More and more consumers are singing the praises of subscription car services.

By Sarah Lee Marks

When my Uncle Sal returned from his annual six-month spring/summer break in Cape Cod, he called me with a five-word request: “I need a new car.” Having left his 2014 Subaru back in Massachusetts, he was anxious to pick up a new 2018-19 vehicle for his winter home in Las Vegas. We made a plan to test-drive some new luxury cars and SUV’s to see what struck his fancy. Our first stop was the local Cadillac dealership. As we pulled in to the lot, he asked, “What do you think of these subscription services?”

All right, Uncle Sal! Always surprising!

“How much do you know about these programs?” I asked.

“My friends are driving some sweet rides,” he shrugged. “They say they drop the car off at the dealer for all the services. The insurance and registration are covered in one payment. When they get ready to go back east, they turn it in, no penalty, and get something else in New York. Do they have that everywhere?”

“Every program is different and, between them, the variables can be quite confusing,” I said. “Let’s see what you like driving first.”

Vehicle subscription programs offer an annual contract for high-quality credit clients, starting at around $1,000.00 a month, depending on the model. Outside of major metropolitan areas, most of these plans are limited to luxury vehicles. At our first stop, we inquired about the Book by Cadillac plan, which was advertised as a “simpler, smarter way to drive.” Unfortunately, they were not accepting any new members at that time.

The car subscription model is trending, with as many variations as there are interstates. As Sal continued to test-drive cars at the Porsche, Jaguar, BMW and Mercedes dealerships, we found the amount of knowledge at the dealership level varied significantly. When pressed for particulars, all of the salespeople with whom we interacted suggested going online to their websites. It turns out that most of the manufacturer programs are designed to be handled online, over the phone and without competing with the franchised dealer’s base of business.

The sales manager at Volvo showed Sal their XC90 and S60, the only models currently offered under the Care by Volvo platform. “The entire deal is completed on the phone app,” our sales manager explained. “We meet the client, deliver the car, and hope they decide to buy or lease one after they try it.”

That sounded like a good fit. But Uncle Sal, who is not a technophile, wasn’t crazy about the phone app process, never mind the $1000-and-up monthly ticket.

“You do realize you could lease the same car for less money?” I offered.

“Yeah, but then it sits for months and I’m paying insurance and registration to not drive the car,” he said. “This way I get a new car whenever I want.”

“There are some other versions of the monthly subscription plan you might like better,” I pointed out. Indeed, individual dealership groups have now entered the subscription fray. It’s a way of retaining their customers, harvesting new clients and also turning used car inventory.

We added the local Ford dealership to our itinerary. Jeff, the customer concierge in charge of their subscription service, explained the Try & Buy program. My uncle immediately chafed at its phone app component, but changed his tune when he saw how easily he could order a car.

“You simply select the car you want from our available inventory, choose the number of miles you will drive, pick the number of months you will want it for, and hit submit,” he said. “Once the credit application and driving record are checked out, we bill you monthly. Furthermore, we deliver the car to you, pick it up when it needs service, or want to switch it out.”

“Hold up,” Sal said. “For $600.00 a month, all in, I drive a new 2019 Ford Edge?”

“Well sir,” Jeff replied, “It will have miles on it, and it may not be a 2019. But it won’t be older than a year or have more than 50,000 miles. That is our dealership policy. Every dealer can set their own standards.”

“What if I crash it?” Sal asked. (More likely totaled it, I thought…good question.)

The dealership has insurance, he answered, adding that it didn’t offer the program to people with bad driving records, poor credit or DUI’s. In addition, every family member who might drive the car has to supply a driver’s license and have their record checked.

“What about crashes where it’s not totaled or your client’s fault?” I jumped in. “Who gets sued for diminished value?”

“I believe we would go after the responsible party’s insurance, but I’ll have to check,” he replied.

“How many times can Sal switch cars on your plan?” I asked.

“Once in twelve months, on our one-year plan, which is less expensive than the six-month plan,” Jeff said. “But if you want to go month-to-month, the monthly fee is $100.00 more…but that gives you the maximum flexibility to try different models based on your needs. A four-wheel drive in winter, a truck for spring yardwork and a seven-passenger van for family vacations.”

The selection of makes and models in the Ford dealer’s subscription plan appealed to my uncle’s fondness for cars of all kinds, dating back to his high-school Dodge Duster. This is just a more exclusive form of car rental, I pointed out. There is a “plan for every seat,” as dealers like to say.

“I still don’t like the thing-y on my phone,” Sal complained over lunch. As a retired accountant, however, he was mostly focused on crunching the numbers and calculating the return on investment. “It’s the ‘time value’ of money I need to understand.”

That night, in preparation for round two of Car Search, I called my acquaintance, Janine, an early adopter of the subscription service model.

“I travel a lot,” she said, “so I need something to get around town when I’m home. I use Canvas.”

Canvas is a service built around used Fords. For $600 a month, Janine got 500 miles, insurance and registration on a 2018 Fusion, which had 20,000 miles when she started. Her only complaint was that Canvas did not have more makes and models from which to choose.

“I love the flexibility and it’s fun,” she said. “Everything is handled online, I don’t have to talk to anyone. They pick it up for service. I can add miles or extend my monthly plan from the phone app, anytime.”

Sal and I resumed our research on local subscription options the next day. He decided to rent until he got a firmer grasp of the possibilities. As we pulled into the Enterprise lot he said, “This Nissan Altima is costing me $600 for a month. My insurance covers me.”

“Well,” I said, “that gives you time to consider what car you really want. Then we can find a plan that lets you drive all the cars of your dreams…until there aren’t any left.”

“Now that sounds like a fun bucket list plan,” Sal smiled.

Revolve

Sal did a little research on his own. He called his buddies in Miami, who use Revolve, a Florida-based company that does luxury subscriptions. Revolve specializes in Porsche, Maserati, Land Rover, Ferrari, Lamborghini and other exotics. They offer “all-inclusive” memberships starting at $1,000 a month. Unfortunately, their service was not available in Nevada or Massachusetts.

Editor’s Note: Sarah Lee Marks is a car concierge and automotive consumer advocate for all things car-related. Sarah lives in Henderson, Nevada with her husband, Norman. You can ask her car questions at her website: www.mycarlady.com.

These are New Jersey’s greatest songwriters…

Crafting songs is no way to make a living. Making the music and lyrics come together in just the right way can be frustrating, time-consuming and totally unpredictable. An artist can spend months on a song and never quite get it right. Or it can pop into his or her head in a serendipitous moment. The best piece of advice for a songwriter might be Don’t quit your day job. When the stars align, however, the result can be nothing short of immortality. Which is why they do what they do.

New Jersey has been producing hit-makers for more than a century, from the earliest days of popular music to Broadway shows to every conceivable sub-genre of rock and R&B. It is difficult to put one’s finger on how or why spending one’s formative years in the Garden State elevates a songwriter’s craft, but the evidence that it does seems irrefutable.

Who are the best of the best? Here are my 16 picks…

ROCK ON

James Murphy Princeton Junction • B. 1970

Murphy is the driving force behind one of the first groundbreaking bands of the 2000s, LCD Soundsystem. The group energized the Electronic/Dance/ Alternative Rock genre with songs like “Losing My Edge” and “Daft Punk Is Playing At My House”—both of which were written by Murphy and produced by his DFA Records label. Murphy won his first Grammy last year for “Tonite,” which he co-wrote with bandmate Al Doyle.

Jon Bon Jovi Sayreville • B. 1962 & Richie Sambora Woodbridge • B. 1959

Bon Jovi—the man, not the group he fronted—was inducted along with Richie Sambora into the Songwriters Hall of Fame a decade ago. They penned a string of chart-toppers in the 1980s, including “You Give Love a Bad Name,” “Livin’ On a Prayer,” “Bad Medicine” and “I’ll Be There for You,” as well as fan favorite “Wanted Dead or Alive.” Bon Jovi also wrote “Blaze of Glory,” a #1 hit he recorded as a solo act in 1990. Their formula was simple: If both did not think a song had potential, they discarded it and started on the next one.

Bruce Springsteen Freehold • B. 1949

Even the eight people in New Jersey who don’t believe Springsteen is a musical genius have to admit he deserves top billing on this list. And he may be the finest songwriter this country has every produced. As a teenager, The Boss was deeply influenced by The Beatles, who wrote and played their own material. He carved out his own niche as a game-changing singer/songwriter in the 1970s with his poetic take on working-class life and his epic live performances, but also penned songs that were huge hits for other performers—including “Fire” (Pointer Sisters), “Because the Night” (Patti Smith) and “Blinded By the Light” (Manfred Mann). Although Grammys are an inexact measure of talent, the sheer number of Best Song and Best Album nominations Springsteen has accrued speaks to his ability to write at a consistently high level. Entire books have been produced on his work (including his own autobiography), so summing it up in a long paragraph tends to be perilous. However, the depth of his lyrics is easy to appreciate in “Born to Run,” “Hungry Heart” and “Born In the USA”—rock anthems so familiar that listening to them is almost like breathing.

Donald Fagen Passaic • B. 1948

A move to the suburbs from gritty Passaic during Fagen’s pre-teen years greatly influenced his artistic outlook. He couldn’t stand it. He became a jazz junkie as a teenager and did not rediscover rock and R&B until he enrolled at Bard College—where he met guitarist Walter Becker. After graduating, the duo moved to Los Angeles and wrote songs for ABC/Dunhill recording artists. They co-wrote and released their first album as Steely Dan in 1972 and the rest is history. Aja, which hit stores in 1977, was one of the first albums by an American group to go platinum.

Debbie Harry Hawthorne • B. 1945

Best known as the front woman for the new wave group Blondie, Harry co-wrote a huge number of hits in the 1970s and 1980s, with bandmate Chris Stein and others. Her writing credits include “One Way or Another,” “Heart of Glass,” “Call Me” and “Rapture.” Before achieving superstar status, Harry worked as a go-go dancer and Playboy bunny, as well as a cocktail waitress at the East Village clubs where she later became a headliner.

POPULAR FAVORITES

Charlie Puth • Rumson • B. 1991

Puth’s ability as a songwriter was first recognized by YouTube fans and by Ellen DeGeneres, who signed him to her label. His star continued to rise in 2015 with “See You Again,” the song he co-wrote and performed with rapper Wiz Khalifa, and “Marvin Gaye,” a huge international hit recorded with Megan Trainor. Just 27, Puth has already demonstrated stunning versatility in his songwriting and producing skills. His second album, 2018’s Voicenotes, was a hit with reviewers, who applauded his maturity, attention to detail and willingness to take chances with his lyrics.

Rob Fusari • Livingston • B. 1976

A multi-instrumental prodigy as a child, Fusari started writing songs at 22 and is credited with discovering Stefani Germanotta, aka Lady Gaga, in 2006. He co-wrote and co-produced most of her 2008 Grammy- winning album The Fame. Earlier, Fusari wrote “No, No, No” and “Bootylicious”—both #1 hits for Destiny’s Child. He has also written for Will Smith, Whitney Houston, ABC, Adam Lambert and the Back Street Boys.

Bob Gaudio Bergenfield • B. 1942

At age 15, Gaudio co-wrote “Short Shorts,” which rose to #2 on the charts. Two years later he formed the Four Seasons with Frankie Valli and wrote “Sherry,” the group’s first #1 hit. Working with Newark-born producer Bob Crewe, Gaudio wrote “Big Girls Don’t Cry,” “Dawn,” “Walk Like a Man” and “Can’t Take My Eyes Off of You.” Always on the alert for new ideas and inspirations, he authored the hit “Rag Doll” after a poor young girl washed his windshield while he was stuck in traffic in New York. Gaudio and his wife, Judy Parker, co-wrote “Who Loves You” and “Oh, What a Night” in 1975. He also wrote and/or produced songs for Frank Sinatra, Michael Jackson, Barry Manilow and Diana Ross, and produced six of Neil Diamond’s albums.

R&B + HIP HOP

SZA • Maplewood • B. 1990

Solana Rowe, aka SZA (SIZ-eh), is among a group of young performers who are remaking the soul and R&B genres. Her 2017 debut studio album, Ctrl, went platinum and was roundly hailed as the year’s best record. Her lyrics, which often explore themes of sexuality and abandonment, reference a range of influences, from fellow New Jerseyan Lauryn Hill to non-musicians Spike Lee to jazz singers like Ella Fitzgerald. SZA’s background also imparts a unique spin on her songwriting. Her father is a Muslim and her mother a Christian—both are high-achieving corporate executives—and she originally set her sights on a career in marine biology. In 2018, SZA co-wrote and performed “All the Stars,” the lead single on the Black Panther soundtrack, with Kendrick Lamar.

Rodney Jerkins Pleasantville • B. 1977

Jerkens, who went by Darkchild early in his career, established himself as one of the industry’s most influential hit-makers two decades ago. He co-wrote and produced songs for the top names in the business, including Toni Braxton, Brandy, Mary J. Blige, Michael Jackson, Beyoncé, Whitney Houston, Lady Gaga, Kanye West, Justin Bieber, Brittney Spears, Will Smith and Jennifer Lopez. Jerkins’s chart-topping hits include “The Boy Is Mine,” “Say My Name” and “Déjà Vu.”

Freddie Perren • Englewood • 1943–2004

Berry Gordy hired 24-year-old Perren as a member of the production team for the Jackson 5 in 1968. Over the next 15 years, Perren wrote or co-wrote some of the most iconic pop and disco hits, including “I Want You Back,” “ABC” and “Mama’s Pearl” for the Jackson 5, “Love Machine” for The Miracles, “Boogie Fever” for The Sylvers, “Heaven Must Be Missing an Angel” for Tavares and “Shake Your Groove Thing” and “Reunited” for Peaches & Herb. In 1980, he won the first Disco Grammy for writing the Gloria Gaynor hit “I Will Survive.” Perren also produced the Saturday Night Fever album.

Leon Huff • Camden • B. 1942

A talented keyboardist, Huff teamed up with Philadelphia’s Kenneth Gamble when they were in their 20s to form one of the great soul music writing and producing duos. After working with Aretha Franklin and Wilson Pickett at Atlantic Records, they formed Philadelphia International Records in 1971 as a rival to Motown, adding deep bass and lush strings to their recordings—creating a foundation that would later popularize disco. Huff co-wrote “Backstabbers” and “Love Train” for the O’Jays, “If You Don’t Know Me By Now” for Harold Melvin and the Bluenotes, Billy Paul’s “Me and Mrs. Jones” and “Ain’t No Stoppin’ Us Now” for McFadden & Whitehead. Gamble and Huff’s biggest star of the 1980s, Teddy Pendergrass, was paralyzed in a car accident. The duo went into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2008 with more than 3,000 songs to their credit.

SHOW TUNES

Jerry Herman • Jersey City • B. 1931

The recipient of a Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement, Herman perfected his craft putting on musical productions at summer camps in the 1940s and 50s. An off-Broadway collaboration with friends Phyllis Newman and Charles Nelson-Reilly brought him to the attention of big-time producers and, in 1964, Herman was hired to write the score for Hello, Dolly! From there, Herman wrote the scores for Mame, La Cage aux Folles and other hit shows.

Jerome Kern Newark • 1885–1945

A giant in the world of theater composers, Kern wrote the music for hundreds of songs and worked with an all-star list of lyricists, including Ira Gershwin, Johnny Mercer and Oscar Hammerstein . His iconic songs include “A Fine Romance,” “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes,” “The Way You Look Tonight” and “Ol’ Man River.” The Kerns moved to Newark when Jerome was 12 and his songs were first performed in a musical at Newark High School (now Barringer High). Kern began composing for Broadway in the early 1900s and later composed scored for silent films. In 1927, he wrote the scores for Show Boat, the crowning achievement of his career. The vacation yacht Kern purchased with his earnings was named after the musical.

THIS+THAT

Dory Previn Woodbridge • 1925–2012

A talented lyricist who contributed to movie scores in the 1950s as Dorothy Langan, she married composer Andre Previn in 1959 and they churned out several Oscar-nominated songs. They also wrote songs for Bobby Darin, Sammy Davis Jr., Jack Jones, Nancy Wilson, Vic Damone and Rosemary Clooney. Previn’s fear of flying kept her from accompanying her husband on tour when he became a classical music conductor and they divorced in 1970 after she learned of his affair with Mia Farrow. Previn became a highly regarded singer-songwriter in the 1970s. Her intensely personal lyrics and political activism earned her a devoted following.

Cy Coben • Jersey City • 1919–2006

How many songwriters can claim that their songs were recorded by Benny Goodman, Peggy Lee, Eddy Arnold and The Beatles? Coben may be the only one. He was also the first writer of a UFO song: 1947’s “Those Flying Saucers,” which he co-wrote with longtime collaborator Charlie Grean, who was Arnold’s manager. Coben found his ultimate niche in Nashville during the late-1940s. He wrote several #1 hits for Arnold during the 1950s and his songs were popular on both sides of the Atlantic into the 1970s. Coben also wrote for Leonard Nimoy, whom Grean produced in the 1970s. 

Ol’ Blue Eyes

Wait, don’t shoot! No, Frank Sinatra does not make this Sweet 16 list. However, it’s worth mentioning that a) he was well known for tweaking a word or two in the songs he made famous and b) he actually did receive official co-writing credit on a handful of songs, including:

This Love Of Mine (1941)

Sheila (1949)

Peachtree Street (1950)

Take My Love (1950)

I’m A Fool To Want You (1951)

Mistletoe and Holly (1957)

Mr. Success (1958)

All That Jazz

For the better part of a century, New Jersey has been a fertile ground for pioneering jazz performers, as well as providing dozens of venues where people from all walks of life could enjoy groundbreaking acts. To call jazz composers “songwriters” sounds a bit pedestrian, but their work has certainly stood the test of time alongside composers of popular music. Here are three of the genre’s New Jersey giants…

Wayne Shorter Newark • 1933–

Shorter has been at the leading edge of his craft for 60 years, as a writer, arranger, saxophonist and bandleader. The jazz standards he has crafted are too numerous to mention, while his Grammy wins are now in double-digit territory. Shorter’s collaboration with Miles Davis and his work with Weather Report rank among the most productive quarter-century enjoyed by any musician in history.

