New Haven November 2008

NOVEMBER 2008

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A Concert of Maestro James Sinclair and Orchestra New England start the holiday season 1790-style

Can city schools learn from charters’ success?

Yale’s Gelernter has his head in the Cloud

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New Haven I November/2008

Brian Dennehy brings O’Neill to LWT (and vice-versa)

12 Heritage

51 Spokes People

On the trail of Connecticut’s Underground Railroad

Wheeler-dealers reinvent commuting to work

14 Real Estate Reality

56 Words of Mouth

Rethinking the residential real-estate ‘crash’

Sweet tooths flock to New Haven’s Cupcake Truck

21 Class Acts

62 Discovered

Can city schools learn from reformers’ success?

This may not be the best month to be a turkey, but it’s the perfect time for a visit

Steve Blazo

44 Onstage

PHOTOGRAPH:

8 Head in the Cloud Yale’s David Gelernter reveals the future of technology.

25 Of Notes The Little Orchestra That Could turns 35

29 AtHome In Wallingford, everything new is old again

34 Gallery The sculptor behind the Peabody’s new dinosaur

51 New Haven

| Vol. 2, No. 2 | November 2008

Publisher Mitchell Young, Editor Michael C. Bingham, Design Manager Larissa Wigglesworth, Design Consultant Terry Wells, Contributing Writers Brooks Appelbaum, Elvira J. Duran, Joyce Faiola, Michael Harvey, Liese Klein, Cindy Marien, Melissa Nicefaro, Tashema Nichols, Joanna Pettas, Ron Ragozzino, Steven Scarpa, Cindy Simoneau, Administrator Sylvia Brodzia, Editorial Assistant Sarah Politz, Photographers Steve Blazo, Anthony DeCarlo

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november 2008

Advertising Director Laura Whinfield, Senior Publisher’s Representatives Mary W. Beard, Ronni Rabin, Publisher’s Representatives Cynthia Carlson, Michele Dibella, Paula Thompson, Sara Zembrzuski New Haven is published 12 times annually by Second Wind Media Ltd., which also publishes Business New Haven, with offices at 85 Willow St., New Haven, CT 06511. 203-781-3480 (voice), 203-781-3482 (fax). Subscriptions $24.95/year, $39.95/two years. 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.

OUR COVER Orchestra New England Music Director James Sinclair.

Photograph by Steve Blazo. Wig, costume and accessories from Costume Bazaar, New Haven. Cover Design by Terry Wells.

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By sunrise on November 5, Americans will have chosen a 44th President (unless we have a rerun of 2000’s photo finish, in which case lawyers will get to choose the President).

But whom will we choose: the community organizer or the fighter pilot? (And do those descriptions by themselves reflect the dreaded “media bias�? How about the “bright-eyed visionary� versus the “Bushkisser�?)

Even more than the two previous Presidential campaigns of the 21st century, news coverage of the 2008 campaign (which at this point feels like it began in about 1965) has put the lie to the myth of media “objectivity� — that reporters are supposed to leave their brains, backgrounds and biases at the door to present us with some pure, crystalline version of reality.

In truth, “objective� presentation of the news is mainly a creature of the 20th century. Before then, most newspapers (the principal medium of mass communication before 1900) were highly partisan, and not afraid to say so. Right through the Yellow Journalism era of the late 19th century, press barons like Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst were not the slightest bit reticent about using their newspapers as a bludgeon to advance their own political and financial agendas.

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It seems to many of us that the media of the new century is returning to those roots.

Conservative talk-radio hosts like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity have fricasseed Barack Obama (excuse me — make that Barack Hussein Obama) as a Trotskyite who would practically confiscate all private property, while for “mainstream� media outlets like the New York Times and most of the blogosphere, no blow against the family of Sarah Palin (excuse me — “Caribou Barbie�) is too low.

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In the end, though, the media don’t get to select a President — voters do. But uncertainty about who will choose to vote — and even who is allowed to vote — cloud the outcome of the election.

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For the first 100 years of the Republic, the franchise to vote was restricted to white male property-owners. It seems unlikely we’ll be going back in that direction (although some of my best friends are white male property-owners — honest!) because there exists in the culture now a bias (that word again) that everyone should be allowed to vote.

Four years ago, superannuated (but faintly lovable) curmudgeon Andy Rooney urged 60 Minutes viewers to stay home on Election Day unless they had taken the time to educate themselves thoroughly about the candidates and their stands on the issues. After all, he argued, the last thing we should want is for our nation’s leader to be selected by the ignorant. v

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november 2008

— Michael C. Bingham, Editor

I NT EL Shell Shocked

Price of Admission

NEW HAVEN — Walter Joyce, manager of the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History’s vertebrate collection, may have solved the riddle of how the turtle first got its shell.

EASTON — Scouting locations for Farlanders, a movie about a young couple seeking the perfect place to raise their family, New York City-based Big Beach Films was drawn to Connecticut by the Nutmeg State’s mostgenerous-in-the-nation subsidy package — up to 30 percent of a film’s costs. The movie was partly filmed in Stamford and Easton this spring. Now, Easton’s Board of Selectman is saying if Hollywood filmmakers want to once again use the town’s leafy byways as a backdrop, they should expect to provide more than just a chance for locals to rub elbows with extras in the town’s sole restaurant.

That age-old question has been the subject of innumerable theories including that of Georges Cuvier, the founder of modern paleontology, who suggested that over the course of evolution the turtle’s ribs had flattened, spread and fused together to become a shell.

With the aid of a 210 million-yearold turtle fossil found in New Mexico, Joyce demonstrated that the terrapin’s shell and ribs are distinct, not fused, thus concluding that the shell evolved from the skin, not the ribs.

As Joyce told the Waterbury Republican American, “As far as turtles go, this was the biggest question out there.”

After a section of Black Rock Turnpike was closed last April to accommodate filming, a new proposed town ordinance now calls for a $500 application fee and a $1,000-per-day minimum fee for use of any town facility, including roads, parks and public buildings. The measure will go to Town Meeting, where residents will decide the price of admission.

Destination: Middletown MIDDLETOWN — Bill Ziegler, owner of Wild Bill’s Nostalgia Center in Middletown, has his own ideas about boosting tourism in Connecticut.

The eccentric Ziegler just happened to have a 600-pound clown head and a 33-foot silo; his eureka moment came when he decided to put the two together, creating what we all hope is the largest jack-in-the-box in the world. In doing so Ziegler hopes to change the face of Middletown.

He explains: “We really feel that this is gonna be a destination for people — crazy people just like us that need this kind of thing in their lives.” Right.

You Too Can Go To Yale NEW HAVEN — How’s this for tuition: free courses at Yale? The university has added eight new courses in history, economics,

literature and biomedical engineering, all taught by Yale faculty, to its growing online curriculum. The courses, available in video and audio formats with closed captioning, were recorded live as they were taught to students. “Open Yale” courses were launched in December 2007 and are now among the most frequently visited Yale Web sites, with more than half a million unique visitors from 187 countries having accessed the site since its launch.

You can access them at open.yale. edu/courses. The Yale T-shirt and baseball cap are extra.

Tell Us Something We Don’t Know HARTFORD — A new report by the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities says Connecticut taxpayers pay nearly twice the national per-capita average in property taxes. The state is more dependent on property taxes to finance local government than any other state in the nation. Connecticut residents pay on average $2,042 annually in property taxes for homes, businesses and vehicles. The national average is only $1,123.

Financially pinched residents may finally being having their fill, however: Last year, of the 73 cities and towns that held municipal budget votes, only 45 passed on the first try.

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Will humans one day be ruled by computers and the Internet? Yale’s legendary David Gelernter has some thoughts on that

D

avid Gelernter is an author, novelist and a professor of computer science at Yale. He’s published ten books including novels, cultural commentary and volumes on technology. His most recent book is Americanism: The Fourth Great Western Religion (Doubleday 2007). Gelernter, 53, played a major role in the development of parallel processing computing, a development that enabled the creation of supercomputers to speed computations that have made practical such things as the sequencing of DNA. In 1993, Gelernter was severely injured opening a mail bomb sent by Theodore Kaczynski (later dubbed the Unabomber), who claimed to be opposed to the advancement of technology.

Gelernter’s 1991 book, Mirror Worlds: Or the Day Software Puts the Universe in a Shoebox... How It Will Happen and What It Will Mean, predicted a cyberworld that literally mirrored the real one. To many it offered an analogy to the unfolding Internet, and presaged the services Google and others provide today, 17 years later. Publisher Mitchell Young interviewed Gelernter.

vvv I noticed you recently on a national TV show hosted by former Education Secretary William Bennett. Is this a regular gig?

I’ve often been on his radio show.

He’s been interested in discussions of cultural-type issues, as opposed to only political ones. But as far I know [the TV appearance] is only a trial balloon; it might be a show.

Where did you get your start as a ‘cultural commentator’?

I’ve always been a painter first, and a writer first — and a technologist and scientist third [sic]. I went into technology as a self-conscious decision where I could do something useful, make a living and support my family. I published a novel [1939: The Lost World of the Fair] about ten years ago. I didn’t want to talk about current issues, but in summing things up it seemed dishonest not to say how that era contrasted with this.

How it could be that a country that was so vastly poorer and so vastly more dangerous than this country [today], that PHOTOGRAPH:

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Steve Blazo

november 2008

Ten thousand villages

had a puny army and faced a dangerous Japanese army, and a highly dangerous Nazi empire — and yet there was an irrepressible optimism, a vibrant belief in the greatness of the country. [That is] an optimism that I had never known in this country.

Is that because you grew up in the ’60s and ’70s, when there was lot more skepticism about American values?

Right. The question is, why should a country in the ’60s, ’70s, ’80s and today — that is so much better off, that is on top of the world — why should it be so unhappy?

Why do my children go through school, instead of learning about the spiritual greatness of this country, why were they taught, term after term, that what they really need to know was the terrible things we had done: to Indians, to this minority and that, to the Japanese during World War II, the terrible things we had done to the Third World?

What have you concluded?

I start going on about this and I hesitate to do it; it’s a polarizing issue. There was a cultural revolution in the ’60s and the result was that a group of people who used to be on the sidelines, was put — not through its own design, but through cultural processes — on top of the cultural establishment. The transformation [took place] in particular at the universities.

The universities always had intellectuals in them, scholars and scientists, but they were never run by intellectuals. There was another simultaneous revolution: the professionalization of society, when all of a sudden the programs of the universities became tremendously important. After the war Yale, Princeton and UConn all had their fingers in virtually the whole spread of American culture where it never used to be.

It’s been 15 years since the Unabomber attacked you.

Not my favorite topic.

You weren’t attacked for being a painter or a writer, do you think it was a political act or a mental illness?

Neither. It was a cowardly, vicious crime.

All terrorism is that, but some springs from mental illness, or sometimes something political.

One noble nepali Hors D’Oeuvre set

The idea that someone is mentally ill or incapable of taking responsibility — but they could map a tremendously elaborate and technologically sophisticated campaign of mayhem and murder and escape detection and a nationwide manhunt for years and years — is absurd.

Would that make it a political act?

I’m not willing to call it a political act. I don’t think we should dignify murders all over the world by allowing an act of terrorism or murder to be described as a ‘statement.’ Crime is not a statement, it’s an act of violence. When Israel was constantly fighting terrorism — Italy, the Brigate Rosse, the Baader-Meinhof gang in Germany, the IRA — there were too many intellectuals who would say, ‘It’s not that we approve of murder, but after all these people have important grievances.’

Didn’t the Unabomber claim he was responding to the conflict between human values and technology?

Every terrorist is motivated by greed for fame and publicity. Whether they murder for a right-wing cause or a left-wing cause, or because they’re pro-technology or antitechnology, it’s just a footnote. Terrorists murder so they’ll be famous. The issue of society at war between pro- and anti-technology was treated by George Orwell in The Road to Wigan Pier in 1937.

‘Personally, I hate machines,’ he said.

‘They’re the enemy of human life.’ He had a profound hatred for machines, but he went on to say that as a rational man no one draws water from the well when he can turn on the tap.

Perhaps the issue is that some people have become unsettled by the modern world and have problems coping with it.

It’s absolutely true. People have very legitimate grievances against technology.

When did you become a Yale professor, and what were you actually teaching back then?

Nineteen eighty-three. It was right at the beginning of personal computers.

Computer science then was more or

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PHOTOGRAPH:

Steve Blazo

Lifestreams that is now the subject of a huge litigation. I’m no longer an owner, but an interested party. I don’t know if our patents were infringed; I do know our ideas are a big piece of the Apple software today.

The alternative we were working on at the time was to say everybody had a single stream — a Lifestream — which was a chronological parade of electronic documents. Everything you received or created was on this single stream — all my photos, e-mails, all the URLs I had accumulated, all my electronic possessions, a kind of a documentary history of my life.

It begins with my birth certificate [and] continues on into the future as I have appointments coming up, things I need to remember to do. Everybody has one of these streams and it lives in the [cyber-]clouds.

I thought the idea of ‘clouds’ or storage out on the Internet rather than on your PC was a more recent concept.

Gelernter: ‘We have a highly “de-religious-ized” intelligentsia and raise our children too often to believe that making $100 million is the goal in life.’

less what it is now. What type of stuff is software? Is software like concrete, like steel, like thought? Then there are practical questions: If I want to write software to work not on one computer but 1,000 simultaneously, or I have a powerful computer and a user who doesn’t want to waste time learning the software. How can I make it simple to use? That’s a question that has still not been answered.

The software we rely on, the Windows environment, gets more obsolete every year. It was invented by Xerox in the 1970s; it was commercialized brilliantly by Apple in 1984.

But in 1984 the world was radically different computationally. Computers had a tiny fraction of the power they

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november 2008

have today. The user community was vastly smaller. How could it be that the computer world is completely upside down since 1984 — and we’re still using the same software?

Isn’t it mostly the interface that hasn’t changed much?

Yes, but the interface is the only thing that matters. If I’m doing research or teaching I care about the structure of the software, but if I’m writing a short story, the interface is all that matters.

There are a lot smart people at Microsoft and Apple who haven’t been able to come up with a different version. What could it be?

We came up with one in the ’90s called

I’m told we were the first ones to discuss this idea of storing everything in the cybersphere. We each have one of these streams, and so when I sit down on a computer I don’t care which computer I sit down on, any more than I care [which] TV I turn on. It was basically the thesis of my 1991 book Mirror Worlds: The Day Software Puts the Universe in a Shoebox…

How It Will Happen and What It Will Mean (Oxford University Press). When people talk about the influence of the book, they say it predicted the Web, which took off in 1994, and Google maps and storage in the clouds and so forth.

But the Internet itself, the idea of computer networks, goes back to Vannevar Bush, [Franklin D. Roosevelt’s] science advisor who wrote a brilliant paper in 1946 about a theoretical machine that he called the Memex, which would have a huge network of information. Long before my book was published many brilliant scientists had [envisioned a network like the Internet]; the question was what would we do with it.

What do you think your kids and their kids will be doing with the Internet?

There are two things. First, the idea of the ‘Mirror World’ will be realized, not necessarily because it’s good. Reality mirrored in software — every institution that exists will be mirrored in the cybersphere.

So there’ll be a cyber Yale?

Exactly. Instead of going to the

Department of Motor Vehicles, I can go to the software version of it, to the library, to stores. The idea was and is being realized, not as series of separate computers but seamless, like the surface of a lake in that everything out here will be mirrored [in the cybersphere]. In the epilogue [there is a discussion between] my two alter egos — one saying this is really wonderful and the other one saying this is a disaster.

Yes, I can go into the Louvre and see everything up to a point, but still you’re missing everything that really matters: the smell, the taste and the actual human interaction.

Do you ever worry about how some of this stuff will be implemented and what the results will be?

I think it’s clear that the ‘mirror world’ will be realized more or less completely.

You’ll look at anything [on the Internet] in whatever amount of detail you want, and not only look as an observer but be present at it. So visit the Louvre and see the other people there and chat with them.

That seems worse than Orwell’s vision — a camera in your house?

England has installed cameras across the entire country. It’s an indifference to a

complete suppression of privacy. Both labor and conservative governments have pushed this forward. The ‘mirror world’ completed — in some ways it’s a wonderful thing. I can get so much information, I can reach so many people; I can chat with friends all over the world.

Lifestreams become universal so everyone has this narrative history; I can will it to my heirs, and institutions have a history.

How long before the average user says, ‘We’re there’?

In the mid-1990s there were people writing, ‘This Mirror World was a good forecast Continued on 20

Where does the Yale computer science department fit in with software creation?

The Yale computer science department has always been small. It has had significant effect on the history of software and the field, primarily because of the brilliance of its theoreticians rather than its software. There are two types of computer science departments: one spawned by engineering departments and another spawned by mathematics departments. It was mathematicians who formed the [Yale] department, so from the beginning it had a theoretical rather than a practical flavor. When software turned into an enormous business in the 1980s there were certainly people at Yale [who] wanted to [commercialize it], but the university was unprepared for it. The university has a long scholarly tradition and was very unsure of messing in commercial things.

You mentioned your father was one of the early pioneers in artificial intelligence at IBM. Did your software ideas follow that route?

Only in part. My thesis was in parallel programming, running programs on a lot of computers at once. The idea is I have a big problem to solve — a car company designing a new car and crash-testing it, a drug company designing a new drug, a nuclear lab doing an experiment in physics. They have huge problems and otherwise it’s going to take ten years [of computing time]. However fast one computer is, two are faster if I can make them work together. Today all supercomputers are parallel computers.

Virtually all supercomputers have [the coordination language] Linda running on them, which is the system Nick Carriero and I built and [which] Scientific Computing Associates [a New Haven company formed by Yale computer science department chairman Martin Schultz] commercialized.

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PHOTOGRAPH:

Sarah Politz

Varick AME Zion Church trustee James West with the ladder to the lookout in the attic that once sheltered runaway slaves.

On the Trail of Hidden History Connecticut’s legacy on the Underground Railroad

By Sarah Politz

W

ade in the water, wade in the water, children.”

Valerie Bertrand, president of the Greater New Haven African-American Historical Society. According to the Connecticut Historical Commission, fugitive slaves would enter Connecticut either overland from New York, or as stowaways on boats in the ports of Stamford, New Haven (which historian Horatio Strother calls the “Gateway from the Sea”) or Old Lyme.

From the coast, most runaways continued on to the hub of Farmington, dubbed the “Grand Central Station” of Connecticut; then historians believe they set out in hopes of reaching Westfield or Springfield, Mass., and, eventually, Canada.

So begins an old spiritual addressed to fugitive slaves as they traveled north to freedom along the route of what became known as the Underground Railroad. “Wade in the Water” was a reminder that, in addition to making it more difficult for slave hunters to track fugitives, travel on waterways was often the quickest, most flexible and most secretive method of transportation.

This gave cities and towns in Connecticut with access to the Long Island Sound and the Connecticut River a key role as way stations for escaped slaves passing through. “The Underground Railroad was made up of people’s homes and other shelters, “People used all modes of transportation churches, sometimes even railroad — rivers, canals, ferries, anything,” says stations, any place that transportation 12

november 2008

flowed,” explains Bertrand. The terms of the Railroad were also expressed in code.

“People were ‘passengers,’ so to speak,” she says. “And the people who helped them were ‘conductors.’”

While the Railroad was not literally under the ground, it was certainly a clandestine operation. It was so secretive, in fact, that it left little written evidence; telling its story requires cobbling together oral histories, rumors and personal narratives.

The New Haven area is full of likely Underground Railroad way stations.

According to Bertrand, New Haven’s Varick AME Zion Church on Dixwell Avenue routinely sheltered runaway slaves in the attic of its parsonage. An old barn house on Whitney Avenue in Hamden, across from Sleeping Giant, may also have housed runaway slaves. Along the Quinnipiac River in Fair Haven, a house built by architect Henry Austin for an abolitionist sea captain was used as a “station” on the Railroad, says Robert Forbes, assistant professor of history and American studies at UConn/Torrington.

With the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, bounty hunters were allowed to hunt, capture and forcibly return slaves to their masters. “You’ve got an underground network that is promoting something that after 1850 is illegal and punishable by a $1,000 fine and six months in jail,” says Forbes. “It was a very serious crime to be participating in the concealment of a runaway slave.”

Free blacks living in Connecticut were also vulnerable to the bounty hunters, who would sometimes indiscriminately kidnap any black individual they could find and take him or her back to the plantation for pay. In some cases it may have been those same threatened free blacks who risked their lives as “conductors” on the Underground Railroad.

Lisa Johnson, executive director at the Austin Williams House in Farmington, relates a case better-documented than most: “Williams was a strong, charismatic abolitionist who was called the conductor of the Underground Railroad in Farmington,” she says. “He had a black man who worked for him, a freed slave who owned his own property. It was later discovered that it was actually this freeman named Henry Davis who was conducting slaves through Farmington, and not Williams himself.”

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“The remarkable thing is that these were people of color doing this and then the white folks in the area jumped on the bandwagon,” says Gwendolyn Quezaire-Prezutti, a historical storyteller in Hartford. “A lot of times it was black freemen who did the sheltering of other slaves,” agrees Bertrand. “They just didn’t have a pen or pencil. It depends on who is writing the history.”

“Putting together a narrative of the past always requires a very complicated jigsaw puzzle of shards of evidence,” Forbes says.

“So for something that is secret and against the law, the puzzle is one in which many pieces don’t exist, or never existed in written form. That’s not to say you can’t to do it. You have to cast a much broader net, work with inferences and the subtle, almost coded, language in the personal letters.”

“When you connect all the dots to all those fragmented pieces, you come out with some really great stories,” says Bertrand.

