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New Haven I March/2008
PHOTOGRAPH:
14 ONE2ONE Connecticut’s best-known TV weatherman speaks his piece
Steve Blazo
18 Mad Max Has a Ball New Haven’s 11-year-old squash champion has game
20 When We Were Kings New Haven’s legacy as co-state capital
22 Irish Eyes Are Smiling The faces behind Connecticut’s largest parade
28 The Street Where You Live Plumbing the soul of East Rock
36 Coming Together In Woodbridge, two old houses make one new home
44 In Good Faith Five New Haveners speak frankly about the spirit within
52 You Look Marvelous Fashion consultant Andrea Ward amps up her clients’ clothes consciousness
OUR COVER 2008 New Haven St. Patrick’s Day Parade Grand Marshal Bernadette Smyth LaFrance of Guilford. Hair and makeup by Laura Brereton. Photograph by Steve Blazo. Cover Design, Richard Rose. 4
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New Haven I March/2008
PHOTOGRAPH:
54 Scratching the Surface Richard Ziemann’s meticulous etchings
Steve Blazo
61 Story Within a Story At LWT, Donald Margulies’ Shipwrecked! is stranger than truth
64 Buttons and Bows John Whelan and friends stage a rousing night of Irish tunes
78 I Believe I Can Fly Despite the best intentions, a failure to launch
New Haven Vol. I, No. 6 | March 2008
Publisher Mitchell Young, Editor Michael C. Bingham, Design Manager Larissa Wigglesworth, Design Consultants Richard Rose, Terry Wells, Contributing Writers Brooks Appelbaum, Elvira J. Duran, Joyce Faiola, Michael Harvey, Felicia Hunter, Brittany Galla, Susan Israel, Liese Klein, Cindy Marien, Melissa Nicefaro, Tashema Nichols, Ron Ragozzino, Steven Scarpa, Contributing Photographers Steve Blazo, Anthony DeCarlo, Advertising Graphics Michelle Ulrich Advertising Director Laura Whinfield, Senior Publisher’s Representatives Mary W. Beard, Ronni Rabin, Publisher’s Representatives Cynthia Carlson, Kym Marchell, Diana Martini New Haven is published 12 times annually by Second Wind Media Ltd., which also publishes Business New Haven, with offices at 1221 Chapel St., New Haven, CT 06511. 203-7813480 (voice), 203-781-3482 (fax). Subscriptions $24.95/year, $39.95/two years. Send name, address & zip code with payment. Second Wind Media Ltd. d/b/a New Haven shall not be held liable for failure to publish an advertisement or for typographical errors or errors in publication. For more information e-mail NewHaven@Conntact.com.
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hat does March really have to recommend itself in Connecticut?
On the surface, not much. The calendar says “spring,” but the weather usually says “cold” and “mud,” and doesn’t lend itself much to getting outdoors. Except for the always wild-and-woolly NCAA basketball tourney (yes, the descriptive “March Madness” is copyright-protected), it’s a pretty blah sports month as we wait impatiently for the first cries of “Play ball!” and the sweet crack of hickory meeting horsehide next month. Bob Dylan observed that you don’t need a weatherman to tell which way the wind is blowing. And while Connecticut’s March weather may be blah, Connecticut’s favorite weatherman has never been accused of blahness. We don’t know of a single other TV market where the best-known local television personality is the guy who brings you not the news, and not the sports, but the weather. In New Haven, that would of course be Geoff Fox, who is the subject of this month’s ONE2ONE interview. Under the relentless interrogation (and perhaps waterboarding) of NHM Publisher Mitchell Young, Fox reveals for the first time that he is actually not Dr. Mel’s son-in-law. One thing March makes me think of is music. An obvious example is the glorious cacophony of New Haven’s grand St. Patrick’s Day parade, which this year takes place earlier than ever (March 9). The thunder of marching bands reverberates down Chapel Street, mixing with the unmistakable drone of bagpipes (but must they all play “Scotland the Brave”?). Beginning on page 22, Melissa Nicefaro profiles Connecticut’s largest event and the people that make it tick. This is also the month when the driving melodies of traditional Irish music resound throughout area pubs and coffeehouses. Last month I was fortunate enough to be introduced to one of the titans of Irish music on this side of the Atlantic — seven-time All-Ireland champion button accordionist John Whelan, who now lives in Milford. His performance at East Haven’s IrishAmerican Community Center (page 64) was a barn-burner and set the stage for the full blossom of Irish music that this months brings. Speaking of the calendar, this year Christians celebrate Easter earlier (March 23) than it has been observed in 99 years. The moving liturgical music of Holy Week fills area houses of worship. Coincident with that, on page 44 we profile five area people whose faiths are all different, yet central to the lives of each. Their observations about the challenges of trying to lead a spiritual life in an increasingly secular society are moving and thought-provoking. Oh, and for all you stringed-instrument maniacs out there, the mandolin in the photo is a Gibson A-2 made in Kalamazoo, Mich. in 1920. Sweet. v
— Michael C. Bingham Editor 8
march 2008
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Claws for Alarm A recent dramatic drop in the local lobster catch has entangled a new program designed to protect local animals and the fishermen who harvest them. Winter lobstering has been “an absolute bust” in the western Long Island Sound, according to Eric Smith, director of the state’s Marine Fisheries Division. As a result, almost a third of the lobsterman who had signed up for an innovative conservation program have dropped out, he says. Under the plan, the state set aside $1 million to pay lobstermen to throw back harvestable animals after their fins were notched by marine science students. More than 13,000 lobsters have been notched since the program began last October, mostly in eastern Sound waters. But to
keep the program alive, 60,000 animals must be notched by June, and numbers are way down, Smith says. Warm water in the Sound and repercussions of 2001’s catastrophic die-off may be to blame for the poor catch, Smith says. But because of the poor harvests, only 12 of the 35 lobstermen who signed on to the notching program are still taking part. “It’s been so bad,” Smith says, “people have just decided to pull in their pots.”
to the Sound beginning in December. Excursions leave every weekend day for walk-ons, as well as weekdays for groups of ten or more. Each trip lasts 60 to 90 minutes (bundle up!) and costs $15 for adults and $10 for children under age ten. Call ahead for times, reservations and weather alerts at 203-488-8905. Charters are also available. Hey — maybe you can “seal a deal.”
Speeding Up For the eBay lover in you, take heart: UPS has finally put Connecticut on the fast track. Big Brown is expediting delivery in eight states, including that Nutmeg one. So you can now expect ground shipments between Hartford and Chicago to take two business days instead of three.
‘I Want to Thank All the Little People’ Seals with a Kiss March 1 marks the beginning of the seal watch from the Thimble Island Cruises aboard Capt. Michael Infantino’s M/V Sea Mist. Seals actually return
It all starts here with a call from the Collective Consciousness Theatre, a New Haven-based non-profit now actively in search of actors, directors and writers for upcoming touring shows and productions — and
Orange Goes Green Orange is the state’s first municipality to forgive personal property taxes on cars with a federal gas mileage rating of at least 40 miles per gallon for city driving. The vehicles must be purchased in 2008, and with a current town mill rate of $29.90, the savings can be considerable. Several hybrids and a handful of compact cars can meet the criteria. By the way, the city of New Haven provides free parking to select hybrids, with a special pass.
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they pay! Send your head shot, résumé and/or writing samples c/o Dexter Singleton, Executive Director, 71 Howard Ave. No. 1, New Haven, CT 06519.
Ladies Night If you have $600 (for fees and the “buy-in”) and are willing to risk it all for your shot at poker immortality, take your chances at the World Poker Tour (WPT) Ladies’ Tour at Foxwoods on March 29, the final stop on its No Limit Texas Hold ‘Em Tournament Circuit. Winners will head to Las Vegas for the ladies championship. The tour is open for amateur, semi-pro and professional players.
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Hamden Feels the Love It may be tough times for some couples, but Julie Palmieri and Joseph Cosenza are starting out on the right foot with the help of the town of Hamden, which on Valentine’s Day joined the Hamden couple and two others in holly matrimony at no cost. Justice of the Peace was Hizzoner, Mayor Craig Henrici. Along with the beneficence of the town came music from Silk-N-Sounds, flowers from Lucian’s, and a host of other companies all donating their services.
of Branford are also hoping to reduce the cost of their nuptials. The couple is trying to locate “sponsors” for their wedding at SponsorYourWedding. com. The not-entirely-new concept is being helped along by the above-named Web site, which charges no upfront fees to join or to use its services. A commission is charged when the company successfully negotiates a deal on the clients’ behalf to reduce the cost of a wedding-related service such as music or limousines.
PHOTO
GRAPH
: Steve
Blazo
Likewise betrothed Jennifer Ferraro and Anthony Ceniccola
Crafty Artists Sought Wallingford’s ArtFest is also in search of those with special creative talents. The call to artisans, craftspeople, sculptors and performing artists to participate in ArtFest 2008, to take place on May 17-18, has gone out. Deadline for entries is April 4. To learn more visit Wallingfordcenterinc.com or call 203-284-1807.
Boo-Hoo Yahoo Broadway & Beyond The tons of bad publicity that was ground into millions of pounds of recalled USDA Choice beef may help prove that Prasad Chirnomula has both good taste and exquisite timing. The New Haven chef/entrepreneur who owns Thali, a popular gourmet Indian restaurant in Ninth Square, is opening an all-vegetarian restaurant at 65 Broadway in the courtyard behind the Yale Bookstore. Also moving to the Broadway district and beyond, are sportswear retailers Denali and Traffic, the Devil’s Gear Bike Shop II, Moe’s
Yalies Back Obama with Big Bucks Donations to presidential campaign through the end of 2007 have been reported, and Chris Dodd was the fund-raising favorite in the Nutmeg State among contenders for the White House. His total $16 million war chest was helped along with $3 million from Connecticut. Hillary Clinton raised just under $2 million in the state, only $112,000 in New Haven County. More surprisingly, her campaign generated only token support from area colleges, with just six Yale-affiliated donors (of $250 or more) supporting her. Barack Obama raised just under $2 million in Connecticut also. Yale employees were far more generous to him, donating $30,000 to Clinton’s $11,600. Only a handful of donors identified other New Haven-area colleges as their employers.
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Attorney General Richard Blumenthal isn’t too sure he likes the idea of Microsoft acquiring Yahoo. “We are monitoring [the potential deal] because there may be issues of concern under our antitrust authority,” the AG says. INTEL’s not sure why anyone cares what these dinosaurs do, since many on Wall Street don’t think Yahoo justifies the price it would command. Observes Joe Rosenberg, a respected investment analyst for Lowes Corp.: “It just doesn’t make sense. It will be even more ridiculous if Microsoft increases its bid.”
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PHOTOGRAPHS:
march 2008
Steve Blazo
nicole miller yolanda arce betsey johnson juan carlos pinera badgley mischka
G
eoff Fox has been a staple of Connecticut television for nearly 24 years, dispensing weather forecasts and humor in equal measure for New Haven’s WTNH-TV. We met up with the 57-year-old personality at the station’s Elm Street studio one very rainy February afternoon. The frenetic Fox was prepared for it. Mitchell Young, publisher of New Haven, interviewed Fox. Since today there are torrential downpours and flood warnings and it’s the middle of winter with the expectation of everything freezing — seems like a good place to start your day. I come in usually around 3 p.m. There’s a team of people [at work on the weather] by the time I get here. Thank heavens for the Internet — I have most of the raw data I need. We produce some computer models right here in the building. Do your friends and relatives call you up to ask, ‘What’s the weather?’ Sometimes my wife and child do. The funnier thing is I’ll be having coffee or dinner and someone will come up to me and ask me the weather, and a second person will come up and say, ‘You must really hate that.’ But I don’t mind that at all — that’s what I do. I’ve been really, really lucky, I’ve been here [at WTNH] 23 years. The people who watch me on TV have afforded me a phenomenal life. I grew up wanting to be known; I originally thought I was going to be on radio. I guess I was insecure about who I was and thought if there was a way that I [could become] famous, that would open every door.
PHOTOGRAPHS:
Steve Blazo
Yours is an industry where air personalities change jobs frequently. But you and many others at WTNH have stayed a long time. How come? It’s the Peter principle: We’ve risen to our level of incompetence, and now here we are — stuck. It’s a good gig; I’m not driving a Pinto. Sinatra did not sing “New Haven, New Haven.” That being said, people here have been very nice to me and I’ve tried to give back.
Through 23 years you’ve probably had four or five ownership groups here. You even had the Eskimos as owners? This is my tenth news director. [The Eskimos] were like a split-squad game, they had two incarnations. The Eskimos owned the majority, but in the beginning it was run by non-Eskimos. Then they took over and both owned and operated it. Did they make you use all their 27 words for ‘snow’ on the air? They were not hands-on owners. My boss doesn’t come to me and tell me what to say. They understand we have a certain competence in the subject at hand. No one has ever come to me and said, ‘You have to hype up this storm — we need high ratings tonight.’
1020 Chapel St New Haven 498.2626 242 Post Rd E Westport 341.9960
I don’t remember the weather being as big a deal on the news 23 years ago as it is now. It totally was! It’s the No. 1 reason people watch local news. I didn’t have the accuracy 23 years ago, and even now I’m not right 100 percent of the time — if you watch you’ve seen me go on and apologize for a wrong forecast. Thankfully I don’t have to do it that often. What else has changed? We can show more now — I have cameras all over, weather stations all over. The payoff to the whole thing is the forecast. My first job is that I need to prepare and understand the weather and get it right. The second job is, I have to tell a story on the air. It has to be a compelling story with a beginning, middle and end. If I say 36, 31 or 32 degrees. that’s not important. I’m not getting you prepared to hit a number; I’m getting you prepared to live your life. I’m going to leave you with emotional clues which are just as important and in many cases more important than the specifics.
Josh Simpson Contemporary Glass Creating Wondrous Worlds
Does your fame wear on your family life? The good thing is when you go on TV you don’t become instantly well known; it’s a very long process. My daughter was very interested in going to college outside of
1014 Chapel Street New Haven • 203-782-2280
new haven
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Connecticut because she wanted to not be ‘Geoff Fox’s daughter’ for a while. But does she enjoy going places with me and having people come and be nice? She does. Is she interested in going into the family business? Absolutely not. She doesn’t want to be on TV. I think she would be great, but she has no desire to be on TV. My daughter and my wife don’t look at me as the guy on TV. I’m the guy walking around in pajamas on Sunday. She wants to be in public relations, which was more in line with what my wife was involved in. She’s 20; she’ll change her mind 50 times. So what non-weather questions do you get asked by the public? ‘Is Dr. Mel your father in law?’ — all the time. I suspect people look at me and say, ‘There is no way he could have possibly gotten the job without the help of a relative.’ Every once in a while I’ll get an e-mail that says, ‘You know, Geoff, I’ve been watching you for X number of years — don’t you think it’s about time you stopped coloring your hair?’ I was wondering myself. It’s my hair. I’m really very lucky, in a business that values a youthful look. Was it difficult for me when I was 21, looking like I was 13? Yes! How did you get this job? I was on TV in Buffalo… Where they have real weather? Yes, but much more predictable. At that time Channel 8 was owned by Capital Cities and they had a station in Buffalo. The news director there told the news director here that, ‘There’s a guy on TV, and when he’s on TV I can’t turn it off.’ He’s still my friend, Mike Seacrest. Mike was a little ambivalent, but I opened up my briefcase — this was 1984 — and took out a floppy disk and all of a sudden I made his weather computer look different, and his eyes lit up. You have to prepare for each broadcast, obviously, but do you use a script?
When I said I was going to interview you, everybody said the same thing: ‘Ask him if he hypes the weather? There’s no upside in being wrong. I would have to be, ‘Oh — big snowstorm coming,’ and then there’s two inches. Even last night, I said, ‘It’s not going to be a big snowstorm; the problems will be all the problems around the storm.’ How has the Internet changed the business? People have a lot of places to get the weather that they didn’t have before. We’re in competition with the Internet, and I have access to so much more data than before. How did you first get on TV in Buffalo?
I collected everything I had done on The weather person is the only person in television — telethons, auditions, etc. I the newsroom that is ad-libbing on the air. put them together and sent them tape. It’s very difficult to slander Mother Nature, The guy that hired me is still my friend I guess. It’s traditional; I don’t know any — he’s in Warsaw, Poland, and runs TV weatherperson that uses a script. I’m on for Post, owned by the Catholic Church and two and half minutes at a time — there’s run by Rupert Murdoch. I went to Buffalo no wasted time. to host PM Magazine. It was a show that ran on Channel 3 in Hartford [WFSBTV] and a hundred other cities. It was all 16
march 2008
done on location. Imagine you’re living in Buffalo and working in Buffalo. The job is outdoors and we’re talking the early 1980s; we were driving around in a Dodge panel van. It was starting to get really brutally, bitterly cold and it was getting more and more difficult. I remember a show before Christmas about a real life M*A*S*H unit, and we went to the Niagara Falls Air Force base. My lips were so cold I was literally having trouble forming words. We had a weekend weatherperson at the station and she was horrendous — misidentified cities. And the criteria to do weather wasn’t as high as it is now. They were looking to get rid of her. I said, ‘I’ll do PM Magazine and weekend weather.’ Is that something a weatherman should admit to — you were too cold? So you didn’t need to be a meteorologist to do weather on the air? I said to the news director, ‘I know nothing about the weather,’ and he said it’s not necessary. I said, ‘Really?’ He said, ‘You get [the forecast from] the [U.S.] Weather Service and you do the forecast.’ The Weather Service, me, [WVIT-TV’s] Brad
Fields, [WFSB’s] Bruce DePrest, [WTIC’s] Garett Argianas — most days we have the same forecast, and most days we’re all correct. I quickly found out it was not how it works, you have to understand nuances. Almost immediately I knew I really enjoyed the job, and it was the beginning of computers in the station at the weather center. I had always been a math guy and I had taken a computer course in high school in 1968. I was very good at math and found this as an amazing challenge: no matter what you do the next day there’s another physics challenge. I started teaching myself to understand what was going on, then they hired a chief meteorologist and he was a real whiz. I wanted to ask questions and he was thrilled to answer. Before you sold yourself into TV, how long were you in radio? I’m a product of the New York public schools when people used to lie to get into them. I went to Brooklyn Tech. It was an engineering school with 8,000 boys. I was supposed to become an engineer, and most of the guys I went to school with became engineers. The New York City Board of Education [radio] station, WNYE, was located in my high school. I became a radio actor and played kid parts with professional
actors. Mostly morality plays — ‘Gee, Billy, if we take our bikes over the hill, Mom will never know’… and by the third act I would have a broken arm. I was not a good student and obviously not very bright, because in 1969 at the height of the Vietnam War I flunked out of Emerson College. Flunked out of Emerson? That would have been pretty hard back then. Thank you. I like to say I was on the ‘early dismissal’ program. I got a part-time job in Fall River, Mass., then I went to West Palm Beach, then Charlotte, N.C. — all radio. I was a disc jockey. Did you have success on the radio? Did you ever have a morning show? The most successful job I had was in Philadelphia where I did mornings on WPEN. We were an AM station playing oldies, and it was the end of music on AM. We had signal problems and trouble competing. They hired a new program director and it was obvious they were going to change format. My newsman came in and said, ‘They’re going to be changing format, but the whole station is built around you. You’re the one they’re gonna keep.’ An hour later I was canned.
