recreation and Leisure Studies o Social Work o Urban Studies

w w w. g r a d s t u d i e s . S o u t h e r n C T. e d u

new haven

5

New Haven I April/2008

PHOTOGRAPH:

55 Drama Queens New Haven’s first distaff theater company spreads its wings

Steve Blazo

59 Connecticut Idol Country-pop singer Nicole Frechette is primed for stardom

71 Thai One On Beyond New Haven’s ‘Little Bangkok,’ a star is born

78 Kid for a Day School vacation at the Connecticut Children’s Museum

New Haven Vol. I, No. 7 | April 2008 Publisher Mitchell Young, Editor Michael C. Bingham, Design Manager Larissa Wigglesworth, Design Consultants Richard Rose, Terry Wells, Contributing Writers Brooks Appelbaum, Elvira J. Duran, Joyce Faiola, Michael Harvey, Felicia Hunter, Brittany Galla, Susan Israel, Liese Klein, Cindy Marien, Melissa Nicefaro, Tashema Nichols, Ron Ragozzino, Steven Scarpa, Contributing Photographers Steve Blazo, Anthony DeCarlo, Advertising Graphics Michelle Ulrich Advertising Director Laura Whinfield, Senior Publisher’s Representatives Mary W. Beard, Ronni Rabin, Publisher’s Representatives Cynthia Carlson, Diana Martini, Business New Haven Advertising Manager Timothy Stanton New Haven is published 12 times annually by Second Wind Media Ltd., which also publishes Business New Haven, with offices at 1221 Chapel St., New Haven, CT 06511. 203-7813480 (voice), 203-781-3482 (fax). Subscriptions $24.95/year, $39.95/two years. Send name, address & 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.

6

april 2008

55

BEAUTIFYING, REJUVENATING, RENEWING Restorative & corrective non-surgical aesthetic services.

■

Skin rejuvenation & hair reduction

■

Advanced skincare products

■

All services provided by advanced clinicians

Free consultation & 20% off any treatment 203.732.7233 ■ 67 Maple Ave ■ Derby

Spring Showers time to get ready for gift-giving season

9-6 Mon, Thu, Fri. 10-6 Sat. 12-4 Sun 72 Blatchley Ave., New Haven. Just one block off Chapel Street in Fair Haven or take exit 6 off I-91, turn left to the end 203-776-3099

w w w.f a i r h a v e n - f u r n i t u r e .c o m

FINE STATIONERS

TRUNK SHOW Fri. April 25 Sat. April 26 EUPHORIA SIGNATURE DOUBLE SIDED CHAINS

1028 MAIN STREET - BRANFORD 203.481.6683

CELLINI Design Jewelers 203.397.8334 560 FOREST RD, WEST HAVEN new haven

7

Joseph A. Conte Jewelers, Inc.

EDITOR’S L E T T E R

A House Divided 38 Years of Jewelry Manufacturing

Specializing in antique restorations. Set while you watch by Joseph A. Conte personally.

I come from a broken home. Pray for me.

A broken work environment, too. Well, divided might be a more accurate word than “broken.”

I’m hardly alone. We are a nation divided, aren’t we?

Hillary or Obama? Paper or plastic? Do you groove on the Spitzer scandal, or are you more of a McGreevey man?

www.josephacontejewelers.com

But those all pale before the deepest divide of our time.

Red Sox vs. Yankees.

The 2008 Championship Season (as Major League Baseball grandiloquently refers to its “regular” season) is upon us, pitting neighbor against neighbor, father against son. Nowhere does the division of loyalties create more friction than here in Connecticut, infelicitously sited smack in between the Athens and Sparta of baseball.

203.248.9853 or 203.248.9852

2582 Whitney Ave, Hamden

Barrels of newsprint have been spilled trying to calculate or divine where lies in the Nutmeg State the geographic boundary that separates Red Sox Nation from the Evil Empire. (You may be starting to discern which side I am on.) A few years ago a Quinnipiac University pollster calculated that the border ran roughly through the latitude of Hartford. But after the Red Sox won the 2004 WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP, a viewing of the World Series trophy on the New Haven Green attracted some 8,000 revelers, suggesting that success and redemption on the part of the Crimson Hose had pushed the boundary southward.

All I know is it’s something I have to live with every day. My own son, for reasons best understood only by virtue of intense psychotherapy, has grown up a diehard (that’s the word they always use — “diehard”) Yankees fan (O wayward youth!). And if that weren’t a heavy enough cross to bear, my Second Wind Media partner and co-founder, Mitchell Young, is likewise a Yankees fan. (He’s from Brooklyn. Why couldn’t he have grown up a Dodger fan or something?)

I hate Yankees fans. So arrogant, so presumptuous — even though they haven’t won a thing since Monica Lewinsky was in the White House!

nicole miller yolanda arce betsey johnson juan carlos pinera

But here’s another baseball issue we can all be exercised about: In 2008 New Haven is without a professional baseball team for the first time since 1993. For many of us hardball lovers, that’s a travesty — especially considering greater New Haven’s long and (some times more than others) distinguished history of minor-league baseball. In this issue Steven Scarpa recounts much of that rich history and, along with us, laments its demise.

Also, Liese Klein writes thoughtfully (as always) about “God’s Commandos,” the Legionaries of Christ, while Melissa Nicefaro writes the book (nearly) on all things “green” in this greenest of seasons.

Play ball! v

badgley mischka

1020 Chapel St New Haven 498.2626 242 Post Rd E Westport 341.9960 8

april 2008

— Michael C. Bingham Editor

We Feel the Love In reference to Joyce Faiola’s article, Looking for Love in your February issue, it’s obvious from that she will never find love with an attitude like that.

She writes: “Men make lousy husbands — all chase and no bonding.” Perhaps that’s because she chooses the wrong man. Perhaps the men she meets can sense immediately that she hates men and has a chip on her shoulder.

Should men say, “Women make lousy wives — all looks until they catch you, then it’s to hell with their appearance”?

I found Ms. Faiola’s article whiny and feminazi. Not only that, there did not seem to be a point to her article, and it droned on for pages.

But love your magazine otherwise.

— Alison Wilfred Woodbridge

Some Stones Unturned Regarding your article in the March New Haven magazine on the East Rock neighborhood.

While there certainly are a disproportionate number of “Yalies” in the East Rock neighborhood, I wish your article had looked also at some of the more permanent residents — and not only those wonderful upscale businesses who cater to “Yalies.” They also cater to school teachers, their young students, older residents and regular working-class neighbors.

For example, the school where I teach, Wilbur Cross High School, has more than 1,600 students. They dwell in the East Rock neighborhood for an important four years of their lives, but also reside in New Haven — many in this very neighborhood — and very often stick around afterwards, or come back as lifers.

The neighborhood actually has quite a lot of schools: East Rock

Middle School is also in this neighborhood, as is Worthington Hooker School and the Leila Day Nursery school. I counted the word “Yale” seven times before I stopped counting. Everything in your article about East Rock was focused on the transient Yale population.

Too bad. You missed a lot of the real New Haven.

— Barbara A. Sasso Hamden

Team Mad Max We were delighted and so proud to see our son Max Martin featured in New Haven magazine (KIDSTUFF, 3/08). Whatever Max has accomplished at his young age is a reflection of dedication and hard work that he has brought to the game of squash. We have encouraged, chauffeured and celebrated his passion for a game neither one of us could possibly have taught him. For such instruction we have relied on a cadre of talented young athletes who have taken Max under their wing and shared with him a love for the game.

Mariposa • Baggallini Bags • M. Aram • Archipelago • Hanky Panky

LE TT ERS

TM

love me comfort me portaMEe

Hands Free Baby Carrier with Lumbar Support For Babies 8 lb / 6 weeks - 35 lbs

UO

URBAN OBJECTS URBAN BABY

Mon - Sat: 10-6 Sun: 11- 5 1022 Chapel St. New Haven (203) 865-5236 www.urbanobjects.com

• Barefoot Dreams • Pinecone Hill PJs • Thymes •

Fleurville & Petunia Pickle Bottom Diaper Bags • Robeez • Kissy Kissy

• Manhattan Toy • PJ Salvage • Mat & Natt Bags •

Grand Opening • New Showroom

Among his many coaches over the years one stands out and needs to be mentioned, for Max’s triumphs have in no small measure been their joint venture.

Blake Gilpin started teaching the highly technical game of squash to a seven-year-old Max who could not yet tie his shoelaces.

Now that he is 11, Max continues to thrive under Blake’s tutelage.

In the words of their shared mission statement, “B&M Squash [have been] building the foundation since 2004.”

Sports coaches are unsung heroes: At the root of Max’s accomplishments is a foundation of inspiring and dedicated coaches. Blake Gilpin is the cornerstone of that foundation, and these words are an attempt to express our boundless gratitude for his loving commitment to our son.

— Rebecca and Andrés Martin New Haven

Store Hours: Mon-Fri: 8-4pm, Sat:9-2pm Additional hours by appointment only.

National Award Winning Designs

680 South Main St. Cheshire 203 272-1337 www.covoda.com/ams

new haven

9

INT EL

Call Every Vegetable People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) have written to New Haven Schools Superintendent Reginald Mayo urging him to offer more vegetarian food options for students. The letter comes in response to a disciplinary action against a student for purchasing Skittles candy on school property. PETA wrote that “Although a school ban on candy

and other unhealthy snacks is understandable, offering healthful, vegetarian alternatives to meat would do much more to protect students’ health,” according to PETA Vice President Bruce Friedrich. He added, “The student who was suspended for buying candy on school grounds has had his record expunged, but unfortunately the health and animal-related ill effects of meateating aren’t so easily reversed.”

including credit card and Social Security numbers. The group used the purloined personal particulars to make withdrawals from automated teller machines and to purchase goods online and at retail outlets.

— ice. At least that’s the hope of On the Rocks, a Hartford company that claims to be the first anywhere to mass-produce packaged “spring water ice.” The company employs a slow freezing process to pack more water into each cube.

Naughty, Not Nice

Not a complete cure for global warming, perhaps, but these ice cubes, made from spring water, come in a puncture-resistant, re-sealable package sealed with a tamper-evident seal to help keep you free of pollutants, E. coli and other unwanted substances.

Daniel Mascia, 24, of West Haven admitted in federal court last month that he and a gang of cyber-criminal cohorts swindled hundreds of victims via the Internet. The group used disguised emails to obtain personal financial information,

The pure spring water used for the ice comes from the Triple Springs Spring Water Co. in Meriden. The family-owned and -operated business is celebrating its 90th year in business this year. For more information visit IceIsFood.com.

The New Ice Age As reports of drug infested water sweep the country, a new trend may take hold in Connecticut

2007-2008

Season

CONNECTICUTS SUPERCENTER FOR PILATES

Young Children’s Performances

“Dr. Dolittle” Saturday, April 5, 2008 2:00 pm, Main Theater $12/Children 12 and under $10

* * * *

K

ind-hearted Dr. Dolittle lives in the imaginary town of Puddleby-on-Marsh with his animal friends. This musical is based on the stories Hugh Lofting wrote for his son, Colin.

Appropriate for grades 2 through 6.

Guest Artists

Gaelic Storm Saturday, April 12, 2008 7:30 pm, Main Theater $35/Sr. Citizens $32.50/Students $20

G

aelic Storm brings their skilled and rambunctious adaptations of traditional Irish music once more to the PMAC Main Stage. The band became an instant sensation a decade ago after their cameo appearance as the rowdy, partying steerage band in the 1997 blockbuster hit “Titanic.” “Gaelic Storm is a whirlwind ruckus, able to knock out an homage to the ocean and to whiskey in a theater, pub or barge.”—The Village

For tickets: (203) 697-2398 or order online at www.choate.edu/boxoffice.

Christian Street, Wallingford, CT Free Parking

10

april 2008

Some People Paddle If you’re a paddler, here are two dates to mark on your calendar.

May 3 is “Quassy Paddling Day” at Middlebury’s Quassy Amusement Park in celebration of its 100th anniversary. It’s open to all paddlers, paddling clubs and organizations. One week later (that’s May 10 for the math-challenged) is the inaugural Naugatuck River Race through Waterbury and Beacon Falls. It involves 6.5 miles of Class I and II water through Naugatuck State Park. The fastrunning waters are expected to attract a big crowd. The race begins at 9 a.m., and proceeds benefit the Naugatuck River Revival Group. For information on both events call 860-274-6213 or visit 4ctoutdoors.com.

Dance in the Aisles The Greater New Haven Arts Council, in partnership with Connecticut Transit, presents Exact Change, an afternoon of live entertainment on four New Haven city buses. All performances will take place on Sunday, April 13, and will include poetry, theater, music and more.

Cost for a one-way bus ticket is $1.25. Buses depart from Amity Shopping Center, Foxon Boulevard, Putnam Place in New Haven and Hamden Plaza in New Haven. To assure a spot get there by 1:20 p.m. All four buses will arrive at the New Haven Green at 2 p.m., where the artists will participate in a final performance. For information contact the Arts Council at 203772-2788 or newhavenarts.org.

Feeling the Green According to a March 18 article for the Architectural Record, the South Central Connecticut Regional Water Authority’s award-winning Whitney Water Purification Facility and Park in

New Haven is inspiring more “green design” projects. Steven Holl Architects designed the RWA’s water facility and park and the project was cited as one of the Top Ten Green Projects by the American Association of Architects Committee on the Environment for 2007. Planners in Toronto reviewed the RWA plant before choosing Holl to design a 37,700-square-foot facility that will power a new neighborhood on that Canadian city’s lakefront.

Don’t like what you see in the mirror?

• Do you struggle with lines that make you look tired?

•Do you wish your jawline had more definition?

• Do you feel like your face has changed overnight?

Susan O’Malley, M.D.

You Can Take Back Your Face™ Without Surgery At age 56, I know what it’s like to look in the mirror and see a changing face. I solved my problems and I can solve yours too.

Visit my website to see before and after pictures of women just like you. Then make an appointment to share your struggles and talk about solutions. Get acquainted, free of charge.

It’s Your Face, Take It Back! shorelineaestheticare.com • 203 488-8266

shoreline aesthetic care Taste This!

Stony Creek Medical Center, 6 Business Park Dr, Suite 301, Branford New You Fitness, 1856 Boston Post Rd, Westbrook

Here’s your chance to eat really well and guilt free as you help put an end to childhood hunger.

Taste of the Nation returns to town beginning at 5:30 p.m.

April 17 at the Omni-New Haven Hotel, with more than 25 of the region’s “best loved” restaurants participating. Tickets are $75 per person and sales benefit Share our Strength, an organization dedicated to ensuring that “no kid in America goes hungry” and to local groups including Christian Community Action.

Beneficiaries also include the Connecticut Food Bank and the advocacy group End Hunger Connecticut. Organizers say 100 percent of proceeds from ticket sales stay in greater New Haven. For information visit tasteofthenation.org.

You can even walk off the pounds you may put on at Taste at the Connecticut Food Bank’s May 4 Walk Against Hunger. Registration and festivities at 1 p.m.; the three mile Walk begins at 2 p.m. For information on assembling a team, contact the Connecticut Food Bank or visit ctfoodbank. org/walkagainsthunger.

new haven

11

F

ormer Gov. John G. Rowland has a new job — economic development czar for the city of Waterbury — and a new attitude. Working from an office at the Greater Waterbury Chamber, Rowland’s new position was promoted and ardently supported

by Waterbury Mayor Michael Jarjura. In terms of both geography and responsibility, it’s a place the former governor and Brass City native feels very comfortable. But his critics, including a number of current legislators, don’t appear ready to allow him back into ‘public’ life so easily. Until now, many media accounts show an overwhelmingly contrite Rowland, but that’s not the one we found. Instead we found a still relatively young (50) man aware of his failings but proud of his accomplishments and confident in his ability to revitalize the hometown that continues to (mostly) embrace him. NH publisher Mitchell Young interviewed Rowland for 121.

vvv You’ve recently started doing some speaking engagements. What do you talk to audiences about?

It’s talking about leadership and adversity and how things have changed in business cultures. [Rowland’s speaking engagements are] mostly to Fortune 500 companies. I have an agent and a Web site [to promote Rowland as a speaker]. It’s been fun. [My message is about] listening and humility. If you look back 15 years ago in the corporate environment, there would be signs everywhere: ‘We’re the biggest, we’re the best, the brightest — kill the competition!’

Now things are coming back to, ‘Listen to your customers, your employees’ — much more of a humble approach.

12

april 2008

PHOTOGRAPH:

Steve Blazo

How did you get your new job?

There’s a [city] economic-development commission, and the guy who was running it moved on to another job. The people there said, ‘Do you want to do this?’ The [commission] oversees the community development block grants and the loan programs and there is a lot of blocking and tackling. I said I don’t want to be into loan programs and paperwork. They said [the job could involve] marketing,

Grand Opening! mention this ad for 10% off

JUST RITE COMFORT SHOES, LLC Comfort without compromising style.

coordination and outreach, and I said I would be interested. Then the [Greater Waterbury] Chamber [of Commerce] said, ‘Why don’t we run [the effort] out of the chamber, then you have free access to work with the existing businesses and you can work the business climate and you’re not working for an agency. The chamber can take different positions [than an arm of city government]. We’re about economic development and promoting the city. There’s been a void [in economic development]. I bring profile to the job, and people know whom to call. We’re not going to be a corporate headquarters city, but there are other niches we can fill.

Last June the Washington Post ran a long article headlined ‘A Look Back and Up’ about you. What did you think of it?

[WaPo staff writer Michael Leahy] followed me around for six months. He got obsessed with my dog. He was looking for an angle.

Yeah, I got that angle: The dog, at least, is still your buddy. In the article you talked about arrogance a lot. Don’t leaders need a certain amount of arrogance to get ahead?

Absolutely not! Confidence, yes — there’s a difference. Confidence is when you’re confident in your abilities, or your state or your city, your family or your team.

Confidence becomes arrogance when the listening device is turned off, and when we becomes me. Arrogance is a disease — there are no positive qualities to it at all.

Do you really think that was you?

My friends always say, ‘It’s not you.’ But if you let an arrogant culture develop around you, whether you’re arrogant or not, it’s just as bad. I have two books in the works and the second is called Arrogance…A Table for One, because it’s a very lonely existence. Once you’ve allowed ego and pride to overcome you, you no longer have an interest in what your fellow workers have to say, family members have to say.

At some point arrogance — e.g. [former New York Gov. Eliot] Spitzer — causes you to make really bad decisions and bad judgments. If you look back in the past ten years at every businessperson, politician or

sports figure who’s gotten into trouble, I’ll bet 99 percent of the time the guy had an arrogant attitude. Name a humble person who’s gotten into trouble.

60 Temple Street, New Haven, CT 203-772-3884 • Hours: Open daily M-F

What is the title of the other book you’re working on?

Falling Into Grace. I’ve been working on it for a couple of years. There’s some interest [from publishers], but there’s no sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll, so it’s not going to sell.

Perfectionists at Color & Style!

Now you’re chief salesperson for Waterbury.

What is the pitch, and what is the challenge?

Like any Northeastern mill town and in any city there is always a fear of public safety.

The good news is, it is a safe city. So is New Haven. But perception is reality. We have a lot of smaller manufacturers. Those guys are doing okay, but we’ve lost some of the banks. The [Brass City Center] mall has impacted all the retail.

287.1919 4133 Whitney Ave. Hamden

What does Waterbury need to be more vibrant?

We have to have unique retail, secondly, residential. We have a UConn [branch campus] downtown, but there’s no coffee shop, no ESPN Zone. There has to be a very diverse restaurant environment. We have these beautiful buildings and architecture, but most of them are empty. We have a lot of developer interest. [Developers] see a building for a $500,000 and say ‘I’ll take the block.’

Connecticut cities like Waterbury have a diverse ethnic population, while their suburbs for the most part are pretty homogeneous. What does it take to sell the city to the region?

That’s a great question. We have 60 different nationalities in Waterbury; what’s going to work for us is ten different [ethnic] restaurants — a Moroccan restaurant, a Greek restaurant, an Asian restaurant.

We’re famous for Italian food, like New Haven. Young people want all these different choices. There’s the diversity of the international melting pot. But sports are also important — we need a sports bar.

[In addition], the city has to be attractive

Featured Artists Patricia Locke Mundelein, Illinois MAR Santa Barbara, California Thomas Mann New Orleans, Louisiana Amy Kahn Russell Wilton, Connecticut Josh Simpson Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts Ed Levin Cambridge, New York

By Patricia Locke

1014 Chapel Street New Haven • 203-782-2280 new haven

13

PHOTOGRAPH:

for kids, focused on young families, and affordable. For example the Palace Theater brings in a zillion people. In all economic development, it’s always chicken-and-egg: If you had the people down here already, it would be easy to have the retail and the restaurants.

Steve Blazo

How has your profile as a former state CEO helped?

They know I know who to call, and they know I have a passion for this city, and networking and connections. It’s a very small world.

When you were governor there was a lot of attention paid to the cities. Has the public lost interest in urban investment?

I’m a great believer that if you want economic development stimulus, the state has to go first, or the feds. Public investment never follows private investment.

Everyone is in favor of progress as long as there is no change, and when you get into the academic setting especially everybody fights it. Everyone fought [new UConn football stadium] Rentschler Field. Now you can’t get a seat. Downtown Hartford’s Adriaen’s Landing — no one thought the [Connecticut] Convention Center would work.

It’s not clear it is working yet.

Pick up the phone and try to get a room in Hartford for tonight; I guarantee you can’t get a room. You have a refurbished Hilton, the new Marriott, the Marriott Residence [Inn], hundreds of new residential apartments being built. Now you’re going to have the science center [the Connecticut Science Center]; that’s going to create a whole new look and whole new venue.

We certainly took a run at Bridgeport. We were able to do the Arena [at Harbor Yard] and the [baseball] stadium and the railroad station. In Stamford we were able to bring in UBS — that was mostly our efforts.

In New Haven we did a few little things, but it was tough to break in there. It was tough to build partnerships. Waterbury of course we did get [a branch campus of] UConn downtown, the Palace Theater. In New London we brought Pfizer in when they could have gone anywhere in the world. The first thing we did was fix up the Garde Arts Center. My first strategy was to invest in the arts, because that’s how you get people downtown.

Why was it more difficult in New Haven?

You already had a base of residential and [Yale] university which is a plus, plus, plus.

There wasn’t a lot of open inventory; we 14

april 2008

‘Arrogance is a disease,’ Rowland says now.

‘There are no positive qualities to it at all.’

did do the Shubert [renovation], put money into that. New Haven already had a lot of natural assets and the restaurant culture.

How is your presence playing so far with potential developers in Waterbury?

I had a New York developer call me on the first day on the job and he said, ‘I’m coming into town; I’m going to invest. You’ve got something to prove, you’re passionate about your city, so I’m getting on this wagon.’ Public investment in the cities is not taking place. So the question is, how do you stimulate private investment?

Don’t you need more public investment in Waterbury?

It’s not coming because it’s not a priority.

Where you need [investment] is in brownfields; that’s one of our starting blocks. We have dire needs in brownfields remediation; that’s a ten-year plan. This is an old mill town. Same thing in Meriden. The concept of remediating brownfields is very much the same as investing in open spaces. If we’re spending a dollar to preserve open space in Fairfield County, we should be spending a dollar to revitalize a brownfield in Bridgeport or New Haven. You get rid of blight and you bring in something productive and taxpaying.

Is there an appetite for this kind of investment?

Well… [sighs]. We’re the Land of Steady Habits. When they built [UConn basketball

arena] Gampel Pavilion 20 years ago, they about the investments that were made is The three Fs? called it a white elephant — ‘What a waste not important to me. My job is to steer Faith, family and friends. of money’ — if you build it they will come. people toward these investments.

I assume that your other proposed book One of the failures is that we’ve lost our Mayor Jarjura’s been criticized for hiring title, Fall Into Grace, signifies an embrace young people. Try to convince my 21-yearyou. of your faith? old daughter that it is more exciting to be in Waterbury than Boston. You have to create Mostly by people from outside of Waterbury.

No, anybody who’s gone through adversity an environment where people’s quality of You take all the letters to the editor, it’s all — that’s a test of your faith. If you don’t have life is comparable. It’s a great place to raise people from outside of Waterbury. a strong faith you’re not going to make it. kids, great schools, all across the state. In Why do you think emotions ran so high I know a lot of people who are bitter and New Haven you have ten high schools, ten angry — woulda, shoulda, coulda. over your transgressions? years ago you had two.

Lay off 2,500 [state government workers] How do you avoid being bitter? Do you just We’re trying to fill in the gaps, sports, and I guarantee you will generate a lot of have an upbeat personality? entertainment, and arts. emotion. At [my] sentencing, there were No, I had some people who were helpful.

The University of Connecticut is one of hundreds of people lined up, all the unions, Part of it is personality, part resilience, and the top universities now. The arts are filled; CCAG [Connecticut Citizens Action part of it is growing up in Waterbury. Ken you can’t build any more restaurants in Group], and they were very organized.

Burns picked Waterbury for his World War downtown New Haven now.

They had T-shirts, billboards made up.

II series [The War]; there are thousands of If you lost your job, how would you feel other places he could have picked. In this Do you think you’re still recognized for your — your wife, your daughter? city you learn about loyalty and supporting accomplishments in those areas?

The Spitzer resignation had some wags each other and second chances.

People know how it got there, but that’s not talking about the tri-state area’s ‘trifecta’ of Do you think the fact that you were a what’s important now. What you now have disgraced governors [including former New Republican meant you took a harder hit? to do is work off the investments. When Jersey governor and ‘gay American’ James I have a developer come to Waterbury, I McGreevey]. How do you feel getting this I don’t think about that, but there are take them on a tour of the Palace Theater. different standards of course. The hit that in your face all this time?

I take them across to UConn, and then I took versus a state legislator that had I show them these beautiful empty I don’t think about. If it doesn’t affect the abused a child [former Democratic State buildings. Whether I get credit or not three Fs, I don’t care.

Continued on 17

Arons Plastic Surgery

203-865-8315 www.drarons.com

Dr. Jeffrey Arons

Get a Jump Start on Spring!

& Realtors, LLP www.grlandrealtors.com

Gena Ruocco-Lockery Owner/Broker

(203) 781-0000, x203 1435 State Street, New Haven

Intense Pulsed Light (IPL) for: • aging skin • skin rejuvenation • hair reduction • rosacea • acne

Betsy Grauer Realty, Inc.

Botox • Juvederm • Restylane Radiesse • Breast Augmentation Tummy Tucks • Face Lifts Liposuction • Microdermabrasion General Plastic & Cosmetic Procedures

Specializing in Greater New Haven

Obagi Skin Care Products *not actual patient

Orchard Medical Center • 330 Orchard Street, Suite 205 • New Haven

www.betsygrauerrealty.com 787-3434 • betsygrauer@aol.com new haven

15

Steadfast, serene, immovable, the same, Year after year, through all the silent night Burns on forevermore that quenchless flame, Shines on that inextinguishable light!

You Light Up My New Haven

— From “The Lighthouse,” Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

By Elvira J. Duran

T

he New Haven Light, also known as Five Mile Point Light (its distance from downtown New Haven), may not have inspired Longfellow’s stanzas like the towers of Maine and may not have been recorded as one of the Seven Wonders of the World like the lighthouse on Pharos island, but it has remained “steadfast, serene, [and] immovable” for 161 years even though its light was extinguished more than a century ago. That in itself is a greater feat than enduring the hurricanes of yesteryear that rocked — or, rather, washed — New Haven.

The first Five Mile Point Light was built in 1805 on the spot where its replacement (built in 1847) now stands in Lighthouse Point Park. This first attempt at a lighthouse fell somewhat short of being awe-inspiring.

The octagonal tower was made of wood and a mere 30 feet tall, with a light that was too low and too dim to be of much help to mariners. The recommendation of a city official to build a bigger, better lighthouse on nearby Southwest Ledge was denied due to budgetary constraints, and a second Five Mile Point Light was built instead.

The new tower was much more impressive than its predecessor. Built of local sandstone with brick lining, the tower rose to 65 feet. Instead of rickety wooden stairs, shoes kissed granite on the spiral climb up to the lantern room. A few years later, the lighthouse was upgraded with a fourthorder Fresnel lens and a fog bell.