The mysterious narrative of the Underground Railroad weaves its way in and out of Connecticut’s cities and towns, leaving us to tell the tales of American heroes who fearlessly defended what was right — even with the dogs on their heels.v

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M

ost people fall into one of two life-forms: optimists and pessimists. There are “glasshalf-full” types and there are “my glass shattered years ago” types. Today there are those who are glued to the news, taking in every bit of information about the financial meltdown — and those who refuse even to look. They’re the “que sera sera” crowd.

If you pay attention to the local or national news, you may be led to believe that now is absolutely, positively not the time to be looking at real estate.

The reality about real estate is that people don’t always get to choose when it is time to move. A growing family, new job or change in marital status may require a new home.

For Jessica Bakis, her husband Mike and their four-year-old daughter Payton, it was time. They were living in a 1,100-squarefoot Cape in a Stratford neighborhood that Jessica Bakis describes as being in an urban area of homes whose values had maxed out and were now beginning to slide.

“A year and a half ago, we knew the market was dropping and we had to sell quickly,” she says. “We found a buyer and closed within 28 days. We wound up living with my in-laws.” Bakis didn’t want to settle on a new house hastily, so they kept looking until they found one that was just right.

When the Bakises bought their Stratford house 11 years ago, the price of the house was so low that it was just as affordable to buy as to rent an apartment.

Their house sold quickly, but not without a highly emotional process for this family.

Eighteen months later, the Bakis family is just moving into the house of their dreams in Orange: a 2,600-square-foot Colonial with four bedrooms and three baths on 1.25 acres. It’s just what they were looking for.

“At one point, we were looking at just about every house in the paper, but we didn’t want settle and compromise,” she says. “By waiting as long as we did, we had to sacrifice over the past year or so, but in the end, we didn’t settle.”

She offers one piece of advice to people selling a house: Be willing to give up everything that you have. “It’s a buyer’s market,” Bakis says. “If they want the plants in the ground that you want to take with you, be willing to leave them behind.

“I wanted to take a raspberry bush that I planted years ago, but the buyers said they didn’t want to close unless I left the 14

november 2008

A Dose of Real-Estate Reality What’s really happening in southern Connecticut’s residential real-estate market

By MELISSA NICEFARO

The Bakises finally found their dream home in Orange — but not before their patience was sorely tested. ‘In the end, we didn’t settle,’ says Jessica Bakis.

PHOTOGRAPH:

Anthony DeCarlo

new haven

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Dave and Joan Rivers have mixed feelings about selling their longtime Wallingford home, which they first listed a year ago.

Recently they dropped the asking price by $120,000, to $750,000.

PHOTOGRAPH:

bush. So I did,” she says. While visiting neighbors a short time afterwards, the Bakises noticed the raspberry bush was gone.

“People went through my house and asked me to leave some items that I never thought they’d ask for. Like the window treatments that my mother gave me as a gift when we were married. They had to stay —it was a deal-breaker. I had let go of the house, but I wasn’t ready to let go of things like that. It was a horrible experience,” Bakis says.

“I was willing to sell the home, but when it came down to all of those little things I got so emotional,” she adds.

Dave Rivers, an executive who retired from his role as vice president of research and development of engineering for Schick, Wilkinson Sword and Pfizer, and now runs a manufacturing business in St. Croix, is looking to sell the Wallingford house in which he raised his family. He’s sad to sell the family house, but with oceanfront homes in Maine and St. Croix, it’s not exactly a necessity. His wife understands the rationale behind selling the house, but she’s sad about the prospect.

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november 2008

Built in 1910, the 3,600-square-foot Wallingford house once shared digs with the largest chicken hatchery on the East Coast. It is listed at $749,900 — no chickens included.

“I bought that home from Mabel Hall, who was born in the house in 1910,” recounts Rivers. “That house was the main house for the Hall Hatchery, the largest chicken hatchery on the East Coast of the United States.

“In a third-floor building, I still have the bedroom furniture that belonged to Mabel’s parents,” he says. “I’m going to donate that to the Wallingford Historical Society.”

The reason? “I don’t need three homes,” Rivers says. “I would be satisfied with two homes. It’s not a financial thing for me. Maine and St. Croix are perfect.” On the other hand, “My wife isn’t superenamored about selling the house,” he says with some understatement. “It’s hard for her.”

He knows that buying a house takes some consideration into the upkeep. He notes that the taxes in Wallingford are

Anthony DeCarlo

pretty low and the operational costs of the house are low, but everything’s relative.

Electricity for Rivers’ 10,000 square-foot house in St. Croix runs almost $2000 a month and taxes are $35,000 a year.

Relatively speaking, his Wallingford home is very reasonable to run.

“I’m sure it’ll sell one of these days, it’s just a matter of getting it in front of the right people,” he says. “It’s a great house to have a party in. We had so many great parties when the children were younger. I would’ve loved to have just given it to one of my four children, but they’re all settled in other places.”

He listed the house one year ago and dropped the price by $120,000, to $749,900, recently.

“So many people are calling and they just want the house. They love it, but it’s out of their price range,” Rivers says.

Though Rivers is facing more a desire than a need to sell his Wallingford home, he knows that the recent economic times have introduced a whole new set of rules for the sport of buying and selling a house.

e g e, o. g 0.

o

As Tyler Della Valle, general manager of Coldwell Banker’s Hamden office says, “There’s no doubt that the turmoil that gripped our financial markets has challenged our consumer confidence.”

“What we’re seeing at the local level is that buyers need to buy and sellers need to sell,” he says. “They may question what’s going on in the financial world, but at the end of the day, if that need is there, they’re going to go through with the purchase.”

Realtors are by nature optimists and look at low interest rates as an exceptionally profitable opportunity.

“We’ve been experiencing a depreciating market for about three years,” Della Valle explains. “As a result, the sellers are becoming wise to the fact that they need to become competitive with their pricing.”

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In order to sell a home in today’s market, sellers need to be realistic and not allow their egos to convince them that their home is worth more than it is, because otherwise it just won’t sell. It will sit all alone with its outsized price tag.

“Sellers are now forced to become more realistic and that results in lower, more reasonable prices,” Della Valle says.

“I’ve always been one that believes that personal lifestyles may dictate when you need to buy, but a price too high will turn off potential buyers.

“There was a time when it was difficult to find an entry-level home in the $250,000 price range,” he adds. “Today, in any of the towns of the greater New Haven area, there are dozens of choices at that price point.”

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Prudential Connecticut Realty Vice President Barry Rosa shares Della Valle’s philosophy — and he has the research to back his convictions.

“Economically, Connecticut is in much better shape than other states,” Rosa asserts. “We have been adding jobs as opposed to some of the big losses that are happening elsewhere. Coming into this recession we were in much better shape.”

Rosa writes Prudential Connecticut Realty’s quarterly Real Estate Report. He says the national media has done a great job of “scaring the crap out of people,” but he urges potential buyers and sellers to realize that the gloom and doom reflected in the news media doesn’t pertain as much to New Haven as it does to other real estate markets.

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of the week,” Rosa says. “You see a story come across that says one in 100 or one in 150 homes are being foreclosed.

Connecticut’s picture is not so terrible.

We have about 1 in 600 homes in foreclosure, but there are some horrible figures — as low as one in 40 or 50 — in California, Nevada, Arizona and Florida.

Connecticut is different,” he says.

“There are people who are not getting mortgages who may have gotten them two years ago,” Rosa adds. “At the end of the day, if the credit is reasonable and the down payment is there, you’ll get your mortgage.”

One of Rosa’s biggest pet peeves is continuing media references to the “national real estate market.

“There is no such thing as a national real estate market, or even a state market.

Connecticut has 169 different markets,” Rosa says, referring to the number of municipalities in the Nutmeg State.

“For years we were spoiled, where everything was moving in the same direction — but that’s unusual,” says Rosa.

“What’s more usual is when in any given community, there is a different picture.”

As of September 30, there were 567 properties in foreclosure in New Haven County. That number represents one in 614 homes — a low figure compared to the nationwide aggregate.

Plus, “Many of these loans should never have been made to begin with,” Rosa says. “If you take a person with marginal credit who is having difficulty making a rent payment and offer them an adjustable rate at a low teaser rate with a low down payment, common sense should tell you that it’s going to cause trouble down the line. Unfortunately,” he adds, “common sense doesn’t prevail.”

18

november 2008

Although the media has done a good job ‘scaring the crap out of people,’ Prudential Connecticut’s Rosa says Connecticut’s residential market is in relatively good shape.

On the other hand, interest-rate drops have had a salutary effect on some prospective home-buyers — opportunists who see low home prices as a “sale.”

“Despite all of the nonsense going on in the financial market, many people are pulling the trigger and buying,” says Rosa.

“They know they can get a cheap fixed rate and first-time buyers can get a $7,500 tax credit, so they do it.”

Granted, it is those same first-time buyers who have to take a different approach than someone who has owned homes and needs to get a certain sum for the one he already owns in order to buy the next one.

Rosa’s advice for today’s buyers: “None of the stuff is as bad as the media says. There are sections of this country where markets suck and just aren’t good, but the whole picture isn’t that scary.”

But it’s maybe a little scary. In the city of New Haven, sales of single-family homes

are down 13 percent on a year-over-year (October 1, 2007 to September 30, 2008) basis. New Haven County sales are off by 21 percent for that same period, according to Rosa.

“Some of that has to do with relative pricing,” he explains. “The median price for a single-family home is off from last year. It’s at $215,000 now and it was $230,000 one year ago. Relatively speaking, when you look at some of the prices relative to the city, you’ll see the prices are reasonable and that’s part of the equation.

That’s true for many major cities, except for Stamford, which can fetch a higher price. Some of the [inventory] is a relative bargain today.”

Concludes Rosa: “It’s not great news to say that sales are down. But the way I like to look at it is that if sales are down 25 percent from last year, we’re still selling that 75 percent that we sold last year. So the glass is three-quarters full.” v

Anthony DeCarlo

When you look at aggregate numbers, such as those that show that, statewide, sales of single-family homes fell more than 30 percent from August 2007 to August 2008, hidden in that information is the fact that some markets are selling like gangbusters, while activity in neighboring areas may have slowed to a crawl.

PHOTOGRAPH:

New Haven, for example, has a downtown market that is distinct from the Westville market. A separate market exists around Yale University from elsewhere in the city center. The Elm City also has a first-time condo market. Each functions independently of the others.

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ONE2ONE Continued from 11

but the problem with it was that it was being too conservative.’ The book said in ten years [from 1991] you would start seeing signs. Three years later in 1994 you looked out your window and saw URLs on the side of buses.

community cohere. [In the end] it seemed to me that my side of the field wasn’t as a community organizer.

What’s the ‘next thing’ in software?

One part of the next step will be highly lifelike, human-like robots; it’s easy to see how they can be made....

What route did you take to get here?

It’s easy to see?

I was born in Rochester, where my father was a graduate student. I grew up in Westchester [N.Y.], where he worked at IBM labs and then [went to] school in Stony Brook [N.Y.]. Later I was in a Yale graduate program in Bible studies.

Not in the sense that they would deceive you into thinking they were human, but in the sense they exhibit many human-like behaviors: expressions, emotions, a certain articulateness. It’s all phony; there is no human presence beyond the façade.

Why Bible studies, and why the change to software?

What kind of a time frame can we expect for that?

My grandfather was a rabbi; I grew up in a highly Jewish environment. The more I studied biblical and rabbinical text the more I was aware I didn’t know enough.

My grandfather worked very hard in all the things that a rabbi does — the weddings and funerals and teaching young people, visiting the poor and urging the rich to give to the poor and making the

Not right away — 15, 20 years. It will be very bad; it won’t be a really very sophisticated machine and people will treat this as my best friend. Girls get attached to dolls; adults will get attached to these things. I think it will lead to the infantilism of society unless people decide to learn about software.

Your brother is a geneticist. Do you worry

about the misuse of that technology?

Oh, yes! The direction that genetics is pointed to is gruesome, hideous. People have to learn something vastly more important than software. They have to reclaim their religious heritage, which means understanding the dignity of human beings and human life. We have a highly ‘de-religious-ized’ intelligentsia and raise our children too often [to believe] that making $100 million is the goal in life. If we don’t teach them anything about good and evil, right and wrong, dignity versus slavery, then they’re not going to understand why it’s wrong if I want my kids to be beautiful and strong, to tinker with the genes a little bit.

It’s obvious my kids’ generation are going to be very bright because of access to technology, but they’re not going to be obsolete two years later because my neighbors across the street are going to have 2012 technology — and instead of IQs of 160 they’ll have IQs of 180. Then their kids will become obsolete and we’ll be turning human beings into machines, literally. v

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november 2008

Class Acts Can charterfueled reform efforts pay dividends in New Haven public schools?

By Liese Klein

Troup School fourth-grader Karis Bunke Jr. (center) with Mayor John DeStefano Jr. and Schools Superintendent Reginald Mayo.

PHOTOGRAPH:

I

t’s 7:40 a.m., and the last of the New Haven school system’s yellow buses are heading back to their lots. At the Connecticut Scholars Academy on Nash Street, a final few stragglers are pushing open the doors of the narrow brick building and slipping off their backpacks.

All ninth- and tenth-graders, the 60 students at the Connecticut Scholars Academy are gearing up for a day of intensive learning — the equivalent of three years of study in two years. The goal is to boost these middle-performing kids up to honors-level work by 11th grade, when they’ll rejoin their Wilbur Cross High School classmates in the main building.

At this school, it’s not just about cracking books: A typical humanities class looks at topics such as domestic violence, segregation and hate through the lens of a half-dozen disciplines. The kids

create experiments, put together video documentaries and write letters to people like Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice about issues like child labor.

“Children all around the world should get an education,” tenth-grader Diamond Russell wrote to Rice. “It doesn’t hurt if you have a little knowledge.”

Diamond should know about the benefits of education: Her school is one of a dozen innovative new schools to open in the New Haven system in the last decade.

With cutting-edge curricula, expanded school days and an energized cadre of teachers, the system is looking to turn around decades of poor performance in its schools. And although politicians and administrators have pledged to improve New Haven schools for decades, the new charter schools and innovative schoolswithin-schools are showing some concrete results: New Haven showed a 2.1-point

Anthony DeCarlo

jump in the percentage of students meeting the goal on CAMT mastery tests this year, compared to an average statewide gain of 0.7 points.

City schools have also become the focus of a new generation of New Haven activists, who are bypassing traditional politics and community organizing to enact social change through education.

This new generation’s zeal and work ethic has shaken up traditional educational bureaucracy and put new focus on accountability.

That zeal has drawn new players into New Haven’s schools. These include the Connecticut Business & Industry Association (CBIA), which played a key role in starting the Connecticut Scholars program at Wilbur Cross five years ago. Alarmed by low math and science achievement in Connecticut schools, the state’s largest business group won a federal new haven

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has made double-digit gains in scores at “goal” level on the Connecticut Mastery Tests, despite a student population that is 61 percent low-income. In the elementary grades in the most recent round of testing, King/Robinson boosted scores by 22 percent, putting it in the top ranks in the state. In the middle-school grades, King/ Robinson also outperformed the district average in all four core subject areas on the test—science, reading, writing and math. Principal Iline Tracey accomplished all within a regular school day and without external resources.

The school’s gains are the focus of an upcoming “Success Stories” case study by the Connecticut Coalition for Achievement Now (ConnCAN), an outspoken New Haven-based educationadvocacy group that “grades” schools on student achievement. King/Robinson was one of only 11 schools statewide to show up on three or more of ConnCAN’s topten lists this year.

“There are some encouraging signs there,” says Alex Johnson, ConnCAN’s executive director. “Across the district as a whole, New Haven outperformed the state average in performance gains; we made some ground in closing the achievement gap.” grant to start the program and mentor students. The Connecticut Scholars Academy moved last year to a former neighborhood school on Nash Street, where it now offers two intensive years of study stressing science, technology, engineering and math.

Academy on Grand Avenue and the $52 million revamping of the Troup School on Edgewood Avenue. The striking Cooperative Arts and Humanities High, designed by star architect Cesar Pelli, is nearing completion on College Street, with costs expected to top $70 million.

“I think it’s good for them no matter “I think the programs for the new what they want to do in the future,” says buildings is fabulous,” Puglisi says. “I Judy Puglisi, the assistant principal who think our children deserve those beautiful runs the academy. Kids graduate from buildings with all the technology.”

Connecticut Scholars with a minimum four years of math and science coursework, t’s 11:55 and lunchtime, but the honors-level skills and exposure to handsstudents at King/Robinson Magnet on learning in all core disciplines. aren’t taking too much time to linger Puglisi, who has worked in the district over their chicken stir-fry. for 20 years and sent her children through Formed in the merger of two schools on New Haven public schools, says the the federal failing list, King/Robinson new energy in the district is palpable. was reorganized in 2004 as a K-8 She’s especially excited about recent magnet school and last year introduced training opportunities for teachers and a curriculum organized around the administrators.

International Baccalaureate (IB) program.

Puglisi adds that district veterans are Educators based in Switzerland create also excited about New Haven’s recent the IB coursework, which prepares kids $1.5 billion building boom, which has to earn a pre-college diploma recognized resulted in the renovation or replacement worldwide. Students get the basics along of 27 schools so far, with more on the with two languages, technology and way. New schools opened this year humanities with a global focus. include Christopher Columbus Family Since its reorganization, King/Robinson

I

22

november 2008

Connecticut has the widest “achievement gap,” or score disparity between rich and poor students, in the entire nation, Johnston says. And that’s not because Connecticut has such great schools: We lag behind states like Massachusetts in national rankings despite similar demographics. We just do an especially bad job educating our poor students, beating only Alabama among the 50 states in eight-grade math scores for the poorest kids.

“There remains a tremendous amount of work to be done when you look at the difference between what model states are doing and what Connecticut is doing,” Johnston says. “We still have a long way to go.”

That gap inspired Johnston to help form ConnCAN in 2005 after several years working at New Haven’s housing authority. Fresh-faced, passionate and Harvard- and Oxford-educated, Johnson exemplifies the new generation of education activists.

“For me, this is an issue that’s about the future of our country,” Johnston says.

“Working in the public schools gets to the root of some of the challenges that New Haven and other cities face. It’s possible

for schools to have a tremendous influence on the life outcomes of kids no matter what challenges they may have in their lives — and that is a very powerful point.”

Johnston says he and other young activists have seized on education as an issue that can be tackled locally and comprehensively and can help solve other social ills.

“What if we can set up schools that can transform the opportunities for the kids who come out of them in a way that really break a cycle of poverty?” Johnston asks.

“That may be one of the best chances we have of really flipping this whole thing around.”

That idealism and efforts by other young entrepreneurs like Wendy Kopp of Teach For America have helped boost applications to programs like Yale’s Teacher Preparation program, says its director, Jack Gillette. Nine Yale undergraduates have signed up this year for the program, compared to two last year, he says. Yale has also seen a surge in applications to its new master’s program in urban education, which has begun its third year. Both new graduates and mid-career professionals are signing up to become teachers, Gillette says, with most

spending an average of nine to 11 years in the field.

“We’re going to see lots of movement of young folks out of teaching and lots of movement of older folks into teaching,” adds Gillette.

Teach For America (TFA), which recruits recent college graduates to work in urban schools, also expects young people to move in and out of the profession, says Edna Novak, the state director. But the organization hopes that even brief exposure to urban schools will help build support for better schools across the culture.

“We attract really outstanding candidates early in their careers who we know are going to be great leaders, regardless of what they are going to do in life,” Novak says. “That experience really changes the direction of their career. It organically evolves into this movement both inside and outside of education.”

Starting with just 40 teachers in New Haven in 2006, Teach For America now fields more than 150 teachers statewide, with 35 working in New Haven public schools. One TFA teacher, Megan Ambrus at Hill Central Music Academy,

Hopkins School

improved her students’ test scores by 25 percent last year. By TFA’s internal measures, more than 70 percent of corps members have significant or solid academic gains in a single year, Novak adds.

“We’re already having a pretty significant impact in terms of scale,” Novak says.

I

t’s 4 p.m., but the students at Amistad Academy are still far from packing up their books and boarding buses.

Kids in karate uniforms with colored belts practice techniques in an activity room. African drumming echoes through the school’s lobby as kids drill spelling words in a conference room. The Amistad building on James Street is a hive of activity even as other schools across the city turn out their lights and many kids settle into an afternoon of Disney Channel.

Amistad Academy and its offshoots have shown the most dramatic results of any city schools since their founding in 1999. Nominally “charter schools,” they operate as public schools educating city children with independent governance by a separate board. They get their

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money directly from the state, without going through the New Haven school district. That independence has allowed Amistad to expand the school day, add a mandatory summer school and tweak their curriculum to include character development and learning skills.

In less than a decade, Amistad has topped the charts on achievement for urban schools year after year.

Amistad’s outsized success has made New Haven a national model for charter reform and most notably has attracted the attention of New York City’s schools chancellor, Joel Klein. New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg and Klein invited Amistad to open in the city in 2005 and provided full funding and support. After only three years, more than 2,100 kids in New York attend AF schools.

Connecticut, by contrast, still funds only 70 percent of Amistad’s per-pupil expenses, requiring the charter’s administrative arm, Achievement First (AF), to sustain aggressive fundraising efforts. But with school district support and encouragement, AF has expanded to five schools in New Haven and “incubator” schools in Hartford and Bridgeport, serving a total of 1,600 children in the state.

“The good news is that we’re educating many more children,” says Ken Paul, Achievement First’s director of development. “We do not have a sustainable model until we get revenues from the state that are equal to what our operating costs are.”

