A lifelong appetite for reading begins with that first taste in the classroom.

A great debate is raging in the tech world. It concerns the type of devices today’s youth will be using to read books a decade from now. Will there be a way-cooler version of the iPad? Will smart phones become personal libraries? Will the printed page magically appear in space a foot or two away? Fun stuff. Star Trek stuff—going where no book has gone before. But these flights of fancy tend to overlook a more immediate issue concerning New Jersey’s parents and educators: Will tomorrow’s 20-somethings be reading books at all? Before sounding the alarm bell too loudly, it’s worth noting that New Jersey students, as a group, mop up on just about every standardized test that measures reading proficiency. However, proficiency does not guarantee a lifelong love of reading. Every scrap of evidence available on the reading habits of adults tells us that they echo their experience with literature in grade school and high school. Indeed, kids who regard reading as an unpleasant reality of their education— or worse, as cruel and unusual punishment that steals precious time away from video games, social networking and VH1—are unlikely to pick up a decent book after the age of 20. Conversely, kids who encounter great books and great teachers, or who are at least challenged in some way by important literature, are not only far more inclined to be eager readers throughout adulthood. They are much more likely to see the world in a layered and sophisticated way. Given the powerful pull of competing media, when is the right time to start introducing great books to young readers? Although educators may quibble about theories and practices, on this one point, there is near-universal agreement. Harriet Marcus, chair of the Upper School English Department at Oak Knoll School of the Holy Child in Summit, insists that it is “never too early to present the great universal ideas to children.” Jane Freeman, of Solomon Schechter Day School in West Orange, maintains that great literature should be introduced from the moment “a child can understand the spoken word.” Noreen Andrews, of Union Catholic in Scotch Plains, concurs. “At birth,” she smiles. Actually, there’s some truth to this idea. “Babies are introduced to great literature when they are sung to and read to as infants,” points out Sister Regina Martin, Principal of Mother Seaton Regional High School in Clark. She says that “while the books they hear are not great classics per se, babies learn to love the sound of literature, whether it is from a song, a nursery rhyme, or a bedtime story.” Once a school gets its hands on a young reader, that’s when things can go very right or very wrong. Talented and impassioned leadership is a must; even for the most taciturn of students, a teacher’s enthusiasm for the material ultimately will prove contagious. An instructor whose primary goal is to plow through the material, test the kids and then move on, is likely to leave uninspired readers in his or her wake. From a parent’s perspective, there is only so much influence you can exert when it comes to picking a teacher to foster a love of books. Whether your child is in public or private school, it’s a hiring and firing issue that is out of your hands. Where parents can affect the outcome (besides encouraging reading at home, of course) is by asking questions about a school’s class size and format. Classroom discussion is absolutely, positively the number one factor when it comes to understanding and appreciating literature. Here, the private schools—by virtue of their smaller class sizes—typically have a distinct edge. Andrews says that small-group discussions “enable students and teachers to dig deeper for the full experience.” Karen Calta, Assistant Directress at Mount St. Mary Academy in Watchung, adds that they are “invaluable in that they serve students well in many academic areas.” Calta explains that students across a wide range of subjects are encouraged at Mount St. Mary to develop their own interpretations, while teachers serve as guides. Andrew Webster of The Wardlaw-Hartridge School in Edison agrees that an understanding and appreciation of literature is not merely a means for improving academic performance in English. “Done properly,” he says, “it enriches the lives of students and their understanding of what it means to be human. It allows them to step beyond their own experience, develop empathy, and form careful judgment.” According to Nat Conard, Headmaster of The Pingry School, literary discussion does more than motivate, challenge and engage. In a learning environment that embraces diversity (Pingry counts itself among the New Jersey schools that draw from a particularly broad cultural, religious and socioeconomic spectrum), it also fosters an appreciation for multiple viewpoints. “In class discussions, our students hear ideas from students whose backgrounds are very different than their own,” Conard says. Of course, the “must-reads” provide plenty of fodder for class discussion. Simple themes have a fun way of fueling spirited debates. In Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, the lesson is that cruel people can change. In Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird, young readers learn that strong people can help those in trouble. William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a reminder that life can be filled with fantasy and fun. A great book is never finished saying what it intended to say. The words may have been consumed and the thoughts digested, but the ideas never stop. The classics go on teaching, inspiring and enlightening long after that first, indelible classroom experience. And like the moon that goes through phases and moods, so do young people and their relationship with books. Their interpretations grow. They change and they question. And, if everything goes right, as they move into adulthood, their hunger for the printed word is never satisfied. EDGE

 EDITOR’S NOTE: Diane Alter is a freelance writer whose work has appeared in numerous newspapers and magazines. She has become our go-to girl whenever there’s a high-risk, low-reward story to be done. Before we sent Diane “back to school” for this story, she was assigned to cover the dating scene in New Jersey and New Jersey after midnight—with explicit instructions to produce two entirely different articles (which, somehow, she did). A couple of years ago, for another magazine, Diane checked herself into a monastery for a weekend of quiet reflection about her previous life working for a huge financial services company. Talk about penance!

The state’s public schools are coping with shrinking budgets and teacher layoffs. Many parents are asking: ‘So what’s the deal with private schools?’

Say what you will about New Jerseyans. Compared to the average American, we are pretty darn smart. The numbers don’t lie. Our children consistently score at or near the top of the national rankings for math, reading, writing, standardized tests and  percentage of high-school grads headed to college. Some have observed that college students represent the state’s number-one export. As a people and as a state, in good times and bad, we spend a ton of money on K-thru-12 education. So how come we’re so clueless when it comes to choosing between public and private schools? Almost every parent agonizes over this  choice at one time or another. We weigh every variable, examine each statistic, poll our friends, and attempt to reconcile this information with our family and cultural values. Then figure out what we can and cannot afford. These are not simple  calculations. Ultimately, we go with our gut…and hope we’ve made the right decision. Statistically, the case for public education in New Jersey is a strong one (see sidebar). In addition, the state’s public schools hold the promise of a more realistic and representative preview of life, bringing together young people from different cultural and economic  backgrounds, with a wide range of academic capabilities and learning skills. Public schools also tend to have more competitive sports programs and, in the case of New Jersey’s magnet schools, focused educational tracts for high-achieving
students—from Engineering to Communications to Marine Sciences. Intellectually, we know that private schools tend to offer a number of advantages, including spiffier amenities and traditions of high achievement. Most of these are linked to the fact that private schools do not receive tax dollars, and thus are free from the vagaries of state policy-makers and budget woes, like the one we’re in right now. Private schools are free, so to speak, to do as they please—or, more to the point, to do as parents please.

A SENSE OF COMMUNITY
What bang do private-school parents expect for their tuition buck? For many families, the decision is all about college; the sooner they “mainstream” their kids, the better the university they are likely to attend. For others, the pull of going private is the extra attention that they believe will be (and typically is) lavished upon their offspring. And, of course, for some families, a driving force behind writing that big tuition check is the belief that it will open up all kinds of new social opportunities. Elizabeth O’Mara, Director of Strategic Marketing & Communications at Far Hills Country Day School, views the social  component of a private school experience through a different prism. It is an outgrowth of what she considers to be one of the key advantages of going private: an understanding of the partnership between school and home. “The school becomes the neighborhood for many of our families,” O’Mara says. “We have a community where parents are encouraged to get involved in the classroom and out. We think of our parents as partners. We value inclusion, and we ask parents and faculty to model that for our students.” Chad Small, Headmaster of Rumson Country Day School, has worked as a teacher and administrator in both sectors. He points out an inherent strength in this sense of community. “Families have chosen us and want to work with us,” explains Small. “If they don’t like us, or we don’t like them, it’s ‘See you later.’ That enables us to develop a core
sense of values we can pursue, in our case Kind, Honest, Respectful and Responsible.”

IT’S ACADEMIC
For those able to wangle the added cost of a private education, the benefits to the family as a whole are secondary to the advantages awaiting the individual student. That being said, the job of private schools is not to spin straw into gold. Rather, it is to maximize a child’s academic opportunities and challenges. To the naked eye, the greatest difference between private and
public education in New Jersey is class size. In this case, looks definitely are not deceiving. Every administrator contacted for this story ranked the smaller class sizes in their schools at or near the top of the list when asked about key points of differentiation. Obviously, this translates into more “teacher time” per student. But what does that mean exactly? In most cases, it gives schools the flexibility to recognize the different ways kids learn and achieve excellence. For schools that begin in kindergarten, it also translates into a formal plan for social and emotional learning, which is designed to create a stronger academic foundation, as well as opportunities for leadership. The goal is to turn out a child who is self-reliant, flexible and confident both in and out of school. Directly and indirectly, this is actually where a high percentage of tuition dollars go. Because its curriculum is not mandated by any legislative body, a private school can aim as high as it wants in terms of the type and quality of education it offers. It can be more rigorous, offering courses  such as Latin and Language Arts to grade-schoolers. It is also free to make course alterations when new research compels it to. Unlike public schools, private schools must continuously strive to improve. If they don’t, they risk going out of business.

NARROWING THE FIELD
Among the many private education choices in New Jersey are myriad schools with some type of religious affiliation, and also single-gender schools. Both have an added element of “mystery” for prospective parents, particularly if they did not attend these types of schools themselves. In terms of size, quality and cost, faith-affiliated schools (for lack of a better catch-all term) run the gamut. Many of these institutions also happen to be single-gender, such as highly regarded Mount Saint Mary in Watchung and Oak Knoll School of the Holy Child, which is located in Summit, both of which are all-girls. Needless to say, the perceived benefit of a religious school is the attention given to a student’s spiritual development. For some families, this is a primary concern when choosing a private school. To others, it’s an afterthought. Timothy Saburn, Head of School at Oak Knoll, sees spiritual development as part of the bigger picture of community. “It’s an important aspect of a successful school today, whether independent, public or otherwise,” he maintains. “Our school culture and program foster a sense of community, which is grounded in our spiritual commitment.” Does that hold true even when a student happens to adhere
to a faith other than the one with which a school is affiliated? Donna Toryak, Admissions Director at Mount Saint Mary
Academy, insists that it does. “The values, code of ethics, discipline and spirituality are universal features that attract
the applicants,” she says. “The faith journey of each student is enriched no matter what the practice of venerating their
own God.” In terms of the gender question, Saburn cites a 2009 UCLA study. It suggests that graduates of girls’ secondary schools have a definite edge over their co-ed peers. “This current research validates, and Oak Knoll proves,” he says, “that
young women in a single-sex learning environment are setting high educational goals, breaking gender barriers, and emerging as leaders. Our young women graduate with a sense of purpose and much promise; they have found their voices and are committed to making their marks in the world.” Finally, at the top of the private-education food chain in New
Jersey are its boarding schools, including world-class institutions such as Peddie, Blair and Lawrenceville. The decision to send one’s child off to boarding school—and how to pick the right one—is an article unto itself. For the purposes of this story, suffice it to say that for families leaning toward boarding school as a high-school option, the Garden State offers some superb options for those who don’t care to schlep to Massachusetts.

STARTING EARLY, FINISHING STRONG
For many families weighing the pros and cons of going private, decision time can come prior to first grade. More than 50,000 children each year are enrolled in private-school pre-K programs in New Jersey. The number of six year olds in private schools drops to around 15,000. From there the enrollment numbers dwindle by a few hundred a year until ninth grade, when there is a jump back up over 15,000. Families sending their public middle schoolers to private day schools and boarding schools account for some of this bump. However, in any given school year, a recent study showed, as many as one in five families is moving a child from public to private, or private to public, so it’s a fluid situation to say the least. What  happens after high school? For private-school educators and parents, this is where the rubber meets the road. For the  overwhelming majority of kids in private secondary education, college is not just an option. It is the next thing they will do. Will the same kid get into a better college as a private-school senior or a public-school senior? The answer honestly depends on the kid as much as the type of school. However, where private schools offer a clear advantage is in the college advisory and application process. There simply is no comparison. Students enrolled at private schools in almost all cases receive much better preparation for their college years.

According to Toryak, this is a result of several factors. “They are surrounded by classmates with similar values with regard to education and their future,” she points out. “They are success- and goal-oriented, and focus on their current situation as a stepping stone to the college years ahead.” Toryak adds that, because most private high schools have established communications and relationships with colleges, their counselors are better at helping students navigate what has become an increasingly tricky acceptance process. Willard Taylor Jr., Director of Admissions at Newark Academy, believes that private schools are also equipped to determine the “best fit” for students when it comes time to narrowing down their college choices. In terms of the commonly held belief that a top school “automatically” gets kids into a top college, he insists that strong students take care of that themselves. “What an independent school will do,” Taylor says, echoing the thoughts of his peers, “is give a student the opportunity to stand out…to participate and perform at a high level academically, athletically, and in the arts.” EDGE

Editor’s Note: Mark Stewart has two teenage daughters. One opted for public education, the other for private. Both attended a private day school through eighth grade.

A beginner’s guide to tutoring.

As a New Englander in a small southern liberal arts college, I was intrigued by the small but natural differences in the way my classmates spoke. It wasn’t just “y’all”—in addition to their inflections and accents, there were phrases that I’d never heard before, phrases that made total sense to my peers and none to me. Twenty years later, one of these phrases has stayed with me: when a grade came back in a class, instead of asking “What did you get?” my southern friends asked, “What did you make?”

As in, “What did you make on the Econ midterm?” I loved that. It’s easy to think of a grade as something a teacher “gives” to a student, instead of realizing that a grade, more than anything else, is a product of the student’s creation.

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After two decades as a classroom teacher, I can appreciate even more the symbolism of this phrase, and I make a point to tell my students this quick anecdote at the start of every school year. I think of this distinction often when parents ask me about arranging a tutor for their children. Both as a tutor myself (and as a classroom teacher whose students occasionally need additional help outside the classroom), I’ve come to realize that the best tutoring experiences occur when the student and parent understand that tutoring is not a Band-Aid. Instead, it’s an opportunity for a student to make themselves better, to change both in habit and philosophy. Tutoring is, to riff on the phrase, whatever the student is willing to make of it.

To clarify, there are a lot of kinds of tutors—tutors for academic remediation are the first that come to mind, but there are also tutors who work with students in lower-stakes situations. When a child is doing so well in school that their parents decide to supplement their education with additional support, tutoring becomes less stressful and more engaging—like a piano lesson for an accomplished musician or a training session for a skilled soccer player. There are tutors who help students in non-academic ways as well. (I was once hired by a parent to give “social-awareness” lessons to their child. We covered some basics like how to shake hands, how to look people in the eye, how to make polite conversation, how to write a thank-you note.) Like enrichment tutoring, the stakes are low in these situations. The flip side is a tutoring situation in which the stakes are very high and there is a specific, external goal in mind. Most often this occurs with tutors who specialize in preparing students for certain tests—the SAT, for example—and this kind of tutoring is more formulaic and has a clear end-goal.

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But tutoring when a student is having difficulty in school is the most common kind, and it can be fraught right from the beginning. One of the first questions I’m often asked by parents when their child is struggling in school is: “Do we need to hire a tutor?” Some parents ask this question with a lot of trepidation, as if the answer is a kind of loaded diagnosis. Others ask the question clearly hoping my answer is “yes,” because then at least they’ll have what looks like a way to fix a problem. But hiring a tutor to occupy a weekly hour of a student’s life doesn’t instantly solve an issue, and so the tutoring question is one I have to weigh carefully before I answer. Because tutoring works really well in some situations and not so well in others. Sure, a lot depends on the quality of the tutor—their knowledge and experience and expertise. But there are a number of other factors at play.

In a perfect world, parents don’t have to make this call on their own: their child’s school does the responsible thing: after observing the student for a few weeks and meeting with a team of professionals, the school administration recommends that the child receive some academic help outside of school. Maybe the school even has a team of tutors whom they recommend, seasoned educators who know what they’re doing. And maybe, after a handful of sessions over the course of a few weeks, whatever academic issue the child was having disappears. This is an ideal scenario, but unfortunately, it’s not how it often plays out. In fact, it’s a bit of a fantasy.

Instead, the decision to hire a tutor usually comes in response to pain. Parents see their child struggling at home and it hurts. There is nightly pushback and fighting and exasperation: tears at the kitchen table because they don’t understand how to do their homework, a crumpled test at the bottom of their bookbag. Maybe the child becomes secretive about their performance in school; when their peers talk about their marks on the Spanish quiz or their study plan for the upcoming Math exam, the child clams up. Parents turn to tutoring as a kind of last resort.

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I would hope it doesn’t get to that. Actually, I would hope that every parent would consider hiring a tutor for their child, even if they don’t think they “need to.” Too often, parents rely on non-academic extracurriculars to round out their child’s schedule. Instead of signing a child up for that third sport, why not have them work with an academic tutor who could take them beyond wherever they’re going in the classroom?

A tutor should commit to working with a child regularly, but I would avoid meeting more often than once a week. I have found that 45-minute sessions are best for middle-school and high-school-aged students; anything longer can be a drag. I’m happy to travel to students’ homes to work with them, but I do ask that there is a dedicated and semi-private workspace is made available. Parents certainly want to avoid having their child work with a tutor in the middle of the house, which, depending on the family, can seem like Grand Central Station. Though parents like to “listen in” during a tutoring session, I find that students are less willing to engage if they know that Mom or Dad is listening from the hallway.

There have been a few times when I’ve worked privately with groups of students, particularly when we’ve read the same novel and the session operates as a kind of book club. This can work if the children all know each other and are comfortable with speaking up in front of their peers. Certainly, students benefit from attending another academic experience that mimics a small-sized class. However, though this kind of tutoring can seem beneficial and less intense, I don’t see the individual growth in the participants that’s often found in one-on-one tutoring.

It helps to see tutoring as a temporary experience for a finite amount of time. Both for the tutor and the student, understanding that their work together is not going to last forever can add urgency and meaning to their sessions. If I know I’m only going to meet with a student six times, I can set what I want to accomplish in that time period, and the family has the opportunity to reassess after we’re done. I can focus on the skills that I’m trying to impart, and our sessions are more likely to stay focused on an end goal. One thing I refuse to do as a tutor is to become the homework police. If students are not intrinsically motivated to complete their work, their parents are the parties most effective in creating change—having a stranger’s encouragement doesn’t seem to make much of a difference. This can be difficult for parents who believe that hiring a tutor “takes it off [their] plate.” Above all else, tutors should never complete a student’s work for them. There’s a clear line between supporting a student and covering for them, and in my experience, parents don’t seem to mind crossing it. I even had a parent ask me to log in to their child’s college application portal and complete all the submissions for them, simply because their child refused to do it herself. Tutors should run away from situations like these, as I did.

Sometimes when I’m calculating grades at the end of a marking period, I notice that despite the two-dozen-or-so assessments over the course of a few months, a student will have almost the exact same average as they did in the previous marking period. The answer, of course, is that the student is the same person they were in the fall, and this is not always a bad thing. It’s hard to change. Expecting quick miracles, especially when children are involved, can be a waste of time. Instead, I’ve learned to look for small, incremental improvements; a student whose average goes from 84% to 88%. These are the kinds of changes that parents can expect from good tutors, given the correct circumstances. EDGE

History’s greatest ‘best-case’ scenarios.

Roughly 3,000 years ago, the Israelites and Philistines faced off in the Valley of Elah for what promised to be a costly, no-win bloodbath. The two sides did the sensible thing and agreed to settle their differences in single combat, but the Hebrew warrior-king Saul was none too keen on tangling with the giant Goliath. People were measured in cubits back then and Goliath had cubits to spare; most Biblical scholars believe that he stood nearly seven feet tall, so Saul’s reluctance is understandable. You know the rest of the story: A boy named David, tasked with bringing food to his older brothers on the front lines, volunteered to take on the towering Philistine by himself. He selected five smooth stones from a riverbank, eschewed Saul’s offer of armor and spear in favor of his trusty sling and—after some Old Testament trash-talking—took out Goliath with a rock to the forehead…and then decapitated his corpse (because that’s how they rolled back then) as the defeated Philistines hustled back to wherever it was they came from.