I’ve heard you speak at events on social issues. Have you every thought about going more toward commentary or news? I think that ship may have sailed for me. Other than freezing your butt in Buffalo, do you feel you’ve paid your dues? Yes, I have paid my dues, and I continue to pay my dues. As it turns out you never pay them out — there’s always dues to be paid. A few minutes ago your wife phoned in to tell you there was something wrong with the weather crawl on the station, and you said you won the marriage lottery. Why? I’m sitting doing my radio show in Philadelphia, and I get this call from Buffalo (that I got the TV job. I’m running [down the hall] and here was this new girl who had just started in the promotions department, and boom! I run into her and knock her to the ground. Two weeks later I moved out of town, and we didn’t see each other for a year and half. She said she fell in love with me the moment we met. I was the idiot: I had already had a bad marriage previously, and said, ‘Maybe I’m not suited for [marriage]; I’m not very mature.’ She would come up [to Buffalo] and bake for me, cook for me and clean my place and Continued on 35
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PHOTOGRAPH:
Steve Blazo
Mad Max An 11-year-old squash prodigy is quashing opponents far beyond the Elm City By Cindy Simoneau
F
or most 11-year-old boys, “success” is measured by a high score on a video game. And strategy involves the plotting to defeat some computer-generated foe on Halo 3. But just a few minutes with Maximiliano M. Martin of New Haven will quickly show he is just a little different from most boys his age.
Just about every day of the week Max (as he prefers) is employing his prodigious prowess to defeat any and all challengers on the squash court. With an engaging smile and easy manner he does not appear to be the stereotypical monomaniacal child prodigy, but on courts from Connecticut to Boston and Pennsylvania, he has proven otherwise. On the courts at Yale University, where he trains with Gareth Webber, associate head coach of the Yale men’s and women’s squash teams, Max is, in a word, intense. With racquet in hand and goggles over his eyes, Max whips the small, hollow rubber ball at the wall of the court. “Pow. Pow. Pow.” Over and over he practices rallying between the in and out lines of the court wall. Observers passing by the courts note his focus during practice and in play against Webber.
Max Martin balling at Payne Whitney: ‘Squash is like chess, but you move around.’
opponent and quickly find their weakness. Then, you need to play to that weakness. That’s how I win.”
for coaching, says Max is ranked among the top five competitors in the country for the junior division in the under 13 age bracket. “To be ranked in the nation is an outstanding achievement,” Webber says of his young athlete. Webber adds that Max is well on his way toward competing against the squash powerhouse players in the European ranks.
Winning is something about which Max knows a great deal. In his four years of playing, he has taken home more awards than he can count, and faced opponents from throughout the United States and abroad. He has been ranked No. 3 in the United States for his age division, and won “Max is a great competitor — he has a lot “There’s a lot of thinking and playing at at the U.S. Open boys championships, and of potential,” says Webber. “With great the same time,” he says. “If you’re really in December at the world championships coordination and attitude he has exactly focusing, you’ll hit the right shots in the at Trinity College in Hartford. the life skills needed to succeed. Among right spots. his best points is he is a good sportsman Webber, who hails from Wales and who “Squash is like chess, but you move around,” has won many awards on the world courts and demonstrates patience. But most importantly, Max plays fair.” Max explains, “You have to study your 18
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As a coach, Webber says he always looks for athletes of any age who demonstrate the proper attitude toward their sport and competitors both on an off the court. For Max, playing squash six or seven days each week and competing in as many as two tournaments each month illustrates his commitment to some day achieving his goal of being the best squash player in the country for his age and, in the future, competing on the varsity team at Yale, which he considers his hometown team. “I really hope to come to Yale someday because of its traditions,” says Max, “and the squash team is really, really good.”
He first learned to play squash from his uncle, Joseph Cohen, who learned it from his father, Max’s grandfather. “I guess it’s become our family tradition,” Max says. His sisters, nine-year-old Ariela and Gabriela, seven, have also started playing. Max is also hoping his four-year-old brother, Jacob, will pick up the game as well. Like many parents of elite young athletes, Max’s parents — Andrés Martin, medical director of the Children’s Psychiatric Inpatient Service of the Yale Child Study Center, and Rebecca Martin, a college admissions counselor who founded the Ivy Learning Center — spend countless hours shuttling their precocious offspring to tournaments, but with limited competition in southern Connecticut they must travel greater distances for Max and his sisters to compete.
that’s one of the sacrifices I have to make,” Max explains with wisdom beyond his tender years. “We do other things together. I also like to play baseball and lacrosse, so we can have fun playing those together.” On the other hand, the sport has also led him to make new friends from the squash circuit. “I have lots of fun being with my squash friends and seeing them compete,” he notes One of Max’s school friends recently enrolled in Squash Haven, the program designed to teach inner-city children the game at the Yale courts in Payne Whitney gym.
A sixth-grader at Edgewood Magnet SchWebber says he hopes all his athletes look ool in New Haven, Max says he likes the at the sport like Max. “The main thing is subjects of math and social studies. “When for them to have fun and enjoy playing,” I meet players from other countries, like says the coach. “I think he does.” Canada, England and Mexico at the world competitions, I enjoy learning about their Max agrees playing squash is fun, but is cultures,” he notes. And he thinks the “When you find something your child also hoping for the lifetime of competitive math will be essential toward his career likes to do so much, and they are good at playing. “Squash is my life, and I hope to goal of being an architect and real estate it, you’re willing to make any sacrifice,” play the rest of my life.” developer. explains Rebecca Martin. Coach Gareth Webber this summer will direct “I like school,” Max allows. “But I also can’t All the travel time, Max acknowledges, the Ultimate Squash camps at the Brady Squash wait to get home, do my homework right does take away from opportunities he may Center at Payne Whitney Gymnasium at Yale away and then go play squash for an hour have to be with his local friends. “It is hard for boys and girls ages seven to 18. To learn each day.” because they don’t play squash with me, but more visit UltimateSquash.com. v
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By Michael C. Bingham
When We Were Kings NEW-HAVEN, July 12. — After a struggle of years’ standing between members of the New Haven Colony Historical Society and citizens of this place the work of tearing down the old Capitol building on New-Haven’s lovely green has been commenced. The beautiful old building, in the Grecian style of architecture, with many immense stone columns, was much loved by older citizens for its age, history, and imposing appearance, and they wished to repair it, but a majority of the voters have long believed that it should be torn down. — The New York Times July 13, 1889 20
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O
kay, “kings” might be overstating it a bit. But for more than two centuries New Haven was the state’s leading city, the all-powerful capital of Connecticut.
If the Bay State had followed Connecticut’s reasoning, today Worcester or Springfield would be the seat of government in the Commonwealth.
New Haven had petitioned the General Well, “capital” might be a little bit of an Assembly for status as the colony’s coexaggeration, too. We were actually “co- capital. To balance competing regional capital,” truth be told, sharing leading-city interests, the Assembly voted to hold the honors with that gritty, rather unappealing October session in the New Haven Meeting city 40 miles to the north, that place where House and the May session in Hartford. harts ford the river just to get the hell away This alternating system was undoubtedly unsatisfying for those elected to the upper from the place. and lower chambers — especially in an In sports, they say a tie is like kissing your era when travel was slow, difficult and sister. But politics abhors a tie — everybody dangerous — but it survived, improbably, (as the song goes) loves a winner. into the second half of the 19th century. It is little-remembered now, but for more In 1719, the first State House in New Haven than two centuries — from 1665 to 1873 — was built on the northwest corner of the New Haven and Hartford functioned as coGreen, adjoining the County House. In capitals of the Connecticut Colony, and later addition to being used by the legislature, the the state of Connecticut. It was an awkward building housed the courts and as a result arrangement, but one that reflected the fact was sometimes called the Court House. A that, unlike Massachusetts, Connecticut room in this State House was used for the had no single leading population center session of the County and Superior Courts th such as Boston, which into the late 18 until 1763, when a new brick building was century was North America’s largest city. erected for the State House.
Located between the present sites of Trinity and Center churches on the upper Green, the structure’s entrance faced Temple Street. This building was used during the American Revolution and into the first part of the 19th century.
people of Connecticut. In 1873 the question was put to a statewide referendum in which that city to the north triumphed by a maddeningly narrow margin. To add insult to injury, in 1885 the Court of Common Council voted to remove the old State House from the Green which, by then, had deteriorated to an advanced state of disrepair. In spite of vigorous protests from preservationists and others, four years later the building was demolished in sensational fashion as 3,000 people looked on. Iron cables were passed through the east and west columns. Seven men then turned a windlass connected to the cables and the six massive The last physical remnant of New Haven as co-capital came crashing down to an ignominious end.
In 1827, the General Assembly voted to construct a new State House, the building also to house the various municipal and county courts. In 1828 construction was begun on a new State and Court House on the Green near College Street, behind Center Church. The old State House was razed and some of the materials were used in the new construction. Designed by Ithiel Town (who also designed the 1815 Gothic Revival Trinity Church on the Green) , the new State House was built in the Greek Revival style and designed after the Temple of Theseus in Athens. It opened in 1831. The court was housed on the first floor, and it was in this room that the Amistad case. The building continued to function as a courthouse until 1861, and as a State House by the legislature until 1873, when New Haven ceased to be co-capital of Connecticut. The battle between New Haven and the Ford of Harts raged from 1867 to 1873. Over time most of the lawmakers had come to
Ithiel Town’s grand Greek Revival State House on the upper Green was razed in 1889. NEW HAVEN MUSEUM & HISTORICAL SOCIETY COLLECTION
favor a single seat of government, and it wanted it in the more centrally located city for convenience of travel. New Haven tried to battle back, offering to build a new State House and give it to the
2007-2008
Season
Guest Artists
Thus ended the Elm City’s brush with political greatness. But the question remains: If we could have the Capitol back, would we want it? Perhaps. But could we support it in the 21st century? The spruced-up, sanitized New Haven of 2008 no longer has the infrastructure of vice and corruption — the gin mills, whorehouses and speakeasies — that grease the wheels of backroom deals. Continued on 67
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By Melissa Nicefaro
Blowhards: The Connecticut Hurricanes Drum & Bugle Corps infused the 2007 parade with pomp and circumstance. PHOTOGRAPH new haven: Bill23O’Brien
Steve Blazo PHOTOGRAPH:
All in the family: In 1994 LaFrance became the third of her family to be crowned Parade Queen. Fourteen years later she’s Grand Marshal.
Parade Queen. “I was so impressed with the organization,” she recalls. “The members of the committee have to be involved with one of the four associated Irish societies in the area. I was born into the New Haven Gaelic Football & Hurling Club, so the Irish influence has been a natural part of my growing up.” LaFrance is a first-generation Irish-American and considers herself lucky to have been raised with firm cultural values. “Two of my aunts are former parade queens, so there is a huge connection to this event in my family,” LaFrance says. While Bernadette will be the first Smyth to wear the orange, green and white sash that distinguishes the Grand Marshal, she was the third Smyth to be crowned Queen of the St. Patrick’s Day Parade, in 1994. Her aunts, Elizabeth Smyth Driend and Bridget Smyth O’Dea, won the title of Miss Ireland in 1968 and 1974, respectively. Bernadette’s sister Sheila continued the family tradition by earning the title of Honor Attendant of the 2000 St. Patrick’s Day Parade. LaFrance grew up in Hamden and now lives in Guilford with husband Robert LaFrance and their three sons: John, Joseph and James. On March 9 the young boys will be marching with their mother in morning coats, top hats and sashes. “I think my boys are going to steal my show — and that’s just fine with me,” she says.
T
he very first parade in New Haven took place on March 17, 1842. Then it was strictly a celebration for the city’s small but growing Irish community. In 2008, the parade has long outgrown its Irish-only origins.
N
ew Haven’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade represents something different to every one of the 300,000 people who line the downtown streets for the annual rite of spring. To the young bar-going crowd, it’s time to party. And, well, to the old bar-going crowd, it’s time to party. To the kids, it’s time to sit on the sidewalk, hoping to catch the eye of a marcher and catch some goodies from the bags and bags of candy they toss. But to the tens of thousands of greater New Haveners who boast of their Hibernian
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“That,” LaFrance explains, “is a good thing. We pride ourselves on the fact that it’s a community event. It’s a family event and heritage, it’s a tradition — a day to celebrate the more diversity we have in the parade in marching units, the better. We really want history. all of those 300,000 spectators that line the To Bernadette Smyth LaFrance of Guilford, streets of New Haven to be able to relate to it’s that, and more — a day to don a top one or more of the marching units.” hat and make her father’s Irish eyes smile “Whether it is kids who are marching down on her. with a band, or cheerleaders, or even fire LaFrance, the daughter of Margaret Ann departments, it’s all about the fact that we Wynne and the late John Francis Smyth, are the melting pot and New Haven has is the seventh woman to be named Grand been a place where many immigrant groups Marshal in the 166-year history of the have come to settle and start families and parade. develop new roots,” says LaFrance. “This Her career on the parade committee began is true for the Irish, Italians and many in 1994 when LaFrance was nominated to be other nationalities. We love it when can
bring Russian and Portuguese dance groups together and bring the community together.” The parade’s universal appeal has frankly diluted its ethnic specificity, she notes. “It’s not just an Irish event — and it has been that way for years,” LaFrance notes. “It’s not a religious event, either. It’s not a Catholic parade. That may have been true years ago, but people have come around to make it something that everyone is included in,” LaFrance says.
T
he reality is that when you have an event that involves whole departments of city government, draws 300,000 spectators and costs $80,000 to stage, there is bound to be controversy.
St. Patrick’s Day cards I see are obscene. — the executive committee of former There’s no humor like Irish humor — but grand marshals — convenes its annual meeting and nominates individuals for when you see this, it’s not humor.” chairmanships. Committee members will Despite his philosophical disagreements, nominate candidates for each chair, and Boyle remains active and involved with then an election takes place. the parade. Indeed, he wouldn’t miss it for “If you’ve done a good job in each of the anything. positions, you’re nominated to move on to the next spot until you become ach New Haven parade is nine Grand Marshal,” explains living example months in the making. Each June, LaFrance. the hierarchy of the organization “The most difficult year is when you’re
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John Boyle, president of the New Haven division of the Ancient Order of Hibernians (AOH) is marching in his 60th parade. He was instrumental in getting the parade back on the streets in 1957 after a hiatus. “I’ve walked in every parade since,” he says, “and when I’m gone they can carry my ashes.” Boyle is less than thrilled with the changes that have taken place in the parade over the years. “When we put it back on the streets in 1957, it cost $5,000,” he recalls. “It’s appalling what it’s become. This was supposed to be a parade to honor St. Patrick and getting the Irish groups together. We were not competing with Macy’s [Thanksgiving Day parade] and didn’t have floats. It’s disgusting. “The parade was on Saturday and the Chamber of Commerce wanted to know if we could move it to Sunday, so as to not compete with business,” Boyle says. Eventually the parade was moved to Sunday, but the committee still has to be mindful of the churches that are holding worship services throughout the parade route. This year they’re holding the parade a week earlier because the churches hold special—and often lengthy—services on Palm Sunday.
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The commercialism that has grown from this ancient Irish celebration also drives Boyle to distraction. “The Hibernians for years have had a campaign that complains about St. Paddy’s Day sales,” Boyle explains. “St. Patrick never sold a car, and very few people knew him well enough to call him Paddy. He was a very aristocratic-type person. Even the new haven
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Sharp-dressed men: In the 1988 parade, grand marshal and New Haven police commander John O’Connor (second from right) was joined by (l-r) U.S. Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman, parade treasurer and city registrar of vital statistics Michael V. Lynch, Gov. William A. O’Neill and Mayor Biagio DeLieto.
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chairman, because the buck stops at you,” she says. “You are completely responsible for putting the parade on the street.”
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But, you know — no pressure. It’s only, after all, the single largest spectator event in the state of Connecticut. “Nothing brings a higher attendance,” says LaFrance. “Not the Pilot Pen [tennis tourney], not the former GHO [Greater Hartford Open golf tourney] — nothing attracts more people.” Indeed, New Haven’s is the largest St. Patrick’s Day Parade between Boston and New York.
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“It’s pretty cool,” LaFrance says. “We had to send a bunch of archived articles and photos to Washington and now everyone who visits the Library of Congress can learn about the people who made it happen. That is a neat thing, because the criteria for being recognized as a ‘local legacy’ says the event has to be occurring for more than 100 years. That’s a pretty big accolade for us.”
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“As parade committee members, our favorite thing is marching down the street and seeing children on blankets and waving and getting so excited when we make eye contact with them,” says LaFrance.
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Ed Donadio, who is on the committee, wishes more people knew the history of the parade and what goes into it every year.
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“It is quite a job to put it on the street, especially when we’re running short on funds, as we often are,” explains Donadio. (Don’t let the name fool you. His mother was Irish, and what Irish he didn’t get from her, he explains, he absorbed from his wife through “osmosis.”) And while the parade undoubtedly is a labor of love — it’s a very labor-intensive one. The money the committee raises is raised the old-fashioned way — cornedbeef dinners, bowling events, in-kind sponsorships from local media. “It is a lot of work,” says Donadio with a measure of understatement. Following the last 12 months, LaFrance can relate. “I had gone to the parade my entire life, but I never stopped to think about how this happens,” she says. “Who does this? Who organizes it?” Now she knows. v
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march 2008
Anthony DeCarlo PHOTOGRAPHS:
Under a swiftly moving winter sky, the newly refurbished 1887 Soldiers & Sailors Monument atop East Rock (the rock) stands sentinel over East Rock (the neighborhood).
Anthony DeCarlo
PHOTOGRAPHS:
L
ocal historian Richard Hegel sits in his home on Loomis Drive, surrounded by piles of books, hundreds of volumes, many of which recount the history of New Haven.
He has a professorial air, fitting given his long careers at a librarian at Southern Connecticut State University and lecturer at Gateway Community College. Hegel leans back in his seat and takes a pregnant pause when asked an ostensibly simple question: What are the borders of the East Rock neighborhood? “The definition of East Rock is elusive,” he says. He is, of course, referring to the physical boundaries, but even the most cursory examination of this distinctive city neighborhood reveals more questions than answers. Is it a place for the city to recover its middle class heritage? Is it a yuppified enclave with no real resemblance to the rest of New Haven? Is it a template for success for the rest of the city? On an average warm sunny day in the East Rock neighborhood centering on Orange Street, an area once known colloquially as Goatville, teems with people. Old couples stroll hand in hand. Young people and families stream out of the local businesses like Nica’s, Romeo & Cesare’s Gourmet Shoppe and Lulu’s European Style Coffee Shop. Joggers and bicyclists take advantage of the wide sidewalks to get their exercise. An informal query of residents, business owners, academics and politicians provides a cross-section of thoughts. There is no single, neat definition of this popular section of New Haven. They talk about multiculturalism, diversity, Yale and, first and foremost, the people. “The neighborhood hangs together because of the nearness to [downtown places of] employment and because of the Yale scene,” Hegel says. “It breeds a loyalty of place.” Allan Brison is the newly elected alderman in the 10th Ward, the general area from State Street to Whitney Avenue. He arrived in New Haven more than a decade ago and was at once taken by the city’s ambience — so much more he decided to purchase a home on Everit Street, a lovely street nestled in the heart of the East Rock neighborhood.