In the years to come, improved technology brought down the cost required to build the

16

april 2008

The 161-year-old Five Mile Point Light is the second lighthouse on its site.

recommended “other light” on Southwest Ledge, and 30 years after the new Five Mile Point Light had been built, a rival Southwest Ledge Light (on the New Haven breakwater) came into existence.

The newer lighthouse was a pioneer, being among the first to be erected on a cylindrical iron foundation which allowed floating ice to drift around it in freezing temperatures instead of becoming trapped around the foundation. Southwest Ledge Light, which continues to shine its light on mariners, became operational on January 1, 1877 — a fateful day that also marked Five Mile Point Light being extinguished.

According to a current Lighthouse Point Park ranger, like most other lighthouses around the world, Southwest Ledge Light has been automated since 1954.

Southwest Ledge Light is not open to the public. But Five Mile Point Light is.

The old lighthouse tower stands in a popular park on the beach, a park with a restored antique carousel (only 50 cents

per ride) akin to the one at the beach park in Santa Monica, Calif. The park grounds are open year-round, offering visitors swimming, a touch tank, educational programs (on seashore and marine ecology, maritime history and history of the forts on New Haven Harbor) run by park rangers, canoeing and kayaking (contact the outdoor adventure coordinator at 203944-6768 to learn more).

Lighthouse Point Park is also home to a bevy of special events such as Paddle Day (summer), Hawkfest (September) and the Fantasy of Lights (November-December) , but the lighthouse tower is open only sparingly. Limited fall and spring tours of the lighthouse are conducted by Lighthouse Point Park rangers. Because the tower is so narrow, only about seven people can ascend the stairs at a time, so tours are on a reservations-only basis (call 203-946-8790 to get in on the action). The scheduled tour for this month will take place at 10 a.m. on Thursday, April 17. Happy lighting! v

one2one

Continued from 15

Rep. Jefferson B. Davis, a state-licensed foster parent who pleaded guilty to committing a sex act involving his foster son], you couldn’t even tell me his name.

That’s how much press he got. This guy adopted a child and abused him. I’ll bet you $100 to your favorite charity that you couldn’t tell me what crime I was charged with.

Do you think Sen. Louis DeLuca [accused of performing favors for a organized crimeconnected trash hauler in return for having him threaten the senator’s granddaughter’s husband] got a bad rap?

I think it’s ridiculous that we have politicians judge fellow politicians. As long as that’s the standard, it’s political.

What’s the alternative?

You let the proper authorities make the judgment, just like the rest of the world.

You had to and did work both sides of the aisle. Can we get there again?

It’s all about personal relationships — that’s how the world is run. Who’s one of my best friends in the legislature? [New Haven State Rep. and liberal Democrat]

Bill Dyson. Could we be further apart philosophically? There were two no closer allies in the legislature.

Politically you were far apart, but both of you were pragmatic people, not ideologues.

That’s not it. [Dyson] didn’t get along with [former House Speaker] Tom Ritter for some reason. When [Ritter] was speaker we had a great personal relationship. We could do the budget on the back of an envelope. Use your own mayor [John DeStefano Jr.] for example: Don’t you think his personal relationships with people affect his ability to get the job done?

It’s about trust and respect, which leads to an appropriate political relationship. Over my ten years that we got the budget done on time, it was all based on just working together. I would meet with the legislative leaders every Wednesday at 9 a.m. and we would work together to establish those relationships. Those aren’t there now —it’s people out to get everybody.

Is that because seemingly everybody is running for governor?

No, it’s about everybody’s personal agenda.

If it’s about personal agenda, you’ll never accomplish anything in business, in politics or sports. In business, at some point your fellow employees, your bosses,

your subordinates are going to say, ‘He’s not for the team. He’s not going to help me get my bonus.’ Your personal agenda is always self-defeating.

What do you think of Mayor Jarjura here in Waterbury?

I don’t think he’s reached his potential.

He’s very smart, he’s very personable; he sometimes needs to get ahead of an issue instead of running behind it. He’s compassionate, he’s very loyal, and he listens. He’s going to get better with age.

I said throughout my ten years [as governor] that Waterbury was the center of the universe, I said it all the time.

[Economic development] is like making a puzzle: bring the developer in, where are the workers, the city has to accommodate tax abatements. My job is getting everyone moving in the same direction. The mayor would be the first one to say, ‘I really don’t want to lead this economic development; this is not my forte.’ To recognize your assets and liabilities is quite a feat.

Is it what a mayor should be doing?

Some are good at it. DeStefano was good at that, shaping a vision. He always had good plans.

Continued on 77

Honeymoon Experts

LISA J. CAPPALLI, ESQ., LLC FAMILY LAW & MEDIATION

2323 Whitney Ave, Hamden

Educating and empowering divorcing or separating clients to make the right choices for themselves and their families.

288-8100 Guaranteed Lowest Rates Leading Agents For Sandals & Beaches Resorts Dedicated To The Friendship Of Those We Serve Since 1925

Serving the Greater New Haven Area 203-271-3888 attorney@lcappalli-familylaw.com Please visit my website at: www.lcappalli-familylaw.com

RE SPEC T FUL • PR IVAT E • C R EAT I V E new haven

17

The

of

New Haven

By Melissa Nicefaro

He’s quick to pass along his knowledge and save-the-earth mission to children when the opportunity arises.

Environmental entrepreneur Joe De Risi makes a living from other people’s stuff. He runs a Hamden company called Urban Miners that acquires its inventory from deconstructing and disassembling “Yale is an innovator with the most certified buildings. He also cleans out garages and — not just registered — green buildings in houses. He then sells those acquisitions to the state,” Ney says. Yale’s Malone Center, contractors and other people looking for Chemistry Research Building and new that special something for the home.

Sculpture Building are all Leadership in “We get very usable stuff that people will Environment & Energy Design (LEED) often throw out,” De Risi says. His finds certified buildings, although Ney is quick include the actual framing of a entire house, to add, “I personally don’t believe that you flooring, doors, windows, cabinets, sinks have to be LEED to be green.” and other perfectly serviceable fixtures.

There are plenty of small and mid-sized “The typical person who cleans out a home businesses that consider themselves green, keeps the antiques, but they tend to throw but it is mainly large organizations that are out a lot of what I save,” he says. “We have pushing the movement to meeting the goal to be creative sometimes. Old doors make of environmental stewardship and social great tables for stores, but I have to work responsibility. into the more creative side. There’s just too “Zane’s Cycle Shop in Branford, for example, much work in salvage right now.” has to compete with the Wal-Marts of the De Risi keeps track of the amount of world and they’re building a new store that materials he has salvaged and translates is quite green,” Ney notes. “It makes sense that into barrels of oil saved and carbon because they sell a product that is green in dioxide emissions not released into the nature: a bike.” environment.

Christopher Zane, president of the bike He recently salvaged 7.1 tons of cast iron shop, is taking on the responsibility of radiators and almost three tons of industrial lowering energy costs and reducing the doors that are now being re-used instead of impact bricks-and-mortar stores have on scrapped. the planet.

Though it’s a business for De Risi, he knows “We had this opportunity to start with he’s doing good things for the environment. a blank canvas and wanted to do it in a 18

april 2008

Anthony DeCarlo

Adam Ney, managing director of Aucto Verno and BuildingCTGreen.com as well as assistant director of public affairs for the Connecticut Business & Industry Association (CBIA), says there are varying shades of “green” in Connecticut — much of it concentrated in the New Haven area.

PHOTOGRAPH:

H

ave you ever thought about what becomes of all the stuff you accumulate? You move into a house, think you’ll never possibly fill it up and next thing you know, you’re tripping over furniture and other “had-to haves.”

Save the Sound’s Chris Cryder works to restore salt marshes and help spawning fish make their way up rivers. new haven

19

Steve Blazo PHOTOGRAPH:

When it comes to expertise in alternative vehicle fuels, the Clean Cities Coalition’s Grannis has the market pretty much cornered.

responsible way,” says Zane. The building will include a large eight-foot wheel as part of the building’s distinctive designs. But instead of functioning solely as an ornament, the wheel will actually turn and function as a wind generator that will help power the bike shop. “We think it’s a creative way to emphasize our commitment to the environment, which as a bike company we certainly encourage people to get out and enjoy the outdoors,” Zane says.

The new design also call for a significant investment in solar panels that eventually will generate 60 percent of the shop’s power needs. The solar photovoltaic system consists of 120 panels and will produce 25,480 KW of electricity annually — roughly 30 to 40 percent of the new building’s total electrical requirements. It will remove the equivalent of 60,000 pounds of CO2 from the environment, and be the equivalent of planting 60 acres of trees per year.

Dave Simon, director of renewable energy at Aegis Electric, says early adopters like Zane’s Cycles are serving as catalysts for the growing renewable energy business in Connecticut by reducing their carbon footprints. In addition, Simon points out the existence of both federal and state

20

april 2008

rebates and credits available for renewable energy.

“The rivers are in good shape. I have other folks helping me,” Davis explains. He was working as a volunteer when he came upon Zane says that through a state program the job while working at Ben Haven, a he expects to recoup close to half of his home and school for autistic children and $100,000 investment in the solar project, adults. “I helped one of the adults, David and may also get tax credit help from the Burgess, clean up a river and that’s how it federal program. With those incentives, began,” he says. Davis volunteered for ten Zane said he expects to start free and clear years before the city took him on as a paid on energy use after just seven years. employee.

The 8,000-square-foot building is expected Much of his work is done by boat during to be completed in the fall. warmer months. Taking city children for “Blue is the new green,” Ney says. “We’ve canoe rides in the warmer weather is one got a great new focus on water and of his favorite parts of the job. “It makes carbon and have many green teams in the it worth it seeing the kids when they’re in communities around us.” the canoe. It’s a nice experience for them,” he says.

Green — or blue, for that matter — doesn’t just happen without human intervention.

Davis enjoys the experience also.

Peter Davis, New Haven’s official “It’s nice to see the wildlife come back,” he Riverkeeper, has been cleaning the city’s says. “Now I see great blue herons, egrets, three rivers by hand for 20 years. Has he pomerants and many other forms of noticed any changes over the years? Sure — wildlife.” but it’s only because he’s still hard at work.

People like Davis — with his contagious He’s retrieved cars, shopping carts, bicycles enthusiasm, even after a week at work and even trash bags filled with asbestos in freezing temperatures — are vital to from the Mill River, which flows through the Greening of New Haven. So are the East Rock Park, as well as the West River, individuals profiled below. near the Ella T. Grasso Boulevard, and the Quinnipiac River in Fair Haven.

THE GREEN TEAM The Big Wheel

L

ee Grannis is executive director of the Greater New Haven Clean Cities Coalition, which works locally and nationwide on economic and environmental issues related to energy.

Clean Cities carries out this mission through a network of more than 89 volunteer groups which develop public and private partnerships to promote alternative fuels and vehicles, fuel blends, fuel economy, hybrid vehicles and idle reduction.

and slow-fill it. They’re not taking off so well in Connecticut because, according to Grannis, for now they’re sold as a fleet vehicle. But he does see the consumer market heading there soon.

Over the next three or so years, a plug-in hybrid that runs on a lithium-ion battery will be hot. Not “hot” as in likely to explode, as some computer lithium batteries have been known to do. This technology will allow the average commuter to drive to work and possibly home without starting

the vehicle’s internal combustion engine.

Currently, hybrids run on nickel metal hydride (NiMH) batteries and they only get two or three miles.

Grannis is positively giddy about this car that plugs in with a normal 110V plug, typically overnight during off-peak electricity hours.

Grannis was stoked over the recent signing of the first formal appropriations in the energy arena in two years. $2.2 billion was earmarked by the U.S. Department of

What does that mean? It means that Grannis is hitting on all cylinders, cruising on bio-fuel. He’s Connecticut’s expert on all things clean transportation and is frequently consulted by other cities across the country to assist their clean-car efforts.

In Connecticut, Grannis sees bio-diesel as the cleanest option for diesel vehicles.

Other options include ethanol, natural gas and electric cars.

Mandated by the Energy Policy Act of 1992, the state was required to have 75 percent of its light vehicle fleet running on alternative fuels by 2001. Beginning on January 1 of this year, at least 50 percent of all cars and light-duty trucks purchased or leased by the state must be alternative fuel, hybrid electric or plug-in electric vehicles.

The state opted for ethanol, but costs related to its transportation restrict the use of ethanol by the general public.

(Transporting ethanol requires a dedicated pipeline; it can’t be run with other fuels since it is alcohol-based and will absorb water and other fuels.) So for now it has to be carried in its own rail cars and tanker trucks, but in a couple of years, Grannis believes we’ll be seeing many more ethanol pumps at gas stations, which are now required by law to permit the sale of biofuel.

As far as the automobiles themselves, Grannis raves about the Honda Civic GX, calling it the world’s cleanest vehicle. It is a dedicated natural gas car that gets 250 miles per tank. It’s not the most convenient, since natural gas for personal cars is available to the public at just three locations in Connecticut: Hartford’s Brainard Airport, Santa Energy in Bridgeport and at a station in Norwich. At around $2 per gas gallon equivalent, this option adds about $3,000 to the sticker price of the Honda.

Homeowners with a natural gas line to their house can hook the car up overnight

Everything You Already Love about the Shoreline Plus the Security of Life Care Always stirring, never stuffy, the favored retirement lifestyle of the Shoreline awaits you at Evergreen Woods. Enjoy maintenance-free, amenity-rich living plus future health care security – and asset protection – through the refundable life care plan.

• Minutes from the shoreline • Security of Life Care • Convenient to New Haven cultural activities • Largest apartments in the area • Friendly and active atmosphere • Active community involvement • Superior dining • Indoor pool and spa

Call today for details!

203-488-8000

• Club room and private event rooms

88 Notch Hill Road, North Branford, CT 06471 www.EvergreenWoods.com

Supporting Your Parents Through the Retirement Maze Tuesday, April 29 • 6:30 PM new haven

21

Steve Blazo

The Tree Hugger

J

PHOTOGRAPH:

effrey Ward is chief scientist and station forester for the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station’s Department of Forestry and Horticulture in New Haven.

For almost 21 years, he’s worked in forest ecology, studying how forests change with time.

It doesn’t take a profound appreciation for all things green to think his work is really cool. He’s working on research that was started in 1926, following the same 46,000 trees, how they’ve grown, how they’ve died and what diseases they have survived or succumbed to.

“It’s really cool to look at an oak that you know was three inches in diameter back in the ‘20s and now the tree is 20 inches in diameter,” Ward says.

Trees are his friends. He even counts the field mice and sometimes deer as his buddies, too. His biggest enemy is Japanese barberry, an invasive species in the woods. He is using organic methods of controlling it, such as propane torches, as well as synthetic herbicides. Both methods are effective in controlling the invader, but on some properties including watersheds, in parks or where there may be people who are sensitive to herbicides, he sticks with the propane.

Removing the barberry actually has the potential to diminish an illness many Connecticut residents rightfully fear: Lyme disease.

Out standing in his field: Like Dr. Suess’ Lorax, Jeffrey Ward speaks for the trees.

Energy for energy supply and conservation, with $1.5 billion of that for energy efficiency and renewables. Grannis is seeing green for bio-mass (ethanol and diesel) , hydrogen and battery technology and also for idle reduction.

He knows that many observers are concerned with bio-fuels causing food prices to rise, since in the case of bio-diesel the primary component is soy.

“We had a major drought in the South last year and soybean and corn prices went through the ceiling,” explains Grannis. “In the case of corn, everybody is complaining that corn is causing food prices to go up, but much of corn goes toward making fructose, 22

april 2008

“We wondered why the barberry was increasing the number of ticks,” he says.

He sampled the local mouse population and found that there were indeed increased numbers of them because the barberry gives them great protection from predators and also provides them with a steady source of food (the berries) . The acorns and maple which a lot of us can do without.” seeds that fall through the barberry are easy for the mice to get to before the deer Right now the University of Connecticut and turkey find them. as well as the federal departments of agriculture and energy are doing a lot Ward concluded: “Because there are more of work on getting cellulosic ethanol to mice, and mice are the primary host for market. This will take corn out of the the first two stages of a deer tick’s life equation, since Swiss grass, tree bark and cycle, there were 60 percent more ticks in corn stalks will be used. Grannis knows the areas with barberry than in an adjacent big holdup is in the price of the enzymes forest without barberry. This is the species used to break cellulose down. of ticks that transport Lyme disease, and if we can control this invasive species “The other issue that people are talking of plant there is a potential to control or about is the energy it takes to make a reduce Lyme disease.” gallon of ethanol,” says Grannis. “Though many people have said it takes more energy In the forests, there are plenty of invasive to make it than it produces, I don’t believe plants that pose a threat to trees, but it is it. It’ll come.” fauna, not flora, that are doing a job on

new growth — deer eat the regeneration and seedlings. According to Ward, forests in some areas look like parks because there is no tree regeneration.

Though not plush with forests, New Haven — the Elm City—has a long history of disease to its namesake. Dutch elm disease, a fungus, wiped out much of New Haven’s population of elm trees in the 1950s.

The city has also lost many American chestnuts because of disease. According to Ward, “What’s really sad is that it’s just a matter of time before we lose a lot of our ash because of an insect: the emerald ash borer. We stand the chance of losing 8,000 trees. It’s already killed 12 million trees in Michigan, Ontario, Illinois, Ohio, Indiana, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Maryland.”

Ash trees account for three percent of all trees in the forest and about 3.5 percent of street trees in Connecticut.

Ward’s typical day is to get to the forest with his team at 7:45 a.m. and start measuring trees, but since he has become chief scientist, he has to spend more time than he’d like behind the computer.

“In the forest, the sunshine on your face in the winter is just so beautiful,” he says. “It’s not real exciting work, but it is very calm and tranquil. You can be frustrated after a day in the office, but once you get into the woods, you feel so refreshed. The birds and mice will wander right up to us. Deer will walk right up to us and get spooked because they’re not expecting to see us.

NEW HAVEN’S PREMIER PLASTIC SURGERY CENTER & MEDSPA

• Laser Hair Removal • BOTOX® Cosmetic • Restylane® • Vein Therapy • Microdermabrasion • Chemical Peels • Clinical Facials • IPL Photo Facials • Cosmetic Surgery

SAVE UP TO $300 IPL Photo Facials or Laser Hair Removal Packages

BEST FACIAL BEST COSMETIC SURGERY Deborah Pan, MD & Javier Davila, MD — Plastic and Reconstructive Surgeons

1 AUDUBON ST • NEW HAVEN • 203.562.7662 • ESANAMEDSPA.COM

“There’s nothing more natural than watching how trees grow year after year and to hear the wind whistling through trees. The forest is one of those things that many people don’t think about until you’re out there. You get the sunshine and shelter from the wind in the cool weather and in the warmer months, you get the shade from the trees. It’s perfect.”

Follow the LEEDer

R

ussell Campaigne, a principal of the Guilford architectural firm Campaigne & Kestner, noticed that many of his clients were becoming increasingly concerned about energy costs. So he made himself an expert on sustainable building and has great advice for his clients who care about the environmental impacts of residential building.

Campaigne built the first Leadership in Environment & Energy Design (LEED) certified house in Connecticut in South new haven

23

Steve Blazo PHOTOGRAPH:

Architect Campaigne (with wife and partner Mary Jo Kestner) says building energy efficiency into new homes can pay off quicker than many believe.

Glastonbury, a craftsman-style bungalow called the Tall Timbers.

To qualify for LEED certification, a home’s construction must meet criteria pertaining to site selection, site impact, environmental impact, efficiency and durability.

higher quality, requires less maintenance and can afford homeowners as much as a 50percent savings on energy costs compared to an oil or other fossil fuel system.

Geo-thermal systems use a ground-source heat pump that puts water through tubing into the ground to extract heat in the winter and release heat in the summer.

you start over again, that’s about the worst thing you can do,” Campaigne says. “Very cost-effectively, you can use cement-based siding and solid PVC trim and higher-grade flashing and roofing materials and you can see those paybacks on one paint cycle on an exterior finish. There might be a bit more cost up front, but the lower maintenance will result in a return on investment much quicker.”

“Sustainability” is a broad term, but there has also been a broadening of the public consciousness and understanding of all “Some of the homes built in the 1980s were things green. not built well and people feel the only But a sense of ethical responsibility to solution is to tear them down and start “Every client is different as far as how they the earth needs to extend beyond homefrom scratch,” Campaigne says. “That’s a justify their choices from a practical level builders and -buyers. very short life for a building.” with cost-benefit analysis and return on “Realtors, appraisers and banks need to see investment,” Campaigne says. “Some of In Connecticut one sees plenty of structures the value of reduced energy costs in homes our clients are trying to minimize their that are 200 or 300 years old and continue and pass that feedback to speculative impact on the environment, but the vast to be serviceable because they were built builders,” says Campaigne.

“The majority are looking for practical feedback to sustain. Those homes were built on a investment that a speculative builder has on the available technologies to see how nice-sized piece of property, close to town to make to bring a home up to sustainable they make sense with long-term payback.” centers. They were built for multiple levels is quite low, and I wish Realtors and generations and with a vision for the future He advises clients that many good appraisers would see the same value I see.” (see story, page 33). building practices are easily justified with Campaigne points to the stark contrast a short-term (less than five years) payoff “We look to very traditional detailing between the West Coast — where some period. About 90 percent of homes he has because we want a home to be around for 30 percent of new homes are Energy Starbuilt in the last three years have utilized a long time,” Campaigne explains. “Adding certified — and here, where the number is geo-thermal heating systems, which over size for no purpose is one of the least closer to 23 percent. Given the relatively the past five years have made substantial sustainable things you can do. [Until] the high education of home-buyers in Connadvances in functionality and affordability. early 1900s, people thought they were going ecticut, the architect is amazed that more This broader market segment means the to pass their homes on to their children. people aren’t seeing the value in the market. equipment has better performance with “Once a house ends up in a landfill and Instead of looking back, Campaigne looks 24

april 2008

ahead, noting on the positive side that Connecticut has one of the highest rates of photovoltaic (PV) production and deployment.

“That is very seductive with a house that has a geothermal system, and people like the statement that PV array makes,” he says. So, looking toward the day where photovoltaic energy is more available and affordable, Campaigne designs the feature into homes, allowing for installation at a later date.

Water Works

T

here is one question that Save the Sound’s Chris Cryder finds himself answering over and over: Why? Why do you work so hard to make sure fish swim in the right direction or to remove dams that were built in Colonial times?

The program Cryder oversees, the Habitat Restoration Program, focuses on Long Island Sound and the habitat that nourishes it. His work involves salt marsh restoration and the removal of fish blockages.

But why?

The answer is simple: “There are migrating fish called diadromous fish that go from salt water to fresh water to spawn, and there are over 7,000 obstructions that we humans have built in Connecticut since Colonial times that obstruct the fish passage.”

opening up small culverts, or pipelines, built under roads or railroad tracks that allow better tidal flow to upland marshes.

He also restores stream banks by eradicating invasive species and replanting native trees and shrubs.

Okay. So what do we do? We don’t do “Over time, humans have not always been anything, but Cryder and his staff build wise in their development and as a result, fish ladders, which help the fish navigate have impaired or [destroyed] habitat,” obstructions. Sometimes he removes old explains Cryder. “The habitat that was dams, but that can be much more difficult once accessible to wildlife is no longer to do. Cryder also works on restoring tidal there.” flow to rivers and streams where it has been restricted through development in urban About 30 percent of the Connecticut’s areas. As a flood-protection measure, towns original salt marshes no longer exist due and cities often build one-way flapper gates to development or removal and dredging that do not allow the natural rhythm of the of wetlands. tide of salt water to come upstream. North “Fish species rely on those salt marshes for (in Connecticut) of those one-way flapper habitat and spawning,” he says. “We are gates, the habitat becomes degraded in the restoring habitat as much as we can so that absence of the flushing and the cleansing we can make Long Island Sound and its effect of the tide. coastal areas improved.”

In addition, explains Cryder, some plant He also oversees stewardship programs, or species that depend on that tidal flow restoration projects in which Cryder tries are damaged and more prone to invasive to get the public involved and engaged. species. Certain animals that have relied on the natural habitat no longer have it, so “We have a ‘Save the Sound’ program that is he works on trying to enhance tidal flow responsible for coordinating international by installing self-regulating tidal gates or Continued on 77

203.387.CAMP (2267)

www.holidayhilldaycamp.com

ACA Accredited, for boys and girls, 4 through 13 whimsical toys home decor • Judaica • jewelry •

funky art

203–389–5865 muffysroom.com

for kids’ rooms

Programs Include: Swimming, Archery, Team Sports, Low Ropes, Rock Wall, Arts &Crafts, Newspaper, Ceramics, Nature, Boating, Tennis, Cooking, Woodworking, Horseback Riding and more.

• murals & name/initial paintings •

• portraits & decorative paintings •

•

We’ve Been Waiting For You

Just one mile from 1-95 • Exit 59 575 Clapboard Hill Road

All Ages, All Levels, All Year

www.grsriding.com (203) 453-8768 new haven

25

Building Supplies

Clean Bodies

Center for Green Building’s Measure for Measure — Green building materials including cotton insulation, lighting, organic paint, countertops made of recycled glass and other supplies. 3380 Fairfield Ave., Bridgeport, 203-382-0774, measureformeasurehome.com.

Sunflower Farm — Handmade lotions, balms and soap from soybean, olive, castor, hemp, palm, coconut, olive, avocado, sweet almond and grapeseed oils, shea butter, monoi de tahiti, with goat milk or coconut cream. 767 Derby Milford Rd., Orange, 203-795-6829, sunflowerfarm.com.

Urban Miners — Reuses and recycles building materials from deconstruction. 39 Oregon Ave., Hamden, 203-824-1724, urbanminers.com.

Trudy & Sage Goat Milk Soaps — Made at the Bourt Family Homestead in Milford, allnatural soaps come in various

BellaFuchsia 1008 S. Main St Cheshire, CT 203-272-8353 12 Lasalle Road West Hartford, CT 860-523-0107

www.bellafuchsia.com

shapes such as stars and hearts.

Lip balm, laundry soap, hand cream and bath accessories are also created here. goatmilksoaps@sbcglobal.net, trudyandsagegoatmilksoaps. com.

Voda Natural Soaps and Herbal Bodycare — Made in New Haven, Voda’s luxurious soaps are sold in the finest shops across the country. Deeply scented, visually appealing, healing on many levels, and naturally, all natural. vodasoap. com.

west meets east

LA + NYC fashions

dare to be forward

Clean Home Seaside Naturals — Branford company develops and manufactures comprehensive line of non-toxic cleaning and personal care products under the brand name Simple Pure Clean. Natural cleaning products made for cleaning bathrooms, hardwood floors, glass, laundry and even yoga mats are all natural, non toxic, biodegradable, earth-, kid- and pet-friendly and made from sustainable resources. 203-4837777, simplepureclean.com.

Guilford White House

fl orist

florals & botanicals guilfordwhitehouseflorist.com 203-453-2122 • 1-800-342-2330 966 Boston Post Rd • Guilford

we fit • we alter • we care

Smiles By Design Jack M. Levine, D.D.S.

375 Orange St • New Haven

203-624-7571 www.orangestreetsmiles.com 26

april 2008

Don’t feel like a misfit because you’ve been misfit. We can help!

Bras from 30AA to 56J Lingerie • Gifts • Sleepwear

• 203-795-5592 • Largest Post-Breast Surgery Fitter in CT

185 Boston Post Road • Orange, CT

Stylin’ Green GG2G — Handbags and accessories made from recycled materials such as billboard vinyl and vintage or designer fabrics. Billboards are found, cut and washed locally. All fabric is either recycled or organic. 2 Eld Street, New Haven 203-6406159 gg2g.com.

Eat and Drink Green Ahimsa Vegan Organic Restaurant — One of the first in New Haven, this all-vegan eatery features a full menu of appetizers, soups, salads, entrées and desserts. 1227 Chapel St., New Haven, 203786-4774, ahimsainc.com.

Thyme & Season Natural Market — Natural foods store offers quality fresh, natural, organic and whole foods, nutritional products and health information. Web site offers hundreds of recipes and a comprehensive reference library. 3040 Whitney Ave., Hamden, 203-407-8128, thyme andseasonnaturalmarket.com.

