New Haven magazine January 2013

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INSIDE: Greater New Haven Healthcare Heroes JANUARY/FEBRUARY

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HAPPY BIRTHDAY! The Elm City at 375 — past, present and future

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WAV E

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New Haven may have a slew of “green” credits to its name right now, but that didn’t keep it from being named to Forbes magazine’s 2012 list of America’s 20 Dirtiest Cities. The Elm City ranked No. 7 on the list, beat out by cities like Philadelphia and Fresno, Calif., and even Bridgeport, which ranked No. 4. Rankings were based on data from the Environmental Protection Agency, including air and water quality, and Superfund sites.

While the petition criticizes policies its creator says restrict small business and which have killed jobs in the town, Nicholas v goes on to say that through secession, the town will establish a constitutional monarchy, ruling through divine economic authority. It also proposes a wall to be built along the borders of Stamford and Port Chester, N.Y., however the Bedford-Armonk (N.Y.) border would remain open.

LETTERS

Of New Haven, Forbes said its residents’ lungs “pay the price” for being located by the intersection of I-95 and I-91. Bridgeport was already mocked by the writers of the animated series Family Guy in 2010 for being a world leader in things like shattered glass and abandoned buildings, but Forbes took the city to task for its high rate of blighted properties and pollution.

Kingdom of greenwich? GREENWICH — A post-2012 presidential election trend found people in a number of states creating online petitions to secede from the United States via the White House’s official website.

White House petitions need at least 25,000 signatures within a month in order to warrant attention from the government. The Greenwich petition to date has 39 signatures.

stealing to get ahead

Editor Michael C. Bingham Design Consultant Terry Wells Contributing Writers Brooks Appelbaum, Ashley Chin, Duo Dickinson, Jessica Giannone, Kate Forgach, Mimi Freiman, Eliza Hallabeck, Liese Klein, Nancy Burton, Melissa Nicefaro, Priscilla Searles, Cindy Simoneau, Tom Violante Photographers Steve Blazo, Anthony DeCarlo, Lisa Wilder

4 January/February 2013

FÊ T E S

American Home Realty owner Robert Toth, 54, was slapped with larceny and trespass charges after he stole a competitor’s real estate signs for U.S. Asset Realty from more than half a dozen sites in Bridgeport and from two homes in Stratford.

ENFIELD — Maybe creative use of the ingredient would win them a competition or two, but two female Fermi High School upper-class students wound up in hot water after they distributed an assortment of home-made cupcakes tainted with urine to students they didn’t like.

Toth once worked for U.S. Asset Realty before opening his own company.

| Vol. 6, No. 4 | January/February 2013

Publisher: Mitchell Young

WORD S of MOUT

the secret ingredient is…

O F N O T ES

new Haven

The languages would be taught through video conferencing and other distance-learning technologies. The three universities have already been presenting classes in Romanian, Dutch, and the Aztec language Nahuatl, with the likes of Bengali, Indonesian, Yoruba, and Zulu. For the fall 2013 semester, they hope to add such headscratchers as Khmer, Sinhala and Vietnamese. Languages are added based on student demand.

BRIDGEPORT — Prospective home-buyers can’t buy from your competitor if he doesn’t exist, right?

AT H O ME

One of the more peculiar entries from “Nicholas v” asked for secession for Greenwich, noting that the town “wishes nothing more

Yale University has teamed up with Columbia and Cornell universities for an education initiative to increase access to some of the more less commonly taught languages. The initiative has even been given a twoyear $1.2 million grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to continue.

Advertising Manager Mary W. Beard Senior Publisher’s Representative Roberta Harris Publisher’s Representative Daniel Bennick Robin Ungaro Graphics Assistant Ashley Brown New Haven is published 8 times annually by Second Wind Media Ltd., which also publishes Business New Haven, with offices at 20 Grand Avenue, New Haven, CT 06513. 203-781-3480

A Waterbury Parks Department employee employed similar tactics when he allegedly mixed the chemical Speedy Dry into his supervisor’s oatmeal. William Lampron, 43, was suspected since he and his boss had been having problems over Lampron’s performance.

I N ST YL E

Speedy Dry is a granular substance used to soak up liquid spills; the amount ingested was not lifethreatening, but apparently caused some intestinal distress.

OU T DOOR S

The girls were done in when the one person they told of their prank ratted them out. Some students Lampron resigned shortly after his became ill when discovering the arrest. prank, but none needed medical attention. The two girls may face criminal charges for the prank. INSIDE: Greater New Haven

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HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

ONS C REEN

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The Elm City at 375 — past, present and future

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IN T E L

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EDITOR’S LETTER Celebrating I N T EL Two Birthdays This isn’t about the best cheeseburger. Don’t get us wrong: We love cheeseburgers — really we do. The City of Elms of course has a special relationship with the burger, stemming from a certain Crown Street eatery that every August closes for its “inventory of spoons” (get it?) and where you’d better not even think of trying to have it your way.

L E T TERS

W O R DS o f M O U T H FÊTES I NST Y L E

When we began publishing New Haven Magazine five years ago we had a simple objective in mind: to create the best magazine between New York and Boston. A magazine that reflected the best of what is uniquely New Haven — its people, its places, its culture. For a host of reasons this place is different from other New England cities of approximately the same size. We’re not Hartford or Bridgeport. Neither are we Providence or Worcester.

AT HOME

O F N O TES

O U T DO O R S Before

B O DY & SO U L

I arrived in New Haven in early 1987. The next year I was fortunately enough to work with a extraordinary team of writers and artists in creating an official magazine guide to the Elm City’s 350th birthday celebration. The professional contacts and friendships created during that process have endured for a quarter-century.

O NSC R E E N

So it is with a sense of coming full-circle that we celebrate not one but two birthdays: five for New Haven Magazine, and 375 for the city whose name this publication bears. It’s an anniversary, but it is also something of a fresh start. You will already notice the magazine’s new physical format — a larger size to provide a more attractive “frame” for photographs and advertisements. In commemoration of the other birthday we offer as the centerpiece of this issue an in-depth look at the Elm City’s past, present and future through the eyes of some of the community’s most discerning observers. It’s a fascinating package, and we hope you enjoy it. It’s even better than a cheeseburger. Michael C. Bingham Editor

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EDITOR’S L ETTER

In her more than half-century on the job, chief Yale archivist and city historian Judith Schiff has seen it all — and then some

I NTEL

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Lifelong New Havener Judith Schiff grew up in Westville and attended Sheridan Middle School and Hillhouse High School before going to college at Barnard and later earning graduate degrees at SCSU and Columbia. Schiff recently completed her 51st year of employment at Yale. For the last 40 of her 50 years at Yale, Schiff has held a single title – chief research archivist. In that capacity, she has worked on such significant Yale projects as the tercentennial celebration in 2001, the Special Olympics World Games in 1998 and the archives of Charles Lindbergh and his family, one of the largest and most valuable in the Sterling Library archives. Last April Mayor John DeStefano Jr. appointed Schiff city historian, succeeding Richard Hegel, who passed away in February. NHM Editor Michael C. Bingham interviewed Schiff for ONE2ONE.

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In a profile of you I read that when you were a student you were ‘bored’ by American history. That obviously changed — how? I was bored by the way it was taught in high school. I did not find it very exciting, and I had no intention of majoring in it when I went to college. So what did you major in at Barnard? History. But I didn’t start out that way. I was actually going to be a chemistry major. How did you come to work at Yale? It was really not intentional. I graduated from Barnard and came home [to New Haven]. I had majored in British and European history. At that time most women didn’t even think about applying for scholarships to graduate school. You just somehow thought you were going to pay your own way. At Barnard they had a teaching program similar to Teach America today. You could get a teaching license and practical experience by the time you graduated. And getting a teaching license in New York City was not easy — you had to go to Brooklyn four times for four different kinds of examinations. We also had practice teaching at a public school and a private school. So I taught at a big, crime-laden school in the Bronx — James Monroe High School — and I also taught at [Manhattan’s exclusive private] Dalton School, which was

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the ultimate in progressive education. So my thought was to come home and probably take a year to decide in which direction my teaching would go — would it be public, private, maybe getting an advanced degree to teach college. I knew I wanted to go back to graduate school and I wanted to go to Columbia, because once you were in the Columbia (Barnard is Columbia’s all-female liberal-arts affiliate) system you could continue without taking any extra exams. So I was going to take a year or two to gather my thoughts and earn enough money to support myself. So I applied at Yale and a week after I graduated from Barnard I had a job. What was your first job? It was as an editorial assistant at the Cowles Foundation for Economic Research, which still exists on Hillhouse Avenue. It was really like a glorified secretary or typist. After I worked there for some months, a friend of mine from high school told me there was a job opening for someone to work in the department then called Historical Manuscripts to catalogue some papers. So I decided to investigate because by then I was becoming kind of bored with my job. So I came to this very department and asked about the job, and they said they had some money from

what was then the New Haven Foundation to catalogue some papers [relating to] New Haven families. When they found out I had gone to Barnard and had done a senior essay in history that had involved using special collections at Columbia, I was hired practically on the spot. That was in 1961? That was in 1959. I would hate to see that in print, but most people know, because two years ago I was given a lot of attention for working 50 years at Yale. So I did that job for a year and I found it fascinating. The papers I got were the papers of the Whitney family — not Eli Whitney, but another man who in his way was almost as famous: William Dwight Whitney, who was a pioneer in the history of languages. He became the editor of the Century Dictionary, which was the American [counterpart] to the Oxford English Dictionary. His brother Josiah, whose papers were also in this collection, was a geologist who taught at Harvard and was an early explorer of California. Mt. Whitney is named after him. It was a wonderful thing to do but I didn’t consider it too seriously career-wise because I already had my teaching license and I felt I needed more specialized education, so next year I went to Columbia for graduate school.

I supported myself by substitute-teaching in Harlem. You’ve written the ‘Old Yale’ column for the Yale Alumni Magazine for a quarter-century. What are some of the most dramatic ways Yale has changed since you began working here? I went to Hillhouse High School, which was at that time where Morse and Stiles [Yale residential] colleges are. Hillhouse almost considered itself kind of like a prep school for Yale. Charles Seymour, who was president of Yale during World War II, went to Hillhouse, and they had all the classical subjects that prepared people for college. And there were scholarships, these Sterling scholarships. So there were usually at least six boys a year who graduated from Hillhouse who were going to go to Yale. And others went because the tuition really wasn’t that high if you lived at home — it was about $500 a year. Certainly a major change has been the internationalization of Yale, where ‘For God, for Country, for Yale’ is really a relic of the past. What’s your opinion about that? It’s certainly very different for the undergraduate body [Yale College]. In the graduate schools

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you did [previously] see quite a few people from other countries. But the surprising thing in many ways is how quickly something that seems new and radical becomes the norm. When I was in college Yale and many other schools were known to have quotas for Jews. [Today] nobody seriously thinks about limiting Jewish people. I was even forewarned by someone here that if I were looking for a serious career at Yale I should probably look elsewhere, because I probably wouldn’t go that far up the ladder because I’m Jewish. And here we end up with a Jewish president [Richard C. Levin], a Jewish provost, a dean of the college. So certainly religion-wise, it has changed. And the same thing with women. It didn’t take long for the alums to realize that many of them only had daughters, or their daughters were the only [offspring] who could qualify [for admission to Yale], so with the alumni it was a very quick process of accepting [co-education]. How has the relationship between Yale and New Haven changed over the same period? On the one hand you had Yale as an avenue of upward mobility. You have people like [former Yale president] Bart Giamatti’s father, Valentine Giamatti, who was a poor Italian boy in the Wooster Square section who comes [to Yale] as a day student. There were many day students — Irish, Italian — there was more diversity than people realize. Again, because it wasn’t that hard if you were a day student. You still had to have the same grades [as a boarding student], but because you weren’t occupying a room in a dorm, it was just extra income coming in [to the university]. And I don’t think people were that concerned whether a class had 25 or 27 students in it. It was much harder on the larger group of applicants who applied from around the country, and people who were not expecting [the degree of] snobbery when they came — you couldn’t get into a good fraternity, you couldn’t get into a senior society until some of them began to accept Jewish people. But if you came from a poor section of New Haven you wouldn’t be aware of that — or if you were, it would have been the way things had been for you in New Haven, too. Not being part of the East Rock aristocracy and so forth.

You researched Yalies who were involved in the Titanic disaster for its 100th anniversary last April. What were some interesting things you learned? There were four [Yale] people who had stories, and they were all dramatically different. Each had such a poignant side. It was all the luck of the draw [depending on] what ship’s officer happened to be in charge of loading [which] lifeboats. Some allowed men on and some didn’t. I know a little bit about the tennis star Karl Behr, who was a Titanic survivor. Would you share a bit the story? A few years ago I was going to do a piece on the history of tennis at Yale. When I was looking up some of the tennis stars I found the story of

Karl Behr [Yale ‘06]. He was an independently wealthy young man from Brooklyn. He was employed in his father’s business but also had gone to law school and was a lawyer. He was also a very well-known amateur tennis player and is in the Tennis Hall of Fame in Newport [R.I.]. [In 1912] he was young, attractive, bright — he really had all the qualifications that anybody could want [in a suitor]. One story was that he was disapproved of [by the family of his] sweetheart [Helen Monypeny Newsom], who was taken away by her parents to Europe so she would forget about him. But he then went to Europe and got on [the Titanic, on which Newsom and her family were likewise embarked] in France. Because they were on a deck that

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How did you become city historian, and what are the responsibilities of the job? They’ve only had one other historian: Dick Hegel. There was a [state] statute passed some time in the 1980s that ‘There shall be appointed a historian’ for every town and city in Connecticut. But the duties are not specified. So [the responsibilities] depend on each town and whether they have an active historical society, a good local history librarian in place and a library. So far I’ve probably been more reactive than proactive [as city historian]. I am beginning to participate in a [city] committee that is planning to celebrate the 375th birthday [of New Haven]. new haven

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wasn’t the tippy-top deck — the very richest, shall we say — he was allowed onto a lifeboat with her family. And they all were saved. One story was that he proposed on the lifeboat. In any case they were married within a year. Others of the Yale-Titanic stories didn’t have such happy endings. Yes, One was Arthur Ryerson, an older man [Yale 1870] who went down with all the wealthy men who were on that top deck. This was the family of Ryerson Steel — a major wealthy family in this country. He was on the deck with the Houghtons, the Strausses and the Vanderbilts. The reason they were [returning] so quickly from England was that their son, who was a freshman at Yale, had just been killed in an automobile accident. They were coming back to arrange his funeral, and the first ship they could get was the Titanic. [Aboard] was the wife, one or two daughters and a little boy, 13. [When the boy was refused entry onto the lifeboat], the mother said, ‘Oh, no — I can’t leave my boy [on board the sinking Titanic]; he’s only 13.’ And the father says, ‘I’ve just lost a boy; you’re not taking another one.’ So he pushed the boy into the lifeboat even though the ship’s officer said, ‘He’s 13 — he’s old enough to stay with the men.’ But the father stays, and he goes down with the ship.

So within a week or two both the father and the son were lost. You were intimately involved with the archive of Charles and Anna Morrow Lindbergh, and worked closely with the aviator for a decade up until his death in 1974. What was Lindbergh’s connection to Yale? He was someone who would have been willing to give his papers to Yale if asked, because he had so many Yale people in his life whom he trusted and was very close to. He and Juan Trippe founded Pan Am Airlines in the 1920s. Juan Trippe was Yale [Class of] 1920. Also, the man who asked [Lindbergh] to come to Germany to report on aviation to the [U.S.] government was Truman Smith, who was the attaché for air in the Berlin [U.S.] embassy, and he was also Yale [Class of] 1920. The man who really was his close friend was Harry Guggenheim of the Class of 1910, who was a flyer in World War I and the man who financed [Lindbergh] after the [1927 first solo transatlantic flight from Long Island to Paris, which made Lindbergh an international hero], when his only choices would have been to go the Amelia Earhart route with the endorsing of luggage and making a public spectacle of yourself. Guggenheim said [to Lindbergh], ‘Your role now is never to advertise anything, but to represent what aviation can be.’ And he was the one who

financed these public-relations tours where Lindbergh flew around the country. They became very close friends. Has Lindbergh gotten a bum rap from history for his role in the anti-interventionist America First movement and his supposed admiration of German military power before the U.S. entered World War II? I get asked that question but I don’t think it’s anything you can discuss in five minutes. It’s a very complex issue that has different parts to it. I will say that his going to Germany was not connected to [his] America First [role]; he was asked to go to Germany [to assess the military aviation potential of Nazi Germany]. He did not go there as a pal of the Nazis. He did not speak German and he never met Hitler. He was given an aviation award, which the American ambassador told him to accept because it would have been an insult to decline it. What kind of person was Lindbergh? In some ways he reminded me of my father because he was the same age [birth date 1902] as my father. They both came from a great love of the country in the Midwest [Lindbergh grew up in Minnesota]. Both my father and Charles Lindbergh were the first to drive [an automobile] in their families when they were 11 years old. It

‘I think it will be a while before we appreciate just how phenomenally Yale has changed’ in the 20 years of the Levin presidency.’

’I went to Hillhouse High School,’ says Schiff, ‘which was at that time almost considered itself kind of like a prep school for Yale.’

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was like getting a computer — the only one who could learn to use it was the kid. But he was a very simple man. He came in here quietly and dressed very plainly. He drove an old station wagon. Very quiet. Next June Richard Levin will step down after 20 years as president of the university. How would you assess his legacy? I think it will be a while before we appreciate just how phenomenally Yale has changed [in 20 years]. The major thing is the upgrading in science and technology, mainly in the facilities that have been built. The medical school has been almost reinvented with this new [emphasis] on research. [Also] the emphasis on working with biotech industries to develop new medications. The renaissance of the engineering school, which has had its ups and downs. The School of Management which, when we see [the new Edward P. Evans campus on Whitney Avenue] open we’ll see a very dramatic change because that’s one of the few [graduate professional] schools at Yale that has not had a top-notch rating around the country. It’s still working its way up. That’s interesting, because one of the things I thought you were going to say had to do with university’s closer engagement with the larger New Haven community. I think the decision for New Haven to accept [Yale’s] help has been important, too. We saw in the past a lot of antagonism, mainly with the Board of Aldermen — most dramatically in the decision not to allow Yale to build two new residential colleges back in the 1970s. Anything where [the aldermen] thought Yale could be halted from its expansion, at least until Yale began to pay its own way with the development of the so-called PILOT [payments in lieu of taxes] program, which was a great help. Another Levin legacy is Yale’s increasing globalization. Do you think something has been lost with the era of ‘For God, For Country and For Yale’? It works both ways. We see it more as people from foreign counties coming to Yale. But a big part of it also is the feeling that no bachelor of arts education is complete unless you have had some contact with the world. Because nothing can exist nationally any more — business, education — everything seems to be a collaborative program that involves more than one country. Now every student has to go on a trip [internationally] in the summer, and they usually go on a service trip abroad. And these trips are paid for by Yale. This international contact is very important. It’s just as important [even] if the person is going to remain in America to have a global understanding of the cross-currents that [characterize] the world today. Everybody is accessible through the Internet and our smart phones.

You received your undergraduate degree from Barnard in the days before Columbia — and Yale — enrolled females. If you were applying to college today would you apply to Yale? I would feel privileged if I got into Yale, certainly. But at the time I was 17 years old and wanted to be exposed to a larger world [New York City] than the one I grew up in. And being an only child, I was just very anxious to be on my own. Of course people grew up much younger in those days. I knew women who had two or three babies by the time they graduated from Barnard. You didn’t rely on your parents that much. [Today] I hear students talking to their parents continually all day long on the phone. [When I was in

college] if you spoke to your parents once a week on the telephone, that was a lot. In 2038 New Haven will celebrate its 400th birthday. What do you think the city will look like then? Let’s hope that the economy is better for all ranks of society — but especially for the, shall we say, non-professional groups. There has to be a way of providing more work for people. This has been coming onto our economy for a long time, and many things have contributed to it — the multiculturalism, the growth of manufacturing in China, the fact that women work. At the same time you have more and more mechanization

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NEW HAVEN PAST

An Empire of the Mind By PRISCILLA SEARLES

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eligion and economics were the motivating factors in the founding of New Haven three and three-quarter centuries ago.

On April 24, 1638 a group of English merchants and 500 followers, led by John Davenport and Theophilus Eaton, arrived on the banks of the Quinnipiac River after sailing west across Long Island Sound. Who were these first settlers, and how did they end up in New Haven? Davenport, a Congregational (read: Puritan) clergyman, and Eaton, a prosperous London merchant, had been childhood playmates. Because Puritans were not popular with the officially sanctioned Church of England, Davenport left London in 1633, for a time making his home in the Netherlands.

The Puritans who settled New Haven 375 years ago envisioned a ‘new Jerusalem.’ What developed on the shores of Long Island Sound was something different

Accounts of the new land known as New England intrigued him and he returned to London where he gained Eaton’s support. The two organized a company of parishioners from several churches and sailed for Boston, but challenges to Puritan orthodoxy by the general community and a growing sense that there was a lack of commercial opportunity forced the two to look for a new location. While in Boston Davenport and Eaton had learned of the “rich and goodly” meadows of the Quinnipiac, an Algonkian word meaning “Long Water Land.” Excited about the prospects of a splendid harbor, in August 1637 Eaton and a handful of men set out to explore the territory. Eaton was reportedly delighted with what he found: a harbor, rich meadows and a promising 12 January/February 2013

In 1646 New Haveners loaded much of the fragile colony’s wealth onto a ‘Great Shippe’ to establish direct trade with England. The vessel was never seen or head from again. However, two years later an apparition of the ship was seen in the clouds above New Haven Harbor, as portraed in Jesse Talbot’s ‘Vision of the Phantom Ship’ (courtesy New Haven Museum).

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source of beaver pelts and other furs.

had gone to war against the English.

The goal of the group was to establish a Christian community and lay the foundation for a viable commercial enterprise. Eaton became governor of the new colony while Davenport was installed as minister of the New Haven church.

During the early years of New Haven the Quinnipiacs traded deer meat to the colonists, served as guides and messengers, traded canoes, killed wolves that preyed on the livestock and taught the settlers how to fish and clam.

New Haven’s first settlers were considered the wealthiest group of merchants to settle in New England. Unlike the Pilgrims who settled in Plymouth, Mass. with money borrowed from investors in England, New Haven’s first settlers invested their own funds in the new settlement.

But all did not go well for the Quinnipiacs. Forbidden to plant crops outside the reservation, the tribe attempted to buy back a tract of land at Oyster Point for agriculture. The town rejected the request. Fever hit the Quinnipiacs hard and in 1731 there was an attempt to move them to a new reservation in Waterbury. By the 1760s the last of the Quinnipiacs migrated to join the Tunxis Indians in Farmington. In 1773 the last of the Indian land on the East Shore was sold.

The first settlers had no authority to settle on this new land but because it fell within a grant made by Robert Rich, Earl of Warwick, to friends of Davenport and Eaton, the two were confident that they could acquire the deed to the territory. They soon negotiated treaties with the local Indians, the Quinnipiacs, who gave up the area for “twelve coats of English trucking cloath, twelve alcumy spoons, twelve hatchets, twelve hoes, two dozen of knives, etc.” The treaties, dated November and December 1638 and May 1645, gave the settlers what is now New Haven, East Haven, Branford, North Branford, North Haven, Wallingford, Cheshire and parts of Orange, Woodbridge, Bethany, Prospect and Meriden. The Quinnipiacs, weakened by disease before

Puritan minister John Davenport (pictured) and merchant Theophilus Eaton arrived on the banks of the Quinnipiac River on April 24, 1638.

the first settlers arrived and distressed by raiding bands of Pequot and Mohawks, had welcomed the English as military allies. The Quinnipiacs had ample reason to fear the Pequot — a powerful, warlike tribe that resided in southeastern Connecticut. But a year before the first settlers arrived in New Haven, the Pequot

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With Indian treaties in hand, the founders began to pursue their goal to establish a commercial empire controlling all of Long Island Sound and much of the coastline to the south. Believing that it was essential to establish subsidiary towns that would supply agricultural and forest products for trade with other ports, they acquired additional land in the vicinity. The New Haven Jurisdiction, also known as the New Haven Colony, was formed on October 27, 1643 to deal with the expanding territory, which now consisted of six towns — New Haven, Branford, Milford, Guilford, Stamford and

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invested lived outside its boundaries.

In 1640 Quinnipiac was renamed Newhaven and a complete government was established. The new settlement was exporting furs, shingles and clapboards, lumber and wheat. That same year New Haven constructed its first meetinghouse in the marketplace, a 50-foot square building with a tower and a turret. By the following year the growing community had a population of 350 households, 250 children and 200 servants.

The central square, now the New Haven Green, was designated a public common. At various times the Green has served as a marketplace, a drill ground for exercises by the militia (known as the Train Band), the site of stocks to punish those who broke the strict Puritan roles, public wells, a burial ground and the site of various public buildings.

New Haven’s town plan was based on a grid of 11 squares, nine of these divided from a halfmile square rectangle and two, called suburbs, extended from the rectangle to the waterfront.

New Haven Green

\breaker hed\The Ninth Square New Haven was designed around a grid of nine squares, enclosed between what are now Grove, George, State and York Streets. Once the location of homes owned by investors in the New Haven settlement, the Ninth Square borders on State, George, Church and Chapel Streets. In tribute to people who have lived and worked in the Ninth Square throughout its 375-year history, the sidewalks are lined with plaques, designed by Sheila de Bretteville, bearing names and brief histories of those who helped New Haven grow. Those who had invested the original £36,000 stake in the association, known as proprietors, lived within the 11 squares. Those who hadn’t

Jr. and Yale law professor Drew Days III, who chairs the group. In spite of its early prospects of creating a prosperous commercial empire, New Haven’s growth soon began to slow and trade shifted to Boston. In hopes of opening direct trade with England, on January 15, 1646 residents of New Haven filled a “Great Shippe” with local valuables to be sold or traded when the vessel reached England. Its hold was filled with lumber and hides, grain and priceless beaver skins. Others put in silver plates and spoons to be shipped, for they needed other things more and their silverware was all they had left with which to buy them. The ship sets sail from New Haven Harbor carrying one-fifth of the colony’ wealth as well as 70 of its most prominent citizens.

The 17-acre New Haven Green is protected by a plan that was developed over 375 years ago. The land that comprised the New Haven plantation was purchased and owned by the individuals who put up the money to establish the new community. These people were known as “the free planters” and later as “the proprietors.” In 1805 the proprietors transferred all their interests, rights and powers to a permanent selfperpetuating committee, which continues to this day. Confirmed by the General Assembly in 1810, this gave legal title to the Green to what today are still known as the Proprietors of the Common and Undivided Land. The proprietors are Albertus Magnus College President Julia McNamara, Ann Calabresi, U.S. District Court Judge Janet Bond-Arterton, Robert B. Dannies

Two full years passed with no word of the fate of the ship. But in June 1648, a vision of the “Great Shippe” appeared in the clouds over New Haven Harbor, convincing residents that the ship was gone forever. The loss of the ship and its cargo was a severe economic blow to the colony. Direct trade with England had proved beyond the capabilities of New Haven’s early settlers. The colony became satellite of New Amsterdam (later New York) and Boston, dependent mainly upon agriculture for regular sustenance. Citizens of the colony began to speak out against the leadership and exclusive control of Eaton

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and Davenport as the New Haven Colony continued to struggle until January 7,1665, when it surrendered its status an autonomous colony, joining the Connecticut Colony. The New Haven Colony had lasted a short 27 years.

West Rock. They were later joined by a third “regicide,” John Dixwell.