New Haven historian Richard Hegel: East Rock ‘breeds a loyalty of place.’
sense of the thoughts and fears of the neighborhood. As such, he often heard more bad things than good things about the place where he chose to make his home. Always-increasing taxes, spotty city services and the occasional spate of opportunistic crime are the main problems, Brison said. Even the city’s towing policy on streetcleaning days incurred Brison’s ire, a law he called “draconian.”
To topple incumbent Democrat alderman Yet these real concerns don’t seem to Edward Mattson last fall, Brison knew he dissuade the diehard East Rock resident. had to conduct an active and aggressive “The desire to stay and make it good is campaign. So he went door-to-door, talkvery strong here,” Brison says, pointing ing to neighbors and getting an intimate to the neighborhood’s healthy network of
block-watch programs and active political engagement. The mixed-use structures and mom-andpop retail found today along Orange Street and throughout the neighborhood was a hallmark of New Haven life from 1850 to 1950, says Yale professor and urban expert Douglas W. Rae, author of City: Urbanism and Its End, and East Rock resident. The combination of small shops and a comfortable middle/student class assure that the neighborhood will mostly buffered from ups and downs of the larger economy. This has been the history of the neighborhood, which was at one time filled new haven
29
with the single-family homes of the upper middle class. “It is filled with Yale faculty and people practicing learned professions, like law and medicine — which was true then, too,” Rae explains. The key characteristic that has informed the development of the East Rock neighborhood and vouchsafes its future is its proximity to Yale University, says Rae. “Yale is the dominant economic force in southern Connecticut,” he notes. By way of contrast Rae points to the history of the Dixwell neighborhood and lower Fair Haven to illustrate his point. When Winchester Repeating Arms and Sargent Hardware, long time manufacturing anchors of those two city neighborhoods, respectively, closed their doors, it threw the neighborhoods into a downward tailspin from which they have never recovered. “What you can’t readily reproduce is the stable economic environment of the neighborhood,” Rae notes. With Yale planning to add two new residential colleges and undertaking a major facilities expansion on Science Hill — and with many Yale faculty members and senior staff seeking to buy in East Rock — Rae has no fear that the neighborhood’s biggest employer will have any kind of downturn. “I’d tell anyone not to worry,” he says. Yale’s pervasive influence on the neighborhood — and on the city as a whole — is a very tangible, day-to-day thing to the people of East Rock. “Because of the growth of Yale both here and abroad, New Haven will be dynamically changing and evolving while continuing to maintain New England charm and character,” says Matthew Osborne, an artist and Prospect Street resident whiling away the afternoon at Lulu’s.
Romeo Simeone, owner of Romeo & Cesare’s Gourmet Shoppe at Orange and Linden streets, grew up in a small town in the Italian province of Caserta called Cavallieri. He says his native town probably isn’t much bigger than the entire Orange Street neighborhood. When he looks out the front door of his popular store and sees the daily parade of passersby — whose omnipresence many business owners say contributes to the relative safety of the neighborhood — he recalls the nightly passegiata in his hometown. “That is what makes it special,” he says. 30
march 2008
Lulu deCarrone, proprietress of the eponymous Cottage Street coffee shop: ‘Old New Haven was almost all small businesses.’
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Simeone is a gentle bear of a man, with short, spiky grey hair. He speaks with the singsong inflection of his native tongue. The sense one gets in talking to Simeone is of a favored older uncle — he walks through his store greeting, helping, handing out delicacies for sampling. He gets as good as he gives from the people who walk to his store.
Shoreline in Clinton, walks out of Simeone’s market carrying a crate of tomatoes for that evening’s pizza. “I live in Clinton but I am here three times a week because I miss the people,” Nuzzo explains.
footsteps of her father, who had his own business on Grand Avenue. “Old New Haven was almost all small businesses,” recalls deCarrone. “The joy of New Haven was all the independent businesses.”
Simeone stands in front of his shop, talking DeCarrone already had family in East to a customer. A woman pedals by on her Rock, and when she observed that a tiny bike and waves hello before continuing nook of a storefront was available for rent, on her way. “You see that?” he asks a she saw an opening to create the kind of “I think it is a lot about the education,” bystander in the market for a cappuccino. community gathering place she had always Simeone says. “The education makes “You see that? It is more like a family. I am dreamed of — a place where conversation everything better. They talk so nice, so soft, very happy to stay in the neighborhood.” was savored every bit as much as piping so patient. As long as you have quality, that mugs of fresh-brewed coffee. Lulu deCarrone, proprietress of Lulu’s is what people understand.” European Style Coffee Shop, opened her “This neighborhood is part of my growing Michael Nuzzo, owner of Grand Apizza business 17 years ago, following in the up,” says deCarrone. “I’ve always loved it.
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Romeo Simeone of Romeo & Cesare’s compares his adopted neighborhood to his native village in the Italian province of Caserta.
East Rock is multicultural. There are a lot of different colors and ethnicities. It makes it joyful to have a business here. There are a lot of transients here, but it comes together as a community.” The nature of deCarrone’s business (who doesn’t love good coffee?) means she sees all types, from blue-collar construction guys stopping by for a cup of joe before beginning the day’s exertions to expensively shod lawyers devouring the New York Times on a break from work. As much as she loves East Rock, deCarrone doesn’t necessarily feel that it is the only New Haven neighborhood that can claim
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Marilyn Acquarulo and Nancy Davidson walk into Lulu’s on a cold winter Saturday afternoon, the sky spitting a mix of snow and rain on the people in the neighborhood fooled by fleeting morning sunshine into taking a stroll. DeCarrone proudly tells the pair about the renovations she plans for the spring — a new espresso maker, which necessitates the relocation of a pastry cabinet to behind the counter. Between the internal reconfigurations and a new façade, deCarrone hopes evoke the feel of a French café. When Acquarulo gets off I-91 at Exit 3 (Trumbull Street) and turns right, she just seems to feel better. The architecture of the neighborhood, the colorful multistory homes with their broad porches and lots of idiosyncratic detail have a calming effect on her. Always have. She grew up in a big gray house diagonally across Cottage Street from Lulu’s place. “I think you get the feeling of an oldfashioned neighborhood,” explains Acquarulo, who owns By the Sea Inn & Spa in Branford. “Over the years, you don’t see that many changes. My grandmother’s favorite thing was to sit in the window and watch Orange Street. She would watch students walking by, bicycling and moving in and out of their apartments.”
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a loyalty of place, to use Hegel’s words. Both deCarrone and Simeone welcome each other’s presence — the idiosyncratic nature of the various stores on the street cater to all tastes in the neighborhood. “They are doing very well and they charge premium prices — and people pay it with a smile,” Rae says.
Davidson, a psychologist, has lived and worked on Eld Street since 1979 — long enough so that she “has an ex-love on every street in the neighborhood.” Simply put, she returned to New Haven after living in San Francisco because it was cool and funky and although visibly unchanged, by no means disconnected from larger societal trends. East Rock gave her something, something intangible — a feeling, a connection, a way of thinking. Davidson defines it with the word “soul,” noting, “People essentially want to be able to belong somewhere.” v
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SERVING GREATER NEW HAVEN SINCE 1980 Continued from 17
be nice to me. And I’m thinking, ‘What’s wrong with her?’ This is what I thought. Then we went on vacation and I said, ‘This is pretty good,’ and she said, ‘We’ve been going out a pretty long time‌’ So she closed the deal. Exactly. She tells the story much better because she makes me look like the ass I was. Guys are jerks. What do you tell your college-age daughter about ‘guys,’ then? I tell her, ‘Look at the marriage that Mommy and Daddy have — wouldn’t you like that?’ You want somebody that respects you, is honest with you, you can share with. My daughter is dating a musician. He seems like a very nice boy, [but] I hardly know him. I tell her the important thing is, can you trust your spouse, do you want to trust your spouse? Do you want to conďŹ de in your spouse, do you want to have a partnership? These are all things that are incredibly important. What did you think about New Haven when you arrived twenty four years ago? Like most people coming here I thought FairďŹ eld County — that the whole state was Greenwich. I was very lucky that I was embraced. It was a very good time at the station, they hired John Lindsey and Janet Peckinpaugh. John left and Al Terzi was coupled with Janet and it was like TV magic. We moved into a condo in Branford. It’s not that I had never owned a home; I had never lived in a home.
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What was the Fox home in Brooklyn like? We lived in Queens. It was a bus and two subways every day [to school]. Now my parents live in Florida in a condo complex where they celebrate New Year’s Eve at 7:30 p.m. I come from a very warm family, My dad was an appliance salesman, working six days a week. We lived in a really tiny apartment. Looking out the windows you would see a parking lot. The day we discovered my wife was expecting [their ďŹ rst child] we couldn’t reach my parents because they were moving to Connecticut. How cool is it to be on TV and your parents can watch you and tell people, ‘That’s my son on TV!’ I only wish my grandfather, who in high school when I said I wanted to go into radio, stopped me and said in his very thick eastern European accent, ‘Geoffrey, you know they don’t hire Jews in broadcasting’. He wanted me to be a physician. That wouldn’t have worked. v
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By Michael C. Bingham
PHOTOGRAPHS:
Steve Blazo
A newly constructed wing featuring a second-story bridge connects two refurbished older homes in this Woodbridge residence. Note distinctive ‘eyebrow’ dormer at upper left.
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ATH OME
H
ow do you turn two old houses into one new home? How does an commercial architect taking on his first major residential project create a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts?
Simple. You build a bridge. That’s what architect Andrew K. Robinson and his wife, Monica, decided to do after happening upon a lovely hillside pasture in Woodbridge in the early 1980s. Andrew Robinson was just a few years out of the Yale School of Architecture when he and his bride discovered a property along Route 67 that had until recently been a working chicken farm. The site was originally a 16-acre property that two families living there had divided into four lots. What is now the Robinsons’ living room with two bedrooms above it was a two-story farmhouse, built perhaps in the 1930s, that was moved and re-sited at about a 45-degree angle to a smaller existing pre-20th-century structure that was built as a house but later was used as a cheese factory, music studio and woodworking shop. That second, smaller structure has been reborn as the family’s garage with master bedroom suite above it. Up until the early 1980s much of Woodbridge was farmland or rolling woodland. But when the Robinsons moved here from Hamden, the town’s landscape was changing rapidly and dramatically, as families left New Haven neighborhoods such as Westville and moved “up to the county.” To illustrate that, since 1960 Woodbridge’s population has nearly doubled. “This [property] was the eyesore of the neighborhood,” Monica Robinson recalls. “This [by the 1980s] had become a nice, suburban neighborhood, but this place was derelict, awful, all overgrown. The place was a mess. When we bought the property the neighbors actually threw a party for us. That was in 1982. But the fun was just 38
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Monica and Andrew Robinson at the foot of the stairs, which were deliberately sited in the middle of the home instead of near the front entryway.
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The next step was to pick up and moved the larger of the two houses after a new foundation had been dug for it. And because of the new site’s hillside location and a high water table, the couple needed to install curtain drains around the entire exterior to keep moisture from seeping in.
Hamden had sold much quicker than they anticipated, leaving them with no choice) and doing most of the work themselves, often working far into the night after full work days (she works in the development office at Yale). The idea was to link the two older, rebuilt houses with a spacious new structure that would create a literal and figurative “bridge” linking old and new. After that was erected, the pair lived in the new wing as they rebuilt to two existing houses that were now “bridged” together. Perhaps the shared adversity of living on a construction site was a healthy tonic for the Robinsons’ still-young marriage.
“There were a lot of [construction issues] “A lot of people wonder how our marriage like that when we began this project,” survived something like this,” says Monica Monica Robinson recalls. “But we were Robinson. “But we actually enjoyed young, so we just said, ‘What the heck.’” investing in the project together. And I “Ignorance is bliss,” adds her husband with don’t remember us ever arguing about any a laugh. of the decisions” — the hundreds upon hundreds of decisions about the house and By the spring of 1983 the couple were living how it would be constructed and furnished on the property (their previous home in and lived in each and every day.
The kitchen with its distinctive sitdown island was sited in the middle of the new-construction wing.
It must have worked, too — this year Andrew and Monica Robinson will celebrate their 37th wedding anniversary.
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Today the larger of the two older homes is an expansive living area on the first floor, with two bedrooms and a full bath upstairs. The smaller structure houses a two-car garage on the ground level and master bedroom suite above. The idea was to separate the parents’ bedroom from those of their two boys in the other wing. “We wanted them to have some space,” Monica Robinson explains. Linking the two is new construction that houses a formal dining room, half bath and open island kitchen on the ground floor (“I wanted a kitchen where I wasn’t isolated from people,” says Monica Robinson). On the second-story level is, literally, a broad bridge, open on both sides to the kitchen and lounging space below, that connects the master suite with a cozy elevated study. In the middle of the roof over the new wing
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is an unusual “eyebrow” dormer window facing west to capture the setting sun. One of home’s unusual features is the interplay of sweeping open spaces with cozy nooks. “I liked the idea of layering spaces,” Andrew Robinson says. “I didn’t want a house with a repetition of the same-sized spaces over and over again.” His wife agrees. “We liked the combination of open spaces and private spaces,” she says. “So many modern houses are totally open. Our feeling was that we enjoyed openness and ‘loft-y’ spaces and light” — but they also valued enclosed spaces where one could study or seek quiet. “We kind of ‘zoned’ the spaces from public to private,” Andrew Robinson says. “So guests come in the door and are greeted by the living room and dining room — the public spaces. Then, more private is the kitchen, even more private is the [bridge] area
Breakfast nook off the galley kitchen in the new construction wing of the Robinsons’ home.
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upstairs and most private is the bedrooms.” Consistent with that “zoning” philosophy was the architect’s decision to site the staircase in the middle of the house, emptying out into the downstairs kitchen — unlike traditional colonial construction, which would site stairways near the front door. “We wanted the center to be the center,” Andrew Robinson notes. Outdoors, the exterior of the new home whimsically echoes the respective architecture of the two previous structures, with cedar clapboard siding on the first story, and cedar shingles above it. Soon after they purchased the property the Robinsons dug a pond down the hill from the house that initially was used as a watering hole for a retired Yale polo pony that had lived on the property when the couple bought, and which Monica Robinson cared for afterward.
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Later the couple’s two sons (now in high school and college) swam and fished in the pond, which is about five or six feet deep in the middle.
maple a “focal point” of the new structure. On summer mornings its leaves shade the structure from the burning sun, while in winter its bare branches allow warming sunlight to pass through.
Indeed, the pond is a key element of the property: Andrew Robinson notes that Ah, warmth. the new house was sited and configured to “We really wanted a warm place — a “address” the pond. place that was alive, that didn’t feel like a Another natural element that informs museum,” Monica Robinson says, “a place the space is a soaring maple tree that the that celebrated life and everyday living.” (approximately) L-shaped house seems to As it does, with notable success. v embrace. Robinson decides to make the
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The spirit is willing for these five New Haveners whose faith lies at the center of who they are and what they do By Melissa Nicefaro
N
ew Haven is an extraordinary place.
We have great art. The food is out of this world. The shopping possibilities are more varied than ever. All great things, all powerful attractions.
But above and beyond mere creature comforts, New Haven is of course a city founded on, and deeply grounded in, faith.
Yosef Y. Hodakov, Rabbi and Teacher Chabad of Westville and Southern Connecticut Hebrew Academy in Orange
R
abbi Hodakov was born a Jew, but his belief system is a continuing work in progress. He believes that first God created the world and now He continues to create the world anew and give it life.
It was a Puritan clergyman, John Davenport, “That applies to every detail of our world,” who founded the New Haven Colony in Hodakov says. “That inherently means 1638. The charter that created what would that every individual and every part of this later be known as Yale College in 1701 world has a purpose and inherent to that is said the school’s purpose was to create a the intrinsic good that is in the world and place “wherein Youth may be instructed within every human being.” in the Arts and Sciences [and] through the He hasn’t studied many other religions, but blessing of Almighty God may be fitted for is not surprised to hear that there are many Publick employment both in Church and similarities across religions of the world. Civil State.” And perhaps the Elm City’s most iconic image is of the three historic “What’s unique about the Jewish beliefs is churches on the New Haven Green. that we are taught specifically that every individual has their unique mission and Even as the role of organized religion has that it is not necessary to be a member, or faded in American life, New Haven’s legacy to join the Jewish faith to optimize and of faith remains powerful and tangible. And actualize their potential in the Jewish while the Elm City’s “charter religion” was faith,” he explains. “I do not need to join Puritanism, today New Haven is a melting the faith to live Jewishly, to live fully as pot of religions. There are believers of God God wants me to live.” and there are believers that there is no one god. As different as their beliefs are, they That is how he lives and that is what share one commonality: devotion to their makes him tick. Hodakov knows there’s faith. a difference between what makes him get out of bed in the morning and what keeps Below are profiled five people who have him going through the day. devoted their lives to their religion. These are not just your Sunday faithful; they live “What makes me tick is teaching and their faith. They know why they believe connecting with people, bringing some what they believe and they know what joy to people,” he says. “That can mean makes them tick. They’re not ashamed visiting someone in an old-age home, or of the challenges they face; they welcome seeing a child’s face light up when they’ve them — not just on Sundays, but every day. grasped a new concept, or learning with adults and being able to share knowledge with others.” 44
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James Jones was raised a Baptist before discovering Malcolm X’s autobiography, which led him to question, and ultimately abandon, the religion of his youth for a life devoted to Islam. PHOTOGRAPH:
Steve Blazo
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Episcopal priest Greene-McCreight: Embracing a life of faith is ‘a radical thing that involves a radical shift in your life.’ PHOTOGRAPH : Steve Blazo 46 march 2008
Rabbi Hodakov is an Orthodox Jew, but he is cautious about the “Orthodox” label as it evokes stereotypes, including some outdated ones, about forelocks and secondclass status for females. Judaism is a notion, an idea, a belief system and a religion, Hodakov explains. And it is not a religion without challenges.
James E. Jones, Amir Masjid Al-Islam
J
ames E. Jones was born and raised a Baptist in the South during the dark days before the Civil Rights Act of 1965. His religion wasn’t bringing him the peace he sought as he looked for answers about racism. It wasn’t until he began reading an autobiography of Malcolm X that he began to find his peace.
