New Haven magazine February 2012 by Second Wind Media Ltd

JANUARY/FEBRUARY

2012

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When Child Becomes Parent

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IN T EL Leonard’s conﬁrmed that the developer had signed a one-year option to purchase the 44-acre parcel on Marsh Hill Road that Stew Leonard’s spent a decade and a half trying to site a store,in the face of anti-development town residents.

Painted by Thomas Hirata, the 1993 Connecticut Duck Stamp Print portrays a pair of black ducks over historic Saybrook lighthouse.

For the Birds The state’s Department of Energy & Environmental Protection (DEEP) has created a new artistic competition to determine the annual Migratory Bird Conservation Stamp image. Artists are invited to enter an original piece of artwork that depicts a waterfowl species (duck, goose or brant) native to Connecticut. Images that include a Connecticut scene or landmark in the background are preferred. The winning entry will be featured on the 2013 Connecticut Migratory Bird Conservation Stamp. Artwork may be in any full-color medium, including acrylic, oil, colored pencil, and watercolor. Entries must be postmarked by March 15. Sales of the Duck Stamps are used by DEEP to protect and enhance vital bird habitat. Artwork should be sent to Connecticut Waterfowlers Association, c/o Chris Samor, 29 Bower Hill Rd., Oxford 06478.

Scinto ‘Stews’ the Pot Truth ORANGE — Shelton über-developer Robert Scinto isn’t the kind of guy to allow something as trivial as a stint in the pokey to slow him down. Earlier this month Scinto and ofﬁcials at dairy-store giant Stew

New Haven

Last November the 64-year-old Scinto, completed a six-month term in federal prison on a corruption conviction.

New Haven’s Woody Allen? NEW HAVEN — In January the Elm City became the setting for a full-length independent feature ﬁlm. Written and directed by New Havener Stephen Dest, My Brother Jack was to begin principal photography in and around the city on January 2.

Charity Begins at Home MADISON — Throughout the month of January, Madison seventh-grader Ilana Foggle is collecting new, unused school supplies for a school in Nicaragua. “I visited the school in November,” explains Foggle, who attends Polson Middle School, “and it is the poorest school in the province of Nindiri, Masaya. It has no electricity and it just received its ﬁrst bathroom system last year.”

My Brother Jack tells the story of Jack and Vincent, two brothers who as young boys witness the murder of their parents and then grow up coping with this tragedy in very different ways. Explains the ﬁlmmaker, “My ultimate goal is to do for New Haven what Woody Allen did for Manhattan and provide a narrative for this amazing city.” The project is being produced by the citybased UpCrown Entertainment Group, a multi-media production company.

| Vol. 5, No. 1 |January/February 2012

Editor Michael C. Bingham, Design Consultant Terry Wells, Contributing Writers Brooks Appelbaum, Susan Cornell, Duo Dickinson, Mimi Freiman, Jessica Giannone, Liese Klein, Melissa Nicefaro, Karen Pasacreta, Ariane Rasmussen, Karen Singer , Photographers Steve Blazo, Anthony DeCarlo, Lisa Wilder

4 January 2012

Scinto told the New Haven Register he had had two nationally known tenants “seriously interested” in the property just off Exit 41 of I-95. He said the project would result in the erection of a 300,000- to 400,000-squarefoot structure housing a mix of uses including manufacturing, distribution and R&D and create up to 500 jobs (!).

Foggle was moved by the commitment of the schools’ teachers to providing a good education to their students, despite extremely limited resources. Donation boxes are located in Madison at the downtown ofﬁce of Coldwell Banker at 752 Boston Post Road, in the lobby at Temple Beth Tikvah at 196 Durham Road, and at Polson Middle School near the main entrance of the building.

Senior Publisher’s Representatives Mary W. Beard, Roberta Harris

OUR COVER

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You Can Count on It Prescient pollster Doug Schwartz has helped to build the Quinnipiac poll — and its host university — into a national brand

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6 January 2012

Schwartz’s ‘accidental career’ has proved a boon to both himself and his host university,

oug Schwartz, 45, has spent nearly his entire professional life building and running the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute, which has helped raise the proﬁle of the Hamden college far beyond Connecticut and the Northeast. Countless times within the political season local and national news organizations will cite the results of a Quinnipiac poll. In an era where news organizations such as Fox and NBC are increasingly accused of bias, independent polls are being given more credence by news organizations and political campaigns. After years of moving to and from borrowed space on the QU campus, the polling institute is now run out of its own state-of-the-art complex outﬁtted with more than 100 interview booths and a growing list of seasoned journalists as analysts. NHM Publisher Mitchell Young interviewed Schwartz for ONE2ONE. How long have you been in polling?

Since 1989. It was an accidental career. I started out as a government major at Connecticut College. I grew up in Trumbull and pretty much spent my entire life in Connecticut, except for two years when I worked at CBS news in New York. [Following graduation] I was interested in government, but when I looked at what jobs were out there for a government major they weren’t very appealing to me. Working for a politician was one option. I interned for one [thenU.S. Sen. and Gov. Lowell P. Weicker Jr.] and I found that the people that work for politicians are overworked and underpaid. I came across this brochure at the Trumbull library from the University of Connecticut and it said you can get your masters in political science with a concentration in survey research in just one year, ‘and this will lead to a good job.’

There are more polls than ever now, true? There are. I got in just it as it was beginning to proliferate. Then there were the biggies that everyone had heard about — Gallup, CBS News, the New York Times, Harris was still around. It wasn’t like it is today with a proliferation of polling. When I graduated from UConn, not only did it give me the practical but it helped me get my foot in the door at CBS News. They said, ‘You have something that very few people have: You actually have an educational background in survey research.” I went there in 1989 and had a really good experience there.

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What was the first election you worked on? I remember the [1993 New York City mayoral] David Dinkins-Rudy Giuliani race; we also served the local CBS affiliate [WCBS-TV]. What I remember about that election year was that I worked with Ed Bradley from CBS’ 60 Minutes. I served [off-camera] as the exit-poll analyst. I was so impressed by how he was going live constantly — he was so good. You’d give him one piece of information, like ‘In this state we’re finding people viewed the economy [as the paramount issue] and they’re going for the challenger here.’ He would take that little bit of information and make it sound so interesting. You really understood it, and he was right off the cuff. That seems like a pretty good gig — hanging with the bigs in your early 20s. Why leave? In order to be the director of a poll, you had to have a Ph.D. I had my master’s. I was a survey associate, and I realized that

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I wasn’t going higher. If I wanted to run a poll I would need a Ph.D. My boss at CBS News, Kathy Frankovic, she had a Ph.D. I said, ‘I guess I should go back and get a Ph.D.’ My master’s advisor at UConn said, ‘Come back and you can be a teaching assistant,’ which meant that UConn was going to pay my way to the Ph.D. I completed all my courses and then I found out about the job at Quinnipiac in 1994. Is that when Quinnipiac started its poll? They started the poll in 1988; they brought me on board in 1994. It had already been started by a marketing research professor, but they wanted to expand the poll. At that point there were only a few polls per year conducted in Connecticut. They wanted to do more polls, go into other states, [especially] New York state, New York City, New Jersey. So they brought me on full-time. At that point I was ABD Ð ÐAll But [doctoral] Dissertation.Ð It took a while, but I eventually got my Ph.D. in 2001. What was your dissertation on? The effect of campaign spending on congressional elections. The gist of it was: Does money really matter in terms of the election of members of Congress? Incumbents don’t really need it — they spend a lot of time raising money, but they don’t really need it. The voters already know who they are and they already like them. Of course for the challengers who are unknown, they need the money. I was able to show using survey data that incumbents who spent a lot of money were not any better liked than the incumbents who spent [only] a little bit. You were pretty young. How much leeway did you have? I was 27. They said, ‘We want you to set up a poll pretty much from the ground up.’ We had 12 phones, one computer and a small room attached to the cafeteria. Today we do about two polls per week. Last year without the national elections we were doing one [poll each week]. How many people refuse to be polled? A ballpark on refusal rates is about half that are eligible. It does vary. In Connecticut we get about two thirds of the people who do the [telephone] survey. 8 January 2012

We don’t do as well in New Jersey, for example, but from state to state we do pretty well. When you ﬁrst started, what made you nervous? We were jumping into New York and itÐs a tough media market. YouÐve got the tabloids Ð the Post, the Daily News — and those are tough reporters. If you’re not doing a good job, they’ll let you know. What do reporters call about typically? TheyÐre looking for analysis Ð ÐWhat does the poll mean?Ð Mickey Carroll is our analyst for our New York polls, and Peter Brown handles our Ohio, Florida,

[midterm] elections. We were proud of the fact we were ranked No. 1 of all the polls in the nation. He said, ‘Quinnipiac performed the best in predicting the results of the election.’ The other question your raising is left-right bias. One of the things you can always look at is the question of wording: Is it balanced? Poll are sometimes criticized for how questions are worded. How do you format questions to avoid accusations of bias?

When I ﬁrst hear about a new issue, IÐll look at the news media coverage Ð how is it being framed in the media? What are the words being used? That will inform me in my question writing. Very often weÐll use the language thatÐs in the ‘I am skeptical of polls that are sponsored by media. Then weÐll vet it. ItÐs outside groups,’ says Schwartz, ‘because they want to see the results come out a certain very important the questions way that supports their agenda.’ be clear and unbiased. I may think a question is perfectly clear and has no bias, but someone else may say, ÐIt wasnÐt so clear to me,Ð or ÐThat word has a negative connotation.Ð WeÐll go around until everyone signs off on it. What about the language and story lines of the Internet, or ‘blogosphere,’ being different than the socalled mainstream media?

Virginia and national polls. Tim Malloy handles our Pennsylvania polls. IÐm the spokesperson for our Connecticut polls, so when someoneÐs looking for analysis of our Connecticut polls I can handle that. [My colleagues] are former reporters and experts in public policy in these various states. They can say, ÐThis is what the numbers mean.Ð They know the issues, they follow the news, they talk to the reporters, they are plugged into the hot issues. Do you see certain polls that evidence manipulation or built-in bias? You’re getting into a complex question. I look at the track record of the polls, and some are more accurate than others. Nate Silver, the polling analyst for the New York Times, looked at how [many of the major] polls did in predicting the 2010

I do read the blogs, and there is a lot of very informative online news coverage. For example Patch.com is providing news here in Connecticut. We’re supposed to reﬂect what’s in the news; we’re not supposed to make news. We’re looking at what’s out there and what people are talking about, and we’re going to ask poll questions about it. You say you’re not trying to create news, But don’t polls function to drive outcomes? That’s why we like to emphasize they we are independent and have no ax to grind. All of our funding comes from the university. I don’t have to get contracts from outside organizations. I am skeptical of polls that are sponsored by outside groups, because they want to see the results come out a certain way that supports their agenda. That’s why I say look at the questions — you can bias the questions.

Can’t a poll bias the respondents, too? I’m a big proponent of transparency. How you determine who is going to vote [is an issue], they say polling is part science and part art. We’ve looked at past voting behavior, attention to the campaign, intention to vote. So what happens when someone gets up in your face about the results? Well this just happened, there was some criticism of our recent Florida poll by a campaign pollster, he was critical of our sample. He thought the sample was too Republican. It was Obama versus Romney, it also had the Senate race. He was the pollster for one of the candidates for the Senate. I responded and explained how and what we do and did not agree that poll was too Republican. Pretty much election time we’ll ﬁnd out, but we have a good track record. Not just in 2010 but in 2008 also. What did your poll say on the presidential race in Florida? It said that our poll found that [President] Obama, was in a statistical tie with Mitt

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Romney and that Romney leads by three points [within the statistical margin of error]. I don’t think it’s any surprise that it will be a close race. Obama won by two points last time. Everyone is expecting it will be close again. We heard a lot during the last election cycle that ‘The world is different today,’ meaning that that polls would miss young people and cellphone users. In every election there are going to be poll skeptics. One of the chief criticisms was that we would miss people who only used cell phones [in conducting telephone surveys], but we didn’t miss them. In 2010 we called people on their cell phones. Does the analysis of Ron Paul include that many of his supporters understand his various issues and do they all support him on all the issues? The one thing about Paul you wonder is how he would be doing if he had foreign policy views that were more in the mainstream of the Republican Party. I suspect he would be doing better. A lot of Republicans like his small-government conservatism.

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The way I would do it is something like, ‘Does Mitt Romney’s experience at Bain Capital make you think more favorably, less favorably or doesn’t make a difference?’ Don’t provide details, just put it out there — does it have a positive or negative effect on [respondents’] view? How does Connecticut stack up in the continuing split between what some call ‘true conservatives’ and more traditional Republicans? There has been a dwindling of the moderate Republicans you see here in Connecticut and in other states. Every year that goes by there are fewer moderate Republicans being elected. What about a swing state like Ohio, where many voters seem to switch between the parties? You have blue-collar Democrats there and they are going to make a difference, Obama needs their votes, and he is struggling with them. His approval rating is low [with those voters] and he is going

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to have to turn that around. The group I focus on [is] independents. [Obama] won [independents in 2008], and then in 2010 they swung over to the Republican side and elected Republican governors in Ohio and Pennsylvania and Florida. Right now he is struggling with them again. The central issue for independent voters? The same as for everybody: They are not happy about the way he is handling the economy. Fairly or unfairly it is the President that gets the credit or the blame. We ask, ‘Are things moving in the right direction?’ And if people feel they are, then they are more likely to vote for the incumbent. Here in Connecticut, what have we learned about Gov. Malloy’s first year in office? People did not like the tax increase. They wanted spending to be cut first. They also thought that the rich should have borne a larger share. Double-whammy Ð you should have cut more and if you had to raise taxes you should have gotten to the rich. There was a strong majority.

Usually the cut-spending people aren’t the tax-the-rich people. It was across the board: ‘You should have cut spending before you raise taxes.’ It was less so among Democrats. When it came to raising taxes on the rich, yes, it was more popular among Democrats than it was with Republicans. But the bottom line was the majority was for [cutting spending] and against his tax increase. So how do people feel about Malloy now? Tepid, so-so, low 40s approval rating. He’s very visible, very out-there, especially during the storms, people thought he did a good job. We asked about his handling of [Tropical Storm] Irene, they thought he did a really good job on that. But they’re still not happy about the tax increase. Was he too close to the unions for voters? There was also some criticism about the way he handled the unions. He can’t get his own base; he only has a slight majority of Democrats that approve [of the job Malloy is doing]. If you’re that low among your own base, you’re in trouble. The good news for him is that it is only

the first year. If you’re going to raise taxes you do it in your first year. The U.S. Senate race is a little more wide open. Did Linda McMahon leave voters with a good feeling even though she didn’t win in 2010? Not really. She still has a low favorability rating; she still has high negatives. Despite all the advertising that she did Ð she spent $50 million Ð people did not come away with a very positive image of her. This is not a state for watching wrestling, I guess. That was part of it. We asked questions about the wrestling. People have an unfavorable opinion of professional wrestling and people said her experience as CEO of WWE [World Wrestling Entertainment Inc.] gave them a more negative opinion of her, especially among women. That was one of the more interesting findings during the election polling. She was particularly unpopular among women, and the women were telling us that they were especially negative on wrestling.