For Davenport it marked the end of his dream for an “Independent Kingdom of Christ.” He had unsuccessfully opposed the absorption of New Haven into Connecticut, as prescribed by the Charter of 1662. With the battle lost, Davenport felt that his life’s work had failed and in 1667 he accepted the pastorate of the First Church in Boston. Unpopular in Boston, Davenport returned to England in 1670, leaving his dreams behind in the New World.

Because the British attempted to suppress colonial manufacturing to keep the colonists dependent on finished goods from the mother country, early New Haven had few manufacturing industries. But some creative residents were able to develop home-based operations.

The political situation in England had a major impact on the colonists. In 1649, King Charles I of England was accused of treason and tyranny and beheaded by supporters of Oliver Cromwell. At the time of the Restoration 11 years later his son, Charles II, became king and sought vengeance against the judges who had signed his father’s death warrant. Two of them, Colonel Edward Whalley and his son-in-law Colonel William Goffe, fled to America. In 1661, barely a step ahead of their pursuers, Whalley and Goffe were hidden by John Davenport in a cave atop New Haven’s

Early Commerce

One of the first commercial enterprises in New Haven was a water-powered gristmill that supplied the colonists with flour. Later, in 1655 John Winthrop Jr. established an iron forge and foundry. It refined iron from bog-iron mined in North Haven and remained in operation until 1679. A 1730 water-powered sawmill operated in Hamden. It was converted to a distillery in 1786. One of New Haven’s earliest entrepreneurs was Isaac Doolittle, who opened a brass shop on Chapel Street in the 1740s. One of the first shops of its kind in Connecticut, it was in this shop that Doolittle built the first printing press in America. By 1701, New Haven had grown to be the village center of a mainly agricultural township and

became co-capital of Connecticut, along with Hartford. A battle ensued for decades for the right to become Connecticut’s sole capital but in the end New Haven lost. Hartford had the political backing and the money for a new Capitol building. In 1873 New Haven lost its status as co-capital, forced to cede that distinction to its northern neighbor. Education was a primary concern of the first settlers, and the New Haven community was quick to establish school. In 1642 the proprietors established a free school (“free,” that is, to all who could pay tuition). By 1656 New Haven required all parents and masters to provide schooling for children and apprentices. A new school came shortly thereafter thanks to a bequest from Edward Hopkins, seven-time governor of Connecticut Colony, who gave a portion of his estate to the American colonies to found schools dedicated to “the breeding up of hopeful youths...for the publique service of the country in future tymes.” In 1660 a portion of that bequest was used to found the Hopkins Grammar School, today the fifth-oldest educational institution in the country. The school began in a one-room schoolhouse on the New Haven Green. The school settled in its present 104-acre location on a hill overlooking the

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city in 1926. Higher education was not overlooked, either. New Haven had been sending its most promising young men of means off to Harvard, founded two years before the first settlers arrived in Quinnipiac. But the desire to have a college in New Haven was critical to the Colony’s mission. In 1701 Yale was founded by ten Congregational ministers as the Collegiate School in the home of Abraham Pierson, its first rector, in the eastern Connecticut community of Killingworth. The Puritan school was to serve as a place where young men could be taught arts and sciences. The initial graduating class consisted of a single student. The original curriculum, designed to prepare young men for a life of public service, consisted of logic, rhetoric, grammar (Greek, Latin and Hebrew), arithmetic, astronomy and geometry. In 1716 the Collegiate School relocated to New Haven and, with a generous gift by Elihu Yale, the first college building was completed. In 1718, in honor of Elihu Yale, the name of the school was changed to Yale College. To this day people know little of Elihu Yale or the extent of his donation to the school. It was in fact nine bales of goods, 417 books and a portrait and arms of King George I that helped

Gazette, was published in 1755 in New Haven. James Parker of New York owned and published it. His business partner was Benjamin Franklin.

launch a world-renowned university. As for the man himself, Elihu Yale rarely lived in America, never attended college and was not a trustee of the original Collegiate School. But it seems safe to observe that his name is forever secure in the pantheon of American higher education

Publication of the Gazette was suspended in 1764, as the French-Indian War was winding down. A year later Benjamin Mecom, nephew of Benjamin Franklin, resumed publication. But Mecom was not an adroit businessman and the paper lasted only until February 1768.

Transportation Networks Transportation by land remained a major challenge for all New England residents. Most of Connecticut’s roads were primitive and followed Indian trails. Shoreline communities such as New Haven relied on transportation via water for economic security. On January 22, 1673 a rider left New York on horseback carrying mail and traveling through New Haven, Hartford and Springfield en route to Boston. The trip took approximately 14 days. The route traveled was known as the King’s Highway or the Great Road — the first post road on the American continent. There were three Boston Post Roads leading from Boston to New Haven, merging in the Elm City to become a single thoroughfare continuing south to New York City. The state’s first newspaper, the Connecticut

Meanwhile, Thomas Green and Samuel Green founded the Connecticut Journal (later the New Haven Journal Courier) in New Haven in 1767. Publication of this newspaper continued into the 20th century. In 1987 the Journal-Courier was finally absorbed by the New Haven Register, which had been established in 1812. \breaker hed\Benjamin Franklin and New Haven The Journal Register Co., which owns the New Haven Register, wasn’t the first multi-newspaper “chain” to do business in New Haven. In 1755 Benjamin Franklin came to New Haven to begin a newspaper, the first in Connecticut, called the Connecticut Gazette. Managed by a series of editors including Franklin’s nephew, Benjamin Mecom, the weekly newspaper lasted 13 years. Franklin’s most famous publications were a newspaper called the Philadelphia-based Pennsylvania Gazette and his annual Poor Richard’s

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Almanack. New Haven paid tribute to Franklin in 1790, the year of his death, when the “Franklin Elm” was planted on the New Haven Green. Located near the corner of Church and Chapel Street, it was removed in the early 1900s. In 1775 David Bushnell invented the submarine during his senior year at Yale. Called the Turtle, the one-man wooden barrel-like craft was the first submersible used for military purposes. Employed during the American Revolution against British warships, the vessel was powered by hand-cranked propeller. It was able to approach ships partially submerged and attach an explosive charge to the target vessel’s hull with an external screw-like device. The craft itself worked but the attempt to attach the explosives to the hull of the HMS Eagle in New York Harbor was unsuccessful and the charge exploded spectacularly but harmlessly. Like the rest of the colonies, New Haven felt keen pressures of the war with England. In 1765 England had imposed the Stamp Act as a form of colony taxation, wildly unpopular with the colonists. On July 4, 1776, New Havener Roger Sherman became one of four men from Connecticut to sign the Declaration of Independence. Sherman is the only American to sign four important historical documents: the Continental Association of 1774; the Declaration

of Independence; the Articles of Confederation; and the federal Constitution. As a crafter of the Connecticut Compromise, Sherman envisioned two legislative bodies. Representatives in the lower house would be based on population and each state would have equal representation in the upper house. Today we know these two deliberative bodies as the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate, respectively. Sherman, a lawyer, became New Haven’s first mayor after its incorporation as a city in 1784 and in 1791 was elected a U. S. Senator. As did other communities in the breakaway Connecticut colony, New Haven sent its men off to war. One month after becoming a member of the Governor’s Second Company of Foot Guards, on April 22, 1775 Captain Benedict Arnold paraded his troops on the New Haven Green, demanded the keys to the powder house and when the keys were handed over, marched off to war at the head of his soldiers. A successful businessman and owner of several ships, Arnold had rented a store on Chapel Street in 1762. The sign that hung above his store read, “B. Arnold Druggist Bookseller &co. From London Sibi Totique.” The Latin motto translated, “For Himself and for Everyone.” Later Arnold would become New Haven’s — and the nation’s — most infamous traitor.

New Haven came perilously close to being burned to the ground during the American Revolution. On July 5, 1779, 1,500 British soldiers landed at Savin Rock and another 1,500 on New Haven’s East Shore. Nineteen men on duty at Fort Nathan Hale, located at the mouth of New Haven Harbor, attempted to defend the city against a naval bombardment. Unable to stop the British troops, the two groups of “Red Coats” converge on the New Haven Green, withdrawing two days later to sail south to Fairfield. Some say that the British decided not to burn New Haven because it was so beautiful but a more likely explanation is that many of them were extremely drunk, having consumed great quantities of rum purloined from warehouses on the wharf. New Haven’s early economy was based on a steady flow of immigrants, a plan that was bound to fail. It would be more than a century before New Haven began to produce creative, innovative thinkers that would begin to grow the community’s economy and set it on a path to long-term viability. By the dawn of the American Revolution New Haven had grown to a community of 3,500. This article was originally published September 15, 2003 in Business New Haven. It has been edited and updated for publication here.

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NEW HAVEN PRESENT

Happy Together To fill the void creating by the erosion of the city’s manufacturing and corporate base, Yale and New Haven have set aside three centuries of antagonism and mistrust to forge a productive partnership. But can the new era of town-gown cooperation endure?

By MATTHEW NEMERSON

killed by her family’s firearms coming back to haunt them.

T

She was persuaded to move to San Jose, Calif. with her $8 million-a-year inheritance and 50-percent ownership of the Winchester Repeating Arms Co. There she poured all of her money into building the country’s largest and weirdest house as a means to confuse and misdirect these spirits.

here are occasions when it is impossible not to want to start an essay with the cliché, “It was the best of times; it was the worst of times.” I will also no doubt touch on wisdom and foolishness, so — with all apologies to Mr. Dickens, a man who is said to have noted the great universal beauty of New Haven’s Hillhouse Avenue — let us start by conceding that this is a fascinating time to think about the health and prospects of our fair city. Our conversation should touch on the economy, the politics, the leadership and the strategic options that combine to present our leaders with such vexing and difficult choices.

By way of introduction, I have done my best to contribute to the evolution of the community: helping to start Science Park in the 1980s, running the Greater New Haven Chamber of Commerce and Regional Leadership Council in the 1990s (where we did crazy things like buy the Chapel Square Mall and produce our own TV commercials for downtown) before leaving to help start a software company. Now I run a statewide group in Hartford trying to promote the regional innovation economy — I’ve come full circle, in a sense. I also collect maps and history books about the Elm City and can bore anyone silly haranguing them on the finer points of John Davenport’s temper, the placement of highways in the 1950s or town-gown relations during the Civil War. Just days before finishing this piece we were all jolted by the murders in Sandy Hook Elementary School. The state and indeed the world is reeling from this horrific and heartbreaking slaughter of innocents in Newtown. This is not the place to comment on something beyond understanding. Yet it is interesting to draw a line back to a related incident that changed New Haven 130 years ago.

Big-city amenities like boutique shopping and cosmopolitan cuisine (the Elm City is said to host the largest number of Thai restaurants in the U.S.) have helped to give New Haven an advantage in recruiting talent unimaginable even a generation ago.

18 January/February 2013

In 1881 the only living relative of legendary New Haven rifle manufacturer Oliver Winchester was his daughter-in-law, Sarah. Oliver died in 1880, his wife in 1864 and his only child, William, in 1881. Sarah was shaken by the deaths of the Winchesters and convinced it was the souls of people

Winchesters would survive here to hire tens of thousands of workers and attract countless Italo-American and AfricanAmerica relocations to our city. Still, an historical fact that one lady’s guilt over the use of guns may have caused New Haven to miss out on what could have become an amazing asset and one of the great private philanthropic legacies of America’s late 19th-century industrial prowess — a gigantic, locally controlled foundation.

The Best of Times New Haven today is buffeted by the currents of many global and regional trends. Call it our legacy of economic diversity and complexity, but New Haven city and region might be the beneficiary (and victim) of more front-page, big-picture trend stories in the New York Times and Wall Street Journal than your average two-thirds-ofa-million-person metro area. The typical educated, hard-working family in the city and inner-ring suburbs has been making the transition from manufacturing to health care and educational services for several decades, and many are doing well by it. Our hospitals, colleges and the big guy, Yale, continue to grow — slowly, but there is measurable progress. Despite losing so much manufacturing and wholesale trade business, there again exist career arcs here that can be as good as it gets in the post-industrial age. Many a family in Hamden and West Haven has transitioned from one wellpaid assembler at Echlin, Sargent or Winchester 30 years ago to two service workers at a local major non-profit today. At the higher income end are a disproportionate number of professionals (lawyers, architects, dentists, financial consultants, shrinks) who can make a good living here thanks NEWHAVENMAGAZINE.COM


to the good wages that those who use these professional services earn, a number of Yale professional grads who just stick around and “make it work” and the relative proximity to the financial centers of Stamford, White Plains and New York (where a surprising number of locals indeed work). These folks have a real spending impact on the region. The greatest impact on the region’s income may have been the impacts of globalization and the winnertake-all economy of meritocracy at Yale and Yale-New Haven Hospital. A generation ago, professors and clinicians would accept a lower salary to escape the rat races of New York and Boston and enjoy the prestige of Yale and the calm and affordability of a neighborhood like East Rock or a town like Woodbridge. Over the last 15 years this has changed, as major universities and hospitals — Yale included — now pay top dollar with relocation and home-purchase benefits to intellectual superstars who hop the world like baseball free agents building labs and departments.

themselves that New Haven wasn’t as dirty or dangerous as their child told them. Now, compare them to today’s Amex Gold Card-brandishing “selected as one out of 15 applicants” students, eating out ten times a week at Romeo’s café, Bentara or Bar, enjoying paninis, cappuccinos and buying friends gifts at Wave or Indo-Chic on Dad’s credit line. It has been a deftly planned and remarkable journey from the three sit-down restaurants and no coffeehouses of 1980 to 85 worthmentioning restaurants and an Apple Store next to a New Yorkstyle Korean market today. The transformation has pumped money into the economy and created a variety of decent service jobs (albeit many beneficiaries are college kids or Guatemalan baristas and pizzatossers). The farsighted real estate acquisition, image marketing and political coalition-building

These folks are married to each other and make a globetrotting duo who require a top brand-name university complex with a base of fellow thinkers, facilities and conferences in a range of topics legal, medical, engineering, energy — with access to an airport and a NPR affiliate studio — to be happy.

It should not be forgotten that there were decades of notable experiments and luring of developers and outside dollars by Mayors Lee, Logue, DiLieto and Daniels. There was also the inspired efforts of New Haven’s most consistently visionary businessman/booster/builder, Joel Schiavone. Indeed, when Schiavone’s real-estate fortunes sank in the early 1990s, Yale’s purchase of his Chapel and College Street properties and appropriation of his brand became the foundation of the “new” New Haven. Speaking of real estate, for higherpaid information-age workers and professionals, housing in greater New Haven is actually considered reasonably priced compared to Fairfield County, especially given

the quality of schools and mixes of city ambiance and older suburbs. Unfortunately, new housing construction has slowed and with it the many great entry level-tohigher end contracting jobs that had replaced manufacturing in the 1980s and again this past decade. The high cost of land and the complexity of building codes in most towns has kept prices stable despite reduced demand. The wild card for the region is traffic, which can be a monster in the morning heading south on I-95. Still, recent and pending improvements to Metro-North and the lack of delays north and east means that we are seen by many as a somewhat undiscovered, highly livable area. This has sparked one of the other significant trends: the adoption of the city and its surroundings by a new group of successful entrepreneurs who see the region as a place where they can make an impact. Instead of joining suburban school boards, they are helping run the airport commission and complete development projects such as Science Park. The founders of Higher One come to mind. With the college financial services company’s millions they have not only stayed in town and hired hundreds but they worked with the state to finance an iconic headquarters inside an old Winchester arms factory building. More impressive still, a cadre of their friends are beautifying and organizing neighborhoods like upper State Street, mentoring one another and reaching out to an even younger generation of locals and Yalies to create more successful firms.

When you add this small but impactful slice — consider their appetite for high-end international cuisine, great schools (private, since price is no issue, or public because they are communitarian at heart), high-quality nannies, regional theater and nice cars — to the other phenomenon of university towns — the tremendous buying power of the baby-boomer parents of college and graduate students — you have quite an economic engine. Parents, you ask? Think back to the minimal impact of baby-boomer students in the 1970s to early 1990s who lived in drafty attics off Orange Street or in decaying and moldy 65-year-old “colleges,” ate pasta they cooked on hot plates and went out to dinner once a semester when their skinflint G.I. Bill-era parents came to see them only to reassure

policies of Yale Vice President Bruce Alexander from the late 1990s transformed the city and established Yale as one of the most “roll up your sleeves and help fix things” urban universities in the country.

This nascent community of entrepreneurs is exactly what we have all hoped for going back 30 years and resembles a similar dynamic in Boston and Silicon Valley going back to the 1960s. The 20-year leadership duopoly of Mayor John DeStefano Jr. and Yale President Richard C. Levin (pictured) has produced a remarkable turnaround of the historically brittle town-gown relationship.

This growth augments continued success around the Yale medical complex. A platform over the Route 34 connector will be house a fastgrowing pharmaceutical company that quit Science Park years ago for the suburbs and now is returning in triumph to occupy its own new signature HQ. Alexion’s return is being underwritten about 40 percent with state money, so perhaps the new haven

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In the 1980s visionary developer Schiavone created the city’s most successful retail district, College/Chapel. When his commercial real-estate empire crashed, an opportunistic Yale swooped in to acquire the properties.

anchored by a global brand-name institution recognized on the streets of Shanghai, 72 miles from the center of the Western Hemisphere — is not bad.

The Worst of Times While the improvements and changes described above have put the city and region firmly on the map, ominous clouds are on the horizon. Major investments are needed in infrastructure and services to support the higher costs that go with our older, more evolved region’s competitiveness versus Texas or North Carolina. In the face of this need, the state and its larger towns and cities seem increasingly wanting for resources while overly burdened with costs of government that seem out of kilter with the quality and quantity of services provided. Taxpayers want agile and responsive government and they want their taxes to pay for new and current services. Footing the bill for out-of-date work rules or benefits of former workers — no matter how negotiated for in the past — will not be sustainable for long. In an age where consumers know every price at every store, governments will soon be subject to price and performance comps, too.

market has not equated us with Boston quite yet. But if anything is worthy of catalytic government incentives, this project is it. Working behind the scenes are new players in new environments such as shared office space the Grove, occupying what in another time would have been the boarded-up former Orange Street offices of the United Way, as well as the Yale Entrepreneurial Society (YES) for undergrads who want to start companies. These new players are actually doing the hardest thing of all — changing the culture of the community to one of risk-taking and wealth-creation. One can envision a few years from now the center of the region powered by two export engines: 1) specialized therapeutic and medicaldevice companies feeding off ideas from the medical school and hospitals; and 2) startup software and Internet service firms selling new cloud and digital services to large institutions across the world. In sum I think greater New Haven is doing as well as any former manufacturing town can do in a post-industrial age. Young people are moving here, top-educated folks show up from around world (for Yale or metro New York, but happy enough to be here) and hardworking local people can find good and stable jobs while accessing a myriad of good, part-time educational programs for a pathway into the new core industries of “eds and meds.” In 2013, to be regarded as a self-contained miniurban hub with ample regional amenities, 20 January/February 2013

Manufacturing has declined precipitously, and although it is just now stabilizing, workers need considerable skills to operate the latest manufacturing technologies and make even a decent wage. Service jobs in suburban big boxes and chain restaurants pay poorly while providing few benefits and health insurance for hourly workers. So, if you have not connected with a major institution or stayed in school long enough to program a drill press or color hair, you will most likely be kept or shunted into one of a few hardscrabble neighborhoods in New, East or West Haven and reminded daily that you are missing out on what the other folks are doing downtown and elsewhere. With this comes turmoil, inwardly focused violence and hopelessness induced by race- and income-segregated schools, overstretched social services and the political pressure everywhere to shield the “have” communities from poor neighborhoods. Ironically, in the 1950s when segregation was the norm, inner-city New Haven was much more similar in income and education to Orange or Branford than it is today. Sadly, most suburban towns and citizens of the region see themselves not as the beneficiaries of this concentration of social “bads” but as virtuous creators of their own social “goods.” To preserve and grow a sense of regional destiny and unity, something or someone needs to invite the entire region to engage with the “Havens” to create a viable regional set of aspirations and

plans for the future — especially as state and federal resources continue to decline and we are truly “on our own.” Around the country, regions and their core cities are doing more together — both from a practical perspective but also from a sense of shared destiny. Business and institutional leaders need to address this intangible community need even as they find themselves drawn into managing the impact of inner-city issues. Next, as grand-list growth withers due to the pressures on commercial development from the Internet and distance working, and as local and state tax dollars dry up, older taxpayers will grow even more militant against local and state tax hikes to pay for services they don’t want.

Leadership Changes In New Haven we are embarking on an experiment in progressive government as a new generation of smart but decidedly leftist and communitarian white- and pink-collar uniontrained political leaders have replaced many of the old ethnic and race-based ward leaders. This crew must try to solve major problems that have been fermenting for decades because of the desire of municipal and state government to keep workers happy. New Haven’s leadership must now contend with having fewer resources while accomplishing new things. Perhaps this new cadre of energetic and motivated community leaders will be able to undertake an honest self-examination of government and union practices. Like Nixon in China, they may be the only ones who can open the door to deal with the greatest crisis facing the region. New Haven and other towns will be facing insolvency due to endlessly optimistic economic projections (or simple bad math) and the imbalance of generations of selfdealing by political leadership that have led to overly generous (and ultimately unaffordable) pensions, health-care benefits and onerous and counterproductive work rules that hamstring municipal governments’ ability to innovate and compete.

A Special Relationship An unusual epoch is about to end in New Haven. For two decades, two uniquely skilled managers — one in City Hall, the other in Woodbridge Hall — have evolved the closest thing to a leadership cartel that most communities will ever see. As someone who once was paid to try to elbow his way into the leadership circles of the region and also as a citizen, I can say that for the most part this has been a very successful and efficient partnership.

NEWHAVENMAGAZINE.COM


Take the movie Groundhog Day, in which Bill Murray transforms from an unskilled loser to a talented charmer through repetitions of the same day until he masters many skills while simultaneously discovering what he wants from life. I see Rick Levin and John DeStefano working separately and together every day — experimenting, trying, failing, succeeding, over and over within their complex organizations and partnerships — for 20 years as they slowly mastered each challenge and tactic. Each has made a nearly impossible job seem easy at times, confounding onlookers with regard to the weakness of the cards they were often dealt. Neither has had much room for error, which make the frequent triumphs more remarkable.

the city and Yale have had each other’s back. Yale set out to make New Haven a more attractive environment for itself, and the city went out of its way to create a political landscape that allowed Yale to grow and thrive with only few exceptions. In a sense New Haven is like a lifeboat on the ocean with just a few passengers. You hope a ship will come and rescue you or a fish will jump in or rain will fall. But for now, all the occupants of boat need to help one another to survive.

died on the vine. You need a number of strong institutional players within a community especially as the bigger manufacturers have disappeared. Diversity of ideas and a transparent planning and visioning process builds commitment and engagement — even if the results of the long-term leadership duopoly have been impressive. Like a baseball team or political party, not everyone is a superstar. Farm systems and clubhouse camaraderie are key assets when leadership transitions are upon you.

Finally, there is an organizational cost to having two powerful civic and institutional leaders as a tight team for 20 years: There has been precious little oxygen left for other leaders or institutions to grow and contribute, and many withered SCSU_NHMagazine_5.25x7.25_Layout 1 or 12/20/12 3:51 PM Page 1

Continued on 39

Some have grown weary of the mayor’s style, which can be overly self-assured at times. My experience is that he does a great deal of homework and weighing of options before locking in, so perhaps showing his calculations before writing down the answer (as in high school calculus) would help. But I am impressed by the quality of the team he puts on the court every day: the longevity of skilled people in planning, engineering, development, parks and education — talent not getting paid much and dealing with staff cutbacks below them every year. It hasn’t been perfect. Why not a few more highrises like 360 State Street, or resisting the lure of Ikea to build something special on the best parcel on the East Coast. I wish we had built more real regional operational partnerships (I blame the suburbs here) or spent more on school reforms much earlier and bit less on all those fabulous new school buildings. Most of all I wish the mayor could share his challenges and hopes over a few beers with the many community leaders and active citizens a place like greater New Haven nurtures. I think he is often underappreciated. On the Yale side, it is not overstating to suggest that President Levin has been the best CEO of any American institution over the last generation — performing with little drama and a crystalclear sense of unified direction in an institution populated by thousands of people who are the smartest, most competitive and snarkiest kids and adults in every room they enter. With surreal calm Levin extracted billions of dollars of fundraising, built and rebuilt a small city’s worth of facilities, selected tens of deans who were not only loyal and team-builders but transformed and strengthened their schools. All the while finding and training four provosts and one college dean who each become the presidents of top-ten global institutions: Duke, MIT, Oxford, Cambridge and now Yale itself. Jack Welch at GE doesn’t come close!

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To an amazing extent, given a 300-year history of mistrust and antagonism, over the past 20 years new haven

21


NEW HAVEN FUTURE

Manifest Destiny Elm City’s ability to claim the commanding heights of opportunity lie atop the Everest on the Hudson

I

t’s April 2038 — New Haven’s 400th birthday — and all is well with the Elm City. To be sure, there have been losses. City Point is being steadily reclaimed by the sea. Yale’s Kline Biology Tower was blown up by architecturally sensitive terrorists back in 2017. The long-planned DeStefano Memorial Tunnel is even now in search of its environmental impact permit. On the brighter side, Hillhouse High School has set records in Ivy League placements over the last decade, and Yale football is in the midst of a six-year win streak against the hated Crimson of Harvard. After last November’s 55-3 thumping, Mory’s sold more of its deadly drinking Cups than on any occasion since the 54-0 win in 1957.

From its opening in 2010 and over the following quarter-century, the 360 State Street luxury apartments were a trendsetter in the reversal of suburban flight.

By DougLas W. rae 22 January/February 2013

Extending a trend begun as early as the 1980s, New Haven’s economy centers on higher education, medical care and advanced research in fields as diverse as biotechnology, business strategy and environmental engineering. Led by the 38,000 workers employed by Yale and its associated hospitals, the local economy is humming. The now-aging residential tower at 360 State Street turns out to have been a trend-setter. Property values downtown are at an all-time high, most of all in the Ninth Square area — close to all three of our commuter rail stations, within walking distance of the art museums on upper Chapel, and within sight of the stunning New Haven Symphony Hall on the Green. Of the 3,200 market-rate housing units downtown, vacancy rates hover near two percent — lower than nearly every other central-city zone nationally. Interestingly enough, it is very common for couples living there to work 70 miles apart — one in New York City, the NEWHAVENMAGAZINE.COM


other at Yale or one of the hospitals or one of the start-up firms popping up across the city. The availability of 55-minute express trains running non-stop between Bridgeport and 125th Street makes an apartment within walking distance of New Haven’s Union Station quite the deal. Another set of downtowners live in New York City during the week, and keep a New Haven pad for what they like to call “country museum weekends.” Where else among New York’s outer suburbs can you browse Albers, Corot, van Gogh, Stubbs and Constable so easily (and for free) as on Chapel Street? Bridgeport, already the state’s biggest city in 2010, has grown nearly as fast as New Haven in recent decades. Both now top 160,000 residents. And in both cases, true to the TOD (transit-oriented development) model, once-declining areas near the train stations have become all the rage. New Haven’s edge in higher education and technology is offset by Bridgeport’s being 16 miles closer to Manhattan. All of this and more really is possible, depending on how intelligently we handle a few critical issues in the near future. I’ll look at these under headings corresponding to the four cities which matter most to the shape of things to come: New Haven itself, Hartford, Boston and — most of all — New York.