“I think that one of the biggest challenges is that a lot of people, on different levels, would benefit from learning more about their religion, their observances, the “I found the book very compelling — so ground and reasons for many of the things much so that I’m teaching it today to we do,” says the rabbi. “Most people are another generation of young people,” says limited by what they learned as children Jones. “I was impressed with Malcolm X’s in Hebrew School or Sunday school and ability to go through different stages of their knowledge doesn’t grow. We’re living understanding and looking into orthodox what we learned years ago. That’s a big Islam gave me an understanding of the race challenge.” problem from a very different perspective This religious leader and teacher knows from the one I had before. I realized it was that the young people in many ways play more nationalistic and more political.” the most important role in religion. It was much more than a matter of simply “Jewish tradition has it that before God reading a book, and — viola! Instant gave the Torah to the religious people, Muslim! Indeed, his spiritual awakening Moses offered the sages and the prophets took Jones over a decade. He continued as guarantors, but God did not accept. to give the Christian church a chance, When the children were offered as a thinking maybe he just hadn’t found the guarantor, God accepted that,” he says. right church yet. “The youth bring a freshness, enthusiasm “I literally went around to churches and and excitement for the future.” listened, but the cognitive dissonance was Hodakov offers the Jewish faith in a just too high in terms of their belief about nutshell: “Believing that God creates Jesus,” he says. the world and animates everything that Now he believes and practices the Muslim happens, it guides everything to where we faith. are and why we’re there, and to act on that opportunity,” he explains. “We could try “I believe that everybody’s Muslim to begin to find the reason, but more often than not, with,” Jones explains. “I believe there is we don’t know the ultimate reason. We can one creed, one creator that created everyone certainly try to find what we can do — in and everything. That creator is the one that global terms — to make the world a better I worship. It is not a person, but an entity place,” says Rabbi Hodakov. that is timeless. The creator was there before time and therefore created time and is not confined by time and space. It’s
Smiles By Design
inconceivable for us to grasp timelessness.” Based at least on anecdotal evidence, the number of adherents to the Muslim faith in New Haven is growing as more people seek the same answers Jones sought. YaleNew Haven Hospital and the Hospital of Saint Raphael, for example, have attracted a significant cohort of Muslim medical professionals to the community, and area colleges and universities also bring many Muslim students both from the U.S. and abroad. “The biggest challenge is the notion of what constitutes a Muslim-American identity,” Jones says. “There is a strong push to homogenize everybody who is American. Post-September 11, you’re either with us or against us, and that puts a lot pressure on all people. We’re much more under the microscope. “This makes it very difficult to have an authentic identity,” he says. “Muslims don’t have the same rights because of September 11 and the war in Iraq and the Palestinian conflict. It makes it very difficult and pushes people to one of two extremes — to be very patriotic or to be resentful. We should be somewhere in the middle.” The twin lures of consumerism and a growing reliance on technology are additional challenges to those who seek to follow a more spiritual path, according to Jones. “This is the key to some of the difficulties that families and young people are having,” he explains. “The media and technology have broken traditional values down. I use both all of the time, but they have taken over our life in ways that amaze me. We have more access to information, but we have less literate people. “The consumerism has created a notion
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that people want to be like other people and to not trust people who dress and talk differently,” Jones adds. “This is difficult for grownups and youth.
Lama Padma Karma, Spiritual Guide Center for Dzogchen Studies, New Haven
B
When he graduated from college in 1985, Karma traveled to China to set up a crosscultural program. The experience was lifechanging.
ecause it acknowledges no god, “I intended to stay for six months and Buddhism is not a religion. But it is a wound up staying for eight years,” he says. powerful faith that requires perhaps more “When I arrived there, the first thing they daily commitment than many religions. did was introduce me to Buddhism, took “I’d like to see the youth more active in the “Buddhism is a way of life, a philosophy, a me to temples — and I felt that was where Muslim faith,” Jones says. “Historically, way of perceiving reality,” explains Lama I belonged.” youth were very active. We’re in an age Padma Karma, who like Jones was raised where we don’t trust our teenagers. We Karma practices Dzogchen Buddhism, as a Christian. “There is no one god in just added a 17-year-old person to our board which has some differences from other the Buddhist system. There is a god realm, of directors and we are trying to integrate branches of the belief system. which is made up of many gods, but there is the younger people more throughout the not one particular god that controls in the Karma believes that one of the biggest authority structure. We have a youth retreat way that other traditions perceive God. But problems facing Buddhism is the mistaken coming up in April (see masjidislam.net) to when you get to the very highest levels of belief by some who practice the faith that help tackle the issue. We’re trying to hold Buddhism or Judaism, the language begins gods or protectors propitiate and give onto who we are; hold onto our children to sound the same. The distinction is on results. “The Buddhist tradition is letting and at the same time make a positive the lower levels with how you perceive people know that this is inappropriate,” he contribution to our neighbors. If you have says. “That is not the Buddhist teaching.” reality.” a paradigm to work from, it’s much easier.” Karma grew up a Christian in his native Instead of praying, Buddhists meditate Virgin Islands but, as many adults do, re- daily, but Karma observes that doing so examined his faith and his beliefs when he is increasingly difficult in today’s busy society. became old enough to choose for himself.
PHOTOGRAPH:
Steve Blazo
Jones agrees with Hodakov that young people are key to the future of their respective faiths.
Carol Yingling’s initial encounter with L. Ron Hubbard’s Dianetics made her realize ‘I might be on a path to getting some answers.’
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A six-month trip to China turned into an eight-year sojourn — and a spiritual transformation for Karma.
“Some followers have a limited amount of their grandparents and parents followed, time every day and choose not to meditate,” they will be happy, but it doesn’t work that he says, “but they are trying their best to way. Happiness cannot be found in things make the commitment to their belief and or money or age or anything worldly. [at the same time] make money for their “That’s why Buddhism appeals to people family. in their late 30s and beyond,” Karma says. “As a Buddhist practitioner, it’s a lifelong “It takes a certain level of maturity and commitment that I’ve made to myself to the willingness to make the commitment keep looking at how I define my reality and to oneself and that is a difficult to help and guide others to use the same commitment.” techniques that have been handed down for centuries in the Buddhist traditions,” says Karma. Buddhism is not for the weak of devotion or the dabbler, Karma explains. “You can explain the Buddhist philosophy to the youth of our country and they’ll get it in a heartbeat,” he says. “The problem is that they’re not ready to sit down and look at their own lives. This is the challenge for the youth. For the most part, they think that if they follow the methodology that
Carol Yingling, Community Service Minister Church of Scientology of New Haven
When she was a child, she thought having a pony would bring her happiness. She actually got one, but it didn’t make her happy. When she got a little older, she thought that if she found a nice boyfriend, she’d be happy. It didn’t happen. Into adulthood, she was still missing something and it wasn’t until she was in her mid 20s that she realized that what she had sought all her life wasn’t outside of her at all, but inside. She saw Mother Teresa on television and wondered how a woman with such a miserable existence could look so happy. “She had a terrible wardrobe, a rough job — how come she’s so happy and I’m still not?” Yingling wondered.
“I knew I needed spiritual strength,” she recalls. “I tried different religions, but I or her entire life, Carol Yingling looked wasn’t getting that comfort level. I met a for something to make her happy. She Dianetics auditor and Scientologist. He was always sure it was around the next handed me a copy of Dianetics” — the corner.
F
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L. Ron Hubbard book that is the seminal “It offers ways of improving human cond- Kathryn Greene-McCreight, Minister text of Scientology. “I read the book and itions,” Yingling says. “It can be something St. John’s Episcopal Church realized I might be on a path to getting as simple as how to get along better with some answers.” your spouse or your children. It’s such a simple concept. It makes everything easy t took Kathryn Greene-McCreight some It was then that Yingling got her first and that is one way of improving your time to find her home in the Episcopal glimpse of that spiritual strength that she condition. A more involved way is by Church. She was never far from home, had so long sought. understanding that we are immortal souls.” though. Brought up in a different Protestant “I didn’t know how one obtained it, but I denomination, she became an Episcopalian Yingling believes that there are quite a few knew there had to be a way if Mother about 15 years ago. misconceptions about her religion, and she Teresa had it,” she says of that strength. thinks the funniest is that the church is “One of the things that led me to the Yingling joined the Church of Scientology secretive. “That’s silly,” she says. Episcopal Church was the prayer book and when she realized she shared the belief the liturgy,” Greene-McCreight says. She Yingling also notes that Scientology is a of its adherents that people are immortal was also attracted to the acceptance of the non-exclusive religion. spiritual beings. role of women in the Episcopal Church “People can be Scientologist and [also] and five years ago, she became a minister at “We don’t tell anyone what they need to Jewish or Christian,” she notes. “We have her parish, St. John’s Episcopal Church on believe in,” Yingling explains. “This is a conservative Jewish rabbi who is also a Humphrey Street. a religion with no dogma, it is up to you parishioner at our church. We also have a to reach that understanding. Scientology Her belief is strong and simple. Muslim woman, who after Ramadan asks offers a toolbox — a religious philosophy me to donate her money to a poor family “I believe that in Jesus we have life and that that works off of the human spirit,” that we support.” Jesus is alive,” she explains. “In Jesus, God Yingling says. brings us back to His own presence from Helping others is an essential part of In Scientology no one is asked to accept something that Christians call sin, but I Scientologist philosophy and she is very anything on faith or as an absolute belief. think of it as anything that separates you active with the Drug-Free Marshals. She What is true for any adherent is what from God. That is overcome in the cross of enjoys seeing children involved with that person has observed to be true. An Jesus. Jesus is the ultimate healer.” the church as she realizes that the future individual discovers for him or herself that depends on them. Greene-McCreight suffers from mental Scientology works by personally applying illness and found wellness in her faith. In its principles and experiencing results. 2006, she wrote a book, Darkness Is My Only
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Companion: A Christian Response to Mental Illness, about her journey and battle with bipolar disease. Today she is healthy and has a stronger hold than ever before on what makes her tick. “Love of God and love of neighbor come from my religious tradition, and that’s what makes me tick,” she says. “It’s about praise for God, care for our neighbor — and that means everyone, of all faiths.” While many of the biggest challenges in other faiths stem from modern evils, Greene-McCreight believes that one of the biggest challenges to her faith is the historic legacy of violence and intolerance. “I think that people still think [Christians] are violent because of the Crusades from a long time ago,” she says. Misconceptions also top her list of faith challenges. “I think people have a misconception of what Christianity is. The other great difficulty for our faith is the other world religions that don’t believe in love of God and love of neighbor. Judaism does and Islam does, but the kinds of faiths that deny the power of God is another big challenge to us.” She knows that the future lies in the hands of the children. “The future is one of hope,” she says. “We stretch out toward God in our future. I do feel that the world is being called to hope because God is there in the future. I don’t think my particular denomination is bringing up the next generation well enough, catechizing them well enough and teaching them what it means to be a Christian. It’s a radical thing that involves a radical shift in your life. “Loving God and loving neighbor requires a huge turnaround in your life and sometimes I think we give the impression that it’s something you just do on Sunday. It’s not something you just do on Sunday,” she says. “We have this saying that God has all sorts of children, but no grandchildren,” says Greene-McCreight. “That means you have to raise each child up to accept the love of God for him or herself and to take that love into their hearts. Knowing you’re loved is just huge. It is very healing. The power of Christianity is healing.” v
Rabbi Hodakov says the Jewish faith is ‘believing that God creates the world and animates everything that happens.’ new haven
PHOTOGRAPH:
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Steve Blazo
By Brittany Galla
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City fashionista Andrea Ward helps clients build their wardrobes form the soul outward
t’s not every day that a woman can “I love dressing women and have always felt wake up, know exactly what outfit she that I am an inspiration to them for success will wear that day — and feel great in anything that they do — business or about it. personal,” she explains.
But that’s exactly what Andrea Ward has been helping her customers accomplish over the past 35 years as a personal fashion consultant: setting them up with an entire wardrobe that they can feel comfortable in, no matter the occasion. Ward works with two or three customers a week and offers them outfit advice for every aspect of their life. Her clientele are professional career women in their 30s and up. Some of her clients have worked with her for more than 20 years. 52
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dozen years. After closing her stores, she now is the owner of Andrea Wardrobe Consultant of Essentials by Andi Kamel and is a personal fashion consultant with women across Connecticut.
A Hamden native who now lives in Oxford, Ward has worked in the fashion industry “I love New York; it is where the center as a merchant, manufacturer, model of fashion is, besides of course Paris,” she and stylist. She started working at Ann says. “But I love living in Connecticut with Taylor in New Haven and then moved my husband and still maintaining roots in to New York as a stylist at Richilene, a New York through my business.” fashion couture house. After marrying her As for fashion advice, Ward, who calls husband, she moved back to Connecticut herself a “true minimalist,” follows this in 1985 and opened a specialty store called philosophy: Less is more. Andrea Renee Limited in Southbury. In 1995, she opened Andrea Ward Clothier in “Clothes should be special,” she says. A New Haven and did business there for a common fashion mistake women make
Ward credits her favorite designers as Armani, Prada and Karl Lagerfeld because she says the fashion styles never look the same. “My least favorite designers are those who use gimmicks that just do not depict a woman as they should, and tend to focus on the garment and not what it should be saying on the woman,” she explains.
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Ward follows five steps to help women find their fashion style: define your style and lifestyle; recognize your figure and personality type; assess your own clothes; start with the basics and fundamentals; and build outward by adding components for excitement. Sharon de Escobar (left) models a Classic Max Mara USA camel hair outer piece and motoring jacket in tweed. Linda Yimoyines in a Donna Degnan ensemble including gold-foil sundress and novelty jean jacket for cruise or warm-weather wear. Mannequins dressed in the Yansi Fugel Collection — ‘known for clothes that are real and wearable and have great style,’ according to Andrea Ward, who styled them all. PHOTOGRAPH:
Steve Blazo
now, she adds, is wearing “big shoulder pads that make you look like a quarterback.” “Keep it soft,” she offers. “Stay away from tops that are too provocative; you don’t have to let it all hang out.”
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Ward also offers private shopping appointment at which clothes collections are brought to the client and alteration services are included for a $100 consulting fee and a $50 travel charge. For a personal wardrobe consult and assessment, it’s a flat $700 consultant fee and $50 travel charge. All services are preceded by a $200/hour consultation. “It is just fun building the whole concept [of a wardrobe] for someone,” she says. “It is a renaissance for each client.”
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Ward observes that New Haven women “love black,” so she encourages her customers “Women in the surrounding New Haven to explore different shades of black, such area are very fashion-conscious and love as chocolate brown, midnight navy, loden, the classic element,” she says. “They love merlot, mushroom taupe or charcoal gray. quality, they love to look great and of And for those women with messy closets, course they are very inspired by New York Ward advises to colorize pieces, organize fashion.” clothes light to dark, hang suits together and to start with short pieces to long pieces.
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R
ichard Ziemann creates etchings, a difficult, complicated and meticulous art form that has changed little since the time of Rembrandt.
While in high school in Buffalo, N.Y., Ziemann discovered that he liked nothing better than to escape to a cabin in the woods and draw. His early passion for the outdoors and affinity for solitude has led to a life-long meditation on nature. At the Yale School of Art he was fortunate to find a mentor in Gabor Peterdi, who liked to create etchings on natural themes. The leafless trees of Edgewood Park fascinated the young Ziemann with their stark crisscrossing branches defining endless detailed patterns against the winter sky. Like most young artists it took time for Ziemann to find his way. His love of the outdoors instinctively drew him to George Innes, the 19th-century American landscape painter who, like Thoreau, embodied an almost fervent attitude toward nature. The pointillist technique of George Seurat showed Ziemann how to build a broad visual effect on the accumulation of small detail. And finally there was Jackson Pollock, whose drip paintings eschewed any vanishing point or illusion of depth in favor of an all-over, edge-to-edge focus. Ziemann has spent a lifetime teaching at various colleges like Yale, Hunter and Lehman, but his home since 1967 has been in Chester. Outside his back door are abundant woodlands, fields and wetlands to satisfy his need for subjects. He finds his spot intuitively among Queen Anne lace or ailing hemlocks and settles down for days at a time — sometimes in a makeshift tent
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against the elements, or with a lamp when the light is fading. He draws directly on an etching plate with a felt-tip marker. The plates are usually zinc, about 1/16th of an inch thick, and can vary from eight by ten inches to more than
24 by 36 inches — a heavy load to carry about the wetlands. Though he works on several prints simultaneously, he takes time to make sure the drawing is right as he is embarks on a project that could take anywhere from two months to three years.
Once satisfied with the drawing, Ziemann coats the plate with a rosin ground that dries like a varnish over his drawing. Ziemann then takes a sharp point and, with great patience, goes over his drawing once again, scratching through the ground exposing the metal. The plate is then submerged in an acid bath (a mixture of one part nitric acid to nine parts water) . The acid eats into the exposed metal leaving the areas still covered with ground untouched. Depending on how deep he wants the groove, the plate can stay in the bath anywhere from five minutes to two hours; the deeper the groove the more ink it will hold and the darker the printed line. He does this out of doors now, but there was a time in his more cavalier youth when he did this indoors while peering closely at the acid’s progress.
Cricklewood Pond 10 7/8” x 14” etching and engraving (above). Wetland Grasses V, 1996 9” x 12” etching and engraving.
If Ziemann envisions the final print consisting of lines of various weights and densities — some light and delicate, other heavy and coarse — he takes the plate from the acid fairly quickly. He then makes a
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print to determine which lines he wants to keep light, and after painting over those lines with more ground, he returns the plate to the acid so the remaining grooves may be more deeply etched. By this process of testing, back and forth to the acid bath, Ziemann is able to modulate the nature of the lines as they will appear in the final print. For further refinement there are two other methods he uses: engraving, in which the line is literally gouged out with a sharp tool making a very clean edge; and dry point, which is akin to scratching and leaves a softer line.
Wetlands a 9” x 14 1/2” engraving. Rutztown Pines, the 18”x 24” etching and engraving was done over a two year period from 1993 to 1995.