James P. Johnson • New Brunswick • 1894–1955

A great deal of the evolution of ragtime into jazz occurred in the Garden State thanks to the writing and performing of Johnson, whose most famous song “Charleston” ignited an epic dance craze during the Roaring ’Twenties.

Willie Smith Newark • 1897–1973

Smith was known as The Lion during a performing career that stretched into the 1970s. A pioneer of stride piano, Smith had a profound influence on the music of Duke Ellington, and was regarded—along with Fats Waller and James P. Johnson—to be the masters of their craft.

Today, New Jersey (specifically, Newark) can legitimately lay claim to the title “epicenter of jazz” thanks to the radio station WBGO, which streams music and interviews 24/7 at wbgo.org. The station was founded in 1979 and reaches a global audience of 400,000 listeners a week, as well as providing content for NPR and Jazz at Lincoln Center.

Editor’s Note: Mark Stewart does not sing or play an instrument, but he has written two books related to the music industry (Will Smith and Ultimate 10 Music Legends) and produced the guidebook for Woodstock ’94. He has interviewed jazz performers Vince Giordano and Audra Mariel for EDGE, as well as Jeff Hanna of The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band.

Where on earth do you get this stuff?

By Andy Clurfeld

Dan Richer, the multiple James Beard Award-nominated chef at Razza Pizza Artigianale on Grove Street in Jersey City, may have skipped his graduation ceremony at Rutgers to go to Italy, but he’s been the university’s biggest booster as a restaurateur. You’ve heard of Richer’s renown Project Hazlenut Pizza? No? Well, look it up on The New York Times web site and understand why the newspaper’s restaurant critic Pete Wells gave Razza a three-star review in 2017. The background according to Richer: Before the 1900s, the hazelnut tree was prevalent in New Jersey. Disease wiped it out. Oregon became the hazelnut capital of America. But, with hazelnuts in demand, a worldwide shortage ensued. Enter Rutgers, with its prominent school of agriculture and Dr. Thomas Molner, the head breeder of what soon would be known as Rutgers Project Hazelnut. Molner and his crew worked, and worked hard, to revive the hazelnut in New Jersey. What they produced, Richer supported – by purchasing the crop. He made—of all things—a pizza of hazelnuts. A pizza! Who knew? “The Project Hazelnut Pizza has hazelnuts, a little fresh mozzarella and ricotta and a few drops of local honey,” Richer says. It’s brilliant. Unlike anything you’ve ever tasted. And pure Garden State. “Now there are more than 10,000 hazelnut trees in New Jersey under Rutgers’ supervision.”

Travel down Ryders Lane in the New Brunswick-Millstone environs and take them in. Extraordinary. And it’s thanks to a famous chef that the hazelnut, Dr. Molner and Rutgers are getting their due.

Who are the other farmers and food artisans Richer relies on to keep Razza riding high?

“My neighbors at Cedar Hill Farm, on Red Hill Road in Middletown, Agnes deFelice and her son Gary deFelice,” Richer says. The deFelices grow strawberries on their farm for Razza and, during that precious three-week season in spring, Richer picks them up on his way to the restaurant and takes in the aromas of still-warm-from-the-sun strawberries all the way from Middletown to Jersey City. “On Day One, we do strawberry salad. Day Two, we have to put them in the fridge, so we make strawberry jam or a topping for dessert. I just guarantee Agnes and Gary that I’ll buy whatever they pick. It’s worth it. The season is so short. I just pray they don’t sell their land to developers.”

What and who are the favorites of other restaurateurs and chefs?

Mark Pascal & Francis Schott • Owners • Stage Left Steak and Catherine Lombardi • New Brunswick

“Dreyer Farms in Cranford is a seven-acre farm in an area that has become surrounded entirely by suburb. Family-run for generations, they have a great farm market for consumers and they also work well with restaurants, letting us know what is coming in and making sure we are able to take advantage of it.

“Mike Baker is a lawyer first and a farmer second. He owns 4½ acres in East Brunswick, and basically grows us whatever we ask for. We have a meeting every year at the end of winter and decide what the plantings will be for the coming year. He supplies the lion’s share of our heirloom tomatoes—also a tremendous amount of herbs that we use.”

Ehren Ryan • Chef-Owner • Common Lot • Millburn

“We use a few local farmers for very specific items and they are all very seasonal. We love what they produce—in season. First is Malcolm Salovaara, of PK’s Four Brothers Farm in Bernardsville. This is a family-based farm who raise mainly pigs and chickens. The chickens are some of the best I have eaten anywhere. They are very seasonally driven, so the chicken season is from around April to October. We use the chickens with ramps, morels, spring items that bode well with the flavor of their chickens.

“Second is Dan Liplow, [who operates] the Foraged Feast, all over New Jersey. Dan is our forager and mushroom guy. During spring, summer and fall, Dan will search out interesting ingredients for us to test in our dishes. He brings sassafras for us to use, which we turn into root beer. Wild garlic roots, wild watercress. He also brings us black current wood for oils. During the winter months he has access to cultivated mushrooms that are by far are the best-tasting mushrooms.

“Third is Colleen Gilmore, of Buds and Blooms in West Milford. Colleen has a small farm that supplies us with all different types of herbs, edible flowers, small heirloom tomatoes and other little items. We sit down and chat about what can she grow for us—bronze fennel, Thai basil flowers, chive flowers, etc. The quality of the herbs and flowers is second to none. So pungent, so much flavor, and they look so bright.”

Randy Forrester • Chef-Owner Osteria Radici • Allentown

“We use Korean grapes and pears from Evergreen Orchard Farm in Yardville. We compress the pears with stracciatella from Italy and preserve the grapes for our semifreddo. We use potatoes and cabbages from New Sung Sang farm in Millstone. We hay-smoke both the cabbage on a pork dish and purée the potatoes as a thickening agent in spaghetti, with mussels.”

Bruce Lefebvre • Chef-Owner The Frog and the Peach • New Brunswick

“We love Valley Shepherd Creamery in Long Valley. The owner and cheesemaker is Eran Wajswol. (Valley Shepherd) has more than 500 sheep, 100 goats and 50 cows. Eran uses traditional European methods to produce many kinds of cheeses from grazed animals’ milk. They milk the female ewes on their unique rotary milking carousel, which you can see firsthand by taking one of their tours in spring. They also age the cheese in a hillside cave. We have used so many of their cheeses over the years, including Oldwick Shepherd, Crema de Blue, More Beer, Oldwick Shepherd, Nettlesome and Carameaway. Valley Shepherd Creamery also has a shop that is open to the public.”

Shanti Church Mignogna • Co-Owner Modine and Talula’s • Asbury Park

“We get fresh greens year-round from Lew at Thompson Family Farm. He grows beautiful hydroponic greens right in Wall, which is like 10 minutes away from our restaurants. A few years ago, we asked him to put together a mix with tatsoi and mustard frills for Talula’s and I’m pretty sure his ‘Asian mix’ is one of his best-sellers now. It’s always awesome when farmers are willing to grow specific things you ask them for.

“At Modine, we have put a lot of thought into our meat program. Our chef Chris is a skilled butcher, so we have the ability to source larger cuts of meat and break them down ourselves. He’s been working with Fossil Farms since opening. All of our eggs, beef and pork comes from them. We get whole Berkshire and Duroc pigs that are pasture-raised, completely naturally, which means without hormones or antibiotics. It’s pretty cool that our meat is completely traceable and comes from less than 100 miles away. Also at Modine, we love getting the freshest, most delicious local oysters from our good friends at Barnegat Oyster Collective! It’s a family-run business and they represent 12 local shellfish growers in the Greater Barnegat Area. You can always find their oysters on our menu, either raw with a seasonal granita and/or broiled with chipotle bourbon butter.”

(Shanti quotes oyster-grower Sarafina Mugavero of Forty North Oyster, who says: “The number of oyster-growers has grown just in the past few years because more restaurants and retailers are supporting a burgeoning local agriculture industry.”)

AJ Capella • Executive Chef A Toute Heure • Cranford

“I use a lot of farms. I think it’s important to support the community you live in as well as small businesses. I extend that theory to other purveyors, not just farmers. [I use] Breadsmith in Cranford and Dan Lipow’s Foraged Feast. Roamin’ Acres in Lafayette raises Berkshire pigs, and one of the products they do is prosciutto. Cured in the same way prosciutto in Italy is treated, salt-cured for 18 months. I have eaten many prosciuttos and cured hams, and the flavor of this one is remarkable. The color is vibrant red, the fat is pure white, and there’s a slight crispiness to it. It is hands-down my favorite cured ham.

“It’s funny how the food world in NJ is seemingly large but, in reality, quite small. Everybody knows everybody.”

Shall we play a game?

By Rena Sandberg

Bad news. The federal government has just received viable intelligence that insurance, healthcare, utility and communications systems are minutes away from a cataclysmic cyber attack. Urban areas on the East Coast are in its crosshairs. Within minutes, the Trinitas Emergency Department will be dealing with an influx of patients that promises to grow in size and complexity as the drama unfolds.

Fortunately (this time) the crisis is purely conceptual. It was created in order for Trinitas to identify and assess vulnerabilities with an eye toward determining how it can improve its state of preparation for the unthinkable. Over a four-day period beginning November 25, 2018, Trinitas put Operation Community Peril into action. The full-scale exercise involved all of the hospital’s campuses, buildings and business occupancies.

Operation Community Peril was developed to assess the response capabilities of the Trinitas Incident Command System during a number of threat scenarios, including a cybersecurity failure, information technology (IT) breach, and communications blackout. Response objectives were set by an exercise planning team. Phil Solomon, Safety Officer and Emergency Preparedness Coordinator at Trinitas, who was in charge of the exercise, says that operations of this nature make Trinitas and the surrounding communities better prepared in the event of catastrophic events.

“We want to make sure that we have the highest level of preparedness for our customers, community and patients,” he adds.

Coordination between Trinitas, the Elizabeth Police Department and the community prepares everyone so they know how to respond if a situation arises in the future. Deputy Chief Alexander Sofianakos agrees: “It’s very important to give the community an idea of how their role would play out [in the event of a catastrophe], how they would help themselves and how they can assist us.”

The object of the “game” was to gauge response, initiation, incident command, and the testing of communication capabilities. Trinitas personnel worked with subject-matter professionals to create a path toward full preparation in the event of an actual disaster. According to Solomon, the exercise objectives were clearly defined and successfully accomplished.

“They took it very seriously,” says Solomon, adding that there was an outstanding level of participation from hospital personnel during more than 70 hours of real-time flow scenarios.

“Trinitas is up-to-date and very well prepared for a disaster,” says Deputy Chief Sofianakos. “They are doing a great job.”

Orchestrating Operation Community Peril’s complex scenarios required strategic planning and a diversity of live simulation drills, evacuations, lockdown events and departmental huddles. By all accounts, the collaboration of the participants exceeded expectations. Just as importantly, the large-scale exercises played a fundamental role in community preparedness by testing their ability to communicate and cooperate.

All Hands On Deck

Participants in Operation Community Peril included the Incident Report Team, Trinitas leadership, the hospital’s Emergency Preparedness Committee and external agencies including the City of Elizabeth, County Emergency Management and the Tri-County Radio Association. Training activities also took place outside of the Elizabeth area— such as the Bayonne Community Mental Health Center, Cranford Campus and ED triage. In addition, a groundbreaking activity occurred at the first-ever evacuation of residents from the Brother Bonaventure Care Center on Jersey Street in Elizabeth, as a large number of patients were moved from one wing of the facility to another. This drill was very well received by the residents. The “horizontal evacuation” was attended by the Elizabeth Fire Department and County Office of Emergency Management, who also gave the team a big thumbs-up.

My mother. My hero. My problem?

By Ashleigh Owens

In the summer of 2017, my mother lost her life to pulmonary fibrosis, the puzzling disease that takes your life by literally taking your breath. The illness plagued her through a 16-year-long battle that began in her 30s. She never saw it coming. She was at the height of her success when the disease crept into her life, robbing her of her dreams, her mobility and, ultimately, her time. I witnessed her excruciating decline and her diminished quality of life starting when I was in grade school. During those years, I wrestled with some difficult questions about the origin of the disease, its management and, of course, whether I too might be gasping for air one day.

“Am I next?” I often wondered.

You may be familiar with my mother’s work. Her name was Tracey Smith-Owens and she conducted celebrity interviews (as Tracey Smith) for EDGE until her passing. She had a knack for engaging people—including Louis Gossett, Chazz Palminteri and Frank Vincent—in thoughtful conversation, and often carried those conversations past the magazine’s pages into civilian life.

Her own words held great weight, too. Of her fight with pulmonary fibrosis, she once wrote: My freedom is limited and my assailant is a fifty-foot tube that lingers around my ankles and is connected to a concentrator to provide me with the oxygen necessary to live. My mother often spoke about the way this culprit, which had weakened her lungs, sliced into her life with no regard for the innocent people it impacted. We shared that fear and anxiety.

My mother was in the hospital for over a month until peacefully departing in her sleep. I never saw it coming; pulmonary fibrosis is full of surprises. My mother and her lungs were true fighters, the doctors told me. Her ability to survive and in many ways thrive for more than a decade-and-a-half astounded them.

Throughout my mother’s illness, she constantly warned me to keep myself healthy. She was unable to identify a connection or source of her disease—and indeed, pulmonary fibrosis is very much a mystery. Her greatest fear was that it was genetic, that there might be some chance of me inheriting it. Although this was always in the back of my mind, I was primarily focused on being my mother’s protector during her trials and tribulations. The life I had known as an only child with a single mother, who was devoted to watching over me, was suddenly juxtaposed: I became a shield for her.

Seeing how pulmonary fibrosis affected my mother physically, mentally and emotionally could be overwhelming, especially when I was a teenager. We felt a distance from family and friends, who lacked an understanding of her condition. My mother knew she could rely on me to listen. She could count on me to be her cheerleader, to root her through her at-home medical therapies and doctor visits, to remind her of maintenance with lung exercises, and to step in for her on day-to-day tasks, as her pace and strength weakened over time. Our bond strengthened as two became one to fight against this illness.

My mother left me a recording of a February 2017 doctor visit, which included a conversation regarding her eligibility for a lung transplant. To get on the list involves meeting certain criteria, in her case to demonstrate how her lungs and heart coincide. This recording drove home for me the monumental medical obstacles she faced and her commitment to explore any options that would enable her to stay on this earth longer with me. The doctors in the recording seemed amazed as she described her journey, and her will to keep ongoing. They said my mother would make a great spokesperson for the Pulmonary Fibrosis Foundation. Hearing these words validated for me that my mother was the ultimate heroine in the fight against this life-crippling disease.

Following the loss of my mother, the fear that I might be next weighed heavily on me. It forced a certain growth. We were guardians for each other; now she wasn’t there to guard me. However, fighting alongside her all those years prompted me to explore ways I could live a healthy life that might diminish the chances of my getting this disease—and to take the initiative and see a pulmonologist early on to determine the state of my lung function. I went through a series of tests and x-rays, both of which came back with satisfactory results.

The severe (or idiopathic) pulmonary fibrosis that eventually claimed my mother usually affects people in their 50s or 60s. She was diagnosed with the disease in her 30s. She lived a decade longer than average. She was a fighter. I am in my 20s.

Fortunately, idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis rarely occurs in more than one family member. But because its causes are not completely understood, no one can say with certainty that it is not hereditary. There does in fact appear to be a genetic link in certain cases where it runs in families: Two genes, TERT and TERC, are found to be mutated in about 15 percent of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis sufferers. However, not everyone who develops these mutations develops the disease. Needless to say, a lot more research needs to be done.

So am I next?

When I asked my doctor, he said where pulmonary fibrosis is concerned there is never really any guarantee, but emphasized that the disease doesn’t “have” to be hereditary. He said to live healthily and be proactive by monitoring the state of my lungs, and that everyone should be as curious and vigilant about their health as I am. You can choose to be oblivious to the inevitable, he added, but you do so at your own risk.

Pulmonary Fibrosis: The Hard Facts

Individuals suffering from pulmonary fibrosis must struggle for every breath. Thick, scarred tissue becomes progressively stiffer until the lungs can no longer function properly, preventing oxygen from entering the bloodstream. The damage is irreparable and the cause often is unknown. In some cases, pulmonary fibrosis can be attributed to long-term exposure to environmental toxins—including airborne asbestos, metals or silica particles—or an adverse reaction to certain medicines or medical procedures, such as radiation therapy. Pulmonary fibrosis has also been linked to other conditions, including rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, connective tissue disease and even pneumonia.

Medication (including steroids and antibiotics) and various therapies can ease symptoms, but only for a while. Depending on the severity of the disease, pulmonary fibrosis can progress very quickly or linger for a decade or more. Over time, it can trigger pulmonary hypertension, heart failure and respiratory failure. For some pulmonary fibrosis patients, a lung transplant is a possibility. About half of the lung transplants performed in the U.S. each year are for pulmonary fibrosis sufferers. Not all patients are good candidates for a transplant; many who are don’t live long enough to receive a suitable pair of lungs.

For many women, finding the right post-operative compression garment is still a mystery.

By Caleb MacLean

Follow-up is everything after a hospital stay. For women returning home from surgery, childbirth or certain other medical procedures, part of that follow-up process involves an after-surgery garment of some kind. Typically, a doctor will mention a particular type of garment or possibly even a specific brand as patients are preparing to be discharged. However, most women have no concept of what to do next.

For instance, many women benefit from postpartum compression abdominal garments. In some cases, they are worn to help restore that pre-pregnancy figure. Jessica Alba (a former EDGE cover girl) famously wore a double corset 24/7 for 12 weeks after giving birth to her daughter and was back on the red carpet in no time. Other celebrities have fessed up about their use of compression garments in recent years, creating a mini-boom in the business. For mothers who have delivered via caesarian section, the support of a compression garment is less a choice than a must. It speeds recovery and healing of the abdominal muscles. Typically, an abdominal binder is worn for six to eight weeks after a c-section.

Post-operative compression garments often must be “staged.” For example, in a tumescent liposuction procedure, the surgical fluid used to loosen fat cells is not completely expelled. Patients begin with a “first stage” compression garment that helps with draining and also protects bruised and swollen areas. After a week or two, liposuction patients will switch to a less-confining “second stage” garment that allows the body to return to normal lymphatic functioning. After a month or more, when healing is complete, many patients opt for a “third stage” or everyday compression garment, which helps maintain the new body shape.