New Haven Being a WASP male in 2038 isn’t what it used to be. Not only have the standard racial and religious bigotries faded in measurable degree, we have by now allowed three generations of women to compete on an increasingly level playing field. And they’re doing really well, thank you very much.

Here is a slightly disguised example from the 2012-13 hiring season at Yale. Juliet is a brilliant research scientist, married to Jonathan, also a distinguished scholar working in the humanities. Both now have jobs at a Chicago-area university and both hanker for a return to the East Coast. Yale desperately needs Julia, but has no current job for her husband. Harvard wants Jonathan, and Julia can command an endowed chair at MIT or Tufts or Boston University. As a result, Julia wins, Jonathan wins, Harvard, MIT and Cambridge-Boston win. Yale and New Haven lose.

— is utter folly. Oodles of money are being poured into making that city’s downtown core easier to get to for those of us so unfortunate as not to live within it. Something called “CT Fastrak” provides perhaps the most dramatic evidence of the craziness. Using roughly $600 million of taxpayer money, we are creating a 9.4mile busway between New Britain and Hartford, and we are warned to expect it to lose up to $22 million yearly once it becomes operational. At nearly $64 million per mile (and thus nearly $13,000 per running foot on land the state already owns) this is a stupendous boondoggle.

If New York’s Columbia or NYU were in play the story would end similarly. One couple makes little difference; but a generation-long succession of similar stories makes a very big difference — to Yale, to the hospitals, to the private sector, and ultimately to the city’s ability to compete in national and world markets. Just incidentally, Connecticut also gets hurt since Hartford’s ability to recruit these top-tier couples is no better than New Haven’s.

We are told that the construction work will create 9,000 person-years of employment. Yes, but so would digging a very deep hole with 4,500 personyears, then filling it with another 4,500 personyears of effort. Better yet, the hole would generate no operating losses once filled. To top that off, the largest contract so far awarded for CT Fastrak went to a Massachusetts contractor.

Hartford One might guess from watching where public money is being spent that people involved in Connecticut government believe that Hartford is at once: 1) the state’s capital and 2) the strategic hinge of its economic future. The first is true, and has been since the co-capitol on New Haven’s upper Green was razed in 1871. And one must in fairness say that the present-day Capitol building and its surroundings in Bushnell Park form a most handsome place to visit, either for business or pleasure. But the second proposition — strategic Hartford

Another Hartford-centric project is known at the Knowledge Corridor — the term indicating a great concentration of “knowledge industries” such as insurance (huh?), along with many colleges. The first three of its five phases add up to $647 million, devoted mostly to making large improvements in the Amtrak rail-bed, more and better stations, and quicker service between Hartford and her sisters — Springfield and New Haven. The official report notes an encouraging 1,124,458 “boardings and alightings” along the 65mile rail line. This alas turns a little hollow when we learn that far more than half of those occur at New Haven, and neither begin nor end anywhere north of New Haven in the Knowledge Corridor. As I suggest below, Bridgeport could play a far stronger role in another railroading venture

Even way back in 2010, for instance, U.S. bachelor’s degrees were earned by 954,891 women, while just 713,336 were won by men. Of 163 MDs awarded in Connecticut that year, 91 of the new physicians (56 percent) were female. In no New England state did more men than women earn medical degrees. Of 1,224 Ph.Ds from Yale in the five years preceding 2010, 543 belonged to females. All this gender parity is good news for men, for women, for the country and for New Haven, in every respect — save one. Guess who most of these high-achieving women elect to marry? High-achieving men. This increasingly prevalent pattern is known to economists and demographers as “assortative marriage” — like to like. It even applies to body types: skinny to skinny, tall to tall, fit to fit. And this is where the future of New Haven gets dicey: If we are to compete for the very best talent, we will typically need to offer quality employment opportunity to two people, not just one.

New Haven’s ability to embed itself within metro New York City is central to its future, and mass transit is a key to that connection.

New Haven in 2012 is handicapped by being a small city in a fairly small region, making it hard to come up with that second top-level job. new haven

23


than Hartford is likely to play in the Knowledge Corridor. Half of Connecticut’s 3.58 million citizens live in two of the state’s eight counties (Fairfield, New Haven). They share the 75-mile corridor between the New Haven Green and Central Park. That corridor is by far the most promising development target available to Connecticut. It can even be argued that Hartford itself would have more to gain from a full development of that corridor than it has to gain either from CT Fastrak or the Knowledge Corridor.

Boston Boston is a great standard-setter for any New England city, including New Haven. In some critical respects, Boston 2012 is a working model for what New Haven can aim for in 2038. I have in mind a great hospital network, a world-leading assemblage of research universities, the very workable mass-transit system, and a local culture worthy of great admiration. Boston’s cow-path traffic system simply has to be forgiven. The several urban-studies programs at Harvard and MIT are consistently among the nation’s best. Historical memory, furthermore, connects the two dots: New Haven’s founding theocrats — Davenport and Eaton — began at Boston, migrating to New Haven in search of greater purity.

24 January/February 2013

What Boston is not is the apex of the so-called “New Atlantic Triangle” as pitched in 1999 by Michael Gallis on behalf of the Connecticut Regional Institute for the 21st Century. According to Gallis: Connecticut is set in the center of a unique triangular cluster of five metro regions, which can be referred to as the “New Atlantic Triangle.” The New York, Boston and Albany metro regions form the triangle. The triangle is bisected by the Hartford/Springfield metro economic region and bounded on the southern coast by another smaller metro economic region (1999). Albany? What nonsense! Albany is of course important for its status as capital of the state containing New York City. It is also where rail freight seeking to cross the Hudson toward the Connecticut shore must travel to reach the Selkirk Bridge (since the old freight crossing near Poughkeepsie was destroyed decades ago). This 200-mile detour, incidentally, helps explain the number of 18-wheelers crowding out cars on I-95. All that justifies this New Atlantic Triangle, this triumph of creative imagination, is that it puts the Connecticut Regional Institute’s client’s capital city — Hartford — in the center of something. Think of the weight one should attach to each of the Atlantic Triangle’s apices. If New York merits 100, and Boston perhaps 7 or 10, then what would Albany become? At 97,660 persons and nothing much beyond state government, perhaps a 1. If

Plattsburgh, N.Y. were the client, perhaps Gallis could pair Montreal with another state capital, Montpellier, Vt. (population 7,855), to define the hypotenuse of a New Yankee Triangle. This of course reveals the mischief of pretending to see the Triangle, thus shifting attention northward to center upon Hartford. There is no meaningful triangle — just a more or less linear corridor along the shore from New York to Greenwich, to Stamford and Norwalk, to Bridgeport — and on to New Haven.

New York If you map North America by any indicator of economic, cultural, or intellectual altitude, a great Everest looms up above the palisades of the Hudson. It has no counterpart anywhere on the continent — not at Chicago, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Dallas or Toronto. The likes of Philadelphia and Baltimore are its southerly foothills. My favorite measure for such purposes is dollars of earned income per square mile. Think of a square mile with 1,000 households, earning an annual average of $100,000 apiece. Or 500 earning $200,000 apiece. Or 2,000 earning an average of $50,000. Or 100 earning $1 million each. These square miles each represent a dollar earnings density of $100 million per year. Near the peak of the New York Everest, dollar

NEWHAVENMAGAZINE.COM


densities run well beyond ten times as high as that. There are Manhattan census tracts which in 2010 had dollar densities at or above $100 million. These are the economy’s commanding heights where we should seek opportunity for Mr. or Mrs. Assortative Marriage. What regional strategy therefore best serves the interests of Connecticut generally, and New Haven specifically? Forget Albany and Springfield. Love Boston, but do so from a distance. Work with Hartford, and work for Hartford. But never mistake the capital city for the commanding heights where Connecticut’s and New Haven’s future must be won.

will require federal financing, along with money provided by Connecticut and New York state. It will require sustained leadership from the cities along the corridor between Greenwich and New Haven. Key institutions — Yale, the hospitals, Quinnipiac and the rest — will have to assume leadership roles. It will require a legislative coalition that sees why the coastal corridor toward New York is of paramount importance to Connecticut’s future.

I

n closing, a little more news from 2038. Quinnipiac’s medical school is now attracting hundreds of applications from Yale College, while its athletic teams are

rumored to be heading west as the Big Ten’s 21st member. Long Wharf Theatre is now thriving near Exit 8, on the large site opened up by Walmart’s bankruptcy in 2030. And the women’s draw of the 2039 U.S. Open tennis tournament will be played at the wonderful stadium which also still hosts the New Haven Open at Yale. Douglas W. Rae of New Haven is the Richard S. Ely Professor of Management and Political Science at the Yale School of Management. He is also the author of City: Urbanism and Its End (2003, Yale University Press), a portrait of New Haven and the rise and fall of American cities.

Look west from New Haven toward the great arc of wealth and opportunity which slopes down along the north shore of Long Island Sound. Metro North’s New Haven Line commuter rail carried 38.2 million riders in 2011, more than 15 million of them riding between New Haven and the major stop at Stamford. The new M-8 cars, being delivered regularly to replace the very tired cars of a previous generation, are a step up for commuters — cleaner, better illuminated, better suited to people who cannot survive an hour without electronic tools and toys. All that said, we know this service has to be a whole lot better than it is at the dawn of 2013. Next time you go into New York City, get on the head car and watch for a mile or two out the front door. Those catenary posts — the ones made of iron X’s — were there a century ago when Mr. A.C. Gilbert, recently graduated from Yale College, was looking for inspiration in designing his great toy, the Erector Set. He simply copied these ancient stands. Notice also that some of the turns are pretty tight, even at 43 mph.

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Say the improved track covers 72 miles on its way to Manhattan. Focus for argument’s sake on the peak period express trains going west around 7:30 a.m. and east around 6 p.m. Maybe four or five each way. Suppose they make four stops each, consuming a total of seven minutes. If we are to do the trip in 55 minutes total, that leaves 48 minutes for getting there. The train will therefore need to make 90 miles per hour on average. The technology required is at least a century old already. The challenge will be political and economic. It

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B OD Y & SO U L

CosmeticDentistry Goes Digital Cosmetic Dentistry Goes Digital CosmeticDentistry Goes Digital

O NS CRE E N

By Jessica Giannone

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one are the days when people used to wait weeks for mail, spend hours researching endless material in libraries for one answer, or even wait five minutes for an Internet connection. With the help of communications advances and high-speed technologies, we have become a society that expects immediate gratification. From instant messages and search results to instant mail and pudding, even our appearances can’t wait. All the same, the new age of technology did not exclude dentistry from the beneficiary list. Waiting weeks for a better and brighter smile, as opposed to one day, is quickly becoming a thing of the past, as more and more patients are seeking timely improvements to their teeth—and offices are giving it to them. John Levy, DDS of Levy Dental Group in New Haven describes cosmetic dentistry as an artwork — including being able to beautify the “scenery” (gums) in order to make the “actors” (teeth) look their best, as he puts it. N. Summer Lerch, DDS of the Center for Esthetic Dentistry in New Haven agrees a cosmetic dentist is like an artist. “Someone who can look at the full picture,” says Levy. And looking at the full picture requires the dentist’s hands and eyes to be able to “deliver,” as Lerch explains. But now, dentists can deliver with more than just their hands. 26 January/February 2013

Computer-Aided Design and Computer-Aided Manufacturing (CAD/CAM) technology has dramatically transformed cosmetic dentistry. Though the technology has been around for years, the application of it for the industry has

only recently started to pick up its popularity.

its face in the dental world, offering more than the fancy name.

Less than ten years ago, a CAD/ CAM system called Chairside Economical Restoration of Esthetic Ceramics (CEREC) really showed

Allowing users to scan and design crowns, veneers, or any other tooth restorations, the digital and 3-D imaging software creates a final product in less than a few hours. Once the patient’s oral scan is converted to a 3-D image and manipulated on the computer by the dentist, it can be sent to a milling machine, which produces a ceramic tooth fit for the patient, where it can then be tinted to match the rest. “Instantly we have great images,” says Aaron M. Gross of Whitneyville Dental in Hamden. “It puts these pictures at our fingertips. We can do these procedures right in the office and literally transform [the patient] in one day.” Gross says that even for users such as himself (whom he characterizes as not “computer savvy”) CEREC is a godsend — an improvement from earlier, nonuser-friendly days when “you almost had to have a degree from NASA to operate it.” Gross adds that the technology has spread widely throughout the cosmetic-dentistry marketplace over the last five years. Before CEREC, dentists would use a mold to make impressions of oral structure, and the replicas would be sent out and fabricated in a laboratory. The dentists were not able to design their own final products — no less so with their patients beside them participating in the process. NEWHAVENMAGAZINE.COM


HEROE EROE

January 2013

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Heroes for Life Publisher Mitchell Young Editor Michael C. Bingham Art Director Terry Wells Advertising Manager Mary W. Beard Senior Publisher’s Representative Roberta Harris Publisher’s Representative Daniel Bennick Robin Ungarp Contributors Felicia Hunter, John Mordecai Melissa Nicefaro, Priscilla Searles Karen Singer, Tom Violante Photography Lisa Wilder, Tom Violante Graphic Design Assistant Ashley Brown Healthcare Heroes 2012: Publshed January 2013 in Business New Haven and New Haven magazine. and at www.conntact.com Business New Haven is a publication of Second Wind Media, Ltd., with offices at 20 Grand Avenue, New Haven, CT 06513. Telephone (203) 781-3480. Fax (203) 781-3482. Subscriptions: $32 annually. Send name, address and ZIP code with payment. Second Wind Media, Ltd., d/b/a Business New Haven, New Haven magazine shall not be liable for failure to publish an ad or for typographical errors or errors in publication. email: support@conntact.com

M

eet the Health Care Heroes Class of 2013.

They are doctors, nurses, educators, researchers, administrators, volunteers. They come from many different places and backgrounds, and taken as a whole their career paths have defined many twists and turns. What they have in common is a profound respect and even veneration for the value of human life, and have devoted not just their careers, but their lives, to improving and preserving it. One of these is Jon Soderstrom, the would-be minister who instead ended up spearheading the commercialization of research out of historically reluctant Yale and its school of medicine. The work of Soderstrom and his colleagues at the university’s Office of Cooperative Research was spawned dozens of new companies pioneering new innovations and medicines that help improve the quality of life — and in some cases, save lives — in patients across the globe. Speaking of medical schools, this September Quinnipiac University’s Frank H. Netter MD School of Medicine will welcome its first class of primary care physicians-to-be. Four years in germination, the opening of Connecticut’s fifth medical school would not be possible without the almost single-handed work of the school’s remarkable founding dean, Bruce M. Koeppen, MD. A gifted physician, educator, researcher, author and administrator, Koeppen came to Quinnipiac in autumn 2010 to begin creating a school of medicine out of whole cloth. Now we are at the brink of seeing what will have been three years of labor bear fruit. As we say hello to QU’s new school of medicine, we also say goodbye to a remarkable doctor who passed away recently, and whose like we may not see again. To characterize Leonard Fasano, MD — father of State Sen. Leonard Fasano, who passed away 18 months ago at the age of 84 — as “old school” is no backhanded compliment. A gifted and caring physician whose relationships with his patients in many cases last a lifetime, Fasano had a profound impact of the many lives he touched, and saved. He will be missed. We hoping you enjoy reading all their stories in the pages that follow.

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CORPORATE ACHIEVEMENT AWARD Griffin Hospital Patrick A. Charmel, CEO

Local Roots, National Profile In pioneering a new model of patient care, Griffin Hospital is a trailblazer

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riffin Hospital, a not-for-profit, tax-exempt subsidiary of the Griffin Health Services Corp., is a 160-bed acute care community hospital serving more than 100,000 residents of the lower Naugatuck Valley. It also serves as the flagship hospital for Planetree Inc., an international leader in patient-centered care that has received national recognition for creating a facility and approach to patient care that is responsive to the needs of patients. Griffin has more than 280 active and courtesy physicians who have admitting privileges. It is affiliated with the Yale School of Medicine and accredited by the Joint Commission. Griffin is recognized for having industry-leading patient satisfaction ratings and has received numerous quality and clinical excellence awards. It is the only hospital to be named on Fortune magazine’s “100 Best Companies to Work For” list for ten years running, and was the only Connecticut hospital named a “Top Quality Performer” on key quality measures by the Joint Commission in 2011. Planetree is a consumer health-care organization dedicated to humanizing health care. The planetree, or sycamore tree, is the tree under which Hippocrates, the founder of modern medicine, sat when he began teaching his medical students in ancient Greece. In 1992, the hospital instituted Planetree, an innovative model of health care that puts patients’ needs first. In Planetree’s patient-centered approach to health care, providers partner with patients and their family members to identify and satisfy the full range of patient needs and preferences. The program counts several hundred hospitals and health-care organizations in the U.S., Canada, South America and Europe among its members. “I’ve seen a lot of changes since the Planetree program began,” says William Richter of Oxford, a former member of the hospital’s Community Advisory Council and a volunteer there for the past 14 years. “With the council, we got together once a month to talk about what we observed, what patients may have told us or what we heard around the hospital. We look at the feedback to see if something works or doesn’t work. We’ve gotten good feedback on the program.” Richter says the council sees patient comments received by various means, including his own observations in his role as an ambassador for the volunteer program, in which he greets people at the door and guides them to their destination in the hospital. He says the hospital is well-received in the community. He says Griffin keeps up with the bigger hospitals but they are more like “home” and very patient focused. “Customer service here is great,” he adds. “If we find something on a survey that doesn’t look great, we bring it up at our council meeting and at the next meeting, they’ll have it all squared away.” Susan Frampton, president of Planetree, which is headquartered at Griffin, says the program is one of the reasons Griffin remains one of the best places

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‘This is the kind of place where you have committed people who embrace change and are willing to try new things,’ says Griffin President and CEO Charmel. ‘You can actually turn the dials here and watch things happen.’

to work and that it has had many positive effects on the way the hospital treats its patients and conducts business. “Probably, the most important influence of Planetree has been on the organizational culture,” says Frampton, who earned her bachelor’s degree from Rutgers and her Ph.D. from UConn, both in medical anthropology. We’re involved in working with hospitals and long-term care settings to help to transform their cultures from a provider-centered culture to a patient- and family-centered culture.” She notes that the process begins with input from the hospital staff, patients and families of patients to get a sense of the existing culture. Frampton says the best way to understand the benefits of Planetree is to visit one of its member hospitals. There, the visitor will find a culture that begins with music in the parking lot, greeters at the door and staff eager to please and make a patient’s stay comforting as well as keeping the patient informed about every aspect of his or her treatment.

“We look for every opportunity to make it a better experience for the patients and their families,” adds Frampton. “It fosters transparency for the patients and allows patients to view their own medical histories and patient records” to answer questions about their condition. “It’s very much a model that engages patients and their families in their own care process,” notes Frampton.Patrick A. Charmel, president and CEO of Griffin Health Services Corp. and the hospital, began his association as an intern in 1979 while attending Quinnipiac University. He served in a variety of administrative positions and rose to become president in 1998. He also serves as president of Planetree Inc., a not-for-profit subsidiary of the corporation that supports an alliance of more than 170 hospitals in the U.S., the Netherlands, Canada and Brazil, and over 180 long-term care facilities and ambulatory care centers that are committed to patient empowerment and the delivery of patient-centered care.

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During his tenure, Charmel has earned the hospital a reputation as an award-winning innovative organization, recognized as an industry leader in providing personalized consumer-driven health care in a healing environment. Under his leadership, Griffin was selected as the 2008 Top Leadership Team in Healthcare in the nation for community and mid-size hospitals by Health Leaders Media. Griffin has earned numerous quality, value and patient experience awards from various national organizations that measure and monitor hospital performance. It is the only Connecticut hospital named a 2011 Top Quality Performer by the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO), which accredits health care organizations in America. The hospital was also recognized by Premier Healthcare Alliance as a winner of the 2010 Premier Award for Quality, placing it in the top one percent of the nation’s hospitals. Charmel is also president of the board of governors of the Quinnipiac University Alumni Association and a university trustee. In 2011, he received the Distinguished Alumni Award from the Yale School of Public Health. He is a recipient of the 2009 Planetree Lifetime Achievement Award. Charmel is co-author of Putting Patients First: Designing and Practicing Patient-Centered Care (Jossey-Bass, 2003), which received the American College of Healthcare Executives health care book of the year award in 2004. A second edition of the book was published in October 2008. “I’ve known Patrick since he was my student intern when he was a junior in the health-care program

at Quinnipiac,” says William C. Powanda, the hospital’s vice president. “He’s a humble, selfeffacing natural leader who leads by example and his personal values dictate how he manages. He’s passionate about excellence and providing a patient-centered, exceptional experience for every patient Griffin serves.” Powanda notes that Griffin’s employees, physicians and his colleagues respect him because he is truthful and straightforward. “Even if you don’t agree with him, you appreciate his candor and the rationale for his position,” adds Powanda. “He would never ask anything of an employee that he wouldn’t do himself. I’m proud to call him a colleague and friend.” Charmel, who’ll celebrate his 15th year as president in February, says he never imagined he’d one day become the CEO of the very hospital where he had worked as a college intern. He figured he’d work there for several years, then move on to a different organization and work his way up the corporate ladder. “That’s the typical career progression,” says Charmel, who next month also will mark 33 years at Griffin. “You start in a small- or medium-sized hospital in a junior position and you move up and take on more responsibility because there’s more prestige associated with that. In this organization, I’ve had opportunities to take on additional responsibilities, be progressive, be creative, try new things and, once they’re implemented, actually see some results.” By contrast, Charmel adds, “In a larger organization, you can exert a lot of effort and not

see a lot of positive movement. And that’s a little frustrating, if you’re results-oriented as I am. This is the kind of place where you have committed people who embrace change and are willing to try new things. You can actually turn the dials here and watch things happen. In a large place, you can turn the dials and see no response. From my point of view, this is the ideal place. “For folks that are really dedicated to caregiving, this is the place that allows them to practice it,” says Charmel. “The model here gets stronger over time as because people are drawn here to work because they are committed to that type of approach.” Charmel says that Griffin’s employees are prepared to make personal sacrifices to insure that patients get the best possible care in an environment that’s conducive to healing. “It’s not only in direct caregiving, but also it’s an effort to create an environment for caregiving and that takes a lot of effort,” Charmel explains. “It’s resulted in our folks getting a real sense of satisfaction because they know that they’re meeting or exceeding the expectations of their patients. Our folks have a great deal of pride in what they give to their patients, and that’s what makes us a great place to work.” “We’ve got a national reputation and we’re a model for the industry but we’re intimate and a group of committed caregivers that really see themselves as a family,” adds Charmel. “So it’s the best of both worlds.” — Thomas R. Violante

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RESEARCHER OF THE YEAR Dr. Mary Tinetti Gladys Phillips Crofoot Professor of Medicine (Geriatrics) and Professor of Epidemiology (Chronic Diseases) and of Investigative Medicine; Section Chief, Geriatrics.

Fall Gal Yale’s Mary Tinetti has devised an innovative, holistic approach to fighting senior falls

I

PHOTO: LISA WILDEN

t’s a fact of life: As people get older, gravity starts to become dangerous. Falling is associated with many health threats — broken bones, damaged joints, sometimes even death for the elderly. Falling may be common, but according to one Yale Researcher, common doesn’t mean acceptable.

Mary Tinetti is Yale’s Gladys Phillips Crofoot

Professor of Medicine in Geriatrics, Professor of Epidemiology in Chronic Diseases and Investigative Medicine. She’s also section chief in geriatrics. In her 26 years as a physician, there was a sense from the elderly population and other physicians that little or nothing could be done to prevent falls. “It was inevitable,” Tinetti says. “It was just something that happened when people got older.” Over the past two decades, Tinetti and her coinvestigators at Yale New Haven have identified that although falling is common and is associated with a lot of bad outcomes, seniors who are most at risk for having a fall are in many cases identifiable. “By identifying the risk factors or the problems that they have that put them at risk for falling, we actually can institute treatment to decrease that risk of falling,” she says. After that, the next step is to get the information out to doctors and incorporated into the care of at-risk patients. “We want to decrease that risk, and then get that treatment incorporated into clinical practice,” Tinetti says. The fruits of her labor are being practiced not just in greater New Haven, but across the country now. Mark Garilli, interim CEO at New Haven’s Tower One assisted living community, calls Tinetti’s work invaluable to his elderly population.“Our goal is to keep folks living independently longer,” he says. “They come here, they have the key to their own apartment, they have their own kitchen and our goal is to keep them living healthy, safely and longer independently.” Fall prevention receives significant attention at Tower One/Tower East. “Environment plays a big role in that, in terms of how their space is arranged. They need to have clear paths from point A to point B,” Garilli says. At a recent presentation at Tower One, Tinetti spoke about a person’s five senses, and how human beings take advantage of those. “As people age, those senses can dull, so we need to look to our stronger senses with our wayfinding,” Garilli says. For example, those who can’t see so well can rely on the sense of feel to navigate from one spot to another. “We look forward to hearing more from Mary, and more about what she can offer our residents above and beyond our own wellness approach,” says Garilli. “Falls are huge here, even though we do everything we can to prevent them.” “The most important thing is to become more proactive, take away the obstacles that create falls in our own environment, but it’s also important to

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PHOTO: LISA WILDER

Tinetti hopes her research will help prevent unwanted side effects from treatment in those with multiple diseases. ‘[I]f you really want to provide the most effective and appropriate health care, we have to start looking at the benefits and harms of treatments in patients with multiple chronic diseases.’

continue to educate our residents — and Mary plays a big role in that,” Garilli adds.“As our residents’ senses and bodies change, they need to learn to adapt to better prevent the falls,” he says. That’s not always the easiest thing to do with an aging person. “We think that one of the biggest things about the education is convincing folks to accept that their body is changing and recognize that they are changing,” says Garilli. “They should understand what the serious risks from a fall entail. It could mean going to rehabilitation and not coming back to live independently.” Most of the fall risk that older people see comes from muscle weakness, bone weakness from osteoporosis, cognitive impairment from dementia, postural blood pressure (a sudden drop in pressure when one stands up), tripping hazards in the environment and medications.

What is unique and different about Tinetti’s approach is that in medicine, researchers often identify one disease and then a treatment. She looked at it differently, looking at all of the different problems and different interventions. “Some of it older people can do themselves,” she explains. “They can keep their environment safer. And for some, it is working with a physical therapist to improve their balance and gait and strength. For others, it’s using the correct walking device.”She says that medications used to treat other illnesses are often to blame for unsteady footing and falling. “Medications can have good effects and bad effects,” Tinetti allows. “Physicians prescribe individual drugs for the good effects, but what happens is we wind up with many bad effects, and only some good effects.”She works with physicians to prescribe medications not just on one disease, but what’s best for the overall wellness of the patient.

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Tinetti’s team also works with nurses in home care to work with older adults to make their homes safer, to check their blood pressure not just sitting, but also lying and standing. Tinetti’s research was undertaken through a clinical trial that was so successful it led to funding from the Donahue Foundation, a Connecticut foundation that helped her implement her findings working with physicians, home-care agencies and physical therapists in the Hartford area. Fellow researcher Dorothy Baker also received funding from the state legislature to disseminate the information throughout Connecticut. In 2009, Tinetti was named a MacArthur Fellow and received a “genius” grant from the foundation for her research at Yale. Tinetti’s work also involves research about multiple chronic conditions, since in medical research, doctors typically look at an individual disease and diagnoses. “Since older adults typically don’t have one disease, we’re just beginning to understand that if you really want to provide the most effective and appropriate health care for older adults with multiple diseases, we have to start looking at the benefits and harms of treatments in patients with multiple chronic diseases,” she says. Tinetti’s team has identified the frequency of multiple chronic conditions, identified common combinations of diseases, and identified situations where, treatment for,

for example, heart failure might make their lung disease worse, or treatment for dementia might exacerbate the patient’s urinary incontinence. “We’re looking at those combinations of diseases, with the idea that eventually we’ll help doctors and patients make the most effective decisions for people with multiple diseases,” she says. Tinetti has a profound curiosity when it comes to the aged. She says it comes from her early days as a physician a quartercentury ago. Training to become an internist, most of her patients were older and she became aware that what she had learned in medical school and residency training didn’t always seem to apply well to an older patient population. “If we gave them the state-of-the-art treatment, we often made them worse,” she says. “We were often focused on their disease when the patients were focused on their functions.” Following her training, Tinetti joined the faculty at Yale and began to research and find the answers to the questions that were most important to older patients.“I used my observations in caring for patients to perform the research that I do,” she says.She hopes that research is preventing falls and enriching the lives of the elderly here and around the world.