Other impediments to the growth of reform efforts in the state are the Department of Education’s standards for teacher certification, the most demanding in the nation in certain subjects. Those standards make it hard to find math and science teachers, especially in urban districts.

But thriving experiments like Amistad, the shiny new buildings all over town and dozens of new teachers are making their mark on New Haven schools and their performance, experts agree. Energized administrators can help turn around a district’s culture and get results in even the most challenging environments, says Johnston of ConnCAN. “You can’t ignore those problems, but you have to devote your energies to the things you can control,” Johnston says. “It’s amazing how resilient kids can be when they’re given a supportive and loving and nurturing environment in the school.

It’s really phenomenal what the results can be.” v

24

november 2008

By MICHAEL C. BINGHAM

Bach to the Future Elm City’s doughty chamber orchestra celebrates 35 years this month with a greatest-hits concert — from 1790

The Saturday after Thanksgiving each year, United Church on the Green comes to life with the sounds and sights of Orchestra New England’s Colonial Concert.

PHOTOGRAPH:

Harold Shapiro

new haven

25

PHOTOGRAPH:

T

his November 29, some number of hundreds of music-lovers will gather at United Church on the Green to hear a concert of songs and orchestra works by an unknown young upstart named Mozart as well as some outof-fashion music by that unpopular old fuddy-duddy J.S. Bach.

Leading the festivities in the candlelit sanctuary will be a fellow in a powdered wig wearing silk breeches, a satin waistcoat and conducting with a rolled-up scroll of parchment. The musicians, too, will be outfitted in garb typically of late 18th-century New Haven city folk.

Welcome to Orchestra New England’s Colonial Concert XXIX, the traditional New Haven kickoff to the busy holiday music season (it is always performed the Saturday after Thanksgiving). The event is a fun-filled feast for the ears and eyes, with a few fractured history lessons thrown in for good measure.

And the 2008 Colonial Concert is freighted with some extra historical meaning: Its theme commemorates the 220th anniversary of the ratification of the U.S. Constitution — and the opening of 26

november 2008

Orchestra New England’s 35th season.

The Colonial Concert traces its origins to a 1980 “Concert of Mufik.” “The whole idea was to recreate — no, re-experience — the concert experience from late Colonial New Haven,” explains ONE founder and Music Director James Sinclair.

The concept for the event attracted immediate attention from beyond the ranks of the orchestra.

“We had been tight with Connecticut Public Radio’s first station manager Brad Spears,” Sinclair recalls, “and when he heard about what we were up to [planning for the concert] he said, ‘That would be awesome on the radio.’” CPR broadcast that initial event live from United Church on the Green. “It was a sellout crowd and everyone was incredibly excited,” says Sinclair. And thus was a New Haven — and New England — tradition born.

The next year, 1981, was an even bigger deal, as the Colonial Concert was videotaped and aired nationwide on the Public Broadcast System (PBS) for the next four holiday seasons. From there, Sinclair says, “It snowballed, to say

Harold Shapiro

the least. We got backing from [then hometown telecom] SNET to take it around the state — Hartford, Wethersfield, lots of classic old churches and even on concert stages [such as] the Stamford Performing Arts Center.”

But United Church has always been the Colonial Concert’s true home. When planning the first event, “I was keen to have it on the Green,” Sinclair says.

“Center Church — Charles Ives’ church — was my first thought. And it’s a larger church [than United Church], but it’s not a good [theatrical] production space.”

That was and is important, because the Colonial Concert is a musical event, yes, but one with an important theatrical dimension. Today, the typical orchestra concert begins with an overture, followed by a concerto played by a featured soloist.

Following intermission, the orchestra performs a full-length symphony while audience members “sit still for four movements, then applaud,” Sinclair says.

Two hundred years ago, musical performances were more diverse and less predictable, more of “a potpourri that I call an Ed Sullivan Show,” Sinclair says.

“All kinds of stuff happened, and you never knew what the next act was going to be” in the days long before printed concert programs.

“There would be an overture that was probably the first movement of a symphony,” Sinclair explains. “There would be songs sung, perhaps with just a keyboard [accompaniment]. There would be something played by violin — perhaps with some strings or perhaps with just a keyboard.

“One of the things they would do if they had a whole symphony — by Haydn or William Boyce or somebody — would be to use the first movement to open the concert, and use the last movement to close it. The other movements might be played or not played, but they’d be mixed in, sandwiched into a club sandwich of layers.

“That makes for a terrific entertainment now,” Sinclair adds. “People who [today] like music or even [only] tolerate classical music would love this concert because everything is a short movement, then they get to applaud. There is chatter between movements, jokes and skits to weave in historical fact. We’ve had General Lafayette visit. We’ve had Benjamin

HOLIDAY GIFTS

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Franklin visit. Thomas Jefferson was a guest.”

Featuring guest soloist Yale Opera soprano Mireille Asselin, this year’s concert will be a celebration of the ratification of the U.S. Constitution in 1788. Sinclair intimates that legendary New Haveners Roger Sherman (the Elm City’s first mayor and a signer of the Declaration of Independence) and Noah Webster may make appearances.

“It’s all decoration for the concert,” Sinclair explains. “But in the end, it’s all about re-experiencing this music. We’re not the Yale Rep.” Founded in 1974 as the Chamber Orchestra of New England (the word “chamber” was dropped from the name a year later to reflect the orchestra’s versatility and ability to perform larger works than those associated with traditional chamber orchestras), ONE has performed more than 700 concerts.

Its regular subscription series is performed in Yale’s Battell Chapel, whose bright, crisp acoustics particularly favor strings. ONE has made more commercial recordings than that other

Elm City ensemble — the larger and older New Haven Symphony (with which ONE shares about a third of its players) — having recorded for labels including Columbia Masterworks, CBS Masterworks, Delos, New World Records and Koch International Classics.Ð ONE has known no other music director than founder Sinclair. He is its guiding light, and inspires almost cult-like loyalty from his players, several of whom have played for him for more than three decades.

Through fat times and lean, it has been Sinclair and a core of instrumentalists such a clarinetist Reesa Gringorten, bassoonist Garrett Bennett, double-bassist (and composer) Joseph Russo and cellist extraordinaire Steven Thomas who have kept the flame burning bright.

“The players really do want to show up and play these [concerts],” Sinclair says.

“They say [ONE] is their favorite group [to play in]. We’ve always had a sense of the group being the most important thing — not the board of directors. You can get to a place where you think the institution is the management and the board of directors, and ‘We’ve got the money and we hire you [the players].’ When players

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PHOTOGRAPH:

aren’t regarded as artists, but as servants, you’ve got a problem.”

Soprano Stephanie Gregory was guest soloist for the 2007 Colonial Concert.

Harold Shapiro

The conventional wisdom is that classical music is on a long, slow but inexorable death march — its superannuated audience straining to hear Tchaikovsky through their ear trumpets in ancient barns like Woolsey Hall.

Pas du tout.

The reality is that Western art music is in a period of unsung but surging popularity — at least in terms of live performance.

There are 400 professional orchestras in the U.S. today — twice the number of 30 years ago, according to an October 3 story in the Wall Street Journal by Bard College President Leon Botstein. There are also 500 youth orchestras in America, up from just 63 as recently as 1990.

Moreover, ticket-sale income from orchestra performances surged by 18 percent, to $608 million, from the 2004-05 to 2005-06 seasons. And as Sinclair notes, in the U.S. “More people go to classical music [performances] than go to baseball games.”

In addition to being a concert and recording artist as a conductor, Sinclair is a prodigious scholar of worldwide

renown. He is the planet’s leading authority on groundbreaking American composer Charles Ives (1874-1954), a Danbury native regarded as the first American classical composer to earn international acclaim (even though his works were rarely performed until late in his life). As executive editor of the Charles Ives Society, Sinclair has edited the entire catalogue of Ives works (both completed and otherwise) and in 1999

was commissioned by the Naxos label to record Ives’ complete orchestral works, an ongoing eight-CD project.

The Colonial Concert reflects Sinclair’s theatrical bent and rejection of much of classical music’s formality and stuffiness.

Over the years, the Colonial Concert has developed “a style, a schtick — it has kind of a loopy historical nature that is Continued on 43

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november 2008

Everything New Is Old Again

Bucking trends, a new Wallingford subdivision strives to become ‘instant neighborhood’

By MICHAEL C. BINGHAM

Many Willows models feature open great rooms with vaulted ceilings for a spacious feel.

PHOTOGRAPH:

Anthony DeCarlo

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The very well insulated (R13/ R38) homes nevertheless have generous sunlight from tilt-in windows with low E-glass.

PHOTOGRAPH:

ATH O ME

B

etween 1970 and 2004, the average size of a single-family home in the U.S. grew by two-thirds — from 1,400 square feet to 2,330 square feet, according to the National Association of Home Builders.

Wallingford developer Liz Verna is hoping that skyrocketing energy costs and an aging population have thrown that longterm trend abruptly into reverse.

Verna is co-principal (along with her two brothers and developer Bob Wiedenmann) of VW Homes, LLC, developer of the Willows, a “new old-fashioned neighborhood” sprouting in a 45-acre former cornfield off Wallingford’s North Farms Road.

The two Wallingford companies — Verna Properties and Wiedenmann’s Sunwood Development Corp. — decided to 30

november 2008

undertake a joint venture four years ago when the property, farmed for more than half a century by the Stegos family, came on the market. Since the Vernas and Wiedenmann knew each other, they figured, why bid against each other when they could do it together?

Anthony DeCarlo

In other approved Wallingford subdivisions, Verna explains, “The land is owned in common, and [buyers] get a portion of the ownership — it’s a condominium.”

Old neighborhood-style charm combined with more practical benefits such as energy-efficiency and low maintenance are at the core of the selling proposition.

“Our market research told us that people wanted an old-fashioned neighborhood,” Liz Verna says. “They did not want to Each of the six home styles (all named live in a common-interest [condominium] for trees native to Connecticut) come in community where the houses are detached, “Traditional” and “Craftsman” models. but it’s still a condominium with Sited on lots mostly between 0.25 and 0.3 association fees, where the roads are not acres, the houses range in size from the public and you’re restricted from putting four- to five-bedroom, three-bathroom in certain things like pools and swing sets.”

Elm ($559,900), just under 3,000 square The Willows is not a condominium, and feet, to the three-bedroom, 2.5-bath owners will own their homes and lots Hickory ($439,900), which weigh in at a outright. There are a few deed restrictions tidy 2,082 square feet of living space. In — no above-ground pools, for example (inWallingford, observes Verna, “For new ground is perfectly fine). But beyond that, construction with granite and hardwood “The ownership here is fee-simple,” Verna flooring, that is a great price.” explains. “You actually get a piece of Only one model (the Chestnut) has property, and you get a house on it — like separate formal living and dining rooms. an old-fashioned neighborhood.”

“We took the square footage from a 12- by

14-[foot] living room and moved it into the great room, into the dinette, into the kitchen, into the drop zones,� says Verna.

(To a clueless observer, she explains that “drop zones� are not where paratroopers hit the ground to invade enemy territory, but where household members drop their belongings to invade the refrigerator. “Only a woman builder would think of that,� Verna adds.)

The Willows is in an R-18 residential zone mandating half-acre lots. “But in the regulation there is a provision that you could cluster the units [on smaller than 0.5acre lots] so you need less infrastructure,�

Verna says. “The houses are closer together but you maintain a corridor of open space. So we were able to preserve 20 acres of farmland [as open space] and develop [the other] 25 acres.�

3/ ve n ss. o

That’s another selling point: Of the 65 planned Willows lots, all but ďŹ ve have direct access to the leafy open space Verna describes. “It’s really a clustering of the homes so you don’t have as much pavement or as much disturbed area, and you have your open-space subdivision,â€? she says. “That’s what we’re trying to market — that people have land ownership, home ownership and property rights.â€?

Coming as it does on the heels of an era of gaudy, look-at-me McMansions, the relatively modest size of the Willows homes is either bucking a trend — or poised to set a new one. But in designing the structures the architects judiciously employed open oor plans and (in some models) vaulted ceilings to create an illusion of greater spaciousness than the actual square footage.

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Even before they closed on the property, the developers convened focus groups to apprehend what prospective homebuyers would seek in suburban central Connecticut in 2008.

In early December 2007, “We did a mailing to six or seven different neighborhoods in Wallingford that we thought would be the type of buyer to move to the Willows,� Liz Verna explains.

The target audience was “people living in single-family homes in common-interest communities who wanted land ownership, who wanted to go back to a traditional neighborhood development. The price range of their homes was similar to this development, but their homes were [on average] 20 years older. Two of the

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Most Willows models have either a formal dining room or living room, but not both, which helps keep the homes’ footprints compact.

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So the developers sent out a 20-question survey to 1,000 households. Explains Verna: “We asked them, ‘What is most important to you? Is it a three-car garage?

Would you prefer a [separate] living room and dining room, or a great room? Do you want a pantry? Do you need walk-in closets? Do you want the washer/dryer room upstairs, or downstairs? Do you want an in-law suite? Is it more important to have a three-season porch, or a 12- by 16[foot] deck?’” The survey also asked about the desirability of specific features such as granite countertops, hardwood floors, soaking tubs, etc.

Survey respondents were invited to participate in an evening-long focus group at Traditions Gold Club. “We expected maybe a dozen people to come,” Verna explains, “but we actually got 45 people.

We didn’t pay them — we just served them pasta and bread.”

BP 32

neighborhoods we considered ‘move-up’ buyers. We wanted to see if that market would rather remodel, or move.”

That process yielded a wealth of information about prospective buyers’ priorities, and the developers synthesized what they learned into virtually all elements of the Willows. Above all, wouldbe homebuyers yearned for a sense of place.

But the big question is: by building spec homes in this economy, are the Vernas and Wiedenmann out of their minds?

“Nationally, there’s one housing market,” says Liz Verna, “and in Connecticut there’s a different housing market. [In Connecticut] inventory has dropped from about 12,000 [single-family home] starts three years ago to about 5,000 [last year].

A lot of the communities [being developed now] are [age-restricted to] 55 and older, and this traditional neighborhood — there isn’t that type of inventory. We felt that there was a pent-up demand for this type of inventory.”

The early market signals seem to support that hypothesis. The developers closed on the property at the end of February, commenced construction in April and began marketing the Willows in earnest in September. “We’ve had a lot of interest,” says Verna. At press time eight lots had been sold, with three more on reservation.

“We’ve had couples who were just married, we’ve had empty-nesters, we’ve had someone who has their granddaughter living for them — so clearly there was a market need for this sort of development.”

So even as the new neighborhood strives to be “traditional,” prospective homebuyers are anything but. v New Haven is on the lookout for unique homes and special living environments to profile. Contact the editor with your ideas or suggestions. Cooperation of the owners is essential. Send your reply to newhaven@ conntact.com or 203-781-3480.

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Setting the

Scenes Inside the Peabody, there’s a little bit of Michael Anderson’s artistry everywhere. But outside, his bestknown work is hard to miss

By Michael Harvey

Torosaurus has a polyurethane foam core covered covered successively with clay, 2,000 pounds of rubber, 4,000 pounds of plaster — and then its ultimate coat of bronze.

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november 2008

Michael Anderson with what in a short period of time has likely become New Haven’s best-known artwork: the life-sized bronze Torosaurus Latus.

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rom atop a great wedge of rock a monstrous, fearsome horned dinosaur roars down at the vista below — “to stir the curiosity of all children” says the accompanying plaque.

It is the life-sized bronze Torosaurus Latus, which stands outside the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History, the creation of sculptor Michael Anderson. He is also the Peabody’s “preparatory” — the person who builds the exhibits, figures out how to mount the skeleton, stand up the bird so visitors can see it, or model the head of a Neanderthal.

A tall man with a ready smile, Anderson greets me in the lobby of the museum

and leads me down a medieval looking stone passage to his subterranean workspace. Right away what he does is becomes evident. On a worktable is a small anatomical model of a horse, several attempts in polyester resin to recreate the diaphanous wings of a Carboniferous dragonfly, the unfinished clay head of a Stone Age male human and a plaster cast mold of the largest gold nugget ever found.

Around the room are other variations on the horse and the head, as well as clay dinosaur models and an osprey (taxidermy is also one of Anderson’s many skills) clutching a fish.

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On the walls, along with several drawings by his children, are a number of small landscape paintings by Perry Wilson, the man who painted some of the Peabody’s renowned dioramas (more about that below).

After five years, however, he found himself losing interest and enthusiasm for the ways of the art world. A Chicago native, Anderson decided to return to the Windy City to study medical illustration.

It was painstaking, detailed work, and in doing it he became consumed by human anatomy.

First Anderson tells me about leaving Pratt Institute in 1980 and taking a job at the American Museum of Natural History “They taught me how to reconstruct a in New York. face from a fossil skull,” he says, nodding toward the clay head on his worktable.

“I was a beginner, one of many in a large Partway through the course he was asked department of preparators,” he explains. by the Maxwell Museum of Anthropology After his day job he pursued another life in Albuquerque, N.M., to fabricate four, making art, which at that time took the life-sizes figures: a Neanderthal, a Homo form of conceptual art morphed into social habilis, an Australopithecus and a modern protest. He was part of the Political Art woman. They are still in the museum Documentation/Distribution group that today. In 1988, his studies completed, made street art and political theater on the Lower East Side of Manhattan.

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november 2008

he went directly from Chicago to the Peabody.

Visitors to the Peabody, the American Museum of Natural History in New York or Boston’s Museum of Science are invariably fascinated by the dioramas, those scenes of animals in their natural habitats. Anderson was struck by them, too, and his job allowed him to see them close up and often. The best ones, he discovered, were painted by Perry Wilson — the same artist whose small landscapes now hang in Anderson’s workshop.

Fascinated by the diorama paintings Anderson began to research Wilson’s life, and became so absorbed that he is now writing a book about the painter and his work.

In the Depression year of 1932, Perry Wilson of Newark, N.J., was laid off from his job as an architect at the firm of Bertrand Goodhue. Faced with finding another way to make a living, he took a portfolio of his paintings over to the American Museum of Natural History, which hired him to paint the backgrounds to the museum’s dioramas.

Most often dioramas consist of a real space foreground with stuffed animals posed in appropriate settings of three dimensional rocks, trees, grass etc. which blend seamlessly into an illusory landscape painted on a two-dimensional backdrop. The painted landscapes are accurate renditions of specific places, with remarkable attention to the authenticity of the light, the skies and the weather conditions. The background canvas is curved to allow room for the foreground exhibit, and Wilson had to learn how to translate a photograph of a particular place onto a curved surface. Wilson executed 38 dioramas in his AMNS years.

In the mid-1940s the Peabody “borrowed” Wilson to paint dioramas for the New Haven museum. Traveling up from New York on weekends and during vacations he painted seven scenes between 1944 and ‘46. He theoretically retired in 1957, but

went on to paint dioramas for the Ottawa Museum of Nature and the Boston Museum of Science.

The latest development in the Perry Wilson book project, Michael Anderson says, is his recent discovery of a large cache of photographs taken by the painter. When asked about his own sculpture Anderson is modest, passing it off as something he does for his own satisfaction. The art world, he notes, is still an unreal, flim-flam place. “I feel more grounded here,” he says surveying his workshop. “More real.” But pressed, he acknowledges that his own sculpture is closely related to his museum work. As a preparator he can take that fossil skull and build over it to create the head and face it suggests, as a sculptor he has been doing the reverse — taking contemporary heads and peeling away everything to reveal the skulls that lie beneath.

With his young son Finn Anderson has recently been making clay models of other dinosaurs, roughly ten to 12 inches high, and is especially taken with the pose of a Deinonychus rearing up on hind legs, running menacingly in predatory mode.

Anderson is pondering the possibilities of fabricating a full-size version.

That other dinosaur out front, the Torosaurus, likewise started small in 2005 — the preliminary model was no more than 11 inches tall. That was then recreated at one-third the finished size, then that in turn was enlarged to full size in polyurethane foam by scaling techniques that have been around since the Renaissance. Clay was then used as the final layer and modeled to achieve the finest detail by roughly two dozen volunteers putting in 600 hours over five months. Polich Art Works then created a 54-piece rubber mold by coating the beast with 2,000 pounds of rubber covered by 4,000 pounds of plaster. The mold was taken to the Polich foundry, where the pieces were cast in bronze using the lost wax method.

Meanwhile, that wedge shaped pink granite base was being quarried from Branford’s Stony Creek and shaped

by Darrell Petit (NHM, October 2007).

Once the foundry had welded the cast parts together and colored the finished sculpture with a patina, everything was brought together outside the museum in September 2005. On the lookout for those children, the Torosaurus now stands there glowering on its rock more than two stories tall. v

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ART Studio Tuesday is an informal, noninstructional “paint-in” that meets each Tuesday. Come work in a creative environment alongside other artists.

9 a.m.-noon November 4, 11, 18 & 25 at Margaret Egan Center, 35 Matthew St., Milford. Free. 203-878-6647, milfordarts. org.

It’s hip to knit. The Blackstone Knitting & Crocheting Group meets Wednesdays in the Lucy Hammer Room. This informal gathering is for knitters, crocheters and other fiber artists of all ages, from beginner to the expert. First-time knitters welcome — coaches available. 5:30-7:45 p.m.

November 5, 12, 19 & 26 at Blackstone Library, 758 Main St., Branford. Free. 203488-1441 ext. 313, events@blackstone. lioninc.org, blackstone.lioninc.org.

Buildings, a juried exhibition at Milford’s Firehouse Art Gallery, features artists’ fantasies of buildings in the medium of their choice — painting, drawing, photography or 3D. Juror is Josephine Sheridan Robinson, whose art background traces to Southwark College in London. Her love for architecture is reflected in large canvases of cityscapes. She has been represented in many group shows at the Kehler Liddell Gallery and the Elm City Artists Gallery in New Haven.