GreenDrinks — Every second Wednesday of the month, Fairfield County GreenDrinks provides an opportunity to network, brainstorm and socialize about local and global environmental issues. A Hartford group is being organized. Organic and all natural drinks are featured. 203-470-8020, info@ ctgreenscene.org.

Green at Work Bristol Meyers Squibb — The Wallingford facility of this pharmaceutical company tracks and measures energy usage, air emissions, waste, water use (all of which have seen substantial decreases since 2004). Corporationwide, employee training, literature and meetings

offered to encourage staff to help company meet its environmental goals. bms. com/ehs.

We Have You Covered!

Green at School Branford High School — Recently installed a natural gas-fired tri-generation system, which allows the school to generate its own heat, air conditioning and hot water.

The PureComfort system provides ultra-clean combined cooling, heating and power and enables the school to double as an emergency shelter by having an on-site power source capable of gridindependent operation.

Barnard Magnet School — This Derby Avenue school houses New Haven’s first commercial solar power system in the region and is one of the largest in New England. The LEED-certified “green” environmental studies interdistrict magnet school features two classes per grade (pre-K-8), solar power and other energy efficiencies as well as close proximity to a river for environmental curriculum purposes.

Health Insurance

Dental Insurance

Medicare Advantage

Long Term Care

Life Insurance

Long Term Disability

Insurance Solutions with the Buying Power of Connecticut’s Chambers of Commerce • Pre-Tax Plans • HSA Accounts • HRA Health Reimbursement Arrangements

SM

800.953.4467 • www.citrust.com 203.795.9756 ext. 14

Green Thumb Blackberry Ridge Landscaping — Uses all organic compost tea and mulch application.

Consulting, design, installation, maintenance and restoration are also offered. 69 Lebanon Rd., Bethany. 203-393-1010, marc.hannon@blackberry ridgelandscapingllc.com.

Down to Earth Organic Land Care — Treats greater New Haven lawns with organic fertilizing and pest care. Bethany landscaper Jeff Sullo uses compost tea, which is exactly what it sounds like: fertilizer brewed from compost. 203-393-7318, downtoeartholc.com.

new haven

27

28

april 2008

Anthony DeCarlo PHOTOGRAPHS:

Stained glass adorns the chapel at the Legion novitiate in Cheshire, which educates priests in training.

By Liese Klein

W

PHOTOGRAPHS:

Anthony DeCarlo

ith his fresh-faced looks and “I love my life here, “ Simpson says. “This on the future and cracking open its doors restless energy, Christopher is how I feel I can best be of service.” to the outside world.

Simpson seems like he’d be The Cheshire seminary, which houses 170 “Here is a center of thriving life,” says Fr. right at home on Yale’s squash courts or in young men in training to be priests, along Owen Kearns, resident of the Cheshire a Southern lecture hall. with a retreat center in Orange and a North seminary and editor of the Legion’s But instead of loading his iPod and updating Haven publishing operation, makes New National Catholic Register newspaper, based his Facebook page, 19-year-old Simpson Haven County one of the world centers of in North Haven. is finishing up his first year of intensive the Legionaries of Christ.

“The church is alive, the church is young,” classical studies in the all-male confines The group, also known as the Legion, has Kearns continues, gesturing toward of the Legionaries of Christ Novitiate in been actively locally for decades, but long Simpson and two other priests-in-training.

Cheshire. Simpson lives in a tiny cubicle shunned publicity. It received notice in the “Young people are finding the answer to and spends much of his day in silence secular media only when a decades-old sex their search; they’re finding an answer here and prayer. The goal: ordination into the scandal erupted in the late 1990s. and it’s contagious, it’s growing.” priesthood in a decade or so and lifetime membership in one the Catholic Church’s Now, with the death of the Legion’s newest and most controversial orders. founder in January, the group is focusing

Students observe the Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament ritual in half-hour shifts all day at the chapel in the Cheshire seminary.

new haven

29

The young men at the Cheshire seminary come from all over the country, many drawn by Legion of Christ youth programs in college or high school. A dozen international students and nine priests also live at the facility.

Allan Wirfel, 29, of Pennsylvania, is a typical student, one of eight children from a very observant Catholic family.

Although he contemplated a career in law enforcement, Wirfel first thought of the priesthood in high school and following college decided to join the Legion.

“I was searching for something a little deeper,” Wirfel says. “Living in community, you realize how special that life is.”

Community life at the Cheshire seminary begins at 5:45 a.m. with prayer, then mass at 7:30. After breakfast the students perform chores, then go to class. Students in the two-year novitiate program focus their studies on spirituality, reading Christian writers and contemplating the spiritual side of Catholicism.

Students in a second program housed in Cheshire study liberal arts at the college level, with a focus on Latin, Greek and literature. Pending a vote by the state legislature this year, the school will soon be able to award associate’s degrees.

About a third of a student’s day is spent in prayer, with silence and reflection encouraged even at mealtimes.

This strict regimen, modeled on seminary life in the 1950s, is the best way to form future priests, argued the founder of the Legion, Father Marcial Maciel. Born in 1920 into a prominent Mexican family, Maciel began organizing his own religious order when he was in his 20s, convinced that priests needed more intensive education and training.

Father Owen Kearns publishes the Legion’s North Haven-based newspaper, which goes out to 35,000 subscribers around the world.

A mile or so off Whitney Avenue in Cheshire, a stone’s throw from the Farmington Canal Trail, runs Oak Avenue, a quiet street lined on the east side by new developments. To the west, your first glimpse of something unusual is a series of soccer nets lining a field, then a small sign announcing the Legion of Christ Novitiate.

Go up a winding driveway shadowed by trees, past an artificial pond, and a 1960s-era building rises in front of you. A few statues

30

april 2008

of the Virgin Mary and a Latin inscription at the door are the only signs you’ve stumbled upon a religious institution, not an unusually quiet regional high school.

The quiet continues inside, into an echoing entrance hall and along spotless hallways lined with classrooms. Inside a chapel three young men sit in the pews for the Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, a ceremony observed all day by students in half-hour shifts.

Maciel’s focus was on reaching the elite — businesspeople and the wealthy — in order to influence society as a whole. Starting in his home country, Maciel attracted some of Mexico’s richest families to his fledgling order, prompting critics to call his movement “Millionaires of Christ.”

Maciel’s ambitions and quick rise in the Vatican also drew fire from some in the church hierarchy, which accused him of operating a parallel church. At various times American bishops have banned Legion activities in cities including Minneapolis and Columbus, Ohio.

The criticism exploded in 1997, when the Hartford Courant published a series alleging that Maciel had sexually abused young

boys from the 1940s through 1960s in Spain and Italy. Maciel said he was innocent of the charges.

More allegations followed the Courant’s stories and the Vatican began an investigation, which ended in 2006 with a statement that Maciel had been ordered to end his public ministry and spend his life in “prayer and penitence.”

Maciel died January 30 in Mexico at the age of 87, still maintaining his innocence.

Controversy has continued to surround the order, however, with disgruntled former members coalescing around an organization called Regain. The Legion sued Regain last August for posting letters from Maciel and internal documents on its Web site. The suit is ongoing.

“No group in the church has ever sued its ex-members; it’s totally unheard of,” says Glenn Favreau of Regain. “The Legion is too obsessed with secrecy.”

Favreau, 44, now a lawyer in Washington, D.C., was a Legion member for 14 years and spent two years at the Cheshire seminary.

He never took vows as priest but served the group as a “brother” in Spain, Chile and Italy.

During those years Favreau says he was isolated from his family and felt pressured to remain in the group even though he had lost faith in its leaders. He says he never saw any sign of sexual misconduct in the Legion, but felt the group was oppressive and cult-like.

Favreau joined with other ex-members to form Regain in 2000. “It grew through our desire to help people who had left, who are traumatized, who are abused, and inform the public exactly what this group is like,” he says.

Presenting 451 Grand Ave, New Haven

203-562-5601

Ernest Byar – Kitchen Designer – Direct Line: 773-3660

Fairfield University School of Engineering Undergraduate and Graduate Degree Programs For Part-time Students BACHELOR OF SCIENCE • Computer Engineering • Electrical Engineering • Software Engineering

“Those years are wasted in my life and I’d like them back,” Favreau says of his time in the Legion. “I wish no one would have to go through it again.”

(Keogh says he never saw any hint of sexual abuse or improper conduct by Maciel

• Mechanical Engineering • Mechanical with concentration in Automated Manufacturing

MASTER OF SCIENCE • Electrical and Computer Engineering • Mechanical Engineering

Jack Keogh, a Trumbull businessman, was in the Legion for 20 years and says the group has overly strict rules and can alienate members from their families.

“They don’t make it easy to leave,” Keogh says. “There’s a huge amount of psychological pressure.” Pressure to stay in the group came both from Legion leaders and his peers, he adds. “We felt like we were the Navy SEALs or the commandos — the elite.”

Armstrong Cabinets was Ranked “Highest in Customer Satisfaction with Cabinets” by J.D. Power and Associates.

• Management of Technology • Software Engineering

CERTIFICATES • Automated Manufacturing • Information Security Applications • Network Technologies • Web Applications Development

Apply Now!

Summer Term Starts May 19

For graduate programs: Online: www.fairfield.edu/grad Toll-free (888) 488-6840 or (203) 254-4184 For part-time undergraduate programs: Online: www.fairfield.edu/engineering (203) 254-4147 E-mail: acastelot@mail.fairfield.edu

Fairfield, Connecticut

new haven

31

during his years in the Legion.)

On the positive side, Keogh says that he was impressed by Maciel’s “big thinking” about the place of the religion in the modern world.

“I think they’re one of the most significant forces in the Catholic Church,” Keogh says.

The Legion’s ability to mobilize lay people and the young offers hope for a church that has lost its foothold in the developed world, he adds.

In Mexico, where Keogh conducts much of his business, the Legion has helped shape a new generation of leaders more open to improving conditions for the country’s poor, he says.

“There’s a vibrancy,” Keogh says of the Legion’s activities. “That story is not told.”

For the young men now training to be priests in Cheshire, the Legion offers an appealing alternative to secular life.

“The Legion, they believe they’re part of something,” a priest from another order told Wirfel, one of the priests-in-training in Cheshire. “They have a mission.”

That mission now has 750 priests worldwide and 3,000 young men in training to be priests, compared to just 210 Legion priests worldwide in 1990. The group’s annual budget tops $650 million, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Three Legion priests have been named bishops, key positions in the Catholic Church leadership, and one of those bishops serves in a top post at the church’s headquarters at the Vatican.

A Legion priest, Fr. Jonathan Morris, has even become the public face of Catholicism on Fox News Channel.

The Legion’s subsidiary for laypeople, Regnum Christi, has 10,000 members in the U.S. and 70,000 worldwide, according to spokesman Jim Fair. The Legion is active in 22 countries, focusing on schools, youth groups and family programs.

“We basically try to serve whatever the needs of the church are locally,” Fair says.

“We look at all phases of people’s lives.”

The Legion continues to grow in developed countries even as the larger Catholic Church reels from sexual abuse scandals — payouts to victims in the U.S. topped a record $526 million last year.

32

april 2008

Christopher Simpson entered a Legionaries of Christ boarding school at 12 and at 19 is now in his first year of college-level studies.

The Legion’s appeal to laypeople has made Christmas Catholic” but was drawn to it among a small group of modern Catholic religious life during college after meeting movements that continue to flourish, several young and dynamic Legion priests. among them Opus Dei. The conservative “It’s something I never really thought about politics and secrecy of the groups have also growing up, something I never really attracted critics — Opus Dei was the villain wanted for myself,” Richardson says. His in Dan Brown’s 2003 blockbuster bestseller family and friends have since come to The Da Vinci Code. support his decision and now seek him out For priest-in-training Ryan Richardson, 27, for advice on personal problems. his family initially greeted his decision to “Finally I’ve found what God made me to join the Legion with skepticism. He grew do,” Richardson says. “Never in my life up in New Orleans as an “Easter-andhave I been more happy.” v

Everything Old Is

New Again

By Michael C. Bingham

Lindsay told her decorator, ‘Give me a dining room that matches my dishes.’

And she did.

PHOTOGRAPHS:

Steve Blazo

new haven

33

L

iving at the time in Bridgeport and searching for a new home in the suburbs, Ann Lindsay and her thenhusband made a very simple financial calculation: “There was about a $100,000 difference between the same house in Fairfield vs. Stratford.”

So the couple found a 1769 Georgian-style saltbox, known locally as the Stephen Frost House, in Stratford’s historic Academy Hill neighborhood, along what a nearby marker identifies as the very first post road connecting Boston and New York. The couple paid $220,000 for the home in 1990.

Like the neighborhood that surrounds it, the house has a rich history. Built by Frost, the home remained in his family until 1821. In the late 19th century it was home to Mrs. Imogene O. Brown, a well known singer of the era who hosted celebrated concerts that brought metropolitan talent to the (then) sleepy town along the Housatonic. In 1983 the property was listed by the U.S. Department of the Interior as a contributing property on the National Register of Historic Places.

“I had always had an interest in historic homes,” Lindsay explains. “I had just gotten married and the first house I bought was a grand 1895 Victorian with turrets, wraparound porches and stained glass.”

“So we saw this house,” recalls Lindsay, who is a professional image consultant who works with male clients. “Our appraiser called it ‘deferred maintenance.’” The condition of the house? “It was baaaad,” she says with a laugh. “It was fierce. The yard had been completely overgrown for maybe 60 years. It was a jungle — we had to get a backhoe in here.”

That was only the beginning.

“The house hadn’t been painted in decades,” she says. “No one had cared for the architectural integrity of the house” that sits squarely in the middle of a federal and municipal historic district. “There was an aluminum storm door screwed onto what was an original [wooden] front door.

There was a Mexican tile bathroom that had been installed on the second floor. The whole thing brought to mind a term from [the PBS television series] This Old House — ‘remuddled.’ Not remodeled; remuddled.’”

Lindsay at home with her two teenage sons, Douglas (left) and David.

to jack the house up on two sides to replace sills — just one of many huge projects.”

how to maintain that pool without [the water] being green or pink or orange.”

Even seemingly benign features posed new and vexing problems.

In addition to the pool, the property features a lovely two-story carriage house with a newer addition that the previous owners had used as an entertainment room and Lindsay and her family remade as a workshop. The structure, probably used originally as a barn, dates from the Civil War era as well.

Soon to be starting a family (today she has two teenage boys) , Lindsay was excited that the home had an in-ground pool, with accompanying brick deck and poolhouse.

It gets better. “We had to replace major The excitement soon evaporated. structural elements,” says Lindsay. “Sills “It took me literally ten years to figure out With structural work well under way, — when someone says ‘sills’ you think the swimming pool,” she says. “Never, Lindsay says, “We had to live in a state of window sills. No — sills are the huge ever buy a house with a swimming pool — of deferred visual maintenance because wooden timbers that sit upon the rock always make friends with people that have we were spending all our time and energy foundation that actually are the first level houses with swimming pools,” she adds doing the structural things that needed to that your house is built up on. So we had with a laugh. “It took me a decade to learn be done just to preserve the house. It wasn’t 34

april 2008

The Kitchen Factor showcases the highest quality cabinets and hardware available in the market today. Our knowledgeable design associates will help you explore a wealth of design ideas in our beautiful showrooms. We can help homebuilders and homeowners choose custom features that will make their new home unique and distinctively their own. We are committed to providing value and world class customer service to all our customers. We look forward to working with you, as we promise to fulďŹ ll all of your interior needs.

Call or visit The Kitchen Factor nearest you today!

East Haven, CT 193 Silver Sands Rd. 203.469.7601 Glastonbuy, CT 2333 Main St. 860.663.2275 www.stockbuildingsupply.com www.kitchenfactor.com

new haven

35

The north parlor of the Stephen Frost house (pictured) is still used as a parlor, while its southern sibling is now a dining room.

until we had lived here 12 years — in 2002 — that we had the time and the income to begin to do the [interior] beautification work that you see here now — the pretty things.”

of the house is that I have some beautiful [antique] pieces,” Lindsay says, showing a visitor through the downstairs. She’s not really bragging — she chalks her good fortune up to being a third-generation (at least on her mother’s side) only child, so she never had to compete with siblings for the previous generation’s estate goodies.

Today Lindsay’s home is graced by some “My mother was an antiques collector,” very pretty things indeed. Last December Lindsay says, pointing to oriental rugs and it drew oohs and aahs as one of five historic other finery. “So I’m very lucky I have so neighborhood homes featured on a house much neat stuff.” tour event that benefited the Sterling Lindsay’s most prized piece is a magnificent House Community Center. cherry corner cupboard that was built for “The niftiest thing visually about this part her grandmother’s grandmother’s wedding 36

april 2008

in Lebanon County, Pa., around or perhaps shortly before the Civil War. A second prized heirloom is a lovingly preserved quilt hand-woven in 1851 by Marie Heilman, Lindsay’s great-great-greatgrandmother as a gift for her daughter.

Her family’s heritage is likewise commemorated along the expansive wall of the front staircase. Along it Lindsay has fastidiously arranged old photographs and other images of her ancestors, divided by paternal and maternal ancestors and artfully grouped by generation. “It’s very meaningful to me,” she says with pride. “I like it alot.”

&$53(7 +$5':22' 9,1</ /$0,1$7( 7,/( $1' 025(

<28j// /29( 7+( :$< <285 1(: )/225 /22.6 25 :( // 5(3/$&( ,7 )5((r

ĹşÇ&#x2018;

ĹşÇ&#x2018;Ó&#x201A; T

$0< :<11 3$6725 79 +RVW +RPH 'HVLJQ ([SHUW

r6HH VWRUH IRU GHWDLOV

2 TOELLES RD, WALLINGFORD | 203-269-7761 | www.carpetone.com/nhct

Beginning in 2002 Lindsay began major redecorating in earnest, working with Valerie and Rob GrifďŹ n of Creative Wall Designs in Stratford.

The south front parlor that today serves as a dining room was redecorated in a paleblue and gold scheme to match Lindsayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s 1930s-era china, handed down from her grandmother. â&#x20AC;&#x153;I told my decorator, â&#x20AC;&#x153;I want a dining room that goes with my dishes,â&#x20AC;? she says. â&#x20AC;&#x153;So she gave me one.â&#x20AC;?

An unusual feature of both front parlors are their ceilings covered with identical ivory patterned wallpaper. Yes, ceilings. â&#x20AC;&#x153;We did it for two reasons,â&#x20AC;? Lindsay explains. new haven

37

“This is a new ceiling,” she says of her present-day dining room, “so we wallpapered it to make it look old. And the ceiling in the parlor we did not replace, so we wallpapered it to make it look better.”

Lindsay spent years accumulating and then artfully organizing (by family and generation) old photos and images of her ancestors.

Lindsay’s son, 16-year-old David, studies by the wood burning stove in the cozy kitchen.

38

april 2008

cupboards distinctive to many original Connecticut Colonials “They’re all over this neighborhood,” notes Lindsay, who is past president of the Old Stratford Neighborhood Association and spearheaded the successful restoration of the town’s oldest extant homestead, the c. 1690 Perry House.

Some time during the Civil War era, the house underwent a very significant renovation. “Like all houses built around its time, So Lindsay certainly knows the house was built around a her history — and now she has massive chimney with flanking made some of her own. But one fireplaces in the front parlors,” question nags: If she knew in Lindsay explains. “By the time 1990s what she learned about her of the Civil War most of the home, and what it would take to rooms were heated with coal restore it — about $100,000 from stoves, so that massive chimney 1990 to the present — would was no longer used to heat the Lindsay do it all over again? house. So they removed it down “Absolutely,” she says without to the basement level.” hesitation. “The value to me Other renovations dating from of the charm of that historic the mid-19th century included property is incalculable. On the the installation of distinctive [Sterling House] house tour 150 diamond-pane windows, Vict- people came through my house orian sliding pocket doors and the week before Christmas and a beautiful porch on the home’s said they would die to own that south side that dates from 1907. house. Those are the moments that make old-house ownership Both front parlors also are so rewarding.” v graced by the built-in corner

Around the time of the Civil War, the giant chimney and hearth that were once the center of family life were removed and replaced by a smaller interior brick chimney and fireplace that now graces the living room.

“Serving the Shoreline Since 1939”

ADDITIONS • KITCHENS • DECKS COMPLETE RENOVATIONS

Hardware & Appliance Co.

BP

CONSTRUCTION

General Contractors

Hardware • Housewares • Appliances On the Green in Guilford

453-5267 • www.pagehardware.com

Specializing in complete restoration & remodeling CT LIC. 566206

203 230-9205 WHITNEY AVE, HAMDEN new haven

39

By Steven Scarpa

Betraying a 133-year legacy, Elm City faces its first season without pro baseball

40

april 2008

Despite the foibles of the Cutters, playing to mostly empty houses, and their predecessors the Ravens, whose yearly complaints about the unsuitability of Yale Field regularly made headlines in the local sports pages, the Elm City has a rich

In more recent memory Colorado Rockies star Todd Helton did an apprenticeship in New Haven. New York Yankees luminaries Derek Jeter and Andy Pettitte passed through Yale Field during their tour of the Eastern League, along with many other players who would make their marks on Major League Baseball.

But let’s go back to where it started, with pitchers throwing underhanded from 45 feet away, gloves years in the future and nine balls constituting a walk. Think barehanded fast-pitch softball for an idea of what a typical late 19th-century game looked like.

Over at Hamilton Park — now the location of a residential neighborhood off Pendleton Street near Yale Bowl — a group of professional ballplayers futilely tried to put New Haven on the map as a baseball community. The park, alternately known as Brewster Park and the Howard Avenue Grounds, was best known for horseracing and as the home of Yale’s powerful football team.

In 1875, for a grand sum of $10, New

Steve Blazo

David Solomon, veteran sportswriter for the New Haven Register, says he has lost faith that more than a small minority of New Haven-area residents care about minor-league baseball in the 21st century.

He thinks that in the beginning, back in 1994 when the New Haven Ravens came to town, there was a novelty factor

baseball heritage. Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig and Ted Williams played at Yale Field.

The Yankees had a farm team at Quigley Stadium in West Haven. The political dynasty known as the Bush family spent a good part of their collegiate days playing ball for Yale.

PHOTOGRAPH:

O

ne of the sublime delights of that brought people in, but nothing more. summer in New Haven used to be “Where baseball succeeds is where an entire a baseball game on a warm night county gets behind it,” Solomon says. at Yale Field. At dusk, when the ballpark Last October 30, the New Haven County lights had just begun to click aglow and Cutters, an entry in the Can-Am League, the heat of the day had broken, the sun one of the lowest rungs on the professional set behind the tree line past the tall green baseball ladder, announced that they would metal centerfield fence, a Ruthian blast cease operations immediately. The stated away. The sky was banded with orange, reason was that local sponsor support was red and purple as another long day whiled insufficient to sustain the club financially, itself away. but that was just one of the many faults In recent years, the park was seldom full, so baseball people found with the greater New one could hear the resonant sounds unique Haven area. to the ballfield between the cacophony of The list of shortcomings was endless: The piped-in music and shouting announcers ballpark is bad. The Yankees, Red Sox and — the click of a sharp grounder slashing Mets split fans’ allegiances. New Haven is across the infield grass. The snap-pop of a fundamentally an arts town. “I don’t think fastball exploding into the catcher’s mitt. anyone has the answer,” Solomon says.

The joyful thwack of hickory on horsehide.

“Every conventional way of promoting the The muffled chatter of the players as they team doesn’t work.” trot back and forth between the field, the bullpen and the dugout.

So, for the first time in over a decade, city residents have no professional baseball Too few people in New Haven County to look forward to — whether they were enjoyed that kind of summer evening to paying attention or not. keep professional baseball around town.

PHOTOGRAPH:

new haven

41

Steve Blazo

The original grandstand at Yale Field dates to the 1880s. The outfield was part of Yale’s football field, decades before a new, dedicated football stadium was erected across Derby Avenue.

Haven had its own entry in the National Association — the Paleozoic version of Major League Baseball. Over a fiveyear period from 1871 to 1875, the largest communities on the East Coast, including Baltimore, New York, Philadelphia, Boston and Washington, D.C., were part of a loose coalition of teams committed to playing a schedule of “championship games.” The team with the most victories over league opponents was crowned champion. Players made about $1,000 for the season — more than the average working stiffs of the time, though not by much (with average laborers being paid about $700 to $800 a year).

Yet, with an entry fee so low almost any local club could afford to join regardless of ability, coupled with uncontrolled player movement and uncertain scheduling, this early version of professional ball was a primitive affair. Teams regularly dropped out and the level of competition was spotty at best. Over time, as owners and players learned more about the popularity of the sport, standardized practices were drawn up. “The first time you do something, you

42

april 2008

Two days before making his Major League debut in 1939, Ted Williams and the Red Sox played an exhibition game at Yale Field.

don’t usually do it well,” observes William Ryczek, a Wallingford resident who has written several books about 19th-century baseball. “People say it is all about the money now. Well, it was all about the money then.”

The club owners, a group of local investors, had brought in mainly untried players, many of whom were local residents. “The team was late in signing players, so there

The New Haven Elm Cities’ first manager, Charlie Gould, also played first base for the team. When the National League began in 1876, Gould was the first manager of the Cincinnati Reds.

was little money and little time,” Ryczek says. “The team was pretty fluid.”

The New Haven team, known as the Elm Cities, had seven wins and 40 losses in 1875, its only season. The club never won two games in a row and started the season by losing 15 games. But the Elm Cities weren’t even the worst team in the circuit that year.

The Brooklyn Atlantics went 2-42. (The club’s only two wins came against New Haven.)

One of the team’s best players was an outfielder/second baseman named Billy Geer. Geer hit .244 on a team whose collective batting average was .219. He was also only 15 years old.

The high point of the season came on July 2.

Behind Tricky Nichols on the mound, the Elm Cities beat the Boston Red Stockings, a team that went 71-8 on the season, by a score of 10-5. July was actually a good month for the hapless Elm Cities — they amassed three wins against six losses. “An analogy would be the Yankees playing the Cutters and losing to them,” Ryczek says.

While the team made little credible claim to on-field success, it did have its share of eccentricities — for example its wealth of rugged, only-in-the-19th-century names: Juice Latham, one of the team’s three managers. Studs Bancker. Tricky Nichols.

The team’s third and final manager, Charlie Pabor, was known to sportswriters as “The Old Woman in the Red Cap,” possibly the only seven-word nickname in baseball history. “No one seems to know why he was called this,” Ryczek notes.

Fred Goldsmith, one of the early claimants to the immortality of having thrown the first curveball, played for the team. He was a successful pitcher later on, winning 112

games primarily for the Chicago White Stockings of the National League. But in New Haven’s inimitable style, they played Goldsmith for a single game at second base, where he got two hits, drove in a run — and made three errors.

Like many present day ballclubs, the Elm Cities had their share of characters. Geer and Henry Luff, an 18-year-old third baseman/pitcher, got themselves in a little trouble on a road trip with the club. “They left with much more luggage than they arrived with,” Ryczek says, explaining how the young duo made off with coats, jewelry and a pipe.

All, apparently, was forgiven. “A few weeks later Geer served as an umpire,” Ryczek says, citing another common practice at the time.

smaller cities like New Haven because it was impossible for them to recoup their travel and lodging costs.

Many of the players never played pro ball again. Some had minor careers in the National League, but none of the former Elm Cities players would go on to baseball fame and fortune.

With over a century’s worth of retrospective, Ryczek sees the similarities between the Elm Cities and the Cutters, particularly in terms of fan support. His statement about the Elm Cities’ fans could just as well apply to the Cutters: “They supported the team as well as you could expect a team that bad to be supported,” he notes.

This colorful group would stay together only Flash forward to the present day. For briefly. When the National Association Bill Dowling, the owner of the New disbanded and the financially most robust Britain Rock Cats, the AA affiliate of the club owners formed the National League, Minnesota Twins playing in the Eastern they set a population threshold of 75,000 for League, the recent history of New Haven a new franchise, Ryczek says. New Haven ball clubs has taught him a valuable lesson. didn’t make the cut (its population at the “To me, it is a fascinating case study in what time of the next U.S. census, in 1880, was not to do in developing a market,” Dowling 62,882.) . In addition, attendance was low says. “They weren’t able to identify their and the large-market teams such as Boston problems and why people weren’t coming. and Chicago stopped making road trips to

HY’S LIMOUSINE SERVICE Serving New Haven County Since 1951 • Over 90 vehicles incl: sedans, 6 & 9 person limousines, & 10 person luxury vans

• Weddings & Proms

• 24 hour service & dispatch

• All major credit cards accepted

• Serving Bradley, Logan, Providence, JFK, LGA, & Newark airports

562-COPY 562COPY.COM Tel: 203

Owned & Operated by Robert Levine, CT DOT #1594, ICC #136740

Web: www.