Trinitas patients often find their way to The Pink Room in Elizabeth, or its sister store in Union. The company is primarily known for its “shapewear”—waist cinchers, butt lifters, tummy-control garments and full-body shapers. In recent years, however, The Pink Room has become a go-to resource for after-surgery garments, with more than 20,000 items in stock and a sales staff meticulously trained by owner Maria Sparacio to ask the right questions and provide the right answers.

“Patients are referred to us by surgeons,” explains Sparacio, “but frequently they just tell them to go get a compression garment. For the women who come to us, it’s kind of a mystery. We spend 30 to 40 minutes on average consulting with new customers to find the garment that best matches their needs and is perfectly comfortable. We get it right 99 percent of the time—it’s very unusual when someone needs to come back.”

Wherever a woman goes for a compression garment, customization is crucial. There is no such thing as one-size-fits-all; the size and type of garment can vary dramatically depending on the type of surgery, the amount of swelling, the type of support needed, a patient’s sensitivity to compression and the length of time a garment is needed—from a couple of weeks to a couple of months or more.

As for Sparacio, she got into the business in a roundabout way. A native of Colombia, she was working her way through law school as a bank manager in the Pacific coast city of Cali when she came to the United States on a student visa. The plan was to improve her proficiency in English, but it didn’t take long for her to realize that she had a head for figures—the financial kind, as well as the humankind—and that these dual talents would serve her well as an entrepreneur.

“I noticed how many women wore clothing that was either the wrong size or the wrong style for their body types,” Sparacio recalls. “It was obvious to me that they were not getting the help they needed in stores. I watched how they did business and always thought that people wanted more help. I thought, ‘I can do this better. I can be more professional. I can help people.’”

Sparacio opened The Pink Room, on Morris Avenue in Elizabeth in 2008, just as the economy was hurtling off a cliff. However, her knack for individualizing service and solving problems for a multitude of body types enabled the store to build up a loyal walk-in and online clientele. She was able to open a second store, in Union, a few years ago.

The quest for the ideal garment often takes consumers to a website rather than a store. It might be a matter of convenience, or a reluctance to allow others to see the physical aftermath of childbirth or surgery. Online shoppers should have the same goal as store visitors: finding a compression garment that closely mimics the wearer’s movements while staying flush to the skin. No creases, no bunching, no extra space. Most internet sellers have liberal return policies, and build that into their pricing. They also carry thousands of sizes. Many women start in a store and then order online from that store (or a competitor) going forward. Bargain shopping isn’t really an option, however. In the compression business, you generally get what you pay for.

Sports Compression: A Placebo?

Compression garments have been around for many decades, of course, and are perhaps more familiar to athletes than surgical patients. The last 20 years have seen a boom in performance-enhancing compression garments. In fact, many products originally designed for medical purposes, such as calf sleeves, have seen sales skyrocket among athletes. Whether compression garments actually increase performance is debatable; it could simply be a case of athletes believing they do. Most medical experts agree, however, that where they are most helpful is in the recovery phase of sports—for much the same reason they work post-surgery.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Not all post-surgery garments require a consultation or fitting. Maria Sparacio estimates that 60 percent of her customers buy online while 40 percent visit her stores.

 

“Chef Juan Placencia has branched out from his cozy Peruvian restaurant Costanera in Montclair to open this self-styled Pan Latin beauty.” 

By Andy Clurfeld 

Midway through the cachapa at Somos, I’m realizing it is the ultimate every-meal food. A corn pancake that’s more flavorful than those based on wheat, it’s not in need of a blast of sweet nor a slather of dairy to entice. It requires no wake-up call from a caffeinated beverage to wash it down nor a counterpoint of anything chilled to stimulate the taste buds. Its inherent sweetness is mitigated by starch, balanced by moisture and toyed with by a chef who understands its potential intuitively and by virtue of practice. 

This cachapa, a homey number that spans all but the rim of a white dinner plate, is topped with a warming stew of leeks and mushrooms punctuated by pops of corn kernels and given a quick flourish of cilantro and cojita. The crowning glory? Tangy tomato jam, plopped not so much artfully as purposefully in the shape of rough quenelles atop the whole thing. The ensemble has a charming peasant-y quality to it, and its potential as breakfast, lunch or dinner makes me happy chef Juan Placencia has branched out from his cozy Peruvian restaurant Costanera in Montclair to open this self-styled Pan Latin beauty in North Arlington. 

Somos is large. You enter to a posh tavern of a space that shows how architect-designer Michael Groth likes playing with geometric shapes as much as Placencia likes stretching the parameters of traditional ingredients and classic dishes. Banquettes make little rooms out of a cluster of four round tables set for two. Semi-circular high-tops align to form the outline of another, larger circle. Chairs with short backs belly up to a bar softly lit from both the floor and the underside of the counter. There are arches as doorways and shelving and also as ornament and decor. You segue to a dining area that’s far less dramatic, set with light wood tables and chairs and lighting that’s not about creating a scene. That’s the purview of the food. 

You can eat the cachapa all night, if you’d like, or you can pry chunks of black bass from slivers of red onion in a ceviche that’s brightened by a vivid soup of tomatillo flecked with nibs of avocado, snips of cilantro and the suspicion of chilies. Grab the tortilla crisps angled on top to scoop up the tomatillo broth—or ask your server for a sauce spoon. The ahi tuna ceviche is richer and more spirited, with its base of coconut milk plied with rocoto and lime. In this one, use the strips of fried plantain to sop up the sauce. I couldn’t ask you to leave behind the chicharron de pescado for the chicken-filled croquettas: The silky cod crusted in quinoa and topped by both a chop of tomato salsa and an aioli infused with sweet piquillo peppers is a terrific table partner for the pert fritters deftly fried and synched to the tune of aji amarillo chile peppers. 

Though little at Somos weighs in as heavy in the startertapas round, working a couple of salads into your meal is all-around wise. I think Placencia’s warm quinoa salad ranks as the standard by which all other main-dish tosses should be judged: It’s served slightly warm and the elements that mingle with the tiny seeds—kabocha, Bartlett pear, Brussels sprouts, chorizo, tomatillo— are either chopped or crumbled so as not to overwhelm the focus of the salad. The signature Somos salad starts with large leaves of Bibb lettuce and tops them with a haystack of spiralized carrots and onions, as well as avocado and, yup, more quinoa. The best part of this one? A vigorous sofrito vinaigrette that lifts familiar ingredients. 

If you wish, you can stop here, with a full slate of small plates that will evolve and change with the seasons and the desires of Placencia and his chef de cuisine Roberto Carnero. The main courses are scaled back in quantity and also achievement. Peruvian pot roast is shredded and served with wide noodles in a spare sauce of tomato, carrot and even green peas. Chicken is roasted with achiote, plopped on mashed potatoes and a messy splay of limp jicama slaw dressed in something that gave it a garish magenta glow. Branzino, grilled with little seasoning, was a snooze alongside yuca fries with far less personality than mainstream French fries, plain white rice and a metal ramekin of bland pico de gallo. The patatas bravas, which we paid for as an extra side, needed more of the good romesco aioli. But they had flavor.

Don’t expect the pineapple tres leches to look like any tres leches you know: Here, it’s served as a layered parfait in a clear, tall glass, with a zippy coconut-rum sauce and chunks of passionfruit laced within—and a toasted mashmallow-y substance on top. My dining companions really liked it, as well as the squash doughnuts drizzled with a cinnamon-streaked fig relish. Me? I could’ve returned to bliss with the cachapa.

For when you find that one-in-a-million dish that does it all, you stick with it

Behind the Scenes at Somos

Juan Placencia is a bona fide star chef in New Jersey. Born in Lima, Peru, he came to the United States as a toddler and got his first whiffs of the restaurant life at the places his parents owned and operated. If you know Oh! Calamares, now in Kearny, you know where Placencia got his start. He went to culinary school and then, in the early aughts, worked at top restaurants in Manhattan, including Gramercy Tavern and Eleven Madison Park. Before opening his own restaurant, he did turns at Gotham Bar & Grill and Del Posto, to learn more about the operational side of things. In 2010, he opened the BYOB Costanera in Montclair. Somos opened in the late fall of 2018. The chef’s team includes chef de cuisine Roberto Carnero; the architect-designer Michael Groth; general manager Brian Bode; and beverage consultant Rachael Robbins. They are the “we are” at Somos—which translates as just that.

SOMOS

185 River Road, North Arlington 

Phone: (201) 621.0299 • somosnj.com 

Open weekdays, except Tuesdays, for dinner; open Saturday and Sunday for lunch and dinner. Major credit cards and reservations accepted. Prices: Tapas and starters: $7 to $14. Main dishes: $17 to $27. Sides: $4 to $5. Desserts: $8 to $9. There’s a cocktail list ($11); glasses ($8) and pitchers ($26) of sangria; wines by the glass and bottle; and beers on draft and by the bottle.

The ups, downs, ins and outs of raising a child who is probably smarter than you are.

By Jim Sawyer

Over the past few decades, the validity of IQ scores has taken a beating. For all that number does say, there is an awful lot it doesn’t. For better or worse, however, we are a score-keeping society, thus we continue to honor high IQs. For the record, a young person with an IQ of 125 or above is considered to be “gifted.” This is no guarantee of success in life, but it is strongly indicative of a complex, fertile intellect.

If you happen to be the mother or father of such a child—or suspect that your child is gifted—you know that parenting is anything but easy. Nor, in many cases, is recognizing your child’s “giftedness” in the first place.

Indeed, high-intellect kids don’t all act or think or look the same. They do not always stand out from their peers in obvious ways; often when they do, it is for behavior that is negative rather than positive. The National Association for Gifted Children—a Washington DC-based organization dedicated to supporting families and teachers of gifted and talented kids—points out that 60 percent of gifted five-year-olds already know nearly all of the material taught in kindergarten the day they walk into the classroom. A bored five-year-old can easily become disruptive.

What qualifies a child as gifted? He or she is able to reason and learn at a high level from an early age, demonstrating proficiency in math or music or language. You’ve probably encountered a three-year-old with a broad vocabulary who speaks in long, complete sentences (with grammar that’s as good or better than yours). This is a major tip-off. Sometimes, however, giftedness in a young child is more noticeable in the physical realm, such as artistic talent or athletics. Either way, gifted children almost always learn faster than their peers and perform better in testing and on exams. Because they deal with a larger and ever-changing “sample size” of students, educators—particularly classroom teachers—are often the first to notice a gifted child. It’s not always news to the parents, however it is gratifying to have their suspicions confirmed.

What happens from that point—how development is encouraged and accelerated through childhood, adolescence and young adulthood, and how certain obstacles are eliminated along the way—will determine how a kid’s gifts manifest themselves in later life. So, hey. No pressure, right?

School is tremendously important. Or, perhaps more to the point, education is tremendously important. Finding a school with a “gifted” program is a start. But not all programs are created equal. Ideally, gifted children will be exposed to a wide range of educational experiences (both in and out of school) at a young age and, then, as they grow older, more of a focus on the areas in which they show the most promise. A good gifted program will be nimble enough to keep adjusting to a child’s capabilities, while also pointing parents to outside resources and programs that will keep nourishing his or her intellect. Parents need to stay on top of their gifted child’s progress, taking advantage of whatever assessments are offered and being open to suggestions and even criticism. Indeed, parent education is a huge part of the process.

What if your son or daughter has not been identified as gifted, but you are convinced he or she is? Actually, this is not all that unusual. Not every elementary school (and not every elementary school teacher) is equipped to spot giftedness. In many cases, this type of evaluation won’t even be made until your child is six or seven, particularly in a public school environment. If you suspect your three-year-old is miles ahead of the competition, go get him or her independently tested. The sooner you can evaluate needs and opportunities, the better off your child will be.

That is doubly true for children who exhibit early social or behavioral problems, or who are hyper-focused on a single area of interest (e.g. being able to name 100 dinosaurs). While these can be signs of giftedness, they may also be early indications of ADHD or Asperger’s. IQ testing is one way to avoid a misdiagnosis. A gifted child who underperforms in the classroom may not be connecting with the teacher, or be bored or disorganized. But he or she may have an attention deficit issue, too. Both can be true. Testing will usually solve the mystery, but it is up to the parents to push for that; the school may see a lackluster student and never think to do any screening.

What Now?

Once your gifted child has been identified and you’ve found programs and resources that will feed his or her intellect, the rest is easy, Mom and Dad. No…just kidding. Your work as a parent actually has just begun!

Consider, for instance, the fact that gifted children sometimes act their age. Their minds may be careening into adulthood, but their bodies and emotions are always playing catch-up. It is not unusual for incredibly able and mature kids to melt into disabling temper tantrums over the tiniest things. They are under constant pressure of one kind or another, and often suffer from severe anxiety—without being able to articulate their frustration. This is only exacerbated by bouts of disorganization and by a feeling of isolation from their peers. A high-functioning mind is rarely a peaceful one. Constant love, support, understanding and recognition are a must. A little courage doesn’t hurt, either.

Ironically, the best bits of advice for parents of gifted children may be the most counter-intuitive. Parents who push or overschedule their gifted child, or who defer to them on big decisions, are likely to do more harm than good. On three specific points—all don’ts—there is strong consensus among educational and developmental health experts:

• Don’t push for perfection. Good grades and scores are not a measure of success for a gifted child. Encourage your gifted child to develop and pursue multiple interests at whatever pace makes sense to them. Voracious learners will learn voraciously without parent reminders.
• Don’t confuse challenging your gifted child’s mind with keeping the child constantly busy. Maintain a reasonable schedule with lots of downtime. When a gifted child is “doing nothing,” the kid’s brain is still percolating.
• Don’t let your gifted child call the shots. You are the grown-up. You make the important decisions.

Go ahead and add to “that Don’t make your gifted child an example for your other kids.” Rather than elevating the performance of siblings, this is more likely to lower the performance of the gifted child, who might choose to “dumb down” in order to fit in with brothers and sisters.

Friendly Advice

Finally, parents of high-intellect kids should understand that their child may need help or encouragement forming social connections. This is really important. Popular culture tells us gifted kids are nerds or geeks who naturally isolate themselves from others. This is untrue. Gifted children play sports and perform on stage and get into all kinds of mischief. They want to fit in with schoolmates as much or more as they do with their siblings.

Ask a gifted child what he or she wants most in the world and the answer is likely to be “a friend.”

Often, a gifted child will seek friendship from an older child who is at a similar stage of emotional maturity. Interestingly, this is often misinterpreted as a lack of maturity, which is 180º wrong. A study by the Davidson Institute for Talent Development concluded that intellectually gifted children start looking for friendships based on closeness and trust at an age when their classmates are still looking for play partners. Naturally, they gravitate toward older kids. This gap narrows by the end of elementary school, but the intervening years can be isolating. The study’s author, Miraca Gross, suggests that parents actually discuss the hierarchy of friendship conceptions with their gifted children:

“Because gifted children begin to make social comparisons earlier than their age-peers, they can become acutely aware that they seem to be looking for different things in friendship than are their age-peers. A frank but sensitive discussion of this can help ameliorate the feelings of ‘strangeness’.”

Gross adds that high-intellect children tend to prefer one or two close friends to being part of a larger friend group:

“It’s okay if your gifted child prefers to link with one ‘special’ friend rather than ‘play the field.’ Parents sometimes worry that the child seems to be putting all his or her friendship eggs in the one basket—but we must remember that because the quality of gifted children’s friendships is different, they have an earlier need for the exchange of confidences and the discovery of mutual bonds. This is more easily achieved in pairs than in larger groups.”

If you are the parent of a gifted child, good research and advice is available on a wide range of topics, both online and on bookstore shelves. Several organizations have dedicated themselves to maximizing the brainpower and mental health of high-intellect kids, and most elementary schools do employ someone who can spot a superior student who has somehow slipped under the radar through nursery school and kindergarten. If you suspect your child is gifted, these same resources can point you toward the kind of testing and expertise that will let you know for sure.

Summer Solutions

According to the National Association for Gifted Children, even the brightest kids can backslide academically during an unstructured summer. The solution for many is an overnight camp experience. Parents of gifted children face some challenges finding the right fit, however. The boxes you’ll want to check (and, frankly, this goes for parents of every child) include:

• Good balance between academic, physical and social activities
• Active, hands-on learning vs. passive learning
• Exploring areas beyond what a child is learning in school
• Progress assessments at the end of a session
• Staff trained to address intellectual and emotional needs

According to Dr. Denise Drain, who consults on gifted programming strategies, professional development and program review, a good summer program should build on children’s interests and expertise.

“They may give children and adolescents an opportunity to develop expertise in areas such as sports, visual and performing arts, music, and academics,” she maintains, adding that being engaged in their own learning “increases motivation and helps children to develop goals and positive attitudes toward their abilities.”

There are a number of exceptional residential summer camps within a day’s drive of New Jersey, which make use of high-end college facilities. If you are in the market, these might be good starting points:

Summer Institute for the Gifted • Bryn Mawr, PA

Residential students live in dorm groups of a dozen or so, with four-period academic days and special trips and programs on the weekends. Classes are comprised of students in the same age- and talent-range.

The Center for Talented Youth • Baltimore, MD

This organization has a summer camp program for gifted children at Johns Hopkins. The three-week sleep-away programs begin in 5th grade and offer courses in the humanities, sciences, math, writing, and computer science.

Duke University Summer Camp • Durham, NC

Duke’s youth summer programs encompass math, science and engineering, but also offers creative writing and performing arts for gifted campers. The programs run for about two weeks, again starting at 5th grade.

Clearing the Bar

Which public figures just cleared the 125 IQ gifted threshold? Vladimir Putin tested at 127, while President Lyndon Johnson was a tick lower at 126. Also at 126 are NFL quarterbacks Tom Brady (right) and Steve Young. Right at 125 are guitar virtuoso Eddie Van Halen, along with actors Chris Pratt, Tom Cruise and Mira Sorvino. Who fell just short of gifted status? Among public figures who tested at 124 were President George W. Bush, X-Men actress Famke Janssen and serial killer Ted Bundy.

