EDGE People

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.

Storied Arc

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.”

Courtney and Brian Foley (left)

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.

Next on the List

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

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

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.

Dreamfarm Clongs

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 Impressions Selfie Toaster

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.

Bissell Pet Stain Eraser

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.

PetChatz PawCall

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 Set

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.

Cinemood Portable Movie Theater

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.

June Intelligent Oven

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.

Annie Wersching

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.

NBC/MiddKid Productions

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.

Photo by Jonathan Weiner

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!

Amazon Video

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.

HULU/ABC Signature Studios

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.

Did That Just Happen?

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.

Jobs 2050

What will today’s toddlers be doing three decades from now?

by Luke Sacher

If you’ve recently been blessed with a child, grandchild or great-grandchild, I’m guessing the furthest thing from your mind is the kind of work they’ll be doing when it comes time to raise a family of their own. Granted, it’s a long way off. And the world will certainly look much different than it does today. However, one thing that is unlikely to change is that what we do will still determine, to a large degree, who we are. Which makes what we do important. What will the employment landscape of 2050 actually look like? That great Bronx philosopher, Yogi Berra, once said It’s tough to make predictions—especially about the future. Don’t expect any here from me. I’m just a 58-year old idiot who writes magazine stories. But I do know what the “experts” are saying and, although their predictions vary dramatically in regard to specifics, in two general areas they seem to agree.

1) About 60 percent of currently existing jobs will remain, particularly those involving technical and mental skills that automation simply cannot replace. The human factor will still be at a premium. By contrast, according to a 2013 Oxford University study, the least safe jobs (those currently performed by humans that are most likely to be fully automated over the next 20 years) are, in percentage of probability: Telemarketer 99%, Loan Officer 98%, Cashier 97%, Paralegal and Legal Assistant 94%, Taxi Driver 89% and Fast Food Cook 81%. The same study identified the “safest” jobs as Mental Health and Substance Abuse Social Worker 0.3%, Occupational Therapist 0.35%, Dietitian and Nutritionist 0.39%, Physician and Surgeon 0.42%, Clergy 0.81%. Wow. Clergy? That means Woody Allen was wrong. In his classic film Sleeper, he makes his confession to a robot priest that is one of the funniest scenes in movie history. Not going to happen, says Oxford University. Futurist.com, a website run by trend expert Glen Hiemstra, lists the Top 10 currently existing occupations for 2050 as Dental Hygienist, Human Resources Specialist, Pharmacist, Biotechnology Sales Rep, Biomedical Engineer, Programmer/Software Developer, Network and Computer Systems Administrator, Nuclear and Solar Power Engineer, and yeah, you guessed it, Attorney. Hold it, that’s only nine. I’ve saved the best for last: Entrepreneur. Don’t you think that’s a bit misleading? Yes, technically, that kid who needs a diaper change could conceivably join the entrepreneurial ranks of Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Joy Mangano, Sarah Breedlove, Mark Cuban, JK Rowling, Jeff Bezos, Oprah Winfrey, Jack Dorsey, Sarah Blakely, Mark Zuckerberg, Weili Dai, Peter Thiel, Ariana Huffington or Elon Musk. All they’ll have to do is create an entirely new product or service that billions of people need or want, and for which they will line up around the block to hand over hard cash. Nice work if you can get it. Personally, I would also add these three to the list: Politician, Soldier, and Master Artisan. For complicated ethical and psychological reasons, people will continue to prefer being lied to and killed by other people rather than by androids. And there will always be a high demand for unique, hand-crafted beautiful things with charming imperfections, such as Michelin 3-star dinners, Patek Philippe watches, Tiffany engagement rings and Lamborghini sports cars. Oh, and also Bartender. Would you really want to go to 21 in New York or Harry’s in Paris and be served a dry and dirty vodka martini or Pimm’s Cup—just the way you like it—by a mechanical arm or silicone-skinned cyborg? Could you imagine Frank Sinatra singing Make it one for my baby and one more for the road to something that looks and walks and talks like a refugee from an auto assembly plant?