As “best-case scenarios” go, this one is arguably the great-grand-daddy of them all, especially considering the worst-case alternative: the near certainty that David would end up squirming in agony on the business end of Goliath’s javelin, his head soon to be a hood ornament on the giant’s chariot. Over the 30-plus centuries since, we have used this Biblical encounter to characterize the most extreme mismatches or impossible odds. When you say “David versus Goliath” everyone knows exactly what you mean. For what it’s worth, the same Biblical scholars who worked out Goliath’s height have also suggested that David might not have been the stone-slinging hero that day. Elhanen may have taken out Goliath; or perhaps David and Elhanen were one in the same. Regardless, it is David whose name we remember. It’s a testament to good press, no pun intended.

What makes an iconic, all-time great best-case scenario? You begin with a bleak set of circumstances, brought on by bad luck, poor decisions or misplaced courage. Then you need to consider the horrible (and highly likely) worst-case scenario. Finally, there has to be a magnificent, wow-factor plot twist—one that almost no one saw coming—that transforms a worst case into a best one. Given those ground rules, these are some of my favorites…

Squeeze Play

Battle of Salamis • 480 BC
The Persian Empire, under King Xerxes, invades Greece—then a loose confederation of city-states—and crushes Greek land forces in battle after battle. Athenian general Themosticles hatches a plan to lure the Persian fleet of 1,200 warships into a decisive battle against 180 Athenian vessels in the narrow strait of Salamis.
Worst Case Scenario: Persia destroys the Greek fleet, picks off the remaining city-states and snuffs out Western civilization before it begins.
How It Went Down: The Persian vessels press for a decisive victory, but their lines become jumbled as the battlefield narrowed, just as Themosticles had planned. The Greek ships form a wedge and ram their way through the disorganized Persian navy, sending heavily armored marines streaming onto enemy boats against the lightly armored Persian fighters. Xerxes may have lost half or more of his fleet in the debacle and Greece was never threatened by Persia again.

Runaway Success

The American Revolution • 1775
British colonists, unhappy with their lack of say in Parliament, decide to take on the most powerful global military force in history for an idea: Freedom.
Worst Case Scenario: The Redcoats send their best troops to America, crush the ill-equipped and poorly trained colonial rebels, hang the signers of the Declaration of Independence, and then return to business as usual.
How It Went Down: Fighting an “idea” turns out to be a losing battle, at least in this case. The Americans know they had home-field advantage: They didn’t have to beat the British, only wear them out. With help from France, Washington’s army traps Cornwallis and his army at Yorktown and the rest is history. P.S. England saw New Jersey as a convenient highway between Philadelphia and New York City. How wrong they were!

Thigh Master

Harland Sanders 1930
An impulsive, self-righteous and occasionally violent 40-year-old ex-manual laborer and disgraced attorney is hired to run a Shell station in Depression-era Kentucky. He begins selling fried chicken out of the structure to make ends meet.
Worst Case Scenario: Sanders blows yet another employment opportunity or, worse, kills an unwary traveler with tainted chicken.
How It Went Down: Thanks to his “secret recipe” and pressure-cooking method, Sanders turns Kentucky Fried Chicken into one of the great franchise operations in the world during the 1950s and 1960s. Sanders sells to John Y. Brown for $2 million in 1964 and becomes KFC’s brand ambassador.

Hat’s Off

Harry Truman 1945
A former haberdasher and Kansas City ward healer chosen by President Franklin Roosevelt as his 1944 running mate, the lowly regarded and largely marginalized Truman ascends to the oval office after FDR’s death. Truman has never been told about the atomic bomb, believes that Russia and China might make good postwar allies, and has a habit of personally attacking anyone he feels has slighted him.

Worst Case Scenario: Truman’s inexperience, stubbornness and indecisive leadership prolongs the war in the Pacific, leaves Europe in ruins and chokes off the American economy, leading to a humiliating defeat in the 1948 presidential election.
How It Went Down: Truman brings the war to a rapid conclusion, resurrects Europe with the Marshall Plan, keeps Greece and Turkey out of Communist hands, orchestrates the Berlin Airlift, supports the formation of NATO and the United Nations, pioneers legislation that creates the FHA and ends segregation in the armed forces. And still almost loses the 1948 election!

Roll Up Your Sleeves, Boys

Polio Vaccine 1953
While still in testing phase, Dr. Jonas Salk brings home samples of his polio vaccine and inoculates his three young sons. Prior to this, Salk had mostly administered the vaccine to monkeys.
Worst Case Scenario: His sons turn into monkeys. No, just kidding. A life-threatening adverse reaction and the bad publicity accompanying it set back the polio program for years.
How It Went Down: The Salk children experience no ill effects and America welcomes the news with unrestrained joy. “There was jubilation,” Peter Salk recalls. “There was such a sense of relief that this fear, which had been hanging over everyone’s heads for years and years and years, was finally lifted.”

Top Cop

Lasse Viren • 1972
A police officer makes Finland’s Olympic team and reaches the finals of the 10,000 meters at the Summer Games in Munich.
Worst Case Scenario: He literally falls flat on his face. Which he did, midway through the race.
How It Went Down: Viren gets to his feet, catches up with the pack and stuns the crowd by starting his “kick” with more than a lap to go, winning gold in world-record time. In the 5,000 meters a week later, Viren wins again, beating heralded American Steve Prefontaine and other top international stars.

Vision Quest

Botulinum Toxin 1977
Ophthalmologist Dr. Alan Scott begins injecting botulinum type A neurotoxin into patients to treat strabismus, a condition that causes eyes to cross or diverge.
Worst Case Scenario: The neurotoxic protein is considered nature’s most poisonous substance; so blindness, paralysis and death.
How It Went Down: The experiments are an unqualified success and during the 1980s, Dr. Scott trains hundreds of ophthalmologists how to inject the drug he names Oculinum. In 1991, he sells Oculinum for $9 million to the drug company Allergan, which renames it Botox. In 2002, Botox is approved by the FDA for cosmetic use.

Emerging from the Rubble

The McRib • 1981
Following a promising test-marketing run, the McRib sandwich becomes a regular menu item at McDonald’s…and is a disastrous failure. It is removed from U.S. stores in 1985, then returns on a “limited” basis nine years later as a tie-in to The Flintstones live-action movie, with packaging that features Rosie O’Donnell as Betty Rubble.
Worst Case Scenario: The gray, “restructured” pork slab is a critical flop in its second incarnation, much as The Flintstones was.
How It Went Down: Over the next two decades, McDonald’s offers the McRib through special limited-time promotions before announcing a “Farewell Tour” for the sandwich in 2005. A grassroots consumer effort to save the McRib creates a groundswell of demand, which is further accelerated by social media posts that help fans “chase” the McRib wherever it is being offered. In 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, McDonald’s makes the McRib available nationwide for the first time.

Can Do

Pabst Blue Ribbon • 1996
A beer brand in business for more than 150 years shutters its flagship brewery in Milwaukee following two decades of declining revenue. Five years later, the company hires a former Benetton exec to turn the company around.
Worst Case Scenario: Marketing a beer brand that has lost 90% of its customers proves a bit more difficult than selling sweaters…and “PBR” joins Jax, Falstaff, Schmidt’s, Grain Belt and Narragansett in the pantheon of extinct and zombie beer brands.
How It Went Down: One word: Hipsters. Pabst finds a new fan base with urban 20-somethings in search of the next dive bar and an ironic down-market beer. The company pours marketing dollars into sponsorships of indie rock, cool small businesses, post-college sports leagues and social media…and the brand returns to market prominence.

Sticking With It

The Blair Witch Project • 1999
Wannabe film makers Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez write an improvised script about a trio of hikers who disappear in the Maryland woods. They blow through their $25,000 budget in eight days and shoot 20 hours of action to create a grainy 82-minute film they hope will go straight to cable.
Worst Case Scenario: A sci-fi film with no witch and no special effects is of little interest to distributors, no network will air it, critics pan it, audiences hate it, Myrick and Sanchez are broke and never find work in the movie industry again.

How It Went Down: Blair Witch generates buzz at the 1999 Sundance Festival by listing its actors as missing or dead and is marketed to filmgoers almost exclusively through the Internet, receiving more than 150 million hits. It grosses $250 million, returning ten thousand times its original cost and pioneering the genre of found-footage film making.

Crab Fest

Deadliest Catch • 2005
Ex-Turner Broadcasting honcho Thom Beers films a pair of one-hour documentaries about crab fishing in Alaskan waters during the 1990s and successfully shops the concept as a cable-TV reality series.
Worst Case Scenario: Audiences quickly lose interest in a show hinging on how many crustaceans tumble out of a wire trap…episode after episode after episode.
How It Went Down: The gritty, true-to-life documentary style of the show—backed by the narration of Dirty Jobs star Mike Rowe—transfixes audiences, who learn that commercial fishing is not only wildly unpredictable…it does indeed have the highest mortality rate of any profession in the world. Deadliest Catch aired its 250th episode in 2020 and is still going strong.

There is simply no explaining some of history’s weirdest trends.

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Until the imitators suddenly realize how stupid they are. Our cultural history is littered with absurd trends that enjoyed a shining moment of mass fascination, only to wind up as objects of ridicule. Most have been mercifully laid to rest for all time, yet others inexplicably continue to rise from the crypt, rediscovered or reinvented by a new generation. The following trends have yet to return—thankfully, but perhaps not permanently. Just remember, as you read about them and chuckle, there is no telling what can happen when a few million of us decide together that some thing is the next big thing.

Color Me Dreadful

The 1970s may be remembered for outlandish fashion and funky, eye-popping design, but that is more a product of retro TV commercials and revisionist history than reality. Clothing, carpeting, drapes, furniture, countertops, cabinets, appliances and even cars were drenched in drab, dreadful burnt oranges, dark walnuts and two of the ugliest colors ever yet realized: Avocado Green and Harvest Gold.

Those who claim there is “no accounting for taste“ might be surprised that a good deal of accountability for these nauseating hues lies right here in New Jersey. For more than a half-century, a select committee of 10 people, whose identities have never been disclosed to the public, has met twice a year with executives of Pantone, a company based in the Bergen County town of Carlstadt. Founded in 1963 by Lawrence Herbert—who created a system for identifying, matching, and communicating colors for consistency across all design industries—Pantone has a mind-numbing 1,925 colors in its current catalog. Its Color Institute studies how “color influences human thought processes, emotions and physical reactions, furthering its commitment to providing professionals with a greater understanding of color and to help them utilize color more effectively.” Avocado and Harvest were Pantone creations; their sister colors included Navajo White and Selective Yellow, which sound vaguely racist today.

I was a pre-teen in the early ’70s, and I swear that almost everything that came in more than one color also came in Avocado Green and Harvest Gold. My objection to these colors is perhaps more visceral than it ought to be. One weekend in 1972, my parents rented an enormous Avocado Green Plymouth Fury station wagon (with matching interior) while waiting for our little white Audi wagon to be repaired for the umpteenth time. Halfway through the 100-mile journey to our summer house in the Catskills, the noxious smell of the Naugahyde, combined with the nauseating color scheme, literally made me vomit. It was the last time that I remember ever being carsick. Now you won’t find a single Avocado Green object in my home. Well, except for actual avocados, which I love. Go figure.

Beanie Weenies

We all grew up with Jack and the Beanstalk, the tale of a boy who trades his family cow for a handful of magic beans. In most versions, Jack comes out on top of this transaction. This was not the case for the countless millions who exchanged fists full of cash for a different type of bean-based promise. This story begins in 1986, when Ty Warner, the top salesman at Dakin & Co.—the world’s largest maker of stuffed toys—suggested to the higher-ups that using plastic “beans” as filler instead of stiff cotton would make the toys more flexible and posable. He was thanked by being fired.

Warner pressed on with his idea and, in 1993, founded Ty Inc. to produce Beanie Babies. Warner saw the product itself as secondary to the marketing. He priced Beanie Babies at an affordable $5, but sold them only in limited quantities to small specialty shops and toy stores rather than big-box chains—to raise desirability by creating scarcity. Consumers could never find an entire collection of Beanies at one single store.

In 1995, Warner started “retiring” certain Beanie Babies, triggering explosive interest in the secondary collector market. Prices for these originals surged past $20. Meanwhile, Warner’s overseas factories were pumping out boatloads of non-retired ones. By 1998, Ty Inc. was making more than $1 billion in profits.

By the turn of the 20th century, rabid collectors and misguided investors, uninterested in trivialities like supply and demand, had become obsessed with collecting Beanies as an investment. The arrival of eBay around this time only fueled their madness; some of the rarest were selling online for as much as five figures. In 1999, Warner officially “retired” several more Beanie Babies, but this time there wasn’t any market response—no notable increase in value or spike in demand. It was the beginning of the end.

Collectors panicked and flooded eBay with tens of thousands of them and their value blew away like sand in the Sahara. In desperation, Warner ordered all production halted by the end of the year, but his announcement did nothing to stop the big bust. By the early 2000s, most Beanies were worth between 1 and 5 percent of their former prices and wound up in truck-stop claw machines. Don’t be too quick to shed a tear for Warner, however. In 2020, the 76-year-old ranked 359th on the Forbes 400 list of the richest people in America, with a net worth of $2.3 billion.

Record Breakers

Half a century ago, before the internet, cable and even VCRs, the big three national broadcast television networks (CBS, NBC and ABC) produced pretty much all there was to watch. When they struck gold with a hit TV series, they often attempted to leverage their stars’ popularity by ushering them into the recording studio—whether or not they had even a shred of singing talent. Not to worry, they could always cut a spoken record. With very few exceptions, the result was a hilariously awful novelty single or, worse, a full-blown album. And, of course, they sold like hotcakes. These ill-conceived celebrity records are collectible kitsch today, but back in the 1960s they could be found in almost every home in America. These celebrity recordings are a few of my personal favorites. All can be found online:

A 1965 episode of The Addams Family featured Ted Cassidy (aka Lurch) as an overnight teen idol pop star. Cassidy teamed up with Gary Paxton—producer of “Alley-Oop” and “Monster Mash”—on a Motown-style dance single entitled “(Do) The Lurch.” Cassidy actually performed it on the popular variety shows Shivaree! and Shindig! for Halloween.

Sebastian Cabot, who is best remembered today for his role as Brian Keith’s butler, Mr. French, on Family Affair—and as the voice of Bagheera in Disney’s The Jungle Book—recorded a full album of poetic interpretations of Bob Dylan songs in 1967. Sebastian Cabot, Actor featured a full orchestra, and included “Like a Rolling Stone,” “Blowin’ In the Wind” and “It Ain’t Me, Babe.”

Lorne Greene, who played frontier patriarch Ben Cartwright on Bonanza, had a #1 hit on the US Billboard charts on December 5, 1964 with “Ringo”— a 45 from his album Welcome to the Ponderosa. Singing satirist Allan Sherman re-recorded the song as “The Ballad of Ringo Starr.”

In 1966, when Batman was the top-rated TV show in the US and “Bat-mania” was sweeping the country, MGM Records signed Burt Ward (aka Robin) to release “Boy Wonder, I Love You” and “Teenage Bill of Rights”—written and arranged by none other than Frank Zappa and performed by The Mothers of Invention. “It was one of the weirdest projects I’ve ever been involved in,” Zappa later reflected.

On the subject of weird, among the most famous/ infamous celebrity albums was a 1968 LP entitled The Transformed Man by TV’s Captain Kirk, William Shatner. It included a disturbing version of Bob Dylan’s “Mr. Tambourine Man” as well as dramatic readings of Shakespeare. George Clooney once included The Transformed Man in his “desert island disc” collection as an incentive to get off the island. Shatner’s rendition of “Lucy In the Sky with Diamonds” was once voted the all-time worst Beatles cover.

Unsafe at Any Speed

Back in the 1960s and ’70s, nothing was cooler than motorcycles and sportscars. Steve McQueen said so! Naturally, kids wanted bicycles that looked like both. So in 1963—the same year that Chevrolet began using the same name for its Corvette—Schwinn introduced the Sting-Ray (below), touting it as “The Bike with the Sports Car Look.” Schwinn’s R&D director Al Fritz was inspired by middle schoolers in Southern California, who customized their old bikes. The concept was quietly ridiculed by upper management… until the entire first production run of 45,000 sold out in two months.

Fast-forward to 1969, when Easy Rider grossed 60 million dollars worldwide. Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper were nominated for Oscars, but the real star of the movie was Fonda’s “chopper,” which was fitted with Angel Forks that extended the front wheel far forward, with no front brake. Fonda couldn’t turn or stop it, but he sure looked good trying.

My 5-speed Sting-Ray was a dream ride: banana seat, ape-hanger handlebars, a fat rear tire, chrome flared fenders, hand brakes and a “Stik-Shift” mounted to the top frame bar. After Easy Rider, I was one of the countless kids who added Angel Forks to their Sting-Rays. The challenge was learning how to keep from jack-knifing on turns. It took a lot of nasty falls on unforgiving blacktop before getting the hang of it.

That same year, in Britain, Raleigh launched its competitor to the Sting-Ray: The Chopper. Loaded with many of the same features as its American cousin, it was also designed specifically for popping wheelies. Back heavy and inherently unstable (the front wheel was 20 percent smaller than the rear), it wobbled dangerously at even moderate speeds and was prone to flipping “arse over tea kettle.” As with the Sting-Ray, its solo-polo seat and sissy bar encouraged double riding; its stick shift was nicknamed the “Impale-o-Matic.”

A few years ago I wrote a story for this magazine that reminisced about potentially lethal toys from the 1960s and ’70s. The Chopper didn’t quite make the cut, but it provided some painful lessons in physics for its young owners. Despite an alarming number of near-fatal accidents being reported in the press—and public safety experts decrying the Chopper as “a dangerous toy”—sales jumped 55 percent in two years and remained robust until the 1980s, when the BMX craze arrived, replacing one cool trend with a safer one that included pads, helmets and other sensible items.

Both the Sting-Ray and the Chopper are fondly remembered today by 50- and 60-somethings. Why the nostalgia for all those face-plants and near-castrations? As Hunter S. Thompson wrote of this generation in his book Hell’s Angels, “They shun even the minimum safety measures that most cyclists take for granted. You will never see one wearing a crash helmet. Anything safe, they want no part of.”

Pole Cat

Alas, some trends truly defy reason or explanation. In 1924, a Hollywood theater owner hired merchant sailor, movie stuntman and childhood human fly (how’s that for a résumé!) Alvin “Shipwreck” Kelly to perch atop his building’s flagpole, as a publicity gimmick, for 13 hours and 13 minutes. It worked…all too well. Almost instantly, Kelly became a national celebrity and flagpole-sitting became an American obsession. For the rest of the decade, young people were scaling flagpoles hoping to set new records and attract newsreel cameras for a few flickering seconds of fame.

Kelly pursued his new vocation with zeal for the remainder of the Roaring ’20s. He appeared in 28 US cities, continually raising the height of his flagpoles, duration of his performances and, of course, his appearance fees—to a jaw-dropping 100 dollars an hour. His crowning moment came in 1930 here in New Jersey, on Atlantic City’s Steel Pier, when he sat on a 200-foot pole for an incredible 49 days and one hour, which is still a world record.

Daredevil stunts fell out of favor during the Depression, and Kelly soon came to be regarded as a public nuisance. His last hurrah was in 1939, when Dunkin’ Donuts sponsored him to consume its product while doing headstands on a wooden plank outside the 54th floor of the Chanin Building on 42nd Street in New York City. Kelly rejoined the Merchant Marines during World War II. After the war, he became destitute. He collapsed and died in 1952 on a street in Hell’s Kitchen, where he’d grown up as an orphan, holding a diary of his more than 13,000 hours of flagpole sitting. He had titled it The Luckiest Fool on Earth.

Editor’s Note: Luke Sacher is a documentary film maker who has authored several articles for EDGE, including loving looks at mad scientists, catastrophic business decisions and the aforementioned dangerous toys. He also interviewed Jerry Lewis and his son, Anthony, for the magazine. Luke actually does own one of the truly rare Beanie Babies, although it is no longer worth thousands; his mother bought it at a garage sale for less than a dollar.

Junior year doesn’t have to be a scorcher.

For college-bound high school students (and their parents), getting junior year right promises a lifetime of rewards. Messing it up can lead to frustration, acrimony and an endless string of woulda’s, coulda’s, shoulda’s and what-if’s. Which makes you wonder: Why is it that most college counselors don’t have a formal sit-down with kids until March or April of their junior year? That puts families in the unenviable position of learning the process while doing the process.