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Are suburban white women going to determine the next President? I don’t know if you can go that far. I would say independents, but [women] certainly are an important swing group. It was one of the groups that [supported Obama in 2008], but you can also say that he energized young voters and Hispanics. So are we seeing that energy again? What we’re seeing, energy-wise, is that Republicans are more enthusiastic. But that can change. But right now in every state when we ask the question, ‘How enthusiastic are you about voting compared to previous presidential elections?’ Republicans are much more likely to say they are more.

I think it’s better now because of the all the online coverage on the [national level]. In Connecticut you have some newer media like CTMirror.org, or you follow the [Hartford] Courant online. I think the quality of the news coverage is very good, my concern is that there are fewer reporters in the State House. There have been cutbacks at the major newspapers and they’re not devoting enough resources to state politics. So what are you waiting to ask here in Connecticut?

She is the frontrunner among Republicans versus [Christopher] Shays. She has the recognition edge. It will be interesting to see what happens as he becomes better known. Well, he has certain qualities that might help him. He was known for integrity and bipartisanship, for example. He is in the original mold of a Connecticut Republican. He ﬁts the mold [of moderates such as] Lowell Weicker, Jodi Rell. It’s not just [McMahon’s] recognition advantage; it’s the money. She can blast him with ads. He’s not that well deﬁned outside his district and he didn’t win the last time, and it’s a money machine he’ll be going against. Can you see the immediate impact of advertising? It’s hard to measure. When you see someone’s favorability [ratings] go down, you can’t isolate the advertising. It could be debate performance, it could be a slew of things. How good is media coverage of political campaigns?

And what was the answer? ‘Bully’ was the most frequently cited word. That was cool: We created this word cloud and the more frequently it was used the bigger the word got. It was not necessarily a negative; some people would say he’s a strong leader. [For Cuomo] ‘good,’ ‘success’ — those were the top words. Y

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You mentioned that your father helped you decide to go to UConn for polling. What was his career? He worked at Columbia Records as a vice president of research and development. He passed in 2003. He was my biggest supporter. When we nailed the [2000] Hilary Clinton Senate race in New York and were the most accurate in predicting her victory, he called me the next day and said, ‘You guys got it right.’ Back to Connecticut, I thought that the residue for McMahon would be more positive?

‘What word comes to mind to describe your impression of Gov. Malloy?’ We asked this for [New Jersey Gov. Christopher] Christie and we did on [New York Gov. Andrew] Cuomo.

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Becoming Parent to a Parent By Melissa Nicefaro

nother holiday season has come and gone. We visited, we reminisced and we laughed, then we left our aging parents, our hearts heavy, wondering what the next year will hold. As we say goodbye, we wonder if that was the last one.

12 January 2012

Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s something nobody wants to think about: caring for ill or elderly parents. It can be a grueling, frightening and lonely process to watch much-loved parents age, nearing the end of their lives. It can turn our own lives upside down.

In caring for aging or ill parents, adult children face difficult and sometimes heartbreaking choices

A popular face in the Elm City knows this all too well. Just three years ago, while former WTNH-TV anchor Kristen Cusato was working in California, her then-61-year-old mother, Linda, was diagnosed with Lewy Body Disease, the second most common form of dementia

Gladys Deutsch (right) spent years trying to convince her mother Mary to move from New York to Connecticut so the two could be closer together. Eventually, her powers of persuasion prevailed.

full of life, so able to balance a checkbook to the penny,” Cusato explains. Before the illness set in, her mother was director of personnel management for Orange County, N.Y. and president of her local Rotary club. Three short years later, at the still-young age of 64, she is in a nursing home, unable to perform the most elementary tasks — unable even to speak. Cusato recounts: “We were having a discussion one day while we were cleaning out her house in preparation for her move into an assisted-living home, she said something to me I will never ever forget: ‘I’m a good person, right?’ ‘Yes, Mom, the best, the strongest person I know.’ She said, ‘Then why did someone pour acid in my ears?’ It makes me cry whenever I think about it.” When her mother ﬁrst moved into assisted living, Cusato would visit every day as she and her brother prepared their mother’s house for sale to help pay for her care. “I learned that the caregiver needs to take time for themselves,” Cusato says. “You have to be healthy, both physically and mentally in order to deal with this. You have to work hard to balance your life.” After returning to the East Coast, she rejoined WTNH as a freelancer, commuting for several months until she was re-hired as the morning anchor. She then moved back to Connecticut and visited her mother every weekend.

after Alzheimer’s. This winter, Cusato left WTNH to become the Southwestern Regional Director for the Connecticut chapter of the Alzheimer’s Association. “I was having quite the life in San Diego at the time. When the doctor said she could no longer live alone, and could not drive, I knew what I had to do,” Cusato recalls. “It wasn’t really much of a decision — it was right.” So she quit her job and moved back to New York to live with and care for her mother. “We struggled to communicate, struggled with our new reality, as I saw what this memory-robbing disease was doing to my best friend, to a person usually so ‘on,’ so

“That was part of my self-preservation — working,” she says. “I was so busy in the early morning hours and had to be ‘on’ so much so that the time I was on TV was a perfect distraction to what was going on with Mom,” she says. “She had a heart attack in the fall of 2010, and I was appreciative of my employer giving me time to get back to New York to care for her, through several hospital and rehab stays.” “Having an understanding employer is helpful,” Cusato adds. “I would suggest that if someone in your family is diagnosed with dementia, you sit down with your boss and explain what is happening. You may have to take some immediate sick time. This disease is unpredictable, and every person is different.” Cusato’s mother now lives in a Connecticut nursing home, on a dementia unit. She doesn’t talk, just a few words here or there, but rarely a full sentence, since her ability to process and form words out of thoughts is severely degraded.

“Imagine being trapped in your mind like that. It’s a horrid prison,” Cusato says. She still visits her mother nearly every day and it does not get any easier with time. “She’s not eating, really, just drinking, and she doesn’t know who I am,” says Cusato. “However, I know she is in there, so I talk to her like I used to, tell her about my day, share things, all in a positive, uplifting voice. “I will admit how hard it is to have onesided conversations with a conﬁdante who I depended on for years,” she adds. “I give her nothing but love, because that’s what she gave me my whole life. I tell her how proud I am of her, and how I know she is working very hard at this.” Living in California a few years back, Cusato had no idea what turmoil was about to hit. Little could have prepared her for the rapid progression of her mother’s disease, but she urges others to educate themselves on the warning signs of dementia and other illnesses, and to prepare as best they can. “My advice for younger folks dealing with aging parents is to give a lot of love,” says Cusato. “Offer support and comfort. They are confused about what’s happening to their bodies and minds as well. They still want to be useful and important to you, their children. Tell them they are.” To adult children with parents suffering from dementia, she offers: “Bring the grandkids, ask their advice and don’t argue when they are not correct. What difference does it make, anyway? If they think it’s Tuesday and it’s Wednesday or if they insist you haven’t been to visit in a month and you were just there yesterday, tell them you are sorry and ‘Let’s go for a walk or look at family pictures!’ Or, “Let’s talk about that great vacation we went on!” Short-term memory may be gone, but many memories from long ago still remain…you just have to get them to come out.” If there is any good news, it may be this: “You do not have to do this alone,” Cusato says. “Our helpline is open 24/7 at 800272-3900. And our website is full of info: alz.org/ct. There are support groups, there are respite programs, education, things you can get involved in: Walk to End Alzheimer’s! There are ﬁve [walk events] in the state. New Haven’s and Norwalk’s are in the fall.” \leaf here\

new haven

Though Cusato was forced to make quick decisions due to the speed at which her mother’s illness progressed, many face a less black-and-white scenario and are better able to prepare — as they should. Gladys Deutsch’s mother Mary was living in New York City when mother and daughter made the mutual decision to live closer together. Living in New York City all of her life, Mary was surrounded by friends and family, but as she got older that circle began to shrink. “As she was becoming older and I had to participate more with her doctor’s appointments, it was hard to navigate the distance,” explains Deutsche, who lives in New Haven. “Between her becoming more isolated after being very active until she was well into her 80s and health issues cropping up, it made sense for her to be closer to family

says. “She misses her independence, she misses her apartment and her [New York] friends. Even though not so many people are there anymore, she misses the life that she used to have. There’s no way around that.” Alternately, she adds: “If you move earlier, you have an opportunity to build a life in a new place. You have more of your faculties and internal resources available.” Deutsch loves having her mother close to her and says it’s been great for their relationship, since visits are easier and more frequent. “Even though there are more issues and needs to tend to, I feel I can be more supportive and providing in a way that is more meaningful and helpful to her. It’s less disruptive to my own life.”

time is right to not wait for the crisis moment. “Do your homework and come with your parents,” she says. “Let them be part of the decision. Help your loved ones plan their future. Since last winter, so many people were shut in and not able to get around in the weather. Not here — life went on here. We dined with friends, saw movies, played cards, and we never shut down.” According to Joy DeMarchis, director of development at Mary Wade, a senior community in New Haven, there is an uptick in website visits during the months of November, December and January as grown children become more concerned for their aging folks.

“These are the three months when family members come home for the holidays and Rebecca Olshansky, director of marketing/ notice changes in their aging parents. It occupancy and community outreach starts the discussion about what to do,” for Tower One/Tower East, agrees that DeMarchis says. Mary Wade offers an “It made sense — but it was still a very involvement and anticipation can help assisted-living facility and short-term difficult process for her mother, who make a difficult situation easier. She rehabilitation for people who have had didn’t want to leave her lifelong New York suggests that adult children do research to surgery and need a place to stay to get home. determine what type of living situation better and go back home. Mary Wade would be best for their loved ones before a “She was very familiar with [the city] and also has a rehabilitation program for crisis arises. it’s not easy when you’re older to adapt to out-patient and in-patient care as well as new places. We had talked about it for a “It’s good for them to visit and tour — see hospice care for those nearing the end of long time and she was very resistant for a that this is who we are,” Olshansky life. long time,” Deutsch recounts. Her mother says. “The walls speak for themselves. Explains DeMarchis: “Often times what kept saying only that she would know [Prospective seniors] have to feel that happens is decisions for care for aging when the time was right. comfort level and I encourage people parents becomes a crisis with a rush to when they come to visit to speak with “We all let her know that we missed the emergency room followed by surgery. our residents. Our residents are engaging. being with her and we wanted to remain Now they can’t come home right away, We are fortunate that we’ve had different involved with her, but she wanted to but what is going to happen?” generations of the same families living remain as independent as she could be,” here over the 40 years we’ve been here.” She adds: “Many will say Mary Wade is says Deutsch. Fortunately, “At a point, full, but that’s not the case. We do have she said it was time. She moved into Olshansky adds, “Look closely at your a waiting list for skilled nursing, but not her apartment last year the day before parents’ needs and what will help make for the adult day center, assisted living Christmas. It started snowing and it their golden years more fulfilling and or transportation.” DeMarchis points out didn’t stop all winter. The timing worked enriched and remember that life is not that Mary Wade’s transportation program out right.” over.” goes door-to-door, not door-to-curb, and Figuratively and literally, “It’s a journey For one resident, moving to the towers that’s important during the winter months and a process,” Deutsch allows. “The meant resuming some of the interests he when it becomes very hard to navigate more you can keep the communication had as a young man. slippery streets and sidewalks. open [the better]. There was a lot of time “He moved here and he realized that this DeMarchis urges adult children of seniors when my mother really just didn’t want wasn’t just a place to live, this was life,” to at least begin communicating with their to talk about it. Change is not easy at any Olshansky says. She tells a story of the parents about the future: “It is mostly point in your life, and it’s certainly not resident who enjoyed photography as a women who make the decision — if not easy when you’re older.” young man, but when family and a career the daughter, the daughter-in-law — and Today, Deutsch is comfortable knowing came along, his hobby fell by the wayside. navigate the system,” she says. “It can be that her mother is in a warm and Once he moved to assisted living, he very confusing. It can be cumbersome and nurturing environment at Tower One/ had more time for photography. “We’ve one of the hardest things you’ll have to Tower East, a Jewish community for coordinated two gallery openings for him,” deal with.” Y seniors in New Haven. Olshansky says. “Assisted living isn’t the end of life!” “We’ve done it, it was the right decision, and there are things that are great about Olshansky encourages the families of it, but there were sacrifices,” Deutsch prospective residents who ask when the

14 January 2012

When he enlisted in the Marines right out of high school, Cardona recalls, ‘I just wanted to be a complete badass. The [Marine] recruiters were the most in-shape and you know, the most squared-away. You see all that and you’re just like, “Man, I want to be like that guy.”’

A Marine’s Story Luis Gallego Cardona, 22, of Hamden is a freshman mathematics major at Southern Connecticut State University. Originally from Colombia, Cardona moved with his family to Stamford in 1996. He joined the Marine Corps after graduating high school. As a machine gunner in the Marines, he was deployed to Iraq in September 2008 for ﬁve months, before heading to the wilds of Afghanistan in the summer of 2010, where the majority of his combat experience took place. He returned home last February. This is his story.

lot of people, I guess, don’t agree with war. But the way I look at it is we’re making a change in the world, in one small way.

It’s one of those things where I didn’t really care what the policies were, or what the government was telling us to do. It was more of me. And most of us, we felt like we signed up for a job, and that required us to do whatever was asked of us.

You took a couple of days to get the gear together, a couple of days to deliver. Travel distance depended on where we had to go. The most was more than 80 miles, which would take us four to ﬁve days to cover. On average it’d probably be about one mission a week.

In my platoon there were about 46 of us. My unit was called Combat Logistics Battalion 2. We lived out of our trucks. Everywhere we went our trucks were where we ate, where we slept, where we rested, where we’d be most relaxed.

Our role is kind of like teaching [Afghani security forces]. Our job there is to train them and show them how to ﬁght the Taliban; teaching about schools, infrastructure and the economy; how to get supplies from Point A to Point B. One of the things that was preached was to not give the [appearance] that we were a conquering force.

My job was to provide security for convoys bringing supplies to different bases across Afghanistan. I was in charge of mission planning, supplies and gear going on missions. We would load all the supplies, make sure weapons were clean. We took turns navigating the vehicle.

The realities [of war compared to what civilians imagine]? Not even close. Nothing can get you prepared for that kind of experience, to be honest. I mean, you can sit there and watch as many war movies as you try and, I don’t know. It’s a lot different in real life.

By JJessica G B Giannone The on-the-ground reality of two little-reported wars through the eyes of a young Hamden Marine

For one, I wasn’t expecting myself to [have to accept] that I might actually die. I think that was a very special moment — when you convince yourself that you might die. Not a lot of people, I don’t think, can say that they agree that they’re gonna. You know that you might not make it past the day. You accept it. When you get to that point it really reveals your character, in a way. It shows who you really are. I told myself if I’m gonna die, I’m gonna go with a bang. I’m not gonna die getting shot in the back. I’m going out blazing hot. If you’re gonna die, you’re gonna die honorably. [Once you accept the possibility of death] you’re able to do your job with less fear. You don’t have to worry about “Oh, I’m getting killed” because you’ve already accepted it. That’s what I call my “Rambo moment” — it’s when you feel like Rambo.

new haven

Cardona’s unit assembled and delivered supplies across some of the most dangerous terrain in the world to far-flung units across the Afghan countryside.