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VOLUNTEER OF THE YEAR Dr. Seth Feuerstein Venture capitalist, Biotech entrpreneur, Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, Yale University School of Medicine, Founder Little Wonder Inc.

Let Us Entertain You Physician/entrepreneur Feuerstein thinks big. But his latest project is a minor miracle

PHOTO: LISA WILDER

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f you knew Seth Feuerstein, you might have guessed BNH would select him as a Health Care Hero for his work in the local health care and biotechnology industries. He spends a lot of his time these days working with Cobalt Therapeutics with clinician researchers from several universities including Yale to improve access to mental health care in primary-care groups, the military and Veterans Administration, through insurers, health systems and accountable care organizations, and he has played roles ranging from co-founder to investor to board member at companies such as Affomix, Biorelix, Carigent Therapeutics, Cobalt Therapeutics, Elm Street Ventures, Hadapt, HistoRx and North East Life Sciences.

You might also guess we’d recognize him for his work as a member of the clinical faculty at Yale where he supervises and interviews residents and is much sought for his opinions and advice on complex legal matters where psychiatric illness may play a role. It turns out we chose him for something else entirely: a non-profit he founded called Little Wonder that he hopes will improve the experience of those undergoing cancer treatment. “Little Wonder grew out of some of my life experiences and a moment when I realized what I knew from each of those experiences might improve people’s experiences and those of their loved ones,” Feuerstein explains. “We have had great support from various local groups including Smilow Cancer Center and the clinicians there and athletic programs such as New Haven Open [as well as] Quinnipiac and Yale athletics.” Through Little Wonder, those undergoing treatment for cancer at Yale-New Haven’s Smilow Cancer Hospital can receive tickets to attend local shows, performances, concerts and sporting events.

Feuerstein hopes Little Wonder can provide a pleasant distraction from the day-to-day burden of cancer treatment for patients. ‘It’s a way for us to give them a night out. That can’t be underestimated sometimes. I believe and hope it helps people do better to be able to smile and enjoy some of their time during the process.’

PHOTO: LISA WILDEN

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Smilow social worker Denise Armstrong calls the Little Wonder program a “godsend” for cancer patients who come to radiation therapy every single weekday for weeks on end. “Complimentary tickets to cultural and sporting events is a pleasant distraction from their illness that they can share with family and friends,” Armstrong says. She adds that the program will be expanded to other areas of Smilow in the near future, so not only patients receiving radiation can take advantage. Long Wharf Theatre was among the first to sign on with the new program. Long Wharf spokesman Steve Scarpa says that when Feuerstein approached the theater with the idea, it seemed very much like something the regional theater would want to participate in. “One of the things that theater provides among many things is respite to take your cares away, or in this case, to empathize and see the world through a different prism,” says Scarpa. “If we can provide for a moment for these people something positive or good

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or thoughtful in some way, we’re delighted to be able to do it.” “The team at Long Wharf Theater has been incredibly supportive as we built the website and got things rolling,” says Feuerstein. His wife Sharon also volunteers with the organization, making sure tickets and patients are getting linked, and their children recently committed donations to Little Wonder (and other charities) in lieu of receiving some Hanukkah gifts. “Cancer treatment is an often rigorous, disruptive and all-consuming period,” Feuerstein. “Patients often go on a nearly daily basis for weeks and weeks. They are often so focused on their treatment that everything else — including planning enjoyable, distracting experiences with loved ones — gets drowned out. “Many of these patients will survive; some will not,” he adds. “My hope is that in all cases they will share powerful experiences and create lasting memories with those they care about. I also do it because I believe and hope it helps people do better to be able to smile and enjoy some of their time during the process.” Feuerstein had the idea to start Little Wonder several years ago when two of his jobs collided. “When I was in medical school I had two parttime jobs,” he recounts. “One was working in the student activities office at NYU. We had tickets to everything ranging from Broadway shows to the

Metropolitan Opera to Knicks games.” It was there that he learned that cultural institutions and season ticket holders are often unable to use their tickets. In the case of NYU they would be donated and students would be able to attend events otherwise beyond their means. Other experiences exposed him to the rigors that patients and their loved ones face while enduring cancer treatment: dealing with insurers, scheduling appointments, balancing family and friends, figuring out who to tell, what to tell them. “The list goes on and on,” he says. “Carving time out and purchasing tickets when each day is an unknown is generally not occurring. “I believe people are generally interested in helping others but often need a little help or facilitation to make it easier for them,” Feuerstein adds. So he designed the site to allow venues such as Long Wharf to make patients aware of tickets they are generously offering and facilitate access on short notice for them and loved ones. “In a perfect world, a patient might be completing a treatment and log in at the hospital and see four tickets for that evening’s performance at, let’s say, Long Wharf,” Feuerstein explains. “They can call their spouse, get the kids and in a couple of hours be enjoying an evening at a world-class venue and performance.”

venues that have already signed on with Little Wonder, but Feuerstein is on the hunt for more. Three families receiving care at Smilow were able to see Shrek: The Musical at the Shubert over the holiday break, and since the Yale and Quinnipiac hockey teams were both ranked in the top ten in the nation early this season, his efforts are allowing patients to see many future NHL hockey players in the coming months. “If people out there know of venues who might be willing to participate or season ticket holders who sometimes have extra seats, please send them our way so we can facilitate access,” Feuerstein says. He also hopes to sign up other cancer centers in Connecticut. “The value of this is a way for people in the entertainment industry to give back in a very small way,” says LWT’s Scarpa. “It’s a way to fulfill a primary function of arts and sports. It’s a way for us to bring people in and give them a night out. That can’t be underestimated sometimes. We know it’s not everything, but it’s a way to give people a break, a way to just take their mind off of things.” Little Wonder lets people live like people for a bit, and not like patients.

— Melissa Nicefaro

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HEALTH CARE PROFESSIONAL/ ADMINISTRATOR Glenn Elia CEO, Connecticut Orthopaedic Specialists

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n his first day as administrator for the New Haven Orthopedic Group, Glenn Elia remembers its founder, John Aversa, telling him, “If you’re not growing, you’re dying.”

The phrase became “sort of my mantra,” says Elia, CEO of the practice, now known as Connecticut Orthopaedic Specialists. He has made his mark by establishing new models for delivery of orthopaedic health care in venues such as company-run outpatient surgery centers and urgent care walk-in centers. Connecticut Orthopaedic Specialists operates eight offices in greater New Haven, with MRIs at two locations and physical therapy centers at seven. It also cares for athletic teams from Yale University, Quinnipiac University and 16 high schools. The practice has 16 board-certified orthopaedic physicians, three podiatrists and a rehabilitation physician. “My job here, besides running the business, is to sort of be a bit of a visionary about what are the

A True Game-Changer How Connecticut Orthopaedic Specialists’ Glenn Elia has recast his practice’s care-delivery model

needs of the community and how do we meet these needs,” Elia says. He began as a physical therapist, with BS degrees in biology and anatomy from Springfield (Mass.) College (1978) and a certificate in physical therapy from the University of Pennsylvania (1979). In 1985, he transitioned to the administrative side of the business, as director of operations and director of physical therapy at a couple of walk-in centers. While earning an MBA at Sacred Heart University (1992), he began physician practice management at Neurosurgery Associates in Waterbury. Aversa, an orthopaedic surgeon who started the New Haven Orthopedic Group in 1963, hired Elia in 1993. “We were growing and doing well but we needed someone to help give us more direction,” he says. “At the time we recognized that orthopaedics was becoming increasingly subspecialized,” Elia says.

“People wanted not just a general orthopaedist. We changed the [business] name to Connecticut Orthopaedic Specialists to reflect what we believed to be a better representation of our work. “We also saw the need to provide ancillary services such as developing a big rehab program.”Seeking other opportunities, Elia traveled to Texas to research how several orthopaedic groups were managing their own outpatient surgery centers. “That was really an important turning point,” he says. “We began to investigate the [Connecticut Department of Public Health’s] Certificate of Need process. It probably took a good year. We ultimately were successful. We got the first Certificate of Need for an outpatient orthopaedic surgical center [in the state]. We broke new ground, and opened up a one-room, single-specialty orthopaedic surgical center in Hamden in 2000.” The strategy worked.“We now started to compete with hospitals to deliver high-quality services,” Elia says. “More and more patients heard about it, and loved it.”

PHOTO: LISA WILDEN

The practice added doctors and in 2011 opened a new, bigger outpatient surgery center in Branford, with three operating rooms and a painmanagement suite. “This is one example of leading the way,” Elia says. “Other [orthopaedic] practices have benefited, and now also have surgical centers. “The other thing that caused our practice to grow was my knowledge of knowing how to deal with Hartford,” Elia adds. “We were able to acquire two MRIs. “The walk-in center business is the latest wrinkle. We were finding a lot of patients were getting hurt and had to go to the [hospital] ER, which was not well equipped” to handle orthopaedic patients. About 18 months ago COS launched OrthoNow, an emergency walk-in care service currently open seven days at week, for limited hours, at its Branford and Hamden offices. “We have got digital X-ray,” Elia says. “[Patients] pay for an office visit. It takes 20 minutes. Then they have a follow-up appointment.”Elia also has pioneered new paradigms with health insurance companies. “Probably the hardest thing to sell the first time was the surgical center, because it was so new,” he says. “We worked with the carriers to develop contracting and pricing. They began to realize this was a savings to them, rather than going through a hospital. As I developed a reputation, they began to trust that what I said was true. When we say we’re going to do something, we’ve been able to deliver the goods.” David R. Fusco, president of Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Connecticut, was an early convert.“I think Glenn shows great vision and great leadership in sort of stepping outside how we currently deliver care, and really pushing that Continued on page 14

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agenda,” Fusco says, “to do it more effectively and to meet evolving needs of our community.” Elia offers reciprocal praise of Fusco. “Dave has always been a like-minded visionary carrier,” he says. “Right now I’m working with Anthem to develop new payment methodology.” COS has what Elia describes as “an unusual relationship” with Yale in caring for its athletic teams: a “capitated contract” health-care plan under which the university pays a per-member/permonth fee for patient care and surgical care. “There’s no one else around doing it,” he says. “It started in California in the 1990s, then died. But this agreement with Yale has been a very successful working relationship. We provide coverage at their health center and do surgery at their surgical center. If they use our surgical center they pay a fee. “We’re proud of the fact that we’ve kept the cost of orthopaedic care for Yale flat for ten years.” In addition to caring for high school and college athletes, COS provides educational clinics for coaches on injury prevention and rehabilitation. A corporate sponsor of the Southern Connecticut Conference (SCC), which represents 22 high schools and 27 sports in greater New Haven, the practice in 2010 established “Comeback Player of the Year Scholarships” awarded annually to a severely injured male and female high school athletes overcoming great odds to become a role model. Each winner receives a $1,000 scholarship. “That was Glenn’s idea, to recognize kids for the hard work they do,” says SCC Commissioner Al Carbone, “He’s a wonderful man, a father who cares about his kids, who played high school sports.

“He’s a very enthusiastic gentleman with a great mind for business. He is on the top level and ahead of the curve. But to me what is most impressive is he is not just somebody who’s doing business. He wanted to get involved in the community.”

“You trudge and trudge and trudge, and when you think you’re on top, that’s a dangerous time,” Aversa adds. “We don’t want to be complacent. We always want to do the right things to enhance our practice.”

Elia attributes much of COS’ success to the support of the practice’s doctors. “It took some vision and some insights, but I couldn’t have done this if I didn’t have physicians who were willing to take risk and invest in the practice,” he says. “A lot of physicians want to see patients and go home, like Groundhog Day [the 1993 film starring a weatherman repeatedly living the same day]. But this group has been willing to embrace change. It’s risk and return, which is why every group in Connecticut doesn’t have what we have.

COS began offering cervical and lumbar surgeries at its surgical center last year, after merging with a neurological group. More partnerships are likely with other specialties and partners.

“That’s what’s made us different. We’ve perceived need in the community and aggressively gone after ways to meet those needs. Now what we perceive is a need to deliver the services in a more efficient manner.”

“We’re looking forward to working with Yale to bring orthopaedic care to another level,” Elia says. “I think Yale has aspirations of building an orthopaedic facility, and we certainly look to collaborate with them. We’re having those conversations right now.” In addition, Elia is “actively communicating with providers all within the bandwidth of musculoskeletal. “We have 350 employees, full and part-time,” he says. “We expect that number to grow.”

Elia sees the need growing with the implementation of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. “There are a lot of changes coming with Obamacare,” he says. “We know that the way we get reimbursed will most likely change. Expect cost compressions. There are going to be more people in the system. Expect the remuneration is not going to go up.” Aversa believes Elia is well equipped to meet the challenges. “He has lived up to all our expectations,” Aversa says. “Every year we have added some new facet to our practice. With Glenn’s help, we are one of the most, if not the most, successful practices in the state in orthopaedics.

Aversa sees opportunities in home care. “I would like to have a facility that we control that constitutes the continuum of care — nursing, rehab, diet, cleanliness — seamlessly,” he says. “I want you to come in the front door [and] be treated, be managed, be followed. “We should change our name to Orthopaedic Complete Care. There’s a trend to operate on people and send them to a rehab facility. But they do significantly better treated at home with support. That’s a better way of doing it, and it’s cheaper.” Chances are, Elia will figure out a way to get that ball rolling.

— Karen Singer

Parrett, Porto, Parese & Colwell, P.C.

Join Us In Congratulating

Glen Elia, CEO

ATTORNEYS AND COUNSELLORS AT LAW

Carl M. Porto John A. Parese William S. Colwell Michael Dean Amato Louis M. Federici

Connecticut Orthopaedic Specialists for his selection as a

Alison L. Slater Richard J. Parrett* John W. Colleran* Joseph A. Aceto*

Anthony M. Solomine Carl M. Porto II Joseph M. Porto Sandra L. Smith Jennifer Rignoli

*of counsel

Congratulations

Greater New Haven Healthcare Hero for 2012

To

Glenn F. Elia HealthCare Administrator of the Year       

PHYSICIANS & MEDICAL PRACTICES PERSONAL INJURY AUTO ACCIDENTS WORKERS’ COMPENSATION EMPLOYMENT LAW WILLS ESTATE PLANNING

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The Experience Matters. John M. Aversa, M.D. John M. Beiner, M.D Hubert B. Bradburn, M.D. David S. Caminear, D.P.M. David B. Cohen, M.D. Jeffrey M. DeLott, D.P.M Peter A. DeLuca, M.D. Richard Diana, M.D. Eliza Fantarella, DPM Norman R. Kaplan, M.D. John D. Kelley, M.D. Jeffrey Klauser, MD Kenneth M. Kramer, M.D. John Marino, M.D.

We congratulate our CEO, Glenn Elia, as Health Care Heroes Healthcare Professional/Administrator of the Year.

John D. McCallum, M.D. Philip A. Minotti, M.D. Thomas P. Moran, M.D. Rakesh Patel, MD Patrick A. Ruwe, M.D. Mark W. Scanlan, M.D. Enzo J. Sella, M.D.

C T- O RTH O.CO M

Sanda L. Tomak, M.D.

B R A N F O R D • G U I L F O R D • H A M D E N • M I L F O R D • N E W H AV E N • O R A N G E • S H E LT O N • WA L L I N G F O R D

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EDUCATOR OF THE YEAR Dr. Bruce Koeppen Founding Dean, Frank H. Netter Medical School at Quinnipiac University

There at the Creation On a new North Haven campus, Quinnipiac’s Bruce Koeppen is building a med school out of whole cloth

B

ruce Koeppen discovered his love of teaching at the University of Chicago in the mid1970s.“There was a course offered in the second year of the curriculum, and faculty would choose fourth-year medical students to help teach it,” recalls Koeppen, who was among the chosen.

As a result, he says, “I made the decision to go into academic medicine.”Several decades later, in 2010, Koeppen was selected as founding dean of a medical school at Quinnipiac University. Its principal mission is to train primary-care physicians. “The other piece is to work collaboratively with the schools of nursing and health sciences, and teach them in an interprofessional curriculum,” says Koeppen, 61, whose experience makes him especially suitable to spearhead the effort. The first in his family to attend college, Koeppen grew up in Elgin, Ill., about 40 miles northwest of Chicago. “I was always interested in science,” he says. “What I really liked was understanding the function of the human body.” Koeppen majored in physiology at the University of Illinois/Urbana, where he earned a BS in 1973 and began a lifelong interest in the workings of the kidney. After graduating, he says, “Instead of getting an internship, I got advanced research training.” Koeppen got his MD (1977) at the University of Chicago and Ph.D. (1980) at the University of Illinois, then spent two years at on a research fellowship with renal physiology expert Gerhard Giebisch. Koeppen has since co-authored several textbooks and dozens of articles about physiology and the kidney. His first faculty appointment came in 1982, as an assistant professor in the departments of medicine and physiology at the University of Connecticut School of Medicine in Farmington. Over the next decade Koeppen conducted research at UConn while becoming an associate professor and professor in the departments of medicine and cell biology. Working with Peter J. Deckers, then dean of the UConn Medical School, Koeppen also revamped the medical school education program. “We implemented a totally new curriculum that was system-based rather than subject-based, which was pretty controversial among faculty and still is at some schools in America,” says Deckers, whose current title is dean emeritus of the UConn School of Medicine and professor of surgery. “Bruce

Koeppen’s experience in education and evaluation of medical schools’ strengths and weaknesses made him an ideal choice to start Quinnipiac’s medical school from scratch with a non-traditional model. ‘We are not going to be a research-intensive medical school or have a faculty practice,’ he says. ‘We hope our graduates go out and practice in the trenches.’

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St. Vincent’s Congratulates St. Vincent’s Health Services congratulates Healthcare Hero winner Dr. Bruce Koeppen on his visionary leadership of Quinnipiac’s Frank H. Netter MD School of Medicine. We also congratulate and thank our staff members for their commitment to improving healthcare for area residents and making possible this Community Service Award for St. Vincent’s.

www.stvincents.org 1-877-255-SVHS (7847)


was completely responsible for implementing that at all levels and exemplary in making it happen.” In the early 1990s, Koeppen was named associate dean for preclinical education at the UConn Medical School. Over the next decade and a half he held a variety of administrative titles, culminating in dean for academic affairs. “I was responsible for administrative oversight for all education programs, from medical students to residents to continuing education, and also had administrative responsibility for facilities,” he explains.

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“Bruce had done many site visits and had been executive secretary on a lot of those visits,” Deckers says. “Therefore, he knew the strengths and weaknesses of medical schools. Some are clinically focused; some are research-focused and spend more time on that than education. So Bruce was extremely well prepared to implement a new curriculum in a new medical school — probably better than anyone else.” From 1999 to 2005, Koeppen served as a member of the Graduate Medical Education Advisory Council at the state of Connecticut’s Office of Health Care Access.

Along the way, he earned a slew of UConn and national awards, including the American Society of Physiology’s Arthur C. Guyton Teaching Award (1995), the Association of American Medical Colleges and the Alpha Omega Alpha’s Robert J. Glaser Distinguished Teaching Award (1998) and the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine’s Distinguished Service award (2002). In 2009, he became an inaugural member of the University of Connecticut’s Academy of Distinguished Educators.

“To start a new medical school you really need two things,” adds Decker. “One is to know all the demands of the groups that license and accredit you. No one knew it better than Bruce, who had lived through and knew all the issues that had to be on the table. You also have to know how to recruit good faculty with a commitment to education.”

In February 2010, Koeppen began to contemplate a different future.“I picked up the Hartford Courant and saw a story about Quinnipiac University’s plans to build a new medical school,” he recalls. He quickly applied for the job as founding dean of the Frank H. Netter School of Medicine.

“In addition to just getting through the process and knowing what to do, he has the temperament and experience to accomplish our medical school’s mission, which is to try to encourage as many of our graduates as possible to practice primary medicine, and to do this working with schools of health science and nursing.

“I did initial interviews in June,” Koeppen says. “I made it to the short list and did second interviews in July and August. In mid-September I got the phone call from Mark Thompson (now Quinnipiac University’s executive vice president/provost) and officially started on November 1, 2010. At that time I was the only employee of the School of Medicine.”

“Bruce is brilliant, yet you’d never know it to interact with him,” adds Lahey. “His personality is very welcoming, and he’s got great interpersonal skills you don’t always find it in geniuses.” The U.S. is in the midst of a new medical school boom.

Building a medical school from scratch wasn’t such a stretch for Koeppen, who had plenty of experience evaluating other institutions going through the process. A member of Liaison Committee on Medical Education [LCME], the accrediting authority for medical education programs leading to an MD degree in the U.S. and Canada, he had been on accreditation teams for more than a dozen universities. He was chair of the accreditation team for the preliminary accreditation for the Hofstra University North Shore-LIJ Health School of Medicine and the Charles E. Schmidt College of Medicine at Florida Atlantic University.

Koeppen’s qualifications were perfect for Quinnipiac.“Bruce is just an ideal dean for our school, says university President John L. Lahey.

“The last round of new medical schools was in the 1960s and ’70s, and that round was sparked by impending physician shortages,” Koeppen explains. “The feds helped these schools get of the ground. “This round also is being fueled by impending physician shortages. But this time they are being funded by states, clinical entities or private universities, and hopefully will provide additional physicians to address the shortage of about 100,000 physicians by 2020 and 150,000 by 2025.” At least 16 new medical schools have obtained initial accreditation, including three in Florida and three in Michigan, and half a dozen others are in the works.

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“Health care increasingly is a team sport, with everyone working together for the care of the patient,” Koeppen says. “Quinnipiac said that’s clearly the future of health care, so why not train our students to be better team players when they get into the workforce?” Koeppen has been hiring and seeking “master teachers who have a track record as excellent medical school educators, or junior faculty who have the potential.” “Our model is not traditional,” he says. “We are not going to be a research-intensive medical school or have a faculty practice. We hope our graduates go out and practice in the trenches.” For a medical school to be accredited, Koeppen explains, “You’ve got to document that you have all resources in place to be successful, including the faculty, staff and clinical placements, so students you admit will get a quality education and that they’ll be able to finish. Our documentation was eight inches [thick] of paper.” On October 3, 2012, Quinnipiac received approval from the state Board of Education to award medical degrees, shortly after received preliminary accreditation from the Liaison Committee on Medical Education. The first class, which will matriculate this fall, will have 60 students, a number projected to grow to 125 by 2017. St. Vincent’s Medical Center in Bridgeport will be the school’s primary clinical partner, with

other training sites at MidState Medical Center in Meriden and Middlesex Hospital in Middletown. Slated for completion in March 2013, the 145,000-square-foot Quinnipiac medical school will include offices, 16 exam rooms, a human anatomy facility, a clinical skills assessment facility, two simulation operating rooms, a library, a lounge space with a yoga studio and a fitness center. “Bruce has developed a curriculum, designed a medical school building and hired faculty and administrators all in about a year’s time,” says Lahey, who adds that to accomplish preliminary accreditation “in less than two years is just phenomenal.” Koeppen’s extraordinary competence comes as no surprise to Deckers, who was “delighted” when his former colleague landed the founding dean’s job. “Bruce is very much a professional,” Deckers says. “He takes being in a position very seriously. He manages times impeccably and has a sense of duty that transcends that of other people. He wants to instill in the generation of students that he’s going to be responsible for the same kind of personal and professional pride. “I know that that school is going to be successful, and I’m absolutely sure they’ll recruit outstanding people to the classroom, because Bruce wouldn’t have it any other way.” — Karen Singer

SODERSTROM Continued From Page 23 Sherer also says Soderstrom is “one of the few experts in the country, and probably the world, people will turn to [for advice].”Soderstrom also is a leader in fostering new sources of innovation. In 2007, he became instrumental in founding the Yale Entrepreneurial Institute [YEI] after noticing Yale students were moving elsewhere to start new companies. “We’re trying to build an entrepreneurial ecosystem around New Haven,” Soderstrom says. “That’s what Greg Gardiner and I talked about in 1996.” Recently some eighty percent of new Yale ventures were in the life sciences. “Nowadays, because of the students, we’re starting to see things growing up in other areas, particularly clean technology and computer sciences,” Soderstrom says. “I suspect that the students will always be a more diverse portfolio of opportunities than research.” Soderstrom credits Yale President Levin with setting the stage for the university’s entrepreneurial growth. “It all started at the very top with Rick. He has never wavered in his support, and has been one of the biggest cheerleaders.”Soderstrom expects the support to continue and “grow even further” under Yale’s incoming president, Peter Salovey. “The stronger New Haven is, the easier it is for us to retain the brightest and best faculty and students,” he says. “And the stronger Yale is the more opportunities we have to build the economy. It’s a very virtuous cycle.” — Karen Singer

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COMMUNITY SERVICE: INDIVIDUAL Jeannette Ickovics Professor of Epidemiology and Psychology; Director, Community Alliance for Research & Engagement (CARE); Deputy Director and Director of Training, Center for Interdisciplinary Research on AIDS, Yale School of Public Health

N

ew Haven residents have been studied, and studied and studied again. In the past it’s been somewhat of a sticking point between Yale University — a major researcher — and its host city, with town-gown relations at times strained by the ongoing microscopic inquiries, examinations and analyses of Elm City residents and their communities.

Catalysts for Community Change Public health advocate Jeannette Ickovics works to shower her clientele with CARE

Enter CARE. The acronym stands for Community Alliance for Research & Engagement. And therein, says Director Jeannette Ickovics, lies the difference between CARE studies and traditional research projects involving the New Haven community. “One of the reasons it’s different is, we really initiated this with a sense of community-university partnership. The partnership is at the heart [of the

research],” says Ickovics. “So this is about a new way of working collaboratively that frankly we didn’t think existed. We feel that we’ve created a kind of unique partnership.” That “unique partnership” is built on a positive relationship that’s been developed over time. “We spent the first few years building the engagement,” Ickovics says. For example, CARE

Ickovics says determining the health needs of people in the community helps providers to offer targeted care programs. ‘We’re in the productivity cycle of using the evidence to make change,’ she says. Pictured (l-r) are CARE staffers Alycia Santilli, Maurice Williams and Ickovics.

PHOTO: LISA WILDER

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staff members spent time with New Haven residents, getting to know their thoughts, concerns and ideas regarding health and health-care issues. “Literally, we were knocking on doors and sitting on stoops,” Ickovics says. The result is a program designed to directly benefit the community by providing tangible, comprehensive solutions to health needs. T date, projects such as tobacco-cessation initiatives, increasing amounts of healthy foods at corner stores, school-based Weight Watchers, a museum food exhibit and community gardens have been established through CARE. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. “CARE has really pushed us to be responsible and responsive to community needs,” says Ickovics. A program of the Yale School of Public Health, CARE was launched in 2007 to assess and improve New Haven residents’ health needs. “Now we’re in the productivity cycle of using the evidence to make change,” Ickovics says. Among the results is a public exhibit, titled Big Food: Health, Culture and the Evolution of Eating, that debuted at the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History. Ickovics served as its curator. “It helped us as a neighborhood to expand our notion of public health. It’s not only the physical, but emotional well-being and public safety,” says CARE advisory board member Ann T. Green. The exhibit sought to improve observers’ food choices and consumption by highlighting the effects of processed and fatty foods, portion sizes and lack of exercise on weight and health. A nationwide tour is planned.