She has had a solo show at the Byron Roche Gallery in Chicago, Ill. and Artscapes at the Knoxville (Tenn.)

Museum of Art. Through November 6 at Firehouse Art Gallery, 81 Naugatuck Ave., Milford. Open noon-5 p.m. Thurs.Sun. Free. 203-306-0016, FHGallery@ optonline.net, milfordarts.org.

Documentary photographers Wendy Ewald, Eric Gottesman, and Susan Meiselas join writer and critic David Levi Strauss for Eye of History: The Camera as Witness, a panel discussion articulating the themes of the conference and the exhibition. Ewald, Gottesman and Meiselas will give brief accounts of their recent photographic works and then discuss with Strauss how photographs can tell us about the past and how photographs function as historical evidence. 4:30-6:30 p.m. November 7 (gallery reception 6:30-7:30 p.m. at Zilkha) at Center for the Arts Cinema, Wesleyan University, 283 Washington Terr., Middletown.

Open noon-4 p.m. (until 8 p.m. Fri.) daily except Mon. Free. 860-685-3355, boxoffice@wesleyan.edu, wesleyan. edu/cfa.

The Knights of Columbus’ newest exhibition, Etchings of the Eternal City: Piranesi’s Rome, examines firstedition prints by Giovanni Battista Piranesi, the premier Italian printmaker of the 18th century, world renowned for his magnificent topographical works titled Vendute di Roma (Views of Rome). Twenty-two of these views are the subject of this show. Exhibition also includes Mallio Falcioni’s contemporary photographs of the Roman sites represented by the antique etchings. Also on view are two original plates used in the printmaking process.

Through November 9 at Knights of Columbus Museum, 1 State St., New Haven. Open 10 a.m.-5 p.m. daily. Free.

203-865-0400, museum@kofc.org, kofc. org/museum.

This new series is a chance for photographers and photo enthusiasts to share work, tips, questions and opportunities. The Photography Meetup allows participants to bring photos and get critiqued or participate in monthly photo projects and share work

online. Guest speakers will talk about a variety of subjects including photo collecting, purchasing equipment, organizing and archiving work, and exhibition or publication opportunities in a relaxed, social setting. 7-9 p.m.

November 11 at Green Street Arts Center, 51 Green St., Middletown. $3 (free for members & students). 860-685-7871, greenstreetartscenter.org.

In conjunction with the Bessie Potter Vonnoh exhibition, the Griswold Museum has invited sculptor Sue Chism to demonstrate the sculpting process with a model in the gallery on five consecutive Sunday afternoons. A graduate of the Lyme Academy College of Fine Arts and an instructor at Lyme Art Association, Chism has earned several prestigious sculpture prizes.

1:30-4:30 p.m. November 2, 9 & 16 at the Florence Griswold Museum, 96 Lyme St., Old Lyme. Museum admission: $10 ($9 seniors & students, $6 children 6-12, free under 6). 860-434-5542, flogris.org.

Grand Scale: Monumental Prints in the Age of Dürer and Titian showcases mural-size prints from the late 15th century to 1630, when ambitious rivals painted images to assert political rule or simply to adorn wall surfaces-prompted printed imagery to expand. Surviving in fewer numbers than smaller prints, mural-size print ensembles sometimes reached over ten feet in height and 16 feet in length.

Grand Scale displays approximately 50 oversize prints from the German, Italian and Netherlandish schools, including compositions by Sandro Botticelli, Albrecht Dürer, Titian, Jacopo Tintoretto, Bartholomaeus Spranger and Peter Paul Rubens. Through November 30 at the YUAG, 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.

CRITIC’S PICK Trails to You, My Friend Witness Margaret Dean paint in oil in the “en plein air “ tradition (“in the open air”) in her studio, where she also teaches classes.

artworks. The artists, who often work alone, get a chance to meet the public, get feedback about their work, and answer questions. It is an enjoyable and festive experience for all.

Thirty-four artists from Madison, Guilford and Branford will open their studios to the public for the annual Shoreline ArtsTrail Open Studios Weekend. Event is an opportunity for visitors to see and purchase the

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wide variety of quality work in the varied spaces that serve as studios (old barns, light industrial parks, attics or basements) and to observe and learn about the processes involved in creating the

Working together, the potters, oil painters, quilters, photographers, sculptors, jewelers, metal workers, watercolorists, as well as glass, pastel, paper, and fiber artists have developed the Shoreline ArtsTrail map

to guide visitors to their studios. The maps also provide contact information for all participating artists so that the studios can be visited throughout the year. Shoreline ArtsTrail maps are available at local libraries in Madison, Guilford and Branford, at the Guilford Art Center, the artists’ studios and online at shorelineartstrail.com.

Follow the map to see what treasures can be found.

— E.J.D. 10 a.m.-4 p.m. November 15-16 on the Shoreline.

Free. 203-481-3505.

A Slice of America: Selections from the New Britain Museum of American Art will be on view in the Chauncey Stillman Gallery in the Administrative Center of Lyme Academy College of Fine Arts, while the Excellence in Painting and Sculpture Exhibition featuring Samantha Webber & David Krevolin, award recipients from the Class of 2006, is exhibited in the Sill House Gallery. Through November 22 at Lyme Academy College of Fine Arts, 84 Lyme St., Old Lyme. Open 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Mon.-Sat. Free. 860-434-3571 ext.

135, KBarkerCraven@LymeAcademy.edu, lymeacademy.edu.

No Boundaries is a one-woman show by resident artist Denise Parri. The show features a new, edgy body of work.

From the organic to the highly textured and from calm to vibrant, this mixedmedia show is a frenzy of design and diversity. Through November 22 at White Space Gallery, 1020 Chapel St., New Haven. Open 10 a.m.-6 p.m. daily (until 7 p.m. Thurs.); Sun. by appt. Free. 203495-1200, whitespacegallery.com.

Natural Abstractions, an exhibit of paintings and monotypes by Judy Atlas.

Through November30 (opening reception: 2-5 p.m. November 8) at City Gallery, 994 State St., New Haven. Open noon-4 p.m. Thurs.-Sun. Free. 203-782-2489, info@city-gallery.org or judyatlas@ hotmail.com, city-gallery.org.

EO welcomes the debut of New York artist Debra Ramsay’s work to the gallery with Boundary. Ramsay’s art is an exploration and a celebration of fracture. Using eggshells and encaustic, both ancient mediums with rare symbolic value, Ramsey creates compositions of simple beauty with profound reach and intrigue. November 4-30 (reception & artist talk: 6-9 p.m.

November 7), 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 appt. Free. 860-526-4833, chester@eoartlab.com, eoartlab.com.

Still-Life Drawing & Painting: Studio Sessions. Still-Life Studio Sessions are intended for artists with some drawing and/or painting experience who are looking for a group of like-minded individuals to share and create work.

Each student will be asked to create one still-life arrangement (schedule will be determined at the first session).

Easels are provided; materials and paper are the responsibility of the participants. This is a collective session (no instructor). Exhibition opportunities will be provided for regular participants. Ages 18 and older.

9:30 a.m.-2 p.m. (session) and 2-3 p.m. (constructive feedback) November 6, 13, 20 & December 5 at Green Street Arts Center, 51 Green St., Middletown. $10 per session ($8 members). 860-6857871, greenstreetartscenter.org.

Wesleyan’s Zilkha Gallery will present a major, semester-long exhibition, Framing & Being Framed: The Uses of Documentary Photography, examining how visual artists use

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Judy Atlas displays her take on Natural Abstractions with reds and blues. On display at City Gallery through November 30.

documentary photography in their work.

Exhibition includes work by Wendy Ewald, Andrea Geyer, Jim Goldberg, Eric Gottesman, Emily Jacir, An-My Le, Susan Meiselas, Ann Messner, Walid Raad, Martha Rosler and Krzysztof Wodiczko. Through December 7 at Zilkha Gallery, Wesleyan University, 283 Washington Terr., Middletown. Open noon-4 p.m. Tues.-Sun. (until 8 p.m. Fri.).

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

The Pearl of the Snowlands: Buddhist Prints from the Derge Parkhang. The Derge Parkhang is one of the foremost cultural, social, religious and historical institutions in Tibet. Founded in 1729

by Denba Tseren, the Derge Parkhang today is an active center for publication and distribution of Buddhist texts and images, preeminent examples of the Tibetan woodcut printing tradition.

The exhibition’s large, finely cut prints of buddhas, protective deities and tara, together with astrological charts, story prints and charms were printed from some of the 300,000 blocks in the Parkhang collection.

They open a fascinating window into the beliefs, symbols and learning of Tibetan Buddhism. Photographs and video introduce the people of Derge who have preserved and revived the Parkhang’s position as one of the most precious pearls of Tibet’s living culture. Through December 7 at Mansfield Freeman Center for East Asian Studies Gallery, Wesleyan University, 343 Washington Terr., Middletown. Open noon-4 p.m. daily except Mon. Free. 860685-2330, wesleyan.edu/east.

Document or Art? Photography in the Long 19th Century, 1839-1914. In The Salon of 1859, French critic Charles Baudelaire denounced photography as “art’s most mortal enemy.� Baudelaire argued that photographs could provide

factual records, but he reserved the realm of art for painting and other products of the imagination. Works

by Thomas Annan, Julia Margaret Cameron, Francis Frith, Alexander Gardner, Eadweard Muybridge, Jacob Riis, Alfred Stieglitz, Carleton Watkins, more. Through December 7 (closed November 25-30) at the Davison Art Center, Wesleyan University, 301 High St., Middletown. Open noon-4 p.m.

Tues.-Sun.(Fri. until 8 p.m.). Free. 860685-2500, lberman@wesleyan.edu, wesleyan.edu/dac.

The Story of Our Journey: The Art of John August Swanson. Los Angeles native Swanson paints in oil, watercolor, acrylic and mixed media. He is an independent printmaker of limitededition serigraphs, lithographs and etchings. His art proudly displays the rich cultural heritages he inherited from his Mexican mother and Swedish father. Swanson addresses himself to human values, cultural roots and his quest for self-discovery through visual images (including Bible stories and social celebrations such as attending the circus, a concert and the opera).

Through December 12 at Yale ISM Great Hall, 409 Prospect St., New Haven. On view weekdays 9 a.m.-4 p.m. Free. 203432-5180, yale.edu/ism.

CONNcentric. An exhibition of works by more than 60 of Connecticut’s most interesting and innovative visual artists, CONNcentric is a juried show presented at Artspace in conjunction with the 11th annual City-Wide Open Studios. Artspace asked three jurors (two visual artists and one curator) to organize an exhibition based on submissions of over 100 artists participating in CWOS. The works displayed in the Artspace galleries are both a reflection of the jury’s selection process as well as an indicator of the

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divergent perspectives, styles, means and subjects that Connecticut artists are exploring today. Through December 13 at Artspace, 50 Orange St., New Haven. Open Noon-6 p.m. Tue.-Wed., Noon-8 p.m. Thurs.-Sat. Free. 203-7722709, artspacenh.org.

View works of art in muliple media with the theme Childhood Memories.

November 13-December 18 (opening reception: 6-8 p.m. November 13) at Firehouse Art Gallery, 81 Naugatuck Ave., Milford. Open noon-5 p.m. Thurs.Sun. Free. 203-306-0016, FHGallery@ optonline.net, milfordarts.org.

Now in its 40th year, the Celebration of American Crafts at Creative Arts Workshop transforms the two-story CAW Hilles Gallery into an enchanting holiday shopping destination with glowing lights, festive colors and the finest in contemporary American crafts.

Exhibition and sale (to benefit CAW) promises an eclectic range of work by more than 400 artists nationwide in a range of media and techniques including fine ceramics, decorative and wearable fiber, hand-crafted jewelry, wood furnishings, blown glass, whimsical toys and much more. On view through December 24 with everchanging displays as new items are introduced daily. Don’t miss Featured Artist Nights (5-8 p.m. November 13, December 4, and December 11) and Connecticut Artists Night (5-8 p.m. November 20). November 8December 24 at Creative Arts Workshop,

Invest in your community, while picking up a little something nice for a special someone. Creative goodies abound at the New Haven Arts & Crafts Show.

80 Audubon St., New Haven. Open 11 a.m.-6 p.m. daily (Thurs. until 8 p.m.), 1-5 p.m. Sun. Free. 203-562-4927, creativeartsworkshop.org.

Claire’s Corner Copia welcomes Original Abstract/Spiritual Landscaping Paintings by Douglas Deveny, its 2008 resident artist.

Deveny, who lives in Westville, attended Savannah College of Art & Design and earned his art degree from Southern Connecticut State

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University in 2006. Through December 31 at Claire’s Corner Copia, 1000 Chapel St., New Haven. Open 8 a.m.-9 p.m. weekdays (Fri. until 10 p.m.), 9 a.m.-10 p.m. Sat., 9 a.m.-9 p.m. Sun. 203562-3888, info@clairescornercopia. com or doug@douglasdeveny.com, ClairesCornerCopia.com.

This artists’ cooperative offers original artwork and handcrafted wares by skilled, local artisans for sale through the holiday season. November 1December 31 (hours TBA) at Artists Lofts West, 838 Whalley Ave., New Haven.

203-494-9905, art@jenniferjanegallery. com, XGphotography.com.

More than 20 artists including Andrew Hogan, Kathy Conway, Sven Martson, Jennifer Jane and Eliot Lewis are represented at the Westville Art Expo.

Celebrating a major gift of more than 200 photographs from the collection of Allan Chasanoff (Yale College 1961), First Doubt: Optical Confusion in

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In 1795 Benjamin West, the Americanborn president of the Royal Academy in London, fell victim to an elaborate hoax. He was persuaded that an old manuscript purporting to contain long-forgotten recipes held out hope of rediscovering Venetian High Renaissance techniques of oil painting. West used these materials and techniques to execute an ambitious historical painting: Cicero Discovering the Tomb of Archimedes. But the manuscript was a fake and the story an absurd invention. When the fraud was exposed, West suffered profound professional embarrassment. Seven years later West painted an almost identical version of his painting, this time according to his own methods.

Benjamin West and the Venetian Secret brings together both versions of West’s composition, along with recent

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Modern Photography will explore the seldom-discussed phenomenon of optical confusion in photography.

Drawn from the Chasanoff collection, as well as from YUAG’s permanent collection, First Doubt will feature approximately 100 photographs by a diverse array of photographers across the 20th century. Seen together, they reveal the interpretive nature of the lens and the interpolative nature of the photograph. Through January 4 at YUAG, 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.

For the second year running, talented artists and crafters from Connecticut and beyond

will exhibit and sell their work at the juried New Haven Arts & Crafts Show. All proceeds from

technical analysis, copies of the fake manuscript, and other works on paper pertaining to the hoax. Through January 4 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. 203-432-2858, ycba.yale.edu.

The Yale Center for British Art is the first and only U.S. venue for a major retrospective of David Cox (1783-1859).

Marking the 150th anniversary of the artist’s death, Sun, Wind and Rain:

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The Celebration of American Crafts at Creative Arts Workshop will have amazing crafts on display, like this gummy bracelet made of acrylic beads with a silver magnetic clasp by artist Yasmin Kuhn.

the show will benefit New Haven Legal Assistance (LAA), a non-profit legalservices office. Its clients are victims of domestic violence, persons living in substandard housing, those at risk of becoming homeless, people unlawfully denied government entitlements,

The Art of David Cox examines the work of this important figure in the development of British landscape and watercolor painting. Works are drawn from the center’s collection, as well as from public and private collections.

Through January 4 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. 203-432-2858, ycba.yale.edu.

The Arts Council of Greater New Haven

children who are denied an appropriate education and elderly victims of fraudulent lenders. By doing your holiday shopping at the New Haven Arts & Crafts Show, not only will you be purchasing quality art, but you will be investing in the community as well.

— Elvira J. Duran 9 a.m.-5 p.m. November 8, 10 a.m.-4 p.m. November 9 at Wilbur Cross High School, 181 Mitchell Dr., New Haven. $4 for both days ($2 if you present this listing). nhlegal.org.

presents works by Joanne Schmaltz and Gar Waterman. In this exhibit, Schmaltz showcases photographs that explore form, gesture and sensuality in nature. She has been taking photographs for more than twenty years. Her photographs have been exhibited in many juried, group and one-woman shows throughout New York and England, including Iris Gallery in Great Barrington, Mass.; Real Art Ways in Hartford; and Kehler Liddell

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CRITIC’S PICK Occupational Spirits Frank Bruckmann’s, 46” x 36” oil painting, Anthony’s Barbershop, is part of a featured series of Westville, merchants and business owners. The series will be on display at Kehler Liddell through November 30.

Frank Bruckmann and Steven Whinfield breathe life into their art — see what kind of life in Occupational Spirits.

Bruckmann wants to

praise the “small-business owner, the working guy.”

In his Westville Village home are mechanics, chefs, massage therapists, hair stylists, gallery, pub

Gallery in New Haven. She currently resides in Guilford. Waterman’s sculptures in stone, bronze, steel and wood examine the relationship between the structured design of architecture and the curve of form in nature.

After attending Dartmouth College, Waterman lived in Italy for seven years, where he learned to carve stone.

His sculptures have been showcased extensively, including at the WOCA Gallery in Maine; the Alva Gallery in New London; and Kehler Liddell Gallery in New Haven. He currently lives in New Haven. Through January 9 at Gallery 195, NewAlliance Bank, 195 Church St., 4th floor, New Haven. Open 9 a.m.-3 p.m. weekdays. Free. 203-772-2788, newhavenarts.org.

En Masse is a collective mass: Each regional artist in the show takes his or her genre (from book arts to digital prints), material, concept or technique to the next level of its associated tradition. Artists include Ron Abbe of Meriden, North Havener Jeanne Criscola, John Favret of Uncasville, New York’s Yosiell Lorenzo, Irene K. Miller of Woodbridge and New Haveners Elise Wiener and Deborah Zervas. Curated

and restaurant owners.

Whinfield likewise captures the essential in his Raku-fired clay vessels.

After creating a range of functional pottery, Whinfield moved on to objects, vaguely automotive — oil cans, spouted buckets — that would ordinarily contain chemical spirits

by Suzan Shutan. November 7-January 9 (reception 5-7 p.m. November 7) at the Small Space Gallery, 70 Audubon St., 2nd floor, New Haven. Open 9 a.m.-5 p.m. weekdays. Free. 203-772-2788, dhesse@ newhavenarts.org, newhavenarts.org.

Artistry on the Shoreline, the Guilford Art Center’s annual holiday sale, features fine handmade crafts and art by artists who live and work on the Connecticut shoreline. This year a shoreline/beach theme informs the show and display, underscoring the seaside origins of many of the artists.

Artistry will also feature special events and activities for all ages, including performances by community musical and theater groups, food and beverage tastings and the annual Jewelry & Champagne evening (December 4). Through January 11 at the Shop at Guilford Art Center, 411 Church St., Guilford. Open noon-6 p.m. weekdays, noon-5 p.m. Sat. Free (all items individually priced). 203-453-5947, info@ guilfordartcenter.org, guilfordartcenter. org.

Bessie Potter Vonnoh: Sculptor of Women spotlights a selection of

largest selection of Bras in CT

such as oil or gasoline and then be discarded.

He recreates the forms in clay, and in the process and tension of Raku firing gives these discarded, still recognizable forms new meaning and great elegance.

Through November 30 (opening reception: 6 p.m.

November 3) at Kehler Liddell Gallery, 873 Whalley Ave., New Haven. Open 11 a.m.-4 p.m. Thurs.-Sun. & by appt. Free. 203-3899555, kehlerliddell.com.

Bessie Potter Vonnoh’s (1872-1955), the leading sculptor of American womanhood of her time and a pioneer among female artists, small sculpture and garden statuary that portrays women as both icons of beauty and moral guardians of family and home.

The Florence Griswold Museum serves as the first venue for this landmark exhibition organized by the Cincinnati Art Museum. Vonnoh and her husband, painter Robert Vonnoh. Through January 11 at the Florence Griswold Museum, 96 Lyme St. Old Lyme. Open 10 a.m.-5 p.m.

Tues.-Sat., 1-5 p.m. Sun. $10 ($9 seniors & students, $6 children 6-12, free under 6).

860-434-5542, flogris.org.

To accompany the Vonnoh sculptures, the museum will display the exhibition Women Artists in Connecticut: Selections from the Florence Griswold Museum. This group of works from the museum’s collection focuses on the contributions of women artists in Connecticut, particularly the members of the Lyme Art Colony. Paintings, works on paper, portrait miniatures and sculptures created between the 1870s and today provide a context for Bessie Potter

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Vonnoh: Sculptor of Women. Women’s early focus on still-lifes and garden scenes and in fields such as illustration and miniature painting reflects both the challenges they faced in entering the professional art world as well as the unflagging creativity that enabled them to flourish. Artists include Cecilia Beaux, Matilda Browne, Margaret Cooper, Elisabeth Gordon Chandler, Caro Weir Ely, Harriet Whitney Frishmuth, Lilian Westcott Hale, Breta and Lydia Longacre and Margaret Hardon Wright.

Through January 11 at the Florence Griswold Museum, 96 Lyme St., Old Lyme. Open 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tues.-Sat., 1-5 p.m. Sun. $10 ($9 seniors & students, $6 children 6-12, free under 6). 860-434-5542, flogris.org.