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When Ziemann is ready to print, the paper must be moistened. Soaking the heavy paper makes the fibers more flexible so that under pressure from the press it will bend and not tear. In preparation he places the wet paper between blotting sheets before he inks the plate. Then he removes all the remaining ground
from the plate with a kinder, gentler, synthetic version of turpentine. When it is thoroughly clean he squirts a glob of oily ink on to it from a caulking gun-type container and begins to spread it around with a stiff piece of cardboard. The ink must be pushed evenly into all the grooves. This done he now takes his trusty (if 40 years in use qualifies as “trusty”) chunk of styrofoam — roughly the size of a brick — wraps it in a page or two of newspaper and wipes off the excess ink. This means that any parts of the print that are to be white must be spotless. Finally the inked plate is moved to the flat bed of the press, and a sheet of damp paper is positioned over it. Thick felt blankets are then laid on top of the paper and everything is ready to go. Ziemann’s Charles Brand press is a classic of industrial cast iron and steel, only slightly smaller than a VW Beetle — probably the largest such press in Connecticut. When the long crank is turned, the bed is drawn in between two fat rollers that compress the paper into the plate, drawing out the ink and giving it an embossed feel. Peeling back the paper from the plate is the moment of revelation for Ziemann — sometimes delight, sometimes disappointment. Either way, unless the problem is glaring, he will wait, watching the print over long periods to ensure that his eye and his mood determine whether it is finished or not. Occasionally Ziemann will rework a print even after it has been exhibited. He does not make a whole edition of any print at one time, which would be highly time-consuming. Rather he makes a few to begin with and then prints to order. Most print shops have multiple printers and assistants; Ziemann, however, mostly works alone or with a little help from his family. In choosing etching Ziemann understood the arduous demands of the craft. He knew that he would forego the use of color and immediacy of other media, but the slow deliberative process, like the ritual of a monk’s daily chores, have been an intricate and vital part of his contemplative life. Now that he is older, Ziemann says, his thoughts turn more frequently to possibilities of painting — a physically less demanding task, perhaps, but one that he will surely give the Ziemann touch. v
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ART
The Milford Fine Arts Council presents an exhibit extolling artists’ interpretations of that most powerful emotion, Love. Works are not restricted to romantic love and in addition reflect love of family, children, home, country, pets and other subjects. Through March 6 at Firehouse Art Gallery, 81 Naugatuck Ave., Milford. Open noon-4 p.m. Thurs.-Sun. 203-306-0016, FHGallery@optonline.net, www. milfordarts.org. Full Spectrum. Artists for this show, all showcasing their work for the first time, are participants in the state Department of Developmental Services’ Division of Autism Spectrum Services. Program provides services to adults with autism spectrum disorders who do not also have mental retardation. Participating artists include Richard Bildstein, Ethel Bonie, Brendan Cunningham, Vance May, Jeffrey Tell and Kimberly Tucker. Through March 21 at Small Space Gallery, 70 Audubon St. (2nd floor), New Haven. Free. 203772-2788, www.newhavenarts.org. Gallery 195 welcomes the colorful wall reliefs and monotypes of local artists Claudine Burns Smith & Pamela T. Dear. Through March 28 at Gallery 195, 195 Church St. (4th floor), New Haven. Open 9 a.m.-3 p.m. weekdays. Free. 203-772-2788, www.newhavenarts.org. The abundance and diversity of bird life in ancient Mesopotamia have been reflected in art, literature and administrative records. People carefully observed birds, raised them for food, made up stories about them, and drew pictures and carved sculptures of them. The tablets and objects in Birds in Babylonia illustrate numerous aspects of the relationship between birds and human beings thousands of years ago. Through March 28 at Sterling
Kimberly Tucker’s Joe and Chickens is one of the works on display in Full Spectrum at Small Space Gallery.
Memorial Library, 120 High St., New Haven. Open 8:30 a.m.-11:45 p.m. weekdays, until 4:45 p.m. Fri., 10 a.m.4:45 p.m. Sat., noon-11:45 p.m. Sun. Free. 203-432-2798, resources.library. yale.edu/online/smlexhibits.asp. The story of the birth of Christ has a protagonist that makes all stories of motherhood pale by comparison: that faithful and fearless servant of God, Mary. Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox traditions all have images of this young Jewish woman who was declared by the archangel Gabriel to be “highly favored” in God’s sight. Who exactly is Mary? How can we recover a larger sense of her meaning through the works of contemporary artists from the Christian traditions and the reflections of contemporary thinkers from these traditions? In an attempt to answer some of the
many questions surrounding Mary, Highly Favored: Contemporary Images of the Virgin Mary, a traveling exhibition from Christians in the Visual Arts will be on display at the Yale Institute of Sacred Music. March 3-28 (reception 4:30-6 p.m. March 6) at the Yale Institute of Sacred Music, 409 Prospect St., New Haven. Open 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. weekdays. Free. 203-432-5062, www. yale.edu/ism. EO Art Lab’s Featured Artist Series presents Click, an exhibition of works by Connecticut photographers Ellen Carey, Jody Dole and George Fellner. Through March 30 at EO Art Lab, 69 Main St., Chester. Open 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Tue.-Wed., 10 a.m.-9 p.m. Thurs.-Sat., noon-6 p.m. Sun. or by appointment. Free. 860-5264833, chester@eoartlab.com, www. eoartlab.com. More than 150 crosses and crucifixes, collected from around the world are on loan from the extensive Yvonne Shia Klancko Collection of religious items and displayed for the first time in Crosses & Crucifixes. Exhibition includes an artifact from the Balkans made more than 800 years ago. Through April 6 at Knights of Columbus Museum, 1 State St., New Haven. Open 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Wed.Sat., 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Sun. Free. 203-8650400, museum@kofc.org, www.kofc. org/museum.
Escapes, The art of Jean Alexandre Kandalaft, on exhibit at White Space Gallery, March 4th through April 5th, reception March 14.
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Harold Rabinowitz & Peter Ziou: A Retrospective. A retrospective of
work by these two artists with ties to the Creative Arts Workshop (CAW). March 21-April 18 (reception 5-7 p.m. March 21) 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. Exceptional and rarely-seen paintings by John Frederick Lewis, Edward Lear, Sir David Wilkie, Richard Dadd, William Holman Hunt, Stanley Spencer, David Bomberg and Lord Frederic Leighton are on view in The Lure of the East: British Orientalist Painting, 1830-1925. Yale’s Center for British Art will serve as the premiere and only U.S. venue for this exhibition focusing on encounters between 19th-century British artists and the Islamic worlds to which they traveled. Through April 28 (tours 2 p.m. March 16, noon March 1 & 29, 11 a.m. March 6) at the Yale Center for British Art, 1080 Chapel St., New Haven. Open 10 a.m.-5 p.m. daily except Mon., noon-5 p.m. Sun. Free. ycba.yale.edu. Organized to complement The Lure of the East (see above), Pearls to Pyramids: British Visual Culture and the Levant, 1600-1830 explores the history of British cultural interchange with the Middle East through trade, tourism, archaeological exploration and military engagement. Exhibition introduces the geographical and historical context of the
Mediterranean trade with paintings by Sir Peter Lely, the William van de Veldes (father and son), and through early travel accounts. The impact of commodities such as coffee and silk is examined through prints, broadsides and illustrated books. Exhibition concludes with an examination of the increasingly militaristic cast to the British presence in the Levant in the 19th century, beginning with Admiral Nelson’s victory over Napoleon in Egypt. Through April 28 (tours 2 p.m. March 2 & 23, 11 a.m. March 13) at the Yale Center for British Art, 1080 Chapel St., New Haven. Open 10 a.m.5 p.m. daily except Mon., noon-5 p.m. Sun. Free. ycba.yale.edu. Colorful Impressions: The Printmaking Revolution in 18thCentury France. Celebrating one of the most innovative periods in the history of color printmaking, exhibition includes 95 images by the most celebrated artists of the time, including François Boucher, Jean-Honoré Fragonard, JeanBaptiste le Prince, Hubert Robert and Jean-Antoine Watteau. These images reflect the carefree spirit of the ancien régime, an era of royal indulgence before the French Revolution. Many of the prints are presented in multiple impressions or alongside related drawings and
CRITIC’S PICK Lost in Marvelous Color The intricacies of the wheels, mainsprings and barrels of Gerald Murphy’s Watch (1925), along with the eyepopping hues command attention to every detail found on this oil on canvas creation
Sara and Gerald Murphy are best remembered as the captivating American expatriates who inspired F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Tender Is the Night. Making It
New: The Art & Style of Sara & Gerald Murphy is the first exhibition to explore the couple’s pivotal contribution to the modernist movement of the 1920s. Their
demonstrate the newly invented engraving and etching techniques of the era combined with new ways of printing a single image from multiple plates. Through May 4 at the
legendary style — modern in its apparent simplicity and freedom from stifling social regimentation — was a kind of manifesto, and touchstone, for the artists, writers and musicians of the Lost Generation. Gerald Murphy himself was a brilliant and inventive painter. Regrettably, only seven of his canvases survive.
Yale University Art Gallery, 1111 Chapel St., New Haven. Open 10 a.m.-5 p.m. daily except Mon. (until 8 p.m. Thurs.), 1-6 p.m. Sun. Free. 203-432-0600, artgallery.yale.edu.
They are brought together here for the first time, along with paintings, watercolors, drawings and photographs by artists within his circle, such as Georges Braque, Juan Gris, Fernand Léger and Pablo Picasso. Photographs and home-movie footage of the Murphys and their friends, as well as personal correspondence and artifacts, also help bring the era to life. Through May 4 at the Yale University Art Gallery, 1111 Chapel St., New Haven. Open 10 a.m.-5 p.m. daily except Mon. (until 8 p.m. Thurs.), 1-6 p.m. Sun. Free. 203-432-0600, artgallery.yale.edu. — Elvira J. Duran
Art lovers don’t necessarily think of the library as a place to study original works of art, but Art Is Where You Find It is an exhibition that showcases pencil sketches,
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New Haven. Open 8:30 a.m.-4:45 p.m. weekdays. Free. 203-432-2798, resources.library.yale.edu/online/ smlexhibits.asp.
Brendan Cunningham gives the words Canned Food Drive a whole new spin. His rendition can be found in Full Spectrum at Small Space Gallery. watercolors, cartoons, caricatures and ephemera from the records of Yale University or from the collections of personal or family papers in Manuscripts and Archives. Filed away with correspondence and diaries or surviving in attic trunks or basements, the items on display reflect the daily lives of
families, individuals and institutions and span three centuries. Included are works of art by luminaries in medicine, government, science, literature and education, as well as early works by a number of well-known artists. Through May 30 at Sterling Memorial Library Memorabilia Room, 120 High St.,
A New World: England’s First View of America. John White, Elizabethan gentleman and artist, was the person most responsible for shaping England’s earliest impressions of America and its inhabitants. White sailed with the earliest expedition to Virginia (the present-day North Carolina) in 1585 and produced a series of extraordinary watercolors that documented his travels. The exhibition will feature White’s drawings of the Algonquian Indians, his maps and charts, watercolors of the Inuit and of North American and West Indian plants and animals, depictions of ancient Britons, and associated works by his contemporaries. March 6-June 1 at the Yale Center for British Art, 1080 Chapel St., New Haven. Open 10 a.m.5 p.m. daily except Mon., noon-5 p.m. Sun. Free. ycba.yale.edu. Master Drawings from the Yale University Art Gallery comprises approximately 85 master drawings from the gallery’s collection, providing a survey of European draftsmanship from the late 15th to the mid-19th centuries. The drawings range from early studies in the late-medieval model-book
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tradition (an anonymous Venetian Lion) up to the beginnings of modern art (Edgar Degas’ Portrait of Giulia Bellelli, c. 1858–59). Drawings of all media, genres, and types — preparatory studies for paintings or prints, finished drawings, and casual sketches — are included, and a range of national schools, including French, German, Italian, Netherlandish and Spanish. The exhibition and catalogue provide the first comprehensive look at Yale’s collection of European drawings in more than 30 years. Through June 8 at the Yale University Art Gallery, 1111 Chapel St., New Haven. Open 10 a.m.-5 p.m. daily except Mon. (until 8 p.m. Thurs.), 1-6 p.m. Sun. Free. 203432-0600, artgallery.yale.edu. Escapes, The art of Jean Alexandre Kandalaft. Experience the dynamic “fauve” paintings of Jean Alexandre Kandalaft. The works of this accomplished international artist spans two decades; with awards from France to New York. Kandalaft teaches and paints in his studio in New Haven. March 4 through April 5 A reception will be held on Friday March 14, 5-7 p.m.White Space Gallery 1020 Chapel St. 2nd Fl., New Haven, CT. 06510. (203) 495-1200, Free. email: marie@dalilithographs.com www.whitespacegallery.com.
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From top: Jeff Biehl, Angela Lin and Michael Countryman in Shipwrecked!
Fiction Stranger Than Truth On LWT’s Stage II, Donald Margulies’ Shipwrecked! Is a story within a story By Brooks Appelbaum
D
onald Margulies, a delicately built and soft-spoken man, delights in a big story — with the emphasis on the words “big” and “story.”
In the spare but comfortable home study on Huntington Street in New Haven
where he works, we talk about his new play, Shipwrecked! The Amazing Adventures of Louis de Rougemont (as told by himself). Sunshine, pouring in from several skylights, seems more than appropriate today. Shipwrecked!, running on Long Wharf Theatre’s Stage
II through March 16, has just had its first preview. Margulies had seen its magic before (the play premiered at South Coast Repertory Theatre in Costa Mesa, Calif., last August) , but that doesn’t dim his pleasure in remembering the previous new haven
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night’s charmed and enthusiastic audience.
Asked if his bare-bones, nearly bare-stage approach references Brecht, Margulies is quick to clarify.
do have an author’s note because I realized, in production, that aspects of the action could be misconstrued. Those kinds of caveats are helpful in the long run. I don’t think they’re intrusive; I think they’re instructive.”
Yet why should he be surprised? Margulies has won the Pulitzer Prize (for Dinner with Friends) and among his many other plays “I’m not a fan of Brecht,” he acknowledges. there have been other Pulitzer finalists, “He doesn’t thrill me like some other writers along with critical and popular success. do. I always felt that there was something pedantic about him, and I don’t think that When asked about his relationship to the Shipwrecked!, though, is different — not this play includes that. For me, the joy of Long Wharf production, which is taking in its themes, Margulies is quick to point writing this and the joy of working on it place almost literally in his own backyard, out — but in its inception and in its form. have to do with my television and movie- Margulies says that — as with all of his Originally commissioned by South Coast fueled imagination. There are so many plays — his style was mainly hands-off. Repertory Theatre for its Young Audience specific influences that I can point to, I He attended the first few days of rehearsal, Series, Margulies says, “It took me a while mean everything from Looney Tunes to so he could make any small adjustments to to figure out what I wanted to tackle in this War of the Worlds. I see things in cinematic the script early on. Then he watched a runparticular play. I knew that I didn’t want terms, and I often talk to my directors through and a dress rehearsal, giving notes to pander to children in any way, and I was about certain passages in the piece as if for both. To be more of a presence, he says, hoping to be struck by lightning and figure they were montages in film.” “would be analogous to the actors standing out a story that would allow me to celebrate over my shoulder while I wrote the first theater and storytelling.” draft.” He believes in allowing actors room Lightning struck in the form of a book to discover their own way. written by a briefly famous Victorian who recounted amazing seafaring and farflung adventures for audiences eager to be amazed. Yet Margulies soon found that he Now that the first preview is over, though, wanted to expand his material into a fullit’s clear, as it was from the beginning of length evening and explore ambiguities our conversation, that Margulies has found that wouldn’t be appropriate for audiences another director, cast and production of five- and six-year-olds (although he that bring his play to the kind of life he does hope that Shipwrecked! might be the envisions. He also observes with pleasure first play that some young people might that present-day audiences are almost as see) . Hence his description of the play as eager to be amazed — even taken in — as “something of a hybrid,” and his continuing those from the Victorian age. and special pleasure when he sees older audiences responding — well, almost like Pulitzer Price winner Donald Margulies. “There’s a delicious moment in the children. production in which [narrator and main character] Louis presents his story to the At the February 13 preview, he notes, Royal Geographic Society. Louis says, ‘And “There were no children in the house. We Reading Margulies’ script, one sees that that, Ladies and Gentleman, is where my had middle-aged people and elderly people, before rehearsals even begin, he “talks” amazing story ends,’ and people applaud and they really seemed to love it. Perhaps to his directors in a single-spaced, page— meaning that they would be satisfied if it took them a few minutes to figure out long set of “Notes about the Play.” These this were in fact the end of the play. And what it was, but they ultimately leapt to notes — precise and commanding, with so when the play continues, and takes a their feet.” the occasional spark of humor — make it turn, I think it’s a wonderful moment. clear that Margulies has a strong vision for Up to that point, people are probably Shipwrecked!, and that he senses the need to thinking, ‘Oh, that was cute,’ or ‘That was protect his creation from misunderstanding a nice story’ or ‘That was nicely done.’ But — or worse. Part of the “hybrid” (and perhaps initially then it goes elsewhere, which I think is puzzling) quality of Shipwrecked! comes “I don’t think it should be assumed that challenging. The themes of the play are from Margulies’ dedication to exposing the people get what they read, which is why big and surprising, and I think that people makings of theater onstage, as is sometimes I decided to write extensive notes. In fact, come along for the ride, which is all I could found in pieces designed for young people. for the published edition, I’m going to be hope for.” even more precise. Because I’ve mounted “You can see in the script how I insist that we One of these themes involves the delicate two productions, I now know where there see how every effect is done,” he explains. line between deception and entertainment, are pitfalls. “I want audiences to see the mechanics storytelling and lying. Another concerns of it and how the magic happens. And I “Cleverness is one thing; but cuteness is whether we measure a man by what he think that is kind of delightful for people. another,” Margulies says. “The themes of does or what he dreams. Finally, Margulies I mean to say, ‘You can do that yourself!’ the play are kind of subversive, and I don’t describes Shipwrecked! this way: “Ultimately, For instance, all the sound effects are want [a production] to undermine that in the play is saying, ‘Is it relevant that this happening onstage in plain view, and this any way. was made up if it took you on a wonderful gets wonderful giggles from the audience journey?’” “In my other plays I rarely write stage because it is such a primal, primitive way directions,” he adds. “There are a couple of Clearly, he knows the answer. And he’s to entertain.” instances in my play Sight Unseen where I confident that his audience will agree. 62
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ONSTAGE REVUES/CABARETS Estrella Cruz [The Junkyard Queen]. A new work written by Reese Smith (Yale School of Drama, Acting ‘10) and directed by Jesse Jou (YSOD, Directing ‘10). 8 p.m. March 27-29 & 10:30 p.m. March 28-29 at Yale Cabaret, 217 Park St., New Haven. $15 ($12 seniors, $10 students). 203-4321566, yalecabaret.org.
THEATER In Pulitzer Prize-winner Donald Margulies’ new play, Shipwrecked!, an old man named Louis de Rougemont finds that stardom is fleeting (see story, page 63). Gaining notoriety at the turn of the century for his fantastic tale of being shipwrecked, living on a remote island with his beautiful islander wife and learning to ride sea turtles, de Rougemont recalls his adventures
wistfully — even as his audience becomes increasingly skeptical. This whimsical fantasy challenges audiences to think about the delicate dance between truth and fiction — are the quiet lives we lead enough to make a mark on the world? How far do we go to be remembered and loved? Evan Cabnet directs. Through March 16 on Long Wharf Theatre Stage II, 222 Sargent Dr., New Haven. $62-$57 ($42 previews). 203-787-4282, 800-782-8497, info@longwharf.org, www.longwharf.org. Lords and ladies gather for afternoon tea and brilliant banter at an idyllic English country estate. For young Gerald Arbuthnot and his mother, the assembled notso-polite company holds the keys to happiness in love and life. In this comedy of serial seducers, moralizing monogamists, secret pasts and simmering heartbreak,
how will the Arbuthnots choose between social advancement and painful truths spoken from the heart? In 1895, the year that saw the debut of Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest, the playwright lost everything when he was convicted of “gross indecency” and sentenced to two years in prison. A Woman of No Importance had premiered two years earlier and anticipated the forces that would strike him down. Of British society, he said, “To be in it is merely a bore. To be out of it is simply a tragedy.” The Yale Rep brings back this classic under the direction of James Bundy. March 21-April 12 at Yale Repertory Theatre, 1120 Chapel St., New Haven. $58-$20. 203-432-1234, yalerep.org. The Bluest Eye tells the haunting story of Pecola Breedlove, a young black girl coming of age in the racially turbulent 1940s. Her feelings
scorned or simply ignored by those around her, love always just out of reach, Pecola dreams of having blue eyes, eyes that she thinks will make her stop being invisible to others, eyes that will spare her from the meanness of the world. This inventive production captures the lyricism and poetry of Toni Morrison’s acclaimed novel and delves into the meaning of beauty and the impact of community on the development of the human spirit. Written by Lydia Diamond and directed by Eric Ting. March 28-April 20 on Long Wharf Theatre Mainstage, 222 Sargent Dr., New Haven. $62-$42 ($42-$32 previews). 203-787-4282, 800782-8497, info@longwharf.org, www. longwharf.org.