I didn’t have the fear of getting sent [into combat]. My expectations going in, I thought I was going to see the world, get to travel and get to go to cool places like Thailand. What I actually got was two deployments [to Iraq and Afghanistan]. I wanted to see combat, and unfortunately I got more than I asked for.

where we traveled, it’s like wild country. There are no roads. The terrain is very, very hard to maneuver through — a lot of loose sand that the vehicles easily get stuck in. I’ve seen vehicles ﬂip over in front of me on huge hills, like tumble down. We were towing one vehicle and I remember it catching on ﬁre.

I wasn’t expecting myself to kind of stay as cool-headed as I had originally thought I would be under such chaos. I think before you see combat your expectations are just what you see in the movies, and that’s kind of what my expectations were. You know, you see your enemy, you see who you’re shooting at, you see the house-to-house type of ﬁghting. And in reality, most of the time you don’t see who’s shooting at you. You’re ﬁghting an invisible enemy when it comes to IED [improvised explosive devices, a/k/a roadside bombs]. Those things can set off at any time. You really don’t know when to expect it.

There’s always a threat of IEDs. You get attacked more in the remote locations in Afghanistan than you do in the city, just because in the city there’s a bigger presence of us and the Afghan police. Once you get out more into the middle of nowhere, where there’s less condensed population, it’s kind of like there is no law; there is no rule.

There are a lot of signs [of concealed explosives]. There could be markers, like a stacked pile of rocks. That usually was a pretty good indicator that there was an IED there. Disturbed dirt obviously is one of the easiest. I was looking for either disturbed dirt or stacks of rocks, and 99.9 percent of the time I was right. We saw a lot of people in the cities. But as soon as you broke off into the desert 16 January 2012

That’s where we got into our firefights from these random villages in the middle of nowhere where the mountainside is. They like to shoot a lot from the mountains. After the first time when you shoot back and you feel like you actually have a fighting chance at survival, you’re a lot more comfortable. It doesn’t freak you out as much. Getting shot at is just like any other day on the job. When you’re on the road you don’t keep track of time. You lose track of time. You’re doing the same thing for hours and hours. You’re sitting on a truck just driving through the desert. You’re hungry, you’re tired, you’re sleepy, you’re irritated,

you’re on edge. There was no sleeping. There was nothing but naps.

YYY Iraq was a completely different experience compared to Afghanistan. One of the biggest differences was the combat; in Iraq I saw none. In Iraq I did my actual military occupational specialty of supply administration. I was in a team that was in charge of managing over $30 million of equipment. We oversaw the logistical side of the battalion as far as ordering supplies and shipping them out to all the other small bases. My highlight of Iraq was when I got to visit Baghdad. This was a huge deal because the Marines operated in the AlAnbar province, which is completely different than Baghdad. I was sort of “forced” into this situation. As it turns out, our unit had about $5 million worth of equipment that belonged to the Air Force. The only way to hand over this equipment was to deliver it in person. I showed up to work, got told to pack for three days and go to the ﬂight line. The ﬂight line was where helicopters and aircraft took off. I was put on an Osprey (V-22 helicopter) to Baghdad with nothing but the name of some Air Force captain who I was to deliver this gear to. When I landed I was the elephant in the room. First of all, there are practically

no Marines in Baghdad. Everything was operated by Army or Air Force. I was pretty screwed. Wasn’t sure where to go to sleep, eat or where to get started looking for this guy. Lucky for me there was another Marine sergeant and captain who were there doing the same thing. They were able to get a vehicle and helped me do everything I needed to do to turn the equipment in. In Afghanistan, most of the time we had we spent working. I don’t think we ever got bored. Our free time was spent cleaning our weapons. We would eat food, listen to music, play cards. We’d clean the truck, resupply for the next trip, I’d make sure my ammo count was good. The best way we coped was making fun of each other. My ritual was to play the song “Cookie Jar” by Gym Class Heroes every time before we left friendly lines. I got hooked on the song, and it just put me in a good mood; kind of a relaxed mood to start off. My biggest priorities were to take care of [fellow Marines] and take care of myself. My biggest fear was not making it back home. The day that my sergeant lost his leg, that was the first time I saw anything like that. It was specifically scary because everything was combined into one. I woke up to sounds that I will remember until the day I die: “[Convoy vehicle] White 4 is hit!” There was a lot of screaming and a horrible smell of burning human flesh. The armored doors had been completely blown off the vehicle. As my eyes slowly took the image of [my sergeant’s] body, I came to notice something was not right; his leg was hanging by flesh just below the knee. The smell and sight of that alone almost made me throw up, but I kept it together for him as I knelt down and started talking to him. It was like a 20-minute event, but I tell you that it felt like three hours of just constant fighting, and everything you could possibly think could go wrong did go wrong — when the gun got jammed, the fact that we were inside of a village, the fact that there were still [cooking] pots outside, which is a horrible sign because that just lets you know that people are nearby. You don’t really know. It could be kids and women; it could be Taliban; it could be just innocent civilians that got forced into the situation. Personally, I was one of those guys that if a choice came between losing a leg or

Back in civilian life, Cardona’s fellow SCSU students know nothing of his ‘other’ life

getting killed, I would have opted to just get killed. I guess my faith was weak. I didn’t want to survive without a leg. That was my biggest fear, just ending up like that. I don’t think I could live like that. I don’t know if I consider myself tough enough to get out of bed every morning with a disability like that. It’s scary and sad seeing someone die. The first time it felt as if the wind had been knocked out of you. You’re speechless in a way. You wonder about their life. You wonder what path they took to get to where they are now. It’s really a sad, sad time to see somebody struggling like that and knowing that you can’t do a damn thing about it. Seeing somebody climbing out of a burning truck with no legs, and watching them flop ten feet in the air to the bottom and just try to drag their way out. When you see that, you’re just — you’re speechless. Some of that stuff is just the worst type of terror you could possibly imagine. You never forget the smells, you never forget the sounds, you never forget the way you feel when something like that happens. The first time [I was shot at] we were on a mission, and I remember hearing these little snaps outside of the vehicle. And that’s when they started hitting the window. I remember telling myself just control your breathing, relax. You do whatever you can to make it worth it. That moment [when] you realize that you’re gonna die, the best way to describe it is you think about all the things you’ve done in your life and try to convince yourself you had a good life. I think the biggest fear of dying comes with all the things that you didn’t do. Once you accept [that you might die] you feel clear-headed — freer in a way. At first you don’t want to believe it. It doesn’t seem real that this is actually happening to you. For me it

was just one thing that goes through your head: either kill or be killed. To be honest, what kept me going was envisioning myself going to school [and] doing something with myself — to be somebody. I know that deep down I feel like I’ve made a change. I guess we just have to wait and ﬁnd out if it was for the good or for the worse. I’ll ﬁnd that out once we pull out of Afghanistan. If the country succeeds in being independent and taking care of their own, then I would feel like I had succeeded; like I played a small part in that. I’m kind of just waiting to see how everything plays out. I think as an enlisted Marine, I got to see very small window of the whole picture. I guess I would say don’t believe what’s on the news. It’s not always accurate. In Afghanistan you talk to the civilians and you learn about how the way of life used to be when the Taliban ruled and how it is now with us being there. A lot of the people there are actually happy. That’s what makes the job. That’s what I envisioned my job being and that’s what I tell people that I did. To be honest, I just wanted to be a complete badass. The [Marine] recruiters were the most inshape and you know, the most squaredaway. You just kind of see all that and you’re just like, ‘Man, I want to be like that guy.’ I think I decided my sophomore year of high school [to enlist]. I really didn’t have anything going on after high school. I wanted to follow in my father’s footsteps. He is in the Army, stationed in North Carolina. The Marines are different. It would be in our egos, our spirit, our tradition and Continued on 41

new haven

Thirty years ago my 90-year-old grandfather was taken from my home at 3 a.m. by Lesley Mills Owner/Director GRISWOLD SPECIAL HOME CARE

e died, confused, within three weeks, not from his

fall or hip repair but from his transfer to a nursing home, where he gave up the will to live. That’s when I made my commitment to home care. I grew up in England, where Hospice was founded, and at Yale came to know Florence Wald, Founders Rev. Lincoln Griswold & Dr. Jean Griswold, Lesley Mills, author

How Alzheimer’s, MS and a Fall turned…

Tragedies to Triumph!

who introduced Hospice to this country. It was a natural choice. Dr. Jean Griswold and Rev. Lincoln Griswold sat at their kitchen table struggling simultaneously with two problems in their parish: elders trying to maintain their independence; mature people unable to find jobs. Jean was already wheelchairbound, but MS did not stop her as she spent the next 30 years building Griswold Special Home Care to solve both the problems of elder independence and middle-aged unemployment. Each family’s needs are unique. It takes patience and skill to grasp both the client’s needs and each caregiver’s abilities before

SENIOR STAFF ANNIVERSARIES: s 18 years Barbara Duncan & Erin Labulis s 16 years Wendy Spillane s 13 years Lorna Lamoureux

a lasting match can be made. The care managers who create these relationships have deep professional and personal wisdom. Since my Mum was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, I know that I respond to families coping with this challenge with more compassion than was possible before. I also can share with them the joys that this patience has brought. I trust the additional sensitivity that Lorna brings to World War II veterans — and her eagerness to make known to them the programs available — now that her Dad has gone. David, having lost his Dad to cancer, relates in a deeper way than others. I can cite examples for every staff member. On a very personal note, I have had the chance to flourish. My patience has grown. I am more tender. I rise to challenges that our caregivers face every day and that I feared. The obstacles in furthering Jean Griswold’s vision are many, most self-imposed, well beyond legal requirements. Griswold Special Home Care raised the bar for the industry standards of caregiver performance. For example, we talk to five references for each applicant as part of our screening process. We’ve advocated for national background checks for caregivers for decades. Becoming a “Griswold” caregiver is arduous, yet

giving more stability for our clients.

About the author:

we are sought out as an employer

The harder we make our lives, the easier we make our clients’ lives.

Lesley Mills is a Yale Associate Fellow: Board Member: Yale School of Nursing Writing Awards; Women & Girls’ Fund, Community Foundation for Greater New Haven. She owns five Connecticut Griswold Home Care offices.

of choice, recommended by other professionals. Remarkably, we rarely

caregiver stays in place three times

I thank Jean and Lincoln Griswold, and their family, for a 30-year legacy. I am grateful to my staff, Bella and our loyal caregivers. They care for me and Mum (who is now 90), and

longer than the national average,

hundreds of other families.

advertise for help, yet we accept fewer than 1 in 10 candidates. Once a member of our team, each

Contact at 203-776-2273; Lesley.mills@griswoldspecialcare.com

s 9 years Lynn Hackett s 8 years Leslie Ann McClashie s 5 years Mara Morales; Malaika Bush & David Tyrie

All in the family (l-r): Beth Hansel with children Ella (on lap), William, Trey, au pair Selena Guth and Jessica. Photo:Lisa Wilder

Au Pairs: Adjusting to American Life

he pitch of her voice changes as she remembers arriving in the United States for the ﬁrst time.

“Wow!” says Selina Guth, an au pair from Kredenbach, Germany. “I saw the JFK, New York. Everything was so big. So many lights everywhere. It was awesome.” That was more than a year ago, but Guth’s excitement is still palpable today.

“I wanted to see the American way of life — not just on TV,” she says. “You 20 January 2012

can’t compare it, actually, because my hometown in Germany is so small compared to New York. Everything was so huge, so fast in New York.” She explains that she made the decision to one day become an au pair when she was only 15. Guth is now 22 years old and on her second year as an au pair. Like Guth, Natassia Tanaka has been trying to fulﬁll her dreams for years.

By Ariane Rasmussen

“I am trying to be an au pair since I was 18 years old,” says Tanaka, an au pair from Sao Paulo, Brazil who recently turned 27. “When I was 18, I felt that I wasn’t prepared to live in the United States for a full year. Because of that, I lived in Sweden for three months to experience how it is to live abroad.” Au pairs are recruited from all over the world by agencies like Au Pair in America and AuPairCare. They mainly range in age from 18 to 26. They come to the U.S. to improve their English and immerse themselves in American culture.

“Au pairs are young ladies who come to this country to take care of a host family’s children and go to school, under the terms of their visa, while they are here,” explains Gail Catlin, a senior community counselor for Au Pair in America responsible for the New Haven area. “This is a cultural exchange — it’s quite different from people just hiring childcare workers like a nanny.” Both the au pairs and the host families need to go through an application and interview process to make sure that the program is a good ﬁt for them. Agencies help facilitate the placement process. “I help facilitate the matches,” says Brenna Lanigan, New Haven and Hartford area director for AuPairCare. “I do the inhome interviews with the families. I make sure that the girls will have an appropriate and private [living] space. It usually takes six weeks from the time of the match for the girls to arrive.” Once a host family’s application has been reviewed and accepted, they can access a database to search for the right au pair. The au pair and the family communicate via e-mail, phone or Skype several times. Once a host family settles on an au pair, the au pair has the ﬁnal say on whether she’ll accept the family’s offer or not. The agencies maintain contact with the young women and the host families throughout the process and during their time in the country. “I was very diligent in my interviewing process, not only asking them about their child-care stuff, but asking them about their personal habits and being very honest about ours,” says Julia Doherty, of West Haven, a parent with Au Pair in America who previously had an au pair from Thailand and currently has one from Germany. “I was very careful not to get people who would be partying, but would enjoy other types of activities. You are bringing a young person into your house that you are responsible for, so you want to send them home the same way you got them. My current au pair wants to get a tattoo and I keep telling her, ‘Please, do it when you get home. I want to send you home the same way you got here,’” says Doherty with a laugh. There are several requirements, based on state regulations, that need to be met by both the au pairs and host families. Au pairs can work no more than 45 hours per week and up to ten hours on a given day. They must have one full weekend off per

month. They are required to take at least six college credits during their stay. The host families contribute to the cost of their education. “They are not here to take care of pets, that’s not really their job,” says Catlin. “They can’t perform household chores unrelated to the children. We want them to be a family member and a team player, but we don’t want them to be the housekeeper for the family — that’s really outside of the scope of what this program is.” Despite the requirements, the benefits of having an au pair outweigh any disadvantages. “Day care is very expensive and having an au pair costs about the same as having a day care for me and it offered a lot of the conveniences that day care didn’t,” explains Doherty. “So it took a lot of the stressors off of the whole morning rush and worrying about babysitters that are unreliable.” She says the greatest challenge of having an au pair is the initial language barrier, but that improves quickly since the girls are in full immersion English. “Our first au pair was from Thailand,” Doherty recalls. “She still comes to visit. She was wonderful, and when she came, my son was three. The au pair we have now is from Germany. She is also wonderful with my son, but her job is very different because my son is in school now.” Doherty says that having an au pair has been “a very rich learning experience” both for her and son Gavin, now five years old. His au pairs have brought her son books and cultural artifacts from their home countries that he has brought to “Show and Tell” at school. Gavin has also learned some words in Thai and German. “My son has loved both of our au pairs. They have their special things that they do together. Gavin is very proud of his au pairs. He likes to tell his friends at school about them and the different things from their countries,” says Doherty. “It’s nice to get the cultural exposure. My son has this beach ball world globe that we got from Au Pair in America when we first started the program. We took a Sharpie marker and started circling where our au pairs have come from and where we have some family living.”