The Arts Council of Greater New Haven, in collaboration with Haskins Laboratories, presents Intricacies: Extreme Detail in Current Art, an obsessive, layered, complex, elegant, intimate and universal show featuring artists who use extreme detail in their work. Artists include John Arabolos of West Haven, Rachel Hellerich and Mark Tsang of Milford, Hamden’s Cham Hendon, Charles Printz Kopelson from New York, Weston’s Edith Borax Morrison and Alyse Rosner of Westport. Through January 23 at Haskins Laboratories Gallery, 300 George St., 9 floor, New Haven. Open 10 a.m.-4 p.m.

Wed.-Fri. Free. 203-772-2788.

Holiday Show. Group show featuring the works of more than 20 local and international artists. November 25-January 31 at White Space Gallery, 1020 Chapel St., New Haven. Open 10 a.m.-6 p.m. daily (until 7 p.m. Thurs.); Sun. by appt. Free. 203-495-1200, whitespacegallery.com.

More than 150 crosses and crucifixes collected from around the world (where they were used in churches or by individuals) are on loan from the extensive Yvonne Shia Klancko Collection of religious items and displayed for the first time in Crosses & Crucifixes. Exhibition includes an artifact from the Balkans made more than 800 years ago. At Knights of Columbus Museum, 1 State St., New Haven. Open 10 a.m.-5 p.m. daily. Free.

203-865-0400, museum@kofc.org, kofc. org/museum.

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BACH TO THE FUTURE Continued from 28 Maestro Sinclair attributes ONE’s perseverance to the loyalty of longtime members such as doublebassist Joseph Russo

Harold Shapiro

poised between being historical and being observers of history,” Sinclair explains.

“And of course audiences today know more [about the music of the late 18th century] than audiences knew then about what music was good and bad, so you can play irony and jokes.

“During the period of 1785 to 1790, Bach was déclassé, pretty much forgotten about.

Handel was still hot because Messiah was so good,” he elaborates. “Haydn was huge; Mozart was basically unknown. We play music that our audience wants to hear now, that they could have listened to [then] but probably didn’t. For instance, [18th century audiences] listened to Corelli but didn’t know Vivaldi. We listen to Vivaldi and skip Corelli.”

So on November 29, United Church will be illuminated by the golden glow of candles. After the audience is seated (the program announces that dogs are welcome as foot-warmers), a town crier enters from the rear of the church and announces, “Mister Sinclair of Boston.” And then the fun begins.

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Life of Brian Dennehy powers O’Neill’s dark Hughie at Long Wharf Hughie, by Eugene O’Neill. Directed by Robert Falls. With Brian Dennehy and Joe Grifasi. Through November 16 at Long Wharf Theatre’s Stage II, New Haven. 203-787-4282, longwharf.org.

By BROOKS APPELBAUM

T

hough Eugene O’Neill’s body of work is not exactly humorless, his focus — especially in his later years — tended toward the melancholy and the elegiac. It’s not surprising that at the same time that he was writing A Long Day’s Journey into Night, he was drawn to the idea of creating a cycle of eight plays, each serving as a kind of obituary for an unseen character. Of these plays, which he called, collectively, “By Way of Obit,” he finished only Hughie, now playing on Long Wharf Theatre’s Stage II. While Hughie’s script has its moments of humor, the play’s keynote is mourning: mourning for a person, for a past, and most of all for the fantasy of a past that never was.

Hughie’s plot could hardly be more delicate. Erie Smith (Brian Dennehy), a down-and-out gambler and self-described “sport” of the 1920s, has been staying at the same seedy hotel for many years.

Over those years he has become fond of the night clerk, Hughie. Hughie died a week before the action of the play and has been replaced by a new Night Clerk (Joe Grifasi). Erie attempts to recreate a similarly chummy relationship with this all-but silent Night Clerk by trying, at first, to portray himself as a big player on the streets of Broadway. But his talk keeps veering toward memories of Hughie. We

44

november 2008

Brian Dennehy and Joe Grifasi in O’Neill’s Hughie on Long Wharf’s Stage II.

find that Hughie was the perfectly gullible audience for Erie’s tales of gambling exploits, horse-racing adventures and jawdropping success with “dolls.” Hughie was the perfect “sucker,” says Erie, with unmistakable affection.

As we come to understand the depth and complexity of Erie’s affection for Hughie, we also begin to note the new Night Clerk’s silence, and his apparent impatience — though welldisguised — with Erie’s endless talk. The fascination and tension of the play lie in the relationships that, in spite of Erie’s non-stop talking, are largely unspoken.

Erie talks to create the self he wants to

be, and he talks about a Hughie who is not there to hear just now much Erie loved and needed him. As for the Night Clerk, his silent response to Erie and his opaque character should create the feeling of the gun on the mantelpiece, ready to discharge.

It is here, in the play’s subtext, that director Robert Falls has not realized the play’s full potential. First, he has chosen to place his actors on a beautiful set (designed by Eugene Lee) that is so realistic that it belies Erie’s description of the filthy place the hotel has come to be.

Certainly, the lobby Lee has created has seen better days, but an audience member

can’t help but marvel at the perfect period details, rather than wallow in the dark and dust as one should in order to fully empathize with Erie’s sense of loss and loneliness.

Second, Falls has directed Grifasi to play many of his moments for comedy.

The actor’s slight resemblance to Buster Keaton wouldn’t matter so much if he were portraying his own version of a complex and saddened soul. Instead, he has been guided toward playing something more like the Fool to Erie’s down-and-out King. There are a number of external city sound effects in the play, and the Night Clerk follows them with his eyes turned upwards. Surely (since O’Neill wrote them into the script) the sounds are meant imply that nighttime is the Night Clerk’s enemy. If so, more marked and specific responses would help us better understand his inner life. And if Erie is talking, in large part, to make the Night Clerk talk back — to become Hughie — as he says at the beginning of the play, then the Night Clerk’s silence must have an underlying stubbornness, or anger, or despair. None of these are clear in Grifasi’s performance, and that can only be because the director didn’t ask for them.

Finally, we come to Brian Dennehy as Erie. Dennehy has numerous moments of brilliance, especially when the script allows for humor, when he reveals his genuine affection for Hughie, and when he lets down his bravado. However, for a dreamer — a loser — Dennehy comes across as awfully powerful. The small playing space and the intimacy of the Long Wharf’s Stage II only accentuate this quality. Dennehy has too few places to go and soon one becomes a bit vertiginous, roaming from place to place.

More problematic, though, is his intrinsic strength, which director Falls has does little to rein in. Though Erie enters the play drunk, just coming off a serious “bender,” he looks spiffy in his cream suit and two-toned shoes (costumes by Rachel Anne Healy), and he seems to revive all too quickly. Dennehy has played this role three times previously, and one must applaud his determination to continue searching. One hopes, though, that through this extended run he finds a way to get even closer to the fragility and darkness at the center of this tormented man. v

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A CHRISTMAS STORY December 14 • 1 pm

“IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE” December 14 • 4 pm

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ONSTAGE

The Girls Next Door is a distaff version of the play The Boys Next Door written

by Tom Griffin. Set in a group home in New England, four mentally-challenged women live under the supervision of an earnest but burned out young social worker. The play offers vignettes from their daily lives where little things can become poignant, funny and memorable. Professional actress Mary Vreeland, who is deaf, directs. 8 p.m.

November 5-8 and 2 p.m. November 9 on Long Wharf Theatre Mainstage, 222 Sargent Dr., New Haven. $10 ($5 students & seniors). 203-582-3500.

Quinnipiac University students Mariah Boxill, left, and Megan Joyce, (front) Brittany Bucci, left, Sehee Lee, center, and Maegan Pachomski perform The Girls Next Door. At Long Wharf Theatre November 5-9.

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ArtFarm’s Circus for a Fragile Planet is an hour-long environmentaleducation circus designed to entertain all ages while delivering a powerful message about protecting the planet. Features juggling, acrobatics, contortion, unicycling, stilt-dancing and physical comedy performed by four professional circus performers. Designed for teen to adult audiences, event is appropriate for and has played successfully to all age groups.

— Elvira J. Duran

PHOTO CREDIT : TOM HUGHEY

Based on the book by Brian Hill, The Story of My Life is an intimate musical comedy with music and lyrics by Neil Bartram. New musical tells the story of two childhood friends and how that friendship profoundly defined their lives. Thomas Weaver is a bestselling, award-winning author. Alvin Kelby was his best friend of 30 years. But time can test the bonds of friendship, and when it does, Thomas calls on the only resource he has — his stories of Alvin — to learn where things went wrong. Directed by Tony Award-winner Richard Maltby Jr. Tony-nominated Malcolm Gets, whose Broadway credits include Passion, Amour and Dreamgirls, plays Alvin. Gets may be best known to audiences as Richard on the television comedy Caroline in the City and was recently featured in the film version of the show Sex and the City. Thomas is played by Will Chase, whose Broadway credits include High Fidelity, Aida, The Full Monty, Rent and Miss Saigon.

Through November 2 at the Norma Terris Theatre, 33 North Main St., Chester. $42.

860-873-8668, goodspeed.org.

CRITIC’S PICK Making Clean-Up Fun PHOTO CREDIT: KISHA MICHAEL

THEATER

Tina Howe’s drama Painting Churches is about a family on the move. Gardner Church, an aging Pulitzer Prize-winning poet in the early stages of memory loss, and his Boston Brahmin wife Fanny are leaving Beacon Hill forever and moving down to the Cape to lead a simpler life. Their daughter Mags, whose reputation as a portrait artist is on the ascendant in New York, arrives home to help her parents pack up and, hopefully, paint their portrait.

Don’t be fooled: This is no sad, dreary tale about dementia or an artist who paints church buildings. Instead, Howe lovingly creates an energetic, passionate, complicated family of three who love, bewilder, puzzle, shatter, and ultimately champion one another. 8 p.m. November 1, 7 & 8 and 2:30 p.m. November 2 at Powerhouse Theatre, 679 South Ave., New Canaan. $18 ($15 students & seniors). 203-966-7371.

Mags (Julie Bell) sets up the portrait which her parents, Fanny (Nancy Sinacori) and Gardner (Fred Tisch) have finally consented to sit for. Find out why it took so long to get them to sit in the Town Players of New Canaan’s production of Painting Churches. November 1-2 & 7-8 at Powerhouse Theatre.

The exclusive Connecticut engagement of the national tour of this all newproduction of The Wizard of Oz will be sure to bring back memories for many and create a new world of wonder for the young audiences as they travel down the Yellow Brick Road and beyond with Dorothy, Toto and their friends the Cowardly Lion, Tin Man and Scarecrow.

Lavish production features breathtaking special effects, dazzling choreography and classic songs. Director Nigel West, choreographer Leigh Constantine and set and costume designer Tim McQuillen-Wright utilize the glamour and elegance of Art Deco Hollywood as the visually stunning Technicolor backdrop for the musical. November 7-9 at the Palace Theater, 100 East Main St., Waterbury. $58-$48. 203-755-4700, palacetheaterct.org.

Director Penny Woolcock makes her Metropolitan Opera debut directing John Adams’ Doctor Atomic, a contemporary masterpiece about a momentous episode of modern history: the creation of the atomic bomb. Baritone Gerald Finley plays J. Robert Oppenheimer with Alan Gilbert conducting. Presented live in high definition on the Big Screen. 1 & 6 p.m.

7 p.m. November 7-8 at First United Methodist Church, 24 Old Church St., Middletown. $8 ($6 students and seniors).

860-346-4390, info@artfarm.org, art-farm.org.

November 9 at Quick Center for the Arts, Fairfield University, 1073 North Benson Rd., Fairfield. $22 ($20 seniors, $15 children & students). quickcenter.com.

Auditions for the roles of four females and two males (ages 20 to 39) for Crimes of the Heart, a dark melodramatic comedy, directed by Chris Peterson and written by Beth Henley, take place this month for February 2009 production by the Eastbound Theatre . No monologues necessary, but familiarity with the play is helpful. Sides will be provided at the auditions. 7:30 p.m. November 9 & 10 at the Milford Center for the Arts, 40 Railroad Ave., Milford. 203-878-6647, milfordarts.org.

Dorothy and Toto encounter the Scarecrow on their way to see the Wizard down the Yellow Brick Road. Don’t miss the exclusive Conn. engagement of the all new production of The Wizard of Oz at the Palace Theater November 7-9.

With precision, sensitivity and unity of ensemble, the Aquila Theatre Co. articulates the human essence inherent in classical drama. The Comedy of Errors is one of Shakespeare’s most vibrant and sparkling comedies.

Brilliant comedy abounds in this witty tale of mistaken identity, assumed personas, hilarious machinations and whimsical family ties. 8 p.m. November 14 at Quick Center for the Arts, Fairfield University, 1073 North Benson Rd., Fairfield. $30. quickcenter.com.

Kelly AuCoin, Mary Bacon, Brian Keane, David Andrew Macdonald, Joan MacIntosh, Quentin Maré and Katharine Powell are part of the cast of the American premiere of Happy Now? by Lucinda Coxon, directed by Liz Diamond. This painfully truthful, darkly comic new play about having it all debuted at London’s National Theatre in 2008. Follow Kitty as she struggles to balance personal freedom with family life, fidelity, a demanding job and a husband who is more interested in misplaced apostrophes than in their marriage. Through November 15 at Yale Repertory Theatre, 1120 Chapel St., New Haven. $65-$20. 203-432-1234, yalerep. org.

Erie Smith, a small-time gambler, wanders home to a seedy New York hotel fresh from a grief-stricken bout of drinking: Hughie, night clerk and once-captive audience for Erie’s tall tales, has died. Will Erie find in Hughie’s replacement the affirmation and friendship he craves? One loner seeks solace in another in Eugene O’Neill’s snapshot of two souls on a city’s margins. Brian Dennehy, leading American stage and screen actor (Death of A Salesman, Long Day’s Journey Into Night on Broadway), stars

in this play about coming to grips with the past. Through November 16 on Long Wharf Theatre Stage II, 222 Sargent Dr., New Haven. $60.75. 203-787-4282, 800-782-8497, info@longwharf.org, longwharf.org.

Written and performed by Dan Hoyle, Tings Dey Happen was developed and directed by Charlie Varon. The play is a distillation of the Niger Delta as the playwright experienced it. Many characters are composites, the monologues a blend of several people’s words. Play seeks to honor these people and make their stories resonate with the audience. Tings Dey Happen won the 2007 Will Glickman Award for Best New Play in San Francisco, where it ran for six months. It followed that success with a five-month run in New York City at the Culture Project. 8 p.m.

November 21-22 at Wien Experimental Theatre, Quick Center for the Arts, Fairfield University, 1073 North Benson Rd., Fairfield. $25. quickcenter.com.

Experience two plays on the same day. Two Rooms is a production of the University of New Haven Theatre Program, while American Gangbang is a co-production of the UNH Theatre Program and Elm City Theater Co., the student-run theatre company at the University. The plays provide a look at both ends of the political spectrum, Two Rooms as a serious drama and American Gangbang as satire. Two Rooms: 7:30 p.m. November 19-22 and 3 p.m. November 23. American Gangbang: 10 p.m. November 19-21 and 2 p.m. November 22 at University of New Haven, 300 Boston Post Rd., West Haven. $10 ($5 for non-UNH students, free UNH students & faculty). 203-479-4512, newhaven.edu.

Enjoy the Metropolitan Opera live in High Definition on the Big Screen right in your backyard. Hector Berlioz’s contemplation of good and evil, La Damnation de Faust, is interpreted

by Robert Lepage, one of theater’s most imaginative directors. Marcello Giordani stars in the title role opposite Susan Graham as Marguerite and John Relyea as Méphistophélès. James Levine conducts this rarely staged masterwork. 1 & 7 p.m. November 22 at Quick Center for the Arts, Fairfield University, 1073 North Benson Rd., Fairfield. $22 ($20 seniors, $15 children & students). quickcenter.com.

Come along for the adventure of a lifetime with Big River: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Huck Finn and runaway slave Jim take a musical trip down the Mississippi River in Mark Twain’s classic tale. Along the way they meet a rascally pair of river grifters, a grieving heiress and of course, Tom Sawyer. A slice of pure Americana.

Adapted from the novel Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, Big River draws from an eclectic collection of musical styles including Cajun, gospel, blues and country. Music and lyrics by Roger Miller. Choreographed

by John MacInnis. Directed by Rob Ruggiero. Through November 30 at the Goodspeed Opera House, 6 Main St., East Haddam. $63-$26. 860-873-8668,

goodspeed.org.

A Christmas Carol. Recapture the childlike wonder of the season with this joyful musical adaptation of Charles Dickens’ holiday classic. Perennial favorite features period sets and costumes, magical special effects and a host of angelic voices singing your favorite Christmas carols. 7:30 p.m. November 28-29, 2 p.m. November 29-30 at Shubert Theater, 247 College St., New Haven. $40-$18. 203-562-5666 or 888-736-2663, shubert.com.

Rough Crossing is a tuneful madcap romance by Tom Stoppard, the four-time Tony Award and Academy Award-winning author of Rock ‘n’ Roll, The Coast of Utopia, The Real Thing and Shakespeare in Love. A brand new musical comedy is about to debut on Broadway, but it doesn’t have an ending yet. Also, the beginning needs a little work. And the middle is a mess. Aboard a transastlantic ocean liner, celebrated playwrights Turai and Gal have their work cut out for them, and only four days to do it. And to complicate matters, their tonguetied composer — hopelessly in love with the temperamental leading lady (who’s been caught in a compromising position with the leading man) — has tossed his score overboard, and threatens to jump ship himself. Can they steady the turbulent emotions of the cast and crew — and finish the show — before they dock in New York?

Directed by Mark Rucker. November 28December 20 (opening night December 4) at University Theatre, 222 York St., New Haven. $65-$20. 203-432-1234, yalerep. org.

A Civil War Christmas. A production directed by Tina Landau. It’s 1864, and Washington, D.C. settles down to the coldest Christmas Eve in years — in the White House, where President and Mrs. Lincoln plot their gift-giving; on the banks of the Potomac, where a young rebel challenges a Union blacksmith’s mercy; and in the alleys downtown, where an escaped slave loses her daughter just before finding freedom. Filled with Christmas music and traditional American songs, this new musical by Pulitzer Prize-winner Paula Vogel intertwines many lives and shows us that the gladness of one’s heart is the best gift of all. November 26-December 21 on Long Wharf Theatre Mainstage, 222 Sargent Dr., New Haven. $60.75-$45.75. 203-787-4282, 800-7828497, info@longwharf.org, longwharf. org.

Seven Angels Theatre presents the only professional Connecticut production of Mel Brooks’ hilarious Broadway comedy hit The Producers. R. Bruce Connolly plays the down-on-his-luck Broadway producer who, with his mild-mannered accountant, schemes to stage the most notorious flop in history. One thing goes awry: the show is a smash hit. November 20-December 28 at Seven Angels Theatre, 1 Plank Road, Waterbury. $48-$32.50 ($10 under 30).

203-757-4676, sevenangelstheatre.org.

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MUSIC Classical Opera Scenes. Yale Opera, under the artistic direction of Doris YarickCross and the stage direction of Vera Lúcia Calábria, presents a program featuring scenes from Mozart’s Le Nozze de Figaro, Lehar’s Frühling, Tchaikovsky’s Iolanta and Massenet’s Don Quichotte and Manon. All scenes will have projected English supertitles.

The cast features sopranos Mireille Asselin, Amanda Hall, Adelaide Muir and Samantha Lane Talmadge; mezzosopranos Gala El Hadidi, Ana Sinicki, Emily Righter, Chrystal Williams; tenors Eric Barry, Tadeusz Szlenkier and Michael-Paul Krubitzer; baritones David Pershall and Vince Vincent; and basses Jeremy Bowes, Damien Pass and Tyler Simpson. Musical direction

by Douglas Dickson and Timothy Shaindlin. 7:30 p.m. November 1 at Sprague Hall, 470 College St., New Haven. $12-$8 ($5 students). 203-4324158, yale.edu/music.

Don Giovanni, a/k/a Don Juan, is the legendary love-’em-and-leave-’em scoundrel of history and opera. Set in Spain in the 1600s, Don Giovanni chronicles the lover’s conquests, said to have numbered in the thousands.

Understandably, those he seduced and abandoned are bent on vengeance. He is pursued by past conquests plus the ghost of the Commendatore he killed in a duel as the nobleman fought to save his daughter’s virtue. When the ghost demands that he repent and reform, the Don brazenly refuses and is consumed by the fires of hell. In the end, virtue vanquishes vice. Conducted

by Willie Anthony Waters, production stars Michael Mayes as Don Giovanni and Jason Hardy as Leporello and features the Hartford Symphony Orchestra and Connecticut Opera Chorus. 2 p.m. November 2 at the Palace Theater, 100 East Main St., Waterbury. $90-30. 203-755-4700, palacetheaterct.org.

Distinguished composer and newlyappointed professor at the Yale School of Music, Christopher Theofanidis makes an appearance at the New Music New Haven series. The highlight of the

Christopher Theofanidis, lends his composer abilities to the New Music New Haven series with his Bassoon Concerto. Catch the free public performance in Sprague Hall on November 6.

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program will be Theofanidis’ Bassoon Concerto, performed by soloist and YSM alumnus Martin Kuuskmann.

Program will also include works by YSM graduate students in composition: Robert Honstein’s Movement for Brass Quintet, Naftali Schindler’s Woodwind Quintet and Polina Nazaykinskaya’s Two Songs for Soprano and Strings. 8 p.m.

November 6 at Sprague Hall, 470 College St., New Haven. Free. 203-432-4158, yale. edu/music.