PHOTOGRAPH:
Frank Marchese
An English mother must choose between social advancement for her son or setting things straight with the truth in Oscar Wilde’s A Woman of No Importance at the Yale Rep.
new haven
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By Michael C. Bingham
S
pring has not quite sprung, at least not officially. But already is greater New Haven’s rich Irish and Celtic music scene in full bloom.
Admittedly, in the run-up to St. Patrick’s Day on March 17, much of the Irish music to be heard in area pubs and clubs is pedestrian, and some frankly regrettable (think innumerable drunken renditions of “Danny Boy”) . But much of what’s out there to be heard this month and yearround rivals or even surpasses what can be heard on the Auld Sod.
rhythms in regular meter — 6/8 for jigs, moderate 4/4 for hornpipes, fast 4/4 for reels. (Oddly, of the three mainstays of “Irish” music, neither jigs, reels nor hornpipes originated on the Emerald Isle, but migrated there from Germany, Scotland and England, respectively.) The trio began with a set of reels bookmarked by “Never Was Piping So Gay” and ending with “The Piper’s Despair.” Whelan and Eaton shared the unison melody while Cohen provided the harmonic underpinning and rhythmic drive.
One example of the latter was on display February 9 when button-accordion virtuoso John Whelan reunited with longtime While Eagan and Cohen performed with collaborators Jim Eagan on fiddle and little visible expression, Whelan was a guitarist Flynn Cohen for an evening of compelling presence and visual anchor instrumental wizardry that raised the roof — smiling, swaying from side to side, his of the Irish-American Community Center spiky (now-) gray hair and incongruous in East Haven. braces glinting in the spotlight, his eyes The trio, joined for three numbers by closed in serene satisfaction about the vocalist Liz Simmons, collaborated prev- amazing sounds he squeezed effortlessly iously for recordings and concert work, but from the accordion. hadn’t performed together in four or five This was music as mental telepathy years, according to Whelan. That idea was — the performers communicating via difficult to reconcile given the easy musical a quick glance here, a wink there. It rapport between and among the three seemed impossible that the three weren’t and the magical musical sparks that built performing five or six nights a week on the throughout the evening. tour circuit. In the traditional Irish ceili, or social dance, After four sets of fast tunes, singer tunes are typically performed in “sets” of Simmons — who first performed with the three, which allows time for the dance to trio at a Celtic festival in Bethlehem,, Pa. unfold (since most of the tunes themselves — mounted the stage for a lovely a capella are brief and fast) . Most of the jigs, reels rendition of “The Maid of Kilmore,” a and hornpipes share these characteristics: simple minor-key melody elegantly but driving melodies underpinned by simple simply ornamented by the petite vocalist. 64
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Steve Blazo
Then it was back to the races for a breakneck set of jigs led off by “Father O’Flynn” (“the first tune I ever learned on accordion,” Whelan said) segueing into “Father Tom’s Wager” and concluding with “The Lilting Fisherman,” on which Whelan even indulged in a bit of unison vocalizing with the melodies. While this night was unmistakably the John Whelan Show, the virtuosity of his collaborators was in some ways the surprising discovery of the event. Jim Eagan, with whom Whelan has been playing since he was but 17, is a phenomenal
flatpicking chops by soloing on “Johnny Whelan had the genes, he had the talent Going to Ceili,” showing that Irish — and he had desire to burn. rhythm guitar involves so much more than “Everything else in my life kind of went by pedestrian time-keeping. the wayside, and I made a lot of sacrifices But the most moving moment of the to play,” Whelan recalls of his initial years night came during one of the few slow with the instrument. “I practiced every day, numbers — an air, “My Ballingary Lady,” eight hours a day, for two or three years that Whelan penned to honor his mother, straight.” (Parents who find they must who passed away last March 30. Whelan put a gun to the head of their offspring to recalled that his mother (“a large woman,” compel 30 minutes of daily piano practice, he allowed) taught the boy John how to take note.) waltz. “My Ballingary Lady” was a delicate, Practice makes perfect, they say, and almost frilly waltz that allowed Whelan to it must be true: Whelan went on to show the expressiveness of his instrument. become seven-time All-Ireland champion, and after moving to the U.S. at age 20, became an international recording artist, performer (all over the world, including at Carnegie Hall and, he says, “places like that”) , teacher and energetic missionary for traditional Irish music. What makes Whelan such a compelling figure, however, is less his purity of purpose than his eagerness to experiment. As a child learning the button accordion, Whelan was shielded by his father from other forms of music. But when he discovered them later in life, he dove with abandon into different oeuvres including folk, zydeco (more accordion-fueled even than Celtic music) and even punk rock, especially after he moved to the States in 1980. “I did a lot of crossover experimentation,” he says. The variety of music in America, he explains, “just made me want to branch out and do other things.” As Martha Stewart might say, it’s a good thing.
fiddler whose placid mien belies his mad chops and bulletproof bowing technique. Indeed, a post-intermission set of reels featuring Eagan’s rapid double-bowing pyrotechnics brought the house down and an uncharacteristic grin to the young fiddler’s face. Another number featured guitarist Cohen. Accompanying master melodists Whelan and Eagan would appear a thankless chore, but the red-sideburned instrumentalist was himself full of surprises. Rather than simply strumming first-position chords, Cohen continuously played different inversions up and down the neck to keep the color of his accompaniment fresh not just from tune to tune, but even bar to bar.
It also illustrated that Whelan is much more than mere interpreter of a popular genre, but perfectly able to create music anew without straying far from his traditional roots. Indeed, the Irish Echo even called the accordionist “one of America’s finest composers.”
“When I came to America and I started meeting different people — [Riverdance fiddler] Eileen Ivers and I did an album together in 1987 [Fresh Takes on the Green Linnet label] that was my first American album. We played together for a few years, including a lot of big shows in places like Carnegie Hall.”
Whelan, 48, who now lives in Milford, was Ironically, Whelan’s flirtation with other born in London to Irish parents. Following musics deepened his commitment to his in the footsteps of his father, he began traditional Irish roots. playing the button accordion (a traditional “I think it makes me appreciate it more,” he instrument that uses buttons to activate says. “It’s fun doing other things, and it’s the reeds that sound each individual note, creative doing other things,” he explains. instead of piano-style keys) at age 11. “I But always and forever, he is drawn back to really didn’t have a choice,” he recalls. his roots: “the essence of Irish music — the Nevertheless, he pursued his new passion simplicity of the melody, the beauty of the with such monomaniacal intensity that culture. Playing his Martin D-28 in dropped-D in just three years, at age 14, he was All“I grew up spending summers in a thatched tuning (in which the sixth, lowest string Ireland champion. cottage with a clay floor with my greatis lowered in pitch from E to D) allowed “I took to [the accordion] right away, and grandmother, walking a mile and a half to Cohen to use more open (unstopped) did a lot with what little [talent] I had,” go get water from a well,” Whelan recounts. strings in the keys of G and D, where most he says now, over-modestly. In reality, “I would sit there with the smell of the Irish melodies reside, creating a fuller, turf, and that music really brings back the more resonant sound. Cohen showed his
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Ireland that I grew up in — not the modern Ireland that we have today.” Whelan is a vigorous missionary for the propagation of that tradition. He is founding chairman of the Milford chapter of Comhaltas Ceoltori Eireann (CCE), which was founded in 1951 in Ireland by a group of traditional musicians at a time when interest in the native culture of Ireland was waning. Today it is surging, fueled in part by pop culture successes like Riverdance (the original production of which featured Whelan in the band) and by ambassadors like Whelan who are spreading the gospel in the most compelling and urgent way possible — by winning over new audiences with performances that leave listeners begging for more. (In addition, Whelan provides music instruction, free of charge, to members of the Milford CCE, which meets the third Thursday of each month at St. Gabriel’s church hall in Devon.) Whelan is better qualified than most to assess the seemingly universal appeal of the music that has defined his life. At its core, “Irish music is dance music,” Whelan says. Although the ballads and airs
reflect “the sad history of Ireland and the tough times,” he notes, “the reels and the jigs and all have so much energy and life that it gets people’s toes tapping and they just really enjoy it. Plus, it’s the original square-dance music,” he adds. “Most American forms of folk music came from Scottish and Irish music.” As Kerry Dexter, writing for the Folk & Acoustic Music Exchange, put it: “John Whelan’s accordion sounds almost like the haunting music of the pipes from some ancient past arising from that morning mist, inviting the listener to reflect and dream along with the players.” Of course, there’s so much more first-rate Celtic music to be heard in Connecticut — and not just in March. An excellent source of information about the local Irish music scene can be found at ShamrockIrishMusic. org, which is maintained by the Shamrock Traditional Irish Music Society Inc. (STIMS) , a ten-year-old, Fairfield-based 501(c) 3 not-for-profit organization devoted to the advancement of Irish music and dance in southern Connecticut. STIMS programs a very full schedule of music and dance events and also functions as a clearinghouse for practitioners and fans (need a piper, anyone?) of Celtic culture. v
“A treat for the Senses”
Heritage
Continued from 21
You’d be hard-pressed to convince some no-account state rep from Voluntown to give up languorous dinners at Max on Main on some lobbyist’s bottomless expense account in favor of an herbal tea at Claire’s. But three centuries ago, New Haven rawked. One of the earliest businesses on the corner of College and Chapel streets was Miles Tavern, built in 1690 by John Miles. When New Haven became co-capital in 1701, Miles Tavern became the actual, official meeting place of the council, or upper branch, of the assembly. A tavern! The council continued to meet there for the better part of two decades, where the distinguished gentlemen partied like it was, well, 1799. That’s all in the past, of course, and today the upper Green bears no remnant or symbol of that glorious era in the Elm City’s history when we were kings. Okay, “kings” might be overstating it a bit. Thanks to Priscilla Searles of Business New Haven for research assistance. v
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MUSIC CRITIC’S PICK: Dueling Fiddle & Banjo Classical
Eden MacAdamSomer and Larry Unger of Notorious, will have concertgoers stamping their feet and clapping their hands along with the melodies the pair produce on their stringed instruments.
Wendy Sharp, professor of violin at the Yale School of Music, along with pianist Julie Nishimura of the University of Delaware, will perform a program including Schubert’s Sonata for Piano & Violin in D Major, Sinding’s Suite for Violin & Piano in A minor and Moravec’s Evermore, Double Action and Sonata in C minor. 7:30 p.m. March 2 at Sprague Memorial Hall, 470 College St., New Haven. Free. yale.edu/music. Olivia Vote, mezzo-soprano (2 p.m.) and Zach Borichevsky, tenor (5 p.m.) perform in Master of Music Recitals. March 2 at Sprague Memorial Hall, 470 College St., New Haven. Free. yale.edu/music. A musical Spring Bouquet. The Yale Schola Cantorum under Simon Carrington and Tale Collegium Players under Robert Mealy perform Latin motets of Mendelssohn. Also, Yale Camerata under Marguerite Brooks and the Yale Percussion Group, directed by Robert van Sice, perform Stravinsky’s Les noces. 3 p.m. March 2 at Woolsey Hall, 500 College St., New Haven. yale.edu/music. The Yale Jazz Ensemble performs under the direction of David Brandenburg. 8 p.m. March 3 at Sprague Memorial Hall, 470 College St., New Haven. Free. yale.edu/music. Experience music by Martin Bresnick, Aaron Jay Kernis, Ezra Laderman and Ingram Marshall in Songs by Faculty Composers. 8 p.m. March 4 at Sprague Memorial Hall, 470 College St., New Haven. Free. yale.edu/music. The Faculty Artists Series presents the Yale Brass Trio: Allan Dean, trumpet; William Purvis, horn; Scott Hartman, trombone; with Mihae Lee, piano. 8 p.m. March 26 at Sprague Memorial Hall, 470 College St., New Haven. Free. yale.edu/music. Yu & Parisot. Kyung Hak Yu, violin, and Elizabeth Parisot, piano will perform works by Handel, Schubert, Richard Strauss and Saint-Saens. 8 p.m. March 27 at Sprague Memorial Hall, 470 College St., New Haven. Free. yale.edu/music. The Student Recitals series brings Juan Fernandez-Nieto, piano to Morse Recital Hall. 5 p.m. March 28 at Sprague Memorial Hall, 470 College St., New Haven. Free. yale. edu/music. Yale Philharmonia Chamber Orchestra. Yale Sinfonietta with conducting fellows Darrell Ang, John Concklin and Julian Pellicano perform a program including
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Notorious musicians Eden MacAdamSomer and Larry Unger bring together traditional and contemporary acoustic music from around the world. With MacAdamSomer on fiddle and vocals and Unger on guitar and banjo, the music is full of rhythmic drive and melodic candor. Their show presents everything from traditional American and
Celtic fiddle tunes to jazz, blues, and the group’s original compositions. MacAdam-Somer is a versatile violinist who began her classical studies at age four. She has been a soloist with symphonies, chamber orchestras, jazz and swing bands, bluegrass and American folk groups. Unger has played guitar, banjo and bass with many top contradance bands,
HAYDN Symphony No. 104 (London), STRAVINSKY Pulcinella Suite and RAVEL Mother Goose Suite. 8 p.m. March 28 at Sprague Memorial Hall, 470 College St., New Haven. Free. yale. edu/music. Under the baton of Music Director James Sinclair, Orchestra New England performs The Rights of Spring. Opening with Vaughan Williams’ Serenade in A Minor, this performance includes a “condensed” arrangement of Stravinsky’s famed Rite of Spring (Le Sacre du Printemps) and conclude with the debut of mezzo soprano Sasha Cooke performing works of Mozart, Handel and Bach. 8 p.m. March 29 at Battell Chapel, 400 College St., New Haven. $40-$20. 203-562-5666, 888-736-2663, shubert.com. Matthew Fried, tuba performs in a Master of Music Recital. 2 p.m. March 29 at Sprague Memorial Hall, 470 College St., New Haven. Free. yale. edu/music. Graduate students from the Yale School of Music perform classical guitar music in the Library Court. 12:30 p.m. March 26 at the Yale Center for British Art, 1080 Chapel St., New Haven. Free. ycba.yale.edu.
including Reckless Abandon, Uncle Gizmo, Big Table and the Reckless Ramblers, and has accompanied many notable fiddlers. — Elvira J. Duran 8 p.m. March 8 at First Congregational Church, 1009 Main St., Branford. $12 ($10 members, $3 12 and under). 203-488-7715, branfordfolk@yahoo. com, folknotes.org/ branfordfolk
Oratorio arias and ensembles will be performed by the Yale Voxtet in Spring Airs. 4 p.m. March 26 at Sprague Memorial Hall, 470 College St., New Haven. Free. yale.edu/music. Kayhan Kalhor, Persian Kamancheh Virtuoso. Born in Tehran in 1963, Kayhan Kalhor has kept the ancient tradition of Persian classical music alive. In conjunction with the British Art Center’s exhibition, The Lure of the East: British Orientalist Painting, 1830-1925, Kayhan will perform with percussionist Behrooz Jamali. 2 p.m. March 30 Lecture Hall at the Yale Center for British Art, 1080 Chapel St., New Haven. Free. ycba.yale.edu. James Hasspacher, double bass, performs a Master of Music Recital. 8 p.m. March 31 at Sprague Memorial Hall, 470 College St., New Haven. Free. yale.edu/music.
Popular Chester’s Exit 6, a blues, “rhythm and roll” (plus banjo) band featuring Jason Baker, Justin Good, Chris Gosman, Joell Jacob, Hans Lohse, Leif Nilsson, Mark Zanardi, and Jeremy Ziemann, performs live. 9:30 p.m. March 1 at Haddam Pizza, 1617 Saybrook Rd., Haddam. 860-526-2077,
nilssonstudio.com/exit6. In an age where popular musical careers are lucky to last three years, Los Lobos has prevailed for more than three decades. 8 p.m. March 8 at Shubert Performing Arts Center, 247 College St., New Haven. $48-$28. 203562-5666, shubert.com. Richie Hart Trio Plus One. Richie Hart, guitar; Rick Petrone, bass; Joe Corsello, drums, plus Joe McWilliams on piano will present music from their most recent release, Greasy Street, and much more. 8 p.m. March 14 at Center for the Arts, 40 Railroad Ave., Milford. $12. 203-878-6647, milfordarts.org. Indulge in “super rock” from the undisputed kings of rock ‘n’ roll, the Fleshtones. March 6 at Café Nine, 250 State St., New Haven. $10. 203789-8281, cafenine.com. The Walkmen, Titles and Aeroplane 1929. Free concert for those 21 and older, featuring three different bands. 7 p.m. (doors open 6:30 p.m.) March 13 at Toad’s Place, 300 York St., New Haven. Free. 203-624-8623, toadsplac@aol.com, toadsplace.com. Join the Jonas Brothers live in concert with guest Rooney. 7 p.m. March 16 at the Arena at Harbor Yard, 600 Main St., Bridgeport. $50-$30. 203-368-1000, arenaatharboryard.com. Enjoy the Pat Metheny Trio at the Shubert on their tour in support of Day Trip, their first studio album together. 7:30 p.m. March 17 at Shubert Performing Arts Center, 247 College St., New Haven. $58-$40. 203562-5666, shubert.com. Remember September will open for Scottish funk and R&B legends the Average White Band. A concert for those 21 and older. 9:15 p.m. (doors open 8 p.m.) March 21 at Toad’s Place, 300 York St., New Haven. $17.50 advance, $20 at door. 203-624-8623, toadsplace@aol.com, toadsplace. com. Drive-By Truckers will perform their “three axe attack” (three guitars, bass and drums) preceded by The Whips in a concert for all ages. 9 p.m. (doors open 8 p.m.) March 25 at Toad’s Place, 300 York St., New Haven. $20. 203-624-8623, toadsplac@aol. com, toadsplace.com. Rock to the music of the Beatles at Waterbury’s Seven Angels Theatre. Billy McGuigan of Seven Angels Theatre hit Buddy fame debuts his brand-new production, Yesterday & Today: A Concert Celebration of Beatles Music. Audience members are sure to enjoy this participatory concert celebration of Beatles hits. Through March 30 at Seven Angels Theatre, Hamilton Park Pavilion, Waterbury. $48-$32.50. 203-757-4676, www.sevenangelstheatre.org.