2) Outside of the truly high-end professional careers— including medicine, surgery, law, clinical psychotherapy, and rocket science—most of the professions we think of as being mainstream will come to an end, fully superseded by that of the “gig” (aka freelance) economy. In other words, we will be witnessing the last vestiges of the “cap-and-gown to gold watch + pension” economy in the decades to come. The vast majority of today’s newly born will most likely have to live by the old Marine Corps motto: Improvise, Adapt and Overcome. Or if you prefer: When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. The take-away? Be flexible. Never stop learning. Take earned personal pride in adding more and more tools to your toolbox, and in expanding your potential. Knowledge is power, as Francis Bacon said. Now for the most interesting part. What about the jobs of 2050 that don’t yet exist, or are presently in the prototype or metamorphic stages? Good news! While so many old jobs will disappear, lots of new ones will be created. According to the Institute for the Future (IFTF), 85 percent of them haven’t even yet been invented…which means that tomorrow’s workforce will likely be unrecognizable to us old geezers who hang on for another 30 years. So when your child or grandchild or great-grandchild proudly announces that he or she plans to be something you’ve never heard of, it’s okay to say What? What the heck is that? But be proud, too.

Virtual Store Manager

More and more consumers are shopping online, but still seek personal advice and assurance from vendors. In a recent Google survey, 61% of online shoppers reported that they call a business before making online purchases. Producers and retailers will be incentivized to expand and maintain their staff of real salespeople with real sales expertise in their online spaces.

Human-Robot Counselor/AI Therapist

As robots become ever more sophisticated, reliable and cost-effective, they will creatively destroy many muscle-driven jobs in heavy industries, such as mining, auto, and aviation manufacturing, shipbuilding and construction. At the same time, they will also create new jobs for humans as their task- and maintenance-supervisors. As working relationships between robots and humans become the norm, personal conflicts are sure to manifest themselves. Who will address them? Robot-Human Resources Counselors. and AI (Artificial Intelligence) Therapists, of course. Thus will be born an entirely new mental health field, geared to help people adjust to and cooperate with their cybernetic colleagues. Think of Fry and Bender on Futurama.

Algorithm Programmer/Robot Trainer

Software and firmware algorithms enable computers to perform sophisticated interactive tasks (i.e. Alexa or Siri). Today, only a small number of elite programmers are capable of writing those algorithms. But over the next decade or two, it’s a good bet that their now-rare skills will become standardized and commoditized—and assumed by mid-level or entry-level employees. Remember, not so long ago, when a working knowledge of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint was a cutting-edge advantage in the job market?

Drone Air Traffic Controller

In 2016, almost 700,000 aerial drones were registered with the federal government. Amazon and Google are actively beta testing delivery of goods by aerial drones, and future drone pilots are already attending specialty technical schools. Three decades from now, millions of drones will fill the skies and will need to be monitored by an air traffic control network similar to that for passenger airplanes. If you’re a glutton for punishment and high stress, this just might be your dream job. I can’t help picturing Lloyd Bridges in Airplane.

Micro Gig Agent

More and more agents, reps and consultants will be needed as independent contractors as tomorrow’s freelance economy grows. Just like today’s talent and professional services agents, “Micro Gig Agents” will work on commission or retainer, finding and matching goods and/or services offered by their clients to the everchanging demands of potential customers and/or employers.

Robotic Surgeons & Surgical Technicians

Precision surgeries are now being performed using multi-armed robots, such as the da Vinci system at Trinitas. Articulated arms are fitted with instruments, providing virtually unlimited degrees of motion and precision, while another holds a high-definition 3D camera to assist the surgical team and minimize error. As more and more medicine is practiced remotely—and as more sophisticated surgeries are executed robotically—robotic surgeons and their supporting technicians will need to possess both the knowledge of traditional physicians and surgeons and technical proficiency with their new high-technology equipment.