Wendy Sharp, lecturer in violin at the Yale School of Music, will perform a Faculty Artist Recital with pianist Julie Nishimura, a faculty member at the University of Delaware and a collaborative pianist with California Summer Music. Program: KERNIS Two Movements With Bells; GERSHWIN Three Preludes (Heifetz Transcription); IVES Sonata for Violin and Piano No. 4, (Children’s Day at the Camp Meeting); SHONFIELD Four Souvenirs. 2 p.m.

November 9 at Sprague Hall, 470 College St., New Haven. Free. 203-432-4158, yale. edu/music.

La Riche & Co. perform Indoor Fireworks: An Intimate Pyrotechnic Display of Music by Handel and His Contemporaries, a program including Handel’s Music for the Royal Fireworks along with chamber works by Thomas Vincent and Giuseppe Sammartini at Yale’s Collection of Musical Instruments. Ensemble includes Gonzalo Xavier Ruiz, oboe; Robert Mealy, violin; Phoebe Carrai, cello; and Katherine Shao, harpsichord. 3 p.m. November 9 at Yale Collection of Musical Instruments, 15 Hillhouse Ave., New Haven. $20 ($15 staff & seniors; $10 students). 203-432-4158, yale.edu/music.

students). 203-432-4158, yale.edu/music.

The renowned Flux Quartet will play new works by Wesleyan graduate student composers Max Heath, Ivan Naranjo, Sally Norris and Brian Parks. 8 p.m. November 13 at Crowell Concert Hall, Wesleyan University, 283 Washington Terr., Middletown. Free.

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

For those who value once-in-a-lifetime experiences, the wine tasting and violin sampler Il Violino Di-vino is sure to please. Led by the New Haven Symphony Orchestra’s principal second violinist Stephan Tieszen with wine expert Bob Feinn of Mt. Carmel Wine & Spirits, guests are invited to take a magical journey from 1736 to the present day through the timbres of six exquisite violins from the Guarneri and Stradivari provenances and the tannins of six wines from the regions in Italy, France and America where the instruments originate. The grand finale will feature a special guest violinist performing a single work on each of the violins. This event will illustrate the differences between each and present the best in the world in one evening. Two of the finest violins in the world — the Muir Mackenzie Stradivarius of 1736 and a magnificent Guarnieri del Gesu from 1741 — will be heard, followed by copies by the two greatest French luthiers, Lupot and Vuillaume, and finally two modern instruments made specifically for the event: copies inspired by Guarneri

by Andrius Faruolo and a Stradivari by New Haven’s own Mark Hough. 6-8 p.m. November 18 at Union League Café, 1032 Chapel St., New Haven. $250 per person ($350 per couple). 203-9312991, ngallego@newhavensymphony. org, newhavensymphony.org.

Piano Music of Ives, Bach and Bruce.

Charles Ives’ “Concord” Sonata with selected preludes by J.S. Bach and Bachrelated pieces by Neely Bruce. 8 p.m.

November 20 at Crowell Concert Hall, Wesleyan University, 283 Washington Terr., Middletown. $5 ($4 seniors & students).

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

Christopher Theofanidis, lends his composer abilities to the New Music New Haven series with his Bassoon Concerto. Catch the free public performance in Sprague Hall on November 6.

Beethoven expert Claude Frank is the featured artist in the Horowitz Piano Series recital for November. Program: MOZART Sonata in C Major, K. 330; BEETHOVEN Sonata in E Major, Op. 109; SCHUBERT Sonata in B-flat Major, D. 960. Frank has made a universally-acclaimed recording of the complete cycle of Beethoven sonatas on RCA. He also has been noted for his longstanding involvement with New York’s Mostly Mozart Festival. 8 p.m. November 11 at Sprague Hall, 470 College St., New Haven. $18-$10 ($5

Bring your lunch and enjoy a musical smorgasbord at the free noontime concert series Bach’s Lunch at Neighborhood Music School. In Violin and Piano Duos (November 7) Xilin Jordan, violin, is joined by guest artist Mei-Tsen Chen, piano, to perform duos including Bach’s Sonata in A Major, works by Gluck, Fiocco, Massenet, and Spring in Xinjiang by Chinese composers Y.X. Ma and Z.H. Li. Chen will perform solo piano works by Liszt and Bartok as well. The Two-Plus-Two Piano Quartet (November 14) offers arrangements of popular works by Schubert and Saint-Saëns as well as Chapelle’s Burlesque (commissioned by the London Piano Quartet). Performers include NMS piano faculty member Margaret Ann Martin and guests Sheila Powers Converse, Adrienne S. Forrest and Linda Maranis. In Jazz with Jesse (November 21), Jesse Hameen II, drums, jams with NMS Jazz faculty

colleagues Mike Asetta, bass, and Tony Lombardozzi, guitar, joined by guest artist Kris Jensen on saxophone and flute. 12:10-12:50 p.m. in the NMS Recital Hall, 100 Audubon St., New Haven. Free.

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

A variety of small classical groups will perform works by composers from the Baroque, Classical, Romantic and contemporary periods. 6 p.m. November 21 at Russell House, Wesleyan University, 283 Washington Terr., Middletown. Free. 860-685-3355, boxoffice@wesleyan.edu, wesleyan. edu/cfa.

The Wesleyan Concert Choir under musical director Angel Gil-Ordonez will perform Spanish and Latin American choral works from the 16th to the 20th centuries in a Candlelight Concert. As part of the Brecht & Weill at Wesleyan Festival, the Wesleyan University Orchestra will perform Kurt Weill’s Symphony No. 2 and Four Walt Whitman Songs. 7 p.m. November 22 at Memorial Chapel, Wesleyan University, 221 High St., Middletown. Free. 860-6853355, wesleyan.edu/cfa.

The Opera/Oratorio Ensemble performs opera and oratorio selections under the direction of Priscilla Gale. 8 p.m. November 22 at Crowell Concert Hall, Wesleyan University, 283 Washington Terr., Middletown. $5 ($4 seniors & students). 860-685-3355, boxoffice@wesleyan.edu, wesleyan. edu/cfa.

Chamber Music featuring winds and piano will be performed by Wesleyan faculty members Gary Bennett, Robert Hoyle, Tom Labadorf, Erika Schroth, Peter Standaart and Libby Van Cleve. Poulenc’s charming Sextet will be performed along with Mozart’s sublime Quintet. 3 p.m. November 23 at Russell House, Wesleyan University, 283 Washington Terr., Middletown. Free.

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

Popular Have your toddler giggling for joy with the Wiggles live in Pop Go The Wiggles. 11 a.m. & 2 p.m. November 1 at Chevrolet Theatre, 95 South Turnpike Rd., Wallingford. $43.50-$23.50. 203-2698721, livenation.com.

The Grammy-nominated Imani Winds, comprising five unabashedly adventurous yet delightfully accessible musicians, has been enriching the traditional wind quintet repertoire with European, African, Latin American and American music traditions since its inception in 1997. 8 p.m. November 1 at Quick Center for the Arts, Fairfield University, 1073 North Benson Rd., Fairfield. $35. quickcenter.com.

Entertainment superstars Reba McEntire & Kelly Clarkson come to Bridgeport, for the 2 World 2 Voices Tour. Don’t miss this show featuring

both superstars on one stage for a combined non-stop show. 8 p.m.

November 1 at Arena at Harbor Yard, 600 Main St., Bridgeport. $64.50-$52.50. arenaatharboryard.com.

The dynamic duo Reba McEntire & Kelly Clarkson grace the stage of the Arena at Harbor Yard on November 1.

Superb singer Tim O’Brien has made a lasting mark on American music through his innate instrumental talents and his wide-ranging tastes. Tim is best known for his melodic and rhythmic mandolin playing, but he also wields a wicked blues guitar, fiddles fluidly and is no slouch on mandola or banjo, either. Originally from Wheeling, W.Va., in 1978 he started Hot Rize, which has earned recognition as one of America’s most innovative and entertaining bluegrass bands. 3 p.m. November 2 at the Little Theater, One Lincoln St., New Haven. $25. 203-430-6020, guitartownct.com/index.html.

You May Already Be Dreaming, Neva Dinova’s third full-length album, is a lush, largely electric affair rich with the rural textures that pepper releases from the band’s Omaha contemporaries. A staple on the scene since guitarist/singer/songwriter Jake Bellows and bassist Heath Koontz began collaborating in the early ‘90s, Neva Dinova (named after Bellows’ grandmother) continually evolved their melancholy sound, making masterful use of counterbalanced melodies and poetic lyricism. 7 p.m. November 2 at the Space, 295 Treadwell St., Hamden. $10 ($8 advance). 203-288-6400, booking@thespace.tk, thespace.tk.

Singer-songwriter Joe Jackson is a critically-acclaimed recording artist best known for hit songs like “Is She Really Going Out with Him?” “Steppin’ Out” and “You Can’t Get What You Want (‘Til You Know What You Want).” Early in his career, Jackson was a part of a trio of British-based artists that challenged the punk scene and brought a New Wave sound to the U.S. in the late 1970s. For this performance Jackson is joined by original bandmates Graham Maby and Dave Houghton as well as special guest Thea Gilmore. 7 p.m. November 2 at Shubert Theater, 247 College St., New Haven. $43-$28. 203-562-5666 or 888736-2663, shubert.com.

Join one of America’s best-known boy bands, the Backstreet Boys, on their global Unbreakable Tour — the band’s first without Kevin Richardson. Features more dancing than their previous

CRITIC’S PICK What a Crooner The Milford Fine Arts Council’s Jazz Committee welcomes Steve D’Agostino & His Quartet to the Center for the Arts. In additional to Trumbull’s D’Agostino on vocals, the quartet includes David Scrofani of Milford on piano, Geno Heiter on bass, Chris Coulter on sax and Marc D’Agostino of Trumbull on drums.

D’Agostino has

tour and also spotlights each member performing a solo number. 7:30 p.m.

November 2 at Chevrolet Theatre, 95 South Turnpike Rd., Wallingford. $57-$37.

203-269-8721, livenation.com.

Billy McGuigan returns as Buddy Holly in Rave On: The Music of Buddy Holly.

McGuigan wrote and co-produced this revue featuring nine musicians and acclaimed by reviewers and audiences alike all over the U.S. Through November 2 at Seven Angels Theatre, 1 Plank Rd., Waterbury. $45-$40. 203-7574676, sevenangelstheatre.org.

been performing songs from the Great American Songbook for more than 20 years with an emphasis on the era of Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Bobby Darin and Tony Bennett.

— Elvira J. Duran 8 p.m. November 14 at Center for the Arts, 40 Railroad Ave., Milford. $12. 203-8786647, milfordarts.org.

The Hydra Head Records Tour with Pelican, Kayo Dot, Stephen Brodsky (of Cave In) and Zozobra. Chicago native four-piece instrumental band Pelican has a sound inspired by doom metal and post-rock. Kayo Dot is an experimental rock/modern composition ensemble currently based in New York. Brodsky is nationally known as the frontman of Cave In as well as a fill-in bassist for Converge, but his solo efforts veer more toward experimental indie pop. Zozobra is a metal band with members of Old Man Gloom, Isis and Cave In. 7 p.m. November 3 at 21

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Daniel St., Milford. $12. 203-877-4446, booking@danielstreetclub.com.

Producer Jordan Tishler has been involved in the music industry for more than 20 years. The classically trained Tishler devotes himself to the rock/pop arena and brings a well-honed musical sophistication to his productions. His years on the music scene have garnered Tishler many friends within the industry, crucial contacts for the promotion of artists and their music. He is chairman emeritus of the New England Section of the Audio Engineering Society, on the planning committee for the 2007 AES Convention in New York, actively involved in the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, and the founder of the Music-Producer’s List. Tishler gives his direct and insightful critiques to artists at a meeting organized by the Connecticut Songwriters Association. 7:15 p.m.

November 4 at B2B3 South College, Wesleyan University, 283 Washington Terr., Middletown. $8 ($5 members). info@ ctsongs.com, ctsongs.com.

Born in Quito, Ecuador, Terry Pazmiño studied under guitar masters in Venezuela, France and Australia. Long considered a guitar master in his own right, Pazmiño’s music combines Latin American and European influences, and his repertoire exudes power, originality, magic, simplicity, enchantment and freshness, all from one guitar. Pazmiño has performed in such esteemed venues as Carnegie Hall and the Sydney

Opera House in Sydney, Australia. 7:30 p.m. November 3 at Clarice L. Buckman Theater, Quinnipiac University, 275 Mount Carmel Ave., Hamden. Free. 203582-3144, quinnipiac.edu.

The Bacon Brothers have gotten more mileage out of the element of surprise than most other bands. Through five albums and countless gigs, these guys have shown they can play. Kevin Bacon is internationally known as an actor, but he is equally dedicated to his musical craft. Kevin and older brother Michael

Christopher Theofanidis, lends his composer abilities to the New Music New Haven series with his Bassoon Concerto. Catch the free public performance in Sprague Hall on November 6.

are lifelong musicians, part of the reason why they’ve become so good at turning heads and tweaking ears. 8 p.m.

November 8 at Quick Center for the Arts, Fairfield University, 1073 North Benson Rd., Fairfield. $50-$40. quickcenter.com.

Ed Miller has been hailed as “one of the finest singers to come out of the Scottish Folksong Revival.” Originally from Edinburgh, he has for many years been based in Austin, Tex., where he earned graduate degrees in folklore and geography at the University of Texas. He’s a true guitar-wielding folkie who wins his audiences over with a sweet but powerful voice, a great ear for material, and equal doses of populist politics and wry humor. 8 p.m. November 8 at First Congregational Church, 1009 Main St., Branford. $15 ($12 members, $5 children 12 and under).

203-488-7715, branfordfolk@yahoo.com, folknotes.org/branfordfolk.

No matter who you are, where you live, or your taste in music, Tower of Power will find you — and once that happens, it’s all over. You will come to believe not only that soul music is the salvation of us all, but that Tower of Power is one of those rare bands that can claim to be the real deal, 100proof, aged-to-perfection, ground-zero Soul. Opening for the group is the Average White Band, widely regarded as one of the best soul and funk bands in the history of music. Best known for their timeless mega-hit “Pick Up the Pieces” the band’s strength lies in their consistently accomplished songwriting, stretching across several gold-selling albums and multi-Grammy nominations. 7:30 p.m. November 13 at the Palace Theater, 100 East Main St., Waterbury. $40. 203-755-4700, palacetheaterct.org.

Nightmare of You rose out of the ashes of the Long Island punk revivalists the Movielife. Ex-Movielife guitarist Brandon Reilly formed the melodic indie rock group in 2003 with a sound much more pop-oriented than his hardcore roots would lead listeners to expect. Alongside vocalist/guitarist Reilly, Nightmare of You includes guitarist Joseph McCaffrey, bassist Ryan Heil and drummer Sammy Siegler (ex-Rival Schools, Glassjaw). Great Caesar & the Gogetters, an indie rock group from Madison; The Hollow Sound, an indie/pop punk band from Boston and blues-rock hybrid AC147 will also perform. 7 p.m. November 14 at the Space, 295 Treadwell St., Hamden. $5 (free with 2 cans of food donation).

203-288-6400, booking@thespace.tk, thespace.tk.

A Day of Praise is a performance collaboration and release concert for Connecticut Songwriters Association spiritual/inspirational compilations.

This concert will benefit the Local United Network to Combat Hunger (LUNCH). Participants can come early to learn one another’s songs and set up from 1-5 p.m., and stay for a pot-luck dinner from 5-6 p.m. The public concert starts at 7 p.m. November 15 at Dunbar United Church of Christ, 767 Benham St., Hamden. $10. info@ctsongs.com,

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ctsongs.com or dunbarchurch.com.

Rock the Sound IV returns with the largest line-up yet: Newsboys, David Crowder Band, Skillet, Leeland and Nevertheless. Special guest Mark Stuart of Audio Adrenaline will be the evening’s emcee. Rock the Sound IV will also focus on Love146, a New Haven based ministry aimed to protect, defend, restore and empower victims of child sex trafficking (NHM, August 2008). 6 p.m. November 15 at Arena at Harbor Yard, 600 Main St., Bridgeport. $65-$25. 877-261-ROCK, rockthesound. com or arenaatharboryard.com.

Put on your dancing shoes and head to the Big D Legends of Rock & Roll show featuring greats like Tommy James & the Shondells, Felix Cavaliere’s Rascals, Gary Puckett, the Turtles and the Buckinghams. 7 p.m. November 15 at Chevrolet Theatre, 95 South Turnpike Rd., Wallingford. $48.50-$38.50. 203-2698721, livenation.com.

One of the foremost American guitar duos, Mannes School of Music faculty members Michael Newman and Laura Oltman give the season-opening concert for the New England Guitar Society with an eclectic program of Spanish classics by Albeniz, Brazilian treats by Machado as well as works

by Vamos, Avers and Pulitzer-winning composer Moravec. 8 p.m. November 15 at Center for the Arts, 40 Railroad Ave., Milford. $15. 203-878-6647, newenglandguitar.org or milfordarts.org.

Trio Globo has crafted an original voice in contemporary acoustic music with combustible spontaneity, rhythmic influences derived from six continents and diverse musical roots that span jazz, classical and sacred traditions.

Eugene Friesen (Paul Winter Consort), Howard Levy (Bela Fleck and the Flecktones, Paquito d’Rivera) and Glen Velez (Paul Winter Consort, Steve Reich) bring three distinctive musical visions together to create original work that is instantly recognizable as their own. For their Wesleyan program, Sounds from a Beautiful World, Trio Globo integrates musical beauty from the rhythms and melodies of the world. 8 p.m. November 15 (7:15 p.m. pre-concert talk) at Crowell Concert Hall, Wesleyan University, 283 Washington Terr., Middletown. $21 ($18 seniors & students).

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

Grammy-nominated bluegrass stars Cherryholmes perform in concert at the Little Theater in New Haven.

Cherryholmes is a family of six that is tearing up the bluegrass circuit of late. They were named International Bluegrass Music Association entertainers of the year for 2005. The band performs songs by eldest daughter, Cia Leigh, and dances while covering songs by the Beatles and the Flying Burrito Brothers. 3 p.m.

November 16 at the Little Theater, One Lincoln St., New Haven. $32. 203-4306020, guitartownct.com/index.html.

PHOTOGRAPH:

Steve Blazo

OUTDOORS

Wheels on Fire An Elm City cycling group gets serious about two-wheeled commuting

By JOANNA PETTAS

O

n a sunny early mid-October morning, Madison residents Steve and Laurie Ongley joined a crowd of some 40 other commuters assembled on the Green before New Haven’s City Hall. This sight might seem unusual, given the chaotic nature of the pre-workday hustle, but these were no ordinary commuters, waiting in a long line of cars at a red light and circling around the crowded streets of New Haven, hunting for a parking space in order to make it to work on time. Instead, these commuters were bicyclists.

The occasion for this meeting was the season’s last formal Bike to Work Breakfast, a monthly event hosted by advocacy group Elm City Cycling (ECC). On this day, amid this throng, the Ongleys held the spotlight. Last spring the couple, along with Steve’s son Steve Jr., devised a new daily commuting routine that incorporates a total cycling distance of 38 miles. All three live in Madison and

Cyclists gather for the last formal Bike To Work Breakfast of the season at New Haven’s city hall.

work at Yale (but each with a different schedule).

The Ongleys bring one car into New Haven each workday; some days, for example, Laurie bikes to work, Steve Sr. bikes home and Steve Jr. takes the train.

On days like these, Laurie takes the car back to Madison in order to pick up the couple’s 12-year-old daughter from school.

So, to top off the season’s last formal Bike to Work Breakfast, Elm City Cycling

presented the couple with an award for their commitment to the cause.

The first official Bike to Work Breakfast was organized three years ago. Matthew Feiner, owner of New Haven cycling landmark the Devil’s Gear Bike Shop, says the series was inspired by “Breakfast on Bridges” in Portland, Ore., a city renowned for its cycling community.

“It’s such a great way to start the day,” Continued on 52

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Earth Angels: Cycling Facts & Figures

Continued from 51

Feiner says. “There’s usually a great turnout. New Haven has a very rich cycling community, with a lot of people commuting to work.” But, he adds, that wasn’t always the case.

• A 130-pound cyclist burns 402 calories while pedaling 14 miles in an hour.

• A 180-pound cyclist burns 540 calories while doing the same.

• Motor-vehicle emissions represent 31 percent of total carbon dioxide, 81 percent of carbon monoxide and 49 percent of nitrogen oxides released in the U.S., according to the Clear Air Council.

• On average, 60 percent of pollution from auto emissions is released during the first few minutes of operating the vehicle.

• A four-mile round trip by bicycle keeps about 15 pounds of pollutants out of the air we breathe, according to the WorldWatch Institute.

Source: League of American Bicyclists (bikeleague.org).

Explains ECC board member David Streever, the event attracted only a handful of people at first. “We’d try to get people’s attention with food,” he explains. “We had an electric grill and we’d make pancakes, but about five of us would end up having to eat all the food ourselves.” Now, Streever says, the event has outside sponsors — Audubon Street fixture Koffee? provides coffee, while ProPark donated an 18-foot banner to help publicize the event — and has attracted up to 150 people during its summer peak.

While Feiner says he and a core of about ten to 15 riders attend almost every Bike to Work breakfast, new people continuously rotate in. The group is typically diverse, ranging from students to professionals.

Some live downtown and bike less than two miles a day; others commute from Branford or Guilford by train; still others come from Hamden or neighboring towns.

People share tips on best routes, practices

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and equipment, and ECC provides maps and a two-sided brochure on sharing the road, which lists the rights of motorists and the rights of cyclists. “The message is educational,” explains Streever.