YYY

Monica Justen of Fairfield is Natassia Tanaka’s host mom. She says that one of the reasons she and her husband wanted to have an au pair was to help their son Lucas maintain and improve his Portuguese language skills. “Another advantage of this program over just the nanny thing is that we can take girls that have been through the university so they have a good level of culture and education,” Justen explains. “That is good to have around your child. Nate [Tanaka] loves to follow up on Lucas’ progress and achievements. She is certainly very involved in his life and cheers for him — that’s very good.” The adjustment period for au pairs and their host families varies, but usually takes two to four weeks. “Adjustment was pretty easy for us, I would say, but because [Tanaka] is very easy to get along with. She is responsible and helpful,” says Justen. Tanaka says that although American culture is very different from Brazil as far as food, habits and greetings go, she has had an easy time adapting. “I love my host family,” she says. “We really have a good relationship and I don’t feel homesick because of that. They really want me to be a part of their family. I am also so glad about the friends that I made here and the church that I found the first week I was here.” Even so, being away from home during holidays and special occasions can be difficult for the young women. “Right now, I really do miss my mom because of the holidays,” says Tanaka. “You expect to be around your family during this season.” Xiaojiao (May) Zheng, 23, is an au pair from China who lives in New Haven. Her host parents are professors at Yale University. She takes care of five children, although not all at the same time. Zheng remembers her first days in America. She says that, at first, it was hard to adjust to the time difference, the food and the language. “Food was the most different for me,” says Zheng. “In China, we usually eat some hot food. We don’t eat a lot of cheese or stuff. Another thing is language — my listening skills are not so good and sometimes I feel worried to talk to the people. My host mom is Chinese so that really helped me a lot when I couldn’t communicate very well. The older kids

new haven

Chinese au pair Xiaojiao (May) Zheng (right), spends some time with Brenna Lanigan, AuPairCare’s area director. Lanigan has played an important role in her life as she adjusted to American culture

also helped me. They corrected my English.” Zheng arrived in the country during the snowstorms of last winter. “A whole two weeks, we had to stay in the house. It was very scary because the snow piled even higher than a car — it was the ﬁrst time I saw that,” she recounts. Attending college here was also very different from China. “I went to a [Gateway] community college and what impressed me was different age people sitting in the same class,” says Zheng. “I think that here it’s more free in the class. People can talk what you want, do what you want, and do a lot of activities. This is very different than the Chinese university.” Her year is almost up now and Zheng will return home to China to ﬁnish college. She is excited about celebrating the spring festival with her family when she arrives, but says she will miss her American family and new friends. Au pair counselors and area directors organize monthly “cluster meetings” to help the girls adjust to their new lives.

22 January 2012

These meetings give au pairs a chance to connect with one another. “I am meeting girls from Sweden, Brazil, Germany — from everywhere,” says Guth. “It’s really cool. I think I’ll never get the chance again to meet so many people from so many different countries.” Matches aren’t always successful. Both au pairs and families can ask for a rematch. The reasons for a rematch can vary from lack of child-care skills to personality mismatches. “I had a girl years ago who came from South Africa and was infant-qualified. She found out in the first month that it was just not going to work out for her,” explains Catlin, who has been working with au pairs and their host families for ten years. “She wasn’t prepared to watch the child as intensely as she needed to and really got in over her head with a toddler that was always on the move. So she asked to rematch with older children.” Personality differences can also play a role when a host family and an au pair are learning to live together. “There might be some personality conflicts that can’t be resolved very easily

between the au pair and someone in the family — sometimes it happens with one of the host children,” says Catlin. “If an au pair is taking care, for instance, of a very headstrong nine-year-old girl and feels that it isn’t going well. No one is stuck, there is always a choice. We try to mediate, but sometimes it’s just not a good fit.” Other issues that can arise may be as simple as the girls staying out too late, says Lanigan. “It’s always difficult if there’s a conflict within a home, but it’s my job to keep it smooth and remain neutral when I hear from both sides. I am here to protect the girls as well as the families,” she says. Rematches are reviewed by the agencies to make sure both the au pair and the family are still a fit for the program. Beth Hansel of Fairfield is a parent who recently joined the au pair program and had to go into rematch because her au pair was not a very good driver. With four children, it was very important for her to have the extra help shuttling the kids back and forth.

Natassia Tanaka, an au pair from Brazil with Au Pair in America, prepares ten-yearold Lucas Justenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s backpack for a sleepover

The agency was able to place that au pair in a new home in Maryland where she doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t need to drive. They also helped Hansel ďŹ nd her current au pair, Guth, a second-year au pair who was looking for a new host family. â&#x20AC;&#x153;I wanted to see more families, how they live and to see different places,â&#x20AC;? says Guth. â&#x20AC;&#x153;I love the [Hansel] family. I feel so comfortable here. They are really nice and friendly and I feel like, really, a part of the family.â&#x20AC;? Hansel explains that, as with anyone else, there is a lot of training in the beginning in terms of making sure the au pair knows how everything in the home works and where everything is.

â&#x20AC;&#x153;With our ďŹ rst au pair, we knew it wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t a good ďŹ t after two weeks â&#x20AC;&#x201D; it wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t quite clicking. She came in with an international driverâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s license. She was from Bolivia, and apparently the driving requirements are not as rigid there. When I put her behind the wheel, I was very concerned.â&#x20AC;?

So Hansel tried hiring their au pair private lessons from a driving school, but that wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t enough. â&#x20AC;&#x153;The driving school instructor told me, â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;I would not put your children in the car with her under any circumstances,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; and that it would be quite a while before she was driving safely,â&#x20AC;? Hansel recalls. â&#x20AC;&#x153; That drove our decision.â&#x20AC;?

â&#x20AC;&#x153;Selina is up to speed now,â&#x20AC;? Hansel says. â&#x20AC;&#x153;She knows how our household is run, and ďŹ ts into it beautifully. She has made such a difference in our lives. It really frees up my time and my schedule immensely. We are able to live happier lives and sit down and have a meal together because of Selina. We are so grateful.â&#x20AC;? To learn more, visit aupaircare.com or aupairinamerica.com. Y

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AT H O M E

By Duo Dickinson A stately Whitney Avenue mansion gets a facelift — and a new life

he Hartford Turnpike was chartered in 1798 by one of New Haven’s legendary ﬁgures, lawyer/real estate developer/Yale treasurer James Hillhouse. We know it today as Whitney Avenue — a classic, straight-shot boulevard. Hillhouse and Eli Whitney virtually owned the thoroughfare, and as a true turnpike the road generated revenue from the tolls charged to those traveling north to Hartford (hence its original name). History has a strangely unexpected habit of repeating itself, and just as I-91 in the 1960s spawned a fertile new geography for suburbia to sprawl north of downtown New Haven, the Hartford Turnpike created access to land for non-agricultural development throughout the 19th century. In the late 1800s century Whitney Avenue became The Place for captains of the new Industrial Revolution to call home, as the Hillhouse and Whitney families sold off acreage and became, in the words of New Haven architectural historian Elizabeth Mills Brown, “the patrician showplace of the city.”

One of the ﬁnest of these showplaces was a home built in 1905 by the brothers Tilton, Albert and Henry. It gains grandiosity by being, in fact, a double home — a rare creation of dead-on, bilaterally symmetric Victorian architecture, with two identical independent residences joined together at a common central demising wall.

A broad, elegant, symmetrical façade is bookended by twin turrets that easily receive the extraordinary front balcony (that once had two front doors but now accommodates one in the reconfigured interior). Not only are the turret walls and trim perfectly curved, but so is the glass in their windows.

Its very broad street-facing façade and porch is book-ended by eye-catching and unforgettable fully round turrets with classically conical roofs capping their twostory storybook presence. These ﬂanking architectural statements have enhanced gravitas with huge curving windows that allow the radial towers to be perfect cylinders of trim, openings, and yes, the glass itself. Just as every other Gilded Age neighborhood evolved, so did Lower

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Kitchen interior as designed by Carla O’Brien. These kitchen interiors are large, well-lit and replete with what elsewhere would be options.

Whitney Avenue. In the Roaring Twenties it became more fashionable to build homes farther from the city center, institutions and commercial establishments began to take over the huge houses and apartment buildings began to be erected further up the avenue toward Hamden. So it was with the Tilton House, which was acquired during that decade by the New Haven Medical Association, which in 1927 added a wonderful ballroom to the rear of the structure. And as did so many other civic organizations, the Medical Association had a hospitable home on this lovely 26 January 2012

boulevard for almost a century. But as cities change, so do professions and their organizations. As medicine became less a fraternity and more an industry, the NHMA began to rent out some of its space, and ultimately sold the building as the real estate market began its full tanking in 2010. But the purchaser has made all the difference. Yes, a for-proﬁt developer bought the building, whose bones remained good but whose skin had become a bit frayed about the edges. But these developers were a new and different breed. Eric and Carla O’Brien moved to

New Haven about 20 years ago, during the last building bust, and saw the value in the antiquity only a New England postindustrial city can offer. The couple bought the home they were renting in East Rock, and founded Urbane New Haven, LLC. They also set about to raise a family and save the urban fabric they had grown to love. “We strongly believe that historical architecture has a signiﬁcant role to play within our cities,” asserts Eric O’Brien. The O’Briens do not “facelift, pump and dump” — they actually restore the buildings they develop. The old

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Frank’s Paint & Wallpaper building on Grand Avenue became nine lofts within a meticulously restored exterior, ditto the Long Lane Condominiums (“Long Lane” was Whitney Avenue’s original name), where six apartments were surgically insinuated into two restored Victorian homes. Single-family mansions do continue to exist one block uphill on St. Ronan Street, but amid the bustle of the institutions, law firms, churches and apartment buildings of Whitney Avenue, multi-million-dollar standalone homes simply no longer make economic sense. But a rapacious desire to “max-out” a lovely shell’s exterior with eight or ten starter condos would involve one inescapable reality: Both the guts and the virtually intact skin of this distinctive building would be savaged — new openings ripped into the gracefully composed facades, interior trim, floors and fireplaces ripped out. Instead, the O’Briens called up Knight Architecture and asked principal George Knight to artfully reinvent a building that started out as a conjoined two-family house that became an expanded New Haven Medical Association and finally devolved into an ad hoc subdivision of offices split off from the host use. Adhering to all the stringent fire codes and adapting to the fairly outlandish presence of the ballroom, Knight created four residential units with minimal interconnection. The radical horizontal redefinition meant that the attic became one unit (with an artfully seamless dormer addition), the second floor was almost entirely given over to a second home, and the entire street-facing half of the ground floor became a third, with extravagant

living spaces fully capturing the use of the porch. Finally, a creative repurposing of the ballroom as an fabulous one-off living space for a two-bedroom fantasy abode completed the light subdivision. The two units occupying the top two floors have sold, and the paint is virtually drying in the ballroom unit. But the approach with this building, as it has been for all the other Urbane New Haven projects, has worked. Detailed largely by Carla O’Brien, gleaming kitchens and baths are completely new creations, occupying whatever space is needed to make the high-sixfigure price tags make sense. Almost all the floors are restored, as are the trim and the windows. Of course the renovation brought all the infrastructure of heating, electrical and lighting up to code and beyond, and the new finishes do not compromise in living up to the standards the Tilton brothers set for the O’Briens.

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There was one seminal decision, however, that speaks of the priorities of Carla and Eric O’Brien. Two of the curved turret windowpanes were lost. Rather than keeping the curving exterior trim and saving thousands of dollars by slipping in perfectly good, high quality but straight panes, the O’Briens opted to perfectly recreate the fully curving reality built over a century ago. “We could have made faceted glass,” notes Eric O’Brien, “but that’s just not what we’ve done in the past and it’s not something we’ll do in the future. That is simply not what we believe in.” Sometimes beliefs can be proﬁtable — and so far, for Urbane New Haven being true to a belief in the value of preserving the magical appeal of embodied history treasured by New Haven has worked. Y

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B OD Y & S O U L

Getting Buff Without Going Broke Seven ways to get/stay in shape without breaking the bank By Kate Forgach

aby-boom queen Jane Fonda started it all with her slinky leotard and goofy leg warmers. The one-time workout fad soon became a way of life for a generation that plans on living longer and better. Aging has its disadvantages, however, including the inability to perform high-impact aerobics or scale mountains in several bounds.

And so was born an entire industry designed to keep baby-boomers in shape without eliminating precious cartilage or boring us stiff. As added advantages, exercise also reduces arthritic pain, depression and anxiety. My personal mantra is “Pain means no gain,” so I’m always looking for low-impact workouts that don’t hurt my wallet. Fortunately, there always seems to be a new exercise trend designed speciﬁcally for my generation. Here are a few healthy yet money-saving tips I’ve learned on my journey to physical ﬁtness (which isn’t by any means complete). 1. Go It Alone It takes discipline to maintain your own workout schedule, but joining an expensive health club isn’t really a necessity. We tell ourselves paying for membership will force us to exercise, but the thinning crowds after January attest to the fallacy of this concept. 2. Bring It Home More than ten million Americans use elliptical trainers as they’re a knee-friendly cross between cross-

30 January 2012

country skiing and stair climbing. An equal number prefer a reclining stationary bike, according to Charlene Laino of WebMD. Both machines reduce stress on joints while eliminating the aching-back syndrome. Fortunately, a lot of people buy such equipment and then use them as expensive clothes hangers. That means you should never have to buy a new machine. Craigslist is filled with ads for home exercise equipment and some dealers offer refurbished machines. The key is to give it a whirl before handing over your cash or you too might end up with a pricey coat rack. If you don’t already have an MP3 player, this should be your second investment. Nothing impels you through a home workout like hot tunes or an hour-long podcast of Car Talk. You can find free shipping codes for Best Buy and other retailers on such sites as FreeShipping. org, allowing you to skip the stuffy retail outlet and avoid paying for delivery charges. 3. Stay Limber Stress is not only the province of youth; neither is muscle elasticity. Yoga helps soothe frayed nerves, improves flexibility and, not incidentally, provides a great

Hurt now? We’re here.

aerobic workout. Pilates has many of the same advantages, but without all that Nirvana stuff. There are countless DVDs and CDs to lead you through these exercises at home, but it’s important to be selective. You want an instructor who gives detailed instructions, like “Keep your stomach flat,” “Push away from the floor,” etc. You don’t want to fall into sloppy habits as this can lead to strained muscles without the desired benefit. 4. Get Outside Recumbent road bikes are fairly expensive, but you can always pick up a traditional bike for cheap at garage sales, thrift stores, FreeCycle.org or the aforementioned Craigslist. If you have shoulder or back problems, invest in high-rise handlebars and have a professional adjust the bike to your body shape and size. Naturally this is a fair-weather exercise, but there’s an added advantage in that you can save on gas by biking to work. 5. Walk It Off It costs nothing to cruise the neighborhood, checking out houses for sale while listening to music that moves you. Walking regularly with a friend is a great motivator and maintaining a

conversation while keeping a steady pace allows you to monitor the amount of exercise you’re actually getting. An article in AARP reports overweight people who walk 30 minutes per day, five days per week, can reduce their risk of diabetes by nearly 60 percent. For bad weather, a second-hand treadmill is a good investment and, according to the Mayo Clinic, exerts about the same force as an elliptical machine. 6. Pump It Up My girlfriends and I used to play a garage-sale game to see who could first spot a set of weights for sale. Even if you just add weights to your arms and legs when walking, you’ll increase your body strength while getting a good cardio workout. 7. Mix and Match Performing just one form of exercise won’t ensure you stay fit. A full regimen combines strength, flexibility and balance training (the latter provided by yoga and Pilates). Mixing it up each day also keeps the doldrums away. Kate Forgach is a baby-boomer consumer specialist for Kinoli Inc. Readers may e-mail her at kate@kinoliinc.com.