Organ Transplant Engineer

In the United States, dozens of people die every day waiting for transplants that can’t take place, primarily due to the shortage of compatible donated organs. Last February, scientists at the University of California, Davis successfully cultured sheep embryos containing human cells—a major step forward to the goal of growing complete human organs inside animal hosts. Xenotransplantation will eventually be the primary source of transplant materials, designed and engineered to ensure 100% effectiveness and 0% probability of autoimmune rejection. Engineers of xenotransplant organs will occupy a critical role in future medicine.

Cyber Security Specialist

Given the relentlessly increasing number of security breaches of both government and private corporate networks, more and more cybersecurity experts will be sought to counter future threats to the online universe that we love and depend on. Calling all keyboard warriors! How cool would it be to work for the CIA (or PayPal), catching truly bad guys?

Security/Police Officer

Security and police officers have existed pretty much since ancient Babylon. In the near future, they’ll no longer need to pull long hours at the station house or cruising streets in a squad car, as they’ll be able to respond even faster and more effectively with robot “muscle” backup— advanced audiovisual surveillance capabilities, and airborne vehicles.

Space Tourism Guide

We’ve been waiting for it since 2001: A Space Odyssey, but at last, space travel and tourism for the common man are drawing closer and closer to realization. By 2050, a trip to a space station or even the moon will most likely be as common as a business junket to Cincinnati or a family holiday to Orlando. Those working to make their passengers comfortable with these probabilities will require strong people skills, similar to those of current air flight attendants, such as knowledge of safety procedures and resistance to motion sickness and vertigo.

Augmented/Virtual Reality Designer/Engineer/Architect

Marketing and retail companies are already actively seeking augmented/virtual reality designers, engineers and architects to create interactive, immersive experiences for their consumers. Those with expertise in AVR technology—combining computer-generated images with physical environments— will be hot prospects in the job market, conceiving and creating for everything from job training to outdoor advertising to (one day) Star Trek “holodeck” experiences.

Automated Construction Specialist/Architectural Engineer

Using innovations like 3D modeling/ printing and advanced robotics, architectural engineering and construction in the future will be nothing short of revolutionary. Specialists in these fields will be equipped to build human habitats straight out of science fiction. Imagine apartment buildings perched thousands of feet in the sky like the Jetsons’, mobile floating “sea stead” towns in the oceans or subterranean Logan’s Run-esque cities.

Data Analyst/Future Forecaster

For a hundred years or more, since the founding of IBM or maybe since the Age of Enlightenment, analysts of empirical data have been instrumental in advancing humanity’s understanding of itself. And they will continue to do so. They are the high priests of our culture, producing the charts and graphs that explain the present and predict the future. Where have we been? Where are we now? Where are we going? Will stock and bond prices soar or plummet? Will we run out of fresh produce, water, petroleum or gummi bears? Will there a war? Don’t ask me…call your analyst.

Genetic Counselor

The term “designer baby” isn’t anything new. Genetic and genomic scientists are already able to detect many inherited abnormalities that may jeopardize a child’s health or quality of life. Doctors and scientists generate the raw information, but genetic counselors will be needed to help parents make the best choices for themselves and their posterity. About 2,000 professionals are currently recognized by the American Board of Genetic Counseling. Look for that number to skyrocket as we learn more about ourselves at the molecular level.

Transportation Engineer

Autonomous personal aircraft, pneumaticintercontinental trains, maglev monorails, moving sidewalks—science fiction novels, movies and television programs (as well as magazines like Popular Mechanics) have dangled images of such futuristic vehicles before our starry eyes for decades. We are still fascinated by their possible realization. Transportation engineers will be the ones to make them happen. Most of us spend more waking hours working than with our families and friends. So, if I may argue, matching our personal strengths and aptitudes to our interests and passions, and choosing wisely what we work at (whether a profession, vocation, occupation or trade) is the most important existential decision any of us make in our lives. If what we do is indeed a big part of who we are, then the best advice we can offer to the young workers of 2050 is aspire to do what you love, and love what you do. In closing, I also think it’s worth considering the words of Saint Jerome: fac et aliquid operis, ut semper te diabolus inveniat occupatum. “Engage in some occupation, so that the devil may always find you busy.” In other words, if you sit around doing nothing, you’ll be more tempted to do questionable things. For those who love to do and make things, the world of 2050 should be a moveable feast of possibilities. If so, sit down to the table and order up.