The event’s burgeoning popularity reflects a deepening sense of community among New Haven-area cyclists. Streever credits Feiner, who was called the “Bicycle Laureate of New Haven” by the Hartford Courant, and his shop, which touts its mission as “turning people into riders and riders into cyclists.” Social events play a part; the other component, adds Streever, is making New Haven safer for cyclists.

“There’s no better way to build a healthy [cycling] community than to build a space for it,” Streever says. ECC helped push the city to create its first dedicated bicycle lane on Orange Street, has worked to get more bike racks placed around the city and is now advocating for a “bike boulevard,” consisting of two lanes for bikes and one for cars, to connect Westville with downtown. These are just a few among many initiatives geared toward making the city safer and more hospitable to cyclists. ECC also advocates safety for cars and pedestrians. “People don’t realize we actually try to help cars, too,” says Streever. “It still always surprises me when people are anti the work that we do. We’re not anti-car.”

The Bike to Work Breakfast is geared toward fostering peaceful coexistence. At its core, the event is intended to celebrate cycling, both in general and as an alternative way to commute. The Ongleys — who consider themselves “Johnnycome-latelys” to the lifestyle — have seen benefits abound. “It’s much more fun to arrive to work during rush hour on bike than car, feeling very upset and annoyed,” says Steve Sr. “I’m always happy, relaxed and invigorated.”

“The beauty for me,” says Laurie, “is that I get to exercise during commuting time.

For working parents, that’s key.”

They also enjoy the peace of mind in saving energy and reducing their carbon footprint. It hasn’t been so bad on their wallets, either. Steve Sr. says his family saved $200 on gasoline in May and June compared to last year, even though gas prices were almost 38 percent higher in 2008, according to CNN Money. “But saving money is incidental,” says Laurie.

“It’s really about getting exercise without having to find the time, helping to reduce global warming and simply having fun.

“Ultimately,” she adds, “we hope to make more friends too.” v

CRITIC’S PICK Over the Moon Pete “The Piano Man” DiGennaro will play a part in evoking the 70’s era during the cocktail reception with renditions of classics by the original “Piano Man” (Billy Joel) and others such as Van Morrison, whose song is referenced in the event’s title.

BY ELVIRA J. DURAN

BELLES LETTRES

The Writers Group of the Milford Fine Arts Council, which includes writers of fiction and poetry, meets monthly.

Bring work in progress or completed manuscripts. Come and enjoy an evening of fun. 7:30 p.m. November 13 at the Center for the Arts, 40 Railroad Ave., Milford. 203-878-6647, milfordarts. org.

While on an Arts International residency in southeast Mexico, Magdalena Gomez met with indigenous theater, literary and visual artists and underground revolutionaries.

PHOTO CREDIT : ANNE TUBIS

Haul those pages out of your desk drawer, dust them off and sharpen your prose — Green Street offers writers a night to share works-in-progress, socialize and seek out constructive comments at the Writers-Out-Loud Literary Open Mic. Readings are limited to prose short stories or excerpts shorter than ten minutes in length. Open mic signup begins at 7 p.m., readings begin 30 minutes later. Each evening will be limited to six readings, with time for one-on-one feedback and sharing afterward. 8 p.m. November 6 at Green Street Arts Center, 51 Green St., Middletown. $3 (free for members). 860-685-7871, greenstreetartscenter.org.

The poems of Jaguar Dreams: Each Day a Lifetime reflect her experiences in a world unseen by tourists, and the passion of oppressed people who use art-making as a form of resistance. 8 p.m. November 21 at Green Street Arts Center, 51 Green St., Middletown. $8 ($5 members, seniors, & students). 860-6857871, greenstreetartscenter.org.

BENEFITS Swing Into Awareness is the benefit that’s got it all. “All” includes a huge raffle, a swing-dance lesson taught

by Noelle Gray and a swing dance featuring the musical stylings of the OTones, a hot swing, R&B and Motown band from western Massachusetts.

Local students and teachers from Vinnie’s Jump & Jive will perform dance pieces including break-dancing, belly dancing, swing, salsa, tap and more.

All profits will go to the Connecticut Breast Cancer Coalition and the Breast and Cervical Cancer Early Detection Program outreach fund. 6 p.m. November 1 at 54 Washington St., Middletown (check-in table at Vinnie’s Jump & Jive, 424 Main St.). $20. 860-3476971 ext. 3513, vinniesjumpandjive.com.

Magdalena Gomez gives an extra flair to the recital of her poems.

Experience Jaguar Dreams: Each Day a Lifetime on November 21 at the Green Street Arts Center in Middletown.

Enjoy a variety of specially selected wines and light hors d’oeuvres at this casual walk-around Wine Tasting event to benefit Amity Cares Habitat for Humanity. In addition, Scoozzi will extend a 15-percent discount to attendees dining following the event. 68 p.m. November 12 at Scoozzi Trattoria

Get a blast from the past with Moondance, a marvelous night of magic, music and movin’ to the sounds of the ’70s. The gala evening will include cocktails at 6 p.m., entertainment, followed by dinner at 8:15 p.m. and dancing. Event benefits the Neighborhood Music School’s financial aid/scholarship program

& Wine Bar, 1104 Chapel St., New Haven. $45. 203-785-0794, AmityCares.org.

Usher in the holiday season at Pilgrim Furniture City’s first ever Holidays in the Mansion Gala, an evening of sumptuous food, fine wine and live entertainment. Live and silent auction of exquisite holiday and one-of- akind items to benefit PFC Charitable Foundation and United Way. Black tie optional. 6 p.m. November 16 at Pilgrim Furniture City, 55 Graham Place, Southington. $35. 866-907-0030.

Goodspeed Musicals holds its annual Thanksgiving Week Food Drive to benefit the East Haddam Food Bank.

Goodspeed offers $10 off the regular ticket price to patrons who bring a nonperishable food item to the 7:30 p.m. performance of Big River on November 24. November 24-30 at the Goodspeed Opera House, 6 Main St., East Haddam.

860-873-8668, goodspeed.org.

“Not your ordinary church bazaar” is the theme of the 16th annual Trinity Church on the Green Holiday Bazaar.

From one-of-a-kind handmade ornaments to the best food court in town, from a well-stocked tag sale to lovingly knitted scarves, from a silent auction to church tours, this event has become the bazaar to die for. Truly a jewel in a city of architectural gems, Trinity offers the city of New Haven a unique gift: stained-glass windows created by L.C. Tiffany Co. They were installed between 1897 and 1910 and

for its full range of music, dance and drama programs for students of all ages, abilities and backgrounds. Musicians include: the band Those ’70s Sensations, some of NMS’ celebrated jazz and rock faculty, and members of Shades (the acclaimed Yale undergraduate a cappella group), who will perform a special set of Abba songs with coaching from NMS faculty member and cabaret singer Anne Tofflemire.

— Elvira J. Duran 6 p.m. November 15 at the Omni Hotel, 155 Temple St., New Haven. $175. 203-624-5189, nmsmusicschool.org.

remain a guiding light to the parish and the city. But time, dust and weather have weakened the windows, and proceeds from the bazaar will help ensure that the windows will be enjoyed by generations to come. Noon-8 p.m.

November 20, 9 a.m.-6 p.m. November 21-22, 9 a.m.-1 p.m. Noveember 23 at Trinity Church on the Green, New Haven.

Free. 203-624-3101, trinitynewhaven.org.

CINEMA Theater critic, scholar and Hunter College theater professor Jonathan Kalb (Wesleyan ’81) explores Bertolt Brecht’s influence on American playwright Tony Kushner in Kushner’s Angels in America: Thinking About the Longstanding Problem of American Brecht. Part of the Brecht and Weill at Wesleyan festival. 4:15 p.m. November 12 at Center for the Arts Cinema, Wesleyan University, 283 Washington Terr., Middletown. Free. 860-685-3355, boxoffice@wesleyan.edu, wesleyan. edu/cfa.

COMEDY Lisa Lampanelli is comedy’s Lovable Queen of Mean. A cross between Don Rickles, Archie Bunker and a 55-gallon drum of estrogen, she won accolades from even the King of All Media, Howard Stern, who described her as “a real funny broad.” 8 p.m. November 8 at Shubert Performing Arts Center, 247 College St., New Haven. $55-$45. 203-5625666 or 888-736-2663, shubert.com.

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An avid reader (including to her three kids) and frequent library visitor, Paula Poundstone is big on books. She’s hard at work on her second book for Random House. Her first, There’s Nothing in This Book That I Meant To Say, with a foreword by her friend Mary Tyler Moore, is out in paperback after a year of successful hardcover sales. Poundstone’s also the national spokesperson for Friends of Libraries USA. Poundstone was the first female to be invited to entertain at the prestigious White House Correspondents Dinner, and the first woman to win the CableACE Award for Best Standup Comedy Special. She is also an Emmy winner for Best Program Interviewer, and American Comedy Award winner for Funniest Comedienne.

8 p.m. November 22 at Lyman Center at Southern Conn. State U, 501 Crescent St., New Haven. $22 ($15 SCSU faculty/staff, active alumni; $10 SCSU students). 203392-6154, southernct.edu. \CUTLINE\ Test your knowledge and have fun doing it at Anna Liffey’s Trivia Night.

Teams of one to five people compete for prize money. Topics range from music to movies, politics to Shakespeare, geology to sports and everywhere in between. Age 21 and older. Arrive early to get a table. 9 p.m. November 4, 11, 18, & 25 at Anna Liffey’s, 17 Whitney Ave., New Haven. $10 per team. 203-773-1776, annaliffeys.com.

A comedy show for ages 30 to 60, the Thanksgiving Eve Comedy Festival features two hours of non-stop laughs with three comedians hand-picked

by Dave Reilly, including comedians Carl Yard, “The Ragin’ Bajan,” and Joseph (The Truth) Anthony. 7:30 p.m.

November 26 at Palace Theater, 100 East Main St., Waterbury. $45-$35. 203-7554700, palacetheaterct.org.

2 p.m. at Edgewood Park, corner Whalley and West Rock Ave., New Haven. 203-7733736, cityseed.org.

City Farmers’ Market at Wooster Square. Enjoy food from local farms including seafood, meat, milk, cheese, organic greens, root vegetables, handcrafted bread and baked goods, honey and more. 9 a.m.-1 p.m. every Saturday in November at Russo Park, corner Chapel St. and DePalma Ct., New Haven. 203-773-3736, cityseed.org.

City Farmers’ Market Downtown boasts food from local farms, including organic and pesticide-free salad greens, herbs, flowers, honey, artisan bread and more. Open 11 a.m.-3 p.m. every Wednesday through November 26 at 165 Church St., New Haven. 203-773-3736, cityseed.org.

DANCE Fall Faculty Dance Concert. An evening of new works performed and choreographed by Wesleyan’s dance faculty. 8 p.m. November 1 at Patricelli ’92 Theater, Wesleyan University, 283 Washington Terr., Middletown. $8. 860685-3355, boxoffice@wesleyan.edu, wesleyan.edu/cfa.

Born of passion and desire, Noche Flamenca was founded in Madrid in 1993 by artistic director Martin Santangelo and his wife, Soledad Barrio. The company played in New York this summer and Tobi Tobias’s Voice of Dance review gave this haunting description: “The cast members of Noche Flamenca work as a team to provide mounting excitement, but Soledad Barrio is still the one who takes you to places you might never have reached without her, emotional states that bare the toughest truths about human existence.” 10 a.m.

(ARTSBound program for grades 4-12)

CULINARY While New Haven has long been lauded for its academic reputation, the city is also receiving accolades as a growing “foodie” destination. Ranging from diners and bistros to gourmet cafés and award-winning restaurants, there are more than 130 dining establishments in New Haven. Many top-rated restaurateurs have opened not one, but two restaurants in the downtown area alone. In celebration of the destination’s rich and varied restaurant scene, New Haven will host its first-ever Restaurant Week. November 9-14 at several top-rated restaurants in downtown New Haven including Zinc, Bentara, Central Steakhouse, Basta and Barcelona.

Fixed-price lunch ($16.38) and dinner ($30) menus. katrinat@lhammond.com, infonewhaven.com.

Enjoy local food including organic and pesticide-free salad greens, herbs, allnatural meat, eggs, honey, handcrafted bread and more. City Farmers’ Markets are Connecticut-grown, producer-only marketplaces featuring organic and pesticide-free food. City Farmers’ Market at Edgewood Park takes place Sundays through November 23. 10 a.m.-

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Be a part of Tere O’Connor’s exploration of architecture as a fundamental, subliminal force in the choreographic form as well as in the human experience as a participatory audience member for Rammed Earth. November 21-22 at Wesleyan University.

& 8 p.m. November 7 at Quick Center for the Arts, Fairfield University, 1073 North Benson Rd., Fairfield. $45-$35 (ARTSBound $7). quickcenter.com.

A collection of new works will be presented by senior choreographers as part of their culminating project for the dance major during the Fall Senior Thesis Dance Concert. 8 p.m.

November 6-8 at Patricelli ’92 Theater,

Wesleyan University, 283 Washington Terr., Middletown. $5. 860-685-3355, boxoffice@wesleyan.edu, wesleyan. edu/cfa.

In the hyper-informed, self-conscious world of “look at me,” how can we ever have a subjective experience, a deep connection to sensation? In Yasmeen Godder’s Singular Sensation, five individuals explore the range of sensation — from the artificial to the authentic — and push the boundaries of their own numbness to provoke a singular sensation in one another and themselves. Israeli-born Godder studied American modern and postmodern dance, performance art and performance theory in New York before returning to her home country. For nearly a decade, she has transformed these principles to comment incisively on the politics and culture of Israel. Part of the Festival of International Dance at Yale. 7 p.m.

November 11-12 at New Theater, 1156 Chapel St., New Haven. $15 ($10 students). 203-432-1234, yalerep.org.

Making his U.S. debut, Opiyo Okach exemplifies the cosmopolitanism of contemporary African choreographers.

Traveling between his home country of Kenya and France, Okach absorbs and reprocesses the cultures of both environments in his subtle poems-in-motion. Feeding on the character of the space in which it is performed, No Man’s Gone Now, created with choreographer Julyen Hamilton for Festival Avignon 2003, evokes the transience of experience — the ephemeral nature of time, place, objects and choices. Territories in Transgression, which premieres in France only days before arriving in New Haven, explores the body as the site of transgression — personal, social, cultural and political — and its attempts to negotiate and construct its own identity. Part of the Festival of International Dance at Yale. 9 p.m.

November 11-12 at New Theater, 1156 Chapel St., New Haven. $15 ($10 students). 203-432-1234, yalerep.org.

American choreographer, filmmaker and writer Yvonne Rainer is credited as a pioneer of postmodern dance.

Her work, which draws on a variety of disciplines and media, has influenced generations of performance and visual artists. RoS Indexical is Rainer’s radical re-visioning of The Rite of Spring, the brilliant and controversial collaboration between choreographer Vaslav Nijinsky and composer Igor Stravinsky which shocked Paris audiences in 1913 with its “primitive” movement vocabulary and dissonant musical score. Also enjoy Spiraling Down, a work commissioned by the J. Paul Getty Museum, Getty Research Institute and World Performance Project at Yale that draws its inspiration from a variety of sources — newspaper photos, soccer moves, old movies, classic modern dance, ballet, Steve Martin, Sarah Bernhardt and Rainer’s own disinterred dances from the 1960s — all of which contribute to the melancholic and contradictory subtext of Rainer’s new dance. Part of the Festival of International Dance

at Yale. 7 p.m. November 14-15 at New Theater, 1156 Chapel St., New Haven. $15 ($10 students). 203-432-1234, yalerep.org.

Dancer and choreographer Tere O’Connor talks about his work and creative process. 7 p.m. November 20 at Center for the Arts Cinema, Wesleyan University, 283 Washington Terr., Middletown. Free. 860-685-3355, boxoffice@wesleyan.edu, wesleyan. edu/cfa.

On November 3 at Fairfield University, former CEO Sanford “Sandy” I. Weill discusses leadership and global markets.

Filtered through a rigorously personal and philosophical lens, Tere O’Connor’s radical reinvention of the formal conceits of concert dance distinguishes him as a truly original presence in the dance world. He returns to Wesleyan with Rammed Earth, which explores architecture as a fundamental, subliminal force in the choreographic form as well as in the human experience. O’Connor’s interest in “sentient architecture,” in which structures change form in response to temperature, climate or human interactivity, is a catalyst for this work.

7 & 9:30 p.m. November 21-22 at Center for the Arts Theater, Wesleyan University, 283 Washington Terr., Middletown. $21 ($18 seniors & students). 860-685-3355, boxoffice@wesleyan.edu, wesleyan. edu/cfa.

FAMILY EVENTS This year’s Corn Maze takes the form of a ladybug carved into a four-acre cornfield. Walk through the maze just for fun, use the map to plot your route or answer a series of trivia questions along the way that point you in the right direction. Lyman’s corny Corn Cops can also guide you through the maze. Portion of the proceeds benefit the American Cancer Society. Through November 2 at Lyman Orchards, 32 Reeds Gap Rd., Middlefield. Open 9 a.m.-7 p.m. daily. $9 ($5 children ages 4-12). 860-3491793, lymanorchards.com.

CultureKids: Symbols and Self. Create a personal symbol for yourself or your family. Examine your cultural traits and explore those of others through a variety of art-making methods and

materials. Japanese Sumi-e painting, West African Adinkra Wisdom practices and Native American environmental symbolism will be part of the cultural discovery for this workshop. 1-2:30 p.m.

November 8 at Green Street Arts Center, 51 Green St., Middletown. Free. Advance registration required. 860-685-7871, greenstreetartscenter.org.

Washington’s hair to the classic Wiffle Ball, discover the big impact small objects have made on history and our lives. Through November 29 at the Connecticut Historical Society, 1 Elizabeth St., Hartford. Open noon-5 p.m. Tues-Sat. $6 ($3 seniors, students). 860-236-5621, CHS.org.

The Yale Astronomy Department hosts a Public Stargazing Session. Twice monthly the department runs a public night during which astronomy buffs can come and peer through one of the department’s many telescopes and ask questions about the wonders of the night sky. Viewable celestial objects change seasonally and range from the moon to the planets to nearby star clusters and galaxies. 7 p.m. November 6 & 20 at the Leitner Family Observatory, 355 Prospect St., New Haven. Free. cobb@astro.yale.edu, astro.yale.edu.

LECTURES/ DISCUSSIONS

The Eli Whitney Museum in Hamden will display A.C. Gilbert Trains in its annual holiday train show, Mr. Gilbert’s Railroad. Kits ($9) available for young visitors who wish to build wooden trains with magnetic couplers.

November 28-January 11 at Eli Whitney Museum, 915 Whitney Ave., Hamden.

Open 10 a.m.-3 p.m. Sat. & noon-5 p.m.

Sun. Free. 203-777-1833, kl@eliwhitney. org, eliwhitney.org.

HISTORY Small Things Considered. From a nutmeg to a strand of George

Sanford (Sandy) I. Weill, who was instrumental in making Citigroup Inc. the diversified global financial services titan it is today, will be interviewed by his daughter, Jessica M. Bibliowicz, chairman, president and CEO of National Financial Partners, as part of the Charles F. Dolan Lecture Series.

It is anticipated to be a dynamic dialogue, titled Leadership, Markets and Globalization. 8 p.m. November 3 at Quick Center for the Arts, Fairfield University, 1073 North Benson Rd., Fairfield. Free. Reservations. 203-254-4010 or 877-ARTS-396, quickcenter.com.

Allen Sack, director of the Institute for Sport Management and professor of management at the University of New Haven, will discuss his new book, Counterfeit Amateurs: An Athlete’s Journey Through the Sixties to the Age of Academic Capitalism. 7:30 pm November 7 at R.J. Julia Booksellers, 768 Boston Post Rd., Madison. Free. 203-9327090, asack@newhaven.edu, newhaven. edu/news-events/24439.

Grassy Hill

Wesleyan earth and environmental sciences professor Martha Gilmore is a planetary geologist who is looking for evidence of water on Mars. In Martha Gilmore: Life on Mars? Gilmore leads an informal discussion about the role of technology in her research and will display many of the Mars mission images she uses to examine the surface of the Red Planet. 2-4 p.m. November 9 at Green Street Arts Center, 51 Green St., Middletown. $5 ($3 members, seniors, & students). 860-6857871, greenstreetartscenter.org.

Author and political activist Sister Souljah will present a lecture, Student Activism vs. Student Apathy. Born in the Bronx, Souljah earned a bachelor’s in American history and African studies from Rutgers. As a student activist, she created the African Youth Survival Camp, a six-week academic and cultural summer camp for 200 children of homeless families. 7 p.m. November 11 in Alumni Hall at Quinnipiac University, 275 Mount Carmel Ave., Hamden. Free. quinnipiac.edu.

The Carl and Dorothy Bennett Center for Judaic Studies presents Ruth Langer, associate professor of Jewish Studies in Theology and academic director of the Center for Christian-Jewish Learning at Boston College. Langer will speak on People of the Book: The Bible in Jewish Life and Liturgy. 7:30 p.m. November 18 at Fairfield University, 1073 North Benson Rd., Fairfield. Free. 203-254-4000 ext.

2066.

Nia is a blend of many movement forms from the worlds of martial arts, dance and body-integration therapies — specifically tai chi, tae kwon do, aikido, jazz, ballet, modern dance, ethnic dance, funk, hip-hop, primal dance, Alexander Technique, Feldenkrais, somatics and yoga. In Nia Guided Moving Meditation Playshop with Nia brown-belt teacher Nancy Hammett, you will experience a unusual sensory journey, guided by the healing resonance and vibration of the Crystal Bowls, by Nia Sounds. 7-9 p.m. November 14 at Sound Mind & Body and Fitness & Yoga for Women, 213 Cherry St., Milford. $15. 203-878-YOGA, soundmindandbodyllc.com.