262 Elm Street (at Broadway) New Haven, CT 06511

480 Island Lane, West Haven | (800) 560.6331 Instate (800) 255.5466 Out of state | www.hyslimo.com new haven

43

A lot has to do with the marketplace, but the main thing is that you have to spend money to make money.”

It becomes easy in the jungle of minor league baseball to blame others for a franchise’s woes — the fans, the corporate sponsors and the ballpark all become the object of finger-pointing when things aren’t working. Dowling doesn’t buy it. “It is your business,” he says. “You have to take responsibility.”

New Britain’s stadium is clean and wellappointed (and just 12 years old, in contrast to 81-year-old Yale Field). Rock Cats players are fixtures in the community — a dictate handed down from the Minnesota Twins that only helps minor league operators.

The prices are affordable, the parking convenient and the entertainment nonstop. What is being sold is not baseball, but family entertainment, Dowling explains.

“The baseball is somewhat important — I am not trying to minimize it — but it is the family entertainment that is most important,” he says.

Solomon agrees. “I don’t think minor league baseball is about the baseball, it is about the entertainment,” says the sportswriter.

Now that New Haven has folded as a viable market for a minor-league club, Dowling is convinced that with some targeted marketing a number of diehard baseball fans will migrate north to see his club. He already has the wraps around 1.5 million people in central Connecticut.

“We’ve only begun to scratch the surface,” he said. “We’ve drawn over 300,000 people a year the past five years.”

Sam Rubin was one of the first people to work for the New Haven Ravens, beginning as an intern in 1993 before the team even played a ballgame. In the early days of the franchise, Yale Field was full and the sounds of fans stomping on the aluminum bleachers to cheer on the new team was unique to the state’s baseball parks. “It was something I had not experienced before,” said Rubin, author of a book entitled Baseball in New Haven.

He sensed an excitement, a vibrancy in the early days of the franchise, which began as a AA affiliate of the Colorado Rockies playing the Eastern League. “For a long time [annual] attendance was close to 300,000, which was indicative of the level of support at that time,” Rubin says. “We just didn’t do enough to sustain that and build on that attendance figure.”

44

april 2008

In 1948 a certain Sultan of Swat, near death from cancer, presented the Yale baseball captain (a certain future 41st President of the United States) with a gift to the university: an original manuscript of George Herman Ruth’s autobiography.

In 1995 the first rumors of the team’s imminent departure began sounding in the local press, Rubin recalls, rendering fans less likely to continue to embrace the franchise. “That is a tough obstacle to overcome,” he says.

The din of the rumor mill swelled in volume and intensity until 2004, when they were finally proved true and the club moved to New Hampshire. At that point, the move was hardly a surprise. “It was the one deal

the owners couldn’t refuse,” Rubin says.

Rubin says he attended a few Cutters games, but there wasn’t much there for him. “It was definitely tough because I had seen what Yale Field was like when we had huge crowds,” he says. “I am sure their front office worked hard — this was not what anyone wanted.”

Continued on 77

1795A Boston Post Road, Guilford, CT 06437 203-453-2370 Fax: 203-453-5347

bulldogs at the bat

Y

ale University might have a long and rich baseball tradition, but when it comes to putting players in the major leagues, that number pales in comparison with the men who it puts in front offices.

Guilford Sporting Goods

From George Weiss, the Hall of Fame architect of the New York Yankees’ dynasty of the 1940s through the 1960s, to Theo Epstein, the boy wonder GM who helped the Red Sox move from a punch line to the pinnacle, Yale has been a breeding ground for baseball executives and owners.

www.guilfordsportinggoods.com

Yale’s president from 1978 to 1986, A. Bartlett Giamatti later served as president of the National League and commissioner of Major League Baseball, succeeded by Yale Law School grad Fay Vincent. Several Yale families, including the Yawkeys (former owners of the Red Sox) and the Wrigleys (owners of the Cubs) , count themselves among the select group of people who’ve owned major league ball clubs. Not to mention President George W. Bush, a pretty good freshman pitcher who became the owner of the Texas Rangers.

Relax. Itʼs Done

It is fitting that Yale has been more influential in baseball’s boardrooms than on its ballfields. According to Yale grad and longtime New Haven Register sportswriter Bob Barton, students were discouraged from playing professional sports. “Yale, up until probably the 1960s, was a place where the majority of students came from prep schools, came from some degree of affluence,” he says. “It was expected that they would take their places as pillars of society and industry.”

Not only were professional sports considered beneath a Yale man, but until the 1960s one could easily make a salary comparable to professional sports in the working world, Barton says. “Bones Kinney, an All-East end at Boston University in 1958, told me he could have played for the Redskins but decided to teach instead because you couldn’t support a family on an NFL salary,” he says.

10% off all apparel

Western/Northern New Haven County

203 272-8499 Greater New Haven & Shoreline In one of college baseball’s most famous games, St. John’s Frank Viola outdueled Yale righty and future Met Darling (pictured) at Yale Field.

That didn’t stop some Yale baseball players from trying their hands in the big leagues. Dick Tettelbach had a brief stint in the bigs with the Yankees and Senators. Johnny Broaca, a Eli pitcher in the 1930s, played for the Yankees before leaving to take up professional boxing.

Yale’s most successful player was pitcher Ron Darling, who over a 13-year career toiled for the Mets, Athletics and Expos.

He was the starting pitcher in arguably the most famous Yale baseball game ever, a 1-0 loss to St. John’s in the 1981 NCAA tourney. Darling threw 11 no-hit innings before losing in the 12th. (The winning pitcher was Frank Viola.)

For the few fans brokenhearted about the departure of professional baseball from New Haven, one thing is certain: “For now it is all just Yale baseball. Yale is going to be playing at Yale Field and that is something you can count on,” says Sam Rubin of Yale’s sports information office and author of the book Baseball in New Haven.

— S.S.

203 488-5977

www.merrymaids.com CT Lic # 602486

GUTTER GUARDIAN

, LLC

• Transparent Design (reduces ice build-up)

• Fits Over Existing Gutters • Not Visible From Street • Closed System

203.439.0829 GutterGuardianLLC.com

COMPARE US AND SAVE new haven

45

INST Y LE PHOTOGRAPH:

Steve Blazo

The three DeViro sisters, (L-R) Maria, Stefanie and Tina.

T hree’s Company

By Brittany Galla

For the dynamic De Viros of Matiste fame, sisterhood is

T

he term “family business” assumes an entirely new meaning when you meet the three De Viro sisters — Tina, Maria, and Stefanie — who not only share laughs together and finish one another’s sentences, but manage a successful Elm City boutique together, too.

Their boutique, artfully dubbed Matiste to incorporate all three sisters’ names (“‘Ma’ for Maria, ‘Ti’ for Tina and ‘Ste’ for Stefanie,” explains the eldest, 32-year old Tina), is something they all take pride in.

46

april 2008

powerful

Born and raised in North Haven, the girls in women’s fashions and accessories, grew up in the leather business, watching including jackets, shoes, handbags, their Italian-born parents design shoes sunglasses, belts and jewelry. Men can to be sold at specialty boutiques. All also find jackets and shoes, and there is a three attended Sacred Heart Academy children’s shoes section. in Hamden and then continued on to “It was an idea that sprang up and it just Quinnipiac University. After graduating evolved,” explains Tina, whose married and working in their parents’ business, the surname is Pellegrino. “We all had a three daughters decided to venture out on passion for handbags, shoes and fashion.” their own and open a store.

“We started small — about 30 handbags In 2004, their dream became a reality with — and now we have 400,” adds 29-year-old the opening of Matiste, which specializes Maria.

Tina is the boutique’s principal designer, evolved an informal division of labor: very trendy, unique items,” Tina explains. and she frequently travels to Italy to scout Tina the designer, Maria the marketer and “They want items that stand out — they’re new ideas and emerging trends that she can Stefanie (who also works part-time as a trendsetters,” adds Maria. bring home to Connecticut. In addition to nurse) a bit of most everything else. their own designs, Matiste also sells other While classic black bags sell, Tina says she “The store is a testing ground and we all design labels, but everything they sell is was surprised to see how quickly prints and help each other with ideas,” explains manufactured in Italy. unusual leathers, such as snakeskin prints, Tina. “Since Maria is a mom now, she sees sell.

Of the handbags Tina designs, “They are different things in bags, such as the need one-of-a-kind bags,” she says. “We have for dividers and a cell-phone pocket.”

“Sometimes I’ll see colors I really don’t specialty unique items that you won’t find think people go for, such as a blue or a Matiste’s most important asset, according anywhere else.” green, and then they will be the first bags to Tina, is its faithful customers that keep to sell,” she explains.

According to all three women, the best part coming back for more. about their business is the opportunity to One of the most popular bags, Maria recalls, “We’re very blessed that our business is work together. Beyond a couple of sales was a baby-blue messenger bag with a tiger growing,” says Tina. “We have wonderful representatives who sell the Matiste house print on it. customers.” brands in the rest of the United States, While the sisters say there’s no handbag the three sisters are the boutique’s sole Tina describes most of Matiste’s customers designer they don’t particularly care for employees. as professional women from their 20s to (“I love looking at what other people are mid-50s. Among their shoppers’ favorite “It’s fun,” explains Tina. “We’re our own doing,” explains Tina), Maria tends to stay items are handbags, shoes and jewelry. bosses.” away from the bags that are made with a Bags range from about $50 to $350; shoes lot of hardware.

“It’s nice to have the flexibility with one are $60 to $350; jewelry is $19 to $120; jackets another,” echoes Maria. “I have two kids, so from $250 up to $1,000 (fur-trimmed jackets “You don’t want to start out with a bag they understand my schedule. We had no $1,000 and up) ; and children’s shoes range that’s already heavy and have that strain,” second thoughts about opening a business from about $39 to $69. explains Maria. “Bags are on women’s together. We complement each other.” shoulders all day and they don’t want that Also, sunglasses go from about $250 to $400, extra weight.”

Although as in most small businesses the belts from $79 to $179, and wallets are $29 employees must be able to perform multiple to $79.

To learn more call 203-288-7649 or visit functions, the three Matiste sisters have Matiste.com. v “Our shoppers appreciate good quality and

Specializing in Curls and European Styles One Whitney Ave, Suite 203

FUR STORAGE! Ask about our Pre-Payment Storage & Cleaning Special

Furs by Prezioso Ltd. Complimentary Pick up and Delivery

203.230.4847

2326 Whitney Ave, Hamden www.preziosofur-ct.com

New Haven, CT 06510

JoBrunoHair.com 203.787.9171

A Fine Skin Care Boutique 693 Boston Post Rd Downtown Madison

203.245.8822

Amazing Face

Care Source: Premier Private Duty Nursing Services How Do You Wrap Peace of Mind?

• RNs & LPN’s • Nurse’s Aides • Live-In Aides • Homemakers • Companions

• RN’s - Assesment/Baby Care Instructions • Nurses Aides Baby Care & Overnights • Homemaker Services

Providing Care At Home, In Hospitals & At Assisted Living Communities An Affiliate of the Visiting Nurse Association of South Central Connecticut

Introducing CareSource Baby: Private Duty Services for Moms, Dads & Babies

203-891-8270 1-800-305-2273

• Gift Certificates Available

www.caresourceinc.org

Accredited

new haven

47

S

ixty-seven photographers were the expert photographer. The three jurors memories — and sometimes even replace represented in Images 2008, this year’s — Sue Brisk, John Corbett and Charles our memories. At the same time we have juried exhibition at the Guilford Art Meyer — are all established professionals become sophisticates in the detection of Center, drawn from 183 photographers who in the photography realm. guile and fraud in “photo ops” and “dating submitted more than 1,100 images. The pictures” and suspicious of advertisers’ In 2008 still photographs are more ubiquitous technology of the image outputting runs the PhotoShop’d glossies. than ever before. We see the world pictured gamut from silver gelatin prints to printing and framed for us by the camera lens at But for all that — or perhaps because on canvas, Polaroid snapshots to digital every turn. By video, cellphone cams, of it — it is still hard or impossible to scanning. In requiring multiple submissions webcams, security cams, film and digital define objectively what makes a “good” from applicants, the exhibition organizers cameras. They are on Facebook, MySpace, photograph. But we can come closer to seem to have understood instinctively in your space, in your face. They reveal the defining what makes a memorable image what every family photo album illustrates secret of Saddam Hussein’s execution, as — one that shows us something we did not — that anybody with a camera can capture well as inane celebrity posing you’d rather know, or captures something we know one memorable image by pure luck. But to not see. They inform, entertain, educated, but cannot express. Of all the hundreds take several requires the discerning eye of titillate and scare us. They preserve our of photos the average person takes in a

Thomas Wells’ “Forest Dawn”.

48

april 2008

Donna Masotti’s “Pink.”

lifetime only rarely is there one that makes gelatin print to evoke the velvety feel of a printed on handmade Japanese paper. us stop and say, “That’s a good picture.” “Foggy Morn.” In “Low Light, Alexandria, John Kallio and Jim Fiora both employ the The photograph that shows Aunt Clara VA” Terry Dagradi employed the geometry photographic frame to carve out and create just the way we see her. It is not about the of a window to frame nature through the abstract compositions of color. Kallio crops focus or the framing or the lighting or the diffused light of a lace curtain. in part of a red maple, part green hedge, and technology — it is just something ineffable more direct “prose” style was catches their reflections in the body-work that captures the essence of Aunt Clara as evident in the rich pigment ink of a car. Fiora cuts out almost everything we know her. prints of Ohio by David Ottenstein save the colorful striped wooden planks of Whether it was a reflection of the (NHM, November 2007) , where a simple a beach hut. Ellen Hovercamp sculpt stilljurors’ taste or simply the inclination wood building stands out against the life compositions of birds’ eggs, feathers of Connecticut photographers, the enormity of the open plains and broad and nests directly on the bed of her scanner. preponderance of work in this year’s sky. In Jeffery Levick’s untitled image the And Robert Charney gives his tiny closeup exhibition drew upon nature for its subject photographer manages to make a basketball of a rusting car door the title “Rogue River matter. In landscape, seascape, forests and backboard literally glow against the dark Rauschenberg,” acknowledging its likeness skies, in closeup and in still-lifes, nature trees of a wooded park. And, in a Fellini- to the Abstract Expressionist’s iconic was the theme of elegant compositions and esque tableau, an elephant stands alone paintings. on the beach in “Seaside with Elephants: delicate elegies. here were very few images of Anglesey, Wales” by Dana Osborn. humans in the show. Odd, given The black-and-white images naturally that we are usually our own favorite concern themselves with gradations of Where the black-and-white prints tended light, using tonal interplay of brightness toward the melancholic mood or the subjects. Only about 20 of the 114 images and shadow to create more somber moods. documentary directness, the color prints included people. In five of those no human “Forest Dawn” by Thomas Wells shows in this exhibition moved toward the face was visible, and another five were by a brilliant sunlight piercing the dark arboreal realm of the painterly. Terry Ashely, for single photographer, Mark Braunstein. His canopy in stark, star-like bursts. By contrast example, achieves exquisitely delicate color pictures are portraits of deeply disturbed Karen Dalrymple used a soft, grainy silver gradations in the “Botanical Chord” studies women — drug addicts, prostitutes and

A

T

new haven

49

”Seaside with Elephants: Anglesey Wales” by Dana Osborn.

In Jeffrey Levrick’s untitled image, a basketball backboard glows against the dark background of trees in a park.

50

april 2008

criminals. Their faces bear the scars of a brutalized life. He has montaged their visages beside articles from the Hartford Courant or Norwich Bulletin about their arrest or death. The women stare directly at the camera making the image somewhere between police blotter mug shots and the salacious quality of True Crime pulp magazines. They are the most dramatic photographs in the exhibition, yet they come at the tabloid price of exploitation and titillation.

Poignant but not so shocking are the stocky pink legs in worn, downtrodden boots of a young woman in a miniskirt. She is facing her boyfriend (one assumes but can’t tell, as their torsos are cut off at the waist). Her stance — one leg pointed off to the side — makes the viewer curious as to what they could be talking about. This mystery, along with Donna Masotti’s casual framing and printing gives an agreeable edginess to “Pink.”

Likewise unsettling for what one imagines is Christopher Beauchamp’s “Isolation.”

On a flat, unmodulated landscape of sand, against a cloudless sky, an old woman stands behind a fence no wider than her body. She is trapped and expressionless. A prison of Alzheimer’s? She is like a Samuel Beckett character overwhelmed by her own impotence.

T

he 2008 jurors awarded first honors to: Kathryn Frederick of Killingworth, Ellen Hoverkamp of West Haven, Dana Osborne of Middlebury and Joanne Schmaltz of Guilford.

Honorable mentions were Robert Charney of Guilford, Madison’s Anne Foley, Robert Giannotti of Northford, Branford’s Michael Marsland, Miela Barocas Mayer of Guilford, Roger Maynard of Andover, Hamden’s Thomas Peterson, and Thomas Wells of East Hampton.

The images in this 2008 exhibition demonstrate a high level of visual sophistication and photographic professionalism. What was noticeable, however, was that something was missing. What was in shorter supply was a sense of timeliness. Most of the photographs on display had a timeless quality — nothing wrong with that, but they could as easily have been shot in 1998 or 1988. What was missing, considering the title of the show, was a sense of today. For this reviewer the show would have had more vitality if it had included some more current images, pictures that show us as we are right now.

A truer “snapshot” of 2008. v

Personal Chef Dinner Parties Off-site Catering Gift Certificates

Catering

Rich & Delicious Richard Balogh, Chef/Owner

SERVING GREATER NEW HAVEN SINCE 1980

Chemical Free Fresh Fish Our Speciality

A Special Thanks To Yale University Faculty & Students For Their Continued Support

FEATURING • Shrimp • Scallops • Live Maine Lobsters

Mon-Sat 9AM to 6PM

• Live Blue Crabs • Fillet • Clams

FINE WINE

One Call Does It All! 203-624-6171 2239 State Street Hamden, CT 06517 WWW.NUMBERONEFISH.COM

RARE WINE

BARGAIN WINE

MTCARMELWINE.COM Again Voted Best of Connecticut - Retail Wine Selection in 2007 CT Magazine Readers Poll Check our website for thousands of fine rare wines 2977 Whitney Ave. Hamden, CT 06518 203-281-0800 Sign up online for our enewsletter to be informed about sales and events

"h# "h# "h# "h# "h#

Fleur de Lys FLORAL & GIFTS

When the ordinary just won’t do Now offering online purchasing of our seasonal collection.

Sign up online for our monthly newsletter and special offers

562-5459 • www.fleurdelysfloral.com Voted New Haven’s best florist 2006 & 2007 new haven

51

ART More than 150 crosses and crucifixes collected from around the world (where they were used in churches or by individuals) are on loan from the extensive Yvonne Shia Klancko Collection of religious items and displayed for the first time in Crosses & Crucifixes. Exhibition includes an artifact from the Balkans made more than 800 years ago. Through April 6 at Knights of Columbus Museum, 1 State St., New Haven. Open 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Wed.Sat., 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Sun. Free. 203-8650400, museum@kofc.org, www.kofc. org/museum.

Spring. Through April 10 at Firehouse Art Gallery, 81 Naugatuck Ave., Milford. Open noon-4 p.m. Thurs.-Sun. Free. 203-306-0016, FHGallery@ optonline.net, milfordarts.org.

View the talents of the seniors in the Art Studio Program of Wesleyan’s Department of Art and Art History in the Senior Thesis Exhibitions.

On display April 1-6 will be works by (reception 4-6 p.m. April 2): Matthew Alie, Lisa Dudley, Joyce Lai, Wendy Schreiner and Constance Smith; April 8-13 (reception 4-6 p.m. April 9): Stephanie Calvert, Zack Davis, Chaz Ganster, Karla Hargrave, Hunter King and Josh Pavlacky. Through April 13 at Zilkha Gallery, Wesleyan University, 283 Washington Terrace, Middletown. Open noon-4 p.m. Tues.Sun. (until 8 p.m. Fri.). 860-685-3355, boxoffice@wesleyan.edu, wesleyan. edu/cfa.

Harold Rabinowitz & Peter Ziou: A Retrospective. A retrospective of work by these two artists with ties to the Creative Arts Workshop. Through April 18 at Creative Arts Workshop, 80 Audubon St., New Haven. Open 9:30 a.m.-5:30 p.m. weekdays, 9 a.m.-noon Sat. Free. 203-562-4927, creativeartsworkshop.org.

A lecture on Modern and Contemporary art topics relating to the exhibition in the Walsh Art Gallery will be given by Diana Mille, Ph.D., Director of the Walsh Art Gallery, and guest lecturers in Director’s Choice. 12:30-1:30 p.m.

April 18 at Thomas J. Walsh Art Gallery, Fairfield University, 1073 North Benson Road, Fairfield. $5. 203-254-4000 ext.

2969, quickcenter.com.

Debbie Hesse: Drawing/Painting on Paper. An exhibition showcasing the art of Debbie Hesse. March 30-April 24 at Willoughby Wallace Memorial Library, 146 Thimble Islands Rd., Stony Creek. Free. 203-488-8702, librarystaff@branford-ct.gov, wwml. org.

Visual Exegesis: Religious Images

by African-American Artists from the Jean and Robert E. Steele Art Collection. Visual Exegesis, the evocative title selected by the curatorial team, Dorit Yaron and Jean and Robert Steele, signals the exhibition’s core idea: artistic interpretation and elaboration of biblical text, religious tradition, and ritual practice to represent the everyday and the truly extraordinary in human experience and identity.

Powerfully, persuasively, with gentle wit and acerbic bite, with vision and prophetic voice, the artworks and artists assembled here concentrate attention on the specific events, the

sacramental practices, the biblical teachings, the hallowed bodies, the celebrations and sorrows, the politics and poetics, the grief and gratitude, that they communicate and portray. April 2-25 (reception 6 p.m. April 4) at the Yale Institute of Sacred Music, 409 Prospect St., New Haven. Open 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. weekdays. Free. 203-432-5062, yale. edu/ism.

The Milford Fine Arts Council invites Milford students in grades K-12 to submit original art and craftwork to the 29th annual Student Arts and Crafts Show. Entries of original works only will be received on April 5 from 10 a.m.-1 p.m. at the Center for the Arts. Local artists will judge the entries, and prizes will be awarded in both arts and crafts. The show will open with a public reception and presentation of awards at 11 a.m.

April 12. April 12-26 at Center for the Arts, 40 Railroad Ave., Milford. Free.

203-878-6647, www.milfordarts.org.

Kehler Liddell Gallery presents Israel at 60: Time and Diversity, a collaboration between photographers Hank Paper and Marjorie Wolfe. Not an exercise in immediate journalism or contemporary conflict, but instead a portrait in stone and sand of what Israel was and of the people today going about their spiritual, vocational and recreational business.

During the artists’ multiple trips to Israel they employed techniques of street and landscape photography to illustrate where Israel has come from and where it is going. April 3-27 (reception 4-7 p.m. April 6) at the Kehler Liddell Gallery, 873 Whalley Ave., New Haven. Open 11 a.m.-4 p.m.

Thurs.-Sun. and by appointment. 203-

CRITIC’S PICK: Changing the Way We Pose And My Heart’s War by Linda Abadjian is one of the featured pieces in About Face: The Relevance of Portraiture in the 21st Century at The Guilford Art Center.

We might all think we know what a portrait is — an artistic

52

april 2008

representation of a person intended to display likeness, personality and

mood, in which the face is usually the focus. However, when one tries to define portraiture as a genre, it is nearly impossible to formulate a definition that

will be universally accepted.

The Guilford Art Center’s latest exhibition, About Face: The Relevance of Portraiture in the 21st Century, examines new artistic avenues into this enduring genre, as a means to explore its richness and complexity.

Objects in the exhibition include paintings, prints, photographs, digital collages, digital animation,

and work accessible only with a computer.

These works will encourage viewers to think about portraiture in new ways and pose provocative questions.

Through April 25 at Guilford Art Center, 411 Church St., Guilford. Open 10 a.m.-6 p.m. daily, noon-5 p.m. Sun. Free. 203-453-5947, guilfordartcenter. org.

— Elvira J. Duran

389-9555, kehlerliddell.com.

Group Therapy is a show featuring works by Thaddeus Beal, Charlie Goodwin, Elizabeth Gourlay, Sarah Gustafson, Vaune Hatch, Janet Lage, Willie Little, Mitch Lyons, Pamela Marks, John Matt, Kelly Jean Ohl, Meg Brown Payson, Evelyn Rydz, Thomas Stavovy and Leah Tinari. April 1-29 (reception and panel discussion 6-9 p.m. April 4) at EO Art Lab, 69 Main St., Chester. Open 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Tue.-Wed., 10 a.m.-9 p.m. Thurs.-Sat., noon-6 p.m. Sun. or by appointment. Free. 860-526-4833, chester@eoartlab.com, eoartlab. com.

Works by Jack Bussman Jr., and Robert Greiner. Enjoy oil and photography pieces in this exhibition.

April 1-30 (reception 5-7 p.m. April 10) at Case Memorial Library, 176 Tyler City Rd., Orange. Open 10 a.m.-8 p.m.

Mon.-Thurs., 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Fri., 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Sat. Free. 203-389-2044, leaplibraries.org/orange.

Working from a Model. Artists will have the opportunity to draw or paint from a live model. Sessions are three hours with short poses and one long pose. Supplies not included; bring an easel and drop cloth. Limit 15 people. 6-9 p.m. April 7, 14, 21, 28 (critique May 5) at Center for the Arts, 40 Railroad Ave, Milford. $50 (for four weeks and critique). 203878-6647, milfordarts.org.

Salon 2008. Works by students enrolled in Fairfield’s Studio Art Program in the Department of Visual and Performing Arts are featured in this salon-style exhibition of paintings, drawings, photographs, sculptures and installations. Through May 22 at Thomas J. Walsh Art Gallery, Fairfield University, 1073 North Benson Rd., Fairfield. Open 11 a.m.-5 p.m. daily except Mon., noon-4 p.m. Sun. 203-254-4000 ext. 2969, quickcenter. com.

Exceptional and rarely-seen paintings by John Frederick Lewis, Edward Lear, Sir David Wilkie, Richard Dadd, William Holman Hunt, Stanley Spencer, David Bomberg and Lord Frederic Leighton are on view in The Lure of the East: British Orientalist Painting, 1830-1925. Yale’s Center for British Art will serve as the premiere and only U.S. venue for this exhibition focusing on encounters between 19th-century British artists and the Islamic worlds to which they traveled. Approximately 90 paintings, prints and drawings are on view.

Through April 28 at the Yale Center for British Art, 1080 Chapel St., New Haven. Open 10 a.m.-5 p.m. daily except Mon., noon-5 p.m. Sun. Free. ycba.yale.edu.

Organized to complement The Lure

of the East (see above), Pearls to Pyramids: British Visual Culture and the Levant, 1600-1830 explores the history of British cultural interchange with the Middle East through trade, tourism, archaeological exploration and military engagement. Exhibition introduces the geographical and historical context of the Mediterranean trade with paintings

by Sir Peter Lely, the William van de Veldes (father and son), and through early travel accounts. The impact of commodities such as coffee and silk is examined through prints, broadsides and illustrated books. Exhibition concludes with an examination of the increasingly militaristic cast to the British presence in the Levant in the 19th century, beginning with visual responses to Admiral Nelson’s victory over Napoleon in Egypt.

Through April 28 at the Yale Center for British Art, 1080 Chapel St., New Haven. Open 10 a.m.-5 p.m. daily except Mon., noon-5 p.m. Sun. Free. ycba.yale.edu.

Life Drawing: Studio Sessions.