That’s the educational equivalent of diffusing a bomb while reading the manufacturer’s instruction manual for the first time.

In the spirit of summer, I would encourage young people and their families making the transition from sophomore to junior year to start embracing SPF. No, not the sun protection SPF—Student Proactive Factor. It’s a six-step process for juniors that should start right about now, but for younger students it can definitely begin earlier..

It’ll be a day at the beach if your rising junior…

• Improves overall GPA by two clicks.

It’s now or never.  Colleges look for an “up” trend and as a parent you can help by encouraging your child to draft a mission statement for junior year. Every academic, social and extracurricular decision from that point forward should be weighed against this goal. Keeping their eyes on the prize will reduce the chance of derailment.

• Begins connecting with admissions representatives at top-choice colleges.

Pick the schools you like and get on their radar. Parents can assist by transporting their child to at least one college fair and then taking a back seat. Shadow your child but refrain from speaking at all. This often-excruciating exercise sends the clear message that it is the student’s process, not the parents’.

• Makes something better at school or in the community.

Colleges aren’t looking for applicants who try to reinvent the wheel; just make a better mousetrap. Prompt your child to identify two or three aspects that they like about their school setting and two or three opportunities for positive change outside school. Then, the student is encouraged to choose area of need and respond to it with the leadership of love.

Campus Visits

If your kid’s begun Driver’s Ed before you’ve visited a college campus, then slow down and back up!Somehow, everything accelerates when students become independently mobile. Go online, buy a college guide, ask around—just pick schools that seem to represent the light at the end of the tunnel and make a day trip or two. You’ll be hearing a lot of pitches from admissions officers over the next 12 to 15 months, and each will make his or her school sound great. Learn to listen between the lines, and get comfortable walking around college campuses. Strength: Zinc Oxide

Student Buy-In

When you have skin in the game, there is more personal accountability. Tell your child what college costs, and how much debt you are likely to incur during the course of their education. Even if you are a “full-pay” family, consider saddling your child with a small student loan. This may help focus your daughter or son on getting serious about the process now. Besides, there’s no time like the present to start providing kids with life lessons about their future of financial autonomy. Strength: SPF 10

Get Acquainted and Organized

Explore and understand fully the processes in place at your school. Remember that, regardless of whether you work with an outside educational consultant, collaborating with your school-based guidance counselor is vitally important. Ask about how to request transcripts, how much lead time is necessary, the protocol for teacher recommendations, etc. While you’re at it, remember that, in this process, the squeaky wheel almost always gets the grease. So try to get a read on how much squeaking you’ll need to do to get the grease you desire in the year ahead.   Strength: SPF 15

Your kid will look like a lobster if he or she…

• Self-sabotages.

Be vigilant regarding behavior that may look like typical teen-aged “ball-dropping” but can actually be deliberate self-sabotage. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy stemming from students’ internalization that they are not worthy of enjoying success. Drawing on the personality development research of Stanford professor Dr. Carol Dweck, parents can make enormous strides by taking praise of intelligence out of their vocabulary and instead, praising their children for their diligent work ethic. This will encourage students to feel worthy of achievement and simultaneously less afraid of vulnerability, risk-taking and comfort-zone transcending in the learning arena.

• Tries to outsmart the teachers.

Teens, especially those of a precocious nature, may believe that they are in no need of growing the bonds of the teacher-student relationship. However, it is precisely that seeking-out of a mentor—and the act of asking for advice and extra help—that can enlist a champion of a student’s admission cause. Encourage the growth and healthy development of advisor relationships. Reinforce to your teen that it takes a village. Or remind them of the Wonder Pets!wisdom: What’s gonna work? Teamwork!

• Fails to understand cause and effect.

High school students do not have fully developed frontal lobes of their brains. Period. This process of development helps us link choices with natural consequences, i.e., “If I run this red light, likely it will only affect me, but nothing is going to happen anyway.” As a result of this perspective, adolescents can make short-term decisions that may result in troublesome long-term consequences. Add any illegal substance, and the effects are exponentially skewed. As a parent, you need to send a strong and consistent message of a zero-tolerance policy for drugs, alcohol and internet pornography. The effects on the developing brain have been amply documented. Be prepared to provide your young adults with fac

ts and stats. This is an information generation and good data trumps cautionary tales.

Don’t End Summers Empty-Handed

Encourage your child to be productive, be adventurous, be courageous, grow a passion, plan for consistency of theme in involvements, explore career paths and possible topics for academic majors and undergraduate programs through shadowing, internships, work or study and academic research. Strength: SPF 20

Reverse-Engineer Your Application

As hindsight is 20/20, backwards-plan as much as possible. Your child might ask questions such as: What level of math or language do I desire to be taking by senior year? What clubs will provide opportunities to take on meaningful leadership by the second half of my high school career? Who will be willing to champion me in my recommendation letters? What story do I want to be able to tell colleges about myself, and how I have stewarded my talents? Strength: SPF 30

GPA and Course Selection: Quality vs. Quantity

When evaluating grade point average, colleges look at whether students have taken on the most challenging courses at their schools. So get involved and be deliberate when picking courses. Be sensitized to strengths and areas of developing expertise, defer to challenge and rigor in almost every case. Also, inquire about teachers’ legacies at the school—who goes the extra mile and who’s phoning it in? Begin to grow strong adult mentor relationships and become the most interesting you possible. Remember, its’ more about skill-set acquisition and exposure than volume. Strength: SPF 50 EDGE

Editors Note: Erin Avery runs Avery Educational Resources, an independent educational consulting practice. The company holds a popular College Application Boot Camp (August 6-9 on the Jersey Shore), where rising seniors complete their common application, personal statement and activity essay before senior year and fall athletic seasons begin. For families with summer homes in the Metro area, the company also offers Bespoke Boot Camp on-location. For more info, log onto averyeducation.com.

In the game of life, everyone has to play…so what if your teen feels like a benchwarmer?

By J.M. Stewart

The term Life Coach means different things to different people. You can hire one to help you with anything from cleaning out your closet to overcoming an addiction. For some people, a life coach is like an iPad—they didn’t know they needed one until they had one.

For teenagers struggling to find their way, however, a good life coach can mean the world.

Life coaches help navigate difficult changes and transitions. For young people, that can include moving from an old neighborhood to a new one, from a divorce to a remarriage, from high school to college—or out of a feeling of isolation. A life coach functions as a personal cheering squad and support group rolled into one, offering guidance toward a more balanced and happy life.

A generation ago, the idea of hiring a life coach sounded self-indulgent and a waste of money—something a bored, aimless yuppie would do. Life coaches made convenient fodder for sitcom writers. Today, there’s nothing to laugh about. Not only have life coaches gained in popularity and acceptance, there are numerous certification and training courses available (think amped-up Psych 101 courses) lasting from a few weeks to six months.

That being said, some of the most experienced, competent and successful life coaches are not certified. Their view is that most courses don’t offer the tools that a background in psychology—combined with years of working as a coach—has taught them. But, for the newbies, having a certification doesn’t hurt.

Why then, one might reasonably ask, wouldn’t you just go to a psychologist or other licensed professional instead of hiring a life coach?

“Sometimes,” explains Dove Rose, a highly regarded life coach based in California, “a regular psychologist, psychiatrist is problem-solving with medication or analyzing the past…you’re just in the hamster wheel, regurgitating the same story over and over, instead of trying to live a different story now.”

Indeed, the client–coach relationship is more casual than the psychotherapist–patient relationship. Psychologists rely mostly on scheduled office visits, whereas a life coach is accessible day or night by phone, through emails and texts, or on Skype. A life coach will also come to your home; psychologists don’t. Naturally, a good life coach is always aware that there is a very fine line between knowing when a client just needs someone to talk to, and when there are danger signs of a more serious rooted problem. That is when a life coach recommends the client seek help from a licensed professional.

What types of issues prompt a call to a life coach? Just about any complex lifestyle issue is fair game. In the case of teenagers, the trigger might be remoteness and slipping grades. As a parent, everything you read and hear screams Oh, no—my kid’s on drugs! A life coach who comes in and builds trust with that teen is likely to discover an alternative scenario. For instance, the parents might be raging alcoholics and the teenager doesn’t have the tools to cope with it. Sometimes, the kid just needs a friend who will listen.

Rick Singer began his career as a coach and director of college-level athletics. For more than 25 years he has made a living as a life coach. He’s done life coaching in the corporate environment, as well on the student level. He has helped countless high-school student-athletes follow their dreams and play college sports, and worked with sports celebrities in planning their goals once their playing careers were over. Singer has been most successful working with teens and young adults in finding a college that is an appropriate fit. He cannot emphasize enough the importance of that “fit”—which is why he named his company The Key.

Teenagers, Singer freely admits, can be notoriously exasperating. It will come as no surprise to parents that he has worked with a number of kids who’ve simply had no interest in growing or taking chances where college is concerned. A lot of the time, Singer points out, it’s the result of overzealous parents who are relentless in the desire for their child to get into a big-name four-year college. In these cases, he sometimes finds the parents are unyieldingly negative to the child and negative to the life coach. In extreme circumstances, if the parents are totally out of control, Rick will actually “fire” them; in any given year he will do so with two to four families. It’s unfortunate because, in his experience, the kid will eventually come around.

Many parents of middle-school children hire life coaches. Their goal is to help their young teen deal with issues ranging from time management and personal grooming to weight loss and inferiority complexes. If your 8th grader hands in her homework on time but it’s a crumpled mess, and the teacher deducts points, a life coach might recommend using a folder. You’ve been telling your daughter that for a month—but does she listen? No, of course not. You are a meddling, know-nothing parent. When that same nugget of wisdom comes from a trusted, outside voice, that is the voice your 8th grader will choose to hear.

Before you jump into hiring a life coach—for your child or yourself—it’s important to understand that this can be an ongoing relationship. It can start out as once-a-week meetings or phone calls, evolve into every-day communication during panic situations, and then wane to once every two weeks, once a month, or just once in awhile. The cost of all of this support varies. Some coaches charge $60 an hour, some $200 per hour, some$5,000 for a whole year of coaching. So, it’s important to understand the coach’s billing system. Make sure to ask if they charge extra for phone calls, texts and emails.

Life coaches aren’t for everybody, but they do offer people a sense of calm and community, knowing that there is always someone they can talk to. People today often feel isolated as a result of problems at work, at school or at home. And although we are more connected than ever thanks to our myriad devices and social media outlets, it doesn’t mean we feel less isolated, sitting in a room by ourselves. For all of these technological advances, we seem to be losing the human exchanges that keep us whole.

“It takes a village,” Dove Rose likes to remind clients, “to stay sane in this world.”

And yes, you can say that a life coach is really just a paid friend. But you get what you pay for: everything that a really good friend should be.

Life Coaches & College:

5 Minutes with Rick Singer

Q: When is the best time for a life coach to enter into a teenager’s life?

A: A third of our families are in 9th grade, a third are in 10th grade, and the last third are the “panic” families.

Q: What is the difference between what you do as a life coach and a college advisor?

A: A lot of people who do what I do are just college advisors. They don’t engage in the kids’ lives, helping them figure out what they want to be and how to do it in terms of schooling. Life coaches are the people who engage in our clients’ lives and do different things to help them grow, in addition to getting into college. Because I’m in the home, I see everything else that goes on in the house. Whereas most advisors just focus in on the technical aspects of helping a kid get into college—like helping with the application—I do both. I want to help them get into college and I want to help them grow as people. The key is coaching them in everything about their life. There aren’t a lot of people who do it like we do it.

Q: What are some issues that you help with outside of the college process?

A: It can be a lack of motivation, especially with boys. There are kids who have learning “differences” and the parents feel that nobody cares about them; meanwhile they’re smart kids! The high-school advisor has no clue or doesn’t want to take the time to help. I also help to find the right school for the student, now that there are so many schools that the kids are looking at and comparing.

Q: How do parents of girls differ from parents of boys in terms of their goals for college?

A: The typical parents will send their daughter to a private school more so than they would a boy, because the parents of a girl want their kid at a “safe” school, a small, safe college. Boys? The mindset is just throw ’em into any public college—they’ll survive. That is not always the case, however. Sometimes a junior college, or even a trade school, is a more appropriate choice.

The 25 books all New Jerseyans should have in their homes

Am I missing something? How did being “book-smart” become a bad thing? More to the point, when did TV and the Internet become more reliable sources of ideas and information than a well-written, proofed and edited book? Honestly, sometimes I wonder if we’ve all become a little book-stupid. As a transplanted Manhattanite who put down roots in the Garden State more than three decades ago, I made it my mission to learn as much as I could about New Jersey as quickly as possible. Thirty-one years later, I am still turning pages (and keeping my local Barnes & Noble afloat) with no end in sight.

Where all of that reading has gotten me is to the realization that New Jersey is a land of multiple personalities and myriad identities. The deeper one drills down into the history or the culture or the literary heritage of the state, the more utterly new and fascinating stories begin to reveal themselves. I was probably in my 40s when it finally dawned on me that I would never be able to synthesize all of the information trapped in the 200 or so books (now 300 or so) I owned that are relevant to New Jersey.

Not long ago, I was discussing this very point with a visitor to my home—a relatively recent transplant in the Garden State. How, he asked, would I characterize exactly what it means to be a New Jerseyan? Well, I replied, you won’t find your answer online. It’s somewhere on these bookshelves. Then he asked the better question: Which 25 would you pull off the shelves to get me started?

I was amazed how quickly I was able to narrow down my collection. What I ended up with was a mix of works covering history, culture and fiction—most of them recently published, some very well known, a few not. You may find my Top 25 light on dirty politics, organized crime, pollution, gambling and diners—five themes that certainly have generated their fair share of books—but hey, this is my list. Go make your own!

No, really. Pick your own Top 25. In fact, I hope you get to the end of this story and disagree with at least half of my choices. Because, truth be told, that’s what being book-smart is all about. Happy hunting!

1609: A Country That Was Never Lost

History • Kevin Wright • 2009

Forget everything you learned in school about the Lenni-Lenape. Kevin Wright unearthed original documents from the 1600s and 1700s for 1609, which repaints the picture of colonial New Jersey in some eye-opening ways.

American Pastoral

Fiction • Philip Roth • 1997

Roth’s novels are very New Jersey-centric, so any of his award-winning books technically could make this list. American Pastoral focuses on the tumultuous life of a former athletic star modeled on Newark’s legendary Swede Masin.

Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret

Young Adult Fiction • Judy Blume • 1970

Margaret is a sixth grader who moves from New York City to the New Jersey suburbs, where she begins an unforgettable search for spiritual answers. Is there a girl under the age of 50 who hasn’t read this book?

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

Fiction • Junot Diaz • 2007

Much of this Pulitzer-winning novel is set in the Dominican Republic, but the central character, Oscar, is a Paterson teenager trying to balance love, life and a sci-fi obsession with his family heritage.

Bruce

Biography • Peter Ames Carlin • 2012

EDGE interviewed Peter right after his Springsteen bio came out, and it has since been heralded as the “Best on Bruce” by his legion of fans.

Eddie and the Cruisers

Fiction • P.F. Kluge • 1980

This novel, set in South Jersey during the early 1960s, has been called the Citizen Kane of rock & roll. No argument here. The movie was very good; the book is even better.

Encyclopedia of New Jersey

Reference • Marc Mappen • 2004

Keep this 900-plus-page book within reach at all times. Though a decade out of date, it still provides a superb starting point for virtually anything you need to know about the Garden State. Mappen’s books and newspaper pieces on Jersey culture and history are legendary.

Freedom Not Far Distant

History • Clement Price • 1980

A scholarly work on the African-American experience in New Jersey by the Rutgers U. professor who was recently named City Historian of Newark.

Howl and Other Poems

Poetry • Allen Ginsburg • 1956

This collection includes Ginsburg’s two best-known poems, Howl and A Supermarket in California. Though not specifically tied to New Jersey—and more famous for its influence on the Beat Generation—this book presents the Newark-born poet at the height of his literary powers…and was just too hard to put back on the bookshelf once I pulled it off.

The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation

Non-Fiction • John Gertner • 2013

I have come to know many now-retired scientists who worked at Bell Labs. What they accomplished—and how they attacked the problem-solving process—is truly humbling. I couldn’t wait to get my hands on this book.

Independence Day

Fiction • Richard Ford • 1995

No, it’s not a book about an alien invasion. Independence Day is one of Ford’s three novels staring New Jersey real estate agent Frank Bascombe. Each is a Faulkner-esque masterpiece in its own right, but this book won a Pulitzer, so it’s the one I’m going with.

Jernigan

Fiction • David Gates • 1991

As first novels go, this one by David Gates is nearly un-improvable. Central character Peter Jernigan sounds like an adult version of Holden Caulfield, with suburban New Jersey as a backdrop.

The Jersey Game: The History of Modern Baseball from Its Birth to the Big Leagues in the Garden State

Sports • James Di Clercio • 1993

Truth be told, I have yet to discover a great, scholarly book covering the history of New Jersey sports. This one makes the list for its sharp focus on baseball in the 19th century.

Leaves of Grass

Poetry • Walt Whitman • 1891

Whitman actually published the first collection of his writing under this title in 1855. He constantly reworked the poems and kept adding more until the final version, published prior to his passing in Camden in 1892. He had moved to the Garden State in the 1870s. Leaves of Grass praises the wonders of nature and the human spirit.

New Jersey: A History of the Garden State

History • Maxine Lurie & Richard Veit, Editors • 2012

As essay collections go, this is the one I now reach for when I need to bone up on my regional history. It is structured chronologically and features an introduction by Marc Mappen.

The North Side: African Americans and the Creation of Atlantic City

History • Nelson Johnson • 2010

We all know what happened to Johnson’s earlier book, Boardwalk Empire. I pick this one, however, because it presents a side of the same story that was underexplored in the HBO series.

Past and Promise: Lives of New Jersey Women

History • Joan Burstyn • 1997

This work of collective biography does an excellent job of highlighting the achievements and contributions of New Jersey women from colonial times up through the late 20th century. I’d love to see a second, updated edition.

Paterson

Poetry • William Carlos Williams • 1963

Williams began publishing his poems about Paterson in the years after World War II. They were finally collected in a 1963 volume. Williams approached his subject as a reporter might, and then transformed his research into a sometimes-eccentric new form of American poetry.

The Pine Barrens

Non-Fiction • John McPhee • 1968

This book was originally published as nine articles in The New Yorker. It is an incredible snapshot of an untouched wilderness in the shadow of two major urban centers. If you are trying to decide which book on this list you should read first, strongly consider McPhee’s.

Rebellion In Newark

Non-Fiction • Tom Hayden • 1967

Were the infamous Newark Riots riots at all? Hayden’s detailed account of the events leading up to and during the six days of murder and mayhem still stands up after all these years—and raises a number of troubling questions about New Jersey’s darkest hour.

This Is New Jersey

History • John Cunningham • 2012

Some version of this book was probably your textbook in 4th or 5th Grade. Cunningham was the state’s unofficial popular historian for nearly seven decades from the 1940s until his passing in 2012.

This Side of Paradise

Fiction • F. Scott Fitzgerald • 1920

The heck with The Great Gatsby. This was the novel that catapulted Fitzgerald into the post-WWI literary scene. The story of Amory Blaine (a thinly disguised F. Scott) explores love, greed and social climbing among the Princeton elite. The initial printing sold out in three days.

Toy Bulldog: The Fighting Life and Times of Mickey Walker

Biography • John Jarrett • 2013

The story of boxing in New Jersey intersects with so many other themes that I had to include one book on the sport. Mickey Walker wins a split decision over the better-known Jimmy Braddock story, Cinderella Man. Though both stories are compelling, Walker’s takes place during the Prohibition Era and is far more colorful.

Weird N.J.

Non-Fiction • Mark Moran & Mark Sceurman • 2003

You’ve probably come across the magazine created by these two guys a million times. Their first book hit the stores a little over a decade ago. If you ever have a hankering to root around abandoned psychiatric hospitals and the like, consider this your travel guide.

A Woman’s Crusade: Alice Paul and the Battle

for the Ballot

Biography • Mary Walton • 2010

After more than a half-century of steady-but-slow progress by the women’s suffrage movement, New Jersey’s Alice Paul rolled up her sleeves and finished the job by employing an out-of-the-box brand of civil disobedience that forever changed the way Americans stand up to their own government.