Easing the Stigma of Mental Illness and Addiction

By Yolanda Navarra Fleming

If anyone can speak with authentic candor to a ballroom full of people about behavioral health and addiction, and make them simultaneously laugh out loud and nod in empathy, it’s Patrick J. Kennedy II, the former U.S. Congressman, mental health advocate and author of the New York Times Bestselling book titled A Common Struggle: A Personal Journey Through the Past and Future of Mental Illness and Addiction (Blue Rider Press, New York, 2016).

In October 2018, the Trinitas Health Foundation launched their Peace of Mind Campaign with an informative evening with Journalist Jack Ford moderating a conversation with Kennedy on “Easing the Stigma about Behavioral Health” at The Park Savoy Estate, Florham Park.

The event raised $235,000 toward the $4 million renovation project to update Trinitas’ Behavioral Health facility, one of the most comprehensive departments of behavioral health and psychiatry in New Jersey. They offer specialized services for adults, children and their families, as well as services for those with various addictions, and a 98-bed inpatient facility. The hospital welcomes nearly 200,000 behavioral health visits per year. The multi-disciplinary and bi-lingual staff includes psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, nurses, creative arts therapists, substance abuse counselors and mental health workers, offering such services as psychiatric, emergency response/screening center, inpatient, outpatient, partial hospital programs and addiction services.

Trinitas provides treatment for patients like Kennedy, who was diagnosed with asthma as a child, and went on to suffer through a lifetime of depression, bipolar disorder and substance use, which included many failed attempts at sobriety until he arrived at the right balance of medication and alternative therapies.

Patrick Kennedy, son of the late Senator Edward “Ted” Kennedy and Joan Kennedy, has fully embraced his DNA. He has worked tirelessly to shed new light on the struggle with mental illness and addiction that hang—now in plain view—on numerous branches of his family tree. In true Kennedy fashion, he is in the public eye working to right certain wrongs, more specifically, to get the world on board with the fact that the brain is part of the body and requires (and deserves) proper medical attention just like any other part. But unlike the Kennedys before him, he practices a sort of transparency that he recognizes as his destiny, which he fully owns both in spite of his DNA and because of it. In his book, he admits to the mistakes he has been hardwired to make and since then, has made easing the stigma of behavioral health his sole mission.

His passion was contagious when he and journalist Jack Ford discussed Patrick’s position as the nation’s leading political voice on mental illness, addiction, and other brain diseases. Ford’s focus on the subject stems from the fact that his father died from alcoholism at age 49.

Kennedy’s efforts to create stronger advocacy for all types of mental health and substance use disorders, have manifested in, among other things, lead sponsorship of the Mental Health Parity and Addictions Equity Act of 2008, as well as the creation of two nonprofit organizations—The Kennedy Forum and One Mind, which aim to provide and encourage groups that would normally compete for research dollars and support in other forms, to join forces.

The Kennedy Forum leads a national dialogue on transforming mental health and addiction care delivery by uniting mental health advocates, business leaders, and government agencies around a common set of principles. One Mind pushes for greater global investment in brain research, which Kennedy has called “the next great frontier in medicine,” and is pioneering a worldwide approach to make scientific research, results, and data available to researchers everywhere.

Progress has been made, but Kennedy says there is much more that can be done to encourage acceptance that brain illnesses should be treated with the same level of concern and respect as other diseases of the body such diabetes, cancer, heart disease, etc.

Here is a large portion of their conversation.

Jack Ford: You have clearly become one of the champions in the area of mental health and addiction. …You have been very open and candid in your book talking about your own life and your own struggles. There has always been a spotlight on the Kennedy family, and it’s something you cannot run and hide from. But what made you decide to step into that spotlight to talk about this in your own personal journey?

Patrick Kennedy: …I didn’t ask to be here as the advocate for mental health and addiction. I never wanted to be here at a podium being asked about this part of my life… and living in a family that also suffered from mental health and addiction. You got me by default. I became the leader of mental health and addiction policy in this country because I put my name on a bill that said the brain was part of the body. I never expected to be the first name on the bill. I thought because in my father’s case it took him 50 years in the US Senate before he got sponsored whatever he wanted because he was in the Senate longer than almost anyone else and he was chair of the big committees. So it was odd that as the youngest member of Congress, at 27, from the smallest state in the country and in the minority party, and as the lowest guy on the totem pole I got the chance to put my name number one. I got to be the sponsor. How in the world does that happen? Because no one else wanted to have to go in front of the cameras and have Jack ask them the same question he just asked me. That is the honest-to-God truth. No politician wanted to get up there and say they’re a champion of mental health, knowing that all of us are affected by it, and then have a press person ask about our own family situations. Because if we said anything, well, that yarn just spools right out and where do you reign it back in? And so you’re in trouble. If you say you’ve never been to treatment yourself, then you’re a one-termer. You say it’s happened to anyone in your family and you’re in the dog house with them, and you might be affecting their mental health by outing them involuntarily. So, there is no good minefield to walk through on this. And if you say no, they’ll think you’re a liar. So that’s why no one else wanted to put their name first.

I put my name first, not because…I keep reminding my Republican colleague Jim Ramstad, who I co-sponsored this with, he goes…if your uncle were alive he’d put you in a chapter in his book Profiles in Courage, but I have to tell everyone…the only reason I came out was because the guy I was in drug treatment with sold his story about being in drug treatment with me to the National Inquirer, which meant my face was on the cover (with the headline), “Patrick Kennedy: Cocaine Addict.” When I got up one morning, I was a second-term member of the State Legislature, and that was on every check-out counter in my district. I thought I was all done, as you would expect. I represented a very conservative neighborhood in Providence, RI, in the State House. The good thing is that my neighborhood was predominately Italian-American. Even though no one liked a drug addict, they really didn’t like someone who ratted on a drug addict. My posse…we started a re-election bid on “We’re not for the Rat Bastards; we’re for Patrick Kennedy.” That was my campaign slogan.

JF: That sounds like a skit from Saturday Night Live.

PK: Life is often like that.

JF: You’re right. So you became the lead sponsor with a bi-partisan backing, signed into law in 2008 by President George W. Bush. The title of the act is the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act. Why did you feel there was a need for the Federal Government to pass this act and what were you hoping it would provide?

PK: I was incredibly blessed because everything I was exposed to in life kind of set me up for this. If I look back on my life now, I could never have orchestrated the way it turned out, in a better way for me. My Aunt Eunice started Special Olympics with my grandmother. My family was steeped especially in the Disability Rights Movement, my father worked on the Americans with Disabilities Act. I was very sensitized to people who were treated as “the other,” particularly if they had a brain illness of some kind. My Aunt Rosemary, frankly, had a lobotomy because of her psychiatric disorder. Most people don’t know that. She had a mild form of intellectual disability. And yet, like many people, a certain percentage of those with intellectual disability also have psychiatric disorders. Everything I’ve read and learned about my Aunt Rosemary, leads me to conclude she had a psychiatric disorder, which really unnerved my grandfather, as it would any parent. At that time, lobotomy was the standard form of therapy. When that didn’t go well, she was banished from my family, and was sent to Wisconsin and wasn’t seen again by any member of my family, until after my grandfather had a stroke. My grandfather never saw her again after the lobotomy. That shame was so deep in my family that it transmitted itself through my father’s generation. When I think about my father’s inability to address what’s right in front of him, …he had learned and become very good at denial. It allowed him to survive things that…no one could survive what my father survived.

I was sensitized to that and to growing up with my mother being vilified because of her alcoholism. She would walk through the house inebriated in the middle of the day. My dad would have all of our nation’s leaders come to our house, people you would recognize and know of, and none of them would look up when my mother walked through the hallway. As a kid, I totally got the message to get her back in the room and shut the door. My brother, sister and I spent our childhoods doing all we could to hide our mother so she wouldn’t embarrass anybody. That was on family vacations, in our house and everywhere we went. I never got to connect with my mother on an emotional level because she was so debilitated by her illnesses, both alcoholism and severe depression, but I felt the need to defend her. Throughout my life, that’s what I took on.

I really feel blessed that I was able to support this bill and that, ironically, the House version of the bill covered alcoholism and depression and the Senate version of the bill did not. I could not get any agreement between the House and the Senate versions. But when my dad got brain cancer and he was home and nearing the end of his life, I asked him to help get the House version passed. He told me to call Chris Dodd, his best friend. …four days later, the market collapsed and the banks in this country went belly-up, and all of a sudden, Chris Dodd became somebody. He was Chairman of the Banking Committee and all of a sudden he was the most important man in Washington, D.C. That was four days after I asked for his help to get HR1424, the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act passed.

He called me back and said, “Patrick, we have to pass this bail-out of our nation’s banks. It’s going to cost the taxpayers between $700 and 800 billion dollars. None of us wants to vote for it, but we know if we don’t, our country could end up in another Great Depression. That was the feeling on Wall Street and around the country at that time. He said, “I have an idea.” I said, “What’s that?” He said, “How about I write the whole Toxic Acid relief program into your bill, the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act.” And I said, “You can do that?” And he said, “Yes, I’m Chairman of the Banking committee.” And that’s exactly what he did. And because of that, we got the whole DSM (Diagnostic Statistical Manual for all mental illnesses) covered in the Parity law, which we never would have gotten if it was on its own. Just to give you a quick flash of what a Conference Committee is, it’s when the Senate sponsors meet with the House sponsors. Pete Domenici said to me, “I’ll be damned if I let those addicts sink our bill.” And frankly, he was right. If we had added addiction, there was no way the Congress of the U.S. would have passed that. There would be no way we could pass that bill today for the same reasons.

There is no advocacy out there in this country. None! Facing addiction… You could fill this whole house with the members nationwide. Faces and Voices probably would fit in the room back here. NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness) does a great job, but they’re a fraction of what they really represent in terms of the populations affected by these illnesses. Bottom line, the reason we don’t get anywhere on these illnesses, is the stigma is so great that no one is willing to come up like HIV-AIDS, who knows. If they could do it, we should be able to do it. But frankly, I think the stigma is even greater than even cancer. That’s the big problem.

JF: Why do you think that is? I had a conversation with someone recently on my PBS show about this. They said something to me, and I hadn’t thought of this. So much of it has to do with words. For instance, if you’re talking about someone who has “substance abuse,” what does that say as opposed to “substance disorder?” I thought about it. I realized, and I make my living with words, the words you use can be extraordinarily impactful. What do you think it is that drives this notion of the stigma that attaches to mental illness and addiction?

PK: …It cuts to the heart of it, and that is who we are as people. We’re talking about our agency, our ability to be considered of right mind. Who amongst us wants to be saddled with the label that somehow we’re not “all there,” that we’re not in full possession of our mental faculties. That, my friends, is why there’s stigma because there’s no one out there who wants to be seen in a way that’s pitiful. …There is nobody who can get past the fact that if you admit that you have one of these illnesses people are going to not only look at you different, but you’re going to have an immediate liability in dealing with them and other people for the rest of your life. They’re always going to look at you in that prism. Are they all right today? Are they on their meds? People make judgments. It’s very disconcerting.

JF: How can we combat that? Like you said, it gets to the core of who we are in the notion of your defense mechanisms and how you want to view yourself. As an aside, I interviewed an Iraq War veteran who lost both legs and part of an arm and suffered a head injury. The first day after his surgery, he was ready to get up and start his rehab, but he wouldn’t talk about his brain injury. When I asked him, he echoed what you said. He said, I can lose my arms and I can lose my legs and I can still function and remember that I was a soldier. But I can’t look my comrades in the eye if they think there’s something missing. So how do we deal with that?

PK: …We have to deal with each other based upon a sense of compassion and not judgment, in that respect. The way we’re all conditioned is to give people value based on all of these other characteristics besides who they are as human beings, and what matters most is how you connect with someone. Mental illness and addiction do not need to impair the human connection, even while it can impair the way communication takes place because of the impairments from these illnesses. But people can show human warmth and love, and that has to be the essential element. I’m a real believer these days in seeing the spark of divinity in every person because every person has his own set of gifts. It may be more difficult to see to find those gifts in some people than in others, but if you spend time because you know we’re all children of God, and they’re going to teach you something you didn’t know before and they’re going to add to your life in some other way…that, I think, is the revolutionary change. That leads to a whole different paradigm in the way people relate to each other. That’s the paradigm that’s going to heal this stigma. It has to be a spiritual solution.

Elevate your home theater binge-watch with a curated movie theme. 

By Mariah Morgan

The binge-watching phenomenon has given TV junkies a new appreciation for their pricey home theaters. Unfortunately, the couch potato in all of us seems content to pick a television series and just burn through all the episodes. Why not curate your own viewing schedule with a hand-picked queue of themed releases? Love dopey Hugh Grant rom-coms? Gritty Charlize Theron dramas? Crazy Ben Stiller vehicles? Don’t be shy. Make yourself a Top 10 list, sit back and enjoy! In honor of EDGE’s “Million To One” issue theme, here is my Top 10 list of movies featuring a “Million” theme…

1 • Slumdog Millionaire (2008) Starring Dev Patel & Irrfan Kahn Patel plays teenager Jamal, a street urchin who rises from the slums of Mumbai to win fame and fortune on the Indian version of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? The film introduced some of India’s most celebrated actors to mainstream movie audiences and won eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director. Directed by Danny Boyle. 

2 • Million Dollar Baby (2004) Starring Hillary Swank, Clint Eastwood & Morgan Freeman Swank stars as a waitress-turned-boxer who enlists the help of old-timers Eastwood and Freeman, who reluctantly guide her toward a $1 million title fight. Million Dollar Baby won four Oscars, including Best Picture. Many consider this the best-ever boxing flick. Directed by Clint Eastwood. 

3 • Million Dollar Legs (1932) Starring W.C. Fields, Jack Oakie & Susan Fleming Oakie and Fields conspire to assemble a team for the Los Angeles Olympics to reverse the fortunes of the bankrupt country of Klopstokia. They lead a cast of slapstick veterans that includes Ben Turpin and Andy Clyde in a comedy so completely untethered that it verges on the avant garde. The Marx Brothers reportedly turned down Million Dollar Legs because it was too crazy. Directed by Edward Cline. 

4 • How To Marry A Millionaire (1953) Starring Marilyn Monroe, Betty Grable & Lauren Bacall A trio of gold-diggers conspires to land millionaire husbands by renting a Manhattan penthouse and posing as high-class New Yorkers. It’s kind of a frivolous story given the talent involved, but it has endured as a classic. Few fans have actually seen it as it was shot— How To Marry A Millionaire was one of the first CinemaScope films, and it is impossible to fit on a standard television screen. Directed by Jean Negulesco.

5 • If I Had A Million (1932) Starring Gary Cooper, Charles Laughton & George Raft Fans of the old TV series The Millionaire should find If I Had A Million intriguing, as the show was based on this imaginative movie. A dying tycoon, played by Richard Bennett, leaves his fortune to eight total strangers, picked at random out of phone book. Seven different directors—including Hollywood legends Ernst Lubitsch and Norman McLeod—were enlisted to tell the eight stories.

6 • One In A Million (1936) Starring Sonja Henie, Don Ameche, Adolph Menjou & The Ritz Brothers Sonja Henie made this film—her first of many—shortly after winning her third consecutive Olympic figure skating gold medal at the 1936 Winter Games in Germany. The magnetic Henie became one of Hollywood’s highest-paid stars after playing a Swiss innkeeper’s daughter who becomes an international skating sensation. Directed by Sidney Lanford. 

7 • Million Dollar Arm (2014) Starring John Hamm, Aasif Mandvi, Bill Paxton & Alan Arkin Disney’s very watchable baseball film follows down and-out scout J.B. Bernstein as he discovers a pair of young pitchers in India. Based on a true story, Million Dollar Arm co-stars Suraj Sharma and Madhur Mittal— familiar faces from Slumdog Millionaire. Directed by Craig Gillespie.

8 • One Million Years B.C. (1966) Starring Raquel Welch This movie is definitely in the running for the all-time guilty pleasure award. Besides Raquel Welch’s iconic cavewoman bikini, it features the work of special effects maestro Ray Harryhausen and fairly good overall production values for a dino-drama. Nine minutes were cut out of the U.S. theatrical version because of violence and a suggestive dance scene. Directed by Don Chaffey. 

9 • Le Million (1931) Starring Annabella & Rene Lefevre This French musical comedy is a favorite of film school professors. Le Million marked a true breakthrough in talking pictures. The director detested the quality of sound films of the era and singlehandedly propelled the technology forward. He was hailed as a master after its release. Directed by Rene Clair.

10 •The Boy Who Stole A Million (1960) Starring Maurice Reyna Paco, a 12-year-old bank messenger, “borrows” a million pesetas from an open vault to help his father repair his taxi. He is pursued through the streets of Valencia, Spain by cops and criminals hoping to get their hands on the money. Shot on location with a talented English-speaking cast, The Boy Who Stole A Million is a sweet, well-made film that is family-friendly without being sappy or syrupy. Directed by Charles Crichton. 

Honorable Mention 

Million Dollar Legs (1939) Starring Betty Grable & Jackie Coogan This was the movie that catapulted Betty Grable into the pin-up stratosphere. It co-starred her then-husband Jackie Coogan, a former child star who was a celebrated bandleader at the time. Coogan later played Uncle Fester on The Addams Family. The movie had plenty of star power—including Donald O’Connor, Buster Crabbe and William Holden—but it doesn’t hold up particularly well 80 years later. 

Horrible Mention 

Brewster’s Millions (1985) How a movie featuring Richard Pryor, John Candy and Rick Moranis can have so few laughs remains one of Hollywood’s great mysteries. 

Headliners

Sunday • February 10 • 3:00 pm

Kean Stage 

David Sanborn Quintet 

In Concert 

This six-time Grammy-winning saxophonist has assembled a stunning program of straight-ahead jazz tunes for his new quintet—featuring saxophone, trombone, keyboards, bass and drums. 

Saturday • February 23 • 8:00 pm 

Prudential Center 

Michael Bublé 

In Concert 

Michael Bublé comes to The Rock in support of his 8th major studio album, Love, a testament to the power of music and its healing potential—not just for the listener but for Bublé, too. 

 

Saturday • February 23 • 8:00 pm 

State Theatre 

John Mellencamp 

The John Mellencamp Show 

The Rock & Roll Hall of Famer’s 2019 tour coincides with the release of his latest album, and features classics such as “Jack and Diane” and “Hurts So Good.”