In these uninstructed sessions, participants 16 and older will start out with a short period of drawing a nude figure in gesture poses followed by approximately two hours of longer poses where the artist can

develop a more detailed drawing.

Artists must arrive by 11 a.m. 11 a.m.1:30 p.m. (session) and 1:30-2 p.m. (constructive feedback) April 5 & 19, May 3 & 17 at Green Street Arts Center, 51 Green St., Middletown. $12 model fee per session ($10 members). Limit of 12 artists. 860-685-7871, gsac@ wesleyan.edu, greenstreetartscenter. org.

Christy Gallagher, a graduate of Cooper Union College and the National Academy of Art, will juror Fantasy. In this exhibition, artists explore the genre of art that depicts magical, supernatural, mystical or spiritual themes. Ancient myths and legends are considered, as well as modern day fantasy and science

fiction. April 17-May 15 (reception 6-8 p.m. April 17) at Firehouse Art Gallery, 81 Naugatuck Ave., Milford.

Open noon-4 p.m. Thurs.-Sun. 203306-0016, FHGallery@optonline.net, milfordarts.org.

Music and Modernism in the Graphic Arts, 1860-1910. In the second half of the 19th century, visual artists in Europe looked to poetry and music as models for modern art, an art of increasing ambiguity and abstraction. This exhibition examines the concept of synaesthesia (the connections among color, sound and other senses) and the Gesamtkunstwerk (total art work) in British, French and German art from 1860 to 1910.

Hank Paper and Marjorie Wolfe explore Israel’s present, past and future in Israel at 60: Time and Diversity.

Center Podiatry Foot Pain Specialists

Pain & Emergencies Seen Immediately Dr. Gary N. Grippo

Dr. Sean Lazarus

Board Certified Foot Surgeon Bone & Joint Specialist

Sports Injuries - Biomechanics Pediatric Footcare

Drawn from the Davison Art Center Collection and Special Collections, Olin Library, the exhibition presents more than 40 works by James Abbott McNeill Whistler, Max Klinger, Odilon Redon, Henri Fantin-Latour and other artists. Through May 25 at the Davison Art Center, Wesleyan University, 301 High St., Middletown.

Open noon-4 p.m. Tues.-Sun. Free.

860-685-2500, lberman@wesleyan. edu, wesleyan.edu/dac.

Charles Chu catches the sweep of the Connecticut River from the Vermont mountains to Old Saybrook in the monumental landscape scroll that is the highlight of Little Frog of the Connecticut: Paintings by Charles Chu, an exhibition of his works from the past 25 years. Both Chu’s mastery of Chinese landscape painting and his familiarity with New England are evident in the great luminous washes of his mountains and the delicate quick strokes of his forests and towns, all caught in the richly poetic vocabulary of Chinese painting. April 2-May 25 at the Mansfield Freeman Center for East Asian Studies Gallery, Wesleyan University, 343 Washington Terr., Middletown. Open noon-4 p.m. Tues.Sun. Free. 860-685-2330, slawrence@ wesleyan.edu, wesleyan.edu/east.

May 2 marks the 40th anniversary of the student uprising in Paris. Six

Luxury & Style – Together Again

CAMBRIDGE OXFORD APARTMENTS

www.centerpodiatry.com 1-800-676-FOOT (3668) • Sat. Appts. Available Guilford, East Haven, Higganum, West Haven, Clinton

i Y D cV`Yag Having Denture Problems? a the newest high tech fixed and

Replace your “Teeth in an Hour” via the newest high tech fixed and permanent implant dentistry. tic technology the dental our!

Using 3-D precise imaging of your jaw and robotic technology the gums, dental gooey adhesives, or loose d of uncomfortable dentures. restoration is placed in your mouth... in just one hour! one of only a few adhesives, ntal procedure.

Eat without clicking dentures. Live without sore gums, gooey or loose bridgework. Enjoy beautiful permanent teeth instead of uncomfortable dentures!

t, ule

Within walking distance to theatres, cafes, art galleries, gourmet grocers & Yale University!

Periodontist, Dr. Marianne Urbanski is one of only a few professionals trained to do this revolutionary new dental procedure.

Call: 203-630-1312 • www.docfloss.com 546 S. Broad St., Ste 3A, Meriden • Free Consultation • Financing available

Studios, 1, 2, 3 & 4 bedroom apartment homes

As seen on ABC’s “Good Morning America”

32 HIGH STREET, NEW HAVEN TEL: (203) 772-4940

riden/Wallingford line.

new haven

53

months later a U.S. Presidential election will take place. Andrea Ray’s three-part installation, Desiré, re-visits that historic moment to pose the question: Could the Paris model of social and political agency be employed in this country at a time when deepening crisis is coupled with fear and apathy? The three components of Desiré include “Occupied,” a series of photographs of now-empty intersections of Paris streets once blocked by students; “The Gift,” a sculptural installation consisting of a dinner table, embedded with speakers, chairs and a “conceptual soup”; and “Rehearse,” a theatrical space with an audio component of an abortive

presented in multiple impressions or alongside related drawings and demonstrate the newly invented engraving and etching techniques of the era combined with new ways of printing a single image from multiple plates. Through May 4 at the Yale University Art Gallery, 1111 Chapel St., New Haven. Open 10 a.m.-5 p.m. daily except Mon. (until 8 p.m. Thurs.), 1-6 p.m. Sun. Free. 203-432-0600, artgallery.yale.edu.

of the library as a place to study animals, depictions of ancient original works of art, but Art Is Britons, and associated works by his Where You Find It is an exhibition contemporaries. Through June 1 at that showcases pencil sketches, the Yale Center for British Art, 1080 watercolors, cartoons, caricatures Chapel St., New Haven. Open 10 a.m.and ephemera from the records 5 p.m. daily except Mon., noon-5 p.m. of Yale University or from the Sun. Free. ycba.yale.edu. collections of personal or family Master Drawings from the Yale papers in Manuscripts and Archives.

University Art Gallery comprises Filed away with correspondence and approximately 85 master drawings diaries or miraculously surviving in from the gallery’s collection, attic trunks or basement storerooms, providing a survey of European the items on display reflect the daily Sara and Gerald Murphy are best draftsmanship from the late 15th lives of families, individuals and remembered as the captivating institutions and span three centuries. to the mid-19th centuries. The American expatriates who inspired drawings range from early studies Included are works of art by F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Tender Is the in the late-medieval model-book luminaries in the fields of medicine, Night. Making It New: The Art & tradition (an anonymous Venetian government, science, literature and Style of Sara & Gerald Murphy is “Lion”) up to the beginnings of education, as well as early works the first exhibition to explore the modern art (Edgar Degas’ “Portrait of Giulia Bellelli,” c. 1858–59).

Drawings of all media, genres and types — preparatory studies for paintings or prints, finished drawings, and casual sketches — are Baptiste Ibar’s tree sprouting from its included, and a range of national installation, Guided chest is also included schools, including French, German, Men, is inspired by in this work of social Italian, Netherlandish and Spanish, Martin Luther King Jr.’s commentary that will is represented. Intended to draw quote “Our scientific speak to many. new attention to Yale’s rich but power has outrun our relatively little-studied collection of Through May at spiritual power — we European drawings, the exhibition Artspace, 50 Orange have guided missiles and catalogue provide the first St., New Haven.

Open and misguided men.” comprehensive look at Yale’s noon-5 p.m. Tues., Placed around the collection of European drawings in noon-8 p.m. Wed.exhibition space more than 30 years. Through June 8 Sat. 203-772-2709, are what appear at the Yale University Art Gallery, 1111 artspacenh.org. to be wooden Chapel St., New Haven. Open 10 planks painted with — Elvira J. Duran a.m.-5 p.m. daily except Mon. (until 8 ghostly soldiers p.m. Thurs.), 1-6 p.m. Sun. Free. 203— representing the 432-0600, artgallery.yale.edu. shadows of the men Gallery goers should and women, past Art in Focus is an annual academic try to find the muse and present who are initiative that introduces the British behind Baptiste Ibar’s misguided into war by Art Center’s student guides to every thought-provoking corrupt leaders. Gold aspect of curatorial practice, from installation, Guided and red Vietnamese the selection of artworks, to research, Men. Hint: it’s a cozily prayer paper decorates label-writing and installation. This nestled Martin Luther the area above some year, the curatorial challenge for the King Jr. quote. of the soldiers’ heads. student guides was to design an And a pale body with a exhibition showcasing highlights from the Center’s collection of late19th through 21st-century paintings by a number of well-known artists. and sculpture. The students couple’s pivotal contribution to Through May 30 at Sterling Memorial chose as their theme the image of the modernist movement of the Library Memorabilia Room, 120 High women in British art. The exhibition 1920s. Gerald Murphy himself was St., New Haven. Open 8:30 a.m.-4:45 Figuring Women: The Female in a brilliant and inventive painter. p.m. weekdays. Free. 203-432-2798, Modern British Art highlights a Regrettably, only seven of his resources.library.yale.edu/online/ recent acquisition, the late R. B. canvases survive. They are brought smlexhibits.asp.

Kitajs School of London Diasporists, together here for the first time, which features an image of Kitaj’s along with paintings, watercolors, A New World: England’s First View wife, the artist Sandra Fisher. Other drawings and photographs by artists of America. John White, Elizabethan artists from the 1850s to today within his circle, such as Georges gentleman and artist, was the include Ford Madox Brown, Edward Braque, Juan Gris, Fernand Léger person most responsible for shaping Burne-Jones, Vanessa Bell, Duncan and Pablo Picasso. Photographs and England’s earliest impressions of Grant, Gwen John, Henry Moore, home-movie footage of the Murphys America and its inhabitants. White and Lucian Freud. The exhibition and their friends, as well as personal sailed with the earliest expedition concludes with an equestrian correspondence and artifacts, also to Virginia (the present-day North statue of Queen Victoria and Julie help bring the era to life. Through Carolina) in 1585 and produced a Roberts’ provocative 1994 painting May 4 at the Yale University Art series of extraordinary watercolors “Gynaecology Treatment Couch Gallery, 1111 Chapel St., New Haven. that documented his travels. The (Blues).” Through June 8 at the Yale Open 10 a.m.-5 p.m. daily except exhibition will feature nearly 100 University Art Gallery, 1111 Chapel Mon. (until 8 p.m. Thurs.), 1-6 p.m. works, including all of White’s St., New Haven. Open 10 a.m.-5 p.m.

Sun. Free. 203-432-0600, artgallery. drawings of the Algonquian Indians, daily except Mon. (until 8 p.m. Thurs.), yale.edu. his maps and charts, watercolors 1-6 p.m. Sun. Free. 203-432-0600, of the Inuit and of North American Art lovers don’t necessarily think artgallery.yale.edu. and West Indian plants and

CRITIC’S PICK Following Your Lead, Sir

rehearsal of a play based on Duras’ Hiroshima Mon Amour. April 29-May 25 (reception 5-7 p.m. & 5:30 p.m. artist talk May 2) at Zilkha Gallery, Wesleyan University, 283 Washington Terr., Middletown. Open noon-4 p.m.

Tues.-Sun. (until 8 p.m. Fri.). 860685-3355, boxoffice@wesleyan.edu, wesleyan.edu/cfa.

Colorful Impressions: The Printmaking Revolution in 18thCentury France. Celebrating one of the most innovative periods in the history of color printmaking, exhibition includes 95 images by the most celebrated artists of the time, including François Boucher, Jean-Honoré Fragonard, JeanBaptiste le Prince, Hubert Robert and Jean-Antoine Watteau. These images reflect the carefree spirit of the ancien régime, an era of royal indulgence before the French Revolution. Many of the prints are

54

april 2008

PHOTOGRAPH:

Steve Blazo

Theatre 4’s (l-r) Mariah Sage, Jane Tamarkin, Rebecka Jones, and Keely Baisden are all actors and educators — and now, stage entrepreneurs.

By Brooks Appelbaum

I

n the heart of the charming Audubon Donald Margulies’ Collected Stories, last Arts District, Koffee! is a perfect place November. Theatre 4 consists of Rebecka for a talk with Theatre 4, one of New Jones, Mariah Sage, Keely Baisden and Haven’s newest theater companies. The Jane Tamarkin, all professional actors and shop is just down the street from the theater educators. The women first started Educational Center for the Arts, where one talking about forming a theater company of Theatre 4’s co-founders, Jane Tamarkin, “in coffee shops just like this,” says Jones. teaches. It is also just a few minutes’ walk The words “new” and “niche” take on from the Little Theatre on Lincoln Street, a fresh meaning when applied to these where Theatre 4 staged its first production,

passionate artists and their collective vision. Theatre 4 came into being just last summer, so the company is certainly new to the scene. And Theatre 4 fills a number of niches in the area.

This core group of women intends to mount plays with rich female roles, and at the same time to open its doors to male actors. The company intends to invite both

new haven

55

FRITZ & HAWLEY VISION CENTER distinctive eyewear

contact lenses eye exams

248-8224 2313 WHITNEY AVE, HAMDEN

A brand new studio for women by women Offering Two Trainer Assisted Circuits Cardio Floor with Treadmills, Ellipticals & Bikes 2800 sq ft Group Fitness Studio Spinning Studio, Pilates Mat & Reformer Classes Forming Now Beautiful Shower/Locker Room Massage Therapy

317 Foxon Road, East Haven

203.469.7500 Mon-Fri: 5:30a - 8:30p • Sat: 8a-4p • Sun: 8a-1p

56

april 2008

Equity and non-Equity talent. And Theatre 4 plans to add an educational component as it evolves — a component that will serve both young people and adults.

Sage, Baisden, and Tamarkin “volunteer” Jones to tell the story of their beginnings, but immediately the women laughingly agree to make it “a joint effort.” This moment sums up the ensemble feeling among these friends, who found one another through a shared passion for theater, education and community.

Baisden and Sage attended New York University together. Tamarkin directed Sage in former Yale professor Doron BenAtar’s Behave Yourself Quietly, which had its world premier in April 2007 at New Haven’s Little Theatre. Baisden brought Sage and Jones on board as adjunct professors (like herself) in the Quinnipiac University Theater Department. “So we’ve all worked together in other capacities,” says Jones. “And being theater artists in this area, and desperately wanting to work as theater artists, we’d get together and talk about what kind of possibilities there were and what kind of possibilities we could create.”

At the end of August, the four women gathered to do a reading in Jones’ living room. Jones remembers the night vividly.

“We were there, I think, for seven hours.”

Tamarkin chimes in, “It was a warm summer night, and I said to my husband, ‘I don’t know about this. I love Mariah, but…

Oh, what the hell! I said I would go; I’ll go.’

And by 1 o’clock in the morning, here were all my new best friends. It was like we’d known each other for a million years.”

The four women read and discussed Ellen McLaughlin’s Tongue of a Bird. “Out of that,” says Jones, “grew the idea of moving forward as a group.”

Only a couple of weeks later (“I forget where this was,’ remarks Tamarkin. “At your kitchen table,” says Jones), the women checked their calendars and discovered that Baisden and Jones were busier, temporarily, than Tamarkin and Sage. So it made sense to search for a two-woman play in which Sage and Tamarkin would act, and Jones and Baisden would fill the roles of directors/ producers. In searching for a script, they didn’t have to go far.

Sage adds, “Why start a theater company if you can’t, as an actor, say, ‘What are the roles I want to do right now, what are the plays I’m dying to do?’ As actors and directors, it’s really about not waiting for permission to do our craft.”

The decision to have Baisden and Jones co-direct illustrates not only the closeness of the women, but also their resourceful approach to a challenge. Because each member of Theatre 4 works elsewhere in drama education, all of them required rehearsals to be held at non-traditional times. “Also,” says Jones, “Keely and I fulfilled very different functions. Keely has the ability to the see the big picture better than I can, and I like to get caught up in the minutiae of the language a little bit more.

We needed both.”

Baisden emphasizes how the collaboration allowed the quartet to pinpoint dates quickly, and say to one another other, “‘Let’s go do it — and we did it!” she adds with evident joy. “It ended up being a beautiful product, and really well done. Jane and Mariah did phenomenal work in their roles. It was a product that we were all very proud of in the end.”

The Theatre 4 team also learned a great deal from the experience, not the least of which was how important it is to have help from outside sources. The group is now actively seeking grants and non-profit status. Theatre 4 also learned that New Haven audiences are hungry for a repertory company whose core is made up of women, which will bring a new sensibility to New Haven’s already rich but by no means comprehensive stage offerings.

In addition, Theatre 4 is keenly aware of the wealth of artists who like themselves are finished (at least for the present) doing their repertory work elsewhere, and are dedicated to creating the best theater possible at home.

And the future? “We want to do a fall and spring show every year,” says Sage. Baisden points out that Theatre 4 has determined a date for its next project and at least one performing-arts venue has offered to sponsor and advertise it. The company is exploring plays for its season through a series of readings. Tongue of a Bird is still on the table, and the group just completed a reading of Jane Martin’s comedy, Anton in Show Business.

“Collected Stories has been my favorite play since I saw it when it opened ten years ago,” Whatever they choose, Theatre 4 is now says Sage. “I then saw it in Seattle, and I well on its way to filling the many niches went up to Canada to see Uta Hagen in the that will enhance the Elm City stage scene role. So for me it was a dream come true.” for artists and audiences alike. v

ONSTAGE

CRITIC’S PICK Spooky Magic Tricks Kieran Kredell’s peek into one of Houdini’s pastimes in Ghost Vaudevillians on the Summerland Circuit will amaze and astound audiences.

In the 1920s, amid the suffering and grief experienced across America

as a result of World War I, the Spiritualist religious

REVUES/CABARETS The Five Fists of Science. This original adaptation (from a graphic novel by Matt Fraction and Steven Sanders) by Alex Knox, creator of the Summer Cabaret ‘07 smash EYE, and director Rebecca Phillips, translator and adapter of last season’s gorily brilliant Blood Box, reveals the epic struggle between good and evil as never before imagined. A mad scientist to some and a hero to others, Serbian inventor Nikola Tesla (1856-1943) invented alternating current, the spark plug, and the first radio transmitter. Thomas Edison hired Tesla, where their personal and professional differences set the stage for the “War of the Currents” between Tesla’s alternating current and Edison’s direct current. In 1899 Tesla was the toast of New York City, working in his lab at 46-48 Houston Street, where he would dazzle his famous friends, including Mark Twain, with impossible feats of science. 8 p.m. April 3-5 & 10:30 p.m.

April 4-5 at Yale Cabaret, 217 Park St., New Haven. $15 ($12 seniors, $10 students). 203-432-1566, yalecabaret. org.

Conceived by Jana Hoglund (Sound Design ‘08), Patricia McGregor (Directing ‘09), & Brian MacQueen, Sidewalk Opera will amuse and entertain. Directed by Patricia McGregor. 8 p.m. April 10-12 & 10:30 p.m. April 11-12 at Yale Cabaret, 217 Park St., New Haven. $15 ($12 seniors, $10 students). 203-432-1566, yalecabaret.org.

movement offered hope to those in mourning with the chance to reconnect with lost loved ones. Following the death of his beloved mother, world-famous illusionist and escape artist Harry Houdini wonders if spirits could

return. Ghost Vaudevillians on the Summerland Circuit collages the story of Houdini’s investigation and eventual persecution of Spiritualism — a crusade that eventually found him crossing paths with author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and “Margery,” a mysterious Spiritualist medium from Boston.

By exploring these complicated relationships, Ghost Vaudevillians questions the reality of “objective

Bone Songs. Written by Andre Gregory. Directed by Paul Carey (Design ‘08). 8 p.m. April 17-19 & 10:30 p.m. April 18-19 at Yale Cabaret, 217 Park St., New Haven. $15 ($12 seniors, $10 students). 203-432-1566, yalecabaret.org.

Adapted by Mattie Brickman (Playwriting ‘09) from a story by Maira Kalman, Max Out Loud, was conceived by Heidi Janssen (Theater Management ‘08). 8 p.m. April 2426 & 10:30 p.m. April 25-26 at Yale Cabaret, 217 Park St., New Haven. $15 ($12 seniors, $10 students). 203-4321566, yalecabaret.org.

Curated by Liz Groth (Design ‘10), The Hot Box: An Evening of Burlesque, offers cabaret goers a night to remember. 8 p.m. May 1-3 & 10:30 p.m. May 2-3 at Yale Cabaret, 217 Park St., New Haven. $15 ($12 seniors, $10 students). 203-432-1566, yalecabaret.org.

THEATER After attempting to find his fortune in America for several years, an anonymous worker returns to his village in Slovakia. His place is taken.

The emigrant’s effort to fit back into the fabric of his homeland finds him in a virtual “no man’s land,” without rights, family or cultural identity. The Latin word sclavi means both “Slavs” and “slaves,” and Slavs to this day remain a cheap labor force in this world. One of the Czech Republic’s preeminent theatrical companies, Farm in the Cave draws on folk songs, letters

experience,” using magic to blur the line between performance and ritual, eventually reengaging the age-old question: “Do spirits return?” A senior thesis production, written and directed by Kieran Kredell.

8 p.m. April 3-5 & 2 p.m. April 5 at Patricelli ‘92 Theater, Wesleyan University, Middletown. Free (tickets required).

860-685-3355, boxoffice@ wesleyan.edu, wesleyan.edu/cfa.

— Elvira J. Duran

from emigrants, and a novel by Karel Capek to create a dynamic tapestry of beat-filled melodies, multi-voiced songs, and raw physical action in their production Sclavi/The Song of an Emigrant. Contains nudity.

This production will be performed in six languages (audiences will be provided with the English text). 8 p.m. April 3-5 at the University Theatre, 222 York St., New Haven. $48-$20.

203-432-1234, yalerep.org.

Fifty brides flee their 50 grooms and seek refuge in a villa on the coast of Italy in Big Love, a modern re-make of one of the western world’s oldest plays, Aeschylus’ The Danaids. The 50 grooms catch up with the brides at the villa and mayhem, singing and dancing ensues. Finally, unable to escape their forced marriages, 49 of the brides murder 49 of the grooms — while one bride falls in love. Written by Charles Mee, under the direction of David Jaffe, Frank B. Weeks Visiting Professor of Theater.

8 p.m. April 10-12 at Center for the Arts Theater, Wesleyan University, Middletown. $5-$4. 860-685-3355, boxoffice@wesleyan.edu, wesleyan. edu/cfa.

Lords and ladies gather for afternoon tea and brilliant banter at an idyllic English country estate.

For young Gerald Arbuthnot and his mother, the assembled notso-polite company holds the keys to happiness in love and life. In this comedy of serial seducers, moralizing monogamists, secret pasts and simmering heartbreak, how will the Arbuthnots choose

between social advancement and painful truths spoken from the heart? In 1895, the year that saw the debut of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest, the playwright lost everything when he was convicted of “gross indecency” and sentenced to two years in prison.

A Woman of No Importance had premiered two years earlier and anticipated the forces that would strike him down. Of British society, he said, “To be in it is merely a bore.

To be out of it is simply a tragedy.”

The Yale Rep brings back this classic under the direction of James Bundy.

Through April 12 at Yale Repertory Theatre, 1120 Chapel St., New Haven. $58-$20. 203-432-1234, yalerep.org. $58-$20. 203-432-1234, yalerep.org.

The Bluest Eye tells the haunting story of Pecola Breedlove, a young black girl coming of age in the racially turbulent 1940s. Her feelings scorned or simply ignored by those around her, love always just out of reach, Pecola dreams of having blue eyes, eyes that she thinks will make her stop being invisible to others, eyes that will spare her from the meanness of the world.

This inventive production captures the lyricism and poetry of Toni Morrison’s acclaimed novel and delves into the meaning of beauty and the impact of community on the development of the human spirit. Written by Lydia Diamond and directed by Eric Ting. Through April 20 on Long Wharf Theatre Mainstage, 222 Sargent Dr., New Haven. $62-$42.

203-787-4282, 800-782-8497, info@ longwharf.org, longwharf.org.

1959 is cool again in Happy Days: A New Musical, based on the longrunning TV hit penned by Garry Marshall, who also wrote the book of the new musical, with music and lyrics by songwriter Paul Williams.

Richie, Fonzie, Ralph, Potsie and the whole gang join forces to try to save Arnold’s in a sock-hoppin’, enginesrevvin’ new musical comedy directed

by Gordon Greenberg. April 11-June 29 at Goodspeed Musicals, Rt. 82, East Haddam. $26-$54. 860-873-8668, goodspeed.org.

Semina DeLaurentis plays delightfully demented coloratura soprano Florence Foster Jenkins, a real life New York socialite, with a passion and love for opera in Souvenir. With her invincible self confidence and her passion for opera, she stunned concert audiences with her unique interpretations of the opera repertoire and her legendary propensity for pitch-imperfect

new haven

57

PHOTOGRAPH:

warbling. Her cultish American Idol-type fame culminated in a sold-out performance at Carnegie Hall. Jenkin’s mantra was “People may say I can’t sing, but no one can ever say I didn’t sing.” Written by Stephen Temperly. April 17-May 11 at Seven Angels Theatre, Hamilton Park Pavilion, Waterbury. $48-$28. 203-7574676, sevenangelstheatre.org.

T. Charles Erickson

“A man must sin. It’s in our blood.”

So says Flora’s fiancé, Manuelo, in Boleros for the Disenchanted. But she will have none of it. Nor is she interested in her mother’s idea that a witch’s spell can make him faithful, or her father’s proposal to have Manuelo killed. Instead, handsome Eusebio sweeps her off her feet, and takes her from Puerto Rico to America on a journey of sacrifice and enduring love. Yale Repertory Theatre presents this world premiere

by José Rivera, OBIE Award-winning author of Cloud Tectonics, Marisol and References to Salvador Dali Make Me Hot, as well as the Academy Award-nominated screenwriter of The Motorcycle Diaries. Directed by Henry Godinez. April 25-May 17 at Yale Repertory Theatre, 1120 Chapel St., New Haven. $58-$20. 203-4321234, yalerep.org.

Miche Braden and Adepero Oduye perform in Long Wharf Theatre’s production of The Bluest Eye.

Fostering Independence and Community – It’s All Right Here

Independent & Assisted Living for Seniors

A better lifestyle is within your reach!

18 Tower Lane • New Haven

203.772.1816 • www.towerone.org

58

april 2008

PHOTOGRAPH:

Steve DePino

OF NOTES

By Michael C. Bingham

N

icole Frechette, your screen test awaits.

The 22-year-old Madison ingénue is poised, primped, primed and polished for stardom.

stands well how to sell a song with her eyes, body and gestures. If she were on American Idol (about which she professes profound ambivalence, although she likes Carrie Underwood) , she would without a doubt be going to Hollywood.

Nashville’s a long way from tony Madison, Connecticut, and country music and the Nutmeg State are — if not exactly strange bedfellows, then at least slightly selfconscious ones.

Frechette says she was introduced to And why not? She’s already been to country music by her grandmother (“my Nashville, where she recorded an eight- biggest influence”), who turned the young song eponymous CD the quality of which Nicole on to the great Patsy Cline (whose At a showcase last month before a packed is light years beyond any amateur “demo” “Crazy” she cites as her all-time favorite house at the Georgetown (Conn.) Saloon, you’re likely ever to hear. (If anything, song).

Frechette performed a barn-burning five- it might be accused of being a bit too “When I first listened to Patsy Cline, I song set that left the crowd wanting more.

Nashville-studio-cat slick, but that can be thought, ‘This music is really simple forgiven.)

At a tender age, Frechette already under— nothing that special,’” Frechette recalls.

For someone who’s been performing for only a couple of years, Frechette indeed is polished to a very high gloss.

new haven

59

my voice and not just cover it with beats and [electronically] alter it. Plus, it’s the most honest music you can find.”

modulation entering the bridge. (Most old-time country artists wouldn’t even have known how to change keys, but that’s another story.)

As for the performing part, as the middle one of five children, Frechette has ample Another strong entry is “Whatcha’ Think experience competing for attention. In high About That,” a bouncy number with school she was a cheerleader, for goodness’ compelling chord changes and a Hollywoodsake. “I had been in the recording studio slick arrangement. almost all through high school,” she says.