Editor’s Note: Mark Stewart has authored six books on his adopted home state, all published by The Heinemann Library, as well as a history of the New Jersey Devils. None made the cut. Which book just missed squeezing into the list? “Number 26” was the 2001 suspense novel set in Spring Lake, On the Street Where You Live, by Mary Higgins Clark. Anyone who’s thinking of digging a backyard swimming pool might first want to check out this supernatural cautionary tale!

The Cover Story
(76) Houghton Mifflin; (77) Riverhead Books; Touchstone Publishing; (78) Penguin Books; Alfred A. Knopf; (79) Upper Case; Rutgers University Press; Plexus Publishing; (80) New Directions; Scribner Publishing; (81) McFarland & Company.

According to leading New Jersey educators, the case for a challenging literature curriculum is open-and-shut.

A couple of months ago, I convened five of my old school girlfriends during our annual reunion to discuss our all-time favorite middle-school (we called it “junior high” back then) Summer Reading List titles. There was an immediate consensus about Catcher in the Rye, To Kill a Mockingbird, and The Heart is a Lonely Hunter. These novels represented our first foray into more serious, more adult fiction, offering themes of rebellious angst, social injustice, and seemingly insurmountable challenges. We also agreed that, as parents (and now grandparents), we were all too familiar with the moaning and groaning of subsequent generations when presented with the dreaded list. Perhaps it’s overscheduling or shorter vacations or digital distractions, but it seems as if the “I can’t wait to read it” treasures of our early teens have become the “Do I have to read it?” chores for a lot of kids today.

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For generations the great literary safety net has been supplied by our schools. Whether reading comes naturally to a student or is a bit of a forced march, every child is exposed to the enlightening qualities of a great book sometime in the vicinity of 6th Grade, and in most systems the rubber meets the road in 7th. By high school, kids have been introduced to literature in a meaningful way; they get why reading matters. For some it sticks, for others it doesn’t.

The responsibility of educators is to inspire their students to read. (It’s up to authors to keep readers reading.) Some school systems in New Jersey do a magnificent job. Others have become less demanding of their students, and even of their teachers. In assessing the relative merits of a child’s educational options, parents would be wise to ask questions about how great literature fits into a school’s overall philosophy. We put this question to a number of top schools in the Garden State.

“The job of a teacher is not just to find the right book, but to start a student on a lifetime of reading pleasure.”

—Dr. Peter Lewis • Head of School The Winston School • Short Hills

Dr. Lewis defines the basic literacy goal for all students as “getting pleasure out of print,” adding that “with literature, we need to find a theme that will spark interest—but first we need to provide the techniques and strategy to decode the words, starting in the lower grades.” At Winston, non-fiction is typically factored in during the Middle School grades. Often the hero is a very ordinary human being who rises to meet and overcome challenges. For example, Mountains Beyond Mountains, by Tracy Kidder, is a book about Dr. Paul Farmer and his inspiring quest to cure infectious diseases around the world.

Be it fiction or non-fiction, Dr. Lewis believes that, from an academic perspective, all literature is still fundamentally “text,” and the challenge is to keep students enraptured by the written word rather than put off by the hurdles of decoding them. That effort includes booking author visits to add a living component to the books students are reading. On a school trip to see Orlando Bloom in Romeo and Juliet on Broadway, Bloom met with Winston students and explained that although he had been dyslexic as a child, he had managed to overcome his early challenges to pursue and achieve his lifelong dream of becoming a modern-day Shakespearean actor. Dr. Lewis used the opportunity to emphasize to his students that “Just because it’s hard to do, doesn’t mean you can’t do it.”

“Avid readers make awesome writers.”

—Mary Schoendorf • Middle School Literature Coordinator St. Bartholomew Academy • Scotch Plains

The kids at St. Bartholomew are in a “trilogy mode,” particularly by authors Suzanne Collins (The Hunger Games) and Veronica Roth (Divergent). Schoendorf has noticed that this popular reading genre has been influencing her students’ writing, which is immensely gratifying. Middle schoolers she notes, tend to be a bit unfocused in their writing. Often her role is to help fine-tune their efforts and come more quickly to the point they want to make.

To inspire her students’ interest in literature, Schoendorf regularly offers video clips about the authors to help bring them to life. She also insists on “web quests,” where students are required to research the author’s life and time—all before they even open the book. “This way,” she points out, “the book itself becomes the reward…and one that they can’t wait to start reading.”

Schoendorf also tries to nudge them out of their literary comfort zone into other genres (e.g., the classics). In doing so, she assesses class profiles in order to determine the most appropriate literature for the grade level, beginning with what she believes a class can emotionally handle. For example, she would ordinarily avoid Edgar Allan Poe, at least until the 7th Grade. For her 6th Graders, she might substitute The Hatchet, a young-adult wilderness survival novel by Gary Paulsen—an adventure story that is not as dark as Poe’s work, but offers all the same basic literary suspense elements. Recently, Schoendorf successfully introduced the 7th Graders to The Wednesday Wars, by Gary Schmidt—a coming-of-age story about a 7th grader. Her students were so impressed by the protagonist’s interest in Shakespeare that they asked for a Shakespeare unit in their own classroom, which is now known as Shakespeare Wednesdays. In fact, they even volunteered to give up half their recess for more class time with the Bard…which only proves her favorite point: “Get them interested, and they’ll bite.”

“Many of the most popular books fall into the category of dystopian literature, where the person who saves the world is a young adult.”

—Barbara Dellanno • Dean of Academic and Faith Formation Union Catholic High School • Scotch Plains

Dellanno, who doubles as Union Catholic’s Humanities Curriculum Specialist, sees the goal of both parents and teachers when it comes to young adult literature as “getting them hooked on reading for pleasure.” Her opinion about much of the YAL being written today is that it does just that. In fact, she admits to getting hooked herself on such contemporary classics as the Harry Potter series. Dellanno also believes it’s a positive for young readers to form their own tastes and reading habits. “I think that it is important that teachers and parents allow them to choose what they want to read,” she says, adding that there’s no harm in an occasional comic book or sports magazine.

The point is to get them reading and, once they develop the habit, they are more easily encouraged to branch out into serious literature, even the classics. Not surprisingly, Dellanno gives a thumbs-up to trending series literature, such as The Hunger Games, Twilight, Maze Runner, Divergent, Gone, and Park Service. As for singular novels, she favors The Book Thief and Wonder, as well as novels like Fahrenheit 451 and Persepolis. As for popular authors, continued on page 68 she lists Jerry Spinelli, Walter Dean Myers (a recently deceased resident of Jersey City), Sarah Dressen (for girls), and Elizabeth Wein (for historical fiction). “Dystopian-themed novels,” Dellanno notes, “are empowering and reflect a way for the younger generation to cope in a healthy way with our post-9/11 world.”

When asked why To Kill a Mockingbird seems to top everyone’s list of Middle School classics, Dellanno explains that it is a great tool to teach the important elements of fiction (setting, point of view, foreshadowing and symbolism), and that the 1962 film starring Gregory Peck enables students to compare and contrast great writing and great filmmaking techniques. “Also, the essential questions raised by the novel grip students and make them think and want to discuss what they have read with one another,” she says. The 1960 novel by Harper Lee happens to be Dellanno’s all-time favorite.

“The classics speak to the human condition and teach lessons about life to which all people can relate.”

—Dr. Martine Gubernat • Chair of English Department St. Joseph High School • Metuchen

The freshmen boys at St. Joe’s dive right into great literature in English I, including short stories, nonfiction, drama, novels, mythology and poetry. During a typical year, they’ll digest Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, Inherit the Wind and The Call of the Wild. This sets the stage for English II, which focuses on American literature; English III, which transports young readers across the ocean for a year of British lit.; and finally to English IV and AP classes that feature challenging selections of world literature.

According to Dr. Gubernat, classic literature is at the heart of the English curriculum all four years. “The classics,” she says, “help readers to consider the impact of events—both large and small, positive and negative—on ordinary people.” The “noble language” of the classics, she adds, serves as the basis for student analysis and evaluation of the written word.

“The written language is still king.”

—Whitney Slade • Head of School

The Rumson Country Day School • Rumson

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The 2014–15 school year will be Slade’s first at RCDS, an independent K–8 school in Monmouth County with a strong historical commitment to fostering an appreciation of literature. The nature of how great writing is delivered, he notes, is changing…and with change comes trepidation on the part of parents and educators. “With the advent of the Internet and social media there is fear—real or imagined—that students will be distracted from reading and the joys of literature,” he says.

Slade believes that it is incumbent upon teachers, parents and caregivers to foster reading whenever possible. However, it needs to be on the young person’s terms. Whether reading an online version of a novel or a well-written publication, engaging in a worthy blog, or simply making a monthly visit to the bookstore, exposure is key. The form it comes in, he insists, should be irrelevant. “Good writing is as important as ever in binding us together, sharing a common history, fostering creativity, and developing skills for an unpredictable workplace,” Slade says.

“Books can evolve with you and your understanding of them can evolve, too…that’s just one wonderful thing about my job.”

—Lou Scerra • English Department Chair Newark Academy • Livingston

At first glance, the literary spread between 6th and 12th Grades at Newark Academy seems extremely ambitious. The 6th Graders are reading A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Nothing But the Truth, a novel about a boy suspended for humming the national anthem. The seniors are tackling

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Alison Bechdel’s 2006 graphic memoir, Fun Home, Junot Diaz’s Pulitzer-winning 2008 novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Virginia Woolf’s 1925 Mrs. Dalloway, and the playwright Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia. In between, students are introduced to Harper Lee, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Walt Whitman, Toni Morrison and John Green.

Serra, who heads the school’s literature-based English Department, points out that much of the literature he assigns is driven by story and character. He meticulously selects texts that are developmentally appropriate in terms of form and content, saying, “I’d like to think we have a nice blend of traditional classics and contemporary literature that all speak to the concerns of the 21st century world. We’re always eager to add new texts into the curriculum and we also try to listen to student input.”

Serra’s personal favorite is The Great Gatsby—the subject, as it happens, of his undergraduate thesis. Interestingly, he credits his sophomores with having helped him to “see the characters, the story, and the novel itself in a new way.”

Inside the Numbers

The U.S. publishing world generated $27.01 billion in net revenue in 2013, selling 2.59 billion units according to a recent report from the Association of American Publishers and BISG (Book Industry Study Group). A large chunk of that business is attributable to YAL. In December of last year, a report on CBS News indicated YAL sales were up 24 percent since 2010, making it the fastest-growing publishing market sector. Long overlooked by the big publishers, these books have actually become popular with adults, too; the report estimated that about 80 percent of YAL buyers are over 18…and not all of them are buying for kids.

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In terms of embracing non-paper delivery methods, the news is also positive. An article in New York Magazine last year entitled “YAL by the Numbers” showed that, in 2002, fewer than 5,000 YA titles were published—of which only 143 were ebooks. By 2012, the number of titles had more than doubled over 10,000, of which 40 percent were of the ebook variety.

Good literature comes in many shapes and sizes—from traditionally leather-bound library tomes to dog-eared and page-worn paperbacks to the latest palm-held backlit digital readers. There are some among us who would never trade that special feeling that comes from physically opening a “real” book and thumbing through it page-by-page. On the other hand, the popularity of audio and ebooks, whether delivered to a Kindle, a Nook, or some other experience-enhancing device, has expanded exponentially, especially among the younger generation. Whatever or however a person prefers to read, it is the actual commitment to read that really matters. And for that we count on our educators—more heavily now than ever.

SO YOU WANT TO WRITE A YOUNG ADULT BEST-SELLER…

In a recent article in Atlantic Magazine by Nolan Feeney, “The 8 Habits of Highly Successful Young-Adult Fiction Authors,” several recognized authors shared their secrets to success. To be a winner, a YA book of fiction must be:

• Attention-grabbing…from the minute the book is opened until the last page is read.
• Age-appropriate…with someone in the book being a peer of the targeted reader.
• Relatable…to teenage experiences, even some that may be dark, but familiar.
• Meaningful…inspirational but in a realistic way.
• Believable…from an author who can think like a young teen and sound like one, too.
• Respectful…with no patronizing or “dumbing down” of information.

DIRTY DOZEN

John F. Kennedy once said that libraries should be open to everyone—“except the censors.” At one time or another, some of the great works of American Literature were included on official lists of Banned Books for public schools and libraries, including the 12 below. All, by the way, made it onto another list: the Library of Congress Books That Shaped America…

The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne (1850)

Moby Dick • Herman Melville (1851)

Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman (1855)

The Red Badge of Courage • Stephen Crane (1895)

The Call of the Wild • Jack London (1903)

The Great Gatsby • F. Scott Fitzgerald (1925)

Gone with the Wind • Margaret Mitchell (1936)

The Grapes of Wrath • John Steinbeck (1939)

For Whom the Bell Tolls • Ernest Hemingway (1940)

The Catcher in the Rye • J. D. Salinger (1951)

To Kill a Mockingbird • Harper Lee (1960)

Where the Wild Things Are • Maurice Sendak (1963)

CELEBRATING 100 YEARS

Benedictine Academy, an all-female, private, Catholic college-preparatory school for grades 9-12 in Elizabeth, celebrates its Centennial this September through April 2015. A Mass and reception on September 21 kick off a year-long calendar of celebrations, including renowned speakers and a grand finale gala. Check the Academy website (benedictineacad.org) for more information or call 908-352-0670 x 105/106. A four-time Jefferson Award-winning, 21st Century learning environment, the Academy emphasizes rigorous academics, including honors and AP courses, and offers five varsity sports—plus service outreach, clubs and extracurricular activities for every interest. Technology includes personal laptops (provided), campus-wide wi-fi, interactive SMARTBoards, and a state-of-the-art science lab. Scholarships and tuition assistance are available.

A Trinitas Family Spans Three Generations

What’s in a name? Every day, we pass by buildings and parks and other public spaces that bear the names of people we know little or nothing about. In the case of the new Thomas and Yoshiko Hackett Ambulatory Surgery Center at Trinitas Regional Medical Center, there’s more to those names than perhaps anyone knows.

The Hacketts have left behind a thriving legacy of a hardworking family which has remembered its roots. Tom Hackett was born in Elizabeth to Irish immigrants. He served in the Air Force during the Korean War, and while overseas he met his future wife, Yoshiko, in Japan. The Hacketts lived in Elizabeth for three decades, raising eight children, all of whom were born in St. Elizabeth Hospital. They moved to Roselle Park and then Clark in 2007. Tom was a letter carrier for the U.S. Post Office in Elizabeth for 35 years. He also worked many part time jobs in order to provide for his family of 10. Yoshiko worked part time for the Elizabeth Board of Education for a number of years. Tom passed away in 2010 and Yoshiko earlier this year.

During their lifetimes, Tom and Yoshiko were longtime supporters of Trinitas. Their legacy lives on since their generosity has made it possible for Trinitas to realize a vision for better health care for the community. In 2014, the family’s generosity and devotion was recognized with the opening of the Ambulatory Surgery Center bearing their names. The 9,500 square foot outpatient facility has already proven vital to the community, and has reduced the demands on the hospital’s busy main operating rooms.

As Gary S. Horan, President and Chief Executive of Trinitas, explains, “The measure of a man is often based on what he does in his lifetime and in the legacy he leaves behind. Tom and Yoshiko Hackett loved Elizabeth and never forgot the City in which they lived, worked and raised their family. They passed along that abiding love and regard for their hometown to their children who, like their parents, are committed to supporting programs and initiatives that help Trinitas meet the health care demands of the communities it serves.”

Their daughter, Eileen, is currently a member of the Trinitas family, working in the Information Technology department, and their son, Patrick, serves on the Trinitas Regional Medical Center Board of Trustees. Eileen and Patrick’s siblings—Ali, Faith, Tom, John, Michael and Mary Catherine—have also remained connected to the hospital in various ways, including annual giving to the Trinitas Health Foundation. A third generation is also involved with Trinitas as several of Tom and Yoshiko’s 19 grandchildren are donors and event volunteers.

“Our parents were hard-working and very caring, and taught all of us the importance of helping each other and supporting others in the community,” says Patrick Hackett. “We are so pleased to have the opportunity to honor them at Trinitas, an organization they had such important connections to and that meant so much to them.”

The Hackett family’s connection to Trinitas—now three generations and growing—continues to move the medical center forward. More important, it will benefit the people in Union County and beyond for generations to come. EDGE

Editor’s Note: In addition to the Ambulatory Surgery Center, Thomas and Yoshiko’s names also grace the Trinitas Emergency Services headquarters (right) in the Center for Regional Education (CORE) on Elizabeth Avenue in midtown Elizabeth. Nick Schoendorf, Communications Supervisor, (right) represents his fellow EMTs.

It’s March 1st…Do you know where your kid’s ‘camping’ this summer?

By Diane Alter

As competition for summer sleepaway camp dollars becomes more extreme, so too does the range of camp experiences. While you may not want to send your kid to Ninja Camp or Explosives Camp (yes, they do exist) a growing number of parents are picking places that push the envelope and promise to explore the limits of their child’s body and/or intellect in new and imaginative ways. Indeed, more and more parents are packing up their troubles—er—pride and joy, and sending them off to exciting, out-of-the-box summer camps. Some run for a week or two, while others go for a month or more. One interesting trend is the mix-and-match approach, where you cobble together a summer of fun from two, three or four of the shorter-duration camps.

From Culinary Camp in Vermont to Spy Camp in D.C. to Stunt Camp in California to Fiji Shark Camp, today’s camps go beyond classic fun. And unlike back in the day, when mattresses were lumpy, mosquitoes pesky and food tolerable at best, many of today’s niche camps rival the best resorts.

In these pages are some interesting options to use as a starting point. Whether you pick upscale, thrilling, educational, a little of everything or something in between, remember that long after tans fade and badges of honor are shelved, your child’s camp memories endure.

Step Right Up • Camp Winnarainbow

Situated in the picturesque foothills of Mendocino County in Northern California, this 35-year-old camp lets kids ages 7-14 learn every aspect of circus life, from stilt walking to juggling to clowning to riding a unicycle. Kids can also swing on a trapeze, walk a tightrope, learn magic and sharpen their comedic timing. Winnarainbow also features sleeping tipis (teepees) and restaurant-worthy meals. On pick-up day of every two-week session, the campers perform a final show for parents and friends.

Camp Winnarainbow • campwinnarainbow.org

+ Games • Teen Extreme Youth Camp

Teen Extreme Youth Camp in Florida is one of many places around the country that blends spiritual development (in this case, Christian) with non-stop activities. Using the Sports Center facilities on the Pensacola Christian College campus, the camp boasts one of the largest indoor rock climbing walls in the U.S., an inline skating track, indoor water park with surfing and water slides, and paintball competition. Other activities include ice skating, bowling, racquetball, basketball and swimming. Music competitions are also available, as are programs in computer science, art, drama, volleyball, nursing, pre-med, science and history. It’s open to ’tweens and teens grades 7 to 12.

Teen Extreme Youth Camp • teenextremecamp.org

Photo credit: New York Film Academy

And…Action! • Film Academy Camp

So, your kid’s the next Spielberg. Or Denzel. Or Cronkite. Whether a child aspires to a career in acting, filmmaking, musical theater, video design or broadcast journalism, this camp may well be the most intensive, hands-on and authentic in the world. Campuses include Harvard and Yale Universities, Universal Studios Hollywood, and Disney Studios in Florida, Paris, Florence, London and Australia. Camp classes inspire creativity and provide invaluable insider industry insight and experience for students ages 14 to 17. Dazzled by Hollywood guest speakers, campers also attend TV tapings and movie premieres. Bunkmates include the offspring of some of Hollywood’s biggest stars. Lodgings include college dorms and apartments situated across the street from site locations, as well as hotels.

Film Academy Camp • nyfa.edu/summer_camp/

Photo credit: iStockphoto/Thinkstock

Dig This • JurrasiCamp

Forget the plastic dinosaurs and playground sandboxes, JurrasiCamp in Florida encourages kids to get dirty in a quest to unearth genuine dinosaur bones. Campers learn about these legendary creatures and are introduced to them to paleontology—while actively working on digs. Kids even get to take home authentic fossils they excavate from specially designed dig boxes. Other activities include swimming, bowling, and field trips. Open to children aged 5-14, JurassiCamp has been in business as a day camp for 25 years in Miami, Boca Raton and Vero Beach.