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Reimagining a Classic LWT’s Ting recasts Macbeth in a Vietnam-era hospital

By Brooks Appelbaum

hen I think of the supernatural in Shakespeare’s tragedies, Macbeth leaps instantly to mind. Witches who see into the future; ghosts that appear from the recent past; blood stains that cause anguished sleepwalking and will not wash off — Macbeth is suffused with such dark magic. Considering the above, it’s especially intriguing that Eric Ting, associate artistic director of Long Wharf Theatre, and director/adaptor of Macbeth 1969, has chosen this particular play as his vehicle for exploring the real and immediate themes of war and its effects on both soldiers and all those emotionally connected to them. Macbeth is also of course a play permeated by war; Macbeth himself is a soldier. But Shakespeare has written many works (the history plays, for example) that focus directly on war as a concept or idea as well as a reality for their characters.

Arguably, Macbeth’s focus is more strongly on the pernicious effects of ambition 32 January 2012

Lien’s hospital set is intended to draw audience members toward every memory they have of hospitals as familiar places.

or persuasion on an innocent man. As Sir Ian McKellen asserts in his tour de force one-man show, Acting Shakespeare, Shakespeare’s Macbeth shows us the tragic process by which a good man becomes a murderer against his own will. Ting however has said that his interest in Shakespeare’s Macbeth is powered by his concern with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and with what happens to soldiers, their families and their communities when these soldiers return home. Rather than set the story in our present, which is still inevitably obscured by partisan concerns and heated emotional reactions, Ting has placed the play in a Midwestern hospital in 1969, during the Vietnam War. He has signaled that his script is an adaptation by calling the production Macbeth 1969, and he has edited it, as he says, “to tell a very speciﬁc story.” Ting also says that “audiences will still hear Shakespeare’s Macbeth.” In addition to the actors, of course, every person on the design team must therefore be especially aware of the central tension between the original and the immediate that such a production creates. Enter, then (among others) Mimi Lien, the scenic designer, whose task it is to create a space for Ting’s adaptation. Though trained in stage design at NYU,

Lien first studied architecture at Yale. This background makes her particularly sensitive to the kind of set that will enhance Ting’s vision. Lien’s beginning premise is that an adaptation as “bold” as Ting’s “needs specific support in order to live.” Because of her background in architecture, she says, she “often designs sets that surround the audience.” But in this case, “It is crucial that the audience look on the action from a remove.” Lien believes that her set — the hospital — must look as real and natural as possible to contrast and uphold what she calls “stylized choices” in the script, such as re-naming Macbeth “The Soldier” and Lady Macbeth “The Nurse.” Lien explains that a “stylized set” might look like “a big white cube.” This is the reverse of Ting’s vision and her own. The hospital for Macbeth 1969 must draw audience members toward every memory they have of hospitals as familiar places. “Eric,” says Lien, “is interested in setting this hospital as far away from the battlefield as possible. This is not a veterans hospital, not a military hospital; it’s home.” Yet this hospital, this home, is made up of contradictions. “A hospital is a place of refuge, but also a place where you are held — you cannot leave,” she says.

characters within the glassed-off box (or nurses’ station) are mic’d so that you, in the audience, see the characters within the box, as if on television, but you hear them as if they are sitting right beside you.” This technique allows Lien and sound designer Ryan Rumery “to manifest the supernatural elements of Shakespeare’s play.”

Macbeth 1969 director/adaptor Eric Ting chose to emphasize the real and immediate themes of war and its human consequences.

To construct this complex environment, Lien took as her inspiration the ﬁrst line of the adaptation, which is a stage direction: “Sound of high heels clicking on a hard ﬂoor.” For Lien, “This language triggered a whole world” — a world that is not only visual, but also visceral and auditory. The sound element lies mainly within the glassed-off nurses’ stations, “which create a space within a space.” Says Lien, “The

Lien did a great deal of research to lay out as speciﬁc a ground plan as possible for a hospital ward from the late 1960s. She found photographs of long hallways, and she fashioned wards, walls and set pieces that suggest “verisimilitude.” For the stage, however, one of the challenges is to include the necessary entrances and exits. As anyone who has been inside a hospital knows, long hallways end in large double doors. Lien notes the iconic and always startling image of those doors ﬂying open as a gurney wheels through. The double doors help Lien literally frame characters such as Duncan and Banquo; in addition, she says, having long entrances and exits down long hallways adds to the dramatic tension of numerous scenes.

Scenic designer Mimi Lien said Ting’s ‘bold’ adaptation ‘needs specific support in order to live.’

Lien wanted to describe more but was hesitant to “give too much away.” Her vision is enticing, as is Ting’s. We will soon see this world premiere, and Ting hopes we will hear Shakespeare’s language as if for the ﬁrst time. Macbeth 1969 begins previews at Long Wharf on January 18 and opens on January 25. The production runs through February 12. Y

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CALENDAR BELLES LETTRES The Mystery Book Club meets the ďŹ rst Wednesday to discuss a pre-selected book. Books are available for check out prior to the meeting. 3-4 p.m. January 4, February 1 at Blackstone Library, 758 Main St., Branford. Free. 203-483-6653, blackstone.lioninc.org/booktalk.htm.

of poetic voices. 7 p.m. January 19, February 16 at Young Menâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Institute Library, 847 Chapel St., New Haven. Free. thepoetryinstitute.com. The Classics Discussion Group reads Theodore Dreiserâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Sister Carrie, the great American novel of seduction, a masterpiece of insight into appetite and innocence that was banned on publication in 1900 for its questionable morality. 3 p.m. January 30 at Hagaman Memorial Library, 227 Main St., East Haven. Free. Registration. 203-468-3890, hagamanlibrary.info.

Release your inner poet. Time Out for Poetry meets third Thursdays and welcomes those who wish to share an original short poem, recite a stanza or simply to listen. Ogden Nash, Robert Frost, William Shakespeare, Dr. Seuss and even the Burma Shave signs live again. 12:30-2 p.m. January 19, February 16 at Scranton Library, 801 Boston Post Rd., Madison. Free. 203-245-7365.

Remembering Shakespeare tells the story of how a playwright and poet in late 16th- and early 17th-century England came to be remembered as the worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s most venerated author. Exhibition brings together works from the holdings of Yale Universityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Elizabethan Club, Irving S. Gilmore Music Library, Lewis Walpole Library, Yale Center for British Art and Beinecke Library, in an unprecedented display of one of North Americaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s ďŹ nest collections on Shakespeare. It affords viewer a unique visual history of how the â&#x20AC;&#x153;Bookeâ&#x20AC;? of Shakespeare was made and read, written and remembered, from his lifetime through the present. February 1-June 4 at the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, 121 Wall St., New Haven. Free. Open 9 a.m.-7 p.m. weekdays, 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Fri., noon-5 p.m. Sat. 203-432-2977, beineckelibrary@ yale.edu.

The Poetry Institute of New Haven hosts Poetry Open Mics each third Thursday Come hear an eclectic mix

In commemoration of Black History Month, meet author Christopher L. Webber, who will discuss his American

New members are welcomed to the Blackstone Library Second Tuesday Book Club. The group meets on the second Tuesday to discuss a preselected book. Books available for loan in advance of discussion. 6:45-8 p.m. January 10, February 14 at Blackstone Library, 758 Main St., Branford. Free. 203-488-1441, ext. 318, blackstone.lioninc. org/booktalk.htm.

Named one of Varietyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Ten Comics To Watch,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; T.J. Miller can be watched February 25 at SCSUâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Lyman Center.

to the Backbone: The Life of James W.C. Pennington, the Fugitive Slave Who Became One of the First Abolitionists. 2 p.m. February 4 at Hagaman Memorial Library, 227 Main St., East Haven. Free. Registration. 203468-3890, hagamanlibrary.info. The New Fiction Discussion Group ponders Erin Morgensternâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s The Night Circus. The circus arrives without warning. Within the black-and-white striped canvas tents is an utterly unique experience full of breathtaking

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amazements. It is called Le Cirque des Reves, and it is open only at night. But behind the scenes, a ďŹ erce competition is underway â&#x20AC;&#x201D; a duel between two young magicians who have been trained since childhood expressly for this purpose by their mercurial instructors. 3 p.m. February 27 at Hagaman Memorial Library, 227 Main St., East Haven. Free. 203-468-3890, hagamanlibrary.info.

BENEFITS Ezra Academy honors fourth-generation New Haven caterer and 1993 Ezra graduate Mereditch Abel at its Dream Builder Gala & Auction, which includes a live and silent auction as well as dinner and entertainment. Proceed beneďŹ t students of the K-8 Woodbridge independent school. 7 p.m. March 3 at 75 Rimmon Rd., Woodbridge. $118. 203389-5500, ezraacademy.net.

CINEMA Jack Webb, Janet Leigh and Edmond Oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Brien star in Pete Kellyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Blues (1955, 95 min., USA). In 1927 Kansas City Pete Kelly and his jazz band play nightly at a speakeasy. A local gangster starts to move in on them and when their drummer is killed Kelly gives in, even though this also means taking the thugâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s alcoholic girl as a singer. 5 p.m. January 26 at Hagaman Memorial Library, 227 Main St., East Haven. Free. Registration. 203-468-3890, hagamanlibrary.info. A Parisian courtesan must choose between the young man who loves her and the callous baron who wants her, even as her own health begins to fail in the classic Camille (1936, 109 min., USA), starring Greta Garbo and Robert Taylor. 5 p.m. February 23 at Hagaman Memorial Library, 227 Main St., East Haven. Free. Registration. 203-468-3890, hagamanlibrary.info.

COMEDY Every Wednesday evening Joker’s Wild opens its stage to anyone who wants to try standup comedy — from brand-new comics to amateurs to seasoned pros. As Forrest Gump might say, each Open-Mic Night is kind of like a box of chocolates. 9 p.m. Wednesdays at Joker’s Wild, 232 Wooster St., New Haven. $5. 203-7730733, jokerswildclub.com. Billy Winn & Bryan Keith. Winn started his comedy career at the original Treehouse Comedy Club in Westport nearly a quarter-century ago hosting Connecticut’s first comedy open mic. Now he’s a regular with Chaz and AJ in the morning on WPLR-FM. Keith’s sarcastic one liners and methodical delivery have made him an instant audience favorite. 8 p.m. January 27, 8 & 10:30 p.m. January 28 at Joker’s Wild, 232 Wooster St., New Haven. $18. 203-773-0733, jokerswildclub.com. T.J. Miller was recently named one of Variety’s “Ten Comics to Watch.” He has appeared in the films She’s Out of My League, Our Idiot Brother, Get Him to the Greek, Cloverfield and Unstoppable. He just finished his one-hour Comedy Central special. Nick Vatterott opens. 8 p.m. February 15 at Lyman Center, Southern Connecticut State University, 501 Crescent St., New Haven. $10 (free SCSU students, staff ). 203-393-6154, tickets.southernct.edu. Called “the biggest comedian you’ve never heard of,” Rhode Island native Brian Beaudoin is possibly the only comedian who’s larger than his own state. Derek Furtado opens. 8 p.m. February 24, 8 & 10:30 p.m. February 25 at Joker’s Wild, 232 Wooster St., New Haven. $18. 203-773-0733, jokerswildclub.com.

CRAFTS Calling all knitters and crocheters! Meeting last Tuesdays, the Hagaman Library’s casual Knitting Circle is open to all who want to share tips and show off new projects. 6-8 p.m. January 31, February 28 at Hagaman Memorial Library, 227 Main St., East Haven. Free. 203-468-3890, hagamanlibrary.info.

CULINARY Consiglio’s Cooking Class Club. Chef Maureen Nuzzo explains and demonstrates how to prepare mouth-watering southern Italian dishes that have been passed down from generation to generation. January’s menu features clams casino drizzled with lemon butter, iceberg wedge with pancetta and gorgonzola, lasagna and Italian cookies. February menu includes asparagus wrapped in prosciutto and mozzarella, baby arugula tossed with apples, walnuts and gorgonzola, rigatoni Bolognese and strawberry Napoleon. 6:30 p.m. January 27, February 9, 16, 23, 24 at Consiglio’s Restaurant, 165 Wooster St., New Haven. $65. Reservations. 203-865-4489, consiglios.com. City Farmers Markets New Haven. Eat local! Enjoy seasonal fruits, vegetables, and herbs from local farms including seafood, meat, milk, cheese, handcrafted bread and baked goods, honey, more. WOOSTER SQUARE: 9 a.m.-1 p.m. alternate Saturdays (1/7, 1/21, 2/4, 2/18) at Russo Park, corner Chapel St. and DePalma Ct. EDGEWOOD PARK: 10 a.m.-1 p.m. alternate Sundays (1/15, 1/29, 2/12, 2/26) at Whalley and West Rock Aves. 203-773-3736, cityseed.org.

DANCE Spring Faculty Dance Concert. Choreographed by artist-in-residence Hari Krishnan and taught to the students of the Wesleyan Dance Department’s repertory and performance course, the world premiere of Nine depicts Navarasa, the nine archetypal moods popular in south Indian classical dance. Also, a multiracial cast of nine male dancers from Krishnan’s Toronto dance company, inDANCE, will present the U.S. premiere of the rambunctiously provocative work

Quicksand. 8 p.m. March 2-3 at Center for the Arts Theater, 283 Washington Terr., Middletown. $5. 860-685-3355, wesleyan.edu/cfa.

It’s a different kind of rock festival as the New Haven Museum hosts New Haven’s Sentinels: The Art and Science of East and West Rock through May 31.

EXPOSITIONS With its theme “Traditions of Nature,” the 31st annual Connecticut Flower & Garden Show includes more than 20 gardens created by professional landscape designers ﬁlling 45,000 square feet. Also, many seminars by experienced horticulturalists and experts. 10 a.m.-8 p.m. February 23-25, 10 a.m.-6 p.m. February 26 at Connecticut Convention Center, 100 Columbus Blvd., Hartford. $16 ($14 seniors, $4 children). 860-844-8461, ctﬂowershow.com.

FAMILY EVENTS Each Tuesday the Yale Astronomy Department hosts a Planetarium Show. Weather permitting there is also public viewing of planets, nebulae, star clusters and whatever happens to be interesting in the sky. Viewable celestial objects change seasonally. 7 & 8 p.m. Tuesdays at Leitner Family Observatory, 355 Prospect St., New Haven. Free. cobb@astro.yale.edu, astro.yale.edu. Creating Readers Saturdays at 2 Program. A fun, interactive program that engages young readers by bringing books to life using theater, dance and music. Each family that attends receives a copy of that week’s book to take home. 2 p.m. Saturdays at Connecticut Children’s Museum, 22 Wall St., New Haven. $5. 203562-5437, childrensbuilding.org. The Hagaman Library hosts a Family Film Festival featuring screenings of King Fu Panda and Kung Fu Panda 2. Free popcorn and punch make this an ideal winter family outing. 11 a.m. & 2 p.m. January 21 at Hagaman Memorial Library, 227 Main St., East Haven. Free. 203-468-3890, hagamanlibrary.info.