Saturday • March 2 • 7:00 pm 

State Theatre

Lloyd Price, Sonny Turner & Bill Haley’s Comets 

Brooklyn Paramount Reunion 

Hosted by the Duke of Doo Wop, Harry G, and DJ Radio’s Alan David Stein, this lineup of oldies legends also includes The Skyliners, Cleveland Stills & The Dubs, Gary Troxel & The Fleetwoods, Sonny Turner of The Platters and Jimmy Gallagher of The Passions. 

Saturday • March 2 • 8:00 pm

Prudential Center 

Elton John 

Farewell Yellow Brick Road Tour Elton 

John’s three-year final Farewell Yellow Brick Road Tour includes this stop at The Rock. His career achievements include more than 30 platinum and multi-platinum albums, over 50 Top 40 hits, and record sales north of 300 million.

Sunday • March 3 • 2:00 & 7:00 pm 

State Theatre

RAIN: A Tribute to the Beatles 

In celebration of the anniversary of the release of Abbey Road, RAIN brings the group’s greatest hits in a note-for-note theatrical event billed as the next best thing to seeing the Fab Four live. 

Saturday • March 9 • 7:00 pm 

UCPAC Muddfest 2019 

Hard rockers Puddle of Mudd headline an electric show featuring Saliva, Trapt, Saving Abel, and Tantric. 

Saturday • March 9 • 8:00 pm 

State Theatre 

David Bowie Alumni 

A Bowie Celebration Celebrate the music of David Bowie with alumni musicians of David Bowie’s bands from across the decades, including his longest-standing member Mike Garson, along with Earl Slick, Gerry Leonard and Carmine Rojas. The concert features an unforgettable and critically acclaimed evening of Bowie songs with an ever-rotating mix of hits and deep cuts. 

Wednesday • March 13 • 8:00 pm 

State Theatre 

Johnny Mathis 

The Voice of Romance Tour 

Johnny Mathis has recorded more than 70 albums and sold millions of records worldwide. He returns to New Brunswick to perform his greatest hits, including “Chances Are,” “It’s Not For Me To Say,” and “Misty.” 

Wednesday • March 13 • 8:00 pm 

Prudential Center 

Fleetwood Mac In Concert 

The iconic band’s 2019 tour features Mick Fleetwood, John McVie, Stevie Nicks and Christine McVie, along with newcomers Mike Campbell and Neil Finn. Fleetwood Mac has sold more than 100 million records worldwide and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1998. 

 

Thursday • March 14 • 8:00 pm 

State Theatre 

Joe Bonamassa In Concert 

Grammy-nominated blues-rock guitar icon Joe Bonamassa is touring in support of his new studio album, Redemption. Hailed worldwide as one of the greatest guitar players of his generation, Bonamassa has redefined the blues-rock genre and brought it into the mainstream. 

Friday • March 15 • 8:00 pm 

State Theatre

Art Garfunkel In Concert 

Art Garfunkel has eight Grammys and a Lifetime Achievement Award to his credit, spanning his partnership with Paul Simon, a long solo career and a Golden Globe-winning turn as a dramatic actor. His show includes iconic hits like “Sound of Silence,” “Scarborough Fair” and “Mrs. Robinson.”

Saturday • March 16 • 7:30 pm 

NJPAC 

Linda Eder 

American Song Since her 12-week victory streak on Star Search, Linda Eder has developed into one of the most powerful and versatile voices of her generation, with a diverse repertoire that spans musical theater, American standards, pop, country, jazz and more. 

 

Saturday • March 17 • 3:00 pm 

State Theatre

Sir James Galway In Concert 

The living legend of the flute, Sir James Galway, returns to the State Theatre New Jersey with renowned flutist Lady Jeanne Galway and pianist Michael McHale. Galway’s illustrious career includes over 30 million album sales and passionate work in music education.

Saturday • March 23 • 7:30 pm 

Kean Stage

Patina Miller In Concert

Miller earned a Tony nomination for her 2011 Broadway debut in Sister Act and later won a Tony for her role in Pippin. She made her feature film debut in The Hunger Games: Mockingjay and had a featured role in Madam Secretary. 

 

Sunday • March 24 • 7:30 pm 

State Theatre

Gladys Knight In Concert 

Seven-time Grammy winner Gladys Knight performs her iconic hits, including “Midnight Train to Georgia,” “I’ve Got to Use My Imagination” and “Best Thing That Ever Happened to Me.” She has 11 #1 R&B singles to her credit and was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame along with her group, The Pips. 

 

Sunday • March 24 • 8:00 pm 

Prudential Center 

TobyMac Hits Deep Tour 

The leading light in Christian hip hop comes to Newark with a show featuring music from his first new collection in three years. After earning acclaim as a member of DC Talk in the 1980s, TobyMac embarked on a solo career that has produced seven Grammy awards. 

Tuesday • March 26 • 8:00 pm 

State Theatre 

Indigo Girls In Concert

With over 14 million records sold, the folk rock duo of Amy Ray and Emily Saliers is known for its award-winning albums and social activism. They met in elementary school, began performing in high school and won a Grammy in 1990. 

 

Friday • March 29 • 8:00 pm

NJPAC 

Billy Cox, Joe Satriani & Johnny Lang Experience Hendrix Tour 

Jimi Hendrix called his stage performance his Electric Church. Experience Hendrix captures this spirit thanks to virtuoso guitarists like Joe Satriani and Johnny Lang and former Experience bandmate Billy Cox. 

Saturday • March 30 6:00 & 8:30 pm 

NJPAC

Mandy Gonzalez Fearless! 

Mandy Gonzalez, aka Angelica in the smash hit Hamilton, makes her Chase Room debut. Gonzalez performs powerful songs by contemporary composers like Lin-Manuel Miranda and Tom Kitt, as well as a stirring reinterpretation of Bruce Springsteen’s “Born to Run.” 

Friday • April 12 • 8:00 pm 

NJPAC 

Chick Corea Trilogy In Concert 

Keyboardist Chick Corea, bassist Christian McBride and drummer Brian Blade gather to form this stellar trio, which earned two Grammys for the 2014 three-CD set Trilogy, a live recording that combined original compositions with standards like “The Song is You,” “How Deep is the Ocean?” and “My Foolish Heart.” Pianist Joey Alexander opens as special guest. 

Saturday • April 13 • 8:00 pm 

NJPAC

Kashmir The Ultimate Led Zeppelin Tribute 

Kashmir, The Ultimate Led Zeppelin Tribute, transports audiences back to the glory days of one of the most iconic rock units of all time, hitting every stop and every classic Zeppelin hit along the way. Created by acclaimed vocalist Jean Violet in 2000, Kashmir has grown from the streets of New York into one of the world’s top Led Zeppelin tribute bands. 

Monday • April 15 • 8:00 pm 

State Theatre

Chicago In Concert 

Did you know that Chicago was the first American rock band to chart Top 40 albums in six consecutive decades? The group’s hits include “25 or 6 to 4,” “Saturday In The Park,” “Feelin’ Stronger Every Day” and “Make Me Smile.” 

Saturday • April 27 • 2:00 & 7:30 pm 

NJPAC

 Zakir Hussain Masters of Percussion 

Grammy-winning tabla virtuoso Zakir Hussain is regarded as one of the world’s greatest percussionists. He returns to Newark’s Victoria Theater with a handpicked ensemble of master musicians and dancers. Throughout his career, Hussain has elevated the status of the tabla—not only throughout India but with world music fans around the globe.  

 

Song, Dance & Drama

 

January 31 to March 3 

Paper Mill Playhouse 

My Very Own British Invasion

A fable of young love set against the backdrop of the exploding 1960s music scene—when England launched the little dust-up that became known as The British Invasion. Based on the experiences of Peter Noone, who was just a teenager willing to sacrifice international stardom for the sake of the girl he loves, the show features more than two dozen chart-topping hits from all the best British bands of the era. Tony Award winner Jerry Mitchell choreographs and directs.

Saturday • February 9 • 7:00 pm 

UCPAC 

Ain’t Misbehavin’ 

The free concert version of the award-winning musical revue, Ain’t Misbehavin’, is presented on the UCPAC Main Stage to kick off a month-long celebration featuring programming honoring Black History Month. Ain’t Misbehavin’ pays tribute to the Harlem Renaissance, an era of growing creativity, cultural awareness, and pride. 

Saturday • February 16 • 7:30 pm 

Kean Stage 

Meredith Baxter & Michael Gross Love Letters 

The Family Ties co-stars are together again, this time in A.R. Gurney’s Love Letters. This Pulitzer-nominated play is a tender, tragi-comic and nuanced examination of the shared nostalgia, missed opportunities, and the deep closeness of two lifelong, complicated friends. 

Saturday • February 16 3:00 & 7:00 pm 

NJPAC 

Maurice Hines Tappin’ Thru Life 

Broadway legend Maurice Hines, accompanied by The DIVA Jazz Orchestra, revisits stopping points along his career in a song-and-dance celebration that pays tribute to his brother, Gregory Hines, and other performers who inspired him—from Frank Sinatra to Lena Horne. Hines is backed by his tap protégés, The Manzari Brothers. 

February 22 to March 2 

Kean Stage 

A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Lunatic lovers, nefarious fairies, atrocious artistes and rambunctious royals star in Shakespeare’s most beloved comedy.

Friday • March 1 • 8:00 pm 

NJPAC 

Snoop Dogg and Tamar Braxton Redemption of a Dogg 

Award-winning writer, director and producer Je’Caryous Johnson comes to NJPAC with his new stage play, Redemption of a Dogg, starring hip-hop legend Snoop Dogg and Tamar Braxton of Braxton Family Values. Redemption of a Dogg, the follow-up to the popular stage production, Set It Off, is set to a soundtrack of over 25 years of Snoop’s greatest hits.

 

Saturday • March 2 • 7:30 pm 

NJPAC 

Rennie Harris/Puremovement Lifted 

Rennie Harris and his Puremovement hip-hop/street dance company have set their latest work, Lifted, to house and gospel music, featuring a live choir. The story is loosely inspired by Charles Dickens’s Oliver Twist. 

Saturday • March 16 • 7:30 pm 

Kean Stage

Murphy’s Celtic Legacy 

This invigorating performance of traditional Irish dance—with dark cinematic undertones—is an inspiring tale of courage and loss created by Chris Hannon, a former lead in Lord of the Dance.

Saturday • March 16 • 2:00 & 8:00 pm 

State Theatre 

Russian National Ballet Swan Lake 

The Russian National Ballet brings the world’s most beloved program to life: the story of a princess turned into a swan by an evil sorcerer’s curse. This performance features choreography by Petipa and an unforgettable score by Tchaikovsky. 

April 2 to 4 • 8:00 pm 

State Theatre

Rent

The 20th Anniversary Tour 

In the 1990s, Rent changed the landscape of American theatre. Jonathan Larson’s Tony- and Pulitzer-winning musical—a re-imagining of Puccini’s La Bohème— continues to speak loudly and defiantly to audiences across generations and all over the world. 

April 4 to May 5

Paper Mill Playhouse 

Benny & Joon 

A New Musical Based on the 1993 film starring Johnny Depp and Mary Stuart Masterson, this new musical is a smart, funny, tender-hearted celebration of love—between children and parents, romantic partners, friends and siblings— and embraces a difficult subject with warmth, honesty and wit. 

Saturday • April 6 • 7:00 pm 

NJPAC 

Carolyn Dorfman Dance Jersey Moves! 

The stunning dancers of New Jersey-based choreographer Carolyn Dorfman’s multi-ethnic company are known for high-energy, technically demanding dance and powerful storytelling—connecting life and dance in bold, athletic and dramatic terms, and taking audiences on intellectual and emotional journeys that illuminate and celebrate the human experience.  

Thursday • April 11 • 8:00 pm 

State Theatre 

Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Live On Stage 

The Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company, one of the most innovative and powerful forces in the dance-theater world, makes its State Theatre debut, blending visual imagery and a stylistic approach to movement. The company’s program will include the dance piece, A Letter to My Nephew, accompanied by a score by composer Nick Hallett, performed by baritone Matthew Gamble. 

 

Family Friendly

 

Saturday • February 16 • 3:00 pm 

NJPAC 

Darci Lynne & Friends 

Darci Lynne is accompanied by her musical friends, including a diva-esque rabbit (Petunia), a shy and soulful mouse (Oscar), and a sarcastic old woman (Edna). Singing through her friends helped the young entertainer find a voice inside that she didn’t know she had, and helped her overcome a lifelong struggle with shyness. Lynne was the winner of Season 12 of America’s Got Talent. 

Monday • February 18 10:00, 12:30 & 3:00 pm 

State Theatre

Jack Hanna Into the Wild Live 

America’s most beloved animal expert, Jack Hanna, brings his Emmy-winning television series to the stage, featuring some of the world’s most spectacular animals. Jack also shares humorous stories and amazing exclusive footage from his worldwide adventures. 

Friday • March 22 • 8:00 pm

Saturday • March 23 • 2:00 & 8:00 pm 

State Theatre 

Finding Neverland 

Finding Neverland tells the incredible story behind one of the world’s most beloved characters, Peter Pan. Playwright J.M. Barrie struggles to find inspiration until he meets four young brothers and their beautiful widowed mother. The magic of Barrie’s classic tale springs to life in this heartwarming theatrical event. 

 

Saturday • March 30 3:00 & 5:00 pm 

State Theatre

B: The Underwater Bubble Show 

The wondrous underwater world of Bubblelandia and all its beautiful sea creatures come to life in this imaginary journey through the deep blue sea. Inspired by childhood favorites like Alice in Wonderland, The Little Mermaid, and Peter Pan, B—The Underwater Bubble Show is a lavish musical production featuring dancers and acrobats, original music, and fantastic stage effects including lasers, flying foam and soap bubbles to create a dreamlike underwater atmosphere. 

Saturday • April 13 • 11:00 am

NJPAC 

Mermaid Theatre Rainbow Fish 

The one-of-a-kind, puppet-filled adaptation of the popular book by Marcus Pfister is an NJPAC favorite. Mermaid Theatre is known internationally for its delightful stage adaptations of beloved children’s literature. The company employs innovative puppetry, striking scenic effects, evocative original music, and gentle storytelling that stimulates young minds. 

Saturday • April 13 • 8:00 pm 

NJPAC

Sunday • April 14 • 3:00 pm 

State Theatre

New Jersey Symphony Orchestra Mary Poppins in Concert 

This family-friendly, symphonic cinema event features the Oscar-winning classic Disney film unfolding on the big screen with the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra performing the charming and delightful musical score. 

April 26 to April 28 

State Theatre 

Sesame Street Live Make Your Magic 

When magician Justin visits Sesame Street to put on a magic show for the whole neighborhood, Elmo wants to be part of the big event. But there’s one problem…he doesn’t know how to do magic. Elmo learns that you can do anything you set your mind to if you just keep trying. 

April 26 to May 4 

NJPAC 

Shen Yun

The world’s premier classical Chinese dance and music company returns to Newark with its latest epic production. Through the universal language of music and dance, Shen Yun weaves a wondrous tapestry of heavenly realms, ancient legends, modern heroic tales, and treasured ethnic traditions—taking audiences on a stunning, immersive journey through 5,000 years of traditional Chinese culture.

 

Funny You Should Say That

 

Saturday • February 16 • 7:00 pm

NJPAC 

Russell Peters Deported World Tour 

Russell Peters leaves no cultural stereotype unturned in his Deported World Tour. An early YouTube sensation, Peters was recently included in Rolling Stone’s 50 Best Comedians of All Time.

 

Saturday • February 23 • 7:30 pm 

NJPAC

Tom Papa Live On Stage 

New Jersey’s own Tom Papa is a true quadruple-threat. He excels as a stand-up comedian, comedy writer, voiceover specialist and dramatic actor. Make that quintuple-threat…he recently released his first book, Your Dad Stole My Rake: And Other Family Dilemmas. 

 

Thursday • March 7 • 8:00 pm 

State Theatre

Lewis Black The Joke’s On Us Tour 

Lewis Black returns to New Brunswick with a new show, ripping subject matter from the headlines and ratcheting up his anger to a fever pitch. Following his star turn on The Daily Show, Black has won Grammys for two of his eight comedy albums, and authored three bestselling books. 

 

Saturday • March 9 • 8:00 pm 

NJPAC

Ryan Hamilton Live on Stage Rubber-faced 

Ryan Hamilton, one of the country’s fastest-rising entertainers, makes his NJPAC debut after opening for Jerry Seinfeld at Carnegie Hall. His sarcastic observational humor covers everything from skydiving to the challenges of being single. 

 

Wednesday • March 20 • 7:30 pm 

Prudential Center 

Impractical Jokers

The Cranjis McBasketball World Comedy Tour The Tenderloins—Joe Gatto, James Murray, Brian Quinn and Sal Vulcano—star in TruTV’s hit series, Impractical Jokers. They bring their bag of public pranks to The Rock for an outrageous multimedia stage show. 

 

Friday • April 12 • 7:00 pm 

NJPAC 

Paula Poundstone Live On Stage 

Paula Poundstone’s smart, observational humor and spontaneous wit have made her a favorite of NPR audiences and stand-up comedy fans. She also appears on Nobody Listens to Paula Poundstone, a weekly podcast co-hosted by Adam Felber—her friend and fellow panelist on Wait, Wait…Don’t Tell Me! She recently authored her second book, The Totally Unscientific Study of the Search for Human Happiness, which debuted at #1 on the Amazon Humor bestseller list.  

 

Classical Performances

 

Sunday • February 24 • 3:00 pm 

State Theatre

Czech National Symphony Orchestra 100 Years of Leonard Bernstein 

The Czech National Symphony Orchestra, with Grammy-winning Mezzo-Soprano Isabel Leonard—and led by conductor John Mauceri—celebrates the legacy of Leonard Bernstein with a program entitled 100 Years of Leonard Bernstein. 

 

Saturday • March 2 • 8:00 pm

Sunday • March 3 • 3:00 pm 

NJPAC 

New Jersey Symphony Orchestra In Concert 

Hans Graf conducts and Van Cliburn finalist Jeffrey Kahane is featured on piano in a program that includes works by Ravel, and Shostakovich, as well as Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4. 