JurrasiCamp • funcamps.com

Ups & Downs • Roller Coaster Camp

The only one of its kind in the U.S., this camp takes kids ages 12 to 16 all over the country to ride some of America’s most amazing scream machines. Celebrating 10 years in operation, the Woodbridge (NJ) head-quartered Thrill Coaster Tours offers five-, six- and eight-day roller coaster tours to various parts of the USA. Each day brings a different park and a different stomach-dropping experience of twists, turns, ascents and plunges on diverse roller coaster tracks. Closely supervised groups of six arrive at parks early and stay late. “We do take the kids for a nice dinner somewhere outside of the park to regroup and get them out of the sun before returning for more nightly fun,” Ira Gordon, Thrill Coaster President says. “We’re parents’ answer to a kid’s summer dream of visiting a plethora of amusement parks.” Additional activities include jet-boating, laser tag, rock climbing and more. Stays are at cushy Marriott hotels.

Roller Coaster Camp • thrillcoastertours.com

Photo credit: iStockphoto/Thinkstock

Think Global • West Coast Connection

One of the largest student travel companies in North America, West Coast Connection has been treating teens to summer travel adventures for 32 years. Programs run the gamut from traditional Teen Tours to Community Service Trips to Language Immersion Journeys to Pre-College Enrichment Adventures. North American programs include surfing in San Diego and exploring in National Parks. European programs offer Italian cooking-school lessons, skiing or snowboarding in the Swiss Alps, a gondola ride in Venice, a play at a

Photo credit: iStockphoto/Thinkstock

London theater and swimming the grottos of Capri. Australian adventures include snorkeling on the Great Barrier Reef. Programs in Israel offer the opportunity to float in the Dead Sea and a visit to the Western Wall.

West Coast Connection Student Travel • westcoastconnection.com

Photo credit: Guard Up, Inc

Dead On • Zombie Summer Camp

It’s never too early or imprudent to prepare for the zombie apocalypse, right? Campers at this Massachusetts locale prepare for such a scenario by learning survival skills, basic first aid (invaluable after a zombie scratch), solving life-threatening mysteries, defending their fragile land, foraging for supplies, navigating a maze and fighting off the walking dead using NERF-type weapons. Day camps are offered for kids ages 7 and up, while overnight zombie camps are available for kids aged 10 and over. Kids who prefer not to engage in battle can opt out, and levels of scariness vary.

Zombie Summer Camp •zombiesummercamp.com

Picking the perfect summer camp has never been easier…which is why you need to start NOW.

By Christine Gibbs

Photo credit: iStockphoto/Thinkstock

How nice it is, in a world that moves at fiber-optic speed, that some things never change. Summer sleepaway camp has been a rite of passage for countless young Americans, stretching back generations in some families. In fact, 2012 marked the 150th anniversary of worldwide camping.

There’s just one thing. Replicating the summer camp experience we enjoyed for our own children (or in some cases grandchildren) isn’t the no-brainer it used to be, especially if you want to build a young person’s mind and body. In this age of specialization, we must assume the exhausting responsibility of matching our children’s interests, likes and dislikes—and perhaps their budding talents—to the camp that offers the greatest chance to learn, to grow and to thrive. All for the pleasure of writing out a large check and then fighting back the tears as they roll away for two to ten weeks of parentally unsupervised fun.

Pick the wrong camp, and not only won’t you ever hear the end of it, your kid will probably find some clever way to work it into your eulogy. Pick the right camp, and at the end of the session your child may grant you a grunt of approval when you ask how it was.

The pressure to get into that “right” camp may not be quite as intense as getting into the right college, but given the ever-expanding choices on top of variables on top of more choices, the process may be even more daunting. That is especially true for a small group of elite camps, such as the by-invitation-only program at Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Talented Youth, which is rigorously selective based on standardized test scores. Really? Yes, really.

Camping in the 21st Century

For those families with mere mortal offspring, the first order of business is deciding between the two types of summer sleepaway camps. There are the old-school Hello, Muddah, Hello, Faddah operations, which feature time-honored and universally shared activities (from hiking and canoeing to complaining about the grub and torturing the counselors). And then there are the specialty camps, which cater to almost every conceivable skill and interest. Is your daughter interested in robotics? Is your son’s golf swing in need of a tune-up? There are several camps within a couple of hours drive that can handle that. Are you arguing with your child about which camp is the right camp? You might consider a debate camp. Really? Again, yes, really.

Photo credit: iStockphoto/Thinkstock

In days past, dating all the way back to the early 1900s, the vast majority of summer sleepaway camps were of the traditional variety: scouting-, religious- or sports-oriented. Today there is a camp for practically every special interest, not to mention many that target special needs ranging from weight loss to autism to terminal illnesses. There are language and travel camps, both domestic and international. There are camps for all of the arts—fine art, music, writing and performing.  There are science, environmental and technical camps galore. Stevens Institute in Hoboken offers its ECOES program (Exploring Career Options in Engineering and Science) and even Apple opens some of its stores to offer free fun summer programs focusing on its own brand of electronic devices.

Sports camps have become an industry unto themselves. They specialize in activities such as golf, soccer, tennis, field hockey, competitive swimming, scuba, sailing and even rock climbing. There are numerous camps whose primary focus is to fast-track budding athletes (some as young as 8 or 9) toward some future Olympics. Others aim at building the skills necessary to secure a college scholarship in sports ranging from softball to sculling. There are football camps for quarterbacks only…which begs the question, who are they throwing and handing-off to? These camps offer fun and games with a serious side; they separate the wheat from the chaff by offering an atmosphere of competition, achievement and success.

Serious, success-driven camps are hardly limited to sports. Future Stars Camp in Warminster, PA, the Superkidz Kamp in Montclair, NJ and Stagedoor Manor—a 26-year old theatrical training camp in the Catskills which counts Natalie Portman, Mandy Moore and Robert Downey, Jr. among its alumnae—are hardcore performing arts boot camps.

And yes, there are actual boot camps now. Often geared toward working with troubled teenagers, they push kids to learn teamwork and also self-reliance in a quasi-military/wilderness environment. They tend to temper their intense work schedules with more traditional recreational camp-type activities such as swimming, hiking and just plain horsing around.

Fortunately, there are plenty of summer camps at the other end of the seriousness spectrum. The Quaker-run Dark Waters Camp in Medford, NJ encourages a non-competitive philosophy with a wide array of arts, crafts and outdoor activities. Similarly, a more balanced agenda is offered at the Stokes Forest Music Camp, where the John J. Cali School of Music at Montclair State University counterbalances serious music sessions with environmental studies and recreational activities. Statistics compiled by the American Camp Association (acacamps.org), indicate that 57% of their accredited camp membership focuses on team-building and more than half provide opportunities for community service, such as area cleanups, recycling, and volunteerism at nursing homes and hospitals.

Dollars and Sense

According to industry statistics compiled by the National Camp Association, U.S. camps rake in an annual $11 billion in business.  More than 11 million American children last summer were tearfully bused or otherwise delivered by their parents to the 12,000 camps spread throughout the nation. Of these, about 60% are of the sleepover variety, two-thirds are run by non-profit organizations, and the remaining third are privately owned for-profit businesses. About one in five camps receive American Camp Association accreditation, which means they have met 300 health and safety standards.

Photo credit: iStockphoto/Thinkstock

This is worth thinking about when narrowing down your choices. Parents are often surprised to learn that, unlike pre-school, there is no government agency that monitors camp conditions and standards. And although most camps are small businesses, they employ more than 1.2 million adults in various capacities such as camp counselors, activity leaders, program directors and support services personnel, so it is something more than a cottage industry.

Not surprisingly, recent economic conditions have impacted consumer spending on summer camps. The good news is that the vast majority have been able to maintain their high standards, with some actually stepping up their games and becoming more competitive. The general consensus about the tangible and intangible benefits of the sleepaway camp experience has kept the industry going. This combination of forces has also benefitted day camps, which are less expensive and often more specialized than sleepaway camps.

Sleepover fees can vary from about $200 to upwards of$800 per week per child. Many camps offer financial assistance of one kind or another—including scholarships (aka “camperships”)—so if you need it, don’t be shy about asking what programs are available.

At the higher end of the scale are camps such as Camp Robindel for girls, located in Moultonboro, NH. At just under $11,000 for the summer, it offers yoga, horseback riding, paddle boarding, surfing, and knee boarding as well as bi-weekly themed meals that are a far cry from the unappetizing camp fare of yesteryear. For boys, a fee of$10,750 for Camp Skylemar in Naples, ME covers a five-hole golf course, eight tennis courts, and three indoor-and-outdoor basketball courts—plus all that nature has to offer. Yet even at the lower end of the scale, there are plenty of specialty sleepaway camps that will match your child’s passions and interests. Their offerings range from computers and technology to fashion and fitness, to the culinary or performing arts.

As much as we want our children to go to the best possible camp, we also want to negotiate lower fees and expenses. There are nearly $40 million in scholarships out there, but beyond these programs, you can explore other ways ways to make fees fit a leaner pocketbook, including no-interest installment payments, sibling deals, early bird sign-up discounts and playing two competing camps off each other. You’ll find some other ideas at campparents.org and camppage.com. Something that many parents are unaware of is the credit the IRS gives for summer camp costs. The Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit can cover 20% to 35% of childcare up to$3,000 for each child. In most cases, the IRS considers summer camp as an allowable form of childcare expense if it is necessary for parents to be able to continue to work through the summer.

Photo credit: iStockphoto/Thinkstock

Keeping the Campfires Burning

The folks who own and operate summer camps are seasoned professionals who take on the myriad responsibilities associated with providing the most rewarding, enjoyable and safe overall summer experience for all resident campers. Their business depends on positive word-of-mouth from parents and, of course, happy campers. With the growth of social media and web sites over the last generation, the quality-control bar has been raised to new heights. One bad review, easily Googled, can put a dent in even the best camp’s bottom line.

Sheryl Kirschenbaum, Director of Surprise Lake camp in Cold Spring, NY is a good example of hands-on camp administration. When asked about the focus of this Jewish-faith summer camp (which dates back to 1902), she thoughtfully sums it all up. “It’s about intangibles,” she explains. “We let kids be kids. We provide a safe place away from some of the daily insanity that surrounds them. Our focus is always on warm and welcoming…but no cell phones allowed!”

Can Kirschenbaum describe the perfect camper for Surprise Lake? “There is none. Camp is magical in different ways for different children. They’re all perfect in some ways or other.”

“However,” she adds, “I am always searching for the perfect counselor!”

A striking example of a successful family-run camp is Camp Jeanne d’Arc, nestled in the rolling hills of Merrick, NY. The Director, Jehanne McIntyre Edwards is the granddaughter of feminist Ruth Israel McIntyre, who began working with the Girl Scouts in her Philadelphia parish early in the 20th century and moved on to work with the Girl Guides in France during WWI. That French connection was the inspiration behind naming the camp and fulfilling her vision for young women everywhere. Edwards is a believer in the advantages of a girls-only traditional camp. “Girls tend to more easily integrate into a close community environment,” she maintains. “The older campers often become ‘big sisters’ to the younger ones, which can be very helpful in overcoming some inevitable homesickness.”

A totally flexible summer schedule offers 2- (for the younger “newbies”) to 7-week sessions for a fortunate 130 young girls from 8-16. The main focus, according to Edwards, is to foster intercultural growth through a diverse body of campers. The goal is to encourage individual skills and strengths over time to build confidence and self-worth. “We believe that small goals will lead to great success,” she says. Although the camp encourages some friendly competition, it definitely is not one of the high-intensity special-interest camps.

Vetting a Camp

The quality of a summer camp can be measured in many ways, however the one that speaks most clearly may be the percentage of campers in the oldest group who started in the youngest. A healthy population of “lifers” is a good sign. At the best of the best, those graduated campers continue to come back, as junior counselors and then as full-fledged counselors. When evaluating your choices, this is something that definitely needs to be on your checklist of questions.

What else should be on that list? Ask about the safety and security measures that are in place, and what medical resources are available in case of emergency. Ask about the food—what is the typical daily/weekly menu? Is there a nutritionist on staff, or are there at least some basic nutritional guidelines being followed? What kind of training and experience are required of the counselors and directors—are they subjected to background checks?

What is the ratio of campers to counselors? There is no “right” number, but it is a useful statistic for comparison purposes. It is also prudent to ask a camp to elaborate on its discipline policies. If you have an unruly child or if you are afraid you child might be picked on, find out how a camp handles these situations.

References are crucial. Even if you have been pointed to a particular camp by a trusted friend or neighbor, ask if you can communicate with other parents. Finally, trust your instincts and your own eyes. If the camp is within a couple of hours, you might even consider visiting while it is in session.

Always remember that you as parents are in the driver’s seat when it comes to final decision-making. You are undertaking a significant investment in your child’s overall summer experience, so don’t be shy about asking some tough questions.

Photo credit: iStockphoto/Thinkstock

WHY CAMP?

In times past, there were some parents who looked upon camp as a “dumping ground” that freed up their own summers for adult recreation. Today, parents are more involved in a rigorous camp selection process. According to the American Camp Association, the three most frequently cited reasons why parents send their children to camp are to:

• build self-confidence and self-esteem;
• provide a safe environment;
• build social skills and make friends.

Selling your plugged-in kids on summer camp.

By Diane Alter

The current crop of 6-to-16-year-olds represents the most connected generation in human history. And the most disconnected. We have social media, gaming, smart phones and the Internet to thank for that. We also have those things to thank for the fact that our kids may never fully appreciate the sounds of frogs singing, crickets chirping and cicadas humming. They will likely miss out on trekking through unknown territory (without GPS help), the smell of liberally applied bug spray and what happens when you move too suddenly in a canoe. They will be camera-ready at all times, to be sure, but by the time they want to relive their childhood summers, it’ll be too late to realize that those cameras were mostly pointing the wrong way.

Fear not. Thanks to a robust group of thriving summer camps, unplugged and idyllic times are still possible. Camps offering unspoiled days starting with quiet, dewy dawns and ending with dusk’s pale pink and bright orange skies do exist. As for the kids who prefer to tap their inner selves and take a more cerebral approach to summer, the specialty camps that cater to this market also do a good job getting them out in the fresh air (albeit occasionally against their will). Study after study shows that kids exposed to camp experiences and outdoor sports at an early age are likely to continue them for the rest of their lives. They also have better self-esteem and tend to do better in school than non-campers.

“The benefits include everything from improved mental health to brain restoration to community building,” confirms Laurel Peak, program manager and mentor at Wild Whatcom—a popular adventure camp in the Pacific Northwest.

Seeing as this is the time of year most parents finalize their plans for sleep-away summers, it’s a good idea to get a feel for the range of offerings around the United States. These 10 do an excellent job of promoting outdoor experiences. Some are thousands of miles away, while others are a relatively short drive away.

The Appalachian Mountain Club, founded in 1876, promotes the protection, enjoyment, and understanding of the mountains, forests, waters, and trails of America’s Northeast and Mid-Atlantic regions—with the goal of making kids lifelong stewards of the great outdoors. With chapters from Maine to Washington, D.C.—including groups in Boston, New York City, and Philadelphia—young people enjoy activities like hiking, paddling, cycling, and skiing. “AMC is committed to getting kids outside, enjoying the time spent outdoors and fostering a closer connection with nature through our many offerings,” says Rob Burbank. “Without question, it’s a challenge to get kids outdoors. But we offer a number of enticing programs that enable kids to interact with the outdoors and achieve a deeper connection with a great big world that’s void of cellphones and computers.”

Avid4Adventure in Boulder, CO teaches hiking, biking, climbing and paddling—building skills, grit and determination. “Kids from all over the country come for our outdoor adventures,” says Ileana Street. “Stand-up paddle boarding, rock climbing, and mountain biking are just some of our activity offerings. We make sports inviting not intimidating. It’s empowering to master a new skill and it’s a confidence-booster.” Campers stay in comfortable (but not cushy) cabins, and meal-wise, Avid4Adventure accommodates any kind of diet. Programs change every year so that repeat guests are introduced to new challenges.

Bold Earth in Golden, CO, offers teenagers an adventure-travel summer camp filled with exploration, learning and discovery. The camp focuses on small groups and promotes leadership, teamwork and excellence in a supportive environment. “We introduce kids, in a very successful way, how to be in the game instead of simply playing the game,” says Abbott Wallis. “There are no locked doors, no HBO, and it’s all super-honest. We teach kids how to connect with others. We turn the entertainment on while turning the computers off. In bringing out laughter, dancing, and singing, we make sure that when kids return home they have a big story to tell—It was incredible…I was incredible.” Since 1976, over 15,000 students from 50 states (and more than 55 countries) have attended Bold Earth. Parents and teens are actually interviewed before being accepted.

Camp Harmony in Warren, NJ has both day-camp and one-week sleep-away programs. It offers a safe and friendly environment where girls and boys can make friends, discover new passions and learn to be independent. Activities include archery, arts and crafts, computers, cooking, drama, earthlore, gaga ball (a type of pinball), hip-hop dance, karate, music, miniature golf, tennis and other sports. “Camp Harmony and its staff dedicates itself to the mission of ensuring the safety and well-being of every single child, while providing a fun, unique and creative learning experience that fosters unforgettable moments, lasting friendships, an unrivaled sense of belonging and lifelong memories,” says  Carol Amedo. The goal, adds her husband, Jerry, is to create the “ultimate summer of their lives.”

Hi-Hills Day Camp at Gill St. Bernard’s in Gladstone, NJ offers a variety of programs for children ages 3 to 15 across 10 summer weeks. Whether a family’s goal is enrichment, academics, sports, fine arts or traditional camp programs, Hi-Hill has become quite good at offering something for everyone. Traditional camp activities include instructional tennis, yoga, archery, pottery, nature, technology, swimming, and dance. Teen travel programs (for ages 13 to 15) offer a mix of day camp activities and travels to nearby attractions, plus one five-day overnight trip. Enrichment programs includes academics, athletics, creative and performing arts—all which can be combined with any of Hi-Hills day camps. “What makes Hi-Hills unique,” says Allyson Day, “is that we are one of the most flexible camps. We recognize that summer is just as busy, if not busier, than a hectic school year. With that in mind, children can attend one or more of our programs for a half-day, half-week or whatever fits into their schedule.”

International Ivy offers summer enrichments programs at 11 New Jersey locations. It was established to give kids creative, hands-on and intellectually stimulating learning experiences during the summer. International Ivy offers 50 week-long, full- and half-day classes that run the gamut from computer programming to biomedical engineering to the engineering of ice cream to golfing to chess. “Our ultimate goal is to help our students find their passion,” says Lily Wong. “Once they find it, they are self-motivated to learn and explore further. For students who opt for our indoor classes, we build in two 30-minutes breaks each day for some outdoor activity and sun.” A former head of innovation at Pfizer, Wong makes sure International Ivy’s classes always feature the latest technology. The Caldwell branch offers residential housing for international students.

Otter Bar Lodge Kayak School on the Salmon River in Northern California is a premier kayak school. Its location may be remote, but the atmosphere is intimate and friendly. “Our concept is simple: keep it small, personable and first-class,” says Peter Sturges. “While we specialize in river kayaking, we also offer a number of other outdoor activities. Some kids come as kayak newbies, while others are experienced. Many come back year after year.” There is no Internet service for the kids, adds Sturges’s wife, Kristy, and they aren’t allowed to bring any electronics. “We keep them busy from dawn to dusk, so they don’t miss their smartphones or video games,” she says. “We have found over our thirty years in operation that given the choice, kids would rather be outdoors, learning or perfecting a new sport than typing away on electronics.” She adds the kids actually enjoy the remoteness, church-like silence and absence of tech distractions.

Sandborn Western Camp in Florissant, CO has been hosting boys and girls from all over the world for six decades. The western-themed camp offers horseback riding, rock climbing, canoeing, swimming, tubing, archery, pottery and more. For many suburban campers, Sandborn is the first time that they know what it really means to be content without electronics. “We offer outdoor adventures that are appropriately challenging,” says Mike MacDonald. “We have over six thousand acres for kids to explore. They find great value and power in being outdoors.” Kids learn to become truly aware of nature’s bounty, he adds, and that awareness stretches their minds and helps them grow as people. “They’re eager to ‘climb the mountain’—whatever the mountain might be—and find out just how unique and strong they are.”