Joyce Salzman, the Guru of Laugh, will speak at this month’s Happiness Club of Greater Milford meeting. The Happiness Club, with both national and international chapters, is an organization with the mission to promote the benefits of being happy through meetings, newsletters and an informative Web site. 6-8 p.m.

November 20 at Golden Hill Health Care Center, 2028 Bridgeport Ave., Milford.

203-767-3582, plynn_135@hotmail.com, happinessclub.com.

Yoga promotes a deep sense of physical, mental and emotional wellbeing. Classes are designed to help cultivate breath and body awareness, improve flexibility, strengthen and tone

Continued on 61

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55

W O RDS of MOUT H

PHOTOGRAPH:

Anthony DeCarlo

By Liese Klein

Todd and Marsha Rowe wake up at dawn to bake sugary treats like red velvetand sweet potato-pecan cupcakes for their Cupcake Truck in New Haven.

NEW EATS: The Cupcake Truck

F

rom the line stretching along Sachem Street in New Haven, you’d think they were giving away free money on this balmy autumn afternoon. But the several dozen people in this queue have something much more dependable in mind: A fresh-baked, tender and generously frosted treat from the Cupcake Truck. Today’s flavors are red velvet and vanilla, and customers from Yale students to construction workers patiently wait their turn. The cupcakes sell out with ten people still in line.

Since Todd and Marsha Rowe first parked their refurbished bread truck on Sachem this summer, the Cupcake Truck has become a downtown-area phenomenon, drawing block-long lines and routinely selling out. After all, the occasional fresh cupcake at $2 is an indulgence that has little impact on

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november 2008

either your wallet or your waistline.

“There’s a cool factor as far as the whole mobile bakeshop,” says Todd Rowe.

“We’ve seen a lot of smiles,” adds Marsha Rowe.

Cake flavors include Red Velvet Jones, Salted Caramel, Sweet Potato Pecan, Chocolate Ruin and Hummingbird, an appealing combination of banana, pineapple, pecan and coconut. Four frostings are usually available, including a rich, creamy, white-chocolate cream cheese and marshmallow. Top off your treat for a few cents more with sprinkles, coconut or exotic touches like edible gold flakes, candied flowers and Fleur de Sel gourmet salt. Cupcakes are baked fresh daily and frosted and topped to order.

The Cupcake Truck parks most

weekdays at the corner of Sachem and Hillhouse between 12:45 and 3 p.m. It then moves to Cedar Street near YaleNew Haven Hospital for the 3:30-to-5:30 p.m. shift. Check the daily schedule and cupcake menu at the couple’s blog, fooddriven.blogspot.com. As winter approaches, the Rowes plan to take the truck out only on warm days and shift to door-to-door deliveries of a dozen or more cupcakes to offices and dorms.

So take an autumn stroll across town to sample New Haven’s newest sensation or drive by on a lazy afternoon. Just make sure to feed the meter: Sachem is a parking-ticket hotbed and the last time we checked, the city didn’t take cupcakes as payment.

The Cupcake Truck (203-675-3965); visit the blog for the daily schedule at fooddriven. blogspot.com.

Anthony DeCarlo

Join us every Sunday

PHOTOGRAPH:

Chef Alfonso “Foe” Iaderosa has brought his bright flavors and inventivecuisine to a new, larger space in Branford.

for the largest Buffet Brunch on the Shoreline

483-9995 168 North Main St. Branford

WELCOME TO MOE’S Located In Audobon Square

HAVING A PARTY? WE CATER!

JUST A TASTE — Foe: An American Bistro

B

igger is not always better in the world of fine food, but Chef Alfonso Iaderosa has risen to the challenge of a larger space at Foe, his “American bistro” in Branford. Iaderosa moved Foe up Main Street this March to a space closer to Branford’s town center and almost twice the size of his original eatery.

The seasonal flavors and artful touch of the kitchen have survived the move intact, and in many ways the new Foe is a better dining experience. Instead of a cramped single room, the eatery’s floor is now subdivided into at least two rooms on most nights, keeping down the noise and allowing for easy movement.

You won’t want to leave the table for long, however, when first courses like wild mushroom “rangoons” come out — these wonton-like morsels are elevated by a savory broth accented with musky white truffle. Lobster ravioli are even better, bringing together a briny richness with bright flavors and al dente zucchini “pasta.” Fresh bread arrives in a paltry portion but is quickly refilled.

Most main courses come in the fashionable “stacked” arrangement, with

protein layered on top of potatoes and vegetables. A brawny hangar steak held its own with a salty shallot demiglacé, best tempered by the buttery mashed potatoes and greens.

The wine list offers more than dozen interesting vintages by the glass at reasonable prices, along with several beers and cocktails like a tangy margarita with organic lime juice. Desserts continue a seasonal theme with apple crisp featured this autumn.

46 WHITNEY AVE – NEW HAVEN – 203.776.MOES

THE Place to Eat on Wooster Street

Come Eat on our Patio for a Little Bit of Outdoor Italy 776-4825

Best of all, Foe’s new space may have the best light of any restaurant in the area, making everyone at my table look like a movie star. Sign me up for date night!

Servers, always attentive and warm at the original Foe, have also made the transition with their skills sharp: You’ll never wait for a glass to be refilled or plate cleared.

In its new, airy configuration Foe remains one of the best spots on the Shoreline for an upscale business meeting, intimate têteà-tête or family celebration.

Foe An American Bistro, 576 Main St., Branford (203-483-5896).

(203) 776 - 4825 127 Wooster St • New Haven AnastasiosRestaurant.com new haven

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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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march 2008

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

masala dosa and many vegetarian dishes, plus the friendly service. No buffet, but open all day and very affordable.

1999-2007 “Award of Excellence”

Stop in Soon and See Our Newly Renovated Dining Area!

Wine Spectator magazine

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.

Best Italian Restaurant, Statewide, 2007–2008 Connecticut Magazine Reader’s Choice Poll

100 Wooster Street New Haven • 777-3373

L’Orcio, 806 State St., New Haven (203-777-6670).

Outstanding modern Italian in an intimate setting.

You can’t go wrong with the pasta specials and perfectly cooked and seasoned steaks.

Roseland Apizza, 350 Hawthorne Ave., Derby (203-7350494). Don’t let the casual pizzeria decor fool you — this Valley favorite makes some serious Italian food. Look for the daily specials and enjoy.

MEXICAN Viva Zapata, 161 Park St., New Haven (203-562-2499).

Toothsome classics and a killer sangria in a festive pub atmosphere. Open for lunch.

Baja, 63 Boston Post Rd., Orange (203-799-2252). An expansive salsa bar and fish taco entrée appeal to homesick Californians and big eaters.

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

Moes, 46 Whitney Avenue, New Haven (203-776-6637).

Southwest grill styled food. Speial attention to the tortilla.

Jalapeno Heaven, 40 N. Main St., Branford (203-4816759). Tasty Americanized fare in a cozy setting with excellent margaritas.

the blue pearl RESTAURANT & LOUNGE

Long Wharf Taco Trucks, Long Wharf Drive near Veterans 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 (203-782-4828).

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 sandwiches — in the area, filled with spiced meat and accompanied on the weekends by a lipsmacking posole hominy soup.

MIDDLE EASTERN Mamoun’s, 85 Howe St., New Haven (203-562-8444).

Cheap plates of falafel and Syrian-style specialties like stuffed eggplant keep this student favorite hopping late into the night.

Istanbul Café, 245 Crown St., New Haven (203-7873881). This critics’ favorite has the best ambience in town and consistently flavorful food. A grilled octopus salad and red lentil soup are standouts, along with lamb dishes.

Turkish Kebab House, 1157 Campbell Ave., West Haven (203-933-0002). Every kind of kebab

New Haven’s Tastiest Hideout Happy Hour • Thurs & Fri, 4-6 pm Martini Specials • Late Night Menu 130 COURT STREET • NEW HAVEN 203.789.6370 • THEBLUEPEARLNEWHAVEN.COM

The

Playwright Irish Pub, Restaurant & Banquet Facilities WELCOME BACK STUDENTS AND FACULTY 144 Temple Street • New Haven • 752-0450 1232 Whitney Avenue • Hamden • 287-2401 WWW.PLAYWRIGHTIRISHPUB.COM new haven

59

imaginable, from doner to minced chicken to cubes of lamb, is on tap at this neighborhood eatery. Also vegetarian and seafood options.

“A treat for the Senses” – Hartford Courant

Kasbah Garden Café, 105 Howe St., New Haven (203777-5053). Moroccan-style lamb and vegetable dishes prevail on the limited but tasty menu. Savor mint tea and baklava outside on the idiosyncratically landscaped patio.

“Amid elegance, a variety of Indian dishes” – New York Times

SEAFOOD

Fine Indian Cuisine

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.

148 York Street, New Haven, CT 203.776.8644 www.zaroka.com

New Fall & Winter Menu Introducing our own

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.

YellowFin’s Seafood Grille

Homemade Bouillabaisse & Lobster Ravioli Where OLD New England Meets NEW New England

YellowFin’s Seafood Grille, 1027 South Main St., Cheshire (203-250-9999). Flavors are light and bright at this fusion eatery, with a menu that ranges from cioppino to Asian scallop salad to Tilapia St. Tropez. A raw bar and house-brewed beer round out the offerings.

yellowfinsseafoodgrille.com

1027 South Main Street • Cheshire

203-250-9999 Open Seven Days

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?

Lunches $5 & Up

Jimmie’s of Savin Rock, 5 Rock St., West Haven. 9343212. Take the family out and enjoy the boardwalk view. Known for its moderate prices and casual atmosphere Jimmie’s has all the fried favorites, a full menu of broiled fish, lobster and the famous split hot dog.

SUSHI Wasabi, 280 Branford Rd., North Branford (203-4887711). Good quality rolls and sashimi at reasonable prices, along with Korean specialties like mandu dumplings and bibimbap rice bowls. The sake flows freely on Monday nights, a favorite with students.

Akasaka, 1450 Whalley Ave., New Haven (203-3874898). Unusual specials like baby octopus and blowfish make this veteran eatery worth a visit.

Live sea urchin roe and scallops are also a best bet, along with tasty pickled vegetables.

Hibachi • Sushi • Pan-Asian

Sono Bana, 1206 Dixwell Ave., Hamden (203-281-9922).

Fresh fish, inventive rolls and extensive combo

Catering & Parties Welcome Happy Hour! M–TH, 3-6: All Beer 1/2 price, Premium Drinks $5

- EST. 1974 -

514 Bridgeport Avenue, Shelton • 929-8666 451 Kings Highway, East Fairfield • 610-6888

www.KobisRestaurant.com 60

november 2008

GREAT MEXICAN FOOD 161 Park Street New Haven, CT 203-562-2499

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

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

Number 1 Fish Market, 2239 State St., Hamden (203-624-6171). Make your own sushi at home with fresh seafood from this market, which supplies many area restaurants. The helpful staff will steer you toward the best quality tuna, salmon, scallops and red snapper; items like sea urchin roe are available.

VEGETARIAN Ahimsa, 1227 Chapel St., New Haven (203-786-4774). Wide-ranging vegan fare is featured at this (kosher) eatery that uses no animal products.

South Indian-style dals and curries star at the daily $10 lunch buffet, with more offerings at Sunday brunch.

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

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 awardwinning entrées like sweet potato enchiladas, tempeh “crab cakes” and a generous macrobiotic plate. Full slate of vegan desserts including chocolate mousse couscous cake.

BAKERIES Marjolaine, 961 State St., New Haven (203-789-8589). Buttery croissants and creamy pastries showcase the quality ingredients used by this East Rock neighborhood favorite.

Lucibello’s Italian Pastry Shop, 935 Grand Ave, New Haven (203- 562-4083).

Cannolis to die for are the specialty here but also try the delicately flavored pignoli and other Italian cookies.

4 and Twenty Blackbirds, 610 Village Walk, Guilford (203-458-6900). A

Shoreline star for wedding cakes, cheesecakes, pies and cookies.

Libby’s Italian Pastry Shop, 139 Wooster St, New Haven (203-772-0380).

Top off your pizza excursion with a cannoli or Italian ice at this Wooster Square institution.

Take the Cake, 2458 Boston Post Rd., Guilford (203-453-1896). Brides and sugar fiends flock to this bakery’s tasty mousse cakes, fruit tarts and innovative spice cookies.

Bread and Chocolate, 2457 Whitney Avenue, Hamden (203-907-4079).

Breads and pastries made fresh along with coffee drinks, soups, salads and sandwiches.

Edge of the Woods, 379 Whalley Ave., New Haven (203-787-1055). The best spot in town for kosher, glutenfree and vegan baked goods--the chocolate babka and linzer cookies are outstanding.

HOT DOGS Blackie’s Hot Dog Stand, 2200 Waterbury Rd., Cheshire (203-699-1819).

It’s all about the relish at Blackie’s, a Cheshire institution since 1928.

Simple pork and beef dogs are all they make--just tell them how many and get a birch beer on the side.

Glenwood Drive-In, 2538 Whitney Ave., Hamden (203-281-0604). Topquality Hummel meat make the dogs sing at Glenwood, a Hamden favorite since 1955. Spicy relish and thick-cut fries complement the toothsome wieners.

9288, elmcitycycling.org.

CALENDAR Continued from 55

muscles, detoxify the body and soothe the spirit. All levels welcome. Please bring a yoga mat. Class led by Nelie Doak. 5-6:15 p.m. Fridays, November 7, 14 & 21 at Blackstone Library, 758 Main St., Branford. $10. 203-488-1441 ext. 313, yogidoakie@earthlink.net or events@ blackstone.lioninc.org, blackstone. lioninc.org.

Without inner peace, outer peace is impossible. Start the week off right with a Sunday Morning Recharge: Meditate!

Learn to cultivate and maintain a happy, positive mind. Everyone is welcome for an inspirational talk, special prayers and guided meditation with Buddhist teacher Kaitlyn Brayton. 11 a.m.-12:30 p.m. Sundays in November at Mariner’s Corner, 2415 Boston Post Rd., Unit No. 11, Guilford. $10 (members free). 860-268-3863, info@odiyana.org, meditationinconnecticut.org.

SPORTS/RECREATION Cycling 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. every Sunday in November at Lulu’s European Café, 49 Cottage St., New Haven. Free. 203-773-

The Little Lulu is an alternative to the long-standing Sunday morning training ride. The route is usually 20-30 miles in length and the ride is no-drop, meaning that the group waits at hilltops and turns so that no rider is left behind. The LL is an opportunity for cyclists to get accustomed to riding in groups. Riders should come prepared (tubes, tools, pumps, and/or CO2 inflators) to repair flats on their bicycles. Chances are, even if you don’t know how to change a flat tire, someone will be able to help you.

10 a.m. Sundays in November at Lulu’s European Café, 49 Cottage St., New Haven. Free. 203-773-9288, paulproulx@ sbcglobal.net, elmcitycycling.org.

Critical Mass. Participants meet at the flagpole on the New Haven Green at 5:30 p.m. on the last Friday of each month for a slow-paced ride through New Haven streets. The ride ranges from 30 minutes to over an hour depending on weather. After the event, everyone is invited to a potluck dinner at the Devil’s Gear Bike Shop. 5:30 p.m. November 28 at Temple and Chapel streets. Free. elmcitycycling.org.

Please send CALENDAR information to CALENDAR@conntact.com no later than seven weeks preceding calendar month of event. Please include date, time, location, event description, cost and contact information. Photographs must be at least 300 dpi resolution and are published at discretion of NEW HAVEN magazine.

Open 7 Days a Week: Lunch & Dinner

Mr. Mac’s Canteen, 2004 Bridgeport Ave., Milford (203-874-1515). Chili’s the specialty at Mr. Mac’s, with locations in both Milford and Monroe. The meatless, beanless chili’s spicy goodness plays off the perfectly cooked dog. Fries and other toppings are also excellent.

Al’s Hot Dog Stand, 248 S. Main St., Naugatuck (203-729-6229). Wieners with all the toppings plus shakes, fries and fountain drinks are the draw at this regional favorite. Open late in the summer for al fresco dining after the ball game.

Chick’s Drive Inn, 183 Beach St., West Haven (203-934-4510). The perfect snack after a day at the beach, a Chick’s dog benefits from charbroiling and excellent condiments.

50% Off Sushi, Sashimi, & Rolls Mon–Sat: 4:30–10:30pm and All Day Sunday 7 Elm Street, New Haven: 203-562-6688 (Free Parking After 5:30 &, All Day Sun)

Book Your Holiday Party Now • Take Out Available new haven

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Anthony DeCarlo PHOTOGRAPH:

Turkey in the Straw Joyce L. Faiola

More than 15,000 of Gozzi’s gobblers will be gobbled up this holiday season..

E

xcept at Thanksgiving (or Christmas), no one thinks about turkeys (except other turkeys). If the prospect of a tasty turkey makes you drool, there’s nothing like a fresh, farm-raised one.

Every year, Gozzi Turkey Farm in Guilford sells about 15,000 turkeys during the holidays. Bill Gozzi III carries on the turkey tradition with sons Matthew (age 17) and Christopher (20). Here, on 15 acres, there’s a gigantic Quonset hut of white turkeys who were “invented”

by Granddad Bill back in the 1950s. It took the original Bill about a decade of breeding progressively lighter-colored turkeys until he achieved the whites we see today. With white feathers there’s no telltale brown spots on the skin where feathers have been plucked. By the time the Gozzis’ turkeys are 18 weeks old (the end of their lives), they’ve consumed 70 pounds of feed: a mixture of corn, grains and protein powder.

Reflects Bill Gozzi: “The best part of being here is the generations of families that have been coming here since my grandfather started this place. These folks not only appreciate a wonderful tasting turkey, but they love the nostalgia.

I couldn’t change anything here — this place is everyone’s memory.”

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Another tradition here is the turkeys that are dyed neon colors prance around the lawn from November until Christmas.

Call ASAP to reserve your bird — at least two weeks before pickup date.

Gozzi Turkey Farm, 2443 Boston Post Rd., Guilford (203-453-2771).

R

ight across the street is the incredible Take the Cake Bakery. Nancy bakes side by side with sister Sharon and a team of perfectionists, and the results are, well, the word unbelievable comes to mind.

Scratch-made cakes, tarts, cookies and muffins are all done with the delight, care and love these sisters have in and for their bakery heaven.

For Thanksgiving there’s their famous pumpkin cheesecake with gingersnap crust, peeled-by-hand apple pie and all kinds of seasonal specialties.

Take the Cake, 2458 Boston Post Rd., Guilford (203-453-1896, originaltakethecake.com).

O

ver in Sterling, in the hamlet of Ekonk (a Native American word for “little village”) there’s the Ekonk Hill Turkey Farm, where the Hermonot family works every day of the year to make sure

you can have a terrific turkey any (if not every) day. This oh-so-picturesque farm sits high on a flat glacial plain overlooking open land and farms as far as the eye can see.

Here Rick, Elena and their hands-on family team of Katie, Ashley, Jonathan, Chris and his wife Susan tend the farm store and turkeys in nearby Franklin on 150 acres. Over in Ekonk there’s six more acres and the cozy knotty-pine Brown Cow Café and farm market with homemade ice cream (don’t miss the pumpkin and Indian pudding flavors) and (what else?) turkey sandwiches, coffee, pies and, made very early each morning cider donuts light as air.

Ten steps away the magnificently colored Heritage turkeys entertain — you’ll see Blue Slates, Bourbon Reds and more. The Hermonots raise and sell chickens, too.

“We are passionate about promoting small family farms and the TLC that goes into the foods they grow,” says Rick Hermonot.

“After developing our own tradition of celebrating a homegrown holiday, we enjoy sharing this with our customers.”

Ekonk Hill Turkey Farm, 227 Ekonk Hill Rd., Sterling (Moosup) (860-564-0248, ekonkhillturkeyfarm.com). v

New Haven

IF YOU WANT TO GIVE JUST ONE SPECIAL GIFT LOOK NO FURTHER THAN DOWNTOWN NEW HAVEN

Over 50 shops & boutiques

BROADWAY DISTRICT C

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DISTRICT

Atticus Bookstore & Café Audubon Strings Barnes & Noble Yale Bookstore Book Trader Café Campus Customs Celtica Irish Gift & Tea Shop Clare Jones Boutique Cutler’s Compact Discs Denali Derek Simpson, Goldsmith Enclave Foundry Music Company Gilden’s Jewelers Hello Boutique Hull’s Art Supply & Framing Idiom J.Crew J.Press Katahdin Furniture Laila Rowe Merwin’s Art Shop Métaphore Origins

Paul Richard’s Peter Indorf Jewelers Raggs Fashions for Men Seychelles Shubert Theater Ten Thousand Villages The Owl Shop The Wine Thief Thom Brown tracy b Trailblazer TYCO Copy Center & Fine Stationers The UPS Store Urban Objects/Urban Baby Urban Outfitters Villarina’s Wave Gallery White Space Gallery Wish List Woodland Coffee & Tea Yale Center For British Art Yarn

Celebrate the Holidays on Chapel & Broadway

Thursdays in December • Stores open until 9 p.m.

• Luminary Stroll on Chapel • Horse and Carriage Rides • High School Chorus Groups • Live Jazz Combos • In-store promotions

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FROM I-95 TAKE EXIT 47 OR EXIT 3 OFF I-91

Convenient parking in the Broadway

Parking is easy with over 15,000 convenient spaces. Visit www.infonewhaven.com/parking a Downtown Map andfor Elm Street Parking lots

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