Positive Deflation: Can It Happen?

As productivity increases by way of automation, material scarcity decreases. That means less and less of us will be needed to work at producing the materials for basic human survival, such as food, clothing, housing, energy, and transportation. These commodities will become so abundant that their prices will plummet…which means that everyone will be able to consume them for less and less money. Working simply to earn enough money to purchase them might soon be practically unnecessary. Economists call this Positive Deflation. Difficult as it may be to imagine today, in 2050 the goal of “freedom from want” may be achievable—and a fact of life for many of us. People will be empowered to pursue their unique individual talents and creative passions in the Brave New Economy liberated for the first time in human history from the fear of privation.

Crunch Time

I had no sooner delivered my mom and her new car home when I was the victim of unspeakable irony. Parked at a gas pump, wallet in hand, I noticed a minivan inching backward towards me.

“Stop! Stop! Stop!” I screamed, doing my worst imitation of a cheerleader.

Then Bang.

The van crunched into the front of my car and stopped. A young woman’s face craned out the driver’s window of the offending vehicle.

“What were you doing?” I asked in my outside voice, pointing to our bumpers. “Didn’t you see me waving at you and screaming to stop? Your van has rear sensors and a back-up camera. How does this happen?”

“I was handing my daughter her drink,” she muttered, “This is my husband’s car, he must have the sensors turned off.”

“You were driving backwards, distracted?” I said in disbelief as she got out of the car to look at the damage.

“I’ll take care of the repairs,” she replied as she handed me her license and insurance.

“Great,” I said. “We’re both going to have bad CarFaxes now.”

“Huh?” she sniffed.

“When you have insurance fix your car from a crash, the repair shows up on CarFax as an accident,” I explained. “The bad CARFAX report lowers the resale value of your car. It’s called Diminished Value, and it requires a separate claim to your insurance, to recoup the loss in price at trade-in or sale time.” I took pictures of all her contact information, insurance and the scene where my car sat with a broad white stripe across the front.

“Oh, I’m really sorry,” she said, “I had a lot on my mind with school starting this week.”

“Well, consider this a teachable moment,” I sighed. At least I didn’t have to go shopping for a(nother) new car.

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.

EDGE People

Joanna Gorczyca, MSW, MPA, LNHA Administrator/Director of Senior Services

FIVE STARS FOR BROTHER BONAVENTURE

While “shopping” for a nursing home for a loved one, consumers are likely to be impressed by Brother Bonaventure’s five-star rating on the Nursing Home Compare page on the Medicare website. Compared to other nursing homes, “Brother B” scored higher in health inspections, staffing and most importantly, quality of resident care. Joanna Gorczyca, MSW, MPA, LNHA Administrator/Director of Senior Services, who works tirelessly to maintain order and quality of care, says, “It’s something we’re very proud of and we’re going to work hard to keep it.”

Max Loeffler, founder and creator of Bumbles Dolls, right

BUMBLE DOLLS FOR ALL

Max Loeffler, founder, and creator of Bumbles Dolls, recently donated 100 dolls to the children inpatients at Trinitas. The following week, his sister Natasha Loeffler, brought 100 more to the Cancer Center and the Connie Dwyer Breast Center for patients. Loeffler, whose mother Vanessa Loeffler, the wife of Dr. Abu Alam, is the founder of the Teddy Bear Foundation for Achondroplasia. Loeffler’s daughter Theodora, was born with achondroplasia, a hereditary, congenital form of skeletal dysplasia commonly known as dwarfism. As Max watched medical professionals take care of his sister and began volunteering at a local hospital, he was inspired to help make a difference in a bigger way. And soon, Bumble Dolls were born and have made their way around the country. Now, we’re lucky to have them at Trinitas.