Frechette tackles a couple of ballads on her “But after I got out of college I figured I’d CD. In Rebecca Lynn Howard’s waltz-like better get the performing part going, so “A Good Place to Turn Around,” Frechette I jumped onstage any place I could — I sings, “I’ve made a mess of my whole life/ started going to open-mic nights, karaoke Burned every bridge I‘ve crossed.” At 22, bars in New York. I knew I could sing, and the singer probably hasn’t burned many I knew I liked to; I just needed to make sure bridges just yet, but she has mastered a I was comfortable in front of people. pretty sophisticated sense of vocal phrasing.

“As it turned out,” Frechette says with (How many country singers cite Ella admirable understatement, “I was.”

Fitzgerald and Etta James as influences?)

“But the more I listened to it, the more I understood” just how special it was.

Taking the opposite route of most musicians, Frechette began her career not performing, but recording — at the age of 13, not yet in high school. A friend of a friends of hers owned a studio, Total Traxx, in Guilford.

And the owner let the teenage Nicole pretty have the run of the place during idle times.

“They let me record anything I would bring to them,” she recalls, “country, oldies, classics, blues. It was a really good way to help me shape my genre and figure out what I wanted to do. The country kind of stuck.” (“I rock!” proclaims her MySpace page. “Just in a country way.”)

“Country is the one kind of music that has a story line, and also allows the singers to express themselves vocally,” she explains.

“Around the time I started recording, Britney Spears was becoming really popular, and the one thing I knew was that I did not want to be a Britney Spears” (a decision that looks even better in hindsight) . “Country music allowed me to actually sing and use

One of Frechette’s clear strengths is taste in material. In planning the CD Frechette and producer Paul Scialabba listened, she says, to literally thousands of songs before settling on the eight that made the cut.

All of them straddle that already-fuzzy-andgetting-even-fuzzier line between pop and country, and nearly all have “commercial potential.” The pair did a fine job of selecting material that showed Frechette’s voice to best advantage, offered her story lines she could sink her teeth into, and song structures sophisticated enough to stand out from the crowd. of commercial country.

And it is commercial, for which Frechette makes no excuses: Her objective is to forge a career as a recording and performing artist, not to surrender to someone else’s definition of indy-rock “cred.”

The CD’s “single” is “Yeah, Right,” an appealing mid-tempo 4/4 number in which the singer tries unsuccessfully to convince herself she’s not really falling in love.

Except for the steel-guitar lick at the top and bottom of the song, the song is easily as pop as it is country, including a nifty

The musicianship of her singing notwithstanding, one senses right away that Frechette’s voice hasn’t completely matured (the human vocal mechanism doesn’t entirely stabilize until around age 30) , and her upper register can sound a little brittle. But her growing legion of fans can look forward to the richer and warmer vocal sound that is sure to come with age.

Smart, ambitious and focused? You might say that. Frechette finished her bachelor’s degree at Manhattan College in three years so she could invest her senior-year tuition in her recording career.

“I wanted to start this career as soon as possible,” she says, “because I knew how hard it was going to be. I mean, anything you try to do is hard, but this particular career has a lot more twists and pitfalls than most careers. I wake up in the morning and I have to create the way I’m going to build my career.”

Ain’t that the truth. So it’s hard to say exactly which route Nicole Frechette will take on the road to the Big Time. But it would be foolish to bet that she won’t get there somehow. v

Live Better Does Your Vet See More Dogs Than Cats?

483-7900

B A

Subscribe

214 Main Street, Branford CT • By Appointment • Amy Hinc, VMD

BECAUSE CATS ARE NOT SMALL DOGS 60

april 2008

www.newhavenmagazine.com

Classical Hannah Collins, cello (2 p.m. March 29 in Sudler Recital Hall, William L. Harkness Hall, 100 Wall St.) will perform music by Beethoven, Kodaly, Schumann, Lutoslawski and Boccherini, while Matthew Fried, tuba (2 p.m. March 29) performs music of Hindemith, Shostakovich, Piazzolla, Plog, Villa-Lobos and Paganini. Adelaide Muir, soprano (8 p.m. March 29), Nicholas Masters, bass (8 p.m. March 30), James Hasspacher, double bass (8 p.m.

March 31), SoYoung Kwon, violin (2 p.m. April 5), Ai Nihira, violin (5 p.m.

April 5), Jana Christy Lombardozzi, soprano (8 p.m. April 5), Alma Maria Liebrecht, horn (2 p.m. April 6), I-Chun Yeh, violin (5 p.m. April 6), Edward A. Parks, baritone (8 p.m. April 6), Jacques Wood, cello (8 p.m. April 12 – in Sudler Recital Hall), Valentina Takova, cello (5 p.m. April 17 – in Sudler Recital Hall), Soran Lee, violin (8 p.m. April 19 – in Sudler Recital Hall), David Skidmore, percussion (1 p.m. April 20 – in Sudler Recital Hall), Simon Powis, guitar (8 p.m. April 20), Ying Ying Ho, viola (2 p.m. April 27), Anne Lanzilotti, viola (5 p.m. April 27), Jooyoung Park, cello (8 p.m. April 29 – in Sudler Recital Hall), Wei-Jen Yuan, piano (5 p.m. May 1) and Estelle Choi, cello (8 p.m. May 1) perform in the Master of Music Recitals series. At Sprague Memorial Hall, 470 College St., New Haven.

Free. yale.edu/music.

John Dearman, William Kanengiser, Scott Tennant and Matthew Grief comprise the Los Angeles Guitar Quartet. The group will perform works by Rossini, Bach, de Falla and Rimsky-Korsakov, plus a set of Brazilian and Celtic music. 8 p.m.

April 1 at Sprague Memorial Hall, 470 College St., New Haven. $34-$27 ($14 students). yale.edu/music.

Lunchtime Chamber Music. 12:30 p.m. April 2 at Sprague Memorial Hall, 470 College St., New Haven. Free. yale. edu/music.

Pulitzer Prize-winner Ellen Taaffe Zwilich is featured composer in a New Music New Haven recital.

Program includes her Clarinet Concerto with faculty soloist David Shifrin and members of the Yale Philharmonia, plus works by Yale composers. 8 p.m. April 2 at Sprague Memorial Hall, 470 College St., New Haven. Free. yale.edu/music.

The Artist Diploma Recitals series at Yale is replete with April performances. Enjoy a vocal recital

by Joshua Copeland, baritone (8 p.m. April 4), JongEun Lee, violin (8 p.m. April 7), Katia Michel, piano (8 p.m. April 8), Christopher Miranda, piano (8 p.m. April 9), Thomas Flippin, guitar (8 p.m. April 10),

Jaehee Ju, cello (8 p.m. April 10 – in Sudler Recital Hall in William L. Harkness Hall), Hyun-Joo Juno Lee, flute (5 p.m. April 25), Noelia Gomez Gonzalez, viola (8 p.m. April 25) and Jaewon Choi, violin (5 p.m. April 28). At Sprague Memorial Hall, 470 College St., New Haven. Free. yale. edu/music.

Boris Berman Master Class. 10:30 a.m. April 3 at Sprague Memorial Hall, 470 College St., New Haven. Free. yale. edu/music.

Former students of Boris Berman celebrate his 60th birthday in a recital of Piano Alumni. Melvin Chen, Anna Grinberg, Ivo Kaltchev, Andrea Lam, Stephan Lemelin,

Music of Chopin, Brahms, Debussy, Bach/Busoni and Ravel. 4 p.m. April 4 at Sprague Memorial Hall, 470 College St., New Haven. Free. yale. edu/music/pianosymposium.

Lift Every Voice and Sing is a celebration of the James Weldon Johnson Collection at the Beinecke Library. Featuring a chorus of New Haven public school students, dancer & actor Carmen DeLavallade, the Heritage Chorale, directed by Jonathan Berryman, recitations by actor Ken Robinson, the MitchellRuff Duo and more. 7:30 p.m. April 4 at Battell Chapel, 400 College St., New Haven. Free (tickets required). yale.edu/music.

MUSIC to the Yale Collection of Musical Instruments to perform solo keyboard works by classical masters on two restored Viennese pianos.

In a long and distinguished career Bilson has played a leading role in bringing the piano in its formative stages of development to the attention of audiences all over the world. 3 p.m. April 6 at Yale Collection of Musical Instruments, 15 Hillhouse Ave., New Haven. $20 ($15 seniors, Yale staff; $10 Yale students). 203 4324158, yale.edu/music.

The Los Angeles Guitar Quartet, performing at Sprague Memorial Hall this month, not only plays classical tunes, they also dabble in Brazilian and Celtic music.

Hector Sanchez and Liam Viney perform music by Schubert, Brahms, Liszt, Debussy and Schumann. 8 p.m. April 3 at Sprague Memorial Hall, 470 College St., New Haven. $18-$10 ($5 students). yale.edu/music.

Thomas C. Duffy leads the Yale Band in a program of MILHAUD Suite Francaise, RAND Ceremonial and HUSA Cheetah. 7:30 p.m. April 4 at Woolsey Hall, 500 College St., New Haven. yale.edu/music.

Piano Symposium Presentations.

Performances by faculty and alumni pianists from 9:30 a.m.-3 p.m., with break for lunch. Anthony Tommasini, chief music critic for the New York Times, will offer a keynote address as well. 9:30 a.m. April 4 at Sprague Memorial Hall, 470 College St., New Haven. Free. www.yale.edu/music/ pianosymposium.

Laura Usiskin, cello (5 p.m. April 5 in Sudler Recital Hall, William L. Harkness Hall, 100 Wall St.) and David Kaplan, piano (8 p.m. April 30 at Sprague Memorial Hall, 470 College St., New Haven.) round out April performances for the MMA Recitals series. Free. yale.edu/music.

Piano Symposium Alumni Recital.

Alumni recital featuring Chiao-Han Liao, Anne Louise-Turgeon and Edward Turgeon (two pianos), Warren Lee, and Peter Miyamoto and Ayako Tsuruta (two pianos).

Baroque and contemporary music from Latin American, Caribbean and U.S. composers in Seraphic FireYale Glee Club. 8 p.m. April 5 at Battell Chapel, 400 College St., New Haven.

Free. yale.edu/music.

Pianist Malcolm Bilson returns

Under the baton of guest conductor Helmuth Rilling, Felix Mendelssohn’s masterpiece oratorio Elijah is performed by the Yale Camerata (Marguerite L. Brooks), Yale Philharmonia (Shinik Hahm, music director) and Yale Glee Club (Jeffrey Douma, director) with soloists. Pre-concert talk at 6:30 p.m. in Sprague Memorial Hall. 8 p.m. (pre-concert talk 6:30 p.m. in Sprague Memorial Hall, 470 College St.) April 11 at Woolsey Hall, 500 College St., New Haven. Free. yale.edu/music.

School of Music instrumentalists and singers compete in the Woolsey Hall Competition for the privilege of appearing as soloists with the Yale Philharmonia next season. 10 a.m.

April 12 at Sprague Memorial Hall, 470 College St., New Haven. Free. yale. edu/music.

new haven

61

Watch and listen as Yale Cellos sing Ezra Laderman’s Cello Sonata.

Whiz Kids! will feature the entire NHSO, conducted by Associate Conductor Jerry Steichen, with several student soloists ranging in age from ten to 22. Additionally, Woolsey’s Newberry Memorial Organ — one of the finest instruments of its kind in the world — will be showcased.

The entire audience will have opportunities to participate in the music making, and pre-concert activities will offer children and their families an opportunity to meet the musicians and try a few instruments. 2 p.m. (pre-concert activities 1:30 p.m.) April 12 at Woolsey Hall, 500 College St., New Haven. $12 ($5 child under 18). 203-931-2998, scollins@newhavensymphony.org, newhavensymphony.org.

The Yale Band plays a joint performance with the Morgan State (Md.) University Symphonic Band.

7:30 p.m. April 12 at Woolsey Hall, 500 College St., New Haven. Free. yale. edu/music.

The “visionary” and “ravishingly realized” interpretations of the internationally acclaimed Borromeo String Quartet have established it as one of the most important string quartets of our time. Dreams and Prayers: The Chamber Music

62

april 2008

of Osvaldo Golijov includes Yiddishbbuk, Lúa Descolorida, How Slow the Wind with soprano Jessica Rivera, Tenebrae with clarinetist Todd Palmer, and The Dreams and Prayers of Isaac the Blind. 8 p.m.

April 12 at Quick Center for the Arts, Fairfield University, 1073 North Benson Rd., Fairfield. $40-$30. 203-254-4010, quickcenter.com.

Organ Improvisation Showcase by students of Jeffrey Brillhart. 8 p.m.

April 14 at Battell Chapel, 400 College St., New Haven. Free. yale.edu/music.

Lunchtime Chamber Music. 12:30 p.m. April 16 at the Yale Center for British Art, 1080 Chapel St., New Haven. Free. yale.edu/music.

Yale Opera performs RAVEL L’heure Espagnole (sung in French) and BARTOK Bluebeard’s Castle (in English). 8 p.m. April 18, 2 p.m. April 20 at Sprague Memorial Hall, 470 College St., New Haven. $12-$8 ($5 students). yale.edu/music.

The Elizabeth Verveer Tishler Piano Recital will feature the winner and finalists of the Elizabeth Verveer Tishler Piano Competition. 2 p.m. April 19 at the Russell House, Wesleyan University, Middletown. Free.

860-685-3355, boxoffice@wesleyan. edu, www.wesleyan.edu/cfa.

World premiere of Ezra Laderman Cello Sonata is the attraction of Yale Cellos with Elizabeth Parisot, piano, and Pansy Chang, cello. 8 p.m. April 21 at Sprague Memorial Hall, 470 College St., New Haven. $15-$10 ($5 students). yale.edu/music.

The Yale School of Music Chamber Music Competition winners will perform. 8 p.m. April 22 at Sprague Memorial Hall, 470 College St., New Haven. $15-$10 ($5 students, free to subscribers). yale.edu/music.

New Music New Haven. Music by Yale and guest composers. 8 p.m.

April 23 at Sprague Memorial Hall, 470 College St., New Haven. Free. yale. edu/music.

Yale School of Music faculty member Boris Berman, piano, performs an all-Prokofiev program. 8 p.m. April 24 at Sprague Memorial Hall, 470 College St., New Haven. $18-$10 ($5 students). yale.edu/music.

The Spring Chamber Music Extravaganza, hosted by chamber music faculty members Anthea Kreston and Jason Duckles, features mixed groups enrolled in the Wesleyan chamber music program.

A variety of ensembles will perform works by composers from the Baroque, Classical, Romantic and

contemporary periods. 8 p.m. April 24 at the Russell House, Wesleyan University, Middletown. Free. 860-6853355, boxoffice@wesleyan.edu, www. wesleyan.edu/cfa.

Monteverdi’s Vespers of the Blessed Virgin (1610) is performed by the Yale Schola Cantorum, directed by Simon Carrington, with soloists from the Yale Voxtet and Yale Collegium Players. 8 p.m. April 25 at Woolsey Hall, 500 College St., New Haven. yale.edu/music.

Opera/Oratorio Performance.

Music students perform opera scenes and oratorio selections under the direction of Priscilla Gale. 7 p.m. April 26 at Crowell Concert Hall, Wesleyan University, Middletown. $5-$4. 860-685-3355, boxoffice@ wesleyan.edu, wesleyan.edu/cfa.

Toshiyuki Shimada directs the Yale Symphony Orchestra in concert: HARBISON Remembering Gatsby, Foxtrot for Orchestra; BRAHMS Symphony No. 3 in F major; MAHLER Symphony No. 1 in D major, (Titan).

8 p.m. April 26 at Woolsey Hall, 500 College St., New Haven. $15-$10 ($2 students). 203-562-5666, yale.edu/ music.

The Elm City’s most venerable performing group, the 123-year-old

Trinity Choir of Men & Boys, shares the stage with its younger (five-yearold) sibling, the Trinity Choir of Men & Girls, share the stage for a Spring Concert featuring both classical and popular fare. 3 p.m. April 27 at Trinity Church on the Green, New Haven.

203-776-2616.

An evening of Guitar Chamber Music. Benjamin Verdery directs.

Program TBA. 8 p.m. April 28 at Sprague Memorial Hall, 470 College St., New Haven. Free. yale.edu/music.

Liederabend celebrates the life and songs of Henry Duparc (1848-1933).

Musical direction by Mikhail Hallak.

8 p.m. April 29 at Sprague Memorial Hall, 470 College St., New Haven.

Free. yale.edu/music.

Lunchtime Chamber Music. 12:30 p.m. April 30 at Sprague Memorial Hall, 470 College St., New Haven.

Free. yale.edu/music.

Popular Born in Portugal to parents from the Cape Verde Islands off the coast of West Africa, Lura draws on the islandsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; pungent blend of trade route cultures that have created a unique musical tradition embracing French Afro-pop, Brazilian rhythms and earthy, traditional African music.

She brings to her music a streetwise,

urban sensuality infused with the passionate roots of Africa, breathing new life into Cape Verdean music first made famous by Cesaria Evora.

Performing Bataku (the music of women from the remote interior of Cape Verde) Lura showcases her remarkable vocal range and electric stage presence. 8 p.m. April 4 at the Shubert Performing Arts Center, 247 College St., New Haven. $30-$18. 203624-1825, shubert.com.

The Jazz on the Wharf series presents the Mario Pavone Double Tenor Quintet with Jimmy Greene and Michael Blake, soprano and tenor saxophones, pianist Peter Madsen and drummer Michael Sarin. 9 p.m.

April 4 on Long Wharf Theatre Stage II, 222 Sargent Dr., New Haven. $17 ($15 subscriber/member). 203-787-4282, 800-782-8497, info@longwharf.org, longwharf.org.

Described by The New Yorker as â&#x20AC;&#x153;friendly, unpretentious, idealistic and highly skilled,â&#x20AC;? eighth blackbird offers its ever-growing audiences provocative and engaging performances. It is widely lauded for its performing style â&#x20AC;&#x201D; often playing from memory with virtuosic and theatrical flair â&#x20AC;&#x201D; and its efforts to make new music accessible to wide audiences. This concert features new commissions from Stephen

forever, elevating it from its origins as a relatively simple folk and bluegrass instrument to the sophistication and brilliance of the finest jazz improvisation and classical performance. Thileâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s latest project, Punch Brothers, features Thile on mandolin and includes the young and blazingly talented Gabe Witcher (fiddle), Noam Pikelny (banjo), Chris Eldridge (guitar) and Greg Garrison (bass). 7 p.m. April 6 at the Shubert Performing Arts Center, 247 College St., New Haven. $30-$20.

203-624-1825, shubert.com.

Hartke and Tamar Muskal, whose Sound Mirror incorporates the live, interactive digital art of Danny Rozin. Concert will include still and real-time processed digital images projected on stage. 8 p.m. April 5 (pre-concert talk 7:15 p.m.) at Crowell Concert Hall, Wesleyan University, Middletown. $21-$6. 860-685-3355, boxoffice@wesleyan.edu, wesleyan. edu/cfa.

Tony Scherr Trio. The Brooklyn maestro and Elm City native returns to debut his hot new record in his old stomping grounds. Since migrating to New York in the â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;80s, bassist/guitarist/songwriter/ producer Tony Scherr has become one of the cityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s most prolific and in-demand sidemen, playing integral roles in the music of such notable artists as Bill Frisell, John Lurie (Lounge Lizards), Steven Bernstein (Sex Mob) and Norah Jones, as well as some of New Yorkâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s better-kept secrets, such as Jesse Harris and the Ferdinandos, the Wollesens, Ursa Minor and Slowpoke. April 5 at CafĂŠ Nine, 250 State St., New Haven. $8.

203-789-8281, cafenine.com.

Renowned folksinger Gordon Bok, who hails from Camden, Me., has been preserving the musical traditions of the sea for more than 35 years as a performer and recording artist. His music is largely self-taught and a Bok trademark is his rich, resonant, mahogany bass-baritone voice. He accompanies himself on 6- and 12-string guitars as well as the Bokdesigned â&#x20AC;&#x153;cellambaâ&#x20AC;? â&#x20AC;&#x201D; a cross between a cello and a bass viol de gamba. His repertoire is a rich trove of well-crafted ballads of Maine and the Maritimes, songs and dances from abroad, contemporary songs, stories of boats and sailors, tales of supernatural seal-folk and cantefables of his own composition. He is also a superb storyteller. 8 p.m.

Punch Brothers featuring Chris Thile. Widely regarded as one of the most interesting and inventive musicians of his generation, Chris Thile has changed the mandolin

$FFHOHUDWHG 0 % $ IOH[LEOH Ă&#x201A; EOHQGHG Ă&#x201A; FRQYHQLHQW

i i i i i

)LYH VWDUWLQJ SRLQWV SHU \HDU )RXU GLIIHUHQW FRQFHQWUDWLRQV 6WXG\ IXOO WLPH RU SDUW WLPH &ODVVHV RQ JURXQG DQG RQ OLQH )LQDQFLDO DLG DYDLODEOH

Ă&#x201A; DGS DOEHUWXV HGX

$/%(5786 0$*186 &2//(*( 35263(&7 675((7 Ă&#x201A; 1(: +$9(1 Ă&#x201A; &7 Ă&#x201A;

ZZZ DOEHUWXV HGX 7KH VPDUW FKRLFH new haven

63

April 12 at First Congregational Church, 1009 Main St., Branford. $16 ($14 members, $3 ages 12 and under). 203488-7715, branfordfolk@yahoo.com, folknotes.org/branfordfolk.

until the Night Fever creates a Disco Inferno! 8 p.m. April 19 at the Shubert Performing Arts Center, 247 College St., New Haven. $33. 203-624-1825, shubert.com.

Here’s the grassroots deal you get with Fred Eaglesmith: You don’t learn about him from Top 40 airplay (even on the country stations) or profiles in People magazine or appearances on Saturday Night Live. You just hear him mentioned by friends whose musical taste you respect, and sooner or later you get curious enough to listen for yourself.

Like Steve Earle, another immense songwriting talent who worked under the radar for years. Don’t miss this rare New Haven appearance. 8 p.m. April 17 at Café Nine, 250 State St., New Haven. $15. 203-789-8281, cafenine.com.

New Haven Symphony Orchestra Pops Fridays at the Shubert features a Big Band Extravaganza with guest conductor Daniel Keberle and guests David Keberle, clarinet, and Ryan Keberle, trombone. 7:30 p.m. April 25 at the Shubert Performing Arts Center, 247 College St., New Haven. $48-$15.

203-624-1825, shubert.com.

Get out your platform heels and get ready to shake your Groove Thing as we bring back the dazzling disco era in It’s Raining Men!, a production presented by the Connecticut Gay Men’s Chorus. This salute to the songs and the artists that made the ‘70s sizzle will have you checking into the YMCA, enlisting In the Navy, turning On the Radio, then heading over to the Copacabana and feeling the Hot Stuff grab you

The Acoustic Blues Project. Three of America’s foremost guitarists have been playing together since they were teens. Steve Katz, founding member of Blood, Sweat & Tears and the Blues Project, along with Danny Kalb of the Blues Project,and acclaimed guitarist and educator Stefan Grossman have been playing folk and blues, jug-band tunes, rock and world music since the 1960s.

Together they cover the gamut of musical styles, and remain as exciting and cutting edge as ever.

They will electrify you acoustically as they soar melodically. 8 p.m.

April 25 at Quick Center for the Arts, Fairfield University, 1073 North Benson Road, Fairfield. $35-$30. 203-254-4010, quickcenter.com.

The Wesleyan Jazz Ensemble, directed by Noah Baerman, presents an evening of interactive, smallgroup jazz, featuring works by Ellington, Monk, Shorter and others.

8 p.m. April 25 at Crowell Concert Hall, Wesleyan University, Middletown. Free.

860-685-3355, boxoffice@wesleyan. edu, wesleyan.edu/cfa.

Tom Lewis is one of North America’s foremost exponents of contemporary sea songs. Lewis is a legitimate, real live Old Salt, having served in England’s Royal Navy for a 24-year career as a submariner.

Accompanying himself on button accordion and ukulele, Lewis has long been regarded as one of folk music’s premier writers and singers of songs of the seas. He has a compelling, booming voice with a direct and powerful delivery that swiftly rouses an audience to song. His musical fare ranges from traditional shanties to songs fashioned out of his seafaring background to humorous and salty stories. 8 p.m. April 26 at First Congregational Church, 1009 Main St., Branford. $12 ($10 members, $3 12 and under). 203-488-7715, branfordfolk@yahoo.com, folknotes. org/branfordfolk.

Experience diverse styles of Chinese

The New York Times ranks Gateway Community College among Connecticut’s TOP FIVE public colleges & universities for incoming freshmen.

classical and contemporary music in Chinese Music Concert: A Rose for My Beloved by the Wesleyan Chinese Music Ensemble led by Guowei Wang. Following the concert audience members are welcome to examine the instruments and talk to the musicians. 7 p.m. April 27 in the World Music Hall, Wesleyan University, Middletown. $3-$2. 860-685-3355, boxoffice@wesleyan.edu, wesleyan. edu/cfa.

A pretty girl in a wig, playing the drums and singing so loudly and gleefully it sounds like her lungs might burst — Scout Niblett reduces audiences around the world to jibbering wrecks with the sheer force of her performances. April 29 at Café Nine, 250 State St., New Haven. $8. 203-789-8281, cafenine. com.

Spend an evening experiencing p’ungmulnori with the Wesleyan student Korean Drumming Ensemble. P’ungmulnori is a lively and energetic tradition, combining music and dance. Every performance is an engaging experience for both the musicians and the audience. 8 p.m. April 30 in the World Music Hall, Wesleyan University, Middletown. $3-$2. 860-685-3355, boxoffice@ wesleyan.edu, wesleyan.edu/cfa.

Your education

Choose from over 95 affordable, accredited degree and certificate programs and find the courses you need to accomplish your academic goals. Classes are designed with YOU in mind. Attend during the day, evenings, on weekends or on-line.

Your career

We’re All About YOU !

The Corporate and Continuing Education division offers state-of-theart credit and non-credit programs in the latest technology and best practices. Learn from the experts in your field of interest for professional development or personal enrichment.

Your future

Whether you’re taking college classes for the first time, returning to school to complete your studies, or making a career change, the respected faculty and caring staff at Gateway Community College can help you prepare for the future of your dreams.

New Haven 64

april 2008

(203) 285-2000

North Haven

For a full schedule of courses and program offerings, visit us online at

www.gwcc.commnet.edu

501 Crescent St., New Haven. Free.

203-392-6778, southernct.edu/ events/cinemadumondebl_5985.

BELLES LETTRES Poetry Reading with Joy Harjo.

Born in Tulsa, Okla., poet Joy Harjo is a member of the Muskogee Tribe.

She is the author of many collections of poetry, including How We Became Human: New and Selected Poems, A Map to the Next World: Poems, The Woman Who Fell From the Sky, which received the Oklahoma Book Arts Award, and In Mad Love and War, which earned an American Book Award. 4 p.m. April 9 at Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, 121 Wall St., New Haven. Free. 203-4322966, nancy.kuhl@yale.edu, library. yale.edu/beinecke/.

Enjoy a biweekly series of lectures with literary expert and Yale Dean of Academic Affairs Mark Schenker.

Join Schenker as he presents his summation of literary history as it applies to life and the world around us in Sundays with Schenker: Literature & Life. Schenker will present literary findings from Shakespeare, Pablo Neruda, T.S. Eliot, Saul Bellow, Joseph Conrad, Keats, Auden, Mark Twain, Magritte and Wallace Stevens, as well as from the texts of Anna Karenina, Ulysses and Atonement. This week’s topic is Thomas Hardy, the novelist. 2-3:30 p.m. April 13 at Willoughby Wallace Memorial Library, 146 Thimble Islands Rd., Stony Creek. Free. 203-488-8702, librarystaff@branford-ct.gov, wwml. org.

Poetry Reading with Dolores Hayden. A Yale professor of architecture, urbanism and American studies, Hayden has written extensively about the history of American urban landscapes and the politics of design. Hayden is also an award-winning poet whose work can be found in numerous literary journals including the Yale Review, Southwest Review, Kenyon Review, Poetry Northwest, Verse Daily, Witness and Michigan Quarterly Review. Her new collection is American Yard (David Robert Books, 2004). 5-7 p.m. April 13 at Willoughby Wallace Memorial Library, 146 Thimble Islands Rd., Stony Creek. Free. 203-488-8702, librarystaff@branford-ct.gov, wwml. org.