Joseph Cardinale, MD, Chief of Radiation Oncology at the Center for Cancer Care at Griffin Hospital.

Green began her work with CARE as a community surveyor in 2009 for New Haven’s West River neighborhood. She believes CARE’s success is due to “the willingness to really apply principles of public health in Yale’s own backyard” and its “long-term commitment” and holistic approach. Neighborhood leaders such as Green play an important role in CARE’s success, Ickovics says. “It’s not work we do alone,” she says, adding that the input of entrenched community residents is key to “understanding what the community priorities are.” Ickovics’ ability to understand needs and priorities stems from the personal — her parents survived the Holocaust and instilled in her a sense of social justice, she says — as well as the professional. A native of Philadelphia, Ickovics earned a BA in psychology from Pennsylvania’s Muhlenberg College (magna cum laude) in 1984 and a master’s degree in applied social psychology from George Washington University in 1987. Two years later she was awarded a Ph.D. in that field, also from GWU. She came to Yale as a fellow in 1989 and has been there ever since, holding a succession of academic and administrative positions. The 49-year-old lives in Madison. In addition to Green and other local leaders, there are dozens of community partners, institutional collaborators and neighborhood supporters in the form of various schools, health facilities and socialservice organizations that work with CARE. “We have a program called ‘Health Heroes’ in the schools,” notes Ickovics, adding that participants “made a commitment to eating better and being more active.

“We’ve been very fortunate to work with other leaders in the city,” she says. That is buoyed by “really respecting that they care about the kids so much that we’re able to work together.” Maurice Williams, CARE’s community outreach coordinator, agrees. “It’s hard to make behavioral changes, and a lot health [improvements] require behavioral change,” Williams observes. New Haven’s wealth disparity is a contributing factor, studies suggest. “It’s challenging, in the social and economic times we live in, for people to make health an important part of their lives,” says Williams. It’s easier to pay $10 for a fast-food meal for a family of four than spend time shopping for, planning and cooking meals that include fresh fruit and vegetables and other healthy items, Williams notes. Plus, he says, society tends to “market bad food more than we market good food.” The challenge for CARE, he says, is to emphasize “an education process that’s kind of been left out of the mainstream of education.”“We’re really working on a grassroots level,” adds Alycia Santilli, CARE’s director of community initiatives. Over the next five years or so, Ickovics would like to see results of the work coming out of CARE to impact public policy. “Policy initiatives, so we can create change that would be more sustainable,” Ickovics says. “I think what we’re doing is making a difference.”

— Felicia Hunter

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PERSON OF MERIT Jon Soderstrom Managing Director, Yale University’s Office of Cooperative Research

From Lab to Marketplace How Yale‘s Jon Soderstrom became a technology-transfer superstar

J

PHOTO: TOM VIOLATE

on Soderstrom once thought he would become a minister. Instead, his career path led to Yale University, where he became managing director of the Office of Cooperative Research (OCR), overseeing the commercialization of inventions stemming from faculty research. “It’s a rather improbable journey,” acknowledges Soderstrom, who is widely recognized as heading one of the most successful university technologytransfer initiatives in the country. Along the way he has had a hand in the creation of more than two dozen ventures, including Molecular Staging, Genomic Systems, Achillion Pharmaceuticals, Protometrix, Iconic Therapeutics, Applied Spine Technologies, HistoRx, Affomix and Kolltan Pharmaceuticals. And done his best to start and keep those companies in New Haven. Soderstrom’s journey began far from Yale, in Sparta, Mich., a tiny town 17 miles north of Grand Rapids. “It’s Lake Wobegon [Garrison Keillor’s fictional Minnesota town] and I’m not kidding,” he says, “with three Lutheran churches — one for the Swedes, one for the Germans and one for everybody else.” Soderstrom’s grandfather arrived there in 1882, fleeing the potato famine in his native Sweden. Soderstrom adored his father Edward, a bomber pilot during World War II, who received the Distinguished Flying Cross and saved fellow pilot George McGovern [later a U.S. senator and 1972 Democratic presidential nominee], when both were shot down on a mission. After the war his father, an engineer, helped run the family hardware business until the late 1960s, then designed warehouse systems for a firm with clients including Federal Express and Wal-Mart. “He was my hero because he could design anything and make it work, and traveled all over the world solving problems,” Soderstrom says. “That’s what I’ve tried to emulate.” While growing up, Soderstrom baled hay, trimmed trees and picked apples and peaches at local farms. He graduated from Hope College, a Christian liberal arts school in Holland, Mich., in 1976 with an undergraduate degree in psychology. “Originally I thought I would be a minister.” Soderstrom says. “God was calling me. He’s still there, at the center of my life, but had a different plan for me and how I was going to serve.” Soderstrom went to graduate school at Northwestern, where he studied operations research and focused on the management of innovation and productivity. He earned a Ph.D. in 1980, the same year the Bayh-Dole Act was enacted, allowing universities and small businesses to own inventions created using federal funding and to commercialize those inventions. “That’s what opened the floodgates,” says Soderstrom, who had spent a semester at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee and was hired there following graduation.

‘We’re trying to build an entrepreneurial ecosystem,’ says OCR’s Soderstrom. ‘The stronger New Haven is, the easier it is for us to retain the brightest and best faculty and students.’

“I started with social impact analysis — how you define the impact of technology on society,” he explains. “It was exactly the same stuff I’d been doing at Northwestern but funded by the Department of Energy. One of the programs, an energy-related inventions program, gave small grants to inventors for proof of principle and proof of prototype, to try to commercial them and see what worked and what didn’t.” He later became director of technology licensing and director of program development at Oak Ridge, which was operated by Union Carbide until 1984, when Martin Marietta Energy Systems took over. In the mid-1990s, Martin Marietta merged with Lockheed Corp. “I was starting to feel restless and antsy,” Soderstrom says. “Then the phone rang and there was a recruiter asking about the tech-transfer program at Yale.”His first reaction was lukewarm. But he changed his mind after meeting Gregory Gardiner, who then headed OCR, which had opened in 1982 with one person and few resources. The situation radically changed, Soderstrom says, when Richard C. Levin became Yale president in 1993. “What they wanted to do was transformative,” he says. “They really wanted to

leverage the intellectual capital, to transform it and to change the world. “Rick also wanted to use the office to build the economy of New Haven,” Soderstrom adds. “Who wouldn’t want to do that?”He joined the office in 1996. “Greg and I set ourselves a goal of six ideas that could be funded,” Soderstrom recalls. “Of those, three got financed. One became Molecular Staging, Cellular Genomics, and the third polyGenomics. Each one raised around $5 million in Series A funding, and it got to a point where we had the money. ‘What are we going to do with these things?’ One of the conditions was we had to do them in New Haven.” Finding suitable real estate, however, was not Soderstrom’s forte. It was familiar territory for Bruce Alexander, then a Yale alumnus working with Levin on economic-development issues. Soon he and Soderstrom were collaborating. “When I first came to New Haven, a company, Gene Logic, was going to Gaitherburg, Md. and taking jobs,” says Alexander, now Yale’s vice president for New Haven and state affairs and campus development. “Jon and I figured out there was no


wet lab space available in New Haven. The two of us worked together to get Winstanley [Enterprises] involved. They were in Connecticut and when they expressed some interest in 300 George Street [the former SNET headquarters]. The university agreed to take about 50,000 square feet [ten percent of the building’s total] in order to provide them with some cash flow if they purchased it. They also had a relationship with one of our endowment managers. That gave the developer some comfort.” In 2000 Winstanley acquired 300 George from Matthews Ventures for $27.5 million and retrofitted it for bioscience use.“Molecular Staging became the first biotech tenant, closely followed by a bunch of others,” Soderstrom says. Winstanley went on to manage a lab and office building at 25 Science Park and renovate part of the former Winchester firearms building for Higher One, a financial services company for colleges and universities founded by Yale students. The developer currently is working on plans for 100 College Street, a new 400,000-square-foot mixeduse building to which Alexion Pharmaceuticals will relocate. The building is a centerpiece of the Downtown Crossing project, which aims to convert part of Route 34 into an urban boulevard. “I think with Downtown Crossing and Alexion coming back into town [the company started at 25 Science Park before moving to Cheshire], it’s going to spark a whole lot of stuff,” Soderstrom says. “We’ve got a bunch of companies that are positioned to transform New Haven into a biotech hub. Venture capital funding is just really hard right now, but we’re exploring new financial approaches that are project-based, instead of doing companies.

“We’re never going to be that big,” he allows. “We never aspired to be the new Cambridge.”Alexander calls Soderstrom “a great colleague with respect to efforts to partner with and strengthen New Haven. “In the university community he is regarded as absolutely tops in his field,” Alexander says. “He’s also very civic-minded. In 1990, President George H.W. Bush honored Soderstrom as the 87th “Point of Light” for his volunteer work building and rehabilitating low-income housing in Tennessee. He had been organizing churches in Appalachia to address problems of the poor. Aid to Distressed Families of Appalachian Counties [ADFAC] grew out of the effort, and Soderstrom was board president in its early years. “I think the most important thing about Jon is what you see is what you get,” says Mike Sherman, a serial entrepreneur and partner at Elm Street Ventures who started five companies based on Yale research and who has known Soderstrom for more than two decades. “He’s a very down-to-earth individual, trustworthy, has a lot of integrity and he is experienced enough and good enough at his job that he knows how to make things happen. “One of the interesting things is that what Jon and his predecessor Greg Gardiner did, collectively, was to create a real spirit of entrepreneurship among Yale faculty,” Sherman adds. “When I started in this game, the pharmaceutical industry was a dirty word to a lot of academic investigators, and it was very difficult to get academics engaged. What Jon and Greg did, among others at Harvard and MIT, was helped the faculties to appreciate, not necessarily the financial aspects of developing their discoveries, but how important they could be at helping their discoveries be translated to real-life applications to help real people. That’s one of the

reasons why Yale was always a good place to go to find technology. The academic personalities were really enthusiastic.” Sherman describes his relationship with Soderstrom as “more of a partnership” than mere licensee/licensor. “And that’s one of the things that makes Yale’s technology-transfer [office] stand out,” Sherman says. “They really do look it at as a cooperative venture to try to make the technologies successful. When you set up a company, you need to work out a business plan to translate something that’s done at the bench level in a commercial mode. You need to have to the scientists, and Jon is good at facilitating that. “And then, of course, there’s the onerous task of raising money,” continues Sherman. “Jon was always helpful putting me in touch with investors. I would run companies for a time, then move on and find another opportunity. He often sat on the board of these companies, was helpful in finding permanent members and in a number of ways of providing extra benefits, other than just someone to look to as a source of acquiring rights to intellectual property.” Soderstrom “is widely recognized by his peers to be a thought leader in the technology space,” says Todd Sherer, director of technology transfer at Emory University and president of the Association of University Technology Managers. “He’s broadly regarded as an expert in the business and has always been viewed as being more progressive in the ways to think about tech transfer and the laws and issues that direct it.” Continued on page 19

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FALLEN HERO AWARD Leonard A. Fasano, MD

A Model of Old School Medicine The long and remarkable career of Leonard A. Fasano, MD

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ew Haven lost one of its hometown heroes when, on July 31, 2011, Leonard A. Fasano, MD died at the Hospital of Saint Raphael at the age of 84. Fasano, who earned his medical degree from New York Medical College in 1955, was the husband of Camille Librizzi Fasano, father of Valerie Maribella and State Sen. Leonard Fasano (R-34), and brother of Judge Roland D. Fasano, Victor Fasano and the late Eugene Fasano. He is also survived by six grandchildren. Fasano, who was associated with both Yale-New Haven and Saint Raphael’s hospitals, established the Fasano Center for Internal Medicine at 980 Whalley Avenue, where he practiced internal medicine for more than half a century. The practice, now known as the Center for Internal Medicine, is headed by Kandiah Sritharan, MD. “My father was unbelievably supportive, no matter what you did,” says Len Fasano, the physician’s only son. “For my sister Valerie and me, he was always there whenever you needed him. I think he always believed that people are extraordinarily important, no matter what their background or part of society they came from, and he taught me this. I guess that’s why I went into politics — to help people.” Fasano says his father loved New Haven and Yale University. “He loved the traditions of Yale football,” notes Fasano, himself a Yale graduate who played football under legendary coach Carmen Cozza. Fasano says his father didn’t mind that he chose law over medicine, though the younger Fasano was initially interested in medicine. “He was always a frustrated lawyer,” says Fasano, noting that his own grandfather was a lawyer as well as his father’s brothers. “He always felt free to give legal advice because he felt he knew the law. He was part of that generation that had respect for society, for politics, for judges and for lawyers. He always told me that every judge he treated was never called by their first name. It was always ‘Judge So-and-So.’ He felt that they earned that title and that respect.” The younger Fasano revealed his interest in medicine later, when as a state senator he sponsored and helped to pass legislation to create a Connecticut Umbilical Cord Blood Collection Board to establish a statewide umbilical cord blood collection program. The technology allows families and individuals to tap into rich nutrients provided by umbilical cord blood for future use in many treatments as well as a source of stem cells that is an exact genetic match to a baby, with no risk of rejection. “He loved to play tennis nonstop, every day, but he wasn’t a golfer,” says Fasano. “He was always up for a game of touch football, even into his late 70s. He loved Matt Sanchez, who plays for the New York Jets, though he’d be very disappointed today, seeing that he didn’t pan out [the Jets finished their 2012 campaign with a 6-10 record].

The senior Fasano was ‘a doctor that people looked up to, maybe more so than they do now,’ says Len Fasano of his late father. ‘[H]e always believed that people are extraordinarily important, regardless of ‘their background or part of society they came from.’

He loved the New York Giants as well and always loved Yale football, especially when I was playing for Yale. He was very close to Carm Cozza, whom he considered a very dear friend.” Fasano says his father’s gentle nature was something his patients admired. “He was a doctor that people looked up to, maybe more so then than they do now,” adds Fasano. “But he never felt he was ever above anybody. He talked to anybody from any part of society and I marveled at that ability in him. I think he showed his patients those qualities.” “He was a very thoughtful diagnostician,” says Edith W. Kufta of New Haven, who was a patient of Fasano’s from 1964 until his death. “One of his patients told me that he was on the phone with Dr. Fasano one day talking about his own illness when his wife began coughing in the background. Dr. Fasano wanted to know how long she’d been coughing and told the man to bring his wife in. The man said that Dr. Fasano diagnosed her and cured her. That was the kind of man he was.” In one of her own experiences, Kufta’s daughter woke up with severe pain in her stomach so

she took the girl to see her own doctor who then referred her to the emergency room at the hospital in New Haven. They failed to diagnose her condition so a friend recommended that Kufta bring her daughter to Fasano. “He examined her and diagnosed her as having the grippe, an old-fashioned term” for influenza, says Kufta. “But he was right and after treating her, she was cured. He treated me for 47 years and always determined what was wrong with me. One time, I had a bad cough that went on for many days and went to see him. He examined me and discovered I had whooping cough. “He actually reported it to one of the medical journals noting that several others of his older patients had it. He feared that it was an epidemic among elderly people. Eventually the journal editor agreed with him and alerted the rest of the medical community.” “He was always interested in his patients’ concerns and talked to them about all aspects of their lives,” adds Kufta. “I’m sure that all of his patients will agree with me when I say he is sorely missed.”

— Thomas R. Violante


Congratulations Yale-New Haven Hospital salutes the 2012 Healthcare Heroes. Your hard work and dedication are improving the quality of healthcare throughout the region.

www.ynhh.org

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NURSE OF THE YEAR Kelly Grimshaw Nurse, Yale New Haven Hospital Board of Directors, Doctors Without Borders

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eroism can often be characterized by the willingness do something for others in the face of danger. That much can safely be said of those who volunteer far and wide for Doctors Without Borders. The privately-funded organization was started in France in 1971 (official name Médecins Sans Frontières [MSF]) as an impartial medical humanitarian organization providing care to people caught in the turmoil of armed conflicts,

Confronting a World of Hurt Doctors Without Borders nurse volunteer Kelly Grimshaw has traveled the globe to help those who can’t help themselves epidemics, malnutrition, natural disasters or simply dearth of available health care. The group earned a Nobel Peace Prize in 1999, the same year Kelly Grimshaw joined. Currently a nursing educator in transplants at Yale-New Haven Hospital (YNHH), the 47-year-old Grimshaw always knew she wanted to be a nurse. She earned her bachelor’s and master’s in nursing from the University of Connecticut (in 1988 and

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‘I could just backpack around the world and do my own thing, but I have a skill set that can help somebody else, so why not help out?’ says Grimshaw, pictured here in a pediatric ICU in Monrovia, Liberia.

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1995, respectively), and was a nurse at YNHH —first on the surgical trauma floor and then the surgical intensive-care unit from 1989 to 1999, when she was struck by the urge to join something larger than herself. “The drive was partially selfish,” Grimshaw recalls. “An adventure spirit is in many who come to work for the organization. If you want adventure and want to get to know an area, you might as well get to be productive while you’re there. I could just backpack around the world and do my own thing, but I have a skill set that can help somebody else, so why not help out?” It was while packing to volunteer in the Amazon rainforest for a small organization in Peru that she got the call for what would be her first MSF mission: a year-long stint working at a tuberculosis clinic in Turkmenistan. “I called my mother and told her, ‘Mom, I’m going to Peru for three weeks, I’m coming home for a day, and then I’m going to Turkmenistan for a year. Can you pack up my house?” Grimshaw would take part in nine missions as an active volunteer with MSF through 2009, ranging in length from six weeks to nearly 18 months (spent as a medical coordinator in Angola), and visiting countries as far out as China, Indonesia and many territories in Africa, assisting with civil and ethnic conflicts, the HIV pandemic, and outbreaks of cholera, Marburg Hemorrhagic Fever, meningitis and measles. In Turkmenistan the MSF team was able to convert a derelict former hotel into a makeshift tuberculosis hospital. Even such makeshift infrastructure as that isn’t always available, and sometimes a tent or simply the back of a pickup truck would have to make do as a facility. She’s worked with as many as 30 fellow expatriates, or as few as four. She points to her work treating HIV as an example of how MSF has been able to diagnose and treat infections in settings with few resources. “It used to be that we couldn’t diagnose HIV,” she explains. “Now it’s under every mango tree we can diagnose this disease. We’re bringing more and more of the high-tech [medical devices and procedures] to resource-poor settings, looking at telemedicine and bringing a full-on operating room. There are ventilators, surgical kits, sterilization rooms — it’s all there.” But MSF volunteers often find themselves in unstable parts of the world, often in the middle of a conflict. The key to safety in most cases, Grimshaw says, is to be aware of what you’re doing and where you are at all times. “It’s your own behavior” that’s key, she notes. “There are always pockets of suspicion and fear, and they have to be dealt with accordingly with patience and transparency. [Let] people know who you are, where you are, why you’re there.

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Apologize for making mistakes; all the things you would do to let the community know you’re an honest person.” Grimshaw recalls an instance shortly after 9/11 when she was working with victims of an ethnic conflict in Indonesia where people in town commonly wore “I Love Osama Bin Laden” T-shirts. “There I was, an American citizen helping people who were not well-liked in the area. I wasn’t physically threatened, but it was mentally exhausting with people saying things to you constantly,” she says. But reaction to her as an MSF worker has mostly been overwhelmingly positive, and she’s been rewarded with gratitude and generosity in most cases, whether in the form of an appreciative Thai police officer, a helpful Parisian taxi driver, or a Turkmen grandmother extending an invite for breakfast and vodka. “It took me three days to tell my parents I was going to Sierra Leone, and then I’m not sleeping because I think I’m going to get shot as soon as I get there, that it will be complete chaos, and then I get to the airport and someone hands me a soda and says ‘Welcome to Sierra Leone,’” she recalls with a laugh. Eventually, traveling on missions to dangerous destinations became routine: “I came home from Zambia, would take two days off and come back

to work and people ask, ‘How was Zambia?’ and I’d just say, ‘Oh, it was fine.’ What else do you say?” While Grimshaw went on her last mission with MSF in 2009, she remains a member of the organization’s board of directors, even as she enjoys being more stationary these days, enjoying her home in Cheshire. “I do sometimes miss the issues around tropical medicine; it’s an interesting field of study,” she allows. “But trauma and transplant are also very interesting to me, so here I am. Whatever anyone’s facing is the most important issue to them; it’s always the patient in front of you who matters most. You just do the best you can where you are. “Over time I found I wanted to be home,” says Grimshaw. “Now I have a house, a pet, and I feel really fortunate that my good friends have stayed my good friends through this decade, and my parents are still here and healthy.” There are typically between 27,000 and 30,000 Doctors Without Borders volunteers in the field at any given time, and in 2011 they offered assistance to patients in 67 countries. Grimshaw says the typical American physician who volunteers is either young, has little or no school debt, and hasn’t joined a practice yet, or is on the other side — debts paid, their own children through college, etc.

A healthy community starts with a healthy commitment.

Grimshaw says MSF will continue to emphasize certain diseases — particularly HIV, tuberculosis, and malaria — and provide care for those infected, especially as funding sources come under stress. “We’ve treated thousands of people [with HIV], and we’ve got big projects in Myanmar, South Africa, and Zambia’s program was handed over to their ministry of health. The funding for HIV seems to be diminishing at a time when the medical profession has just really proven that treatment is prevention.” The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, which raises money from donors every three years, pulled in only about half of its budgeted $20 billion for funding through 2013, and froze grants until after 2014 after uncovering a misuse of funds in 2011. Grimshaw notes that every mission MSF dedicates itself to is based on first-hand account of the need for action. Nothing happens unless they’ve seen it for themselves, and oftentimes being there is key simply to maintain awareness, particularly when fighting diseases like HIV. “Our hope is that [research and development] in the world is driven by what needs are out there, and not by other entities,” she says. “One of the ways we can advocate for that is to be there on the ground.”

— John Mordecai

That’s why we applaud Business New Haven’s 2012 Healthcare Heroes. Their vision and leadership improve the quality of life in our community. After all, a healthy community is everyone’s responsibility. We believe all of us working together can help to make our community stronger … better … healthier. And we’re just committed to doing our part. For more information visit anthem.com.

Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield is the trade name of Anthem Health Plans, Inc. Independent licensee of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association. ® ANTHEM is a registered trademark of Anthem Insurance Companies, Inc. The Blue Cross and Blue Shield names and symbols are registered marks of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association. *Life and disability plans available through our affiliate, Anthem Life Insurance Company. 23698CTEENABS 8/11

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ADVANCEMENT OF HEALTH CARE AWARD Dr. David Leffell Dermatologist, Researcher, CEO Yale Medical Group

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hree decades ago, some physicians began noticing unusual-looking skin lesions on a substantial number of male patients. David Leffell was one of those doctors. “In the early 1980s I was in New York, at [Memorial] Sloane-Kettering [Cancer Center],” Leffell recalls. “I was seeing men coming in with purple spots” — cancerous tumors that soon would become known beyond the medical community by their technical identification: Kaposi’s sarcoma. “They were people with HIV,” explains Leffell, who conducted research on what would become a major medical focus. “It was clear to me that was an exciting new area.” That experience is what sparked Leffell’s interest in dermatology. Currently one of the most renowned physicians in his field, his work revolves around prevention, treatment and diagnosis of skin cancer. Today Leffell is deputy dean for clinical affairs at the Yale School of Medicine, and for the past 15 years he’s headed the Yale Medical Group — one of the largest faculty practices in the country. The organization offers care in more than 100 specialties.

Skin in the Game Dermatologist David Leffell has declared war on skin cancer

“The purpose is to oversee strategies for the state. That’s been my big role for 15 years,” says Leffell, whose tenure concluded last year. When he first took the position he sought to make the group better. “At that time Yale was primarily a research medical school. I wanted to make it more patient [oriented].” Among initiatives instituted under Leffell’s watch were patient-satisfaction ratings. “We had a great deal of success,” he notes. For example, patients noted less than total satisfaction with something so fundamental it could easily be overlooked by quality-assurance personnel: the telephone system. “There’s always been a problem with people getting through by phone. [So] we implemented a monitoring system,” says Leffell. For inpatients, a common source of dissatisfaction is food, and for office-based practices, “The No. 1 complaint is parking,” Leffell notes. Such information might not be known — and improvements made — without the patientsatisfaction ratings.

“So we’ve made great strides,” Leffell says. “Transition is essential to stay alive,” he adds, and the time has come for “new blood” to head the group. He still has ideas about the course of the group’s future, however. As a new CEO of the Yale Medical Group begins to assess needs and devise ways of addressing those needs, Leffell says he’d like to “see a new strategy laid out. I’d like to see physicians and other providers, such as nurse practitioners, take more of a leadership role in health care.” Leffell also has helped to advance the field of dermatology through research and invention. He was instrumental in the discovery of the skin cancer gene PTCH and the protein it is involved in coding, and holds joint patents for that discovery. He also holds a patent for a medical instrument that measures aging of the skin. In addition, Leffell has developed a streamlined method for treating vitiligo surgically. Leffell is also a prolific author, having written or co-written more than 120 published works. Among them is Manual of Skin Surgery, and Fitzpatrick’s Dermatology in General Medicine, a

PHOTO: TOM VIOLANTE

Leffell supports legislation to regulate use of tanning beds by minors. ‘We are ignoring, damaging and hurting our children,’ he says, ‘and I’m the one who sees the end result.’

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leading dermatology textbook which Leffell edited. Leffell’s book Total Skin: The Definitive Guide to Whole Skin Care for Life was published in 2000. Refreshingly absent of medical jargon, it was written as a handy education tool about skin health for the general public. It has been widely used by laypersons as a reader-friendly reference book. Born and raised in Montreal, Leffell came to the United States for undergraduate study at Yale. He returned to Canada to earn his medical degree at McGill University in Montreal. He came back to Yale in 1988 to join the School of Medicine faculty as an assistant professor. Leffell and his family (he is a married father of two) have residences in New Haven and the Litchfield County town of Norfolk. Active in the local community, he extends himself beyond the medical field. He is, for example, a board member of New Haven’s Artspace and of Connecticut Public Television, and is also a Hopkins School trustee. Leffell has even ventured into photography. A 2011 coffee table book, Connecticut Pastoral, designed by Leffell’s niece, Rebecca Leffell, features

his striking scenic photographs of locations across the state. “One of my pastimes is photography,” says Leffell. He gives the book to people who make charitable donations to special causes. Among causes about which Leffell is most adamant is the dermatological harm that can be caused by tanning salons. “Far and away the most important cause of skin cancer is ultraviolet radiation,” he notes. Leffell has fought vigorously for legislation that would require parental consent for minors to utilize tanning facilities. However, his advocacy has been met with resistance from some politicians and others set squarely against such legislation. “So that was my introduction to politics,” say Leffell, who maintains such legislation is needed. “We are ignoring, damaging and hurting our children” without it, he says, “and I’m the one who sees the end result. I’m the one who has to operate on them.”