MIND, BODY & SOUL Led by Nelie Doak, Yoga promotes a deep sense of physical, mental and emotional well-being. Classes are designed to help cultivate breath and body awareness, improve ﬂexibility, strengthen and tone muscles, detoxify the body and soothe the spirit. All levels welcome. Bring a yoga mat. 5-6:30 p.m. Fridays at Blackstone Library, 758 Main St., Branford. $10. 203-488-1441, ext. 313, yogidoakie@earthlink.net or events@blackstone.lioninc.org, blackstone.lioninc.org.

NATURAL HISTORY Big Food: Health, Culture & the Evolution of Eating is a collaboration between the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History, the Community Alliance for Research and Engagement at the Yale School of Public Health, and the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity. Multimedia exhibition begins with the neuroscience of appetite, genetics of obesity, and how food and energy are stored in the body. It will examine behavioral choice in nutrition and exercise as well as

ENROLL NOW in visual art classes and workshops for adults and young people

OPEN HOUSE: Sunday, Feb 26, 2 – 5 pm

CREATIVE ARTS WORKSHOP 80 Audubon St New Haven 203.562.4927 www.creativeartsworkshop.org

Continued on 37

new haven

ART Gallery Talks/Tours A tour of the exhibition ‘While These Visions Did Appear’: Shakespeare on Canvas led by a Yale Center for British Art docent. 11 a.m. January 26, 1 p.m. January 29 at Yale Center for British Art, 1080 Chapel St., New Haven. Free. 203 432-2800, britishart.yale.edu. A tour of the exhibition Johan Zoffany RA: Society Observed led by a Yale Center for British Art docent: 1 p.m. January 28 at Yale Center for British Art, 1080 Chapel St., New Haven. Free. 203432-2800, britishart.yale.edu. Gallery talk on the exhibition Passing Time by guest curator Judith Hoos Fox. 5:30 p.m. January 31 at Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery, 283 Washington Terr., Middletown. Free. 860-685-2806, wesleyan.edu/cfa. Understudying Hamlet: A Look into the Studio Practice of Edwin Austin Abbey. Gallery talk by YUAG Conservation Fellow Cindy Schwartz focusing on the 1897 painting, “The Play Scene in Hamlet (Act III, Scene 2)” by Edwin Austin Abbey (1852-1911), an American artist known for his illustrations of the works of William Shakespeare. By looking at several preparatory studies for the painting and hearing about the results of recent technical examinations of the painting, attendees will gain new insights into Abbey’s working methods. 12:15 p.m. February 22 at Yale University Art Gallery, 1111 Chapel St., New Haven. Free. 203432-0600, artgalleryinfo@yale.edu.

Opening Passing Time, a new exhibition of recent works by 14 international artists across a range of media, explores the multiple and converging meanings of the phrase “passing time.” Organized by guest curators Ginger Gregg Duggan and Judith Hoos Fox of c2 (curatorsquared). January 27-March 4 (opening reception 5-7 p.m. January 31) at Ezra & Cecile Zilkha Gallery, 283 Washington Terr., Middletown. Open noon-4 p.m. daily except Mon. Free. 860685-2806, wesleyan.edu/cfa.

Continuing The exhibition Gwathmey Siegel: Inspiration and Transformation reflects the close relationship between art and architecture in eight projects by Gwathmey Siegel & Associates Architects, one of the most influential architecture firms of the modern period. Historical blueprints, sketches, models, original architectural drawings and photographs of five transitional examples are highlighted: the Gwathmey House and Studio (1965–1967) in Amagansett, N.Y.; the de Menil Residence in East Hampton, N.Y. (1983); the Bechtler Residence, in Zumikon, Switzerland (1993); Glenstone, Potomac, Md. (2006); and the renovation and restoration of the Yale School of Architecture’s Paul Rudolph Hall, with the 2008 addition of the Jeffrey Loria Center for the History of Art. Through January 27 at the Gallery of Paul Rudolph Hall, Yale School of Architecture, 180 York St., New Haven. Open 9 a.m.-5 p.m. weekdays, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Sat. Free. architecture.yale.edu. Science of Light art exhibition. Through January 27 at Keator Gallery, Hopkins School, 986 Forest Rd., New Haven. Open 8 a.m.–4 p.m. weekdays. Free. 203397-1001, hopkins.edu.

Conceived by New York curator Rachel Gugelberger, Library Science features works by 22 contemporary artists, both emerging and established, who are inspired by libraries in their drawing, photography, sculpture, installation, painting or web-based projects. Through January 28 at Artspace, 50 Orange St., New Haven. Open noon-6 p.m. Wed.-Thur., noon-8 p.m. Fri.-Sun. Free. 203-772-2709, artspacenh.org. The Exacting Eye of Walker Evans uses new scholarship to examine the postDepression era work of photographer Walker Evans (1903–1975), who captured a place in American social, cultural, and artistic history with his unforgettable images of the Great Depression. Through January 29 at Florence Griswold Museum, 96 Lyme St., Old Lyme. Open 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tues.Sat., 1-5 p.m. Sun. 860-434-5542, ﬂogris. com. Around the World, an exhibition of photography by David McCarthy. On view are images from France, China, Guatemala, England, Canada, Costa Rica, Amsterdam, New Haven and beyond. Through January 30 at Chestnut Fine Foods, 1012 State St., New Haven. Open 10 a.m.-6 p.m. weekdays, 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Sat. Free. 203-782-6767, davidmccarthymedia.com. Holiday Treasures is an annual holiday show featuring 75 new works by 25 contemporary artists. Showcases the artists’ personal choice of favorite works including contemporary realism, city scenes and trompe l’oeil. Through January 31 at Susan Powell Fine Art, 679 Boston Post Rd., Madison. Open 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Wed.-Fri., noon-6 p.m. Sat., noon-3 p.m. Sun. Free. 203-318-0616, susanpowellﬁneart.com. Johan Zoffany RA: Society Observed: Among all major artists working in 18th-centry England, none explored more inventively the complexities of

Georgian society and British imperial rule than Johan Zoffany (1733-1810). His work provides an invaluable and distinctive appraisal of key British institutions and ediﬁces: the art academy, the Court, the theater, the families of the artistocracy and bourgeoisie and the burgeoning empire. Co-organized by the BAC and the Royal Academy of Arts, London. Through February 12 at Yale Center for British Art, 1080 Chapel St., New Haven. Open 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tues.-Sat., noon-5 p.m. Sun. Free. 203-432-2800, britishart.yale.edu. 20th Annual Associate Artist Exhibition: Landscape, portrait and still life paintings by Lyme Art Associate Artist members. Through February 25 at Lyme Art Association, 90 Lyme St., Lyme. Open 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tues.Sat., 1-5 p.m. Sun. Free. 860-434-7802, lymeartassociation.org. A Contemporary Look is an invitational exhibition of contemporary landscape, portrait and still life works on view in the Goodman Gallery. Through February 25 at Lyme Art Association, 90 Lyme St., Lyme. Open 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tues.Sat., 1-5 p.m. Sun. Free. 860-434-7802, lymeartassociation.org. People, Piety and Sacred Power in the Eastern Mediterranean is curated by Vasileios Marinis and Linda Safran. From the Hagia Sophia to paintings of individuals in a humble village church, images document the ways in which Orthodox believers sought, and still seek, to proffer piety in the hope of meriting sacred power. Through March 2 at Yale Institute of Sacred Music, 409 Prospect St., New Haven. Open 9 a.m.-4 p.m. daily. Free. 203-432-5180, yale.edu/ ism/events. The Arts Council of Greater New Haven presents an exhibition of works by Connecticut artists Kerry O’Grady and Rod Cook. O’Grady draws from the experience of unhinged, indeterminate and discontinuous moments to create drawings that contemplate the unﬁxed nature of her own experience. Cook works in projects born from spontaneous experimentation, capturing images that are subjectoriented but not necessarily visually consistent. Through March 9 at Gallery 195 at First Niagara Bank, 195 Church St., (4th fl.), New Haven. Open 9 a.m.-3 p.m. Mon.-Wed., 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Thurs.-Fri. Free. fnfg.com. Shared Sensibilities: The Art of Sol Lewitt (1928-2007) and His Friends. Selections from the LeWitt collection feature more than 40 works by 17 artists, including paintings, sculpture, photography and works on paper by artists Alan Cohen, Charles Gaines, Arlan Huang, Julie Moos and Richard Ziemann, among others. Through March 18 at Mattatuck Museum Arts & History Center, 144 W. Main St., Waterbury. Open 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tues.-Sat., noon-5 p.m. Sundays. $5 ($4 seniors, children free). 203-753-0381, mattatuckmuseum.org. While These Visions Did Appear: Shakespeare on Canvas is an exhibition drawn from the British Art Center’s

36 January 2012

permanent collection of paintings that explore historic representations of Shakespeare’s scenes and characters by artists working in Britain during the 18th and 19th centuries. Exhibition focuses on depictions of Shakespeare’s comedies, and also draws on comedic elements from the tragedies and histories, including The Two Gentlemen

of Verona, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Taming of the Shrew, The Merchant of Venice and As You Like It. Through June 3 at Yale Center for British Art, 1080 Chapel St., New Haven. Open 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tues.-Sat., noon-5 p.m. Sun. Free. 203-432-2800, britishart.yale.edu.

Curated by David Scott Kastan, the George M. Bodman Professor of English at Yale, and Beinecke Library Curator Kathryn James, Remembering Shakespeare brings together for the ﬁrst time works from the holdings of Yale’s Elizabethan Club, Lewis Walpole Library, Yale Center for British Art and Beinecke Library. The exhibit offers a

visual history of how the “Booke” of Shakespeare was made and read, written and remembered, from his lifetime through the present. Through June 4 at Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, 121 Wall St., New Haven. Open 9 a.m.-7 p.m. weekdays (until 5 p.m. Fri.), noon-5 p.m. Sat. Free. 203-432-2977, beinecke.library@yale.edu.

Calendar

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

at Café Romeo, 534 Orange St., New Haven. Free. william.v.kurtz@gmail. com.

Park to beneﬁt Integrated Refugee & Immigrant Services, which helps refugees and other displaced persons. 10 a.m. February 5 at Wilbur Cross High School, 181 Mitchell Dr., New Haven. $22 ($17 students). 203-481-5933, jbsports. com.

Continued from 35 the inﬂuence of social, environmental and cultural settings. Visitors will investigate our origins as huntergatherers; explore societal pressures such as the progressive growth of portion sizes; tackle media inﬂuences on food preferences; and consider serious health consequences that have increased the burden of chronic diseases, including diabetes and heart disease. February 11-December 2 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. $9 ($8 seniors, $5 children). 203-432-5050, peabody.yale.edu.

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

The Little Lulu (LL) is an alternative to the long-standing Sunday morning training ride. The route is usually 20-30 miles in length and the ride is no-drop, meaning that the group waits at hilltops and turns so that no rider is left behind. The LL is an opportunity for cyclists to get accustomed to riding in groups. Riders should come prepared with materials (tubes, tools, pumps and/or CO2 inﬂators) to repair ﬂats. 10 a.m. Sundays at Lulu’s European Café, 49 Cottage St., New Haven. Free. 203773-9288, paulproulx@sbcglobal.net, elmcitycycling.org. Tuesday Night Canal Rides. Mediumpaced rides up the Farmington Canal into New Haven. May split into two groups based on riders’ speed but no one will be left behind to ride alone. Lights are essential. 5:30 p.m. Tuesdays

Elm City Cycling monthly meeting occurs on the second Monday. ECC is a non-proﬁt organization of cycling advocates who meet to discuss biking issues in New Haven. Dedicated to making New Haven friendlier and more accessible to cyclists and pedestrians. 7 p.m. January 9, February 13 at City Hall Meeting Rm. 2, 165 Church St., New Haven. Free. elmcitycycling.org.

Road Races/Triathlons The Milford Road Runners (motto: “10K Every Day — Well, Almost”) present the Winter Wonderland 5 Mile, the USATF’s Connecticut ﬁve-mile championship. 9:30 a.m. January 29 at Platt Regional Tech School, 600 Orange Ave., Milford. $20 advance, $25 race day. runbob48@aol.com.

The 16th annual YMCA Sweetheart Run features an unusual distance (four miles) over a seriously hilly course. 10 a.m. February 11 at Boothe Memorial Park, Stratford. $17 advance, $22 race day. 203-481-7453, kobrien@cccymca.org. 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.

Start your Super Sunday with the 5K Run for Refugees, a challenging certiﬁed courses through East Rock

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MUSIC Classical What If Mozart Played Guitar Hero? (Our guess: awesome!) How does rock music differ from the music of, say, Wolfgang Amadeus? Compare and contrast as the New Haven Symphony Orchestra String Quartet reinterprets rock classics such as Hendrix’s “Purple Haze” or the Stones’ “Satisfaction” in the style of Mozart. 2 p.m. January 21 at Omni New Haven Hotel, 155 Temple St., New Haven. Also, 2 p.m. January 22 at Shelton Intermediate School, 675 Constitution Blvd. North, Shelton. $15 ($12 senior, $5 children). 203-865-0831, newhavensymphony.org. “Untiring, passionate and poetic” is how pianist Wei-Yi Yang, who performs as part of the Yale School of Music’s Horowitz Piano Series, has been described. RAVEL Valese Nobles et Sentimentales, Miroirs; SCHUBERT Sonata in A Major, D. 959. 8 p.m. January 25 at Sprague Hall, 470 College St., New Haven. $22-$12. 203-432-4158, music.yale.edu. The Yale School of Music presents a concert featuring music of Matthew Barnson, whose Doctor of Musical Arts recital will feature his three sonatas for violin and piano performed by violinist Ari Streisfeld and pianist Jessica Osborne. Barnson’s work has been featured at the ISCM World New Music Days in Stuttgart and New York’s MATA and Sonic Festivals, and at the Aspen Music Festival, Centre Acanthes and Ostrava Days. In 2002, he became the youngest recipient of a Barlow Commission. 8 p.m. January 26 at Sprague Hall, 470 College St., New Haven. Free. 203-432-4158, music.yale. edu. The Yale School of Music’s Faculty Artist Series presents Wendy Sharp & Friends, featuring violinist Sharp, violist Marka Gustavsson, cellist Mimi Hwang and Melvin Chen, piano. Music of Fauré, Ravel, more. 4 p.m. January 29 at Sprague Hall, 470 College St., New Haven. Free. 203-432-4158, music.yale. edu. The latest offering of New Music New Haven features Ezra Laderman’s Piano Sonata No. 5 with soloist Amy J. Yang. Also, Daniel Wohl’s One Piece and Paul Kerekes’ Reach (with Lisa Moore, piano, and Ashley Bathgate, cello); Stephen Feigenbaum’s Fantasy for Oboe and Piano; Jordan Kuspa’s Collideoscope for piano quartet; Matthew Welch’s Orbis Tertius for bagpipes (!) and brass septet; and a work by William Gardiner for ampliﬁed mixed chamber ensemble. 8 p.m. February 2 at Sprague Hall, 470 College St., New Haven. Free. 203-4324158, music.yale.edu. The London Haydn Quartet (Catherin Manson, violin; Michael Gurevich, violin; James Boyd, viola; and Richard

38 January 2012

Lester, cello; with Eric Hoeprich, clarinet) perform two Yale recitals (rescheduled from February 6). 8 p.m. February 4, 3 p.m. February 5 at Yale Collection of Musical Instruments, 15 Hillhouse Ave., New Haven. $20 ($10 students). 203-432-4158, music.yale.edu. The Karas String Quartet (violinist Cyrus Stevens, pianist Ruriko Kagiyama, violist Michael Wheeler and guest cellist Julie Ribchinsky) perform the world premiere of the Wesleyan Concertante by William Zinn, as well as Mozart’s Piano Quartet in G minor and other works. 3 p.m. February 5 at Russell House, 350 High St., Middletown. Free. 860-685-3355, wesleyan.edu/cfa. The Yale Institute of Sacred Music presents a recital by faculty artist tenor James Taylor (no, not that James Taylor; he’s hardly a tenor), whose range and facility is otherworldly. With Christoph Hammer, fortepiano. 8 p.m. February 5 at Sprague Hall, 470 College St., New Haven. Free. 203-432-4158, music.yale.edu.