EXPLORE MORE

For more information on the camps in this section, log onto the web addresses below. Camps in (or close to) New Jersey are in bold:

Appalachian Mountain Club • outdoors.org Avid4Adventure • avid4.com

Bold Earth • boldearth.com

Camp Harmony • campharmony.com

Hi-Hills at Gill St. Bernard’s • hihills.com International Ivy • iisummer.com

Otter Bar Lodge • otterbar.com

Sandborn Western Camps • sandbornwesterncamps.com Wilderness Adventures • wildernessventures.com

Wild Whatcom • wildwhatcom.org

www.thinkstockphotos.com

Wilderness Adventures has dedicated the last 41 years to helping teens from all over the globe become responsible adults through challenging and meaningful year-round outdoor adventures—from surfing to snowboarding. With each passing year, the company finds it must focus more and more on what used to be considered the “basics” of the camp experience. “Many young people today don’t know how to communicate face-to-face,” says Mike Cottingham. “We show them how. We’ve been electronics-free from the beginning; these days it can be difficult to convince kids that escaping the comforts of home will open them up to a new world that’s far more fun than the one they leave behind. Yet we do. Our students experience beauty beyond description, and become valuable contributors to our small groups. They establish lifelong friendships and many discover who they really are for the first time in their lives.” Wilderness Adventures camps are located in Washington, Oregon, Alaska, California, Hawaii, Wyoming, Idaho, Colorado, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico and in several international destinations.

Wild Whatcom in Bellingham, WA immerses boys and girls in exploration of the Northwest’s vast forests, wild rivers, mountainous meadows, tumbling waterfalls and pebbled beaches. “We aim to help kids discover their capabilities through suitable challenges, to better understand themselves and others,” says Laurel Peak. Wild Whatcom campers hike the Cascade ridges, watch the sunset over the Pacific, sleep under a star-studded sky, and play games that promote meaningful connections and new discoveries.

Editor’s Note: After working for many years on Wall Street covering for brokers, Diane Alter started covering the markets for print and electronic media in 2009. She is a regular features contributor to EDGE and other publications and web sites. When not writing, she is likely running.

Last year, Diane Alter wrote a story for EDGE about Extreme summer camps. You can find it at edgemagonline.com in the Family section. Also in that section is a helpful How-To story by Chris Gibbs on picking the right camp for your child.

Eight incredible tales of wilderness survival.

Nothing is more terrifying than a wilderness survival situation. In one jolting moment, you are torn from safety and security and thrown into profound peril. You are alone, with little more than your wits and endurance keeping you alive. It’s the stuff of nightmares. And, of course, the stuff of movies and television. Think Tom Hanks in Cast Away. Or James Franco in 127 Hours. Or, if you’re a reality TV fan, Naked and Afraid. The theme of man- or woman-against-nature is as old as literature. 

Older, in fact…hear me out.

I believe it’s a part of our basic biology. Think about it: We all are descended from at least one individual who found himself or herself alone in the wild, possibly left for dead, and then somehow beat the odds and made it back to safety. That little speck of DNA that survived along with that person has been passed down through a dozen or a hundred or a thousand generations—to me, to you, to all of us. Which is why our curiosity is triggered and our adrenaline begins to surge when we see or hear or read about someone who defies the odds and stumbles out of an impenetrable jungle or washes up on a distant shore.

One of the most enduring survival stories in the annals of popular fiction is Robinson Crusoe, the tale of a shipwrecked traveler who spends 28 years on a relentlessly hostile island somewhere in the Caribbean. The book was first published in 1719 and was an immediate sensation. Many readers believed it to be a real-life account and wondered how they might fare in similar circumstances. This was a new genre, “realistic fiction,” and author Daniel DeFoe had clearly tapped into that primal wiring all humans share. Although the plot details of Robinson Crusoe leaped from the fertile imagination of DeFoe, the inspiration for the title character almost certainly came from the incredible tale of Alexander Selkirk, our first of eight remarkable survival stories. 

ALONE ON AN ISLAND 

Selkirk was a 20-something Scottish privateer during the War of Spanish Succession, a conflict that embroiled all of Western Europe and its colonies in the early 1700s and helped England become a world economic power. Selkirk’s impulse control left much to be desired. He actually had chosen a life at sea over showing up in court to face charges of “indecent conduct in church.” In 1704, he was serving aboard  the Cinque Ports in the Pacific, fighting French  ships and plundering Spanish mining settlements in South America. When his captain, Thomas Stradling, overloaded the leaky ship on a resupply stop in Mas a Terra, an uninhabited island off the coast of Chile, Selkirk insisted he would not sail unless much-needed repairs were made. Captain Stradling took the unruly Selkirk at his word and abandoned him on the island with a musket, hatchet, knife, cooking pot and Bible. The Cinque Ports sailed away…and soon sank. 

 Selkirk set up camp on the beach, living off lobsters and waiting for another ship to sail by. His first of many rude awakenings came during mating season for thousands of sea lions, which chased him off the beach and into the island’s interior. There he lived off wild turnips and cabbage, as well as feral goats, when he could catch them. Unfortunately, Selkirk found himself plagued by rats, which attacked him every night after the sun went down. He solved this problem by using goat milk and meat to domesticate wild cats that lived on the island. They kept the rodent population at bay. Two ships did show up, but both were Spanish. One spotted him and sent ashore a landing party to capture him. Had they been successful, Selkirk would likely have been executed. 

Four years and four months after being marooned, Selkirk was finally rescued by an English privateer and went back to his plundering ways like a man making up for lost time. Still an impetuous risk-taker, he was given command of his own ship and enjoyed several successful forays into Spanish territories. He made enough to retire comfortably in London, and his story made him something of a celebrity there, but soon Selkirk grew restless and he joined the Royal Navy, probably to avoid the long arm of the law or some other offended party. He lived an eventful life and was buried at sea after contracting yellow fever at the age of 45.  

BEAR NECESSITIES 

Another familiar story inspired by a real-life tale of survival is The Revenant, the 2015 film starring Leonardo DiCaprio. A “revenant” is someone who has been revived from death. Leo plays Hugh Glass, a frontiersman who, while serving on a westward expedition in 1823, was badly mauled by a grizzly bear in current-day South Dakota. He managed to kill  the bear before losing consciousness, but suffered what appeared to be mortal wounds. After dragging  the unresponsive Glass on a litter two days, the expedition’s leader decided he was slowing down  their progress and assigned two members of the party to stay with him until he died. While the two men waited for the inevitable, they dug a shallow grave. When the inevitable didn’t come quickly enough, they stripped Glass of his valuables and placed him in the hole they had dug. When the men caught up with  the expedition they dutifully reported the sad news of their companion’s demise.  

You probably know the story. Glass awoke sometime later to find himself alone and under the skin of the bear that had attacked him—with a broken leg and deep, festering wounds. He set his own leg and allowed maggots to feast on his dying flesh in order to prevent gangrene. He survived on berries and roots. Glass dragged himself to the Cheyenne River, made a crude raft, and floated down to Fort Kiowa—a six-week journey covering 200 miles. After recovering from his injuries, Glass set out to exact murderous revenge on the two men who left him for dead.  

Glass caught up with one of them, a teenager named Bridges, where the Bighorn River empties into the Yellowstone River. Seeing how young Bridges was, he decided to spare him. He found the second man, named Fitzgerald, in Nebraska. Fitzgerald had joined the army and was stationed at Fort Atkinson. Knowing he would be executed if he killed a U.S. soldier, Glass spared Fitzgerald, too, but warned him that he had better make the military a lifelong commitment—because the day he left the army he would end him. Glass never got the chance. He returned to frontier life and was killed during a skirmish with an Arikira war party. If you haven’t seen The Revenant, don’t worry about spoilers here; the movie is what they called a “fictionalized” version of the true story.

SNOWBOUND 

Jan Baalsrud’s story sounds like it must be fiction. A Norwegian commando fighting for the resistance against Nazi occupiers during World War II, Balsruud and 11 compatriots set out to destroy an airfield control tower in the winter of 1943. Their mission was compromised when they mistook a local shopkeeper for their resistance contact (both men had the same name) and the shopkeeper—fearing he was being tested by the Germans—turned them in. The next morning, Baalsrud’s boat, which was loaded with 100 kilos of explosives, was sunk and everyone except Baalsrud was either killed or captured. 

Baalsrud, soaking wet and missing one boot, hid in a snow gully, where he disarmed and shot a Gestapo officer with his own luger. From there, the Norwegian evaded capture for two months, surviving in frigid conditions with occasional assistance from locals. Suffering from snow blindness and frostbite, Baalsrud amputated his toes with a pocketknife to avoid gangrene. 

Baalsrud hid from German patrols behind a snow  wall for weeks and then was transported by stretcher to the Finnish border. Now near death, he was taken by a group of native Samis by reindeer to neutral Sweden. After months of recovery, Baalsrud made his way to Scotland, where he trained fellow Norwegian commandos. Eventually, he returned to Norway, where he worked as a secret agent until the end of the war. Baalsrud lived to the age of 71. At his request, his ashes were buried in the same grave with one of the partisans who had aided him during his escape from the Nazis in 1943, and paid the ultimate price.

SOUNDS BANANAS 

Staying alive in the wild often depends on one’s ability to take advantage of the local animals. Marina Chapman’s spin on this rule of wilderness survival is a jaw-dropper. Around 1960, she was abducted as a toddler and then left for dead deep in the Colombian rainforest when her kidnappers, possibly realizing that her family would be unable to afford a ransom payment, dumped her and drove away. She walked for days, hoping to find a village and crying for help that never came. What she found was a troop of capuchin monkeys, who eventually adopted her. She knew she had been accepted into the group when the monkeys urinated on her leg and, later, when they groomed her and allowed her to groom them. For as long as five years—Marina has no way to say for sure—she lived with the capuchins. During that time, she managed to decipher how they communicated and was able to produce a vocabulary of whistles, coos, chirps and high-pitched screams. She said all they (and she) thought about was what they would eat each day.  

By the time Marina was “rescued” by a pair of hunters, she had forgotten how to speak. They sold her to a brothel, where she did housework but managed to escape before being forced into prostitution. She used her “monkey skills” to survive as a street urchin in the town of Cucata before being taken in by a family in Bogota around the age of 14. She decided to name herself Marina after a Colombian beauty queen and eventually went to England as the family’s nanny. She married an Englishman and had a family of her own. 

Marina taught her children how to climb trees and liked to tell them bedtime stories about hunting for food in the jungle. Sometimes she’d walk around the yard on all fours. And she could spot a snake from hundreds of feet away. The kids thought she was just being funny until they were old enough to hear the whole story—which Marina struggled to tell because her brain still functioned in a non-linear way. Finally, they encouraged her to write a book, The Girl with No Name. Several publishers turned it down, refusing to believe it could be true. To this day, many doubt Marina’s story. True or not, it’s quite a tale.  

FALL GIRL 

A jungle survival adventure of an altogether different kind began on Christmas Eve 1971, two miles in the air, when a Lockheed Electra passenger plane was struck by lightning and broke apart, spilling its passenger into the angry sky. Seventeen-year-old Juliane Koepcke, the daughter of German parents working in Peru, was still strapped in her seat when it detached from the fuselage. Her mother, who was sitting beside her, disappeared as the entire row of seats plummeted to the earth. 

Koepcke regained consciousness and soon realized she was the only crash survivor. Experts theorize that the row of seats acted as a parachute, perhaps catching an updraft and, in addition, that the jungle canopy must have broken her fall. Even so, she suffered a broken collarbone, deep gashes in an arm and leg, and facial trauma. Koepcke pocketed some candy she found  at the crash site and then activated the wilderness  skills she learned while growing up in the Peruvian jungle with her father, a biologist, and her mother,  an ornithologist. Koepcke found a river and waded downstream in knee-deep water for 10 days before discovering a small boat. She poured gasoline over her wounds to sterilize them and then fell asleep in the vessel. She was discovered the following morning by a group of fishermen, who transported her to the nearest village. Koepcke was reunited with her father, who was stunned to see her alive. She then led the recovery team to the crash site.

Running on Empty  

Have you ever asked your iPhone “Where am I?” If it’s a geography question (as opposed to a career or relationship question) you’ll get an accurate answer that even includes a map. Thanks to GPS and online tools like Waze, getting lost is no longer the terror-inducing situation it was just a generation ago. Mauro Prosperi might be reluctant to admit it, but he really could have used one of those apps. He was competing in the 1994 Marathon of the Sands, a multi-day endurance race across Morocco’s slice of the Sahara Desert when a sandstorm separated him from the pack and left him alone and disoriented. Prosperi thought he was catching up, but he was actually running into neighboring Algeria. 

Out of water and realizing the magnitude of his error, Prosperi grew despondent and attempted to slit his wrists. However, he was so dehydrated that the blood clotted almost instantly. Then he recalled a bit of advice a Berber nomad had offered before the race: When in doubt, walk in the direction of the morning clouds. And so, he set off again. Eating lizards, bugs and cacti, Prosperi made it to a desert oasis and was rescued, 40 pounds lighter than when he had started nine days earlier. He had run, walked and crawled 300 kilometers in the wrong direction. 

In 1998, Werner Herzog made the film Wings of Hope, based on Koepcke’s remarkable story. It was a very personal project for the famed director. In 1971, he had been scouting locations in South America and was booked on Koepcke’s ill-fated flight…but missed it due to a last-minute change in his schedule.

WHALE OF A TALE 

Just because you can build a boat, it doesn’t mean you should be sailing it by yourself. Steve Callahan, a naval architect and avid sailor, designed and constructed the Napoleon Solo and sailed it across the Atlantic to England in 1981. So far so good. From the port of Penzance, at the extreme southwest tip of England, he joined a single-handed sailing race to Antigua in January 1982. Foul weather off the coast of Spain swamped many of the entries, including the Napoleon Solo, but Callahan made repairs and, though he was now out of the running, decided to complete the journey anyway. One week later, the vessel’s hull was punctured during a night storm in a collision with a whale. Callahan had time to collect a few items, including the book Sea Survival, by Dougal Robertson.  He climbed into a six-person life raft and watched his foundering ship drift away.   

Callahan’s first move was to activate the raft’s E-PIRB (Electronic Position Indicating Radio Beacon). In 2021, this would lead to a quick rescue. But in 1982, satellites did not monitor E-PIRB signals, and the raft was in the “fat” part of the Atlantic that commercial airliners did not use, so no one else was close enough to detect the E-PIRB. As days turned into weeks, Callahan put Robertson’s words into action. He noticed that a kind of ecosystem developed around his raft and was able to spear or hook a variety of fish. He also created a sun still and other improvised devices that produced a pint of water a day. Callahan fended off sharks, repaired punctures, lost a third of his bodyweight and endured painful saltwater sores for 76 days before drifting to the coast of Guadeloupe. 

After his ordeal, Callahan became a regular contributor to sailing magazines and also designed a lifeboat based on his survival experience. Callahan also wrote the novels Adrift and Capsized. During the making of the 2012 film Life of Pi, director Ang Lee hired Callahan as a consultant to make life aboard a drifting lifeboat more realistic. Callahan fashioned the various fishing lures and other tools that were used by Suraj Sharma throughout the movie.  

A FISHY STORY 

Callahan called the open ocean the world’s great wilderness. He gets no argument from Jose Alvarenga. An experienced Pacific fisherman, he set out from Costa Azul in Mexico on November 17, 2012 in a 23-foot fiberglass skiff with a big icebox and single outboard motor. His usual fishing partner was unavailable, so he took on a young, inexperienced assistant named Ezequiel Cordoba, whom he had never met before. The two men brought in 1,000 pounds of fish the first day, but a sudden storm prevented them from returning to port. For five straight days, the storm blew them ever deeper into the ocean, destroying the boat’s motor and electronics, and causing them to lose all of their fishing equipment. They had to dump their heavy catch when the vessel became impossible to maneuver. 

Fortunately, Alvarenga had managed to transmit a distress signal to the boat’s owner before going radio silent. Unfortunately, the ensuing search effort turned up nothing and was called off after two days. Alvarenga and Cordoba survived by catching fish and seabirds with their hands. After four months with no sign of rescue, apparently Cordoba gave up. He refused to eat and, after securing a promise from Alvarenga not to eat him, he slipped away and Alvarenga dumped his body over the side. Over the next nine-plus months, Alvarenga spotted several container ships in the distance but was unable to attract their attention. On January 30, 2014, he saw a speck of land on the horizon—it was a remote corner of the Marshall Islands, more than 5,500 miles from where he had started. When Alvarenga drifted close enough, he leaped out of the boat and swam to shore. Two locals encountered him on the beach naked and waving a knife, barely able to stand and screaming in Spanish.  

At first, no one believed Alvarenga’s story. It seemed implausible that he could have survived 14 months on the open sea; no one had ever survived more than a year under those conditions. Scurvy should have killed him, or so the thinking went. However, the vitamin C he got from the birds and turtles he ate probably saved him. Various ocean scientists studied Alvarenga’s claims and looked at the meandering mid-Pacific currents. They not only determined that such a trip was plausible, but that he was fortunate to have made it as quickly as he did. Alvarenga later passed a polygraph test, ending any lingering doubts. You may recall seeing Alvarenga on television. For a few news cycles back in those innocent days of 2014, he was the lead story. Later, Alvarenga gave a series of interviews to investigative journalist Jonathan Franklin, who published 438 Days: An Extraordinary True Story of Survival at Sea. Finally, and perhaps predictably, Ezekiel Cordoba’s family then sued him for cannibalism.  

There are really important lessons to be learned from each of these remarkable tales of survival. If you’d like to know what they are, ask someone else. Or pick up a copy of Field & Stream or Soldier of Fortune. Not being an outdoorsman myself, I have no idea what they are—with the obvious exception of “If you’re thinking about doing something risky beyond the reach of civilization…don’t.” 

Did You Know??

Survival stories generate important information about how humans do without food and water. An individual in good health can last a week without food and water before vital organs completely shut down, assuming physical activity is kept to a minimum. Without food, the body needs about 1.5 liters of water (plus a teaspoon of salt) a day to maintain fluid levels. Unfortunately, we know this from hunger strikes. 

My stronger, more adventurous camping cousin, who had to get himself to a hospital following a surprisingly serious fly-fishing injury, would no doubt correct me. He’d say, “Aw, go ahead and do it…just do it with someone else.”  

That’s fine, I guess, as long as that someone else isn’t me.

There’s a hidden gem waiting to be discovered by your college-bound teen

Photo by Mark Olencki

One of my most important tasks as an independent educational consultant is the development of a list of colleges appropriate to each student who walks into my office. I must consider the qualifications of a student—grades, the rigor of high school classes, test scores, activities, unique gifts and attributes as a candidate, and so on. I also think about the student’s preferences in colleges—big or small, East or West or North or South, highly pressurized or more laid back, religious or not. A consultant has to be sensitive to other factors, such as cost or special services. In the end, people in my profession seek that sometimes-elusive, but always crucial, love match.

Some list builders look to familiar, name-recognition colleges and universities. In some cases, this is done to the detriment of schools that—while not enjoying mainstream popularity—truly provide a transformative learning environment. There is no set list of these hidden gems; that depends on a combination of a student’s profile and a consultant’s knowledge of colleges. Making that list and checking it twice, well, even for a professional, it’s a labor-intensive process.

Let’s look at a hypothetical student, and how I go about creating a short list of hidden-gem schools. Your own college-bound teen may share many of these qualities or just a few. The important thing is to gain insight into the factors that contribute to a solid group of possibilities—so keep your eyes and minds open! I would like to credit my colleague, Dr. Steve Antonoff, for the case study summarized below—a junior whom we’ll call Emma—which we utilize in our UC Irvine online class, Principles of Educational Consulting:

Emma works hard for her grades at a moderately competitive public high school in a suburb of a large metropolitan city. She’s an interesting person. She has studied Chinese on her own, likes drafting, is into martial arts, and enjoys outdoor life. She clearly prefers cooperation to competition. She’s a low-key, introspective type. Emma wants to find the right match and wants something off the beaten path. Emma wants a small-to-medium-sized school. She prefers personal interaction between student and teacher. Very self-aware, she knows that she needs to be involved to be interested.