Thursday • March 7 • 1:30 pm Friday • March 8 • 8:00 pm 

Sunday • March 10 • 3:00 pm 

State Theater 

New Jersey Symphony Orchestra In Concert 

Jun Markl conducts and Ingrid Fliter is featured on piano in a program that includes works by Mendelssohn and Britten, as well as La Mer and Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun by Debussy. 

Friday • March 15 • 8:00 pm 

NJPAC

Philadelphia Orchestra In Concert 

Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducts the Philadelphians in Schubert’s great and noble Symphony No. 9, and young pianist Jan Lisiecki plays Mendelssohn. The Philadelphia Orchestra was cultivated under Leopold Stokowski, Eugene Ormandy, Riccardo Muti and now Yannick Nézet-Séguin. The program also includes Haydn’s overture to his opera L’Isola Disabitata. 

Saturday • March 23 • 8:00 pm 

NJPAC

New Jersey Symphony Orchestra In Concert 

The incomparable Xian Zhang conducts and Johannes Moser is featured on cello in a program that includes works by Schumann and Brahms, as well as Andrew Norman, Music America’s Composer of the Year in 2017. Norman’s Cello Concerto is making its East Coast premiere.

We welcome the community to our programs that are designed to educate and inform. Programs are subject to change.

 

SEMINARS

Visit www.TrinitasRMC.org for seminar listings or check for updates on our Facebook page, www.facebook.com/TrinitasRMC.

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 10 • 5:30 PM

Spotlight On: Minority Health Awareness

Rise up for your own sake! Learn how to feel better and function better. Life is short. It’s never too late to get healthier!

Lord & Taylor, 609 N Ave. West, Westfield Call 908.994.5139 to register.

THURSDAY, MAY 16 • TBD

Spotlight On: National Women’s Health

Women are infamous for taking care of everyone other than themselves. Dr. Abu S. Alam, OB/GYN, will tell you how to stop the insanity and get serious about making the most of your female superpowers.

Elmora Public Library, 740 West Grand St., Elizabeth Call 908.994.5139 to register.

 

TCCC SUPPORT GROUPS

Conference Room A or Conference Room B Trinitas Comprehensive Cancer Center

225 Williamson Street, Elizabeth NJ 07207

Living with Cancer Support Groups

All events take place from 1:00 – 3:00 pm. Call (908) 994-8535 for 2019 schedule.

 

SPECIAL PROGRAMS

Health Services with Women In Mind

Trinitas helps provide women access to vital health services with a focus on preventive measures. These include educational programs and cancer screenings. Programs offered in English and Spanish.

To learn more about these services, contact Amparo Aguirre, (908) 994-8244 or at amaguirre@trinitas.org

 

Ask the Pharmacist: Medication Management

Free of charge, by appointment only. Monthly on the 4th Tuesday, 11:30 am – 1:00 pm Call (908) 994-5237.

 

TRINITAS HEALTH FOUNDATION EVENTS

THURSDAY, MAY 9 • 6:00 PM

Annual Gala Dinner Dance

The Venetian, Garfield, NJ

Join the foundation at this beautiful black tie event complete with fantastic live music, dancing, an incredible auction and amazing food and drink.

 

THURSDAY, JUNE 20 • 8:00 AM

11th Annual Andrew H. Campbell Sporting Clays Tournament

Hudson Farm Club, Andover, NJ

For more information about the Foundation or to learn more about its fundraising events, (908) 994-8249 or kboyer@trinitas.org.

Proceeds from these and other events benefit the patients of Trinitas Regional Medical Center. Making reservations for Foundation events is fast and easy on your American Express, MasterCard, Visa or Discover card.

 

TRINITAS CHILDREN’S THERAPY SERVICES

899 Mountain Avenue, Suite 1A, Springfield, NJ (973) 218-6394

 

“10 Tips…” Workshops

The series consists of workshops appropriate for parents, teachers, or individuals who work with young children and focus on practical strategies that can be easily implemented into daily classroom and/or home routines. All workshops offer suggestions that are appropriate for all children. A special emphasis is placed on children with special needs and those with an Autism diagnosis.

 

Workshops are $15 per class.

April 16, 2019 6:00 – 7:30 pm

10 Easy to Make Sensory Activities

May 21, 2019 6:00 – 7:30 pm

10 Tips for Improving Fine Motor Skills

June 11, 2019 6:00 – 7:30 pm

10 Tips for Creating Fun Summer Activities (Indoor and Outdoor)

For more information or to register, please contact Kellianne Martin at Kmartin@trinitas.org or by phone at (973) 218-6394 x1000.

 

MEDICAL AND BEHAVIORAL HEALTH SUPPORT GROUPS

 

Diabetes Management Support Group

Monthly, First Monday, 2:00 – 3:00 pm

Kathleen McCarthy, RN, CDE (Certified Diabetes Educator)

Open to both diabetics and non-diabetics who want to learn more about diabetes prevention.

65 Jefferson Street, 2nd Floor, Elizabeth, NJ Call (908) 994-5502 to register.

 

Sleep Disorders

If you are experiencing problems sleeping, contact the Trinitas Comprehensive Sleep Disorders Center in Elizabeth. Another location in Cranford at Homewood Suites by Hilton has easy access to the Garden State Parkway. Both centers are headed by a medical director who is board certified in sleep, internal, pulmonary, and intensive care medicines, and is staffed by seven certified sleep technologists.

For further information, call (908) 994-8694 or visit www.njsleepdisorderscenter.org

 

Narcotics Anonymous

Monday 7:00 – 8:30 pm; Sunday 12:00 noon – 2:00 pm; and Sunday 5:00 – 6:30 pm

Jean Grady, Community Liaison, (908) 994-7438

Grassmann Hall, 655 East Jersey St., Elizabeth

 

Alcoholics Anonymous

Friday 7:30 – 8:45 pm

Jean Grady, Community Liaison, (908) 994-7438

Grassmann Hall, 655 East Jersey St., Elizabeth

 

HIV Education and Support Program for HIV Positive Patients

Monthly. Call for scheduled dates/times.

Judy Lacinak, (908) 994-7605

Early Intervention Program Clinic 655 Livingston St., Monastery Building, 2nd Floor, Elizabeth

 

Mental Illness Support Group (NAMI) for Spanish Speaking Participants

Monthly, Fourth Friday except August, 6:30 – 8:30 pm

Mike Guglielmino, (908) 994-7275 Martha Silva, NAMI 1-888-803-3413

6 So. Conference Rm., Williamson St. Campus 225 Williamson Street, Elizabeth

This page is sponsored by

Elizabethtown Healthcare Foundation

Inspired to Care, Inspired to Give

ELIZABETHTOWN GAS REPRESENTATIVES ADDED  HOLIDAY HAPPINESS AND JOY TO BROTHER BONAVENTURE  RESIDENTS

Thank you to the representatives from Elizabethtown Gas who visited the residents at Brother Bonaventure Long Term Care Facility recently. They personally delivered blankets and holiday cards to every resident, sang holiday songs along with them, and even helped celebrate a birthday! Not only did everyone love the warm and cozy blankets but many new friendships were made!

TAILGATE WITH TRINITAS RAISES OVER $31,000 

On Sunday, December 3, 2017, guests gathered at Shacka-maxon Country Club in Scotch Plains to watch the New York Giants take on the Oakland Raiders. NY Giants greats Ottis Anderson, Stephen Baker and Bill Neill delighted Trinitas supporters. While the Giants did not walk away with a win, Trinitas took home a win by raising over $31,000 in net proceeds!  Thank you to everyone who supported this year’s Tailgate with Trinitas event; you are the real MVPs! Pictured above is Stephen Baker “The Touchdown Maker” and Lisa Liss, Trinitas Director of Volunteers having fun together.

SAVE THE DATE AND JOIN US FOR TRINITAS HEALTH FOUNDATION’S 2018 ANNUAL GALA

This year the event will be held on Thursday, May 10th at The Venetian in Garfield, New Jersey. Join us for a fun-filled night with dinner and dancing to music performed by The Infernos. You’ll also have a chance to win some amazing prizes by participating in our raffle drawing, tricky tray, and silent & live auction. 

Please join us as we present the Healthcare Foundation of NJ with the Humanitarian Award and Allscripts with the Celebrating Philanthropy Award. Both organizations are very worthy of recognition.

Can’t join us but still want to support Trinitas? Contact the Foundation to learn about the many different sponsorship opportunities available, our online advertisement journal and other ways you can participate by donating items to our tricky tray and silent/live auction.

For more information contact Kim Boyer, Director of Fundraising Events, at (908) 994-8249 or kboyer@trinitas.org.

Trinitas celebrated Heart Month with a fashion show and heart talk, “Paint the Town: Go Red for Women” in February at Lord & Taylor in Westfield, where women learned about heart disease and had fun in the process.  

 

Heart Month and National Wear Red Day were celebrated in style at Trinitas in a number of ways. At the start of the month, Elizabeth Mayor Chris Bollwage proclaimed National Wear Red Day at a special presentation in the Trinitas lobby. Dr. Mirette Habib addressed 40 women on heart health during a “Going Red for Women” event held at Lord & Taylor in Westfield.

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

In February, Gwen Hassell (in orange and black) organized a Black History Month celebration feast for the Trinitas Operating Room staff. Gwen is joined by (left to right) Corssette Pratt, Joan Richard and Cathy Gittens.

AMAZING STARTS HERE

Kiddie Academy of Springfield, an educational childcare center, is open and enrolling new families. A brand new, state of the art facility with highly trained teachers and Life Essentials curriculum, the academy creates the opportunity for children to become truly amazing. They recently held their Grand Opening and ribbon-cutting ceremony which was accompanied by Jeff Pleis, Kiddie Academy Corporate, Nancy Kovacs, Director,  Aanal Parikh, Owner, Mike Scalera, Chamber Co-Chair, Springfield Police Captain Pat McLaughlin and Lieutenant Jon Rachel, Chamber Co-Chair Scott Seidel and Chamber VP Elliot Merkin.

SKY’S THE LIMIT

State and local dignitaries joined the management team of Sky Zone to celebrate the opening of its 35,000 square feet indoor aerial action park on Route 22 in Springfield. The facility offers trampoline courts, a warped wall, “Skyslam” slam dunking, an Ultimate Dodgeball Court and a Foam Zone. Left to right for the ribbon cutting are Elliott Merkin of the Chamber of Commerce, Township Committeeman Chris Capodice, Sky Zone GM Rich Niemczyk, State Senator Tom Kean, Springfield Mayor Rich Huber, franchise owner Mike Janay, Operations Manager Keith Wilhelmy, and Chamber of Commerce Co-Chair Mike Scalera.

WE HEAR YOU NOW

Thank you, Phillips 66 Bayway Refinery for the donation of five new Motorola APX 6000 portable radios for the Trinitas Mobile Intensive Care Unit (MICU).
The donation was celebrated by (left to right): Gerard Muench, Director of Pre-Hospital Services at Trinitas; Nadine Brechner, Vice President/Trinitas Health Foundation, Chief Development Officer; Gary S. Horan, FACHE, Trinitas President & CEO; Nancy Sadlon, Public Affairs Manager, Phillips 66 Bayway Refinery, and Mary Phillips, Community Relations Coordinator for the Refinery.

EVENING AT THE RACES

On Saturday, February 17, 2018, more than 180 guests gathered at the Meadowlands Racetrack in East Rutherford to place their bets with Trinitas! Thanks to their support and the support of our amazing sponsors, we raised more than$72,000—the most money this event has garnered in more than seven years!
A special thank you goes out to everyone who attended and/or supported the event. You helped us make our first fundraising event of 2018 a huge success. To those in the know, Trinitas is always a sure bet! Pictured: Michael Klein, Arlene Horan, Jill Sawers (Foundation Board Chair), Gary Horan (President & CEO of Trinitas Regional Medical Center).

SEEING IS BELIVING

Team Martucci is gearing up to participate in the Saturday, April 14th VisionWalk in New York’s Central Park. The event supports research for the treatment and prevention of retinal degenerative diseases. Among the many NJ supporters of the team is the Hilton Garden Inn in Springfield. For more information visit FightingBlindness.org.

IF THESE WALLS COULD TALK…

In recognition of Convergint Technologies 16th Annual Social Responsibility Day, 25 employees volunteered for a day of work at Trinitas Regional Medical Center’s New Point Campus in Elizabeth, NJ. The volunteers took part in revitalizing several rooms of the Behavioral Health Department with a fresh coat of paint. The brighter colors will help soothe not only patients but staff as well. Small changes such as these allow patients to feel emotionally safe and improve their overall mental health and wellness. Convergint Technologies was founded on a set of core values and beliefs, which is reflected by Convergint’s commitment to its customers, colleagues, families and, now, Trinitas.

KIDDIE ACADEMY SPONSORS  WESTFIELD 5K       

Kiddie Academy of Springfield owners Aanal & Jigar Shukla and Mihir & Nikita Desai pose with their children (l. to r.) Arya, Rhea and Rishi during Westfield’s Pizza Extravaganza and 5K run on July 26. Kiddie Academy was a proud sponsor of the annual event. The academy focuses on educating children and parents on the essentials of a healthier, more productive life—with a huge dose of fun—distinguishing it from traditional childcare options.  

THE GRADUATES

65 students received their nursing diplomas at the Trinitas School of Nursing (TSON) Convocation Ceremony held at St. Michael’s Church in Cranford. Surrounded by family, friends, and staff that provided guidance along the way, 11 men and 54 women proudly accepted their pins and began a new chapter in their lives. It was the school’s 158th convocation ceremony.

MESINA REALTY RIBBON CUTTING

Westfield Mayor Andy Skibitsky presides over the ribbon-cutting ceremony for the new offices of Mesina Realty Group at 52 Elm Street. Mesina Rutstein, a Westfield resident and Broker/Owner of Mesina Realty Group, welcomed fellow business owners and community leaders to the event. “We couldn’t be more excited to serve such a special community,” Rustein said. “At Mesina Realty Group, we are passionate about delivering exceptional client experiences. We have experts in every field to skillfully guide you from the beginning to the end of your real estate journey.”  

HELPING TO END HUNGER 

Over 500 sandwiches were made and distributed by members of the Elizabeth Rotary Club as part of a Sandwich Drive presented by Assemblywoman Annette Quijano in partnership with the Elizabeth Coalition to House the Homeless and St. Joseph’s Social Service Center.  The event took place at the Coalition’s location on Division Street in Elizabeth.

TRINITAS EARNS CEO CANCER GOLD STANDARD RE-ACCREDITATION

Trinitas Regional Medical Center has earned CEO Cancer Gold Standard™  re-accreditation for maintaining a strong commitment to the health of its employees and satisfying the latest, comprehensive requirements of the Gold Standard. To earn Gold Standard accreditation, an employer must take concrete actions to reduce the risk and burden of cancer: prohibit tobacco use and support tobacco cessation efforts; promote physical activity, healthy nutrition and weight management; provide health insurance options that include detecting cancer at its earliest stages, access to quality care and participation in cancer clinical trials; promote employee awareness of these initiatives, and support the needs of cancer survivors in the workplace. National Walking Day is just one of the many ways Trinitas continues to promote healthy living and reduce risks related to cancer.

ON THE EDGE IN WESTFIELD 

EDGE magazine staff members manned an EDGE/Trinitas display booth during the recent Westfield 5K Pizza Run sponsored by Downtown Westfield Corporation. Magazines and first aid kits were handed out by (left to right): Rob Rubilla, Senior Media Marketing Specialist; Doug Harris, Publisher; Jeff Shanes, Associate Publisher; Jama Bowman, Design Director, and Christine Layng, Media Marketing Specialist. Trinitas has been a top sponsor of the run since 2009

HEALTHY CORNER 

Trinitas Administrative Director of Diagnostic Services Ann Marie Scanlon administers a blood-pressure test during day of celebration and education for the children and families of the Elizabeth to publicize the NJ Healthy Corner Stores Initiative. The American Heart Association, Shaping Elizabeth, Bayway Family Success Center and Snap-Ed were among the event hosts. The event was chaired by Nancy DiLiegro, Ph.D., FACHE, Vice President of Clinical Operations and Physician Services/Chief Clinical Officer at Trinitas. The NJ Healthy Corner Store Initiative supports public health and economic development by linking community partners with corner storeowners to help stock, promote and sell healthy, affordable foods in underserved communities. As part of the initiative, Emily’s Supermarket added new healthy food choices to its store.  

GRAND OPENING IN SPRINGFIELD

After 68 years of doing business in Union, The Decorating Store at Terminal Mill Ends recently held a Grand Opening at its brand-new two floor decorating/design studio, now located in Springfield. Owner Ernie Spinelli (center) handled ribbon-cutting duties to mark the occasion; Township Committeewoman Geri Ann Bujnowski (to his left) joined friends, family and the store’s decorating team during the event. 

SURVIVORS DAY WARMS  HEARTS AND INSPIRES

Survivors Day, internationally known as a celebration of life, was held throughout the US, Canada, and other participating countries as a show of strength that life after a cancer diagnosis can be meaningful and productive. Trinitas Comprehensive Cancer Center hosted a powerful and emotional Survivors Day where nearly 50 survivors, their family members and friends attended the event at which they viewed a short multimedia presentation on what it means to persevere despite all odds. The spirit of Survivors Day was perfectly captured by Mary Jo Daniel of Roselle Park (pictured with Dr. Barry Levinson) who gave a poignant talk about what it means to be a survivor. She concluded with some advice for other caregivers in the room: “We survivors want you to be with us for a long time. Please take care of yourself by reducing your own risk of cancer. Stop smoking, eat healthy, take a walk with us. And love. Just love.” 

THIS IS HOW THEY ROLL

Vine Ripe Markets in Westfield has been rolling out the finest fresh mozzarella every day since opening their doors in December 2015. Earlier this year, VRM launched its long-awaited educational series with their weekly fresh mozzarella class. Held every Monday evening, VRM’s mozzarella experts craft a 90-minute session to teach foodies, families and friends the fine art of making this Italian culinary staple. The class is available for purchase via Groupon for $49. With purchase, guests receive a Vine Ripe Markets Bag, including a ball fresh mozzarella, a loaf of store-baked Italian bread, and a bottle of imported extra virgin olive oil. Complimentary wine, cheese and charcuterie are also served during the class.