Explore how and why our taste in food, what we eat and avoid, how it is grown, selected and prepared, and with whom we eat is culturally mediated in powerful ways. A

Screened in conjunction with the Andrew Cardnuff Ritchie Lecture will be The Rape of Europa (USA, 2006, 117 min.). Noon April 3 & 1 p.m. April 18 at the Yale Center for British Art, 1080 Chapel St., New Haven. Free. ycba.yale.edu.

The Killing Fields (UK, 1984, 141 min.). Directed by Roland Joffé. Hosted by SCSU journalism professor Jerry Dunklee. 7:35 p.m.

April 16 in Engleman Hall A120, SCSU, 501 Crescent Street, New Haven.

Free. 203-392-6778, southernct.edu/ events/cinemadumondebl_5985.

Reader’s Feast discusses The Art of Eating by M.F.K. Fisher. Join discussion leader Sue Eisner for a very interesting evening. Eisner holds a master’s degree in English literature from Northwestern and is a docent at the Yale Center for British Art. Books will be available at the circulation desk. 7:30 p.m. April 30 at Case Memorial Library, 176 Tyler City Rd., Orange. 203-389-2044, www. leaplibraries.org/orange.

Sundays with Schenker: Literature & Life. Biweekly series of lectures with literary expert and Yale Dean of Academic Affairs Mark Schenker (see above). This week’s topic: Thomas Hardy, the poet. 2-3:00 p.m. April 27 at Willoughby Wallace Memorial Library, 146 Thimble Islands Rd., Stony Creek. Free. 203-488-8702, librarystaff@branford-ct.gov, wwml. org.

BENEFITS The University of New Haven’s holds its 25th annual Alumni Scholarship Ball and dedication of the new David A. Beckerman Recreation Center. This year’s honorees include: Martin J. O’Connor (Class of ‘76) Associate Professor/Campus Minister, University of New Haven; J. David Scheiner (‘71), president and chief operating officer of Macy’s Florida; Anthony J. Sparano III (‘84),

head coach of the Miami Dolphins.

Evening includes a cocktail reception, silent auction, recreation center dedication, awards presentation, dinner, live auction and dancing.

Entertainment by Eight to the Bar, while La Cuisine (Branford) provides the food and drink. 6 p.m. April 12 at the David A. Beckerman Recreation Center, University of New Haven, 300 Boston Post Rd., West Haven. $350$175 per person (all proceeds benefit UNH scholarships). 203-932-7082, jpjatak@newhaven.edu, newhaven. edu.

Harbor Lights Fundraiser. Join the Connecticut Audubon Society Coastal Center for an evening with great food (chicken or lobster), a live “Birds of Prey” show, silent auction and beautiful views of the Milford Harbor and Long Island Sound.

Best of all, you will help support the Coastal Center’s year-round environmental education programs.

5-8 p.m. April 27 (RSVP by April 17) at the Milford Yacht Club, 131 Trumbull Ave., Milford. $100. 203-878-7440, ctaudubon.org/visit/milford.htm.

CINEMA Once Upon a Time in China 2 (Hong Kong, 1992, 113 min.). Directed by Tsui Hark. Hosted by Hing Wu. 7:35 p.m. April 2 in Engleman Hall A120, Southern Connecticut State University,

In the film On the Traces of Pocahontas (UK, 2007, 5 min.), modern descendants of the Algonquians depicted by John White visit the British Museum Print Room in London in 2006. They view the drawings and reflect upon their importance to their own history.

Directed by Max Carocci and Simona Piantieri. 2 p.m. April 19 & 26 at the Yale Center for British Art, 1080 Chapel St., New Haven. Free. ycba. yale.edu.

The American wilderness of the 1750s is the setting for director Michael Mann’s grand adaptation of the James Fenimore Cooper adventure classic, The Last of the Mohicans (USA, 1992, 117 minutes).

Daniel Day-Lewis stars as frontier scout Hawkeye defending a band of British settlers during the French and Indian War. 2 p.m. April 19 at the Yale Center for British Art, 1080 Chapel St., New Haven. Free. ycba. yale.edu.

Ashes and Diamonds (Poland, 1958, 103 min.). Directed by Andrzej Wajda. Hosted by Krystyna Gorniak.

7:35 p.m. April 30 in Engleman Hall A120, SCSU, 501 Crescent Street, New Haven. Free. 203-3926778, southernct.edu/events/ cinemadumondebl_5985.

COMEDY Comedian Rob Bartlett: Suburban Legend is a Seven Angels favorite who brings his special brand of humor back to the Brass City. The versatile Bartlett is a successful actor, stand-up comedian, radio personality and writer who is

new haven

65

CRITIC’S PICK The Key to My Heart Let your creativity soar for a good cause by participating in Keys to Creativity, this year’s Leonardo Challenge at the Eli Whitney Museum.

Leonardo da Vinci painted with unrivaled vision, compiled science with modern logic and invented with pure imagination.

The Leonardo Challenge celebrates one of his inventions: improvisational

creativity.

Keys are ancient. As soon as people began collecting treasures, they began inventing devices to protect them. Naturally, keys developed their own mystery and power.

Da Vinci drew locks that were not much

(among other distinctions) a fixture on the syndicated Imus in the Morning radio program. 7 & 9 p.m. April 12 at Seven Angels Theatre, Hamilton Park Pavilion, Waterbury. $45 ($40 subscribers). 203-757-4676, sevenangelstheatre.org.

Returning to the Quick Center with its latest production, One Nation, Under Blog, the Second City Touring Co. is always original, daring and hilarious. John Belushi, Mike Myers, Joan Rivers, Dan Aykroyd, Alan Arkin, Tina Fey and Bill Murray are a few of the company’s illustrious alumni. 8 p.m. April 18 at Quick Center for the Arts, Fairfield University, 1073 North Benson Rd., Fairfield. $35-$30. 203-2544010, quickcenter.com.

CULINARY Chef and co-owner Denise Appel of Zinc and Chow restaurants will discuss technique and ingredients while leading guests through a light dinner and wine selection at her monthly Chef’s Table Dinner. 6 p.m.

April 2 at Zinc, 964 Chapel St., New Haven. $55 inclusive. 203-624-0507, elizabethciarlelli@zincfood.com, zincfood.com.

DANCE Spring Senior Thesis Dance

66

april 2008

different from ancient Greek locks or from the locks you grew up with. But Da Vinci was a prophet of individual identity who imagined infinite differences.

He hinted that every person is a map or code or lock with a

Concert. Senior choreographers present a collection of new works as the culminating project of the dance major. 8 p.m. March 27-29 at Patricelli ‘92 Theater, Wesleyan University, Middletown.$5-$4. 860685-3355, boxoffice@wesleyan.edu, wesleyan.edu/cfa.

The St. Petersburg Ballet Theatre stages a full production of Swan Lake. Peter Gusev, an artist of the Leningrad Opera and Ballet and director of the Kirov Ballet, founded the St. Petersburg company, whose artistic director is Yuri Petukhov. Its rich history includes noted Russian directors and choreographers, as well as leading soloists from the Kirov Ballet. 8 p.m. March 28 at Quick Center for the Arts, Fairfield University, 1073 North Benson Road, Fairfield. $30-$40. 203-254-4010, quickcenter.com.

Katia Kolcio and Nicole Stanton will present an evening of dance entitled The Energy Which Remains, a “cultural archive” that combines dance, music and poetry into three dance works that explore the remnants of culture in and through the body. 8 p.m. April 25 & 26 at the Center for the Arts Theater, Wesleyan University, Middletown. $8-$6. 860685-3355, boxoffice@wesleyan.edu, wesleyan.edu/cfa.

unique key. That is why the key can be viewed as an icon of individual vision.

Each of us has a drawer or cupboard that holds keys whose locks are lost or forgotten. Why do we keep them?

Perhaps we imagine

an unknown door or chest they might open. That’s why, this year’s challenge is to find a key (or keys) and twist the key or its meaning.

Insert, duplicate, cut, connect, color or conceal keys.

Assemble new forms. Unlock new meanings. Let the keys start something new. One hundred artists, designers and playful spirits will transform this common object with wit, whimsy and artistry. Hence, the 14th installment of this challenge is aptly named Keys to Creativity.

Salsa Practice Parties. Tune up your moves or find a practice partner at Green Street’s new Salsa practice parties. Teaching artist David Polon spins some of the hottest Salsa tunes and brings you the latest moves from the dance floor.

Parties are not limited to former Green Street students; everyone (18 and older) is welcome. Bring your dancin’ shoes. 7:30-9:30 p.m. April 11, May 9 & June 13 at Green Street Arts Center, 51 Green St., Middletown. $8 ($5 members, seniors & students).

(860) 685-7871, gsac@wesleyan.edu, greenstreetartscenter.org.

FAMILY EVENTS Birding for Beginners is an introductory course that gives students the basics for identifying birds. Longtime instructor and expert birder Frank Gallo is an enthusiastic teacher. Gallo will cover choosing and using field guides and binoculars, how to identify birds and where to find them in our area. You’ll acquire the tools you need to identify birds yourself. The course culminates with in-the-field experience at a local birding hot spot.

No experience is necessary. Bring the Peterson Field Guide to Eastern Birds. 7-9 p.m. April 1 (class) & 9-11:30 a.m. April 5 (field trip) at Connecticut

This benefit aims to celebrate creativity with fine champagne and the savory inventions from the creative kitchen of Doug Coffin.

Support the work of the Eli Whitney Museum through your presence and your purchase of artwork invented for this event. Finished pieces due by April 7.

5:30-9 p.m. April 10 at Eli Whitney Museum, 915 Whitney Ave., Hamden. $50. 203-7771833, sh@eliwhitney. org, eliwhitney.org.

— Elvira J. Duran

Audubon Society Coastal Center at Milford, 1 Milford Point Rd., Milford. $55 members/$85 non-members.

203-878-7440, ctaudubon.org/visit/ milford.htm.

Food for Thought: Spring Birdhouses. Join Sue Fish, local craftsmaster, to make beautifully decorated birdhouses just in time for spring! Bring a lunch and enjoy some dessert. Noon-1 p.m. April 2 at Willoughby Wallace Memorial Library, 146 Thimble Islands Rd., Stony Creek.

Free (a non-perishable food item is requested as a donation). 203-4888702, librarystaff@branford-ct.gov, wwml.org.

Learn about the water cycle and how we can help keep our water clean in April Showers, a nature program for three- to five-year-olds with a parent or adult guardian. Bring your boots and explore the tide pools, then come inside and make a rainmaker.

Bring your youngster to the Coastal Center for a “hands-on” introduction to nature. Parents and guardians will learn tips on sharing nature with children as we engage and inspire family exploration. Each one-hour program features an outdoor discovery walk or live animal presentation, plus stories, songs and crafts. 10:30-11:30 a.m. April 2 at Connecticut Audubon Society Coastal

Center at Milford, 1 Milford Point Rd., Milford. $10 members/$15 nonmembers (includes 1 child and 1 adult).

203-878-7440, ctaudubon.org/visit/ milford.htm.

It’s spring and birds are moving north to nest. April is the perfect time to sharpen identification skills before most birds arrive. Frank Gallo is offering an expanded 101/201level series with a third evening class focusing on identifying birds by sounds. Extended Birding 101 includes an owl prowl, where Gallo will attempt to call in local owls.

This is the perfect opportunity to explore bird identification by sight and sound. Learn to identify birds on your own and gain valuable time in the field with an experienced leader and fellow birders. In addition, updates on how to choose and use new field guides and optics and where to find birds in our area will be covered. 7-9 p.m. April 2, 9, & 23 (classes) & 9 a.m.-noon April 26 (field trip) at Connecticut Audubon Society Coastal Center at Milford, 1 Milford Point Rd., Milford. $105 members/$135 non-members. Register

by April 1. 203-878-7440, ctaudubon. org/visit/milford.htm.

Public Stargazing Session. 8 p.m. April 3 at the Leitner Family Observatory, 355 Prospect St., New Haven. Free. cobb@astro.yale.edu, astro.yale.edu.

Bird song is all around us and a part of our everyday lives. It can be lyrical or lazy, haunting or harsh, inconspicuous or breathtakingly beautiful. It can also be an incredible aid to finding and identifying birds.

Learning bird songs and calls opens another dimension to bird identification, adding additional layers to one’s repertoire of identification skills. In Sorting Out Bird Songs, instructor Frank Gallo, an avid student of bird song, will introduce participants to the basics of birding by ear, covering available sound resources as well as the tips, tricks and even pitfalls to identifying birds by sound. 7-9 p.m. April 3 at Connecticut Audubon Society Coastal Center at Milford, 1 Milford Point Rd., Milford. $30 members/$50 nonmembers. 203-878-7440, ctaudubon. org/visit/milford.htm.

Bring your young inventor to the Eli Whitney Museum’s 14th annual Jr. Leonardo Challenge and get a glimpse of how your child’s mind works. The challenge: insert, twist and turn old keys (and key rings) into the animals, acrobats, audience, the sideshows and brass band of a Key Ring Circus. 3-5 p.m. April 5 at Eli Whitney Museum, 915 Whitney Ave., Hamden. $14 (benefits the scholarship fund). RSVP required. 203-777-1833, kl@eliwhitney.org, eliwhitney.org.

Cow Chip Bingo will follow the Run

1193 Chapel St. New Haven, CT 865-2598

FURS

OF DISTINCTION

Furs and only Furs Have Been A Family Tradition For Over 100 Years AN

JB LONDON LTD

ECLECTIC SELECTION OF GIFTS AND GIFT BASKETS FOR EVERY OCCASION

for Your Life road race. Tickets are $10 per square on the Bingo Board.

First prize of $1,500 goes to the first cow to drop chips: $1,500; second and third prize of $1,000 and $500 will go to the second and third cows to drop chips, respectively. 11 a.m. April 12 at Quinnipiac University Alumni Field, 275 Mt Carmel Ave., Hamden. $10. QURoadRace@ hotmail.com, qupastudentsociety. com.

City Farmers’ Year-Round Market at Wooster Square. Enjoy local food from local farms including seafood, meat, milk, cheese, organic greens, root vegetables, handcrafted bread and baked goods, honey and more.

CitySeed holds a market each third Saturday of the month through spring. 10 a.m.-1 p.m. April 19 at Russo Park, corner of Chapel St. and DePalma Ct., New Haven. 203-7733736, cityseed.org.

Earth Day Beach Clean-up. Join us as we clean up the beach for nesting piping plovers, American oystercatchers, black skimmers, least terns, shorebirds and beachgoers. If time permits, participants may remove invasive plants from the property or plant native shrubs and perennials. If possible, please bring work gloves and hand clippers.

Garden carts would also be helpful.

Plastic bags, gloves and bottled water will be provided. Free. 10

UR

a.m.-1 p.m. April 19 at Connecticut Audubon Society Coastal Center at Milford, 1 Milford Point Rd., Milford.

Free. 203-878-7440, ctaudubon.org/ visit/milford.htm.

Charles Island Exploration.

Discover the natural history and folklore that make this island the “treasure” of Milford. Wear comfortable sneakers or boots that can get wet for a half-mile hike out to the Island. We recommend you bring water, a snack, hat and sunscreen. 4:45-6:15 p.m. April 19 at Connecticut Audubon Society Coastal Center at Milford, 1 Milford Point Rd., Milford. $12 adult ($6 child) member, $16 adult ($10 child) non-members, $7 seniors. Advance registration only.

203-878-7440, ctaudubon.org/visit/ milford.htm.

Would you like to share your interest in birds and learn identification tips from others? On The Early Bird Walk you’ll get to concentrate on the basics and learn from one another as we search for migrants with Coastal Center Director Frank Gallo on the productive beaches, marshes, mudflats and forests of Milford Point. 8-9 a.m. April 26 at Connecticut Audubon Society Coastal Center at Milford, 1 Milford Point Rd., Milford. $5 member, $7 non-members.

Advance registration only. 203-8787440, ctaudubon.org/visit/milford. htm.

You don’t need to be a rst time home buyer!

..New HaveHome New Haven Is your primary employment in New Haven?

Do you want to buy a house in New Haven?

If You Answer Yes You May Be Eligible to Participate The CHFA’s UR (Urban Renewal) program can lend you 100% of the purchase price plus closing costs at a reduced rate. You can also receive $20,000 for a single family or $25,000 for a multifamily as a forgivable grant to repair/improve the property.

Call Now!

Blake l k Financial, i i l 1209 CHAPEL ST, NEW HAVEN 203.787.4496

se Habla Espanol

LLC

29 High Street, East Haven 230-468-8683 www.chfabroker.com new haven

67

CRITIC’S PICK: The Maya Mystery Jaguar Head -Maya (AD 300-900) is one of the many fascinating Maya artifacts on display at the Yale Peabody Museum through July 19.

Photo courtesy of the Gilcrease Museum, Tulsa.

About 40 years ago some exquisite classic Maya art pieces flooded the antiquities market from an unknown site, known first as Site Q and later by its ancient name of Sak Nikte’. A decades-long search for its location finally came to an end in 2005 when Yale assistant anthropology professor Marcello

LECTURES/ DISCUSSIONS The League of Women Voters of Connecticut will host a panel discussion, The Movement of People: A Global Perspective on Migrants, Refugees & Displaced Persons, as part of its 2008 Symposium on International Relations. Panelists include Elizabeth Campbell, director of the Refugee Council USA; Peggy Levitt, Wellesley College sociology department chair and co-director of the Transnational Studies Initiative; Stephen Pitti, history professor and director of the Program in Ethnicity, Race & Migration at Yale University. Nancy Ruther, associate director of the MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies at Yale, will moderate. 8:30 a.m.12:30 p.m. April 8 in Alumni Hall, Quinnipiac University, 275 Mount Carmel Ave., Hamden. $20 ($10 students) advance, $25 at door. 203288-7996, quinnipiac.edu.

Found Guilty, Finding Guilt: Effects of a Standardized Victim Impact Curriculum for Inmates. University of New Haven assistant professor and Coordinator of Crime Analysis Christopher Sedelmaier will discuss victim-impact education programs in the prison setting. 3 p.m. April 9 at Marvin K. Peterson Library, University of New Haven, 300 Boston Post Rd., West Haven. Free. 203-932-7191,

68

april 2008

hdobi@newhaven.edu, newhaven. edu.

Human/animal chiropractor Wendy Coren demonstrates chiropractic care on a “patient,” and discusses chiropractic work for both horse and rider as part of the Equine Lecture Series. 7:15 p.m. April 11 at McDermot Hall, Room 116, Post University, 800 Country Club Rd., Waterbury. $10 (free for Post students). 203-596-4631, cbaker@post.edu, post.edu.

related to a member of the UNH community. The ceremony will include the lighting of ceremonial candles, the chanting of a memorial blessing, a moment of silent contemplation and musical accompaniment. All members of the community are invited to attend. 3 p.m. April 29 in UNH Library, 300 Boston Post Rd., West Haven. 203-9327095, newhaven.edu.

NATURAL HISTORY

Managing editor of Newsweek and Washington Monthly contributing editor Jon Meacham will lecture at Fairfield University’s Open Visions Forum. Meacham’s book Franklin and Winston: An Intimate Portrait of an Epic Friendship (Random House 2003), a chronicle of the wartime relationship between Roosevelt and Churchill, was a New York Times bestseller. 8 p.m. April 14 at Quick Center for the Arts, Fairfield University, 1073 North Benson Road, Fairfield. $45.

203-254-4010, quickcenter.com.

Atka the Wolf. Help welcome back Atka, an arctic wolf who lives at the Wolf Conservation Center in South Salem, N.Y. Founded in 1999, the center promotes the conservation of this often misunderstood species by teaching about wolves, their relationship to the environment and our role in their protection. 1 & 2 p.m. April 5 at Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History, 170 Whitney Ave., New Haven. $7 ($6 seniors, $5 ages 3-18). 203-432-5050, yale.edu/peabody.

University of New Haven presents its fifth annual Holocaust Remembrance Event. Keynote speaker Martin Schiller ’64 is a Holocaust survivor who has written of his experiences in a book entitled Bread, Butter & Sugar: A Boy’s Journey Through the Holocaust and Postwar Europe. This program of remembrance will also include a reading of names of those who perished in the Holocaust who are

The Peabody Museum’s latest traveling exhibition celebrates the rich and diverse artistic traditions of Mexico. Developed by the Gilcrease Museum in Tulsa, Okla., Las Artes de Mexico examines more than 3,500 years of art and culture and of tradition and change across the broad spectrum of Mexican life, from the ancient worlds of the Mayans and Aztecs to the 20th century works of Miguel Covarrubias

Canuto discovered a perfectly preserved monument with more than 140 carved hieroglyphs identical to those of Site Q. Come find out about the exciting search for the lost site in From Site Q to Sak Nikte’: Chronicle of a 40-year Classic Maya Mystery.

5 p.m. April 3 at Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History, 170 Whitney Ave., New Haven. $7 ($6 seniors, $5 ages 3-18). 203432-5050, yale.edu/ peabody.

— Elvira J. Duran

and Diego Rivera. Through July 19 at Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History, 170 Whitney Ave., New Haven.

Open 10 a.m.-5 p.m. daily, noon-5 p.m.

Sun. $7 ($6 seniors, $5 ages 3-18). 203432-5050, yale.edu/peabody.

Small Things Considered. From a nutmeg to a strand of George Washington’s hair to the classic Wiffle Ball, discover the big impact small objects have made on history and our lives. Through November 29 at the Connecticut Historical Society, 1 Elizabeth St., Hartford. Open noon-5 p.m. Tues-Sat. $6 ($3 seniors, students). 860-236-5621, www.chs.org.

SPORTS/RECREATION Cycling Night Ride on the Canal. Enjoy the newborn spring and get those base miles up with a weekly two- to three-hour ride up the Farmington Canal Trail. Riders maintain a very moderate (15-17 mph) pace. 5:30 p.m.

Tuesdays April 1, 8, 15, 22 & 29 at the Devil’s Gear Bike Shop, 433 Chapel St., New Haven. Free. 203-773-9288, thedevilsgear.com.

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

Cyclists leave 10 a.m. from Lulu’s European Café as a single group; no one is dropped. 10 a.m. Sundays April 6, 13, 20 & 27 at Lulu’s European Café, 49 Cottage St., New Haven. Free.

203-773-9288, elmcitycycling.org/.

Critical Mass. The ride you shouldn’t miss! Participants meet at the flagpole on the New Haven Green 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.

April 25 at Temple and Chapel streets, New Haven. Free. elmcitycycling.org/.

Hikes Join the New Haven Hiking Club for a one-mile Class D Star Trek. If sky is overcast, event will be canceled for that night only. Come gaze at Saturn, Mars, star clusters, a stellar nursery, exploded stars and galaxies. Bring a working flashlight. Hike will explore a scale model of the solar system.

Hike leader will bring along a 25-inch (mirror diameter) telescope. Dress warmly. 7:45 p.m. (hike) or anytime until 10 p.m. (to see the night sky) March 28-29 at 30 Birch Mill Rd., Killingworth. 860-663-3373, nhhc.info.

Road Races Connecticut Can Feed the Need 5K Walk/Run. Feed the Need Inc. will host its third Connecticut chapter 5K walk/run this year, a hunger walk benefiting Shoreline Soup Kitchens. There will be a kids fun run and medals for the top finishers in age/gender categories. Soup and snacks served after the race. 9:15 a.m. (registration 8-9 a.m.) April 5 at Hammonasset State Park, Madison.

Entry fee is 25 non-perishable cans/ boxes of food. 860-767-4948, info@ feedtheneed.org, feedtheneed.org.

North Haven High School hosts its 21st annual 5K Road Race and One Mile Fun Run/Fitness Walk. Trophies and refreshments after the race in the Middle School Cafeteria. 10 a.m.

April 6 at North Haven Middle School, 55 Bailey Road, North Haven. $15-$7 pre-registration, $20-$15 day of race. bews@prodigy.net, north-haven.k12. ct.us/nhroadrace/default.html.

Looking for a fun, early season off road duathlon that’s great for all levels of athletes? That would be the ninth annual Brian’s Beachside Boogie, a two-mile run/ten-mile bike/two-mile run duathlon.

There’s no better way to start off your multi-sport season. 9 a.m. (online registration ends 5 p.m. April 3) April 6 at Hammonasset State Park, Madison. $45 single, $75 relay. briansbeachsideboogie.com.

The Bimbler’s Bash is a 10K loop entirely off-road in Westwoods,

Guilford made of a series of interconnecting single track hiking trails. You should expect to negotiate lots of rocks, roots and possibly get your feet wet, plus with two rock scrambles be prepared for an adventure! 9 a.m. April 6 at Westwoods, 143 Three Mile Course, Guilford. $18. mrbimble.com/bimble_ bash.htm.

The Knights of Columbus Bernardo Council No. 1350 hosts the Greenway 5K Charity Run. Proceeds from the run will benefit local Valley Charities. Trophies to first male & female and first place in all age group runners. Beautiful, flat, scenic raceway along the river.

All participants must pre-register; field limited to 200 runners. 8:30 a.m. April 12 at Naugatuck River Greenway, Derby Municipal Parking lot, Derby. $17 before April 3, $20 after. hitekracing.com/greenway5k.

Run For Your Life is an annual 5K road race certified by Hi-Tek Racing and organized by the Quinnipiac University Physician Assistant (QU PA) Student Society to benefit the Children’s Shelter in San Antonio, Tex. and the QU PA Student Society in the AAPA Host City Prevention Campaign promoting Childhood Literacy. Second annual Kid’s Fun Run to follow adult race, weather permitting. 9 a.m. (registration 8 a.m.) April 12 at Quinnipiac University, 275 Mt Carmel Ave., Hamden. $15 before 4/5, $17 after. QURoadRace@ hotmail.com, qupastudentsociety. com.

Julia’s Run for Children. Four-mile run/walk and 0.7-mile fun run for ages 12 and under, along with an awards ceremony, refreshments and raffle. 10 a.m. (7:45-9:45 a.m. registration, 9:30 a.m. fun run) April 13 on Cross Campus, Yale University, New Haven. $16 advance, $20 day of race ($5/$8 fun run). juliarun.org

Spectator Sports

Bentley College (softball 1 & 3 p.m.

April 19), UMass/Lowell (baseball 3 p.m. April 1), Pace University (softball 3 & 5 p.m. April 2, baseball noon & 3 p.m. April 5), St. Michael’s College (softball noon & 2 p.m. April 5), Southern New Hampshire (baseball 3 p.m. April 8, softball1 & 3 p.m. April 13), Assumption College (baseball noon & 3 p.m. April 13), Bryant University (baseball 3:30 p.m. April 15), Merrimack College (softball 3:30 & 5:30 p.m. April 17, baseball 3:30 p.m. April 23), College of St. Rose (baseball 1 p.m. April 20), Franklin Pierce College (softball 1 & 3 p.m. April 20), American International (baseball 3:30 p.m.

April 22), Stonehill College (softball 3 & 5 p.m. April 22, baseball 3:30 p.m.

April 29) and St. Anselm College (baseball 1 p.m. April 27). At the Ballpark at Southern Connecticut State University, New Haven. 203-3926000, southernctowls.com.

In baseball, the Bulldogs of Yale take the field for twin bills with Princeton (noon & 2:30 p.m. April 5), Cornell (noon & 2:30 p.m. April 6), Sacred Heart (3:30 & 6 p.m. April 6), Harvard (1 & 3:30 p.m. April 12, noon & 2:30 p.m. April 13), Fairfield (3:30 & 6 p.m. April 16), Hartford (3:30 p.m.

April 23) and Brown (1 & 3:30 p.m.

April 27). At Yale Field, New Haven.

Free. yalebulldogs.cstv.com.

The University of New Haven baseball team plays at home against Concordia College (3:30 p.m. April 1), UMass Lowell (3:30 p.m. April 4), Dowling College (1 p.m. April 6), Adelphi University (1 p.m. April 13), University of Bridgeport (3:30 p.m. April 15), Post University (3:30 p.m. April 17), St. Thomas Aquinas College (noon April 19), C.W. Post (noon April 26), Pace University (3:30 p.m. April 30) and Queens College (noon May 3). At Frank Vieira Field, University of New Haven, New Haven.

203-932-7468, rcerrato@newhaven. edu, estrada2.newhaven.edu/ athletics/teams/baseball/schedule/.