Emma’s activities include Cross-Country—all 4 years of high school—Track, Key Club, Stagecraft (about two shows per year), Theatre Company Club, Student Council officer in senior year, NHS, Aikido, African Drumming, Film Production (and viewing), and Snowboarding.

Emma likes arts and is considering a career in architecture or engineering, but wants a broad liberal arts education as an undergraduate. She seeks a balance between academic and social life and a school that’s not cutthroat. She does not want Greek life or for the college culture to be spectator-sports focused. Emma expects the people at her college to be creative, energetic (yet laid-back), scholarly, and supportive.

Emma has said, “The fit of the college is more important than the name/prestige. In fact, the prestige of the college means nothing to me.” She also wants to avoid schools with set cliques and social groups. Ideally, she would like to be close to mountains and/or an ocean. Access to a major city would be nice. She does not want abysmal weather. Her GPA is a 3.8 (approximate unweighted), her class rank is 38/475 and on her first ACT, she scored a 29. By her senior year, she’ll have several AP classes and most of her high school transcript contains accelerated courses. She has written her essay on her interest in Chinese language and culture.

Wow. Where do you start? There are approximately 4,000 four-year undergraduate colleges in the U.S., so the choices are abundant. In Emma’s case, I have left geography open; most students I see in my office do have geographic limitations—placed on them by themselves or parents—as to how far they may travel to attend college. Some (and in many years, most) have financial restrictions, as well. For our purposes, however, we’ll set cost aside. Here are five under-the-radar/ahead-of-the-curve schools that I believe would be a nice fit:

Photo by Keith Walters

SUNY Geneseo • New York 5

A little gem hidden in the Finger Lakes region of western

New York state, SUNY Geneseo is still not on many applicants’ radar. At a mere $10,000 per year for out-of-state students, Emma’s parents will be rubbing their eyes in disbelief. Complete with a quaint Main Street walkable from campus, SUNY Geneseo boasts a reputation as the “honors college” of the SUNY system (without the zero-sum game of most selective institutions). Leadership and a small, liberal-arts size and feel—with access to the great outdoors—makes this a very nice find for Emma.

Photo by Mark Olencki

Wofford College • South Carolina 5

Wofford is the little darling of many Southern in-the-know families, but doesn’t seem to hold the same reputation in the North…yet. A small community of 1,500 undergraduates may be the reason. Up North, we drive by a dozen liberal arts colleges during our morning commute alone, but in South Carolina, Wofford resembles a Northern liberal arts college. Southerners seem to like the slightly conservative feel of the campus, the lack of cliques, and the location of Spartanburg, an up-and-coming growing community amongst young professionals. There is much to do and see, and with access to major airports—and other recognizable universities in close proximity—Emma should at least attend an information session to see if she can envision herself here for four years. Don’t expect a bargain price-wise, as is the case with some other Southern institutions. A solid $50,000 all-told is what you’ll pay per year for this excellent education.

Lewis & Clark College • Oregon

Lewis and Clark in Portland is right up Emma’s alley. While the average class size is 19, there are also several noted graduate-school programs that add to the academic mix. L&C self-identifies as seeking “independently minded scholars who thrive with a challenge.” This fits Emma’s personality and desire to be fully engaged in her learning. In these times of great uncertainty with college admissions, a student applying from another geographic location entirely could be an attractive attribute for a school that is more regionally recognized in the Northwest.

Photo by Tom England

Oxford College • Georgia 4

Oxford ranks as a hidden gem for a very hot reason: if admitted, the 950 students get to join Emory University in Atlanta as juniors, or remain on the Oxford campus (25 miles from Emory) for the remainder of their undergraduate studies. Small liberal arts—with a big university awaiting should a student choose—offers something unique in the college landscape. Emma would thrive in the small Oxford environment initially and be able to opt for something bigger should she desire more diversity or intellectual stimulation as her major and career aspirations develop. Drive due North from Atlanta and in two hours, Emma could be hiking the Appalachian trail or whitewater rafting in Rabun Gap, an outdoor enthusiast’s wonderland.

Georgian Court University • New Jersey 5

Here’s something new for the college-savvy prospective student: GCU just went coeducational last fall, previously remaining all-female since its founding in 1908. The historic campus was formerly owned by the late George Jay Gould, whose father, a rail road entrepreneur, was once the ninth richest man in America! Complete with a Japanese garden, a “real” tennis court (there are less than a dozen of these historic courts in the world!) and an arboretum, this gorgeous campus is enjoyed by approximately 1600 undergraduates and under 1000 graduate students. A Catholic college in the Mercy tradition ensures a quality education that differentiates itself with intentional values-infused courses taught by extremely dedicated faculty. Minutes from the beach, Emma will enjoy weekends at the Jersey Shore.  EDGE

Editor’s Note: Erin Avery founded Avery Educational Resources (@averyeducation) in 2003. She is a Certified Educational Planner who specializes in college and boarding school admissions. Avery holds degrees from the Peddie School, Boston College, Oxford University, Yale University and is currently completing a doctorate at Drew University in Madison. She notes that New Jersey is practically bursting with hidden gems, but in the spirit of variety, only one was included in this story. In addition to the in-state school mentioned, the author also identified Drew University, Bloomfield College, Felician College, Saint Peter’s University and the New Jersey Institute of Technology as potentially intriguing fits.

HOT FUN IN  THE SUMMER TIME

Many families ask if campus visits are a waste of time if done during the summer. With the increase in student commitments, both athletic and extra-curricular—combined with the desire not to miss school days and risk falling behind—school breaks simply do not allow for enough time to conduct comprehensive campus visits. Seeing campuses while students are present is preferred, however summer time should also be used to explore. If it is truly a good match, following up with college social media connections and admission representatives can help to clarify any questions about student culture and fit.

Unusual pets demand something more than the usual commitment.

Americans love their pets. Pet ownership in the United States has more than tripled since the 1970s—when approximately 67 million households had pets—to 2012, when that figure climbed to 164 million, according to The Humane Society of the United States. Cats remain the most popular pet in the U.S., with Americans owning more than 86 million felines. The number of pet dogs totals more than 78 million. What about the more unusual critters—exotic birds, tropical fish, rabbits, ferrets, and reptiles? We may not hear about them as much or see them featured in pet food commercials, but they have just as devoted a following as our beloved cats and dogs.    

If you’re thinking about owning an exotic pet, you need to do your homework. Speak with someone who owns one, or a veterinarian who treats exotic animals. Whether it’s a parrot, a lizard, a rabbit, or a rat, each of them has its quirks and special needs. 

It is also important to know state law. In New Jersey, it is unlawful for persons to possess a potentially dangerous species as a pet. Potentially dangerous species include the following orders: Primates; Carnivora (nondomestic dogs and cats, bears); Saura (venomous gila monsters); Serpentes (venomous coral snakes, cobras, vipers, pit vipers); Crocodilia (alligators, crocodiles, gavials); Psittaciformes (ring-necked and monk parakeets); and Rodentia (prairie dogs, ground squirrels). The law makes an exception for zoos and other exhibitors. They may possess these animals upon showing that specific criteria have been met, such as extensive experience in handling and caring for the animal.

“The best advice I can give anyone seeking to own an exotic pet is to research that pet extensively,” says Dr. Abe Van Beveren, a veterinarian who specializes in exotic pet medicine and surgery at Eagle Rock Veterinary Hospital in West Orange. “Are you able to provide the proper environment for your pet? Is it a social animal, such as a ferret, or more solitary, such as a skunk? Are you aware of the time commitment involved?”

People who fail to educate themselves, he adds, are often surprised and annoyed at pet behaviors that are common to a particular species. “Someone will come in and say, ‘My bird is very loud and it’s annoying when I am trying to talk on the phone.’ Well, you bought a macaw, a bird whose call can be heard for miles in the wild. You really need to research a particular pet’s habits to see if they are a good fit for you and your family.”

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

Exotic pet owners should also be aware that the care and feeding of their pets can be costly. Many vets will charge higher fees for exotics. And, many exotics are prone to specific diseases, such as ferrets, which are predisposed to a variety of cancers, the treatment for which can be expensive.

Max Leichman of Montclair worked at an aquarium store called Absolutely Fish when he first became interested in tropical fish and reptiles. He keeps several exotic fish, including dwarf puffers, a rainbow shark, a large corydoras catfish, buffalo heads, and a spiny peacock eel. “The most important thing is to keep the tanks clean,” he says. “I clean the tanks once a month and the filter three weeks after cleaning the tank. I feed my fish twice a day which actually causes them to grow a little more quickly.”

Photo credit: New York Film Academy

Exotic fish are prized for their exquisite beauty and can provide hours of enjoyment, but pet owners need to learn about the proper aquariums, the right kind of food for different types of fish, which fish can co-exist with one another and which cannot, and the types of plants to buy to help control the nitrogen cycle, where toxic compounds are released into the water by waste products produced by the fish. Your $1,000 reef tank could turn into the Arthur Kill if you take your eye off the ball. 

Reptiles and amphibians are other popular pet choices but, as with tropical fish, they are not low-maintenance. “Bearded dragons [pogonas] are a best choice for your first-time owner,” Leichman believes. “You do need to stay on top of cleaning their enclosure, misting them at least twice or three times a day to make sure they stay hydrated, have enough food, and that they are eating. You also need to have a heat lamp that stays on around the clock and a light that you leave on during the day for them to bask in.”

Each type of reptile or amphibian has its own particular set of needs when it comes to living space, air temperature, and food. Whiptail lizards, for example, are very active and can cover a lot of space. The larger ones require a 75-gallon aquarium. They also need a basking area in their tank that reaches 110 to 115 degrees Fahrenheit. And, since they’re diurnal (active during the day), it needs full spectrum UVB lighting for 10 to 12 hours each day.

Photo credit: iStockphoto/Thinkstock

WINGING IT

If you are planning to own exotic birds as pets, it pays to have the patience of Saint Francis. Cheryl Silva, a graphic designer who grew up in East Brunswick, has several exotic birds: five parrots—including a lovebird, two cockatiels, a Goffin’s cockatoo and a military macaw—along with two doves.

Many people, she points out, are unaware that parrots need a lot more attention than a cat or a dog. “They need time out of their cages, but you need to parrot-proof your home since they can get into things,” says Silva. “They are intelligent creatures that need stimulation and challenging toys when kept in their enclosures.” 

If they are not provided with these things, she adds, they can mutilate themselves or destroy things in your home. Silva advises anyone who is thinking of getting a parrot to read up on them and start with a small one first, such as parakeet or cockatiel. Apartment dwellers should also check their leases to see if there is a pet clause that prohibits noisy birds.

Dan Radzik, a realtor from Metuchen, deals with rare bird rescue. He became interested in parrots when he found his first neglected bird, a timneh, while he was listing a house for sale. He currently has around 35 parrots in his rescue, Lonely Grey Rescue, including a calico macaw, a Solomon Island eclectus, a Congo African grey, a yellow-naped Amazon, a white-bellied caique, a Fischer’s lovebird, and two Moluccan cockatoos. “Everything about owning a parrot is challenging, from learning to read their body language so you don’t get bitten, to getting to know thier likes and dislikes, to maintaining them on a healthy—and often expensive—diet,” he says. “You also need to have the proper lighting system, make sure that your bird receives all of the nutrients and vitamins he needs, continuously replace toys or involve him in activities to keep him stimulated.”

FERRETS & RATS

Tamara von Ouhl-Kremer, a teacher from Red Bank, has been operating a ferret rescue for about 30 years. She currently has 15 ferrets in her rescue, Concerned Ferret Owners. While ferrets can make great pets, she underscores that they are not for everyone. “Ferrets are very social, active animals,” she explains. “Most young ones can play rough, as their skin is tough, but they have to learn that their owner’s skin is not as resilient. They can be rambunctious and get into mischief, opening cabinets, stealing items, and climbing up onto things, but not being able to get down.” 

Photo credit: iStockphoto/Thinkstock

They also require a special high-protein diet and their veterinary bills can be expensive, she says, adding that outside play is not recommended for ferrets as they do not like wearing a leash or collar and there is always the possibility of them running off and being attacked by predators. 

Mention rats to most people and they will turn up their noses. But they, too, have their fans. Destiny C. Sweet of Phillipsburg thinks they make great pets as they are affectionate and social animals. She currently owns an albino rat, the kind used in many research laboratories, named Clyde and a tan hooded rat called Arthur. She keeps the two separate because of Arthur’s aggressive behavior towards Clyde. Caring for rats, according to Sweet, involves frequent cage and food bowl cleaning. “Lice are also very common in pet rats and they can be difficult to eliminate,” she says. “The best suggestion is to bleach the cage and everything in it and also use a special shampoo to bathe the rats.”

Along with special pellets and lean meats, rats love fruits and vegetables, pasta (including raw pasta), and crackers. Sweet also recommends that you provide them with something to chew on, such as cardboard. “It’s not good to let their teeth grow too long,” she says. “They need to chew to keep their teeth filed.” Rats are prone to an upper respiratory infection called mycoplasma respiratory disease, Sweet adds. Mycoplasma is an organism that rats (and other rodents) are born with that can become activated by stress or environmental factors. It can be controlled with medication, however. Rats kept in cages with wire flooring can also be prone to bumble foot, a bacterial infection caused by an inflammatory reaction on the feet. For this reason, wire flooring is not recommended. 

RABBIT ERAS

Jen Holsman of Belleville, a digital image coordinator, has had a fondness for rabbits ever since she was a child. She is the proud owner of Pumpkin Spice, an English Spot rabbit, who “loves playing in her homemade tunnels, romping around the playfully nudging, digging, and doing crazy bunny ‘binkies.’” Binkies refers to the bunny jumping into the air and twisting its head and body in opposite directions before falling back to the ground. It indicates that the rabbit is happy and feeling secure.

Holsman says the single most important thing to know about rabbits is that they are a 10-plus-year commitment and are social creatures. “They need attention and socialization,” she says. “They are also domestic and therefore cannot survive in the wild. Releasing them would be a certain death sentence.” 

Photo credit: iStockphoto/Thinkstock

Rabbits need indoor shelter to survive, preferably an exercise pen where they can run, Holsman adds. The good news is that most rabbits, like cats, can be litter-trained. “Interaction is not only important for them emotionally, but the more time you spend with your bunnies, the better you know their behavioral tendencies, making it easier to identify any potential health problems or variations from the norm.” 

These animals have extremely sensitive digestive systems and are prone to gastrointestinal stasis, which is essentially a stoppage in their intestinal function. “If your rabbit refuses to eat, drink, or relieve itself, get it to a vet immediately,” she warns. “A few short hours can be the difference between life and death.”

Editor’s Note: A good starting point for information on exotic pets are the various clubs, web sites and social media pages devoted to them, such as NJ Ferret Rescue & Sanctuary, Turtles and Tortoises, Reptilecare, Birdchannel and Fishlore. 

Score One for Sports… Literally

By Steve Urena

Offer kids an opportunity to attend a writing camp, and you’re likely to be greeted with blank stares. Offer those same kids a chance to write about sports and it’s a whole new ballgame. That’s the concept behind Write On Sports, the brainchild of veteran sportswriter and editor Byron Yake, who opened the afterschool program and summer camp in 2005. Since then, hundreds of aspiring scribes have pursued their passion, while honing skills that will serve them for a lifetime.

Yake, who worked for the Associated Press for two decades, wanted to give back to the journalism community by passing down his knowledge to the next generation of sports journalists. The Write On Sports director designed his program so that children could strengthen their communication and literacy skills by using sportswriting as a learning tool. The high-interest subject matter keeps them motivated, as does the 4:1 student-to-instructor ratio.

Write On Sports has focused primarily on middle- schoolers in order to prepare them for high school and beyond. One of its success stories, Kevin Lopez, parlayed his success in the program to become class valedictorian at Newark Technology High School for 2012, and now attends Princeton University. Lopez credits his own personal successes to being a three-time participant in the Write On Sports program.

“Write on Sports helped me, overall, in school,” he says. “My self-expression skills have improved and a blank piece of paper is no longer a fear. Before, I used to think writing was something they made us do. Now it’s something I like to do.”

Among the high points of the program are the visits from working sportswriters, including writers from The Daily Record, The Star-Ledger, Sports Illustrated, ESPN The Magazine and several TV and radio stations. During Super Bowl week this year, NFL writer Peter King took four young writers out to lunch to talk shop. Another popular feature of Write On Sports is attending and writing about live games, as well as interviews with players and coaches. The curriculum has expanded to touch on sports blogging and also video journalism, with the kids getting to work with microphones and video editing equipment.

“Seeing children who are not very confident about their writing transform at the end of the program with a new sense of confidence is the most rewarding part of this job,” explains lead instructor Andy Beutel. “This is their summer vacation. They are choosing to do this and are enjoying themselves when writing. I don’t think schools give children the opportunity to do that very often, so Write On Sports definitely gives kids that chance to have fun while learning.”

Editor’s Note: Steve Urena began writing about a wide range of sports as a teenager, and is currently working for World Wrestling Entertainment. For more information about Write On Sports camps and after-school programs, log onto writeonsports.com. At right, former Tampa Bay Bucs linebacker Al Singleton shows off his Super Bowl ring during a visit with an aspiring sportswriter.

New Jersey’s local flavor is available all winter long.

To many travelers speeding at 80 mph on I-95, New Jersey seems largely industrial, but it still, as it’s license plates claim, is “The Garden State”. For a century or two, New Jersey was a stretch of rich farmland, the green grocer to surrounding metropolitan areas—New York to the north and Philadelphia to the southwest. At the 1876 Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia, Abraham Browning, the former attorney general of New Jersey and owner of Cherry Hill Farm, referred to the state as an open-ended cornucopia filled with delicious foods with New Yorkers eating out of one end and Philadelphians eating out of the other. While Cherry Hill is now mostly developed, the state still grows a cornucopia of fruits and vegetables.

Over the years, the industrial and the garden elements of New Jersey have fused together in the food industry as some of the country’s largest food companies—Progresso, Campbell’s Soup, Seabrook Farms—manufacture in the state.

In summer months, everyone becomes a locavore with grocery stores and farmers’ markets offering a bounty of fresh, local produce. The fresh-picked tomatoes, peaches and corn all taste sweeter than any other time of the year. According to Bob Sickles, owner of Sickles Market in Little Silver, “local” has replaced “organic” as the foodie buzzword of the moment.

www.istockphoto.com

Just Peachy

In early summer, the harvest of ripe peaches in New Jersey brings homemade peach ice cream, peach pies and cobblers to many Garden State tables. If you didn’t get around to jarring your sweet peaches or making peach preserves, Circle M Farms bottles the sweet fruit flavor in the liquid form of a delicious peach cider that my son loves year round.

ToMAYto, ToMAHto

With the growing season is over and if you haven’t canned your own tomatoes, how can you recreate the tastes of summer in New Jersey? To make your own sauce any time of the year, Memet Wildirim, general manager of Ashley Market-place in West Orange, says Jersey Fresh Canned Tomatoes is a good product and sells well.

Standing among baskets of a variety of field grown tomatoes, ranging from Roma to Heirloom at Sickles Market, I asked Bob Sickles, what does New Jersey offer best, food-wise, year-round? “Tomato sauces rule!” he proclaims.

Some enterprising epicureans have bottled the fresh flavors of Garden State tomatoes. For instance, Market Basket, in Franklin Lakes, jars their own tomato sauce in large batches and sells it year-round. According to the store general manager, Dave Hamersmith, they also sell other premium quality New Jersey tomato sauces, such as Jersey Gravy.

Bob Sickles explains that the local products excel over the mass-produced sauces. “While a larger production will process all the tomatoes, whether they are ripe or still green, and get a good sauce which has a higher acid flavor, the producers of the local sauces use hand-picked tomatoes and make sure they all are ripe.  This creates a sweeter sauce, which is more work intensive and therefore has to be a bit more expensive. But it’s worth it.”

Not going on Bob’s word alone, we conducted a non-scientific tomato sauce taste test engaging four individuals with limited “foodie” credentials. In the mix were four New Jersey tomato sauces with slightly differing prices that can be purchased around the state—Nanina’s (25 cents per ounce) from Belleville, Manno’s (30 cents per ounce) from Bradley Beach, Jersey Italian Gravy (40 cents per ounce) from Ridgewood and Jar Goods (50 cents per ounce) from Hoboken—as well a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon and a loaf of fresh ciabatta bread for dipping into the sauces.