Acclaimed by the Boston Globe as a “deeply probing, imaginative player with an enormous palette of tone colors,” pianist Hung-Kuan Chen performs a recital of late Beethoven sonatas as part of the Horowitz Piano Series: Sonata No. 27 in E minor, Op. 90; Sonata No. 28 in A Major, Op. 101; and Sonata No. 29 in B-flat Major, Op. 106. 8 p.m. February 8 at Sprague Hall, 470 College St., New Haven. $22-$12. 203432-4158, music.yale.edu. “The Silver Screen” is the theme of this performance by the Yale Concert Band, under the baton of Music Director Thomas C. Duffy. Featured are three works with movie projections: M. O’Donnell’s Halo Music; H. Hodge’s From the Language of Shadows; Dafnis’ Parliament in Flight; plus John Williams’ Star Wars Trilogy (arr. D. Hunsberger). 7:30 p.m. February 10 at Woolsey Hall, 400 College St., New Haven. Free. 203432-4158, music.yale.edu. Yale Opera performs a new production of Mozart’s beloved comedy, Cosi

fan tutti. Justin Way, stage director; Speranza Scappucci, conductor; Dane Laffrey, set and costume design. Italian with English supertitles. 8 p.m. February 10-11, 2 p.m. February 12 at Shubert Theater, 247 College St., New Haven. $41$19. 203-562-5666, shubert.com. From Haydn to Hip-Hop. Explore the relationships between music and dance styles with teaching artists from Hip Hop Dimensions and a New Haven Symphony Orchestra instrumental ensemble. 2 p.m. February 11 at Omni New Haven Hotel, 155 Temple St., New Haven. Also, 2 p.m. February 12 at Shelton Intermediate School, 675 Constitution Blvd. North, Shelton. $15 ($12 senior, $5 children). 203-865-0831, newhavensymphony.org. Celebrate that most romantic of days with Winds of France, featuring works by Poulenc, Maurice Emmanuel, Yan Maresz, Jean Francaiz and Jacques Ibert, performed by members of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. 8 p.m. February 14 at Sprague

If you had been compared to the likes of Lucinda Williams, Ryan Adams and Tom Petty, you would probably feel almost as good as Nashville’s Amelia White, who rocks the Nine on the ninth (of February).

Hall, 470 College St., New Haven. $30$20 ($10 students). 203-432-4158, music. yale.edu.

8:30 and 10 p.m. January 25 at Firehouse 12, 45 Crown St., New Haven. $30. 203785-0468, ﬁrehouse12.com.

The undergraduate Yale Symphony Orchestra performs. HINDEMITH The Four Temperaments (Idil Biret, piano); PROKOFIEV Lieutenant Kije Suite; LISZT Les Preludes, plus new work by Brian Robinson. 8 p.m. February 18 at Woolsey Hall, 400 College St., New Haven. $15-$10 (students $5-$2). 203-4324158, music.yale.edu.

Known as the “Musical Peacemakers of Contemporary Jazz,” Airborne has opened for Tower of Power, Jeff Lorber and Acoustic Alchemy. Their trademark sound fuses and passion with urban emotion. 7:30 p.m. January 26 at Café Nine, 250 State St., New Haven. $12 advance, $15 at door. 203-789-8281, cafénine.com.

Indulge in your own winter daydream when the New Haven Symphony Orchestra performs Russian Nights, featuring violin soloist Chad Hoopes. TCHAIKOVSKY Violin Concerto in D Major, Op. 35; Symphony No. 1 in G minor (“Winter Daydreams”). 7:30 p.m. February 23 at Woolsey Hall, 400 College St., New Haven. 203-865-0831, newhavensymphony.org.

Over the course of their 30-plus year career, the Holmes Brothers have been feeding the souls of their devoted fan base with a joyous and moving blend of blues, gospel, soul, R&B, rock ‘n’ roll and country. 8 p.m. January 27 at Katharine Hepburn Cultural Arts Center, 300 Main St., Old Saybrook. $35. 877503-1286, katharinehepburntheater.org.

A rare opportunity to hear the Yale Philharmonia in a more intimate setting than that old barn farther up College Street. HAYDN Cello Concerto in C Major (Jiang Wang, cello; Aldo Parisot, conductor); MAHLER Symphony No. 4 (chamber version; with Heather Buck, soprano). 8 p.m. February 24 at Sprague Hall, 470 College St., New Haven. Free. 203-432-4158, music.yale.edu. The Yale Philharmonia. Abetted by Yale Choral Artists, performs an all-GFH program, including: Solomon Overture, The Ways of Zion Do Mourn (funeral anthem for Queen Caroline), Concerto Grosso in G minor, and the coronation anthem The King Shall Rejoice. 8 p.m. February 25 at Sprague Hall, 470 College St., New Haven. Free. 203-432-4158, music.yale.edu.

Why not just lay (sic) around the shanty, Momma, and get a good buzz on with singer/songwriter Jonathan Edwards? 8 p.m. January 28 at Katharine Hepburn Cultural Arts Center, 300 Main St., Old Saybrook. $38. 877-503-1286, katharinehepburntheater.org. What do you get when you combine beer, live models, comedy and ﬁgure drawing? Come ﬁnd out for yourself as Dr. Sketchy’s Anti-Art School returns to the Nine. 5 p.m. January 29 at Café Nine, 250 State St., New Haven. $5. 203-7898281, cafénine.com.

Samantha Crain writes folk music, but she belts out notes like she’s singing R&B. Her rich alto seems to have no bottom, and the sound of it against her bare guitar is enough to raise gooseflesh. With Ben Weaver, Mon Monarch. 9 p.m. February 2 at Café Nine, 250 State St., New Haven. $6. 203-7898281, cafénine.com. Singer/songwriter Joe Flood has written for the Band, Blues Traveler and Laura Cantrell, and now takes on translating the legendary French songwriter Georges Brassens. For his Elm City appearance he’ll perform songs of Brassens and related artists in English and French. 7 p.m. February 7 at Café Nine, 250 State St., New Haven. $5. 203-789-8281, cafénine.com. Left-of-center Nashville songstress Amelia White’s new record is brimming with ebullient choruses and complicated moods, literate verse and ravaged guitars. It exudes a level of composition and craftsmanship that bring to mind Lucinda Williams, Tom Petty and Ryan Adams. Rob Morsberger opens. 9 p.m. February 9 at Café Nine, 250 State St., New Haven. $5. 203-7898281, cafénine.com. Featuring Andrew Van Norstrand (fiddle, guitar bouzouki) and Noah Van Norstrand (fiddle, mandolin, feet), the Van Norstrand Brothers play a unique, high-energy blend of traditional and original material and regularly

tour throughout North America. 8 p.m. February 11 at First Congregational Church, 1009 Main St., Branford. $15. 203-488-7715, folknotes.org/branfordfolk. The man, the myth, the legend: George Clinton & Parliament Funkadelic return to York Street. 9 p.m. February 19 at Toad’s Place, 300 York St., New Haven. $30 ($28.50 advance). 203-624-8623, toadsplace.com. Formed in 2004 by Aron Magner and Marc Brownstein (Disco Biscuits keyboardist and bass player) along with New York producer/deejay Omen, Conspirator has assumed various forms through the ensuing years. With the recent addition of virtuoso guitarist Chris Michetti and drummers Darren Shearer (the New Deal) and Mike Greenﬁeld (Lotus), Conspirator has reached a new level of musical intensity. 9 p.m. March 1 at Toad’s Place, 300 York St., New Haven. $18 ($16 advance). 203624-8623, toadsplace.com. Taylor Ho Bynum and Tomas Fujiwara. Composers Bynum (cornet) and Fujiwara (drums) have been collaborators for nearly two decades, documenting their duo on the recordings True Events (2007) and Stepwise (2010). Both are veterans of the groups of jazz legend (and Wesleyan music professor) Anthony Braxton. 3 p.m. March 4 at Russell House, 350 High St., Middletown. Free. 860-6853355, wesleyan.edu/cfa.

Performing Art

The Yale Institute of Sacred music presents a choral hoedown with the Yale Glee Club, Schola Cantorum and Yale Camerata performing music of Bach, Bossi, Brahms, Mäntyjärvi and Sandström. Stefan Parkman conducts. 4 p.m. February 26 at Woolsey Hall, 400 College St., New Haven. Free. 203-4324158, music.yale.edu. Yale Horowitz Piano Series presents Yefim Bronfman, characterized as “a marvel of digital dexterity and jawdropping bravura.” Works of Brahms, Prokoﬁev and Liszt. 8 p.m. February 28 at Sprague Hall, 470 College St., New Haven. $28-$18 (students $15-$10). 203432-4158, music.yale.edu. Under the director of James Taylor, the Yale Voxtet presents Soirée Musicale, an evening of French art songs. With Holly Chatham, piano. 8 p.m. March 1 at Marquand Chapel, 409 Prospect St., New Haven. Free. 203-432-4158, music. yale.edu.

Popular Firehouse 12 welcomes back guitarist Bill Frisell and his trio Beautiful Dreamers, featuring Eyvind Kang (viola) and Rudy Royston (drums). Frisell’s CD Beautiful Dreamers (Savoy Jazz) features original compositions and interpretations of classic songs from the Great American Songbook.

85 Willow Street, New Haven, CT 06511 203.799.6400 | audioetc.com

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ONSTAGE Auditions Wallingford Public Library invites adults and teens to audition for a staged reading of Getting Wilde with Shakespeare and Shaw!, directed by NHM theater critic Brooks Appelbaum. Taking place March 29 and 31, the production will weave together scenes and speeches from three playwrights. No previous acting experience necessary. 6 p.m. January 17, January 31 in Collins Room, Wallingford Public Library, 200 North Main St., Wallingford. 203-269-1439, 203-265-6754.

Cabaret Sister Robert Ann’s Cabaret Class is part of the Dan Goggin’s Nunsense series featuring songs from other Nunsense shows. 8 p.m. January 21-22, 27-28, 2 p.m. January 22, 29 at Seven Angels Theater, 1 Plank Road, Waterbury. $30. 203-757-4676, sevenangelstheatre. org. Winter Cabaret features an array of songs from such classics as Sweet Charity, Funny Girl and Kiss Me Kate to more contemporary musicals like Rent, Hairspray, Billy Elliot and The Addams Family. 7:30 p.m. January 26-28 at Paul Mellon Arts Center, 333 Christian St., Wallingford. $12 ($10 seniors). 203-6972398, choate.edu. Brainsongs, or the Play About the Dinosaur Farm is an unabashedly theatrical invitation into the simple, awestruck world of one man’s brain. Part clown show, part vaudeville, Brainsongs is an eensy-weensy piece of handcrafted theater that celebrates the power of the imagination and the implicit risk in shamelessly pursuing one’s fun. 8 p.m. January 26, 8 & 11 p.m. January 27-28 at Yale Cabaret, 217 Park St., New Haven. $15. 203-432-1566, yalecabaret.org. Tonight, Tonight! A Shakespeare Cabaret is an evening of songs featuring a soprano, alto, tenor and bass from Legacy Theatre’s core resident company. Shakespeare alludes to well more than 100 songs in his works, and most educated people of his time could read music. Not surprisingly, over the past four centuries the Bard’s plays, sonnets, plots and themes have inspired countless works of music. 7 p.m. February 11 at Lyric Hall, 827 Whalley Ave., New Haven. $15. Reservations. 203457-0138, legacytheatreandconservatory. org. The Sonnet Dessert is an evening of sonnets, music and dessert, in which 154 members of the Yale community will perform a marathon of Shakespeare’s sonnets. Professors, graduate students and actors at the Yale Repertory Theater will be invited to participate, with undergrads ﬁlling

40 January 2012

the remaining spots. The event will include musical performances and will last about three and a half hours, so audience members may arrive and leave at any point. 2 p.m. February 12 in President’s Room, Woolsey Hall, 500 College St., New Haven. Free. Mac Wellman’s absurdist, psychosexual adaptation of Bram Stoker’s classic reveals the original’s satire of repression while maintaining its unsettling horror through Wellman’s singular poetic language. Dracula adds song, direct address, physical comedy, puppetry and a uniquely layered structure to the traditional melodrama to create a deeply satisfying evening of theater. 8 p.m. February 16, 8 & 11 p.m. February 17-18 at Yale Cabaret, 217 Park St., New Haven. $15. 203-432-1566, yalecabaret.org. Inspired by music, joy, kissing, holding hands, staring contests, bad poetry and the expression of love, Clutch Yr Amplified Heart Tightly and Pretend offers an exaltation of dance for anyone willing to give the Yale Cab performers a hug. 8 p.m. February 23, 8 & 11 p.m. February 24-25 at Yale Cabaret, 217 Park St., New Haven. $15. 203-432-1566, yalecabaret.org. As dangerous and provocative today as when it debuted in 1964, Funnyhouse of a Negro is Adrienne Kennedy’s shattering story of a young woman trapped between worlds — black and white, past and present, right and wrong. Struggling to make sense of her life while a nightmare unfolds around her, she clings to a truth that threatens to drag her under. She has, she discovers, been miseducated about who she is. Or has she? Lileana Blain-Cruz directs. 8 p.m. March 1, 8 & 11 p.m. March 2-3 at Yale Cabaret, 217 Park St., New Haven. $15. 203-432-1566, yalecabaret.org.

The world’s most beloved ogre trods the Brass City boards when Shrek the Musical comes to the Palace Theater February 10-11.

Opening

to their wounds, both physical and psychological. What emerges from the men’s thoughts are the ghosts of bloody deeds done and horrors inﬂicted as they deal with the aftermath of war. Eric Ting directs. (See story this issue.) January 19-February 12 at Long Wharf Theatre, 222 Sargent Dr., New Haven. $70. 203-787-4282, longwharf.org.