ST. VINCENT’S Continued From Page 30

underserved populations, according to Marcus. Community assessments sometimes uncover surprises. Marcus says he underestimated the behavioral needs of the community until they were brought to light through analyzed surveys. After that, says Marcus, “We certainly put more resources into place.” For example, “We opened up a separate behavioral health section in our emergency department. That was very difficult because behavioral health patients require different types of attention — a different skill set to help them.” Being able to measure success tangibly is one of the rewarding aspects of being part of St. Vincent’s administration, notes Davis. Take, for example, those safety improvements. In situations where so much can happen and so many variables are involved, even incremental changes can be crucial. “I wanted to change the notion that it was given that a patient on a ventilator gets pneumonia” — a not uncommon development in hospitals. “In three and a half years,” says Davis, “we haven’t had a patient on a ventilator get pneumonia. “There’s something called birth trauma [mechanical injury during the birth process] that happens to babies,” Davis adds. She proudly notes, “We haven’t had a birth trauma in over four and a half years.” — Felicia Hunter

in Connecticut. It’s a very diverse community,” says Marcus, who admires “St. Vincent’s ability to treat all patients along the spectrum of that diversity.” Marcus holds a unique administrative perspective. Like Davis — a registered nurse — Marcus, a physician, brings a practitioner’s viewpoint to medical center decision-making. “I came here in 2006 because of the cancer center,” Marcus says. “Another draw here is the holistic care,” he adds, citing the Swim Across the Sound fundraiser as particularly impacting. “It’s an example of how St. Vincent’s offers holistic care — mind, body and spirit. Therapeutic massage, yoga, aquatherapy, all are offered because of funds raised by the Swim.”Following in line with that first needs assessment by the Daughters of Charity, St. Vincent’s continues to gauge community needs through regular surveys. “We look at some of the most pressing needs in the community and put services in place to meet the needs,” says Marcus. Most urgent maladies have included diabetes, heart disease, cancer and asthma. A high level of breast cancer, as well as disparities among minority patients, prompted the health center to augment its preventive-care offerings. A mobile mammography screening, for example, increases screening access for

Photo©JimFiora

Yale-New Haven Hospital Pediatric Cardiac Catheterization Laboratory

Congratulations to all of the 2012 HealthCare Heroes!

— Felicia Hunter Delivering client satisfaction for over half a century

JANUARY 2013 • HEALTHCARE HEROES

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COMMUNITY SERVICE AWARD St. Vincent’s Medical Center CEO, Susan Davis Stuart Marcus, President

A Commitment to Caring In 1905 St. Vincent’s was founded by the Daughters of Charity — which has remained its watchword ever since

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t. Vincent’s Medical Center’s mission to improve its hospital safety undertaken a few yeas ago is an illustrative indicator of the kind of service-oriented management style in which it drapes itself. For precedent, the hospital consulted the rigorously precise nuclear power industry. “Health care needs to learn some lessons from other industries that have significantly improved safety” says medical center CEO Susan Davis. When Davis arrived at the Bridgeport hospital ten years ago, one of the primary attractions for her was the dedication to providing service to indigent populations while continuing to strive for improvement. “What was great was the hospital’s commitment and incredible caring for the poor and vulnerable,” says Davis. “There were opportunities I saw to improve the patient experience, and strengthen safety and quality of care.” That stress on compassionate and quality patient attention is what has earned St. Vincent’s a solid reputation as a leader in health care. Consumer Reports has recognized it as being among the top three Connecticut hospitals for safety, Professional Research Consultants named it a National Excellence in Healthcare GOLD Award recipient in 2010, and in 2012 the Connecticut Hospital Association gave the center its John D. Thompson Award for safety, among other accolades. St. Vincent’s is a member of Ascension Health, the country’s most expansive Catholic non-profit health-care system. It opened in 1905 after the Daughters of Charity, a women’s religious group, conducted a needsassessment. With 473 beds in its Bridgeport hospital and 76 beds at a Westport inpatient psychiatric facility, St. Vincent’s also maintains specialty and satellite offerings that include urgent care/walk-in centers. behavioral health services, specialty needs services, St. Vincent’s College, the Michael J. Daly Emergency Department and the new Elizabeth M. Pfriem Swim Center for Cancer Care. An exciting development for administrators is the medical center’s partnership with Quinnipiac University. Last year the center was named primary clinical partner with Quinnipiac’s new Frank H. Netter MD School of Medicine, which will matriculate its inaugural class this September. “That’s something I personally spearheaded,” says St. Vincent President Stuart Marcus, MD. “Quinnipiac chose us as their primary teaching hospital. Having medical students here will allow us to expand our community focus. There’s nothing more important than training tomorrow’s physicians.” “That’s really exciting, to think that we’ll have a role in training medical students,” adds Davis. “The focus with Quinnipiac is really primary care.” The center is determined to keep tabs on its

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St. Vincent CEO Susan Davis and President Stuart Marcus tout the hospital’s partnership with the new Quinnipiac University medical school as well as its commitment to holistic treatment of the community, especially the poor and those unable to pay for care

quality of care. To help do this, a Patient & Family Advisory Board was established in 2007. The group is charged with ensuring that care is focused on patients and their families, that there’s open communication between patients and staff about issues and concerns, maintaining an atmosphere of respect and building patient satisfaction, and strengthening community ties, among other responsibilities. General governance of care is guided by the medical center’s adherence to the National Council of Catholic Bishops’ Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services guidelines. In its mission statement the center

stresses its commitment to “the healing ministry of Jesus.” It aims to “provide quality, holistic care to all faiths with special concerns for those who are poor, vulnerable and underserved.” That was a major draw for Marcus when he considered joining the St. Vincent’s staff. “One of the reasons I came to St. Vincent’s is the community focus regardless of the [patient’s] ability to pay,” he says. “The mission drives the strategy and the operations and the culture at the hospital. “Each person is a person. Bridgeport is the largest city in Connecticut and the poorest city Continued on page 29

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Congratulates the following 2012 Health Care Heroes:

Educator of the Year

DR. BRUCE KOEPPEN

Founding Dean of Quinnipiac’s Frank H. Netter School of Medicine Corporate Achievement

PATRICK CHARMEL CEO, Griffin Hospital

Health Care Professional

GLENN ELIA CEO, Connecticut Orthopaedic Community Service, Corporate

ST. VINCENT’S MEDICAL CENTER These awards identify distinguished leaders in the health care industry who, through dedication to their practice and their patients, exemplify what it means to be heroes.

Quinnipiac University | Hamden, CT www.quinnipiac.edu


You put your heart into helping others

and it shows.

Congratulations to this year’s Health Care Heroes, outstanding professionals who are improving lives throughout Greater New Haven. We are proud to honor your achievements in the health care field.

www.connecticare.com © 2013 ConnectiCare, Inc. & Affiliates


Levy, who has two machines with digital-imaging capabilities in his State Street office, compares the new tooth single-day procedure (as opposed to the previous two or three weeks) to the process of getting a new tire for one’s car. If a person has a flat, they want the new tire right away — no “donuts” (or temporary teeth).

teeth to make sure they like it,” says Lerch. “It’s like being able to take a test drive for a new car you’re driving.”

“Dentistry used to be like that,” Levy says. “Don’t eat caramel foods; don’t go over 15 miles an hour. People want things immediately. This is what this generation thinks like.”

All dentists agree the innovation in the industry is not just about the technology, but material science has played a role as well.

With CEREC, a dentist can take about 25 minutes to design and ten minutes to produce one crown, then bake it for 20 minutes to cure it. “If it’s not the instant gratification,” Levy adds, “it’s the time.” And the accuracy, dentists agree. But not all offices deem it necessary to make the technological transition, As Lerch points out it is likewise crucial to test out the tooth before it becomes a permanent part of the patient’s body. “We take the extra step of the trial

All the same, Fredric Rosen, DDS of Progressive Dentistry in New Haven adds that molding is still the predominate method, as the new technology brings a steep learning curve to be proficient at it.

“Material science has changed everything,” says Gross. He says e.max lithium disilicate crowns have become “very, very, very strong,” and dentists have been able to create all-porcelain crowns, which is an enormous advancement because crowns were more prone to fracture in the past. Lava (a trade name) porcelain crowns and bridges, for example, do not need metal or gold components, whereas up until about five years ago, crown fillings would have some component metal in them, explains Gross.

Rosen says his industry is continuously searching for better filling and composite materials, and the findings have improved in terms of strength and cosmetics. He says as far as porcelain crowns, they have become more natural appearing with the way they reflect light, relating to that of natural tooth enamel. He notes silver filling still far exceed white fillings with regard to their rate of deterioration. All of the procedures fit for improving the structure of damaged teeth may be in high demand, but whitening seems to take the win for most-desired cosmetic procedure. Though nothing has changed much in that process, as dentists are still sticking to traditional bleaching. “The trick is to not get hooked by the manufacturers’ hype and do your own research,” Rosen says.

is one of two cosmetic dentists in the state certified by the American Academy of Cosmetic Dentistry, “I would call it an innovation.” Levy explains employers are looking at an entirely different population of workers to hire. Assistants have to be verbally trained and computer-literate, undergoing different training than before computer technology made broad inroads into cosmetic dentistry. He adds the dentist is only part of the ingredient. Saying the changes in technology have come about because of the digital age, Lerch asks rhetorically, “Are we ready for the next phase?” Cosmetic dentistry has come very far very fast, Gross emphasizes, but it is not about what dentists want — it’s about what the patients want.

Regardless of time or technical efficiency, the dentists conclude that the progression toward innovation in cosmetic dentistry involves more than scientific advancements.

“I think we have the technology there, and those people who are really responsive have all the technology,” Levy says. “I can call myself a cosmetic dentist, but I have to cater to what [the patients] need.”

“The training of a doctor,” according to Lerch, who says he

After all, Lerch adds, every smile is a work of art. Just ask Mona Lisa.

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Built With Friends By Duo Dickinson

A close creative collaboration yields an open-plan home that belies its size

A wonderfully clean kitchen design by Christine Ingraham allows for everyone gathered to eat or socialize to be included in the act of cooking. Note the side study access (left) extends s the south wall of the home, and the strategically placed bare steel column and beam (right) allow for the entry and storage cabinetry to claim its space amid the openness.

Photographs: Anthony DeCarlo 28 January/February 2013

NEWHAVENMAGAZINE.COM


AT HOME By DUO DICKINSON budget. But artists know the value of design. And these artist sisters also knew the deep value of friendship. Judy’s best friend was Christine Ingraham, a principal in the millwork design firm of Fletcher Cameron Design, also in Guilford. And that friendship, and this amazing site, found a second life — all thanks to Ingraham’s insightful direction.

W O F N O TES hen Betsy MacDermid talks about her home in Guilford, she immediately brings up her twin sister, fellow artist Judy Streeter, who died more than a decade ago. Judy and her husband had discovered the eight-acre site lofted over an incredible array of salt marshes on a walk in the 1990s. Living in West Hartford at the time, Betsy recalls the bond between the sisters was strong. “Guilford was my second home,” she says now. So it was natural that the sisters thought of buying the property together, tearing down the sorry home facing in the wrong location and subdividing the land to create two home sites for the emptynesting life before them. But life intervened and that dream ended when Judy passed away. But the land remained. And beckoned. Betsy and her husband Bruce decided that the property was just too special to not be part of their life and made an offer when it came on the market. They bonded with the owner who accepted their offer, turning down a developer’s higher bid that would have flooded this raw and wild perch with more, larger and less thoughtful homes. First they opened up a bullbriar and poison ivy overgrowth to reveal a place of bare rock outcroppings, large second-growth trees (from after the site ceased to be a pasture) and a perfect perch for a spectacular view. Ninety-five percent of those building a new home find a plan they like on the Internet or in a plan book, or trust a builder to show them designs that fit their

Ingraham did not design the MacDermids’ new home. However, at the behest of Betsy and Bruce she did become the hub of its creation. First she created a short list of architects that reflected the crisp sensibilities of her own sleek Modern interiors — and, more importantly, dovetailed perfectly with Betsy’s art. After interviews the MacDermids selected architects Studio 8, consisting of two very recent Yale grads, Aaron Amosson and Audrey McGuire. It was a leap of faith, based on the personal connection and Christine’s encouragement since the pair had yet to design and build a house. Their first effort is a quietly elegant presence in a raw landscape. Since the home’s completion a couple of years ago the couple has spread its locus to Minneapolis. Next a builder was found in Mike Houde of Clinton, whose “level of craft and expertise brought to the process was invaluable,” explains Amosson. This is not the story of an ego-imposing architect, or a validation-needy McMansionbuilding family, or a moneygrubbing builder taking advantage of the situation. This is a story of trust and friendship, a collaboration choreographed by Christine Ingraham — where a site, aesthetics and values all came new haven

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A simple cast-block fireplace with steel mantle collect the visual focus of a carefully crafted series of glass windows and doors as they transition around a corner, expanding the capture of the view.

Kitchens By Gedney, Inc. Fine Cabinetry for the Home www.gedneykitchens.com

Madison • 203.245.2172 • 30 January/February 2013

NEWHAVENMAGAZINE.COM


A fine example of architecture that responds to a fully open interior site: A sweep of glass frames a dramatic view using large eaves overhangs to prevent weather from damaging the windows and doors.

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Design makes the difference. 640 Boston Post Rd., Guilford CT • 203.453.4358 www.KitchenBathGallery.com

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869 ORANGE ST, #5W, NH - Armory Court in East Rock $359,000 - Beautiful tri-level 3 bdrm/2.1 bth townhouse style condo steps from E. Rock park. Private entrance, laundry hook-up, updated kitchen, hard. flrs, partial bsmt, 2 off-street pkg, balconies. Call Cheryl Szczarba 203-996-8328

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81 CHURCH ST, #2E, NH - Exciting downtown loft just steps from the NH Green w/bamboo flrs, exposed brick walls & steel truss wall of windows over looking your own priv 500 sq ft deck. Bamboo flrs. Laundry. Open flr plan. $424.900. Call Cheryl Szczarba 203-996-8328

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together to create a gentle tour de force. Studio 8’s basic design premise was simple: “The ecologically sustainable aspects of the house are achieved with low-tech means.” First this home limits its footprint and area to 1,900 square feet. Its slightly bent, oblong shape has two discrete sleeping spaces and bathrooms, as well as a few other spaces where visitors can rest their heads. These flanking rooms share an open center where a family comes together for celebrations of food, art and friendships. The large open center of the home has tall ceilings, long strips of windows high above its northfacing entry, and a full glass wall of doors and fixed glazing facing the southerly salt marsh views. The sweep and openness of the central living/dining space is gathered on one side by a modern concrete block and steel fireplace (whose 18th century old Rumford design firebox kicks out far more heat than flies up the flue). On the other side is a classic Fletcher Cameron kitchen wrought of steel, wood, colored panels and stone. The home’s entire sensibility is clean and clear-eyed Modernist — where polished concrete floors, expressed steel structure and flowing built-ins along the entire north side circulation path have a scale and flow that makes a small home feel generous. Opposite the long north wall of raw steel, expressive millwork, wall-forming window seats, storage and bookcases and south-facing glass wall posed real concerns. All parties knew that so much glass can be a maintenance nightmare and a never-ending heating and cooling cost. Careful bidding of options made Lowen windows the right choice. Their very thin frames and muntins and terrific hardware fuse outside and inside with style while being tight to weather and easy to operate. But no window can overcome the elements without help from the architecture. And here Studio 8 created large overhangs of metalclad roofing that shield the glass

from summer sun and torrential downpours of a coastal site that ruin glass doors and windows over time. Open homes have the potential to be cold and harsh. But Studio 8 and Fletcher Cameron Design created moments of detail and material expression than allow a simple place to capture the huge view without being a mute frame. An oak stair to a small loft, the nestled bookcases in window seats, the expressed steel connections and elegant contrasts within Ingraham’s millwork designs all evidence the human touch that makes a small structure a home. Subdued techie lighting, stainless-steel appointments and trimless openings add touches of detail to the quietly contemporary spaces as well. Bruce MacDermid’s father was a builder in West Hartford whose life was dedicated to building classic New England Colonial homes. Nurtured in this traditional oeuvre, Bruce found joy in “marrying a creative person.” The couple have left the suburban home where they raised their children, split time between a new apartment in Hartford and this Guilford retreat that will ultimately become home base. It is not only a place to rest their heads, but for Betsy to display her life’s work — art — and to celebrate her sister’s art as well. The twin’s work now has a home that gives their artful history an intimately sophisticated context. The care of this home’s creation is palpable in the final product. Carefully nestled in the landscape, perfectly oriented to open up to a fully accessible view, its tightly wrought horizontal lines are a foil for the rocks and trees it sits amid. Its interior is both a mini-museum and a frame for viewing the salt-water infused passage of seasons that is coastal Connecticut. Every inch considered, designed and crafted with care. Muses Betsy MacDermid, “We are living spare, but not living without.” new haven

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New and (Spectacularly) Improved By ALIX BOYLE

Re-opening of renovated Yale University Art Gallery allows visitors to experience old artworks in a new light

Photographs: Elizabeth Felicella 34 January/February 2013

NEWHAVENMAGAZINE.COM


hen was the last time you visited the Yale University Art Gallery? If it’s been a while, don’t feel bad. The grand re-opening took place only a nanosecond ago, on December 12.

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This Grande Dame of university museums is ready and waiting, fresh from her $135 million renovation, for your arrival. You’ll recognize your old favorite works like Vincent Van Gogh’s “Night Café” and Edward Hopper’s “Rooms by the Sea.” But they’re hung in new ways, in gorgeous new spaces bathed with light. Here’s the lowdown from Maura Scanlon, YUAG’s director of public relations. The university undertook the renovation and expansion by combining three buildings: the 1953 modernist box designed by Louis Kahn (some say the building itself is the most significant work of art in the collection), the old Yale Art Gallery built in 1928 and the Street Hall building erected in 1866. Private and individual donors footed the bulk of the bill. The refurbished gallery houses 69,975 square feet of exhibition space (compared to 40,266 square feet pre-expansion) and

occupies a block and a half of Chapel Street. The museum owns some 200,000 objects (okay, some of these are coins, which ups this number considerably, but you get the idea), and the expansion allows for 4,000 works to be on display at any given time. One of the best things about living in New Haven is its museums: world-class collections but hardly ever crowded. The Yale gallery owns a wide and deep collection of treasures that includes something for everyone including American, European old masters, and modern and contemporary art as well as new collections of African, Asian, Indo-Pacific, Ancient American, Ancient Mediterranean and Asian art — each with its own gallery. The American decorative arts collection of Colonial furniture, silver and everyday household objects is one of the finest in the country. Photography, prints, drawings, Islamic art and coins are also represented. Its mission is to teach, Scanlon says, and there is an example here of just about anything anyone would want to study. When he cut the ribbon on the renovation, YUAG Director Jock Reynolds, himself an

artist, reminded those in attendance that the museum is here for everyone to come and enjoy. “The new galleries are superb places for viewing art, with space for generous installations in which recently acquired works provide new perspectives on longtime favorites,” Reynolds said at the opening. Admission is free, so what are you waiting for? Need an excuse to visit the museum? The scenarios below will give you food for thought.

If you’ve got just 15 minutes…Take in the new Art of the Ancient Mediterranean installation on the first floor. Housed in a beautiful section of the first floor of the old Yale Art Gallery with light streaming in through Gothic windows, it includes a spectacular 6th century A.D. mosaic from Gerasa (modern-day Jordan) depicting Alexandria and Memphis. The collection also new haven

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includes Greek and Roman statues, vases, portraits and sculpture from as back as the 9th century B.C.

boxing piece, “Taking the Count” and a work with rowing as its subject, “John Bilgin in a Single Scull.”

If you’re entertaining a six-year-old… Download a few photos of paintings from the YUAG website (artgallery.yale.edu) and make your way through the museum searching for those works. Some kid favorites include Picasso’s “First Steps” and Van Gogh’s “Night Café.” If your young charge for some reason is less than thrilled with a trip to an art museum, promise hot chocolate at Atticus across the street (the museum does not have a café).

If you want to see something new…Try the expanded African art collection. Photographs of Africa on the walls are juxtaposed with a strong collection of ritual figures and masks as well as a collection of terra-cotta figures. Be sure to spend some time with D’mba, a mask representing a beautiful mother that would have been used at weddings, funerals and agricultural festivals.

If you’re a history buff…There are a ton of historical paintings by patriot-artist John Trumbull including the famous “Declaration of Independence.” There is also a fascinating collection of miniature portraits that were used to memorialize deceased family members complete with a lock of hair on the back. Not to be missed is “The Veteran,” a haunting portrait of Civil War soldier George Reynolds by Thomas Eakins. The expression in the subject’s eyes truly captures the horror of war. If you’re a sports enthusiast…Be sure to check out the Thomas Eakins paintings in the American wing including the monumental

If your decorator aunt from out of town is visiting…Take her to see one of the world’s best collections of furniture, silverware and decorative objects, including a recently acquired Southwestern chair made of bullhorns and upholstered in ocelot fur. Once you have worked your way through the handsome Colonial and Federal period chairs and highboys, make sure to see the modern side with its vacuum cleaners, clocks and other iconic 20th and 21st century objects. Relatives from New York who dress completely in black and love modern art are visiting…Rush them to the special exhibition, The Société Anonyme: Modernism for

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America. This comprises works by more than 100 artists who made significant contributions to Modernism: Paul Klee, Piet Mondrian, Joseph Stella and Constantin Brancusi, for example. Do not miss Marcel Duchamp’s “Tu m’” (1918), a quirky oil painting that incorporates a bottle brush, three safety pins and a bolt. The Société Anomyme was founded in 1920 by three artists: Connecticut’s Katherine Sophie Drier, Duchamp and Man Ray. The society was created to promote contemporary art to American audiences and believed that the story of modern art should be told by artists. Your Thursday night dinner date says she’s going to be 30 minutes late…Instead of tapping your foot on Chapel Street, spend the time in the museum that’s open until 8 p.m. on Thursdays (except in summer). You need to chill outdoors for a few minutes… Head for the new rooftop sculpture garden. There’s a monumental Henry Moore sculpture, benches to sit and reflect, and a spectacular view of New Haven. You’ve got an entire afternoon…see the whole museum.

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Anthony’s Ocean View 11th Annual Sweetheart Bridal Show A Fantastic Wedding Cake

Join us on Sunday, January 27th 2013 from 11:00 to 4:00 p.m. with over 100 bridal professionals as we showcase our venue and share an opportunity for you to learn about services that every excited bride needs to know about! Admission is free, with complimentary hors d’oeuvres and a fabulous fashion show highlighting this spectacular event! Don’t forget our incredible Grand Prize Give Away Event. The first Prize winner takes home an amazing All-Inclusive Wedding Package valued at $27,000! Come and join us for our Sweetheart Bridal Show and find out why Anthony’s Ocean View is Connecticut’s premiere wedding location! For more information visit www.AnthonysOceanView.com or call 203-469-9010.

At Rocco’s Pastry Shop and Bakery we specialize in beautifully designed wedding and birthday cakes. We’re a local Fair Haven Neighborhood bakery and we’ve been serving satisfied customers for more than thirty years. Bring your wedding cake ideas to us and we’ll work with you to assure your special day has a personalized cake baked with craft and care and the finest ingredients, to assure your guests a tasty treat worthy of your wedding celebration.We can also provide cookie trays, Danish or Italian pastry and a variety of stuffed breads to help make your wedding a unique and special feast. Rocco’s Pastry Shop and Bakery, 432 Ferry Street, New Haven, CT 06513 Est. in 1982 in Hamden. 203- 865-1187

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Fred Arsenault (left) and Euan Morton star in the Rep’s new production of Marie Jones’ Stones in His Pockets.

two to tango Director Yionoulis throws Stones to Yale Rep audiences

By BROOKS APPELBAUM

A

bare stage. Two men. Both are waiting. Does this sound familiar? Of course: One immediately thinks of Samuel Beckett’s classic, Waiting for Godot. Yet the production running at Yale Repertory Theatre from January 25 through February 16 is Marie Jones’ award-winning Stones in His Pockets, directed by the multiaward-winning Evan Yionoulis, who is also a resident director at Yale.

Audiences will most likely fly right over Beckett in the first beats of the script. One of our men, Charlie, is waiting in line for an extra helping of lemon meringue pie, while Jake — soon to become Charlie’s buddy — is waiting for his next instructions from Aisling, the third assistant director. Such is the life of extras on a film set. You wait for food. You wait for the proper light. You wait for your next instruction. You wait for your cue. Stones in His Pockets “examines concepts of artifice versus authenticity,” as Yionoulis puts it, by taking wicked aim at Hollywood — though her story could just as well be applied to any chasm between the empowered and those whom they employ. The plot focuses on a film crew shooting an Irish epic in a small village near County 38 January/February 2013

Kerry. Every American involved in the film seeks to create a genuine Irish experience for the audience, and this endeavor includes, of course, hiring local extras. The satire comes in when the Americans proceed to direct the extras to behave as they — the Americans — imagine Irish rustics would behave. In an early scene when the extras serve as backdrop for the film’s female star, Charlie asks Jake for clarification about what the director has just asked them to do. Jake says, “Look at her lookin’ at us looking dispossessed.” “Dispo what?” responds Jake. Jones’ humor gets more pointed as the leading lady struggles to perfect her Irish accent. “Don’t worry, Caroline,” says her dialect coach, John. “Ireland is only one percent of the market.” Later, as she continues to fret, John says, “Be careful, Caroline, you can’t be too exact. You won’t get away with it in Hollywood — they won’t understand.” Charlie gets the joke: “I love that, huh? Half of America here is playing Irish people and they say I am the outsider.” In a smart meta-theatrical move that requires us to focus on the question of insiders and outsiders, Jones has Charlie and Jake play all the characters, male and female alike. When I spoke to director Yionoulis the day

before rehearsals began, she was absolutely clear about what kind of story she wanted told through the two actors/many characters conceit. She has no interest in broad characterizations or caricatures. “I’m interested in getting to the truth of all these characters,” she said. In her eyes, “No one in this play is ridiculous, anymore than we all are ridiculous. Everyone is trying to do a really good job. For example, Caroline — the movie star — is trying to get her Irish dialect right. The dialect coach is trying to give his actress confidence. Aisling — the third assistant director — is trying to work her way up the ladder.” In rehearsal Yionoulis planned to experiment with props to help the actors make their transformations, but she knows that the actual production allows no time for the exchanging of props and costumes. More importantly, she doesn’t want the kind of play in which “audiences see, ‘Now I have the scarf, so I’m Caroline’ or ‘Now I have the glasses, so I’m John.’” Instead, “The shifts into new characters will be bold, strong shifts.” By “bold and strong,” she means that “Ideally, each actor will just turn his head, and we’ll be clear about who that next character is.” NEWHAVENMAGAZINE.COM


Yionoulis has no doubt that she’ll get what she needs from Fred Arsenault (who just made his Yale Rep debut earlier this season as Marie’s brother Joseph in Marie Antoinette) and Tony Award nominee Euan Morton. “I’m looking forward to working with these particular actors; they are really terrific. Even in auditions, I would see each one just instinctively look right or left and talk directly to the [invisible] other characters.” And the physical setting for this two-man, multiple-character production? Certainly a bare stage, but Yionoulis recognizes that after one decides on a bare stage, the next creative decision involves answering the question “What kind of bare stage is it?” She says, “The Americans have come to Ireland because they want authenticity, so I’m imagining green grass — but not just grass. You know how the grass at the Yale graduation

is just so beautiful, whereas the week before there wasn’t any grass to notice at all? I see that kind of grass beyond grass, meeting a backdrop of sky beyond sky.” The core of the play, of course, remains Charlie and Jake, reminds Yionoulis, and here we return, just slightly, to Beckett: “These two men have been made extras in their own lives, but they have also accepted the role of extras in their own lives.” The play’s arc — the question any script must answer in the end — rests on whether Jake and Charlie will remain “extras,” in all senses of that word, or whether — prompted in part by a very real tragedy — they will choose to move to the center of the action. Undoubtedly, Yionoulis’ vision will make the answer powerfully moving, while still serving Jones’ combination of bite and humor.