According to our tasting panel, all the sauces were winners, yet different. The least expensive, Nanina’s, provides a very good, all-purpose kitchen staple. One taster’s favorite, Manno’s marinara, was particularly gutsy with herb and garlic flavors punching out on our palates. This sauce would be good with seafood. Delicious Jersey Gravy was thicker and sweet. And the rich, full-bodied Jar Goods was the densest sauce, almost like a paste, offering a fruity, sweet flavor.

Ramen Romance

When one thinks of fresh ramen noodles, the words “New Jersey” don’t come immediately to mind. Many of us would rather go ramen-less than to try to digest the curly dried noodles that look like a bad hair perm, reconstituted by water added to its chemical-based broth. Sun Noodles offers a totally different ramen experience. A few years ago Sun Noodle Brand, a producer of ramen for 30 years in Hawaii, opened a factory in Teterboro. Sun Noodles purveys its products to many Ramen shops in New York and now offers fresh ramen kits—with or without delicious, if sodium-saturated, broths—in a number of local Whole Foods and Asian markets. Yes, the dried version in your grocery store costs less than a dollar, but for fewer than five dollars, I bought the real deal at Whole Foods, garnished it with shrimp, bok choy and scallions and fed three healthy eaters. It may not be as divine as the steaming pork bone broth at Ippudo ramen shop in NYC, but it’s still delicious.

New Jersey is a food-lover’s paradise offering so many wonderful local products. For instance, there are a variety of barbeque sauces—Hoboken Eddies, Grandpa Baldy’s from Freehold, and Outer Limits hot sauces from Bayonne. Mazi Piri Piri sauce from Bradley Beach, First Field New Jersey Tomato Ketchup and Fourth Creek relishes from Rumson stand out. Enjoy the seasonal nectar of local bees’ labors with honeys, which are helpful to allergies as well as being anti-bacterial. There are many more gourmet cheeses, locally made sausages and hot dogs, and snack food. As the old advertisement goes, “Try it, you’ll like it!”

Editor’s Note: Sarah Rossbach has written for the New York Times, the Washington Post, House & Garden, and Harper’s Bazaar. When she’s not moonlighting as a feature writer for EDGE, Sarah stays busy as a feng shui consultant to designers and corporate and private clients in New York City. Vogue said of Sarah that “she is probably the American most responsible for introducing feng shui to the West.”

One family’s pandemic response.

My kids, a boy and a girl, are grown and  I thought I was way beyond having another child.  Yet in the midst of the  first outbreak of the COVID-19 virus, on March 15th, we welcomed another daughter to our family. It was not an ominous, painful Caesarian delivery to beware of on the Ides of March, but the fortuitous and joyful arrival of our third child, Cindy. Really, I’m so over diapers and bottles, and, happily, so is Cindy—after all, she was delivered to our home at a full-grown mature-ish 26 years old.   

Cindy’s arrival was unexpected. As the pandemic raged in New York City, our daughter Charlotte had debated for over a week whether to leave her apartment in Astoria, Queens. On a whim, she sent out a blanket invitation to her New York-based friends asking if anyone wanted to shelter in place at our house in  New Jersey. Cindy, a former college classmate living  in Brooklyn, with 24 hours’ notice, filled a book bag  with clothes, grabbed her laptop and joined Charlotte on a turbulent ferry ride from Pier 17 to New Jersey and settled in our once empty nest. 

My husband and I didn’t properly welcome them, because we were “vacationing” for two weeks in Florida when the virus hit. Restful and relaxing, it was not. As Vero Beach restaurants closed like dominos, our stress level rose. We cancelled our plane reservations, packed up our shorts, swimsuits and sandals and headed north in our rental car five days earlier than expected. We spent two nights with relatives near Charleston and then stayed another night in Richmond at the huge, cavernous Jefferson Hotel, where we well may have been the only paying guests and certainly were outnumbered by the staff. For two weeks after we finally arrived home, our kids and Cindy social distanced from us—nothing new about that, only now they had a good excuse. 

I was curious how we, as a family that once lived separately, would acclimatize to being two generations of adults, no less with an additional Millennial in the mix. 

Cindy was ensconced in the guest bedroom and it was a huge relief that we could tell from the beginning that she easily was more like a family member than a guest. We carted up a small wooden table that served as her telecommuting desk and made sure she knew she was welcome to stay through the months ahead. Our main concern was for everyone to be healthy and safe.   

An extra person in one’s home could spell disharmony, stress and strife. To her credit, Cindy fit in seamlessly: a friend, confidant and walking partner to our daughter; the only one who could discuss Dungeons & Dragons and video games knowledgeably with our son; and a little buddy to me as we shared similar sensibilities and sense of humor.   

Cindy was socially astute as she quickly read my husband’s amusing, if naughty, trickery, cleverly dodging questions that really were ways to ensnare the unwary.  When his eyes narrowed in mock earnestness and he queried, “Who’s the most chill person in the family?” or “Who is or was the most badass person at the table?” or “Who is the shining star of the family?”, she would foil his ploy and answer with: “It’s a trap, right?” It’s not easy to fit into quirky humor, but Cindy did and even added her own brand to the mix. 

So that’s how we became a family of five, all with our own careers, habits and social groups. Every day, we met for early breakfast, and then we disappeared into our separate Zoom realms within our own bedroom cyber-offices where we dealt with educational funding, Garden Club challenges, asset management and cultural exchanges. (As well as the occasional dog-walking gig thrown into the mix.)  

My husband and I are not newcomers to taking in friends in need. In fact, after Super Storm Sandy, we invited a family of five—three boys aged one to six and their parents—whose home had been flooded and was uninhabitable for two months.  We and they had a blast together living like a cross-generational dorm. 

Our new family of five established a routine as the coronavirus lockdown wore on. Wednesday, for example, was family game night, where Cindy taught us—sort of—the finer points of poker and video dancing and our son set up amusing online group games. Our leisure pastimes became a cross-section of cyber activities  and capers. Saturday was Zoom craft night for the girls and Zoom cocktails for us. And every non-working moment, our son was gaming virtually with former college friends.  Saturday morning, Sunday and Tuesday nights, Cindy was telelearning French, Chinese and Japanese, respectively.   

Most importantly, Sunday was clean-your-bathroom day.  

Efforts to create positive experiences spilled over to internet activities. Charlotte’s co-workers hosted an international Zoom Karaoke night that engaged Cindy and me—although I am challenged tonally and ignorant of the hits of the last 20 years. And then there were countless girls’ movie nights watching a cache of chick-flicks through the ages from The Women to the latest release of Little Women and My Man Godfrey. Who could tire of a diet of binge-watching comforting Jane Austin films and their offshoots like Clueless for Emma and Bridget Jones’ Diary for Pride and Prejudice?  Thank goodness for WIFI and our unlimited usage plan

I recognize that it’s not easy to move into a family with a quarter-century of established traditions, habits and idiosyncrasies. Yet Cindy adapted to all, incorporating routines and rites, adopting family traditions and adeptly demonstrating that she too shared in (or at least accepted) many of our quirks. She further endeared herself by embracing our interests

My home activities tend to revolve around writing, cooking and gardening, as well as Garden Club. Our garden, the culmination of 26 years of planting, dividing, pruning and propagating, was particularly well-tended during Cindy’s months here thanks to our son being furloughed for a couple of months, and our hiring him to weed, mulch and plant. It became a subject of fascination for Cindy. While the pandemic has been frightful and constricting, the delayed Spring brought unexpected joys in the garden. It made me happy that Cindy seemed impressed and charmed as the seasons changed and blossomed in our garden; the years of planting perennials had created a magical botanical experience for her. The evolution from camellias and daffodils to tree peonies and lilacs to herbaceous peonies and hybrid tea roses to summer’s hydrangeas, daisies and phlox were highlighted by the delight  and wonder Cindy found in our garden. The sudden enlargement of our family, as well as concern for  food safety during the pandemic, inspired me to propagate edibles in window boxes, normally reserved for wildly colored ornamental flowers. Cindy watched as I harvested lettuce, radishes, chervil and micro-basil—all grown from seed among pansies and nasturtiums, also edible flowers. You may wonder why I didn’t plant a full-blown “victory garden”…the answer is a four-letter word: DEER.  

Wildlife presented diverting attraction, particularly hummingbirds—the kids found a nest the size of a demitasse cup. Also aggressive groundhogs, perhaps emblematic of the monotony of our COVID existence, ventured uncomfortably near our home. Cindy, in her fearless fascination and enthusiasm of the new, chased them away in energetic pursuit

When it rained, we occupied ourselves with 1,000-piece jigsaw puzzles, family Scrabble, and backgammon. Much of our insular pandemic life revolved around food. While none of us gained the legendary COVID-19 pounds, I cooked up a storm. Our kids, string beans all, ate like sumo wrestlers. A huge vat of Bolognese sauce disappeared in two sittings.  An iced chocolate zucchini cake for 16 vanished in two days with us ploughing through even the portion reserved for a godparent. And no one was more appreciative than Cindy. Every morning, be it waffles or oatmeal or smoothies, I’d hear her appreciative Oooooh. And Cindy always arrived first for lunch—often grilled cheese and homemade soup—and was my best customer for dinner. It’s easier to cook when everything you concoct is greedily inhaled. Nothing like a thankful public to spur on the home chef. 

I cooked during the week and my husband and kids cooked during the weekend and were specifically not allowed to ask me about recipes. Food, the source of survival, variety and taste thrill, was a gathering point as we all emerged from our bedroom offices to eat and savor, share work complaints and challenges and give positive support during the trials of the pandemic. 

During this anxious, dismal time of sickness, contagion and death, many have felt isolated, frustrated, and at loose ends. So much has been lost, even if temporarily. Gone are exotic travel to distant lands or even to  two states over. Visits to museums, the cinema and friends’ homes are temporarily obsolete. And our naturally social beings are being constricted. Our world has gotten smaller and we are living, communicating, working and amusing ourselves through home electronics. The days are monotonous, one running  into the next, with little change. Yet we hold on to a deep gratitude that we are alive and well.   

After four months, Cindy had become part of our  family fabric. She was a bright spot, always upbeat,  with a ready and, dare I say, infectious smile. We all  felt blessed to have her in our lives and I dreaded the day she would leave.  I saw Cindy as a buffer—a friendly shock absorber between potential sibling conflict  and a humorous shield between the generations, safeguarding family harmony in close quarters. 

Did I neglect to mention that Cindy’s mother owns a hair salon in Wisconsin and her mother trained and entrusted her to color her own gray locks? Due to social distancing and state-mandated closure of hair salons, many friends have had to embrace the truth of the  aging process. While I’m pretty low maintenance—no Botox, fillers, nip or tuck—thanks to Cindy, I can continue the pretense of forever-young hair. So as I started to observe during Zoom meetings and parties that friends and colleagues’ coifs were evolving into various iterations of the skunk family, my own tresses remained deceptively brown. I love my local salon stylist and wonderful colorist Coleen, but for endless months, that was not an option. Cindy and a regular shipment on “auto-order” of Madison Reed’s Veneto Light  Brown hair dye kept me looking like my old self—but not that old. 

Cindy and I also are crossword enthusiasts, and she would email me her Sunday New York Times—which she received, for an extra fee, that I have been unwilling to pay for but happy to print out hers. Cindy is a joy. She is fun, smart and engageable.  

It was a super sad day in mid-July when, after dinner, Cindy gulped and announced that she would be leaving our house to pack up her room in Brooklyn and drive with a roommate back to Wisconsin. While we knew the day would come, we choked out a Say it ain’t so.  I fretted with Cindy’s impending departure: How to  plan for meals for four rather than five? What or who would serve as glue for our vastly different offspring? How would our kids view us without the humor that Cindy brought to our family? (Don’t tell me, we’re still annoying.) The morning arrived with Charlotte loading her car to move out of Astoria and then drop off Cindy. I handed Cindy a bag filled with an assortment of her favorite foods—Heritage Flakes, smoked oysters in oil, chipotle aioli—and hugged her goodbye.  

Cindy had been an important part of our family’s emotional survival during the first four months of COVID-19. She was a sweet, friendly, sunny cure for the isolation and strangeness of the pandemic and we dreaded her inevitable exit. We anxiously speculated how were we going to endure what might be another year or so without someone who had become such an integral and positive member or our family. But it’s a funny thing, that life goes on. We are a family that has enough love to open our house and hearts to Cindy and we are happy she is back with her mother and on to a new adventure.  

We definitely miss Cindy and I think we are a better foursome thanks to her. But my heart doesn’t ache the way I worried it would. We stay in touch; she will always be a part of us. In case I forget, every Sunday—or sometimes Monday—an email arrives from Cindy to challenge and engage me with The New York Times Sunday crossword. 

Oh, and in case you’re wondering, Charlotte became my expert new colorist. Before departing to the wilds of Wisconsin, Cindy taught her how.

Has the Gaming Revolution created a generation of e-casualties?

I’ve been in the city for the day and return to discover my son still home. “Did the SPCA end early?” I ask. He gives me a dazed look. “I’m leaving now.” It’s 4:30 in the afternoon and he’s been so absorbed in his video game that he lost track of time and reality. His volunteer job is nearly over for the day.

I am the mother of an electronic addict. By electronic, I don’t just mean compulsive video gaming, which is much like gambling addiction. I mean our son is addicted to the whole electronic shebang: TV, his computer, iTouch, iPhone, anyone else’s Xbox or Wii. He can play video games, Skype with fellow gamers, watch YouTube, Dr. Who and NCIS, simultaneously and ad infinitum. Electronics—like the Zombie movies he’s captivated by—suck in his brain, consuming his concentration at the expense of schoolwork and relationships. Neuroscientists have noticed the changes in electronic-obsessed brains that mimic those of an addict. And electronics for my son are like the junk food of his life.

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If he could regulate his appetite and intake of electronics and limit his usage, I’d have no problem. But once he sinks into the family room sofa, he becomes an electronic couch potato. I know these are strong words from a parent, and maybe it seems that I’m throwing our son under the bus.

However, he is cognizant of the issue and actually helped me research this story. We’ve been talking about his electronic addiction for several years and at college he has a “coach” with whom he can discuss his obsession with gaming.

“Vidiot” perhaps is too harsh a moniker for my son, as he eloquently discusses the finer points of a particular game’s digital animation and interaction. Gamers see video games as a cross between a science and an art. This is nothing new. We can trace these gamers back historically to arcade game aficionados of 30 and 40 years ago. It’s become so imbedded in our culture that various science museums have mounted interactive gaming retrospectives, beginning with Pong and Space Invaders. There is, in fact, an appreciation among video gamers that borders on connoisseurship (in the way a wine expert might also be a drunkard). Our son’s good friend, who plays in video game tournaments for minor profit, suggested I try a certain game and see how fast I got hooked. Interesting idea, but it holds no appeal to me.

To be sure, electronics has influenced our culture in positive ways. Both the art of Japanese anime and video graphics has fostered and influenced a whole new dimension and medium of art. Over 30 years ago, Nam June Paik fused video with music and performance art at his 1982 Whitney Museum retrospective. Digital art has flourished ever since. The audience created by global web use also has inspired some artists to create installations reflecting our obsessive usage. Artist Rachel Lee Hovnanian uses iPads as substitutes for husband and wife at the dinner table, bride and groom at their wedding feast and even her depiction of multi-generations of a Chinese family—all of whom are engrossed with their iPhones and ignoring each other—at a lunar New Year’s feast. Each installation depicts the haunting message of our daily struggle and infatuation with the cold allure of electronics and our subsequent loss of human interaction and warmth. And electronic addiction has become a hot topic in the press, with Jane Brody writing a two-part piece in the Science section of the New York Times and PBS recently airing a program devoted to Web Junkies.

Some colleges are viewing high-achieving gamers with good GPAs as possible recruits for campus e-sports. At Robert Morris University in Chicago, being a web jockey can translate into a full-ride scholarship. This fall, the University of Pikeville, a liberal arts college in Kentucky, has devoted 20 scholarships to League of Legends video gamers. League of Legends is a multiplayer battle game played online. Full Sail University in Winter Park, Florida, has offered BAs and MAs in game design and development for years. In addition, opportunities for gamers who can program abound in tech and entertainment companies. But that requires being entrepreneurial, ready to tackle Java and C++—and a willing ability to apply for a job.

E-Tox Detox

So electronics can be the user’s best friend or worst enemy. How did our son get hooked? We made every effort to discourage him. During the week, we’d snap the breaker that powered the TV to the Off position. We never owned an Xbox or PlayStation. Yet our son would ferret out video games online—passwords were minor hurdles—or play at friends’ houses. I can’t say it started with the Game Boy Color his grandmother gave him for Christmas, or the robotics team he joined in middle school. Probably part of the appeal of electronics is that it’s the playmate that’s always ready to play. Also, kids who have trouble focusing in school hyper-focus on gaming, and any anxiety in school will fuel the need to take solace in the alternate reality of video games. As our son matures, he is slowly grasping the benefits of focusing on his college courses and the rewards of working hard at his summer job.

Electronic addiction, it turns out, is not uniquely American. It is a global problem. India and Singapore actually have the highest incidence of Internet Addiction Disorder (IAD).

SETTING LIMITS

According to Dr. Rodger Goddard, Chief Psychologist at Trinitas, Internet use, social media, video gaming and being hooked on technology is a very intense problem for our children (and many adults) today.

Rodger Goddard, PhD Chief Psychologist,
Trinitas Regional Medical Center 908.994.7334

“I believe that we are undergoing an experiment in child-rearing. Never before in history have children been brought up with such intense exposure to technology. We do not yet know the results of this experiment. Research is showing that it may be having a very negative impact on our children’s learning skills and potential for success. The best advice for parents is to limit the time their child spends online and screening. Taking away electronics as a punishment can sometimes make using it even more attractive and exciting. Limiting its use gets a child more accustomed to being without continual technological exposure. Some parents have found that no screening outside of school work during the week and just a few hours on the weekend is just the right amount.”

According to a story in The Telegraph, a British newspaper, it’s epidemic in China, too: over 24 million suffer from some form of internet addiction. As a result, internet “boot camps” have been set up across China to take addicted kids—estimated at 14% of all youth—off the grid. In Japan, “internet fasting” has been set up to help create electronic “detox.”

Our own “detox” program has been to send our son on programs in the Pacific Northwest and Alaska, where he is completely off-the-grid for weeks and able to experience nature’s beauty while ice-climbing, sea kayaking and scaling a rugged mountain at midnight to watch a meteor shower. As a college student, he has also trekked in faraway lands in the Himalayan foothills and in rural Central America. His most recent trip lasted a semester. While he has risen to the occasion, learned about Tibetan refugees and Buddhist monks and considered social justice issues of Guatemala, Nicaragua and El Salvador, the challenge is still there. He returns to electronics the moment he gets home. And, needless to say, our version of detox has come with a hefty price tag.

Which is not to say that breaking video game addiction is ever cheap. Or easy. Although it is strikingly similar to more familiar addictions, such as alcohol, food and drugs, it is unlike them in that gaming can occupy every waking hour and involve everyone in an addict’s social network. Another problematic aspect of video game addiction is that gamers are separated from others by thousands of miles, and also by the ability to edit their words before hitting the return button. As a result, they can be uncomfortable dealing with others face-to-face and unedited, which makes traditional therapy a particular challenge.

The consensus among therapists is that families need to unplug their addicted gamers and, ideally, put them in situations where they are stimulated by non-electronic activities and develop off-line social skills. Options range from the aforementioned boot camps and fasting programs to wilderness camps and boarding schools, all of which are geared toward breaking the addiction. The challenge for parents is to pick an option that suits their child’s personality and demeanor.

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Perhaps the most striking development in this area is that health insurance companies are starting to address video game addiction, if not specifically then under “compulsive disorders” or “depression.” Which means we may soon see an entire industry created around breaking this addiction.

MIT engineers recently developed a keyboard that delivers an electric jolt to over-users. I’m not sure our family will be an early adopter of this device, but I have to admit that it did cross my mind. EDGE

Editor’s Note: Is your child hooked on electronics? The web site netaddiction.com offers an internet addiction test that may be an eye-opener. Special thanks to Ben Fleming for his work on this story.