A highly physical rendition of Shakespeare’s Roman tragedy Coriolanus brings the play’s central dynamic — the collision of prideful egotism with collective anger — into connection with the contemporary moment. A senior project for Yale College drama students William Smith and Jesse Kirkland. Daniel Larlham directs. 8 p.m. January 18-20, 2 & 8 p.m. January 21 at Whitney Theater, 53 Wall St., New Haven. Free. Reservations. 203432-1308, yale.edu/ydc. Macbeth 1969, adapted from William Shakespeare. When two soldiers return home injured from war, a group of nurses at the veterans’ hospital tend

The Saybrook Stage Co. presents a co-ed production of the awardwinning play by Reginald Rose, Twelve Angry Men. 8 p.m. January 19-21, 3 p.m. January 22 at Katherine Hepburn Cultural Arts Center, 300 Main St., Old Saybrook. $20. 860-510-0473, katherinehepburntheater.org.

Yale Rep presents the world premiere of Christina Anderson’s Good Goods, an ‘otherworldly love story of the (dis)possessed.

Mamma Mia!, the hit musical featuring songs from Abba, is the story of a daughter’s quest on the eve of her wedding to discover the identity of her father, which brings three men from her mother’s past back to the Greek island they last visited 20 years ago. 8 p.m. January 20, 2 & 8 p.m. January 21, 1 & 6:30 p.m. January 22 at Palace Theater, 100 E. Main St., Waterbury. $70-$50. 203-346-2000, palacetheaterct.org. In Chekhov’s profound comedy The Seagull, years of petty squabbles and thwarted love affairs breed miserable hilarity in the countryside: lovers and artists alike struggle with memory, forgetting and moving on. Alexandru Mihial directs. 8 p.m. January 24-27, 2 & 8 p.m. January 28 at University Theatre, 222 York St., New Haven. $20-$10. 203-432-1234, drama.yale.edu. A new production of Shakespeare’s Macbeth reexamines the Old World tale of murder and ambition in a New World setting. A senior project of Yale College drama students Katharine Pitt, Sam Lasman and Jaime Biondi. 8 p.m. February 2-3, 2 & 8 p.m. February 4 at Whitney Humanities Center Theater, 53 Wall St., New Haven. Free. Registration. 203-432-1308, yaledramacoalition. org. A world premiere by Christina Anderson, Good Goods is an otherworldly love story of the (dis) possessed. Amid the cluttered shelves of a family-owned general store in a small African-American community that appears on no map, four lost souls reunite. Partnerships dissolve, alliances shift and romances ignite as a tragic accident unleashes the town’s mysterious history. Tina Landau directs. February 3-25 at Yale Repertory Theatre, 1120 Chapel St., New Haven. $73-$54. 203-4321234, yalerep.org. Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All For You and The Actor’s Nightmare. The two one-acts by

Christopher Durang are a parody of the stereotypical Catholicschool classroom and a comedy about the plight of a stranger who is suddenly pushed onstage to replace an ailing actor. February 3-19 at Eastbound Theater, 40 Railroad Ave. South, Milford. $17 ($15 senior/students). 203-382-0969, milfordarts.org. The Yale School of Drama presents Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare. Ethan Heard directs. 4 p.m. February 9, 4 & 8 p.m. February 10, 4 p.m. February 11. Iseman Theater, 1156 Chapel St., New Haven, Free. Registration. 203432-1234, yaledramacoalition.org. Shrek the Musical, based on the Oscar-winning DreamWorks ﬁlm, brings the hilarious story of everyone’s favorite ogre to life onstage, featuring 19 all-new songs. 8 p.m. February 10, 2 & 8 p.m. February 11 at Palace Theater, 100 E. Main St., Waterbury. $68$48. 203-346-2000, palacetheaterct. org. The Timid Jester: A Night of Improve, Comedy & Song featuring Shakesperience Productions’ resident actors and special guest performers together with the audience in a series of improvisational scenes and standup comedy. 6 p.m. February 10 at Shakesperience Productions, 117 Bank St., Waterbury. $10. 203-7542531, shakesperienceproductions. org. In the world premiere musical February House, George Davis tries to create his own utopia in a small house in Brooklyn in the 1940s by bringing together some of the greatest and most colorful minds of a generation (W.H. Auden, Carson McCullers, Benjamin Britten and Gypsy Rose Lee). The artists discover new ideas exploding at every turn as they ﬁnd love, friendship and their own artistic voices in a time of war. The score mixes elements of classical operetta, jazz,and musical comedy with modern folk-pop. Davis McCallum directs.

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February 15-March 18 at Long Wharf Theatre, 222 Sargent Dr., New Haven. $52-$42. 203-787-4282, longwharf.org. For Vincent Didonato, the family’s metal-casting shop that he runs would hardly seem the perfect place to meet Ms. Right. But that is exactly what happens when a bunch of résumés from several comely New York actresses start pouring into his “casting” office. Finding one young waitress too irresistible to let slip away; he sets up an “audition” for a fictitious film. Mistaken identity and hilarity soon ensue as show business and sheet metal collide in the Centennial Casting. February 16-March 11 at Seven Angels Theater, 1 Plank Road, Waterbury. $35. 203757-4676, sevenangelstheatre.org. Based on the Robert Louis Stevenson classic, this stage adaptation of Treasure Island brings pirates and parrot-puppets to life with song and dance, treason and treasure-seeking. A Choate student production. 7:30 p.m. February 16, 2 p.m. February 19 at Paul Mellon Arts Center, 333 Christian St. Wallingford. $15 ($10 12 and under). 203-697-2398, choate.edu.

Marine Continued from 17 courtesies. Being a Marine is more than just putting on a uniform and going to boot camp. It’s a brotherhood that you can’t really explain to people. To me it feels like the Marines are a more tightly knit group of warriors. I know I’ve changed as a person, but I haven’t been able to figure out in which ways. You appreciate the little stuff more. When I came in, I went in as a little scrawny kind of having any other the leadership traits. You come out twice as better as you went in. Being on my deployment pushed me above and beyond my extremes. It makes me stronger in the sense that I know what I’m capable of. I don’t tell people that I shot people — you know, firefights and stuff like that. I don’t tell people that. I just focus on the changes that we made — the stuff that doesn’t make the news. Y

The Deadly Seven. Shakespeare’s Purgatorio showcases scenes and monologues from Shakespeare based on the Seven Deadly Sins. Characters Falstaff, Cleopatra, Richard III, Shylock, Queen Margaret, Angelo and Richard II are portrayed to embody Gluttony, Sloth, Envy, Avarice, Wrath, Lust and Pride. An ensemble of seven actors appear in multiple roles. 8 p.m. February 16-19 at DavenportPierson Auditorium, 248 York St., New Haven. Free. Reservations. yaledramacoalition.org/deadly_ seven.

marjolainepastry.com

203-789-8589

961 State Street • New Haven

new haven

W O R D S o f M O UT H NEW EATS: Chocopologie

Strange brews: Cask Republic proprietor Christian Burns

Manager Christian Wilki open in time for the chocolate lover season..

Photo:Lisa Wilder

t’s been years since downtown New Haven had a dedicated chocolate shop, but the new Chocopologie is worth the wait. The Norwalk-based confectioner opened a storefront on High Street near the Yale campus late last year. Like a commitment-phobic lover, the company made its debut as a trendy “pop-up shop,” or limited-engagement storefront, in a narrow nook most recently home to steamed burgers. Happily, Chocopologie has now signed on for the long term, thanks to brisk trade from students and downtown shoppers alike. With its comfy eating area and appealing range of sweets, the shop is worth braving the area’s rapacious parking meters. Walk into Chocopologie and you’re welcomed into a shabby-chic lounge with white brick walls, handwritten signs and ample couches. Far from a hushed temple

42 January 2012

of sugar art, this is a place you can linger to enjoy conversation and a leisurely snack. First stop was the overstuffed display case of truffles, in a riot of colors and exotic flavors.Tops for this sampler was the nougatine, a salted dark chocolate shell packed with satiny ganache. A stellar flavored ganache also starred in a green tea truffle, dusted with a layer of grassy matcha tea powder. The chocolatier’s skill also shone in a white chocolate coconut nugget, buttery smooth and rich with cocoa butter. Less appealing were the intensely sweet macarons, tiny sandwiches of meringue and buttercream. Macarons were supposed to suceed cupcakes as the next “it” dessert, but the confection’s crispychewy texture and pure sugar punch may limit its appeal on this side of the pond, despite some intriguing flavors. Call me

provincial, but they remind me of sugar wafers and make my teeth hurt. More to my taste were the sumptuous tortes and other plated desserts, along with a decadently thick hot chocolate. Molten chocolate cake and the shop’s brownie sundae are top sellers in the New Haven location, according to Manager Christian Wilki. All of the shop’s chocolates are made by Knipshilt of Norwalk, known for its unusual pairings such as chili tangerine and apricot basil. Wilki says he and the other managers are all chefs, “so we use flavors that we know work well together.” For Valentine’s Day or any other occasion, a box of Chocopologie’s gourmet treats would make a great gift. And while you’re there, order some hot chocolate and stay a while. Chocopologie, 47 High St., New Haven (203-650-2738).

EDITOR’S PICK: Elm City Market

Marketing Director Amy Christensen-Regni and GM Mark Regni Photo:Lisa Wilder

o, you don’t have to be a member to shop at Elm City Market. That’s the message managers want to get out about the fledgling downtown grocery store, located in the ground floor of the gleaming new apartment tower at 360 State Street. Elm City models itself on markets in Burlington, Vt. and Northampton, Mass. that are owned and run communally. Elm City’s 1,200 “member-owners” benefit from special sales and deep discounts, but anyone can shop there. The market’s unusual business model and counterculture pedigree doesn’t mean the shelves are crammed with wheatgrass and dried beans. All the veggie/vegan/glutenfree staples are there, but there is also a full array of meats, fish and even junk food. Fine dried sausage, top-flight breads and French cheeses share space with local pastas and sauces and a judicious selection of national brands.

“We wanted a mix of conventional groceries with natural, organic and local foods,” explains Membership and Marketing Director Amy Regni. “People walk in and see familiar brands so they’re comfortable shopping here.” Membership costs $200 and can be paid on an installment plan, or even partially subsidized for those with limited income, Regni adds. What shoppers won’t find at Elm City are acres of echoing aisles filled with every possible variation of a product. Well-edited and usually reasonably priced, the market’s goods are perfectly matched to its urban epicurean clientele. Ample organic produce offerings make up for in variety and freshness what they lack in sheer volume — you may have to fight someone for that last pint of organic blueberries, especially when the item’s on sale. That urban energy is especially visible

on weekend evenings, when the aisles fill with stylish singles and stroller-pushing young professionals. The market also serves as a casual and affordable dining destination, with a 35-foot hot buffet and salad bar. A recent dinner selection featured dishes like spicy grilled flank steak with yogurt chimichurri, lemon caper tofu and Mexican posole soup. For this downtown frequenter, Elm City fills the need for a grocery store open a bit later — until 9 p.m. daily except Sunday. Parking is free one level up at 360 State, covered and easily reached by elevator with bags in tow. “We want the store to be a market for everyone in New Haven, that’s why we called it ‘Elm City Market,’ not ‘Elm City Co-op,’” Regni says. “We want to appeal to everyone.” Elm City Market, 777 Chapel St., New Haven (203-624-0441), elmcitymarket. coop.

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44 January 2012

NEW READS: Welcome to Claireâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s

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laire Criscuolo, chef/owner of downtown landmark Claireâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Corner Copia, was pleasantly surprised last year when copies of her fourth cookbook arrived a few weeks early. Thanks to the early arrival, her husband and fellow chef, Frank, had a chance to peruse the book only days before his sudden death. â&#x20AC;&#x153;I was so happy he got to see the book,â&#x20AC;? Criscuolo says. â&#x20AC;&#x153;He was the reason I wrote it; he was the reason I wrote all of the books.â&#x20AC;? Dedicated to Frank Criscuolo and a moving testament to their life together, the book focuses on healthy vegetarian dishes, from soups like Egyptian lentil to Afghan pickled carrots to Italian cauliflower with tomato sauce. The book excels in offering a range of Italian family recipes like Aunt Joâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s ricotta cavatelli, Sicilian rice balls, Anonnaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s limoncello and Polenta Campagnolo with mushrooms and veggie sausages. But the new book is less a collection of recipes than a glimpse into the rich culture of Claireâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s, with its focus on community, nutritional activism and hospitality in its purest form. Essays alternate with images of customers, staff members and steaming plates of food. The recipes focus on the lighter, more seasonal fare that Criscuolo has featured more in recent years. â&#x20AC;&#x153;One of things I like is that we have so many side dishes â&#x20AC;&#x201D; thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s the way we eat now,â&#x20AC;? Criscuolo says. â&#x20AC;&#x153;I also want to people to think about how they can incorporate more fruits and vegetables into their diets. People are trying to eat more a vegetable-based diet, but they have a challenge in figuring out how to get there.â&#x20AC;? Infused with love and Criscuoloâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s passion for food and life, Welcome to Claireâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s will send you to the kitchen with lots of new ideas. It will make you happy, make you hungry, and finally, make you cry. Welcome to Claireâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s, $24.95, Lyons Press. Available at Claireâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s and major booksellers.

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Housing memorabilia, oddities and of course the company’s signature dispensers from across the decades, the new PEZ Visitor Center is a parade of pastels.

PEZ World: How Sweet It Is By Susan E. Cornell

emember eating those teeny compressed sugar bricks and your dispenser collection from when you were a kid? Of course, and in the back of our minds is the fact that the manufacturer of those confectionary blocks is found in Connecticut, in Orange. But never before have we been able to visit PEZ Candy like we can with Hershey’s Chocolate World in Pennsylvania, Ben & Jerry’s Factory in Vermont, or Jelly Belly in California. But now, Nutmeggers and PEZheads (explanation follows) have a mecca to visit: the PEZ Visitor Center opened in late November at the site of the factory. The new Visitor Center, on Prindle Hill Road in Orange, houses more than 4,000 square feet ﬁlled with everything PEZ. Here you’ll ﬁnd the biggest and most comprehensive collection of PEZ memorabilia on display for the public. You’ll also see the world’s largest PEZ dispenser, a PEZ motorcycle built by 46 January 2012

Orange County Choppers, a PEZ trivia game, learn how a dispenser is made, and view the confections being created and packaged on the production floor. Speaking of trivia, it’s nice to have some knowledge about this product with a major Connecticut connection before the field trip. First, when and where did the name come from? PEZ was invented in Vienna, Austria as a breath mint for adults. The name comes from the first, middle and last letter of the German word PfeffErminZ, meaning peppermint. Second, why the dispenser? The first PEZ dispensers were designed in the late 1940s and called “Box Regulars.” They resembled cigarette lighters, and the objective was to encourage smokers to quit the habit. Third, what is a PEZhead? A PEZ collector. Fourth, how many pounds of pressure does it take to compress the sugar into a

piece of PEZ candy? Three thousand. There are many, many other cool facts and ﬁndings at the Visitor Center. The interactive historical timeline is a great source for more fun information. Naturally, there is a factory store to pick up a few souvenirs. Candies are still produced in Traun, Austria, in addition to the Orange facility, which became the company’s U.S. headquarters in 1974. The dispensers are manufactured in Hungary and China. From Jeopardy to Seinfeld to Stand By Me, the product has been part of American culture and lore for decades. And, they are found in more than 60 countries around the world. Located at 35 Prindle Hill Road in Orange, the PEZ Visitor Center is open 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. daily and noon to 5 p.m. Sunday. Admission is $5 for adults and $4 for seniors and children ages three to 12. Visit pez.com or call 203-2980201.

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