Submit your EDGE People event at www.edgemagonline.com

 

STOP THE CLOCK!

The first baby born in 2018 at Trinitas Regional Medical Center arrived at 11:17 am on January 2nd. Proud parents Rose Demosthene and Willick Joseph of Rahway pose with baby Isaac Joseph who measured 19.5 inches and weighed in at 6 pounds, 13 ounces. The nursing staff kept a long-standing tradition by gifting a complete layette to the New Year’s baby. Pictured are (left to right): Gabriella Moncayo, RN, Val Sivadasan, RN, Sabina Klos, RN and Mayra Via, RN.

ACADEMIC EXCELLENCE

The Academy of Our Lady of Peace, New Providence has been awarded Blue Ribbon School status by the U.S. Department of Education based on its overall academic excellence.

The Blue Ribbon School award affirms the hard work of students, educators, families, and communities in creating a safe and welcoming school where students master challenging content. This prestigious award is given to a select number of private or public schools that exceed the criteria and represents exemplary teaching and learning. Only 229 public schools and 50 private schools out of the 133,000 public and 36,000 private schools in the USA had this honor bestowed on them. Pictured from left to right are Mr. Joel A. Castillo, Principal of the Academy of Our Lady of Peace, Mrs. Mary Rose Raleigh, Technology Teacher and Coordinator, and Father William A. Mahon, Pastor of Our Lady of Peace Church.

TRINITAS MINTS 71 NEW NURSES

Members of the Trinitas School of Nursing Class of January 2018 recite the Nightingale Pledge at the conclusion of convocation exercises held at St. Michael’s Church, Cranford. The 71 graduates are now are eligible to sit for the registered nurse licensing exam. Congratulations to the Trinitas School of Nursing’s 159th graduating class!

MLB MVP’S

MLB Residential Lending, LLC and Springfield Township officials held a rebranding ribbon-cutting ceremony last November. Officials conducting the ceremony were Springfield Township Mayor Diane Stampoulos and Springfield Township Deputy Mayor Maria Vasallo. MLB Residential Lending executive board includes Samuel Lamparello, Francis Lamparello, Justin M. Demola, Richard Doran, Marty Bronfman, and Daniel Gorczyca. MLB Residential Lending, LLC. is a community mortgage banker, founded under the belief that homeownership is the most viable means to secure a family’s financial future. The corporate office is located at 51 Commerce Street in Springfield. 

GALLOPING TO THE RESCUE

Galloping Hill Inn and Galloping Hill Caterers in Union held a special event for the benefit of victims of Hurricanes Harvey and Irma. George Thomas, entrepreneur, philanthropist and owner of Galloping Hill, hosted the fundraiser. George (left) emigrated to the United States from Greece in 1951. He has been a leader in the food business and a generous supporter of local and national charities ever since.

LASSO-CUTTING ON 22 WEST

LongHorn Steakhouse recently celebrated the opening of its new Springfield location at 272 route 22 West. Joining managing partner Anthony Levy and his staff for this special “Lasso Cutting” was Springfield Mayor Diane Stampoulos, along with members of the Springfield Patriot Chamber of Commerce. The 5,869 sq. ft. restaurant, which seats over 200 guests, has created more than 90 new jobs for the community. Its design celebrates the natural beauty of the American West, with a wood-and-stone interior featuring contemporary artwork and sculpture. As part of its pre-opening training period, the restaurant hosted Friends & Family events with proceeds benefiting a local nonprofit. LongHorn Steakhouse (LongHornSteakhouse.com) prides itself on fresh, never frozen, expertly grilled and boldly seasoned steaks, prepared by a certified LongHorn Grill Master.

Outstanding in the Field Returns to Riverine.

By Andy Clurfeld

Chef David Viana looked quite at home where the buffalo were roaming, on the plains of Warren County where Riverine Ranch sprawls across 62 verdant acres in a hamlet known as Asbury. Viana and his crew from Heirloom Kitchen in Old Bridge were working under a tented outdoor kitchen and on grills set up astride the bustling space as ranch owners Courtney and Brian Foley gave tours of Riverine, introducing some of the 150-odd buffalo and their products—meats, cheeses, yogurt, butter—to 250 guests who had journeyed from all parts of New Jersey, plus New York and Pennsylvania, to take part in the ultimate in farm-to-table dining: the national Outstanding in the Field (OITF) program.

Viana, himself a nationally recognized chef who this year was nominated for a coveted James Beard Award as Best Chef in the Mid-Atlantic region—and the Foleys, a teacher and an electrician originally from Queens (who in 2004 moved to Washington Township in Warren to farm)—were anointed by the Outstanding in the Field hierarchy as worthy of hosting a dinner. This is a big deal.

OITF, founded by Jim Denevan in 1999 as a “traveling celebration of people and place and the origins of good food,” had stopped in New Jersey once before, last year, at Riverine. Folks had such a good time at the buffalo farm, OITF decided to come back. The Foleys reached out to Viana, who brought his Heirloom crew (Sean Yan, Kendall Szpakowski, Katherine “Kat” Norat, Rob Santello and owner Neilly Robinson) to the farm to do what they do best: Make the most out of from-the-farm ingredients. The 250 diners were waiting—and had been since seats to the long table set in the signature OITF arc had gone on sale the first day of spring last March, and sold out shortly after. It’s a competitive sport, acquiring OITF dinner reservations; there are those who follow the flow of the transcontinental dinner party as it serves forth starting in the early part of the spring in the warmer climates and continues through fall, touching down in colder parts of the country. Demand is such that, after a break for the OITF home team during the holidays, there’s now a winter session of dinners in the warmest parts of the country. 

After cocktails and passed hors d’oeuvres, after sampling Riverine’s extraordinary buffalo milk cheeses and visiting the cave where some cheeses are aged, the congregation segued to the arc’d table and took a peek at the chefs. There was Viana (above), turning hunks of buffalo over on a charcoal grill, while his team prepped platters of Riverine buffalo tartare served with crusty toasts of bread from his pals at Talula’s in the “other Asbury” (Asbury Park, that is, down the Shore). They’d amped up the opening round served at table with pickled vegetables from Hauser Hill, a farm based in Old Bridge, and cornbread and corn butter from Thompson Family Farm in Wall. A salad of tomatoes from Hauser and buffalo mozzarella from Riverine came with microgreens, while gnocchi made with smoked Riverine buffalo ricotta took a liking to condiments constructed with Hauser carrots, onion and apple. It’s all served family style, with guests and their new best friends quickly settling in at the table. On this night, buffalo roast was carved and plated with chimichurri, polenta and corn, and a suitable finale of roasted pepita pavlova came with Forbidden Rice meringue laced with Riverine buffalo milk. “It’s a pretty big undertaking,” Viana says, noting that it takes a good week to prep and cook outdoors for the huge crowd. “It’s not easy to cook for 250 on a charcoal grill! But we’d do it again in a heartbeat. It’s all about people coming together at the table…there’s an energy that’s palpable.”

For Courtney and Brian Foley (left), it was a “fantastic opportunity to work with the people from Heirloom Kitchen.” And, adds Brian, a chance as well to share our “passion for water  buffalo.”

In the lead-up, the Foleys hosted Viana and his crew at Riverine, giving them tastes of the various buffalo meat and dairy products and sending them home with samples. The chefs then worked up a menu for the OITF dinner in conjunction with farms and artisans Viana often works with at his restaurant. After that, “we just straightened up the farm a bit,” Courtney says with a laugh. “Our buffalo are very friendly and very photogenic.” Top that off with delicious from-the-farm fare and you’ve got a dinner for the ages.

 

Simply Outstanding

• Riverine Ranch is located at 247 Cemetery Hill Road in the Asbury section of Washington Township. The Foleys sell their products out of a store on the farm, which is open Saturdays and Sundays from noon to 4 p.m. For information, call (908) 319-3356 or visit riverineranch.com.

• Heirloom Kitchen is located at 3856 Route 516 in Old Bridge. For information and reservations to its dinners and cooking classes, call (732) 727-9444 or visit heirloomkitchen.com.
• Outstanding in the Field’s dinners can be tracked on its Web site, which also offers links for reservations: outstandinginthefield.com.

 

15 Home Gift ideas people will actually use…and probably love.

 

Been to any yard sales lately? They are basically graveyards for failed gift ideas. While online shopping has sent brick-and-mortar retail hurtling toward extinction, the American consumer’s insatiable need to accumulate pointless junk has only grown. It’s one thing to impulse buy or drunk shop for yourself, but when it comes to purchasing gifts for friends, family, and co-workers, shouldn’t we be exercising a bit more thought and consideration? Before you toss that holiday gift into your (real-life or virtual) shopping cart, think about whether the intended recipient actually has a need for it. Or the space for it. Or the aptitude to use it. Or the desire to clean it. Chances are if you check all these boxes, that person is going to love it. The perfect holiday gift does not have to be expensive or even fun. If it addresses a need or solves a problem or just makes life easier or more interesting, then you’ve hit a home run.

The EDGE staff has combed store shelves and web sites to identify 15 items that a homeowner or apartment dweller will find useful and appealing. They range in price from a little to a lot. If you’re stuck for a great idea and the clock is ticking, we think you’ll find something in the following pages that will be right on the money…

 

CARROT SHARPENER

The Monkey Business Karoto Vegetable Peeler ($10) looks like it came out of your old grade-school pencil box, but the shavings it produces are healthy and edible. It creates ribbons and slices for salads and garnishes, and comes with a second blade that produces vegetable “pasta.” It works best on root vegetables, but can also be used on potatoes and fruit. And it’s safe for kids, making it a fun way to get them involved in meal preparation.

 

Homey Product Taco Holders

HOLDING PATTERN

 

Taco Night always sounds better than it is, in large part because making and serving the crunchy shells ends up being a hard lesson in gravity. Homey Product Taco Holders ($12) solve both issues by combining smooth, smart design and functionality. Tacos stay put in the colorful, BPA-free stands, which are microwave safe and work equally well for hard or soft shells. The holders come in sets of 12.

 

HOT HAND

Few things are more annoying than struggling with that hard-as-rock Häagen-Dazs or Ben & Jerry’s pint when you have to have a bowl or cone of ice cream now. It’s a wrist injury waiting to happen or, worse, a sudden slip of the scoop could send a chunk of Chunky Monkey flying across the kitchen. The Heat Conducting Scoop ($20) from UncommonGoods uses the magic of thermodynamics to transfer heat from the hand, through a conducting liquid in the handle, to the scoop’s ring. No dipping in hot water, no waiting for the thaw. 

LIFT OFF

 

Sure, everyone has a spoon holder for the stove or countertop, but what the heck are you supposed to do with gooey, greasy, sauce-covered tongs? Dreamfarm Clongs ($25) are an elegant answer. The stainless steel click-lock tongs feature a subtle bend in the handles that enables them to lay flat without the silicone tips touching surfaces and making a mess—or to rest on the edge of a pan. The clongs are dishwasher-safe and resistant to high heat, so they can double as a barbecue accessory.

WEIGHT OF THE WORLD

We’re betting the foodie on your gift list doesn’t have the Perfect Portions Digital Nutrition Food Scale ($40). It weighs and measures 2,000 items and ingredients while displaying their nutritional information on a built-in screen. It’s cool for the curious and essential for calorie counters and folks on a restricted diet. Bakers will wonder how they ever lived without it. You can also use it for weighing other items, too (is that a one-stamp envelope or a two stamper?).

Keyport Slide 3.0CHAIN REACTION

 

Keychains and fobs can do a lot of interesting things nowadays, but no keychain is more interesting than the Keyport Slide 3.0 ($40), the “Swiss Army Knife of Keychains.” Smaller than a box of Tic-Tacs, the 3.0 houses six different tools of the owner’s choice. Options include a pen, bottle opener, mini-light, and 32GB USB flash drive. It also accommodates standard, high-security, and transponder-chipped keys for unforeseen emergencies and a “reward-if-found” program from the company.

 

BURNT OFFERING

How many people brag about their toasters? Why would anyone brag about their toaster? The Burnt Impressions Selfie Toaster ($50) certainly answers the second question. It turns toast into a work of art thanks to a pair of customizable stainless steel stencils that can burn almost any two-tone image (including the owner’s own headshot) into a slice of white bread. The lucky recipient (or thoughtful giver) of the Selfie Toaster uploads an image, which the company turns into the aforementioned stencils. The outside of the toaster can be customized, too. The toaster is manufactured in China but the stencils are fabricated in Vermont.

TileLOST AND FOUND

 

Admit it…most of the people you know are constantly misplacing their keys, wallet, handbag, phone, et cetera. The Tile Mate Item Tracker ($50 for a 2-pack) enables the “loser” in your life to locate nearby items by sound and anything else (within a 200-foot radius) on a map display. There is even a wider community of users that can help locate items that are lost out in the big, bad world.

LIKE IT NEVER HAPPENED

Cleaning up after sloppy, unhealthy or inconsiderate pets is one of life’s great miseries, even for those who adore their animals. If you haven’t had the pleasure, well, it’s a process. Thanks to the Bissell Pet Stain Eraser ($70), that process is quicker and simpler than ever. The cordless handheld device sprays, scrubs and suctions away all manner of deposits left on rugs, floors and upholstery—at home or in the car. The special cleaning formula is stored inside the machine, and the dirty water compartment empties easily. Pssst. You didn’t hear it here, but this doubles as a clean-up machine for messy kids.

HANG ON, MY DOG IS CALLING

Not every pet owner can stay on a tight, consistent schedule. Not every pet owner can go more than a few hours without worrying about their cat or dog. The PetChatz PawCall ($90) solves these problems and does a whole lot more. The video system allows a pet to contact its owner (seriously) by stepping on a call button and also play light- and touch-puzzle games (seriously) that dispense a treat. Owner and animal stay in touch via smartphone or tablet apps, and the device dispenses calming aromatherapy oils during thunderstorms or other loud outside noises.

 

ThinkGeek Thor Hammer Tool SetHAMMER TIME

 

This is a keep-it-in-the-closet gift for the closet Marvel Universe fanatic in your life. The ThinkGeek Thor Hammer Tool Set ($100) is an officially licensed replica of the God of Thunder’s Mjolnir (his hammer), which opens to reveal a 44-piece high-quality toolset. Clever, right? Includes a screwdriver, wrench, ratchet set, utility knife, level, tape measure and some other stuff that’s handy for everyday household repairs. No truth to the rumor that Loki stole the power drill.

GROOVY

From the Everything Old Is New Again Department, the world has rediscovered classic vinyl LPs and 45s. As they emerge from basements by the milk-crate-full, it turns out that our old turntables haven’t held up all that well. Enter the Audio-Technica Wireless Stereo Turntable ($150), which brings out all those wonderful cracks and pops and connects wirelessly with any Bluetooth speakers or home entertainment system. It can also connect old-school style, with the included output cables. A diecast aluminum turntable minimizes vibration, while a dual magnet phono cartridge and diamond stylus coaxes the best out of the old records.

 

LOOKING SHARP

According to superstition,  giving a knife to a friend will sever that friendship. Not to worry with the 8” classic Shun Chef’s Knife ($150), which you can give to a family member instead! But honestly, who would dump you after such an extravagant gift? The top-of-the-line slicing, chopping and dicing utensil is clad with 32 layers of high-carbon Damascus stainless steel and features a comfortable, D-shaped Pakka wood handle. If you’re the superstitious type remember to just tape a penny to the knife and your friendship will be unbreakable.

 

MOVIE NIGHT

Few holiday gifts can legitimately be shared by adults and kids. The Cinemood Portable Movie Theater ($350) is most definitely one of them. “Portable” here is something of an understatement, as the wireless 7-ounce, 3-inch cube can literally fit in the palm of your hand. It comes preloaded with Disney content and can project Netflix, Amazon Prime, YouTube and other streaming content on any surface, big or small (up to 12 feet). Needless to say, it can go places you probably wouldn’t or couldn’t take a pricey laptop.

 

CHEF OF THE FUTURE

So much junk is advertised in cooking infomercials these days that most people have become conditioned to ignore any “new” and “revolutionary” countertop appliance. Well, the June Intelligent Oven ($600) is the exception that proves the rule. It won’t do all the cooking for you, but it comes tantalizingly close (and it should at this price). Sophisticated software enables the next generation toaster-oven to recognize the food being inserted and prepares it to near perfection, especially after the user tweaks it to taste. It’s big enough for a casserole or whole chicken, but also does toast (but not selfie toast). The oven can be controlled with a smartphone app, as well as through an Alexa smart speaker.

EDGE EDITOR’S NOTE: Except where indicated, the items on this list are widely available online and in stores. If you don’t see anything that connects with your holiday gift list, we suggest a visit to the Crazy Russian Hacker YouTube channel, where many items you see on TV are tested. You may not find anything there, either, but it’s kind of hypnotic.

 

Not all show business beauties are what they seem. Take Annie Wersching. For more than a decade, TV audiences have been drawn to her appealing, girl next- door good looks only to discover that the people she plays tend to have a mean streak that, well, you wouldn’t want living next door. That may also explain why Wersching a) is one of the most in demand actresses on television, and b) is having so much fun. As Renee Walker on 24, Emma Whitmore on Timeless and now Leslie Dean on Marvel’s Runaways, Wersching has demonstrated a particular talent for taking her characters to the next level in the most entertaining and unexpected ways. Mark Stewart talked to her about the finer points of being a Hollywood star and a Hollywood mom—yet another challenging role she can claim to have mastered.

EDGE: So, congratulations on becoming part of the Marvel Universe.

AW: It’s been crazy [laughs]. It’s not just how they deal with their shows and their actors—it’s certainly more secretive, and there are more rules—but it’s fun to see how they’ve taken the Runaways comic and changed it for television. And how they are pleasing the hardcore fans, yet keeping things unpredictable. I’ve never played someone like my character, Leslie Dean. She’s quite a trip.

EDGE: She seems a bit unhinged.

AW: Yes, but in a very put-together way. She’s the head of this big celebrity church in Los Angeles, and she harbors a lot of secrets. There’s a lot of crazy, cringe-worthy stuff she has to do. Stuff that, to look at her, you wouldn’t expect from the way she presents herself. It’s a big ensemble cast, so in some episodes I have a lot to do and in others not so much. There’s actually been a learning curve for me getting used to that.