BELLES LETTRES Sundays with Schenker: Literature & Life. Biweekly series of Sunday lectures with literary expert and Yale Dean of Academic Affairs Mark Schenker. Join Schenker as he presents his summation of literary history as it applies to life and the world around us. Schenker will present literary findings from Shakespeare, Pablo Neruda, T.S. Eliot, Saul Bellow, Joseph Conrad, Keats, Auden, Mark Twain, Magritte and Wallace Stevens, as well as from the texts of Anna Karenina, Ulysses and Atonement. This week’s topic is William Wordsworth. 2-3:30 p.m. March 9 at Willoughby Wallace Memorial Library, 146 Thimble Islands Rd., Stony Creek. Free. 203-488-8702, librarystaff@branford-ct.gov, wwml. org. The Yale Collection of American Literature Reading Series presents a poetry reading by C.D. Wright. Wright has published numerous collections of poetry including One Big Self and Just Whistle, two collaborative projects with photographer Deborah Luster, as well as the book-length poem Deepstep Come Shining, Tremble and String Light. She has been awarded the Witter Bynner Prize for Poetry from the American Academy and Institute of Arts & Letters and the Whiting Writers’ Award. 4 p.m. March 13 at Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, 121 Wall St., New Haven. Free. 203-432-2966, nancy. kuhl@yale.edu, library.yale.edu/ beinecke/. Sundays with Schenker: Literature & Life. Biweekly series of Sunday lectures with literary expert and Yale Dean of Academic Affairs Mark Schenker (see above). This week’s topic: John Keats. 2-3:30 p.m. March 30 at Willoughby Wallace Memorial Library, 146 Thimble Islands Rd., Stony Creek. Free. 203-488-8702, librarystaff@branford-ct.gov, wwml. org. A broad display of books exploring the ways in which poets, publishers, artists and printers have navigated the intersection of poetry and art in printed formats is featured in Metaphor Taking Shape: Poetry, Art and the Book. Exhibition considers the ways poetry and book
CRITIC’S PICK: Bad News Bared
Quinnipiac journalism professor Karin Schwanbeck reveals why local TV news is a blur of shootings and car crashes instead of news that actually affects viewers in Deadlines and Dollars, screened March 25 at QU.
arts interact and connect, their potentially conflicting functions and their shared context. Materials on display explore questions of verbal and visual metaphor making, emphasizing the roles of creative and collaborative processes involved in uniting image, verse and print. Through March 31 at Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, 121 Wall St., New Haven. Open 8:30 a.m.-8 p.m. Mon.-Thurs., until 5 p.m. Fri., 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Sat. Free. 203-432-2977, library.yale.edu/beinecke/. The Reckoner’s Art: Reading & Writing Mathematics in Early Modern England. Mathematics became an essential part of literate culture in England in the early modern period. This exhibition showcases the means, serious and playful, by which readers learned, practiced and implemented mathematics in England, from the mid-16th through the 18th centuries. Student exercise books, almanacs, textbooks, illustrations, account books, poems, literature and instruments made of paper are included in the exhibit. Through April 16 at Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, 121 Wall St., New Haven. Open 8:30 a.m.-8 p.m. Mon.Thurs., until 5 p.m. Fri., 10 a.m.-5 p.m.
Quinnipiac University journalism professor of Karin Schwanbeck screens her new documentary Deadlines and Dollars (U.S., 2007, 58 min.). Schwanbeck was executive producer, writer and co-editor of the documentary, which offers a critical examination of local TV news and how story coverage is affected more often by profit and efficiency, rather than by meaningful stories with a direct impact on viewers’ lives. “Today, reporters are better educated and trained than ever before, yet
Sat. Free. 203-432-2977, library.yale. edu/beinecke/.
CINEMA The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (U.S., 1988, 126 min.). Directed by Terry Gilliam. Fantastic tale of a 17th-century aristocrat, his talented henchmen, and a little girl who try to save a town from defeat by the Turks. Improbable adventures include being swallowed by a giant sea-monster, a trip to the moon, and a dance with Venus. Introduction by Alicia Weisberg-Roberts, postdoctoral research associate at the Yale Center for British Art. Informal discussion to follow screening. 2 p.m. March 1 at the Yale Center for British Art, 1080 Chapel St., New Haven. Free. ycba.yale.edu. For this month’s lively Sunday Salon Series, Jacob Bricca, adjunct assistant professor of film studies at Wesleyan, will screen his award-winning documentary film, Indies Under Fire: The Battle for the American Bookstore (U.S., 2006, 57 min.). Following the screening, Bricca will host a Q&A where audience members will be encouraged to share their own
the types of stories they cover and the number of stories they turn out every day do not always allow reporters to make full use of their education and training,” Schwanbeck says. “Viewers say they are tired of crime, accidents and fire stories – well, many reporters are, too.” Much Connecticutspecific material including interviews with familiar faces to local TV news audiences. Incisive, critical and well executed. Question-and-answer session follows screening. — Michael C. Bingham
insights and experiences regarding the struggle to keep independent stores alive in the face of bigbox retailers. 2 p.m. March 2 at Green Street Arts Center, 51 Green St., Middletown. $5 ($3 members, seniors, students). 860-685-7871, greenstreetartscenter.org or indiesunderfire.com. The Front (U.S., 1976, 95 min.). Directed by Martin Ritt. Hosted by Robert Workman, professor of Computer Science. Part of Cinéma du Monde, the university-wide film series at Southern Connecticut State University. 7:35 p.m. March 5 in Engleman Hall A120, SCSU, 501 Crescent Street, New Haven. Free. 203392-6778, southernct.edu/events/ cinemadumondebl_5985. In Gabbeh (Iran, 1996, 75 min.), an elderly couple, gently bickering as they clean their gabbeh (an intricately designed rug), is magically joined by a young woman who helps with the cleaning. The young woman belongs to the clan whose history is depicted in the design of the gabbeh, which tells the story of her courtship by a stranger to the clan. Directed by Mohsen Makhmalbaf. Introduction by Beatrice Gruendler, professor of Near Eastern languages
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and civilizations at Yale. Informal discussion to follow screening. 7 p.m. March 6 at the Whitney Humanities Center, 53 Wall St., New Haven. Free. ycba.yale.edu. The Wind That Shakes the Barley (Ireland, UK, Germany, Italy, Spain 2006, 127 min.) is a film directed by Ken Loach. Michael Ryan from the SCSU Sociology Department will host. 7:35 p.m. March 12 in Engleman Hall A120, SCSU, 501 Crescent Street, New Haven. Free. 203392-6778, southernct.edu/events/ cinemadumondebl_5985. Nanook of the North (U.S., 1922, 79 min.). Directed by Robert J. Flaherty. Documenting one year in the life of the Inuit Nanook and his family, film depicts the trading, hunting, fishing, and migrations of a group barely touched by industrial technology when film was made. 2 p.m. March 15 at the Yale Center for British Art, 1080 Chapel St., New Haven. Free. ycba. yale.edu. Shagg Film Festival. One Sunday afternoon, friends, family, neighbors and strangers will pour into the Chester meeting house to view two and a half hours of films created by friends, family, neighbors and strangers — movies zero to eight minutes in length that fulfill no particular parameters other than that they were produced as someone’s creative expression. The movies may be about anything (funny, serious, silly, politically moving) or nothing. The goal of the festival is to get people out of the cold and into the warmth of a fun community project (like walking barefoot on a red shagg carpet). Proceeds will benefit Chester Rotary Club. 4-6:30 p.m. (ticket booth opens at 3:15 p.m.) March 16 at the Chester Meeting House, 4 Liberty St., Chester. Free (donations accepted, tickets required). mbeecherlmt@ sbcglobal.net, shaggfilmfestival.com. 7 p.m. March 25 in the Mancheski Executive Seminar Room, Lender School of Business Center, Quinnipiac University., 275 Mt. Carmel Ave., Hamden. Free. 203-582-8652.
FAMILY EVENTS The first day of spring is almost here! How are things changing at the beach? Take a walk around the Coastal Center and look for signs of spring in Nature Babies: Springing Into Spring. How do plants and animals prepare for spring? Bring your green thumb and plant your own seeds. For children ages three to five with a parent or adult guardian. 10:30-11:30 a.m. March 5 at Connecticut Audubon Society Coastal Center at Milford, 1 Milford Point Rd., Milford. $10 members/$15 non-
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CRITIC’S PICK Got Ink? Know how to tell a girl squid from a boy squid? Or how big a squid’s heart is? Or why their eyes are so big? Most people don’t, but you will! This family program for children eight years and older lets participants explore a squid from head to tentacle, as an experienced instructor guides you step-by-step through a hands-on dissection of a real squid. Not for the squeamish, but definitely for the inquisitive. — Elvira J. Duran 1-2 p.m. March 8 at Connecticut Audubon Society Coastal Center at Milford, 1 Milford Point Rd., Milford. $10 members/$14 non-members. Registration required. 203-878-7440, ctaudubon.org/visit/milford.htm.
members (includes 1 child and 1 adult). 203-878-7440, ctaudubon.org/visit/ milford.htm. Chef’s Table Dinner. Chef and co-owner Denise Appel of Zinc and Chow restaurants will discuss technique and ingredients while leading guests through a light dinner and wine selection. 6 p.m. March 5 at Zinc, 964 Chapel St., New Haven. $55 inclusive. 203-624-0507, elizabethciarlelli@zincfood.com, zincfood.com. Public Stargazing Session. 7 p.m. March 6 at the Leitner Family Observatory, 355 Prospect St., New Haven. Free. cobb@astro.yale.edu, astro.yale.edu/publicnights. Taught by four local woodcarving experts, 12- to 18-year-olds will enjoy an Introduction to Basic Woodcarving. A variety of carving styles will be demonstrated and all participants will make a carving of their own to take home. Materials, tools provided. 1-3 p.m. March 15 at Connecticut Audubon Society Coastal Center at Milford, 1 Milford Point Rd., Milford. $25 members/$35 nonmembers. 203-878-7440, ctaudubon. org/visit/milford.htm.
brown frogs that whistle and peep to let you know that spring has arrived. Even though they are only the size of a postage stamp, a chorus of them will surely delight your ears at night. 10:30-11:30 a.m. March 19 at Connecticut Audubon Society Coastal Center at Milford, 1 Milford Point Rd., Milford. $10 members/$15 nonmembers (includes 1 child and 1 adult). 203-878-7440, ctaudubon.org/visit/ milford.htm. Endangered piping plovers are just returning after a winter away. The Return of the Piping Plovers! will have participants searching for these sand-colored plovers, learning a bit about their amazing life history and finding out how their breeding success can be improved. If weather allows, there will be a beach cleanup and protective fencing will be erected in preparation for the plovers’ nesting season. 10:30 a.m. March 22 at Connecticut Audubon Society Coastal Center at Milford, 1 Milford Point Rd., Milford. Free for members/$6 non-members. 203-8787440, ctaudubon.org/visit/milford.htm.
LECTURES/ DISCUSSIONS
City Farmers’ Year-Round Market At Wooster Square. Enjoy local food from local farms including seafood, meat, milk, cheese, organic greens, root vegetables, handcrafted bread & baked goods, honey and more. CitySeed holds a market each third Saturday of the month through spring. 10 a.m.-1 p.m. March 15 at Russo Park, corner of Chapel St. and DePalma Ct., New Haven. 203-7733736, cityseed.org.
Peter C. Mancall, professor of history and anthropology at the University of Southern California and director of USC/Huntington’s Early Modern Studies Institute, will speak on “John White, Richard Hakluyt, and the Creation of American Icons” in the opening lecture for A New World: England’s First View of America. 5:30 p.m. March 5 at the Yale Center for British Art, 1080 Chapel St., New Haven. Free. ycba.yale.edu.
Nature Babies: Spring Concert. Learn about spring peepers, the tiny
The Grand Tour as Literary Production. Beinecke Lectures in the
Get up close and personal with a squid at the Audubon Society Coastal Center March 8.
History of the Book series presents a lecture by Jeremy Black, professor at the University of Exeter. 4 p.m. March 26 at Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, 121 Wall St., New Haven. Free. 203-432-2969, rebecca. martz@yale.edu, www.library.yale. edu/beinecke/. Humanitarian and author John Prendergast will deliver a lecture, On Our Watch: Stopping Genocide in Sudan. Prendergast is co-chairman of Enough, an organization creating policy recommendations and engaging activists to stop genocide and crimes against humanity. He was involved in various peace processes throughout Africa while working at the White House and State Department during the Clinton administration. He has authored eight books about Africa, the latest, Not On Our Watch: The Mission to End Genocide in Darfur and Beyond, is a New York Times bestseller. 7 p.m. March 6 in Alumni Hall, Quinnipiac University, 275 Mount Carmel Ave., Hamden. Free. 203-582-8652, quinnipiac.edu. Brigitte Payne Cogswell, founder of Success by Design 3D Seminars in New Haven, is the guest speaker for Mirror Image: Reflections of Women’s Body Image & Perceptions of Beauty in Our Society. Event includes a screening of A Girl Like Me, a short documentary about young black women struggling to define themselves, and a panel discussion with faculty and staff members and students. Presented by Quinnipiac’s Multicultural Events Committee. 7 p.m. March 20 in the Mancheski Executive Seminar Room, Lender School of Business, Quinnipiac University, 275 Mt. Carmel Ave., Hamden. Free. 203-582-8652.
NATURAL HISTORY Las Artes de Mexico. The Yale Peabody Museum’s latest traveling exhibition celebrates the rich and diverse artistic traditions of Mexico. Developed by the Gilcrease Museum in Tulsa, Ok., Las Artes examines more than 3,500 years of art and culture and of tradition and change across the broad spectrum of Mexican life, from the ancient worlds of the Mayans and Aztecs to the 20th century works of Miguel Covarrubias and Diego Rivera. Included are artifacts from more than a dozen pre-Columbian cultures that reveal a world of ceremony and celebration, of ritual warfare and the veneration of the dead, along with a selection of material from the Peabody’s own collections. March 22-July 19 (opening celebration 10 a.m.-2 p.m. March 22) at Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History, 170 Whitney Ave., New Haven. Open 10 a.m.-5 p.m. daily, noon-5 p.m. Sun. $7 ($6 seniors, $5 ages 3-18). 203-4325050, yale.edu/peabody.
SPORTS/RECREATION Cycling Night Ride on the Canal. Enjoy the newborn spring and get those base miles up with a weekly two- to three-hour ride up the Farmington
Canal Trail. Riders maintain a very moderate (15-17 mph) pace. Participants should bring lights (some may be available for loan) and helmets. 5:30 p.m. Tuesdays March 4, 11, 18, and 25 at the Devil’s Gear Bike Shop, 433 Chapel St., New Haven. Free. 203-773-9288, thedevilsgear.com. Elm City Cycling organizes Lulu’s Ride, weekly two- to four-hour rides for all levels (17-19 mph average). Cyclists leave 10 a.m. from Lulu’s European Café as a single group; no one is dropped. 10 a.m. Sundays March 2, 9, 16, 23, 30 at Lulu’s European Café, 49 Cottage St., New Haven. Free. 203-773-9288, elmcitycycling.org/. Critical Mass. The ride you shouldn’t miss! Participants meet at the flagpole on the New Haven Green at 5:30 p.m. on the last Friday of each month for a slow-paced ride through New Haven streets. The ride ranges from 30 minutes to over an hour depending on weather. Critical Mass is not an organization; it’s an “unorganized coincidence” — a movement of bicycles in the streets as traffic. After the event, everyone is invited to a potluck dinner at the Devil’s Gear Bike Shop. 5:30 p.m. March 28 at Temple and Chapel streets, New Haven. Free. elmcitycycling.org/.
Spectator Sports The University of New Haven baseball team plays at home against St. Anselm College (noon March 15), Merrimack College (noon March 16), Mercy College (noon March 22), Concordia College (3:30 p.m. March 26) and Molloy College (1 p.m. March 30). At Frank Vieira Field, University of New Haven, New Haven. 203-932-7468, rcerrato@newhaven. edu, estrada2.newhaven.edu/ athletics/teams/baseball/schedule/. Southern Connecticut State University’s batters face Post University (softball at 2 & 4 p.m. March 4, baseball at 3 p.m. March 5), Mercy College (baseball at 3 p.m. March 6, softball at 3 & 5 p.m. March 10), Concordia College (baseball at noon & 3 p.m. March 9, softball at 3 & 5 p.m. March 11), University of New Haven (baseball 3 p.m. March 11), Franklin Pierce College (baseball 3 p.m. March 25), Adelphi University (softball at 1 & 3 p.m. March 22) and Bentley College (baseball noon & 3 p.m. March 29). At the Ballpark at Southern Connecticut State University, New Haven. 203-392-6000, southernctowls.com. In basketball, the male Bulldogs of Yale take to the courts in their last home game of the season vs. Princeton (8 p.m. March 1). At Payne
Whitney Gymnasium, 70 Tower Pkwy., New Haven. $8-$6. yalebulldogs. cstv.com. The lady Bulldogs end their season with games vs. Dartmouth (7 p.m. March 7) and legendary rival Harvard (7 p.m. March 8). At Payne Whitney Gymnasium, 70 Tower Pkwy., New Haven. $4 ($2 non-Yale student, free for seniors, children and Yale students). yalebulldogs.cstv.com. Yale women’s lacrosse team takes to the field vs. James Madison (3 p.m. March 1), New Hampshire (3 p.m. March 5), Penn (noon March 15), Connecticut (3 p.m. March 26) and Harvard (3 p.m. March 29). At Johnson Field, Yale University, New Haven. Free. yalebulldogs.cstv.com. The male Yale Bulldogs cross lacrosse sticks with UMass (1 p.m. March 1), Penn (1:30 p.m. March 15), and Hartford (7 p.m. March 25). At Reese Stadium, Yale University, New Haven. Free. yalebulldogs.cstv.com. Please send CALENDAR information to CALENDAR@conntact.com no later than five weeks preceding calendar month of event. Please include date, time, location, event description, cost and contact information. Photos must be at least 300 dpi resolution and are published at discretion of NEW HAVEN magazine.
h h h h h
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When the ordinary just won’t do Now offering online purchasing of our seasonal collection. Sign up online for our monthly newsletter and special offers
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W O RD S of MOUT H By Liese Kline
NEW EATS:
Lao Sze Chuan
B
ring on the pig ears, jellyfish and ox tongue — a home-style Chinese restaurant has come to town.
Lao Sze Chaun, which opened on the Post Road in Milford in December, caters to a Chinese clientele and adventurous eaters with a vast menu of seafood and meat delicacies. But there’s also plenty for fans of Americanized Chinese cooking looking for a fresh take on Kung Pao Chicken. The first East Coast offshoot of a popular Chicago chain, Lao Sze Chaun features the creations of Chef Yun Gui Zhou. According to manager Charmin Riang, Zhou taught at a cooking
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school in Chengdu, the capital of China’s Szechuan province, which is renowned for its spicy food. A former student brought Zhou to the States and now he works full-time in the Milford restaurant’s kitchen. Lao Sze Chaun’s appeal to Chinese foodies is its wide selection of cold appetizers, Riang says. That’s where you’ll find unusual animal parts and delicacies like sliced conch and steamed salted duck. More conservative eaters will enjoy specials like Three Delights with Crispy Rice, a tasty combination of shrimp, chicken and beef with vegetables. Ample seafood, tofu and vegetable selections are also available.