In softball, the lady Bulldogs take on Ivy League rivals Princeton (12:30 & 2:30 p.m. April 5), Cornell (12:30 & 2:30 p.m. April 6) and Harvard (12:30 & 2:30 p.m. April 12, 12:30 & 2:30 p.m.

April 13), as well as Providence (3 & 5 p.m. April 16), Wagner (3:30 & 5:30 p.m. April 23) and Brown (12:30 & 2:30 p.m. April 27). At Yale University, New Haven. Free. yalebulldogs.cstv. com.

Southern Connecticut State University’s men’s baseball and women’s softball squads face

Watch the heavyweight boys in blue (Yale) row up a storm in the Olympic Axe vs. Dartmouth (8 a.m.

April 12) and in the Blackwell Cup vs.

Columbia and Penn (8 a.m. April 19), while the light-weight crew battles Columbia and Penn for the Dodge Cup (9:45 a.m. April 19) and Cornell (4 p.m. April 19). At Gilder Boat House, 280 Roosevelt Dr., Derby. Free. yalebulldogs.cstv.com.

The 2007 Ivy League, Eastern Sprints and NCAA champions, Yale’s distaff rowers take on Cornell and Syracuse (9 a.m. April 5), Dartmouth and Boston University (9 a.m. April 12) and Harvard with Virginia (9 a.m. April 26). At Gilder Boat House, 280 Roosevelt Dr., Derby. Free. yalebulldogs.cstv.com.

Southern Connecticut State University’s women laxers take on Adelphi University (7 p.m.

April 8), Merrimack College (7 p.m. April 10), Bryant University (1 p.m. April 12), Bentley College (7 p.m. April 16) and St. Michael’s College (1 p.m. April 26). At Jess Dow Field, Southern Connecticut State University, New Haven. 203-392-6000, southernctowls.com.

The Yale women’s lacrosse team takes to the field vs. Holy Cross (3 p.m. April 2), Columbia (3 p.m. April 9) and Brown (5 p.m. April 16). At Johnson Field, Yale University, New Haven. Free. yalebulldogs.cstv.com.

The male Yale Bulldogs cross lacrosse sticks with Brown (8 p.m.

April 4), Air Force (1 p.m. April 20) and Harvard (1 p.m. April 26). At Reese Stadium, Yale University, New Haven. Free. yalebulldogs.cstv.com.

Please send CALENDAR information to CALENDAR@conntact.com no later than six weeks preceding calendar month of event. Please include date, time, location, event description, cost and contact information. Photographs must be at least 300 dpi resolution and are published at discretion of NEW HAVEN magazine.

new haven

69

W O RD S of MOUT H

By Liese Kline PHOTOGRAPH:

Anthony DeCarlo

Executive Chef David Rutigliano with his signature dishes at the new SBC Restaurant and Brewery in Hamden.

NEW EATS:

SBC Restaurant & Brewery

A

brewpub is hardly the first place one would pick for a family outing, but SBC Restaurant & Brewery is already attracting aprés-shopping crowds at its new location on Dixwell Avenue in Hamden with its laid-back ambience and quality food.

It’s no mere happenstance that “restaurant” comes first in the name — the food at SBC is the focus, according to owners Bill and Mark DaSilva.

Warm up with the range of appetizers including Thai-style satay skewers, three kinds of fried calamari and wings

70

april 2008

two ways. There’s even an “onion brick” And of course there’s beer: at least to please fans of a certain Aussie chain. eight house-brewed drafts with names customized for Hamden like Sleeping Chef Dave Rutigliano’s skill shines in Giant IPA, West Rock Stout and Eli dishes like the Asian salad with sesameWhitney Extra Pale Ale. SBC also offers crusted tuna, a harmonious blend of bottled national brands and a full bar at lightly cooked fish and impeccably the restaurant’s center. fresh greens. Pastas are also cooked to perfection and carnivores can choose SBC has built its brand as an affordable from a range of cuts including flatiron, local alternative to national chains, and rib-eye and “Brew Master’s Prime Rib.” the new location delivers — only blocks away from Hamden’s shopping plazas The sizeable children’s menu ranges and the Wilbur Cross Parkway. from grilled salmon to plain pasta to individual kid-sized pizzas.

SBC Restaurant & Brewery, 1950 Dixwell Ave., Hamden (203-288-4677).

Anthony DeCarlo PHOTOGRAPH:

Just what Hamden ordered!

Ram Kumar Shizestha (left), Chef Chanh Tong, Prakash Nath and Phet Vimixay (front) at Ayuthai in Branford.

JUST A TASTE:

An elegant & comfortable Mediterranean Restaurant & Bar with a Neighborhood Feel & Authentic Homemade Taste

Ayuthai Royal Thai Cuisine subtle hint of fish sauce.

Fresh vegetables appear throughout Chef Chnah Cong’s creations, showcasing a generous helping of shrimp in the Laksa Shrimp special and more shrimp in an addictive tom yum soup.

N

ew Haven has got its own “Little Bangkok” around Chapel and York, but a jaunt up I-95 to Guilford is where you’ll find the area’s best papaya salad.

Ayuthai Royal Thai Cuisine opened late last year in a former Japanese restaurant and has attracted notice for its vivid flavors and fresh ingredients.

Take that papaya salad: Most versions around town are limp tangles of vegetables in a salty sauce. But Ayuthai’s version preserves the papaya’s crunch and sets it off with peanuts and a dressing with only a

The Duck Ga Prow perfectly balances the assertive taste of the bird with a garlic and basil sauce. The hearty serving of tender slabs of meat rendered the dish too much to eat at one sitting (but made for excellent leftovers).

Finish up with the mango sticky rice, a harmonious marriage of fresh fruit and coconut-scented grains, but skip the overly oily coconut pudding.

Ambience at Ayuthai is lacking for now, with portraits of the Thai royal family the only decor in a tired dining room. But food this good can be appreciated in any surroundings.

Ayuthai Royal Thai Cuisine, 2279 Boston Post Rd., Guilford (203-453-2988).

Entire Lunch Menu Under

$10 Appetizers 1/2 PRICE during Happy Hour Monday – Friday: 4 – 6pm

Catering On & Off Premise Available LIVE Music In the Lounge Every Weekend Lunch Mon – Fri: 11:30 – 4:00 Dinner Mon thru Thurs: 4 – 9:30 Fri & Sat: 5 – 10:30 (at the corner of Dixwell and Whitney)

2323 Whitney Ave Hamden

203.288.4700 www.mickeysgroup.com

new haven

71

PHOTOGRAPH:

Dine-In • Take-Out • Catering

CHEF ON THE GRILL

Anthony DeCarlo

Re al Pit BB Q Quality, Full Service Catering 389-2065 Tues–Sat: 9–8 Sun: 9–7 1302 Whalley Ave. New Haven

483-9995

LaLuna Join us every Sunday

for the largest Buffet Brunch on the Shoreline 168 North Main St Branford

Sammy Kuru with Turkish specialties at Saray in West Haven.

Sammy Kuru Saray Restaurant

I

f you think Turkish food is only about shish kebab, plan a visit soon to Saray Restaurant in West Haven. The extensive menu, ranging from vegetable plates to Turkish-style pizzas, will change your mind as you enjoy the eatery’s exotic ambience. Don’t miss the antep ezme, a spicy pepper dip set off perfectly by Saray’s fresh bread, and the sliced lamb sandwich. Finish off with the luscious caramelized milk pudding, a rival to the best cheesecakes. Sammy Kuru runs Saray with his brother Halil and he wants to spread the word about his native cuisine.

How did you come to own Saray?

FUSION ASIAN CUISINE HIBACHI STEAK HOUSE, SUSHI BAR & LOUNGE 203.926.1933 702 BRIDGEPORT AVENUE, SHELTON WWW.ASIANBISTRORESTAURANT.NET 72

april 2008

I’m from Turkey but I’ve been in the U.S. for 15 years. I worked as a chef in an Italian restaurant in Cheshire, but then my brother moved here and he’d worked in a lot of famous restaurants at home. After middle school, he went right into the restaurant business. He’s a really good chef, so I said, ‘Let’s give it a try.’

What kind of food did you grow up with?

We’re from a town in northern Turkey near the Black Sea, very close to Russia.

But there are many Turkish dishes that are popular all over the country, so we decided we would use different foods from all the areas at the restaurant.

What is a typical dish?

The most popular are from southern Turkey and Istanbul. Doner kebab (marinated beef and lamb slices served from a rotating spit) is all over Turkey; you can find it everywhere in the world.

Is there one typical ingredient in Turkish food?

I can’t choose one thing. We use a lot of meat, but we also use a lot of vegetables.

We have ten different appetizers, many with eggplant like baba gannoush. Our meat is very special: fresh — we never use frozen. We get it sent from New York every day. We also have a fish corner with two or three kinds of fish from Turkey and Greece.

Continued on 76

BEST OF THE REST

“A treat for the Senses” – Hartford Courant

MIDDLE EASTERN

“Amid elegance, a variety of Indian dishes”

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 the silky baklava.

– New York Times

Fine Indian Cuisine 148 York Street, New Haven, CT 203.776.8644 www.zaroka.com

Istanbul Café, 245 Crown St., New Haven (203787-3881). With its airy yet opulent interior, this critics’ favorite has the best ambience in town and consistently flavorful food. A grilled octopus salad and red lentil soup are standouts, along with lamb dishes.

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.

1999-2007 “Award of Excellence” Wine Spectator magazine

Kasbah Garden Café, 105 Howe St., New Haven (203-777-5053). Moroccan-style lamb and vegetable dishes prevail on the limited but tasty menu. Savor mint tea and baklava outside on the idiosyncratically landscaped patio.

AMERICAN Bespoke, 266 College St., New Haven (203 5624644). 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.

Best Italian Restaurant, Statewide, 2007–2008 Connecticut Magazine Reader’s Choice Poll

1015 Bridgeport Ave.

Milford CT

203 877-2200

100 Wooster Street New Haven • 777-3373

johnnyraysrestaurant.com

Foe, 576 Main St., Branford (203-483-5896). 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 (203-787-3466). 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 (203-8596666). 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.

Zinc, 964 Chapel St., New Haven (203-624-0507).

Consistently excellent food, drinks and service in a central location. Innovative seafood like tamari-cured tuna with wasabi oil is a good choice, along with the drink specials and seasonal desserts.

Milfordʼs Hottest New Restaurant!

Something Fresh is Cooking!

Introducing our new spring/summer menu designed by

Modern Menu & Nightly Entertainment

YellowFin’s Seafood Grille

Pierce Regnier, Executive Chef yellowfinsseafoodgrille.com

203-250-9999

1027 South Main Street • Cheshire new haven

73

INDIAN

MEXICAN

SEAFOOD

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. Buffet is $7.95 daily ($9.95 on Sunday).

Baja, 63 Boston Post Rd., Orange (203-799-2252). 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.

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.

Royal India, 140 Howe St., New Haven (203-7879493). Tasty North Indian fare in an intimate setting on Howe’s mini-restaurant row. Nice variety at lunch buffet with fresh bread. Weekday buffet is $7.95, Friday-Saturday is $8.95 and Sunday $9.95.

Jalapeno Heaven, 40 N. Main St., Branford (203481-6759). Tasty Americanized fare in a cozy setting with excellent margaritas.

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.

Darbar India, 1070 Main St., Branford (203-4818994). Award-winning shoreline favorite with excellent atmosphere and north Indian classics, run by Royal India owner. Spicy vindaloos and tandooris are a good bet. Friday-Sunday lunch buffet is $9.95.

Coromandel, 185 Boston Post Rd., Orange (203-7959055). Great breads and regional specialties from the local outpost of a celebrated Fairfield chain.

Try the shrimp in coconut sauce and unusual lentil dessert. Weekday lunch buffet $9.95 ($11.95 on weekends).

ITALIAN 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 plates in an unpretentious setting.

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.

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., Derby (203735-0494). 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.

74

april 2008

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 lipsmacking posole hominy soup.

Viva Zapata, 161 Park St., New Haven (203-5622499). Toothsome classics and a killer sangria in a festive pub atmosphere. Open for lunch.

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. 9343212. Take the family out and enjoy the boardwalk

EDITOR’S PICK Panama Esmerelda Especial Coffee

Anthony DeCarlo

Thali, 4 Orange St., New Haven (203-777-1177).

Downtown’s best Sunday buffet, with ample meat and vegetarian selections as well as fresh masala dosa crepes and unusual treats like goat curry and carrot pudding.

Mezcal, 14 Mechanic St., New Haven (203-782-4828).

Big portions and wide-ranging menu with lots of surprises. No liquor license.

Guilford Mooring, 505 Whitfield St., Guilford (203458-2921). 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 on the Sound?

PHOTOGRAPH:

Swagat, 215 Boston Post Rd. West Haven (203-9310108). A tiny outpost of south Indian favorites near the University of New Haven. Best bets are the masala dosa and many vegetarian dishes, plus the friendly service. No buffet, but open all day and very affordable.

Long Wharf Taco Trucks, Long Wharf Drive near Veteran’s Memorial Park, weekdays at lunch. Tacos as they’re served in Mexico — just corn tortillas, meat, cilantro and a spicy sauce — eaten al fresco

by New Haven Harbor.

On a recent visit to Willoughby’s Coffee & Tea on Church Street, one figure caught the eye: a coffee listed at $37.99 a pound. Since when does coffee cost as much as Kobe beef?

Since Willoughby’s owners have started bidding on the best beans in the world, that is. Panama Esmeralda Especial is actually a bargain at $37.99 as a batch of beans from a different plot on the same farm went for an eye-popping $130 a pound last year — a world record.

Branford-based Willoughby’s was lucky to get about 50 pounds of the Esmeralda Especial, says co-owner Barry Levine.

“They don’t sell to everybody — there’s not enough to go around,” he explains.

The coffee is an heirloom variety from Ethiopia lovingly tended on the slopes of Mount Baru in western Panama.

There may not even be enough of the batch to last through the month, so head to Willoughby’s New Haven, Branford or Madison locations to try it by the cup.

A 12-ounce serving costs $2.50 and should be drunk freshly brewed and black.

Barry Levine (left) and Bob Williams in front of the roaster at Willoughby’s Coffee & Tea in Branford.

What do you get for your money? An intensely floral scent with hints of jasmine and a rich, complex flavor. It’s definitely a cut above the office brew, and a taste of history as well.

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

PHOTOGRAPH:

RECIPE

Anthony DeCarlo

Seafood with Salsa Verde Spring means seafood in northern Spain, the freshest fish and shellfish in light, subtle sauces. Manuel Romero, chef at top New Haven restaurant Ibiza, hails from Galicia, in Spain’s northwest corner, where seafood is king. Romero created this recipe and recommends Albariño white wine from his home province to drink with it. Hake can be substituted for monkfish for those seeking a more sustainable fish, but do your best to find Manila clams — their intense brininess brings the flavors of this dish together.

Manuel Romero of Ibiza with his Seafod in Salsa Verde.

Serves 4.

3 ounces extra-virgin olive oil 3 cloves garlic, finely minced 1 tablespoon flour 3 ounces white wine (1/3 cup) 1/3 cup fish stock or water

20 Manila clams 4 loins of monkfish or hake fillets, about 8 ounces each, sliced a half-inch thick.

5 ounces fresh green peas (2/3 cup) 2 tablespoons finely minced parsley

Heat the oil on a medium-low setting and add the garlic; cook 2 or 3 minutes until it just begins to brown. Add the flour and cook, stirring constantly, about 2 minutes. Add the white wine and cook a minute or two more, still stirring, then add fish stock or water. Bring sauce to a boil and add clams. (Thinly-sliced Yukon gold potatoes or chanterelle mushrooms

can also be added at this point) . Cook for 1 minute and then add fish and peas.

(Turn fish after several minutes if your fish fillets are thicker than a half-inch.)

Cook everything together until fish is done and clams are open, 3 to 5 minutes.

Remove from heat. Add parsley, stir into mixture, and let rest for 3 minutes to allow the herb to flavor the dish.

Everyone has tried our food,

Open Seven Days

Now try our pizza!

203 776-4825

Hibachi • Sushi • Pan-Asian

127 Wooster St • New Haven AnastasiosRestaurant.com

B[ddo @e[Ëi

<_i^ JWb[

<h[i^" <kd 9WikWb H[ijWkhWdji

Catering & Parties Welcome

Voted th e Best Seafo o d Resta u ra nt in CT!

$5 .BHB[JOF

514 Bridgeport Avenue, Shelton • 929-8666 www.KobisRestaurant.com

Hekj[ ' CWZ_ied M[ijXheea new haven

75

Grassy Hill COUNTRY CLUB

NEWLY RENOVATED

The perfect setting for a wedding of unsurpassed elegance Our experienced staff will assist you in planning your perfect event 441 Clark Lane, Orange

795-3100

www.grassyhillcountryclub.com

ROMEO & CESARE’S Breakfast, Lunch, & Dinner To Go Open Daily: 7-7, Sun: 7-4

771 Orange St, New Haven

Fruits & Vegetables • Flowers • Prepared Foods • Hot/Cold Subs • Catering • Delivery

northern italian cuisine

Michael’s Trattoria Lunch & Dinner reservations recommended on weekends

— excellent wine list — Zagat Rated The BEST RIBS and Much More....

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 stir-fry and a colorful array of main-dish salads.

16 MAIN ST. EAST HAVEN (203) 468-6695

It’s Only Natural Restaurant, 386 Main St., Middletown (860-346-9210). Worth the ride up I91 for award-winning entrées like sweet potato enchiladas, tempeh “crab cakes” and a generous macrobiotic plate. Full slate of vegan desserts including chocolate mousse couscous cake.

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. The homey ambience and great location seals the deal.

On the Grill

Continued from 74

What is your favorite thing to eat back at home?

When I go back I get the Iskander kebab in Istanbul: It’s like a doner kebab, with toasted bread, butter and Iskander sauce with tomato and different spices. It comes with yogurt and a special butter sauce with paprika, grilled tomatoes and hot peppers.

I’ll never forget that — it’s very delicious.

What do your recommend as an introduction to Turkish food?

203 269-5303 Close to Chevrolet Theatre 344 Center St, Wallingford

Saray Turkish Restaurant, 770 Campbell Ave., West Haven (203-937-0707).

Let Us Cater Your Next Party

april 2008

Ahimsa, 1227 Chapel St., New Haven (203-786-4774).

South 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 extensive offerings at Sunday brunch.

Get the mixed appetizer first, the mixed grill; there are a lot of different meats. You can test all the different flavors. Many people come in and say, ‘We’ve never had Turkish food.’ I say, ‘Do you like fish, meat, vegetables? Just sit down and try it.’ When they leave, they say, ‘Thank you very much.’

Barbecued Chicken, Our Famous Onion Ring Loaf, Burgers, Seafood & New York Strip Steaks.

76

VEGETARIAN

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.

GOURMET SHOPPE

776-1614

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.

one2one

Continued from 17

We’re all entitled to our opinions.

Silent Spring

Continued from 44

But I’m not giving mine.

Was there a concern your presence would hurt funding from the state?

You know New Haven inside and out: What has New Haven gotten [from the state] the last two years? What has anybody got? The whole state? Name one initiative.

You took a big hit especially from the Courant for your statement in an interview that Jodi Rell threw you under the bus.

Are you willing to say here that you’re disappointed with her performance?

Well, does your experience give you any extra sympathy for Spitzer?

We’re all going to make a mistake. The question is, Where you are when you make it? The biggest thing with Spitzer is that people saw him as a hypocrite. I don’t think people saw me as a hypocrite. Bill Clinton had similar issues [to Spitzer’s]; his presidency survived, probably because he wasn’t so righteous and judgmental.

Solomon thinks that the Cutters may well be last in the long line of Elm City professional baseball. “The ballpark was not conducive to professional baseball,” he says, citing a common complaint (one minor-leaguer in the Mets system famously observed that he “would rather play in hell than in New Haven”).

“I think anyone would be — I don’t want to say crazy — but you have to have deep pockets to want to try [to put another Spitzer was a guy with a lot of enemies. minor league team] in New Haven.”

No, you’re saying that. I’m disappointed It’s hard to believe that he was undone by Solomon believes he has the alchemy that there are no initiatives. There’s accident. for making a club in New Haven work. nothing from the administration; there’s Trust me, it wasn’t a happenstance wiretap Rather than approach corporate sponsors nothing from the legislature. All I said to — no, people are on him all the time, 20 exclusively and push for season-ticket you is, What are the initiatives? What are state troopers. There is no such thing as a holders, Solomon says he would canvas the investments? What’s the plan? secret. every small business and professional Well, now the Courant is feeling pain itself How have your old political connections in the city. He would try to sell ten or 20 [having announced a new round of layoffs]. tickets to every doctor or lawyer he could outside of Connecticut been treating you?

Are they their own enemy? find, if only as a gesture of civic pride.

In a positive way, very supportive. They They’re not even neutral. They’ve beaten write to me, call me, all the time. Why, So, once Yale finishes its season April 27, up on everything they can beat up on. for the grace of God, it could have been Yale Field will once again close up shop for It’s only a matter of time before United them. If you went down to Congress and the summer. A New Havener in search of Technologies says, ‘I’m not sitting around put everyone away who’s ever gone on a cold beer, hot dog and a crisp double play and listening to this any more.’ a corporate plane — from that, there is will have to drive at least a half-hour to find it, either to Bridgeport or New Britain.

There’s a lot of beating up on companies sensitivity. in Connecticut now — the pharmaceutical Your business card here just says ‘John Solomon once used his Register column as companies, for example.

Rowland.’ What do people actually call you a bully pulpit to exhort readers to support their minor league team — much like It’s about tone. That’s our culture. If you now — Governor? city officials did in the 19th century with kick people enough they will leave.

About half ‘John Rowland,’ the other half the Elm Cities. “Who am I to tell anyone If you look at the number of companies ‘Governor.’ I tell people to call me ‘John they don’t have the right to not come?” that have left the state, and individuals, Rowland.’ What are you going to call me? Solomon says. “I am not going to change hundreds of people that are residents of v their minds.” v Florida for six months and one day [to take advantage of inheritance-tax statutes], substantial rainfall, allow rainwater to back because they have to. Yes the weather is Green Scene Continued from 25 up and combine with raw sewage, which a nicer, but if they want to pass on their is dumped directly into the waterways small business, they need to be a resident coastal cleanup day in September and we without any treatment. of Florida [or face Connecticut’s onerous now have 1,348 volunteers cleaning up at 35 estate-tax hit]. People want to feel welcome, “New Haven does have that problem,” go to work and say they’re doing something beaches across the state,” he notes.

Schmalz says. “The bonding was a great creative. ‘I have purpose in my life.’ If you Cryder’s colleague Leah Schmalz handles investment, but it fell short. This year, constantly crank away its just a matter the money side of the business — or in this we went back to the legislature and said, of time, (before business people leave) . case, legislative and legal affairs.

‘Thank you very much, you did a great job, Between the attorney general and the but we still need a little bit more.’ Two bills Hartford Courant, at some point [business “Clean water funding had a huge investment that will appropriate $1 million to the Clean people] are going to say, ‘I’m out of here.’ last year, the biggest since the inception of Water Fund are before the Environment Name the companies that have swarmed the fund over two decades ago,” Schmalz Committee right now.” explains. The fund consists of $90 million into the state in the past few years in obligation bonds in each of fiscal years Schmalz and her staff are also instrumental Do you think that the problems that Gov. 2008 and 2009. It goes to municipalities in in running a fund that will help give Save Spitzer had governing before his scandal straight grant money, which means they the Sound the ability to acquire threatened makes it less likely that Attorney General don’t have to pay it back to the state. properties through matching grants.

Blumenthal will run for governor?

Albeit a significant pot of gold, it was not “If a developer comes in and wants to build If you’re looking for my political enough to cover the cost of the separation a large development, we could tap into observation, I’ll give it to you off the record. of combined sewage overflows. These are that fund and preserve precious land,” says I’m trying to stay out of politics. the pipes found in cities that can, in a Schmalz. v new haven

77

PHOTOGRAPH:

Steve Blazo

Kid for a Day Spring vacation fun for young people of all ages

By Joyce L. Faiola

A

pril may have been the cruelest month for T.S. Eliot, but that’s because he never went to the Connecticut Children’s Museum in New Haven. This giant toy box for kids has magical places and spaces in which I had so much fun, I hated to leave!

Hosting about 15,000 children each year, the museum is housed in the Children’s Building, a circa-1911 mansion dovetailed into a contemporary addition. There are two floors with spacious bright rooms each focusing on discrete aspects of children’s learning and sensory skills.

Abigail and Domenic explore inner space at the Connecticut Children’s Museum in New Haven.

Saturdays at 2 p.m. is story and sing-along time; mine was with New Haven’s own master instrumentalist and storyteller Chase Anderson who played the fiddle and sang while we all chimed in with, “The Cat Goes Fiddle-I-Fee,” the title of the book we all were given to take home.

Attractions include the Interpersonal Room This wonderful place is lovingly cared for with a giant doll house spread open along by its dynamo director, Sandy Malmquist. one wall; the Linguistic Room with its “I just love it when I hear families as they wall of word magnets; the Musical Room, turn the corner into the great Green Room where I played the tambourine and steel from ‘Goodnight Moon,’ she says. “They drums; the Mathematics Room, where immediately begin to recite the text, adding you can make a wall maze, don a visor and their sweet voices to the magic.” use an abacus or an old Remington adding machine (I admit I spent very little time Because of the children’s programs going in this room); and the Spatial Room with on all week under this roof, the museum a slate house that you can write on with is open on Friday and Saturdays from noon chalk, create wooden buildings and do to 5 p.m. Its Web site has a slide show worth viewing and all the particulars of experiments to understand gravity. each storytime.

Then there’s the Linguistic Room, with its relaxing dark green walls and cow jumping 22 Wall St., New Haven, 203-562-5437, over the moon; and my favorite: the childrensbuilding.org.

Naturalist Room with its glass beehive that Admission $5. you can touch (the warmest spot is where the queen bee is doing her thing), ant farm and assemblage of animal finger puppets I just couldn’t put down.

78

april 2008

J

ust blocks away is the very kid-friendly Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History with its legendary collection of gigantic dinosaur skeletons that never fail to thrill young and old alike. Four-year old Alex, here on his second visit, made it clear that his absolutely favorite thing in the whole wide world is the towering Tyrannosaurus rex.

The Peabody’s (justifiably) famous North American dioramas, especially the majestic polar bear, are my favorites. There’s a surprisingly terrific gift shop that contains an amazing and widely varied selection of stuff to buy. There is high-fashion jewelry handcrafted from nature’s inspirations including seashells, leaves and coral. And neat kid stuff that I just couldn’t resist like real space food — a freeze-dried ice cream sandwich and freeze-dried ice cream. They tasted just like, well, freeze-dried. The moon rock candy was better.

During school vacation week there are special programs at the Peabody, so a call ahead is always a good idea.

Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History, 170 Whitney Avenue, 203-432-5050, peabody.yale. edu. Open daily, kids $5, adults $7. v

THEY HEAL, THEY HELP, THEY CARE, THEY SAVE LIVES...

ITâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S TIME TO SAY THANKS! JOIN BUSINESS NEW HAVEN IN RECOGNIZING THE EFFORTS OF, THE GREATER NEW HAVEN HEALTHCARE INDUSTRY. Nominate an outstanding health professional for recognition; info at www.conntact.com.

Selected honorees will be featured in a magazine distributed May 26 in Business New Haven and at locations in greater New Haven.

A special section will also run in June in New Haven featuring the honorees.

For information on nominations, sponsorships or the Healthcare Heroes 2008 event, visit: www.conntact.com or call 203-781-3480.

FOR INFORMATION AND NOMINATIONS: VISIT WWW.CONNTACT.COM CORPORATE ACHIEVEMENT COMMUNITY SERVICE PHYSICIAN OF THE YEAR HEALTHCARE EDUCATION

NURSE OF THE YEAR VOLUNTEERS OF THE YEAR RESEARCHER OF THE YEAR ADVANCEMENTS IN HEALTHCARE

INDIVIDUAL OF MERIT HEALTHCARE PROFESSIONAL INSTITUTION OR PROGRAM FALLEN HEROES

Healthcare HEROES

new haven

79