EDGE: On your previous series, Timeless, you played a time-traveling assassin. That was a very complex character. A lot of fans were anxious for Timeless to be renewed for a third season because Emma was about to become the leader of Rittenhouse, the bad guys in the show. At least there is a wrap-up TV movie on the way.

AW: Emma was following what she believed the overall Rittenhouse plan was but, yes, she was going to run the show now. It would have been really fun, because she was a little “spontaneous” shall we say.

EDGE: I’ve always been curious about an aspect of movies and TV shows that deal with time travel. Since it doesn’t exist, that means the writers have to establish some basic do’s and don’ts and then weave them into the plots. You also tend to bump up against some logic issues. Was this a constant discussion on Timeless?

AW: Oh, my gosh. Yes. In terms of the science of time travel, there were rules on the show. I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall in the writers’ room to see how in the world they figured out the exact rules we were going to follow.

EDGE: For your character in particular.

AW: Right. When we first find Emma, she has been spending ten or eleven years in the past. But in the present storyline, it’s only been about six months or something. So I would ask, Wait, how old am I? Am I aging? If I go back to the present-day storyline, would I look ten years older? There were so many things like that I’d ask questions about. I have no idea how they kept it all straight, but they had it down. No-no-no…this should be this, and that should be that, and you can’t go back to a time you’ve been in before…I was pretty good at science in school, but when it comes to the TV version of time-travel science, I was like, Yeah, somebody just tell me what makes sense.

EDGE: Was Emma’s story arc laid out for you, or did it unfold script by script?

AW: It was one hundred percent script-by-script.

EDGE: So, as an actor, how do you dig in and understand her purpose and motivation?

AW: It was very tricky. Especially in her first episode. It wasn’t even revealed to me at that point that she was a mole or a bad guy or with Rittenhouse or any of that. Looking back, I think fans saw little smirks and things that they read into her, but at the time, I had no idea how the plot would twist at the end of the season. I knew there were secrets that she had, for sure, but I didn’t know exactly how big they were. A lot of actors write journals and go really in-depth into backstories so they can flesh out a character in their mind. But that’s hard for me in television, because if I make up this whole story and the script comes for the next episode and it contradicts what I made up in my head, that just complicates things for me. So unless I have a really big, serious question—something that doesn’t make sense to me in the episode—I tend to go with what I have on the page from the writers and try to give the characters some humanity and vulnerability and go from there.

EDGE: You had worked with Goran Visnjic before Timeless.

AW: Yes. He played Garcia Flynn in the series. We had done the Halle Berry series Extant together. Goran and I already had a nice rapport, which was good because Emma and Flynn had a fun little chemistry. I hadn’t worked with any of the other cast members, but I had seen Abby [Abigail Spencer] in Rectify. It was fascinating to watch her work. Everybody works differently. Some people have everything planned out when they come in. She would come in and have a lot of questions. But when they said Action, she was just so one hundred percent present and could tap into different emotions so amazingly. It was just so cool to watch her work. I would forget my lines just watching her in awe.

EDGE: On 24, you played Renee Walker, more of a good guy role, at least on the surface. Do you have more fun playing good guys or bad guys?

AW: I absolutely adored playing Renee. Any character that has a switch or change is fun to play. Renee was a good guy, essentially, and Emma was essentially a bad guy. But Renee started as a rules-follower then slowly but surely went over to the dark side after spending some time with Jack Bauer. Emma was very committed to the rules she was going to follow. She spent all those years back in the past to prove herself to Rittenhouse. So both were very committed.

EDGE: How much Annie Wersching was there in Renee Walker?

AW: There is a little bit of me in every character I play. As far as her being a bad-ass, I really enjoyed playing that portion of Renee. I also loved fleshing out her physical aspect. I was a dancer growing up.

EDGE: Did her use of torture bother you or make you squeamish?

AW: Oh, no. I was like, Yes! Not that I agree with torture, but I like anything that makes the audience go Holy crap! That’s always fun to play. And again, it was something that deviated from what she had always been like. It was super fun.

EDGE: Is it an advantage or a disadvantage of joining an established series like 24, which was already six seasons in?

AW: A bit of both. It’s nice to go into a show that’s already a well-oiled machine. I came on in Season Seven, and there had been some negative stuff said about Season Six, so there was a lot to prove. In terms of someone who had to go toe-to-toe with Jack, who had a lot of fans in the audience, that’s always a risky thing. But as soon as I saw how they were writing Renee and the fan response to her, I couldn’t have been more excited. Especially when she started to kind of become the female Jack Bauer. That was huge in terms of winning people over.

EDGE: Did they let you know from the start that you would become a love interest for Kiefer Sutherland’s character?

AW: I didn’t really know that. They wanted Renee and Jack to go toe-to-toe, professionally. Of course, they wanted there to be sparks. Actually, the second I learned about them finally getting together, my first thought was Oh. No. That’s the end of her.

EDGE: Any feelings about Russian meddling?

AW: Oh, I know! I spent all that time undercover with the Russians in that second season! When I’d see that stuff in the script, I’d say, No, that’s too much. This isn’t believable. No way. Let’s stick to real life. Cut to ten years later, and it’s…real life. Terrifying!

EDGE: In the Amazon series Bosch, you played against Titus Welliver. His character, Harry, was also very dark— like Flynn and Bauer. Does that rub off on you after a while?

AW: Definitely. But in Bosch, my character was such a newbie, always messing up. The two of them together— the hardened professional veteran with this rookie—I thought it was a cool dichotomy. I love Titus. We got along fine. We had a really good time.

EDGE: Which male lead has brought out the best in you?

AW: I’ve been really lucky in that department. I played against Kiefer so long I learned a tremendous amount from him. Titus is definitely up there. And I really loved working with Goran in two different shows as two different sets of characters. I feel I’m good at observing and absorbing the good things from these dynamics. I’m a bit of a sponge.

EDGE: You mentioned dancing. Was that how you got your start as a performer?

AW: It was. In fourth grade, I started doing plays and musicals in school and continued into junior high school and high school and then into college. I don’t recall a moment where I thought, This is what I have to do! It was just kind of what I did. But yes, I started with dance. Tap, jazz, ballet, and Irish dancing—which I think was where I had my first experience in terms of stage presence. In the Irish dancing community at that time, everybody was very, very serious. No one ever smiled. It was very rigid. Nowadays, it’s happier, and there is more of an entertaining factor to it. But back then, I was literally known as “The girl that smiles.” If you go back and look at stories from my competitions, they would always mention that. From a competitive standpoint, I have a lot from that experience, in terms of finding a way to stand out. That really helped when I transitioned into plays and musicals.

EDGE: What were your plans after college?

AW: I was a musical theater major, and I’d always planned to go to New York. I went to Chicago briefly after school and ended up touring with a musical that closed in Los Angeles. So I thought, Let me check this L.A. thing out. One of the first things I witnessed was, as a member of a live audience, a taping of Stark Raving Mad, the sitcom with Neil Patrick Harris and Tony Shalhoub. I thought, This is the best of both worlds—they are performing like it’s theater with the audience interaction, but you are on TV—this is the dream. I never went to New York. I returned to Chicago, packed up my stuff, and moved to L.A.

EDGE: What were you doing to develop your skills in your 20s?

AW: Gosh, I was doing it all. Early on, I did a couple of musicals at the Pasadena Playhouse. I was doing commercials. I did extra work. I didn’t take many classes—probably because I didn’t have any money. I booked a pretty good guest star on Star Trek Enterprise. That was fascinating. I remember learning a lot from that group. Then I slowly started booking co-stars with a couple of lines, and then guest stars, then the “recurs”— it’s like this ladder you have to climb. Once I became more of a woman as opposed to a girl, I think it matched up more with how I carry myself, and also my voice. Things changed when I started auditioning for the woman in the show and not the chipper girl in the show. It meshed better with my personality…although I am pretty chipper.

EDGE: After all these years working in television, are you ever tempted to get back on the stage in a play or a musical?

AW: Oh, yeah! I’ve been thinking about it for years, but it’s hard to time it with the television world. It would have to be in the hiatus from whatever show I’m on. But I’d absolutely love that.

EDGE: Did you model yourself after a particular actress when you were younger?

AW: No, not really. Growing up, the posters on my wall were Marilyn Monroe and [laughs] Brad Pitt. Not that I wanted to be like Marilyn, but I was obsessed with her transformation from Norma Jean. Also, I always loved Michelle Pfeiffer and Julianne Moore and Diane Lane. Women who were women, who had a lot of gravitas in their roles.

EDGE: On your résumé is a stint on the daytime drama General Hospital. I am friendly with actors who tell wild stories about knocking those shows out day after day.

AW: I was on General Hospital for about five months, and it was totally insane. I had never done anything like it. It was incredibly exciting. Also, it was the first time my mom and the people back home could see me on TV every day of the week. It was definitely a big deal for me. I left t h e show for a couple of weeks to shoot the pilot for 24, which was my first big pilot booking. Darby Stanchfield played my role for those two weeks, and then I came back. At that point, they were interested in signing me to a four-year contract. I was wavering on whether or not to sign for a long time. It’s a commitment. I think we shot fifty pages a day. On 24 or Runaways or Timeless, we might shoot six to eight pages of dialogue a day. It was intense. I mean, unless you’re falling down bleeding, they’ re moving on—just get the words out and go to the next scene. It was great training, and it forces you to make a choice because you don’t have another take to try something different. You have to really know what your character wants s and what you want to accomplish in that scene. It helped me become more concise and also I learned pretty quickly that I was good at the memorization part of it. It was a lot of work…I don’t think the regulars who are on the show get anywhere near the credit they deserve.

EDGE: You are expecting your third child at the same time you are shooting Season Two of Runaways. Is this the first time you’ve been in this situation? Are you at the point where they need to start hiding you behind things?

AW: I think we’re just about to hit that part…and yes, it’s a first for me. I wouldn’t say that it’s been fun. At the very beginning, I was actually terrified to tell them—Oh, God I’m going to ruin the show, Leslie is going to be chubby this season—there are so many aspects of that, just from a vanity standpoint. There are so many things that go through your head. My character wears all white and, in the beginning, I was having morning sickness like crazy, so I was dealing with that. But it’s fine.

EDGE: You and your husband [actor Stephen Full] are raising a family while working full-time in the business. How do you pull that off?

AW: It’s not super easy, but it’s certainly nice that we both“ get it. ” We both understand what it’s like to be in the midst of a crazy shoot. We’ve been incredibly lucky that our careers have balanced each other in amazing ways. The couple of times we were both series regulars we didn’t have kids yet, so we were living the dream. Now, like, tomorrow, both of us are filming and for the life of me, I cannot find a babysitter. So I’m like, Okay I guess my son will just have to come to the trailer with me. I feel like we’re always scrambling to figure it out. But I think we’re doing a good job keeping things normal for them. We’re Both pretty grounded.

EDGE: What presents the biggest challenge?

AW: We’ve been lucky in not having to work out of town too long. That’s where it becomes really hard when you’re on location. The Vampire Diaries shot in Atlanta and I was gone quite a bit for that. I had the little one with me, but I missed my older boy’s first day of kindergarten. You know, stuff that’s never going to happen again. It’s inevitable that you’re going to miss some of those moments. That’s rough. Timeless shot in Vancouver, but at least that was in the same timezone as California, so you can talk to your kid before bedtime. Sometimes it’s these little things that make a big difference.

Editor’s Note: Annie Wershing’s third child was due as this issue went to press. Although NBC canceled Timeless after Season Two, the network shot a two-hour “wrap-up” TV movie, which it plans to air in December.

 

Nine mind-blowing 2018 medical breakthroughs.

By Mark Stewart

Was 2018 a banner year for medical breakthroughs? Only time will tell, of course. That being said, there were a number of wow-factor stories that found their way into the mainstream media, as well as some that flew a bit under the radar. Each of the following news items, in its own way, heralds a game-changing health discovery that is likely to have a near-term impact—perhaps on your life or the life of a friend or family member.

LET THERE BE LIGHT

During flu season, every countertop, door handle, and armrest is a potential vector for illnesses that sicken millions—and can be deadly to those with compromised immune systems. A study published in Scientific Reports earlier this year showed that far-ultraviolet C light—aka. Far-UVC—can kill flu viruses. The beauty of Far-UVC.(besides its cost-effectiveness as a virus-killer) is that it is not harmful to human cells. Conventional ultraviolet light kills viruses but causes skin damage with too much exposure. This breakthrough could have a dramatic impact on the spread of microbial diseases—not just on public surfaces, but in the air, including influenza and even tuberculosis. Don’t be surprised to see Far-UVC fixtures in airports, schools, and hospitals in the years to come.

A SLUG’S LIFE

For all the medical advances made over the course of human history, wound and incision closure hasn’t progressed all that much. Stitches and, later, staples have been the basic method for keeping our insides in and the outside out. Last year, inspired by the sticky defensive slime secreted by the European slug (Arion subfuscous), scientists at Harvard’s Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering created a new adhesive material that sticks to wet surfaces. In 2018, scientists took things a step further and unveiled a new surgical “superglue” that shows great promise as an alternative to stitches and staples. The advanced hydrogel is made of biomaterials that mimic the slug mucus, which adheres to surfaces in three different ways. The ick factor notwithstanding, it is non-toxic, flexible and able to stick to any surface—even surfaces covered in blood. Next up? A biodegradable version that will dissolve when a wound fully heals.

QUICK AND PAINLESS

We are officially one step closer to Star Trek sickbay thanks to Portal Instruments, a company working with MIT to develop a needle-less shot. The result of their work is PRIME, an injection device that introduces a high-pressure stream of medicine through the skin and into the blood without the sharp stick that none of us particularly likes. PRIME ejects doses of medication at Mach 0.7, or about the cruising speed of a Boeing 707. For people with an intense fear or phobia of needles—who often avoid much-needed doctor visits—the needle-free injection is a game-changer.

EARLY ONSET DEMENTIA BREAKTHROUGH

A few years ago, the acronym CRISPR began popping up in medical stories. It stands for Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats and refers to a type of DNA sequence in bacteria and single-celled microorganisms. In 2018, scientists at the Salk Institute used CRISPR gene editing to target the RNA of diseased cells related to frontotemporal dementia, which is second to Alzheimer’s in early-onset dementia cases. In the Salk experiment, the RNA targeting effectively restored healthy levels of protein to the neurons affected by the disease. RNA-targeted use of CRISPR has been tried before, but in terms of accuracy, this type of gene-editing represents a significant breakthrough.

NEW WEAPON AGAINST SUPER BUGS

The battle against drug-resistant bacteria took an interesting turn this year when researchers at the University of Lincoln in England synthesized an antibiotic called teixobactin—and used it successfully to treat infections in mice. Teixobactin is a key weapon in fighting bacterial strains such as MRSA, which are difficult to kill and possess the potential to trigger epidemics. Teixobactin was originally discovered using a new method of culturing bacteria in soil and has been shown to kill Staphylococcus and Mycobacterium tuberculosis. The ability to synthesize teixobactin on a commercial level will take many years but should provide an important level of protection against staph and tuberculosis sometime in the 2020s.

MOSAIC VACCINE

A large human trial on a new HIV vaccine began in sub- Saharan Africa this year. The new “mosaic” vaccine addresses an obstacle that has thwarted the development of this type of vaccine for decades: The virus has multiple strains and tends to mutate rapidly. Initial trials on healthy, low-risk individuals in the U.S., Asia, and Africa produced a significant anti-HIV immune response. Tests of the vaccine on rhesus monkeys protected two-thirds from HIV. “One of the great challenges for development of HIV vaccine is viral diversity,” says Dan Barouch, Director of the Center for Virology and Vaccine Research at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. “The mosaic strategy is one way to attempt to deal with the global virus diversity.”

SLOWING ALZHEIMER’S

An 18-month trial completed earlier this year by Biogen (a U.S. biotech company) and Eisai (a Japanese pharmaceutical firm) has confirmed that the experimental drug BAN-2401 slows the progress of Alzheimer’s disease. BAN-2401 is an antibody that removes amyloid, the protein that interferes with nerve-cell function in the brain. The study was conducted on 856 individuals with mild cognitive impairment or signs of early-stage Alzheimer’s, all of whom showed amyloid build-up. Other drugs have been effective on amyloid levels, but BAN- 2401 reduced the development of new amyloid clusters and—most notably—slowed the decline in planning and reasoning skills by up to 30 percent. More work needs to be done, but this marks the first time a significant clinical trial has identified a drug that actually slowed Alzheimer’s disease.

SPECIAL K

Ketamine has a long and varied history. It was used as an IV anesthetic during Vietnam and is still used in field. hospitals and ERs. It is prevalent in veterinary medicine

(though not as a “horse tranquilizer” as some have referred to it) and is sometimes used to treat chronic pain in humans. Ketamine has also enjoyed some popularity as a high-powered party drug. In 2018, building off a decade’s worth of clinical studies, researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago College of Medicine concluded that Ketamine is able to lift treatment-resistant depression in a few hours—which has profound implications within the psychiatric community.  Indeed, it’s the first drug in more than two generations that has demonstrated an ability to affect various neurological pathways to alleviate depression. The Chicago study, published in the June edition of Molecular Psychiatry, was one of several on Ketamine released during 2018. Unfortunately, the antidepressant effect rarely lasts longer than a week or so, and it is unclear whether repeat infusions are effective or even safe. The discovery has triggered research into similar drugs that last longer and come with fewer side effects, so expect more news to come in 2019 and beyond.

EXPLOSIVE DEVELOPMENT

When you see the letters TNT, you probably think dynamite. When scientists in the field of regenerative medicine talk “TNT,” they are likely referring to Tissue Nanotransfection, an emerging technology that involves a stamp-sized chip that reprograms skin cells to help repair organs and blood vessels. The implanted chip is used to send an electrical current into the body that delivers genetic codes to the skin cells, essentially changing their function to rescue failing body functions.  In a series of 2017 lab tests at the Ohio State University College of Medicine, researchers applied the chip to the legs of mice that vascular scans showed had little or no blood flow. The TNT chip reprogrammed their cells to become vascular cells and within a week the transformation began. By the second week, active blood vessels had formed. By the third week, the legs of mice were saved (with no other treatment). Human trials of this technology began this year.