NEW HAVEN present Continued from 21

I hope before Rick Levin steps down or Mayor DeStefano decides or is “asked” to do something else, an independent group of leaders from our smart and successful group of nonprofits, banks, utilities, healthcare executives, developers, lawyers and business owners work with an independent but respected group such as the chamber to reclaim some of the roles that the city and Yale (and their surrogates such as the city’s Economic Development Commission and Market New Haven) have handled for too long. True, Yale may have to still “pay” for this for a long time. But it will benefit in the long run from a rebirth of pluralistic and involved participation in the region, even as it remains the conductor.

In Conclusion… Nearly all Connecticut cities are structurally out of balance. Without dramatically lowering costs while also maintaining if not improving

education and services, we won’t be strong and adaptive enough to compete for global talent. Yale may be our golden egg, but it is the sustainability and continued improvement of the greater New Haven environment within the New York metro area that is our goose. This is our challenge as a community. I’m biased, of course, but I think our region may even be the key to the state’s long-term viability as well. New Haven is fortunate to remain competitive as an attractive information-age destination notwithstanding the many serious challenges it continues to confront. After 375 years we retain the spark of that lonely experiment in purposeful community building on the banks of the West Creek— and a region that is both small enough and endowed with assets that can envision a path that will allow us to continue to evolve as a strong and vibrant place. Matthew Nemerson of New Haven is president of the Connecticut Technology Council.

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art

p.m. February 7) at Davison Art Center, 283 Washington Terr., Middletown. Open noon-4 p.m. daily except Mon. Free. 860-6852695, wesleyan.edu/cfa.

Continuing Opening Wood Engravers’ Network Relief Engraving Exhibition 2012 is the first juried exhibition sponsored by the Wood Engravers’ Network. This traveling exhibit features 60 prints and three artist books by 33 relief engraving artists from the U.S., Canada, Russia and the United Kingdom. January 18-February 22 at Da Silva Gallery, 897-899 Whalley Ave., New Haven. Open Wed.-Sat. 10 a.m.-7 p.m. Free. 203-387-2539, westvillegallery.com. A joint exhibition featuring Deidre Schiffer: A Retrospective and Dorothy Powers: The Women. Known for her understanding and use of light in painting, Schiffer’s portraits pursue an exploration of “a deep interest in the power of being, the ineffable sense of presence we experience in our everyday lives.” Powers is a Connecticut artist whose work addresses contemporary and sociopolitical concerns surrounding the human rights of women and girls. January 20-February 8 (opening reception 2-5 p.m. January 20) at Creative Arts Workshop, 80 Audubon St., New Haven. Open 9:30 a.m.-5:30 p.m. weekdays, 9 a.m.-noon Sat. Free. 203-562-4927, creativeartsworkshop.org. Remodeling Zilkha is a site-specific video installation by Janna Höltermann that shows the filmed gallery space within the same gallery space. The two videos of the installation extend, compress and mirror the room using the inherent architectural characteristics of the gallery (repetition, segmenting, mirroring) to reconfigure space. January 25-March 3 (opening reception 5-7 p.m. January 29) at Ezra and Cecile Zilhka Gallery, 283 Washington Terr., Middletown. Open noon –5 p.m. daily except Mon. Free. 860-685-2695, wesleyan.edu/cfa. Lucy+Jorge Orta: Food-Water-Life explores the major concerns that define the 21st century: biodiversity, environmental conditions, climate change and exchange among peoples. January 25-March 3 (opening reception and gallery talk 5-7 p.m. January 25) at Ezra & Cecile Zilhka Gallery, 283 Washington Terr., Middletown. Open noon-5 p.m. daily except Mon. Free. 860-685-2695, wesleyan.edu/cfa. Permutations by Jasper Goodrich features sculptures about pictures, transforming two-dimensional images into sculptural entities through metal casting and mold-making techniques. February 1-March 16 (opening reception 6-8 p.m. February 1; artist talk 6 p.m. February 20) at the Orison Project, 8 Railroad Ave., Building 7, Essex. Open 1-5 p.m. Wed.-Fri., 1-6 p.m. Sat. Free. 860767-7572, theorisonproject.com.

Open Book features works by Shelby Head, who uses the book as an art object. By using the versatile, flexible and ordinary material of paper, Head creates a visual interpretation of text, material, form and content. Through January 27 at City Gallery, 994 State St., New Haven. Open noon-4 p.m. Thurs.-Sun. Free. 203-782-2489, city-gallery.org. The exhibition White on White: Churches of Rural New England presents more than 40 photographs by renowned architectural photographer Steve Rosenthal depicting iconic New England meetinghouses and churches. Through January 27 at Florence Griswold Museum, 96 Lyme St., Old Lyme. Open 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tues.-Sat., 1-5 p.m. Sun. $9 ($8 seniors, $7 students, 12 & under free). 860-434-5542, flogris.com. The Art of First Lady Ellen Axson Wilson: American Impressionist illuminates the artistic career of First Lady Ellen Axson Wilson (1860-1914), first wife of President Woodrow Wilson. This is the first major retrospective of her work in 20 years. Through January 27 at Florence Griswold Museum, 96 Lyme St., Old Lyme. Open 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tues.-Sat., 1-5 p.m. Sun. $9 ($8 seniors, $7 students, 12 & under free). 860-434-5542, flogris. com. A Moment’s Notice includes works by stained-glass artist Pat Miller and watercolorist Sharon Rowley Morgio. Through January 30 at Willoughby Wallace Memorial Library, 146 Thimble Islands Rd., Stony Creek. Open Mon.-Thurs. 10 a.m.-8 p.m., Fri.-Sat. 10 a.m.-5 p.m., Sun. 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Free. 203-488-8702, wwml.org.

The radiant whitewashed clapboards of New England meetinghouses are the subject of White on White: Churches of Rural New England at the Florence Griswold Museum. Pictured: Steve Rosenthal’s image of the 1817 First Congregational Church of Old Lyme.

yale institute of sacred music presents

yale institutefujimura of sacred music presents makoto yale institute of sacred music presents The Four Holy Gospels and the Golden Sea makoto fujimura makoto fujimura The Four Holy Gospels and the Golden Sea

The Four Holy Gospels and Golden Sea onthe display January 15–March 8, 2013

on ISMdisplay Gallery of Sacred Arts on display January 15–March 2013Haven 409 Prospect St.,8, New January 15–March 8, 2013 ISM Gallery of Sacred Arts ISM Gallery of Sacred Arts 409 Prospect St., New Haven hours 409 Prospect New Haven Tuesday thruSt., Friday

Artwork by Karen Dow. February 1-23 (opening reception 5-8 p.m. February 1) at Giampietro Gallery, Building 4 in Erector Square, 315 Peck St., New Haven. Open noon-5 p.m. Free. 203-777-7760, giampietrogallery.com.

hours 3–6 pm hours thru Friday Tuesday

Tuesday Friday Saturday and Sunday 3–6 pm thru 3–6 pm Noon–4 pm Saturday and Sunday Saturday and Sunday Noon–4 pm or by appointment Noon–4 pm artist reception orThursday, by appointment January 17 · 4:30–6:30 pm or by appointment artist reception

Traces of Life: Seen Through Korean Eyes, 1945-1992 is an exhibition featuring 27 photographs taken by the first generation of Korean realists, 13 pioneers whose works evoke nostalgia for a nation in a radical transition from its past. February 6-May 26 (opening reception noon February 6) at Mansfield Freeman Center for East Asian Studies Gallery, 343 Washington Terr., Middletown. Open noon-4 p.m. Tues.-Sun. Free. 860-685-3355, wesleyan/edu.cfa. Arthur Heming: Chronicler of the North is an exhibition that examines the career of artist, author and illustrator Arthur Heming (1870-1940). An avid Northern explorer, his work helped to entrench perceptions of Canada as the “Great White North.” February 8-June 2 at Florence Griswold Museum, 96 Lyme St., Old Lyme. Open 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tues.-Sat., 1-5 p.m. Sun. $9 ($8 seniors, $7 students, 12 & under free). 860-434-5542, flogris. com. (Re)viewing Bodies: Selected American Photographs examines the ways 20th-century American photographers have represented the human body, whether as subject or compositional element. Exhibition includes works by Diane Arbus, Larry Burrows, Harry Callahan, Judy Dater, Gordon Parks and Jerry Uelsmann. February 8-March 7 (opening reception 5-7

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artist reception Thursday, January 17 · 4:30–6:30 pm Thursday, January 17 · 4:30–6:30 pm

Makoto Fujimura, Golden Sea, 64 x 80, mineral pigments and gold on Kumohada paper, 2011 Makoto Fujimura, Golden Sea, 64 x 80, mineral pigments and gold on Kumohada paper, 2011 Makoto Fujimura, Golden Sea, 64 x 80, mineral pigments and gold on Kumohada paper, 2011

Free parking. Tours available; call 203.436.5955 www.yale.edu/ism Free parking. Tours available; call 203.436.5955 www.yale.edu/ism Free parking. Tours available; call 203.436.5955 www.yale.edu/ism

NEWHAVENMAGAZINE.COM


onstage Opening Dixie’s Tupperware Party is a comedy about Dixie Longate, the fast-talking Tupperware Lady, who packed up her catalogues, left her children in an Alabama trailer park and took OffBroadway by storm. 8 p.m. January 18-19, 6:30 p.m. January 20 at Palace Theater, 100 E. Main St., Waterbury. $40. 203-346-2000, palacetheaterct.org. In Marie Jones’ play Stones in His Pockets, a rural Irish village is turned upside down by the arrival of an American film crew. When Charlie and Jake are cast as extras in the movie, they discover that Hollywood’s romanticized Ireland stands in stark

ART CONTINUED Vista: A Study of the Land is a group exhibition featuring works by nine national artists whose approaches to landscape painting are diverse as their subject matter. Through January 31 at Reynolds Fine Art, 96 Orange St., New Haven. Open noon5 p.m. Tues.-Thurs., noon -6 p.m. Fri.-Sat. Free. 203-498-2200, reynoldsfineart.com. Presented by the Arts Council of Greater New Haven, No, Seriously is an exhibition of animations featuring works by Ian Applegate, Beans Cunningham, Raheem Nelson and Vin Paneccasio. Through February 1 at Sumner McKnight Crosby Jr. Gallery, 70 Audubon St. (2nd Fl.), New Haven. Free. 203-772-2788, newhavenarts.org. Joyeux Noël: Christmas in Canada. The eighth annual crèche exhibition includes more than 75 Nativity scenes, dioramas, statues and paintings by Canadian artists. Through February 3 at Knights of Columbus Museum, 1 State St., New Haven. Open daily 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Free. 203-865-0400, kofcmuseum.org.

contrast to the reality of their daily lives. Evan Yionoulis directs. January 25-February 16 at Yale Repertory Theatre, 1120 Chapel St., New Haven. $76-$35. 203-432-1234, yalerep.org. The Addams Family is the smash-hit musical comedy that brings the darkly delirious world of Gomez, Morticia, Uncle Fester, Grandma, Wednesday, Pugsley and Lurch to life. 7:30 p.m. February 1-2, 2 p.m. February 2-3 at Shubert Theater, 247 College St., New Haven. $25-$10. 203-562-5666, shubert.com. Set in a Parisian bar at the beginning of the 20th century, Picasso at the Lapin Agile is the tale of a comical encounter between Pablo Picasso and Albert Einstein. Written by comedian/actor/screenwriter Steve Martin. 8 p.m. Fri.-Sat., 2 p.m. Sun. February 1-17 at Eastbound Theater, 40 Railroad Ave., Milford. $17. 203-382-0969, milfordarts.org. The Tate family is dead broke, the front door smashed in and there’s nothing in the refrigerator Dad drunkenly dreams of a hermit’s life in the desert while Mom longs for European sophistication. So when both hatch schemes, independent of each other, to sell the family farm out from underneath their two children, a wild battle ensues to save each person’s piece of the American Dream. This modern American classic, Curse of the Starving Class by Sam Shepard, balances dark comedy and biting satire in its look at a family’s fight to stay alive. Judith Ivey stars. Gordon Edelstein directs. February 13-March 10 at Long Wharf Theatre, 222 Sargent Dr., New Haven. $60-$50. 203-787-4282, longwharf.org. Rupert Holmes’ Say Goodnight, Gracie tells the story of the relationship between George Burns and Gracie Allen. George Burns, whose career spanned more than 90 years of American entertainment history, laughingly lived and loved each day for all it had to offer. 8 p.m. Thurs.-Sun. February 14-March 10 at Seven Angels Theatre, 1 Plank Rd., Waterbury. $40-$30. 203-7574676, sevenangelstheatre.org. Tony Award nominee Cathy Rigby takes flight in an all-new production of Peter Pan! 8 p.m. February 15, 2 & 8 p.m. February 16, 1 p.m. February 17 at Palace Theater, 100 E. Main St., Waterbury. $70-50. 203-346-2000, palacetheaterct.org.

Following the French guignol tradition of pushing realism to the breaking point of horror and hilarity, Lee Breuer’s Glass Guignol is an exploration/excavation of the multifaceted fictional refractions arising from Tennessee Williams’ erotic, voyeuristic relationship with his sister, Rose Williams. 8 p.m. February 16 at CFA Theater, 271 Washington Terrace, Middletown. $25 ($20 seniors). 860-685-3355, wesleyan.edu/cfa. In the classic play Win, Lose or Die: A Murder Mystery, Lyrical Pursuit, the popular game show on which knowledge of song lyrics could lead to fame and riches, has come to town. Host Sparky Duke invites audience members to challenge the current Lyric King, Furlong Shemp. But before the show is over, someone winds up very dead. Could it be Sparky’s glamorous assistant, Daisy? Or the disgruntled ex-champ? Or is there something about the sponsor that doesn’t quite ring true? 8 p.m. Fri.-Sat., 2 p.m. Sun. February 22-March 9 at Almira F. Stephan Memorial Playhouse, 59 W. Main St., Meriden. $18. 203634-6922, castlecraig.org. A senior thesis production by Emily Hunt ’13, The Kindness of Strangers is a solo performance exploring the psychological journey of an actress struggling to find herself in the infamous character of Blanche Dubois (A Streetcar Named Desire). 8 p.m. February 28-March 2 at Patricelli ’92 Theater, 213 High St., Middletown. Free. Reservations. 860-685-3355, wesleyan.edu/cfa.

Continuing Eat less. Exercise more. Make healthy choices. The clientele of a high-end weight loss spa in sunny Florida try to live these mantras daily. But at what cost? In this modern age, when we are barraged with rail-thin models in magazines, “miracle” cleanses and fad diets, January Joiner asks: Why can’t we just be happy with ourselves? This world-premiere “weight-loss horror comedy” by Laura Jacqmin shows us that what appears in the mirror isn’t always what it seems. Eric Ting directs. Through February 10 at Long Wharf Theatre Stage II, 222 Sargent Dr., New Haven. $70-$50. 203-787-4282, longwharf.org.

Art for Everyone: The Federal Art Project in Connecticut. Paintings, murals and sculptures by Connecticut artists who from the early 1930s to the outbreak of World War II, participated in the federal government’s back-to-work programs which included work projects in the arts. Through February 5 at Mattatuck Museum, 144 W. Main St., Waterbury. Open 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tues.-Sat., noon-5 p.m. Sun. $5 ($4 seniors, children under 16 free). 203-753-0381, mattatuckmuseum.org. The Lyme Art Association hosts its 21st annual Associate Artist Exhibition. Works in media including painting, drawing, sculpture and hand-pulled prints. Through February 23 at Cooper/Ferry, South and Cole Galleries, Lyme Art Association, 90 Lyme St., Lyme. Open 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tues.-Fri., 1-5 p.m. Sun. Free. 860-434-7802, lymeartassociation.org. The Arts Council of Greater New Haven presents an exhibition of paintings by Connecticut artists Perry Obee and J.D. Richey. Through March 15 at Gallery 195, First Niagara Bank, 195 Church St. (4th Fl.), New Haven. Open 9 a.m.-4 p.m. Mon.-Wed., 9 a.m.5 p.m. Thurs.-Fri. Free. 203-772-2788, newhavenarts.org. Web Versions is a mixed-media exhibit of works that reference textile and craft traditions. Curated by Debbie Hesse and Steven Olsen. Through March 30 at Whitney Center, 200 Leeder Hill Drive, Hamden. Open 4-7 p.m. Tues. & Thurs., 1-4 p.m. Sat. Free. 203-772-2788, newhavenarts.org. Once Removed features works by contemporary artists such as Carol Bove, Ree Morton, Nam June Paik and Allen Ruppersberg. Exhibition includes artworks from the 1970s to the present. Through April 7 at Yale University Art Gallery, 111 Chapel St., New Haven. Open 10 a.m.-5 p.m. daily except Mon. (until 8 p.m. Thurs.) 1-6 p.m. Sun. Free. 203-432-0600, artgalleryinfo@yale.edu. Société Anonyme: Modernism for America features works by more than 100 artists who made significant contribution to modernism including Constantin Brancusi, Paul Klee, Piet Modrian and Joseph Stella. Through June 23 at Yale University Art Gallery, 111 Chapel St., New Haven. Open 10 a.m.-5 p.m. daily except Mon. (until 8 p.m. Thurs.) 1-6 p.m. Sun. Free. 203432-0600, artgalleryinfo@yale.edu.

Creepy, kookie, mysterious, spooky: The Addams Family, a new musical comedy created by Jersey Boys authors Marshall Brickman & Rick Elice, comes to the Shubert February 1-3.

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music

Savor a program of early music from the Yale Baroque Ensemble. 8 p.m. February 27 at Sprague Hall, 470 College St., New Haven. Free. 203-432-4158, music.yale.edu. World-renowned English a cappella group Orlando Consort offer an evening of music from medieval Europe. 7 p.m. February 28 at Memorial Chapel, Wesleyan University, Middletown. $12-$6. 860-685-3355, wesleyan.edu/cfa.

Classical

Music of Chris Theofanidis. The Henschel String Quartet and pianist Donald Berman perform a concert of chamber music by composer Christopher Theofanidis, which will include the pieces Visions and Miracles, Summer Verses, Ariel Ascending, Allegory of the Cave and At the Still Point. 8 p.m. February 28 at Sprague Hall, 470 College St., New Haven. Free. 203-432-4158, music.yale.edu.

Mozart & Dvorak Quartets. As part of Yale’s Faculty Artist Series, Ani Kavafian, violin; Ettore Causa, viola; Ole Akahoshi, cello; and Peter Frankl, piano, perform. MOZART Piano Quartet in G minor, Piano Quartet in E-flat Major; DVORAK Quartet in E-flat Major. 8 p.m. January 23 at Sprague Hall, 470 College St., New Haven. Free. 203-432-4158, music.yale.edu. Mozart’s Birthday Preview. Celebrate Mozart’s birthday (on January 27 he’ll turn 257) with some of his close musical friends. BACH/MOZART Excerpts from Art of the Fugue (with original preludes by Mozart); KERNIS Mozart en Route for string trio; BEETHOVEN Variations in E-flat Major on a Theme from The Magic Flute; MOZART Piano Quartet in G minor. 5:30 p.m. January 24 at Sprague Hall, 470 College St., New Haven. Free. 203-432-4158, music.yale.edu. Music Director Shinik Hahm conducts the Yale Philharmonia in its first concert of the new year. KOETSIER Concertino (with the Handsome Dans trombone quartet); RESPIGHI The Pines of Rome; TCHAIKOVSKY Symphony No. 4 in F minor. 8 p.m. January 25 at Woolsey Hall, 500 College St., New Haven. Free. 203-432-4158, music.yale.edu. Led by violinists Robert Mealy and Julie Andrijeski, Quicksilver Baroque perform extravagant and virtuosic chamber music of 17th-century Germany, including music of Bertali, Rosenmuller, Schmelzer and Biber. 3 p.m. January 27 at Yale Collection of Musical Instruments, 15 Hillhouse Ave., New Haven. $20 ($10 students). 203-432-4158, music.yale.edu. Curated by violinist Paul Woodiel, the New England premiere of Music at Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello features what might have been heard after hours in the Charlottesville, Va. home of the third U.S. President (European concert music of Corelli, Handel, Haydn and Mozart), as well as in the slaves’ quarters (African-American and European-American traditional music). Featuring performances by singer, guitarist and banjo player Jerron (Blind Boy) Paxton, Dennis James on glass harmonica, singer Jennifer Hope Wills, violinists Robert Mealy and Mazz Swift, cellist Katie Rietman, Christopher Layer on bagpipes and flutes, and Wesleyan music professor Neely Bruce on harpsichord. 8 p.m. (pre-performance talk 7:15) February 1 at Crowell Concert Hall, 50 Wyllys Ave., Middletown. $24-$6. 860685-3355, wesleyan.edu/cfa. A woodwind quintet from the New Haven Symphony Orchestra bring Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf and the Japanese tale of The Moon Princess to life. Listen as the flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, and horn become characters in this storytelling program, narrated by Thomas C. Duffy, director of bands at Yale. 2 p.m. (1:30 Instrument Discovery Zone) February 2 at Omni New Haven Hotel, 155 Temple St., New Haven. Also, 2 p.m. February 3 at Shelton Intermediate School, 675 Constitution Blvd., Shelton. $15 (children free with purchase of adult ticket). 203-8650831, newhavensymphony.org. Violin & Piano: Dramatic Partners. Pianist Erika Schroth and violinist Netta Hadari perform masterpieces of the repertoire — violin sonatas by Claude Debussy and Edvard Grieg (No. 3 in C minor) — as well as other gems including Jascha Heifetz’s arrangement of Gershwin’s It Ain’t Necessarily So.
3 p.m. February 3 at Russell House, 350 High St., Middletown. Free. 860685-3355, wesleyan.edu/cfa. Yale’s Horowitz Piano Series presents Emanuel Ax in recital. BEETHOVEN Sonata in A major, Op. 2, No. 2; Sonata No. 8 in C minor, Op. 13 (“Pathetique”); SCHOENBERG Six Little Piano Pieces, Op. 19; CHOPIN Sonata No. 3 in B minor, Op. 58. 8 p.m. February 6 at Sprague Hall, 470 College St., New Haven. $30-$20 ($15-$10 students). 203-432-4158, music.yale.edu. The latest edition of New Music New Haven features a new work for solo bassoon by faculty composer Ezra Laderman, performed by Frank Morelli. Program also features new music by graduate composers James Rubino, Matthew Welch, Polina Nazaykinskaya, Balint Karosi and Stephen Feigenbaum. 8 p.m.

42 January/February 2013

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Idiosyncratic violin prodigy Lindsey Stirling rocks the Toad February 6 with a savory stew of classical, hiphop dubstep and techno. February 7 at Sprague Hall, 470 College St., New Haven. Free. 203-432-4158, music.yale.edu. Yale’s Faculty Artist Series presents Kyung Yu & Elizabeth Parisot performing music for violin and piano (respectively). BACH Sonata in E Major; STRAUSS Sonata for Violin & Piano; SAINT-SAENS Havanaise. 8 p.m. February 8 at Sprague Hall, 470 College St., New Haven. Free. 203-432-4158, music.yale.edu. Under the direction of Jeffrey Douma and accompanied by pianists Robert Blocker and Melvin Chen, Yale Choral Artists perform choral music of Johannes Brahms. 8 p.m. February 9 at Sprague Hall, 470 College St., New Haven. Free. 203-432-4158, music.yale.edu. Bach: Art of the Fugue. The Orion Quartet and Windscape perform Bach’s complete Art of the Fugue, arranged by Samuel Baron for string quartet and wind quartet. 8 p.m. February 12 at Sprague Hall, 470 College St., New Haven. $35-$25 ($15 students). 203-432-4158, music.yale.edu. Under the baton of Music Director Thomas C. Duffy, the Yale Concert Band performs Stravinsky’s Firebird Suite, Michael Daugherty’s Lost Vegas and the premiere of Scott Switzer’s Bassoon Quartet Concert (with the Breaking Winds Quartet). 7:30 p.m. February 15 at Woolsey Hall, 500 College St., New Haven. Free. 203-865-0831, music.yale.edu. Yale Opera stages a production of Bellini’s I Capuleti e i Montecchi. Marc Verzatt; stage director; Speranza Scappucci, music director. 8 p.m. February 15-16, 2 p.m. February 17 at Shubert Theater, 247 College St., New Haven. $41-$18. 203-5625666, shubert.com. Guitarist Benjamin Verdery performs as part of Yale’s Faculty Artist Series. 8 p.m. February 18 at Sprague Hall, 470 College St., New Haven. Free. 203-432-4158, music.yale.edu.

Solo artist and one-time Bad English singer John Waite is no stranger to superstardom; his 1984 hit “Missing You” topped pop charts all over the world. You’ll get enough of him when he visits Connecticut for a special show at the Kate with Justin Levinson. 7:30 p.m. January 24 at Katharine Hepburn Cultural Arts Center, 300 Main St., Old Saybrook. $45-$50. 877-503-1286, katharinehepburntheater.org. Folk guitarist John Gorka will bring his signature acoustic finger-picking, unique songcraft and smooth baritone voice to Connecticut for a show in Old Saybrook. 8 p.m. January 25 at Katharine Hepburn Cultural Arts Center, 300 Main St., Old Saybrook. $25. 877-503-1286, katharinehepburntheater.org. Canadian singer Lauren Fox brings an impressive songbook to the Kate, where she dives into the music of legendary folksingers Joni Mitchell and Leonard Cohen. She’ll share context and history of the two artists and their brief relationship as well as performing songs like Mitchell’s “Chelsea Morning” and Cohen’s “Suzanne.” 8 p.m. January 26 at Katharine Hepburn Cultural Arts Center, 300 Main St., Old Saybrook. $40. 877-503-1286, katharinehepburntheater.org. The long-tenured ska band Reel Big Fish makes a return to New Haven as its “Candy Coated Fury” tour hits the Toad. The group will be joined by Pilfers and Dan Potthast. 8:30 p.m. January 31 at Toad’s Place, 300 York St., New Haven. $23. 203624-8623, toadsplace.com. Idiosyncratic violin prodigy Lindsey Stirling may have been told she’d never be able to fill a theater in Vegas when judged as a finalist on America’s Got Talent, but that hasn’t stopped her from launching successful solo tours of her music that incorporates elements of classical, hip-hop, dubstep, techno and covers pieces and soundtracks the likes of “The Legend of Zelda” video games. 8:30 p.m. February 6 at Toad’s Place, 300 York St., New Haven. $20. 203-624-8623, toadsplace.com.

Lisa Williams: Messages from Beyond SUNDAY • 3pm FEBRUARY 10

Orchestra New England presents a Brahms Serenade. Join Music Director James Sinclair and the band for a performance of the composer’s early nonet version of the beloved orchestral Serenade in D Major. 8 p.m. February 23 at United Church, 323 Temple St., New Haven. $35-$20. 800-595-4849, orchestranewengland.org. Augmented by the Yale Glee Club and Yale Concert Band, the Yale Symphony Orchestra performs. TCHAIKOVSKY Romeo and Juliet; IVES Symphony No. 4; DURUFLE Requiem. 8 p.m. February 23 at Woolsey Hall, 500 College St., New Haven. $15-$10 ($5-$2 students). 203-562-5666, shubert.com.