Waiters are bilingual and attentive: be sure to ask for help deciphering menu items like “Silky Fowl with Black Mushrooms.” Skillful lighting and clean lines lend the dining room a sophisticated ambience. In all, Lao Sze Chaun is a great place to expand your horizons or savor Chinese classics interpreted by a master chef. Lao Sze Chaun, 1585 Boston Post Road, Milford (203-783-0558)
Anthony DeCarlo
Lao Sze Chaun Manager Charmin Liang (left), Chef Yun Gui Zhou, sous-chef Wei.
PHOTOGRAPH:
Zhong Ci and cook Gao Lin create Chinese specialties like stir-fried baby squid (inset).
Steve Blazo
northern italian cuisine
PHOTOGRAPH:
Michael’s Trattoria Lunch & Dinner reservations recommended on weekends
— excellent wine list — Zagat Rated
Ed Varipapa runs Leon’s in a Long Wharf location his grandfather built.
203 269-5303
Close to Chevrolet Theatre 344 Center St, Wallingford
JUST A TASTE:
Leon’s
T
here’s nothing better than watching the sun play on the water at sunset — except watching that sunset as you eat a great meal. Leon’s of New Haven, the reincarnation of a much-loved Italian eatery, offers the water view and menu too in the former Long Wharf location of the Rusty Scupper.
A great start to a meal is the pane cotto, a custardy mix of bread, beans and bitter greens — Leon’s version gets a salty kick from pancetta. (Vegetarians and diners with restricted diets should ask questions: the menu does not list all ingredients.) Beans and greens also shine in richly flavored soup.
Leon’s opened on New Year’s Eve only months after the Scupper closed in a lease dispute. It was a homecoming for Leon’s owner Edward Varipapa — his grandfather built the Long Wharf restaurant. “When I had the opportunity to move back here, I jumped on it,” Varipapa says.
Pasta comes in perfectly sized portions with generous servings of seafood or meat. A Shrimp Puttanesca special delivered a boatload of shrimp coated in a complex, intense mix of capers and olives. A raw bar and full selection of veal and beef dishes are offered at dinner and most signature dishes are offered at lunch.
Varipapa, who is also executive chef, has brought many of his family’s recipes with him to the new Leon’s, but is also not afraid to take chances. An extensive list of daily specials pays tribute to what’s in season and the best seafood available, be it local scungilli or branzino from Italy.
Fresh Italian bread is served with meals along with a well-chosen selection of wine, beer and cocktails. Finish up with the cannoli cheesecake or a brightly flavored amaretto fig pudding. Leon’s of New Haven, 501 Long Wharf Drive (203-562-5366)
FUSION ASIAN CUISINE HIBACHI STEAK HOUSE, SUSHI BAR & LOUNGE 203.926.1933 702 BRIDGEPORT AVENUE, SHELTON WWW.ASIANBISTRORESTAURANT.NET new haven
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Just what Hamden ordered!
An elegant & comfortable Mediterranean Restaurant & Bar with a Neighborhood Feel & Authentic Homemade Taste
March Madness Martinis & Appetizers 1/2 PRICE during Happy Hour Monday – Friday: 4 – 6pm
Gift Certificates Available
Catering On & Off Premise Available LIVE Music In the Lounge Every Weekend Lunch Mon – Fri: 11:30 – 4:00 Dinner Mon thru Thurs: 4 – 9:30 Fri & Sat: 5 – 10:30 (at the corner of Dixwell and Whitney)
2323 Whitney Ave Hamden
203.288.4700 www.mickeysgroup.com
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W
ith New Haven in the grip of St. Patrick’s How has the food scene changed back in Day fever this month, Eamonn Ryan of Ireland? Hamden’s Playwright Pub wants everyone to The whole country has kind of changed know that there’s more to Irish food than corned — all the major cities are rebuilt, there are beef and cabbage. A native of Ireland’s County a lot of new restaurants. You see a lot of Limerick, Ryan grew up with traditional foods Italian, French, European food. The people but has seen his native land adapt its cuisine are traveling right through Europe now that as it has morphed into the “Celtic Tiger.” The everyone is part of the European Union. Playwright features traditional favorites, but watch for lighter, more modern Emerald Isle What are some misconceptions about cuisine this summer when the eatery changes Irish food? its menu. People think it’s basically meat and potatoes. The whole country’s gone very modern; What Irish dishes do you offer at the you find different dishes from throughout Playwright? the world. There’s a little bit of flavor from We do the shepherd’s pie, corned beef and all over the world. cabbage, Irish smoked salmon, Guinness Will you be bringing new Irish cuisine to stew. It’s typical Irish dishes, like bangers the Playwright? and mash. Right now we’re just staying with what What is your favorite dish? we’ve got, but we might add some things in I like the stew and shepherd’s pie. At home the summertime. We’re always looking at I like bacon and cabbage — corned beef menus to see what would work over here. and cabbage is actually an American dish.
Anthony DeCarlo
Eamonn Ryan, Playwright Pub
PHOTOGRAPH:
CHEF ON THE GRILL
BEST OF THE REST
Open Seven Days
INDIAN Thali, 4 Orange St., New Haven (203-777-1177).
Downtown’s best Sunday buffet, with ample meat and vegetarian selections as well as fresh masala dosa crepes and unusual treats like goat curry and carrot pudding. Zaroka Bar & Restaurant, 148 York St., New Haven (203-776-8644). Opulent setting for one of
downtown’s most popular Indian buffets. Enjoy the birayani pilafs, crunchy pappadum crackers and fluffy desserts. Buffet is $7.95 daily ($9.95 on Sunday).
Hibachi • Sushi • Pan-Asian
Royal India, 140 Howe St., New Haven (203-7879493). Tasty North Indian fare in an intimate
setting on Howe’s mini-restaurant row. Nice variety at lunch buffet with fresh bread. Weekday buffet is $7.95, Friday-Saturday is $8.95 and Sunday $9.95. Darbar India, 1070 Main St., Branford (203-4818994). Award-winning shoreline favorite with
Catering & Parties Welcome
excellent atmosphere and north Indian classics, run by Royal India owner. Spicy vindaloos and tandooris are a good bet. Friday-Sunday lunch buffet is $9.95. Coromandel, 185 Boston Post Rd., Orange (203-7959055). Great breads and regional specialties from
514 Bridgeport Avenue, Shelton • 929-8666 www.KobisRestaurant.com
the local outpost of a celebrated Fairfield chain. Try the shrimp in coconut sauce and unusual lentil dessert. Weekday lunch buffet $9.95 ($11.95 on weekends). Swagat, 215 Boston Post Rd. West Haven (203-9310108). A tiny outpost of south Indian favorites
near the University of New Haven. Best bets are the masala dosa and many vegetarian dishes, plus the friendly service. No buffet, but open all day and very affordable.
Let Eli’s Cater Your Next Event
ITALIAN Skappo Italian Wine Bar, 59 Crown St., New Haven (203-773-1394). White truffles and chestnuts are
two of the compelling flavors you’ll encounter at this cozy eatery in Ninth Square. A great place to sample wines and small plates in an unpretentious setting. Tre Scalini Ristorante, 100 Wooster St., New Haven (203-777-3373). Acclaimed pasta, seafood and
antipasti in an opulent Wooster Square setting. Also open for lunch. Michael’s Trattoria, 344 Center St., Wallingford (203269-5303). Worth a drive for the romantic ambi-
ence and tasty Northern Italian cuisine. Ample wine list and lunch menu.
Make it Easy, Make it Eli’s
Roseland Apizza, 350 Hawthorne Ave., Derby (203735-0494). Don’t let the casual pizzeria decor fool
• Customized Menus • Food Delivery to Your Door
you — this Valley favorite makes some serious Italian food. Look for the daily specials and enjoy.
• Full Service Catering including set-up, servers, bartenders & clean-up
2392 Whitney Avenue, Hamden • 203-287-2837 • ElisOnWhitney.com new haven
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Adriana’s Restaurant, 771 Grand Ave., New Haven (203-865-6474). Meat is the thing at this Grand
Avenue favorite, especially veal and sausages. Fresh pasta and classics in a formal setting.
AMERICAN SEASONAL Bespoke, 266 College St., New Haven (203 5624644). Save the best seasonal treat for last at
this trendy successor to Roomba — a decadent pumpkin cheesecake. Also on tap for the winter is a rack of lamb and chupe, a seafood chowder of clams, shrimp and scallops in a clear broth. Foe, 576 Main St., Branford (203-483-5896). A sweet
potato-and-ginger bisque will get your meal off to a warming start at this Branford bistro, followed but the hearty black fig and cherry-glazed duck breast on a pillow of sweet potato hash. Other fall flavors include a rack of lamb and a port tenderloin enrobed in a rosemary, garlic and Parmesan pesto. Tenderloin Fish & Steakhouse, 2 East Main St., Branford (203-481-1414). This Branford favorite’s filet
Viva Zapata, 161 Park St., New Haven (203-5622499). Toothsome classics and a killer sangria in
Baja, 63 Boston Post Rd., Orange (203-799-2252).
a festive pub atmosphere. Open for lunch.
An expansive salsa bar and fish taco entrée appeal to homesick Californians and big eaters. Guadalupe la Poblanita, 136 Chapel St., New Haven (203-752-1017). Simple, authentic cuisine from
Puebla in a down-home atmosphere. Jalapeno Heaven, 40 N. Main St., Branford (203-4816759). Tasty Americanized fare in a cozy setting
with excellent margaritas. Long Wharf Taco Trucks, Long Wharf Drive near Veteran’s Memorial Park, weekdays at lunch. Tacos
as they’re served in Mexico — just corn tortillas, meat, cilantro and a spicy sauce — eaten al fresco by New Haven Harbor. Mezcal, 14 Mechanic St., New Haven (203-7824828). Big portions and wide-ranging menu with
lots of surprises. No liquor license. Taqueria Mexico No. 1, 850 S. Colony Rd. Wallingford (203-265-0567). The best tortas — or small sand-
wiches — in the area, filled with spiced meat and accompanied on the weekends by a lip-smacking posole hominy soup.
Anthony DeCarlo
mignon over portobellos with a cognac-gorgonzola cream will warm you as the mercury drops. Specials include a butternut ravioli dish with brown butter and sage.
MEXICAN
SEAFOOD Lenny’s Indian Head Inn, 205 S. Montowese St., Branford (203-488-1500). Fried clams praised by
national critics and the freshest steamers around make Lenny’s a local favorite. The Shore Dinner covers all the bases with cherrystones, corn on the cob, lobster and steamers. Lenny & Joe’s Fish Tale, 1301 Boston Post Rd., Madison (203-245-7289). What it lacks in formality
it makes up for in taste — the freshest, crispest fried seafood around. The perfect spot for quick eats after beach or a coastal drive, with an ice cream stand onsite. Guilford Mooring, 505 Whitfield St., Guilford (203458-2921). Pasta dishes, a stellar chowder and a
full range of grilled fish set this Shoreline favorite apart. And where else can you savor Lazy Man’s Stuffed Lobster as you watch lobstermen at work on the Sound? YellowFin’s Seafood Grille, 1027 South Main St., Cheshire (203-250-9999). Flavors are light and
EDITOR’S PICK
PHOTOGRAPH:
Kari Malaysian seats with a grin, helping out a relative who worked there. Chef Chew Kai Chow is from Malaysia and opened the eatery three years ago. Malaysian food has hints of Thai, Chinese and Indian cuisines, with ample use of dried shrimp, peanuts and chilies. The roti canai appetizer is good introduction, combining a naan-like soft bread with a spicy peanut dipping sauce. Nasi goreng is another classic dish: fried rice with shrimp and chicken that makes for a salty, spicy and satisfying entrée. Impress your friends by ordering the stingray marinated in spicy sauce — just give yourself time to tease the meat out of layers of cartilage.
Chef Chew Kai Chow opened Kari Malaysian three years ago.
When someone from Singapore recommends a restaurant, prick up your ears: That country is known worldwide as a foodie paradise. So when a Singaporean friend recently praised Kari Malaysian restaurant on Whalley Avenue, a visit was in order.
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Tucked away in a strip mall in the Amity neighborhood, Kari doesn’t look like much from the street. But once inside, a huge and intricate gamelan musical instrument at the center of the space helps set the mood. Exceptionally warm service adds to the ambience: On a recent visit a five-year-old girl showed us to our
Almost anything on the menu offers a complex and deeply flavored alternative to other Asian cuisines. Finish up with ginger ice cream or pineapple-stuffed rambutan, a perfumed fruit with a taste like lychee. Kari also offers many of its best dishes at lunch for only $6.95. Kari Malaysian Restaurant, 451 Whalley Avenue, New Haven. (203-389-1280)
bright at this fusion eatery, with a menu that ranges from cioppino to Asian scallop salad to Tilapia St. Tropez. A raw bar and house-brewed beer round out the offerings. Jimmie’s of Savin Rock, 5 Rock St., West Haven. 934-3212. Take the family out and enjoy the
boardwalk view at this West Haven institution, known for its moderate prices and casual atmosphere. All the fried favorites, a full menu of broiled fish and lobster and the famous split hot dog.
VEGETARIAN Duck’s Soup, 3584 Whitney Ave., Hamden (203-2817687). A great place to fortify yourself before hik-
ing Sleeping Giant, with specialties like cabbage and potato vegan pierogies and tasty baked goods. Hours are limited, so call ahead. Shoreline Diner & Vegetarian Enclave, 345 Boston Post Rd., Guilford (203-458-7380). Non-veg diner
fare along with vegan favorites like a tempeh Reuben with sauerkraut on grilled rye and “Twin Towers” of vegetable strudel. Great place for groups with different dining preferences. It’s Only Natural Restaurant, 386 Main St., Middletown (860-346-9210). Worth the ride up I-91 for
award-winning entrées like sweet potato enchiladas, tempeh “crab cakes” and a generous macrobiotic plate. Full slate of vegan desserts including chocolate mousse couscous cake.
CELEBRITY PICK Nicholas Perricone Salmon and salad are Dr. Nicholas Perricone’s main prescriptions for great skin, but the Meriden-based beauty mogul also frequents lots of local eateries with much more varied menus. Perricone names Fratelli’s in Wallingford, Café Allegra in Madison and Geronimo’s Southwest Grill in downtown New Haven as personal favorites, along with Guilford’s The Place and Stone House Restaurant for family dining. The Stone House also gets the nod for a local eatery that serves cuisine that aligns best with Perricone’s famed beauty diet, which favors food rich in vitamins that moisturize from within and fatty acids that smooth wrinkles. Stone House’s grilled salmon with roasted beets or sesame-seared tuna both fit the bill. Perricone, a New Haven native and longtime shoreline resident, extends his beauty tips to a prescription for
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overall health in his new book, Ageless Face, Ageless Mind. He’s also got a new line of beauty products based on antiinflammatory compounds. Even though he hobnobs with Oprah and heads a $100 million company, Perricone maintains his local ties and values the local dining scene. What makes the New Haven area special? “The ambience of the Connecticut shoreline,” Perricone says.
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PHOTOGRAPH:
Steve Blazo
I Believe I Can Fly. (I Just Can’t Prove It.) Strictly for-the-birds excursions By Joyce L. Faiola Robinson Aviation flight instructor Chris Baylor in front of a single-engine Piper Arrow at Tweed Airport.
A
fter three months of being cocooned by the fire and living on popcorn, it was time to get out in the fresh air and rise above it all. I checked out my options; there were two. My first, Robinson Aviation at Tweed New Haven Airport in East Haven was just the ticket where they promise to, “Make a dream come true with a gift of flight.” Robinson provides one stop shopping when it comes to non-commercial flights and everything from the Rolls Royce of corporate jets, the Gulfstream V, to twin-engine Piper Senecas buzzing around. Robinson Aviation owner and namesake Ken Robinson offered either a private lesson (to see if I would chuck up my lunch or not) or a quick hop/skip/jump to see the New York City skyline (ditto). As soon as I was introduced to my instructor, debonair 23-year-old Chris Baylor, I chose the lesson but it had just started to sleet. Getting my priorities in order, I headed to the ladies loo to check on my makeup and to test try the barf bag I had tucked into my purse. Becoming a licensed pilot takes a minimum of 40 hours of training, but most spend twice that time. We began with the
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flight simulator, which looks like a giant PlayStation setup with dual joysticks.
his awe-inspiring hot air balloon has been the show-and-tell feature at many schools where the kids are older. The most popular Once in the cockpit of the tiny Piper suggestion from the wowed teenagers is, Warrior, Chris and I completed the pilot’s “Can you take the principal up and, like, get checklist which covers an examination of lost in the trees?” the aircraft’s exterior (thankfully, no duct tape) and interior. And yes, the instrument Nestled in northeast Connecticut’s “quiet panel looked just like the classroom corner,” Woodstock looks just like Vermont simulator, albeit far more stimulating. with its vast stretches of meadowland and scenic vistas — perfect for ballooning. It’s I took a rain check for the lesson just as a also loaded with shops, cafés and inns. snazzy corporate jet landed. Among sundry creative services, Brighter The skies brightened a few days later so I Skies does airborne weddings and employeedrove over to Brighter Skies Ballooning in reward excursions for corporations. As my Woodstock just to satisfy my curiosity as luck would have it the weekend turned to option No. 2 and maybe take a tethered out to feature 30-mph winds, and so being flight. Owner Bruce Byberg has been hotgrounded (again), I made a pit stop at the air ballooning for 20 years. He recalls: “My Cinnamon Tree Bakery where I had the balloon was once the entertainment at a best homemade honey bun of my life and kindergarteners’ birthday party. When I then drove deep into the woods for a late set up the balloon in their gigantic back breakfast by the fire at Stoggy Hollow, yard they refused to come outside. Turns where waitress Mary spoiled me with their out their parents got short tethered rides I cornflake-covered French toast sundae planned for the kids!” layered with fresh fruit and packed me I felt like those five-year-olds, so we spoke up some of their famous fried pickles for about my taking a tethered ride (that’s the trip home. If you liked the TV show when the balloon stays tied to the ground Northern Exposure, you’ll love this place. v but you go up about 50 feet) . Bruce and
THEY HEAL, THEY HELP, THEY CARE, THEY SAVE LIVES... ITâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S TIME TO SAY THANKS! JOIN BUSINESS NEW HAVEN IN RECOGNIZING THE EFFORTS OF, THE GREATER NEW HAVEN HEALTHCARE INDUSTRY. Nominate an outstanding health professional for recogniton; info at www.conntact.com. Selected honorees will be featured in a magazine distributed May 26 in Business New Haven and at locations in greater New Haven. A special section will also run in June in New Haven featuring the honorees. For information on nominations, sponsorships or the Healthcare Heroes 2008 event, visit: www.conntact.com or call 203-781-3480.
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