Pre & Post show Psychic Fair - 1pm For ticket holders only

Guest conductor Edwin Ortner leads the Yale Glee Club, Yale Camerata and Schola Cantorum in a program of works by Viennese Masters. 4 p.m. February 24 at Woolsey Hall, 500 College St., New Haven. Free. 203-432-4158, music.yale.edu.

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Lisa Williams, internationally acclaimed medium and clairvoyant, shares her amazing ability to communicate with loved ones who have passed on to the ‘other side’, giving live readings to members of the audience throughout the show.

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The Pink Floyd Experience will help you relive the psychedelic sounds of the classic rock band’s discography. The six-person band offers note-perfect reproductions of the band’s songs, accompanied by a HD video and light show, a flying pig blimp, and full quadraphonic sound. 8 p.m. February 9, at the Palace Theatre, 100 E. Main St., Waterbury. $25$45. 203-346-2000, palacetheatrect.com. The wacky white boy hip-hop funk of WHY? returns to Connecticut for an all-ages show in Hamden with the genre-bending hip-hop/rock act Astronautalis. 7 p.m. February 11 at the Space 295 Treadwell St., Hamden. $16. 203-2886400, thespace.tk. The love rocks Toad’s Place on Valentine’s Day when funk legends George Clinton & Parliament Funkadelic return to town for another sure-to-be-epic performance. 9:30 p.m. February 14 at Toad’s Place, 300 York St., New Haven. $30. 203-624-8623, toadsplace.com. Legendary diva Mavis Staples can lay claim to some of the most well-known songs of all time, and can take credit for being a R&B and gospel music trailblazer, with songs like “I’ll Take You There” and “Respect Yourself” under her belt. She stops by the Kate for a one-night performance. 8 p.m. February 16 at Katharine Hepburn Cultural Arts Center, 300 Main St., Old Saybrook. $70-$75. 877-503-1286, katharinehepburntheater.org. Alternative rock-pop band Dada celebrate their 20th anniversary with an extended U.S. tour, returning to New Haven in the process. The band is best known for its song “Dizz Knee Land,” its harmonious vocals, and its three-hour performances. 8:30 p.m. February

19 at Toad’s Place, 300 York St., New Haven. $20. 203-624-8623, toadsplace.com. Ben Taylor didn’t start singing until he was in his early 20s, and that could have had something to do with the fact that his parents were none other than James Taylor and Carly Simon. He brings his blend of pop, folk, soul, reggae and country to Old Saybrook in February. 7 p.m. February 24 at Katharine Hepburn Cultural Arts Center, 300 Main St., Old Saybrook. $28. 877-503-1286, katharinehepburntheater.org. Thomas C. Duffy leads the Yale Concert Band in Anything Goes: Cole Porter ’13 Centennial Celebration commemorating the legacy of Yale’s towering contribution to American popular music. 7:30 p.m. February 25 at Sprague Hall, 470 College St., New Haven. Free. 203-432-4158, music.yale.edu. It was virtually impossible to get away from Shawn Mullins’ pop hit “Lullaby” in 1999; but the Atlanta singer has gone on to top country charts several times since, and has recently delivered a new solo album, Light You Up, the product of a period of collaborative songwriting. 7:30 p.m. February 27 at Katharine Hepburn Cultural Arts Center, 300 Main St., Old Saybrook. $32. 877-503-1286, katharinehepburntheater.org. Legendary Booker T. Jones might be best known for his organ work in the 1960s with Booker T. & the MGs, but his name has gone much farther than that to endure decades later for blues, soul and R&B music. 7 p.m. March 3 at Katharine Hepburn Cultural Arts Center, 300 Main St., Old Saybrook. $68. 877-503-1286, katharinehepburntheater.org.

Shawn Mullins, whose pop hit “Lullaby” was released in 1999, performs at 7:30 p.m. February 27 at Katharine Hepburn Cultural Arts Center to support his new solo album Light You Up.

For those of us who never saw the Beatles perform live (which includes most of us), Rain has been hailed as the next best thing. The Beatles tribute concert comes to Waterbury direct from Broadway. The tribute band has mastered virtually all of the Fab Four’s catalogue, and even performs the complex studio songs the original band never played live. 8 p.m. March 15, 2 & 8 p.m. March 16 at the Palace Theatre, 100 E. Main St., Waterbury. $65-$45. 203-346-2000, palacetheatrect.com.

World The Ellington Jazz Series at Yale presents Rudresh Mahanthappa’s Gamak featuring David (Fuze) Fiuczynski, Francois Moutin and Dan Weiss. A cross-cultural saxophone sensation, Mahanthapa possesses “a roving intellect and a bladelike articulation” (New York Times). 8 p.m. February 22 at Sprague Hall, 470 College St., New Haven. $30-$20 ($10 students). 203-432-4158, music.yale.edu.

Performing Art

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caLenDar BELLES LETTRES 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 17, February 21 at Scranton Library, 801 Boston Post Rd., Madison. Free. 203-245-7365. The Poetry Institute of New Haven hosts Poetry Open Mics each third Thursday Come hear an eclectic mix of poetic voices. 7 p.m. January 17, February 21 at Young Men’s Institute Library, 847 Chapel St., New Haven. Free. thepoetryinstitute.com. Under the auspices of the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, poet Brad Davis gives a reading. 5:15 p.m. January 31 at Marquand Chapel, 409 Prospect St., New Haven. Free. 203-

New members are welcomed to the Blackstone Library Second Tuesday Book Club. The group meets on the second Tuesday to discuss a pre-selected book. Books available for loan in advance of discussion. 6:45-8 p.m. February 12 at Blackstone Library, 758 Main St., Branford. Free. 203-488-1441, ext. 318, blackstone.lioninc.org/booktalk.htm. U.S. Poet Laureate (and former Beinecke Fellow) Natasha Trethewey reads from her work. 4 p.m. February 14 at Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, 121 Wall St., New Haven. Free. 203-432-2977, beineckelibrary@yale.edu.

BENEFITS The Connecticut chapter of Emmy’s Heart, a nationwide non-profit that makes princess tutus and superhero capes and masks for hospitalized children battling cancer or other serious illnesses, holds its inaugural Mardi Gras Gala. 6 p.m. February 23 at Woodwinds, 29 School Ground Rd., Branford. $65 ($120 couple). 860-803-0555, emmysheartct@gmail.com.

CINEMA .Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr star in An Affair To Remember (1957, 119 min., USA).

is pursued by a flighty and often irritating heiress (Katharine Hepburn) and her pet leopard, “Baby.” 7 p.m. February 16 at Whitney Humanities Center, 53 Wall St., New Haven. Free. 203-432-0670, yale.edu/whc. A man and woman share a telephone line and loathe each other, but then he has fun by romancing her with his voice disguised. Rock Hudson, Doris Day and Michael Gordon star in Pillow Talk (1959, 102 min., USA). Free pizza, too! 5 p.m. February 28 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. 203-773-0733, jokerswildclub.com. Comedian Michael Che’s comedy blends street culture with world issues to hilarious effect. Che has been featured and headlined at major NYC comedy clubs including Caroline’s on Broadway, Comic Strip Live, Standup NY and EastVille Comedy Club. A presentation of SCSU’s LOL Comedy Series. 8 p.m. January 23 at Lyman Center for the Performing Arts, Southern Connecticut State University, 501 Crescent St., New Haven. $10, free faculty/ staff/SCSU students. 203-392-6154, tickets. southernct.edu. Comedians Gary DeLena and Anthony DeVito come to Wooster Street. DeLena is a triple-threat entertainer — a musician, impressionist and, of course, funnyman. 8 p.m. January 25, 8 & 10:30 p.m. January 26 at Joker’s Wild, 232 Wooster St., New Haven. $18. 203-773-0733, jokerswildclub.com. Comedian W. Kamau Bell stars in the FX series Totally Biased with W. Kamau Bell. Find out why Robin Williams has called him “ferociously funny” when this witty sociopolitical comedian brings a seamless mix of stand-up comedy, video and audio clips and personal stories that make you laugh and think. A presentation of SCSU’s LOL Comedy Series. 8 p.m. February 8 at Lyman Center for the Performing Arts, Southern Connecticut State University, 501 Crescent St., New Haven. $18, $5 faculty/staff/SCSU students. 203-392-6154, tickets.southernct.edu..

U.S. Poet Laureate (and former Beinecke Fellow) Natasha Trethewey reads from her work February 14 at the Beinecke.

432-2977, beineckelibrary@yale.edu. The Mystery Book Club meets the first Wednesday to discuss a pre-selected book. Books are available for check out prior to the meeting. 3-4 p.m. February 6 at Blackstone Library, 758 Main St., Branford. Free. 203-4836653, blackstone.lioninc.org/booktalk.htm. The Yale program on the “History of the Book” brings together scholars across disciplines to explore the materiality of the written word over time and across cultures. In the latest installment of this series, Roger Chartier discusses Author’s Hand and Printer’s Mind in Early Modern Europe. 4:30-5:30 p.m. February 6 at Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, 121 Wall St., New Haven. Free. 203-4322977, beineckelibrary@yale.edu.

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A couple falls in love and agrees to meet in six months at the Empire State Building. But will it happen? 5 p.m. January 31 at Hagaman Memorial Library, 227 Main St., East Haven. Free. Registration. 203-468-3890, hagamanlibrary.info. Cary Grant, James Stewart and Miss Box Office Poison herself star in George Cukor’s timeless The Philadelphia Story (1940, 112 min., USA). 4 & 7 p.m. February 8 at Katharine Hepburn Cultural Arts Center, 300 Main St., Old Saybrook. $10. 877-503-1286, katharinehepburntheater.org. The Yale Film Society and Films at the Whitney present Howard Hawks’ classic Bringing Up Baby (1938, 102 min., USA). While trying to secure a $1 million donation for his museum, a befuddled paleontologist (Cary Grant)

The Irish Comedy Tour takes the party atmosphere of a Dublin pub and combines it with a boisterous, belly-laugh trio. These hilarious Irish-American comedians as they tear apart as well as validate all of the Irish myths and stereotypes. 8 p.m. February 23 at Katharine Hepburn Cultural Arts Center, 300 Main St., Old Saybrook. $25. 877-503-1286, katharinehepburntheater.org.

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 29, February 26 at Hagaman Memorial Library, 227 Main St., East Haven. Free. 203-4683890, 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 includes baked stuffed eggplant, baby arugula salad with shaved parmesan, Nonna’s traditional lasagne and gingersnap lemon pie. February’s menu includes tomato and olive caponata, Caesar salad, lobster and shrimp cioppino and double chocolate tart. 6:30 p.m. January 24, February 7, 13, 21 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. Saturdays at Russo Park, corner Chapel St. and DePalma Ct. EDGEWOOD PARK: 10 a.m.-2 p.m. Sundays at Whalley and West Rock Aves. 203-773-3736, cityseed.org.

DANCE Featuring a corps de ballet of 65 dancers, the State Ballet Theatre of Russia from the city of Voronezh brings the tale of two star-crossed lovers to glorious new life in a breathtaking production of Prokofiev’s beloved ballet, Romeo & Juliet. 7:30 p.m. February 2 at Palace Theatre, $100 E. Main St., Waterbury. $58-$38. 203-346-2000, palacetheatrect.com. Described by Nashville Scene as “sexy, reckless and edgy as hell,” the ensemble Gallim Dance will perform the New England premiere of “Mama Call” (2011), a contemporary tale of border-crossing, and “Pupil Suite” (2010), set to the contagious music of Israeli band Balkan Beat Box. 8 p.m. February 8-9 at CFA Theater, 283 Washington Terr., Middletown. $25 ($20 seniors, $6 students). 860-685-3355, wesleyan. edu/cfa. The Mystic Ballet performs Swan Lake. This contemporary version of the classic ballet’s Act II is choreographed by Bolshoi-trained Sergei Vanaev, to the dramatic score of Tchaikovsky. After an acclaimed debut in Europe, this powerful avant-garde retelling premieres in the U.S. 7 p.m. February 9 at Katharine Hepburn Cultural Arts Center, 300 Main St., Old Saybrook. $40-$35. 877-503-1286, katharinehepburntheater.org. Inspired by the spirit of an ancient culture, Shen Yun Performing Arts brings to life classical Chinese dance and music in a gloriously colorful and exhilarating show. The New York-based company’s masterful choreography and graceful routines range from grand classical processions to ethnic and folk dances, with gorgeously costumed dancers moving in stunning synchronized patterns. 7:30 p.m. February 13, 2 & 7:30 p.m. February 14 at Palace Theatre, $100 E. Main St., Waterbury. $120-$50. 203-346-2000, palacetheatrect.com.

EXPOSITIONS Think spring! One of the largest flower shows in New England, the 32nd Connecticut Flower & Garden Show covers more than three acres with the theme “Love in Bloom.” Plus, more than 20 gardens created by professional landscape designers, the Federated Garden Clubs of Connecticut’s Advanced Standard Flower Show and some 80 hours of seminars NEWHAVENMAGAZINE.COM


by horticulturalists and other experts. 10 a.m.7 p.m. February 21, 10 a.m.-8 p.m. February 22-23, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. February 24 at Connecticut Convention Center, 100 Columbus Blvd., Hartford. $16 ($14 seniors Thurs.-Fri., $4 ages 5-12). 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. Philatelists unite! Young people ages eight to 15 are invited to join the Hagaman Library’s monthly (first Saturdays) Stamp Club. In addition to learning about stamps, attendees learn a lot of history and many other fascinating things from club leader and World War II veteran Judge Anthony DeMayo. 10 a.m. January 5, February 2 at Hagaman Memorial Library, 227 Main St., East Haven. Free. Registration. 203-468-3890, hagamanlibrary. info. 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. 203-562-5437, childrensbuilding.org.

LECTURES Former NBA player Chris Herren was a highschool basketball legend who realized his dream of playing for the Boston Celtics only to lose it all to alcohol and drug addiction. Now sober, he shares his harrowing story of abuse and recovery. Herren draws on his experience to convince audiences that it is never too late to follow your dreams. 7:30 p.m. February 5 at Lyman Center for the Performing Arts, Southern Connecticut State University, 501 Crescent St., New Haven. Free (ticket required). 203-392-6154, tickets.southernct.edu.

MIND, BODY & SOUL Alan Bitker leads weekly Library Yoga classes suitable for all levels. Walk-ins welcome. Bring a yoga mat. 1-2 p.m. Wednesdays at New Haven Free Public Library, 133 Elm St., New Haven. $5. 203-946-8835. Led by Nelie Doak, Yoga promotes a deep sense of physical, mental and emotional wellbeing. 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 Seasons of Change: Global Warming in Your Backyard is an interactive traveling exhibit that illustrates how climate change

is impacting the landscape of New England over the changing of the seasons. Visitors will learn how climate change is affecting the people of New England; share thoughts about what aspects they might miss most about New England’s current climate; compare coastal flooding today with projections for the year 2100; control a global climate change simulation; and much more. Through February 23 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

Tuesday Night Canal Rides. Medium-paced 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 at Café Romeo, 534 Orange St., New Haven. Free. william.v.kurtz@gmail.com. Elm City Cycling monthly meeting occurs on the second Monday. ECC is a nonprofit 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 14, February 11 at City Hall Meeting Rm. 2, 165 Church St., New Haven. Free. elmcitycycling.org.

Cycling

Road Races/Triathlons

Elm City Cycling organizes Lulu’s Ride, weekly two- to four-hour rides for all levels (17-19 mph average). Cyclists leave at 10 a.m. from Lulu’s European Café as a single group; no one is dropped. 10 a.m. Sundays at Lulu’s European Café, 49 Cottage St., New Haven. Free. 203-773-9288, elmcitycycling.org.

The Milford Road Runners (motto: “10K Every Day — Well, Almost”) present the Gerry McClusky Memorial Winter Wonderland 5 Mile, the USATF’s Connecticut five-mile championship. 9:30 a.m. January 27 at Platt Regional Tech School, 600 Orange Ave., Milford. $20 advance, $25 race day. runbob48@aol.com.

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. 203-773-9288, paulproulx@sbcglobal.net, elmcitycycling.org.

Start your Super Sunday with the 5K Run for Refugees, a challenging certified courses through East Rock Park to benefit Integrated Refugee & Immigrant Services, which helps refugees and other displaced persons. 10 a.m. February 3 at Wilbur Cross High School, 181 Mitchell Dr., New Haven. $22 ($17 students). 203-481-5933, jbsports.com. The 16th annual YMCA Sweetheart Run features an unusual distance (four miles) over a seriously hilly course. 10 a.m. February 9 at Boothe Memorial Park, 5774 Main St., Putney, Stratford. $17 advance, $22 race day. 203-4817453, kobrien@cccymca.org.

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W O RDS of MO U T H

Culinary Culture FÊTES

INSTY LE

The New Haven region’s reputation as a dining destination continues to accelerate By JOHN MORDECAI

I

OU T DOORS

t wouldn’t be a stretch to say that New Haven’s active and ever-expanding culinary culture is one of its most vital assets. The city has become a dining destination of considerable variety, as evidenced by the many

cuisines on almost every block, from Asian to Italian to American. The past five years alone have seen a multitude of eating and drinking establishments come (and go, in some cases) into the area, affording patrons previously unavailable offerings or new spins on

BO DY & SOU L

old standards. It doesn’t get more New Haven than apizza, and while Modern Apizza and Pepe’s may be among the institutions in town, there was still plenty of room for adventurous artisan pizza restaurants. Denise Appel, co-owner and head chef of downtown mainstay Zinc, opened Kitchen Zinc (kitchenzinc.com) in the alley just behind the flagship Chapel Street eatery in 2009, serving pizzas with the likes of goat cheese, figs and balsamic reductions as toppings. Our September 2009 review made note of “burnished, flatbread-like crusts and gourmet toppings like gravlax, pancetta and shrimp,” calling the pizzas “a welcome change of pace.” State Street’s intimate Press (presspizza.com) serves up personal-sized pies with toppings like pears and gorgonzola cheese. Our November 2011 reviewer noted that Press’ pies “aren’t meant to compete with nearby Modern Apizza’s charred

(L) Ami Beach Shadle and Chef Mark Shadle The drink:, Purple Haze. organic concord grape, goji berry saki-tini The appetizer- G-Zen Dim Sum and fresh vegetable spring roll and steamed dumpling vegetable tempura with ginger mirin and thai peanut sauce. New Orleans Creole Tempeh Cornmeal crusted tempeh with spicy creole sauce, sauteed garlic greens, mashed potato and fresh cornbread, (gluten free).

O N SCR EEN

46 January/February 2013

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masterpieces, but they hold their own with crisp crust, vibrant toppings and agreeable flavor combinations.”

Former Prime 16 co-owner Mike Farber, right, opened the Mikro beer bar in late 2010 on Whitney Avenue in Hamden to feature a constantly updated tap list of craft beer, and gourmet food courtesy of chef Mike Fox, left.

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The hamburger is another ubiquitous New Haven food thanks to Louis Lunch, which holds claim to have made the first such sandwich in the country. Many establishments in town serve up a gourmet burger now, and in recent years we’ve seen the likes of fast food joint Shake Shack open downtown and chain Plan B Burger Bar arrive in Milford, but the resurgence ball got rolling in 2008 when Prime 16 (prime16.com) moved into Temple Street with its gourmet burgers and extensive craft beer bar, but “burgers are the focus of the extensive food menu — everything from Angus beef with bleu cheese and grilled onions to a mahi-mahi fish burger to several savory vegetarian patties,” according to Liese Klein in our June 2008 issue. The meatball is practically the grandfather (or perhaps great uncle) to the modern hamburger, and the trendy New Haven Meatball House (nhmeatballhouse.com) on Chapel Street dishes ‘em out in an elegantly hip setting along with a full bar with a rotating beer tap. “The menu is far from the traditional Sunday dinner version of a meatball meal with red sauce and pasta. Juicy and nicely seasoned, the pork balls were a winner, with the savory sauce adding another layer of spice and salt. Veggie balls were also savory and satisfying and the mushroom sauce was a hit. [The] menu may make a hipster out of you after all.” The arrival of boutique Chapel Street hotel the Study at Yale brought with it the classy Heirloom restaurant (studyhotels.com/heirloom) and its “spectacular setting and well-executed, sophisticated food,” making it “one of the most exciting new eateries in the region” when it opened in 2009. Vegetarians, vegans and raw-food dieters needn’t be left out of the action, either. There have been several options in town for a while, but one of the most notable newcomers was Branford’s G-Zen (g-zen.com), which was opened by husband and new haven

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Press Artisan Pizzeria General Manager Jason Drake shows off pizza with Ahi tuna (rare), cilantro, avocado, red onion and jalapeno.

How about a meatball sandwich? Try the New Haven Meatball House on Chapel steet.

wife duo Mark and Ami Beach Shadle. We praised the restaurant for its knowledge of “the finer points of meatless proteins,” its sustainability and eco-friendly practices, and of course the food, which is good enough to appeal to meat eaters and vegetarians alike: “Even if every other thing in your mouth is a burger, you’ll still enjoy this eatery’s hearty, sensual food.” Prasad Chirnomula was already was well established with his Thali Indian restaurant on Orange Street when he expanded into the Yale campus by opening the Thali Too (thali.com/ t21.html) behind the Yale Bookstore, offering inexpensive small vegetarian dishes “drawn from the chef’s travels throughout his homeland, with spices and flavors never savored before in Connecticut.” Craft beer has seen an explosion in the past few years, as evidenced by the expanding selections in most restaurants, some of which are already mentioned here. The exiled Rudy’s Bar (rudysnewhaven.com) re-opened at the corner of Howe and Chapel streets in May 2011 after being ushered out of its longstanding Elm Street location in 2010. The new bigger space offers a huge selection of imported and domestic craft

48 January/February 2013

NEWHAVENMAGAZINE.COM


beers in bottles and on tap, as well as high-end grub, including its famous frites. “The new bar now offers New Haven’s best selection of Belgian ales, potent brews often with hint of sweetness…This is not your freshmanyear Rudy’s. With its top-quality food and adventurous beer list, the new Rudy’s deserves to attract a new generation of fans,” we reported in June 2011. Mikro (mikrobeerbar.com) in Hamden is a tiny spot on Whitney Avenue with a constantly rotating beer selection and gourmet food from a chef with “a deft touch” that is also heading up the craft beer scene in the area. Opened by a former co-owner of Prime 16, the beer bar “deserves to become a destination for those in no danger of being carded,” and boasts a staff that will “offer suggestions and match those new to craft beers to brews that match their preferences.” There have also been plenty of new treats for those of us with a sweet tooth. Perhaps one of the most welcome novelties was the Cupcake Truck (followthatcupcake.com), as evidenced by the long lines waiting for the likes of a revolving menu of homemade cupcakes like red velvet, salted caramel, or sweet potato pecan, paired with different frostings and gourmet toppings. The

truck has been parking around town, especially outside Yale-New Haven Hospital selling cupcakes since 2008, and the husband and wife team Todd and Marsha Rowe have since opened up a bakery storefront in Bridgeport. Renown chocolatier Fritz Knipschildt brought a gourmet chocolate shop café to downtown first as a “pop-up shop” before settling in permanently with Chocopologie (chocopologie. com/cafe/newhaven), which offers a plethora of gourmet chocolates and unique truffles “in a riot of colors and exotic flavors,” and also serves up “decadently thick” hot chocolate, crepes and other confections. “Far from a hushed temple of sugar art, this is a place you can linger to enjoy conversation and a leisurely snack.” If there was one thing downtown New Haven bafflingly didn’t have, it was a full-scale grocery store, but we finally got one in fall 2011 when the Elm City Market co-op (elmcitymarket.coop) opened on the ground floor of the 360 State Street building in the Ninth Square, becoming an oasis in an otherwise food desert. “All the veggie/vegan/gluten-free staples are there, but there is also a full array of meats, fish and even junk food,” but the selection is “welledited” to match its “urban epicurean clientele.”

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The co-op also features a deli and hot food buffet and salad bar making for a “casual and affordable dining destination.” New Haven’s food future looks promising, and we’ll check back on the dining culture later in the year

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over the river & through the By TH WO RWoods DS of MOU snowshoe We shall go FÊ T ES SUSAN E. CORNELL INSByTYL E

O U TD O ORS

T

he Old Farmer’s Almanac says the snowiest periods of winter 2012-13 will be mid- to late February and early March. There’s no mention of digging out the roof rake (if you were lucky enough to procure one two years ago), but it seems like ‘tis the season to finally try snowshoeing.

BO D Y & SOU L

If you don’t want to make the commitment by investing in a pair and/or want a special adventure, you can sign up for a guided snowshoeing hike to a vineyard and rent equipment through a tour company, or you can simply rent from any number of retailers and head out into “the white and drifted snow” in one of Connecticut’s many state parks where cross-country skiing is available. Nordic ski trails typically make ideal snowshoe trails.

O N SC REEN

Bredeson Outdoor Adventures offers three vineyard snowshoeing dates for 2013: February 2 to McLaughlin Vineyards in Sandy Hook; February 3 to Haight-Brown Vineyard in Litchfield; and February 9 to Sharpe Hill Vineyard in Pomfret. No prior snowshoeing experience is necessary, but you should be in good health and at least 21 years old. An enthusiastic and experienced guide leads the journey along the trails. Lunch and hot beverages are provided and, of course, there’s instruction for first-timers (although they say learning is easy — in fact, it’s a “shoein”). Bredeson offers snowshoe rental and

50 January/February 2013

information on where to rent for winter outings. Bredeson founder and guide Deborah Lewis explains that snowshoeing is “not daunting or difficult. Snowshoeing does not require any particular skills or athletic gifts — you strap them on and, in most circumstances, you simply walk, though you do have to adjust your stride to a broader stride. Snowshoeing is harder work than just walking on the ground. I guess what I would say to first-timers is that it is immediately gratifying — it’s a blast the first time out.” A guided snowshoe hike to a vineyard and back, including lunch, hot cocoa or tea, and historical/cultural information costs between $55 and $63. Snowshoe rental is $10 to $15. If there’s no snow, the outing becomes a beautiful winter walk. FMI: Visit bredeson.com, e-mail info@bredeson.com or phone 866-533-4361. Wild Earth Adventures also offers guided snowshoeing trips in Connecticut and New York’s Hudson Valley, not far west of the Connecticut border. Wild Earth does not offer rentals but will help people get what they need. FMI: Visit wildearthadventures.com, e-mail wildearthadventures@gmail.com or call 845357-3380. Rentals are inexpensive and can be found at many locations throughout the state. Connecticut Outdoors, LLC in Oakville rents for $24 per pair per day (can be returned

the next morning). They also have guides available for small groups. Guides cost $50 for four hours, and they know the best locations to snowshoe, says owner Dave Faber. Visit 4ctoutdoors.com, e-mail 4ctoutdoors@gmail. com or call 855-285-2925. Winding Trails in Farmington offers rentals for $12 for adults or $10 for kids on a first-come, first-served basis. Visit windingtrails.org or phone 860-677-8458. Thanks to a “Healthy Eating, Active Living” (HEAL) grant from the Eastern Highlands Health District Initiative, the Parks & Recreation Department of Willington has a free snowshoe loaner program for Willington residents. The department has four sets of adult and four sets of youth snowshoes. In Cornwall Bridge, Housatonic River Outfitters offers daily rentals for $20. There are many trails near the shop, with a variety of terrains from steep to easy. Call 860-672-1010 to make a reservation. Outdoor retailer REI’s stores in Norwalk and West Hartford rent snowshoes for $40 for the first day and $5 for each additional day. For REI members, the price drops to $20 for the first day and $5 for each additional day. I think we’ve got a cabin fever cure which is also good exercise, affordable, exhilarating and requires minimal training and coordination. Therefore…let it snow! Somewhat. NEWHAVENMAGAZINE.COM


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