Geraldine Cruz, Palliative Care Director

NURSE OF THE YEAR

Congratulations to Geraldine Cruz, Palliative Care Director, who won Nurse of the Year in the category of Adult Health recently at the NJ March of Dimes Nurse of the Year Awards.

Nancy DiLiegro, PhD, FACHE Vice President of Clinical Operations and Physician Services, Chief Clinical Officer

SENIOR CAREERIST AWARD-WINNER

Congratulations to Nancy DiLiegro, PhD, FACHE Vice President of Clinical Operations and Physician Services, Chief Clinical Officer, the recipient of the 2020 Senior Careerist Award. She was honored by The New Jersey American College of Healthcare Executives Regent Advisory Council Awards Committee at the Annual Regent’s Breakfast and Awards Program on January 31, 2020, at the Hyatt Regency Princeton.

Trinitas EMS, Dr. Raffee Matossian, EMS Medical Director

MOBILE HEALTHCARE PROGRAM OF THE YEAR

Trinitas EMS was awarded the 2019 “Mobile Healthcare Program of the Year” award at the 20th Annual EMS Awards Program recently during the National Conference on EMS in Atlantic City. Dr. Raffee Matossian, EMS Medical Director, accepted the award from Deputy Commissioner of Health Christopher Neuwirth.

Minette’s Angels, the Connie Dwyer Breast Center

ANGELS AMONG US

Minette’s Angels, a non-profit foundation dedicated to funding efforts to provide programs and services to breast cancer patients, came to the Connie Dwyer Breast Center at Trinitas to make another generous donation to support our efforts.

Elizabeth Police Department PBA, Local 4

PINK LIVES MATTER

Our friends at the Elizabeth Police Department PBA Local 4 came up with a creative way to support Trinitas. For Breast Cancer Awareness Month, they made fancy patches with a pink border and sold 400 of them to the public for $5 each. During the two-day, sold-out sale, they collected $2,000 and donated it for breast cancer patients at Trinitas. Thank you to our local heroes in blue for incorporating some pink!

Foundation People

Trinitas Regional Medical Center Dialysis Employees

#GIVINGTUESDAY

Trinitas Regional Medical Center saves lives EVERY SINGLE DAY and on Tuesday, December 3, 2019, our Trinitas family raised more than $29,000 for #GivingTuesday. Thank you to all of our LIFESAVERS who donated this #GivingTuesday to benefit our behavioral health patients. We are so thankful for our generous employees, board members, and friends who are all helping us provide life-saving care to everyone who needs us. We appreciate YOU!

Renovated Classroom

PEACE OF MIND CAMPAIGN

Renovations to our Behavioral Health facilities are underway thanks to a very successful $4.6 million Peace of Mind Campaign. While patient rooms, group rooms, and hallways are being transformed into bright and cheerful spaces, we need to fill them with the right furniture and equipment for our patients! Help us fulfill their wish list by making a gift at www.trinitasrmc.org/POM

$ 50 Educational and media resources such as workbooks, books,

Renovated Bedroom

videos, bibles

$100 Chairs for group activity rooms

$250 Tablet/iPad for job training, educational games, and stress management apps

$500 Table for group rooms

$1,000 Wheelchair/medical transport chair for non-ambulatory or bed-bound patients

$3,000 Specialized behavioral health hospital beds

Bart Oates (Former New York Giants Player), Stephen Baker (Former New York Giants Player), and Gary S. Horan (President & CEO, Trinitas Regional Medical Center) with Mr. Horan’s daughter and grandchildren.

TAILGATE WITH TRINITAS

On Sunday, November 24, more than 80 guests gathered at Galloping Hill Caterers in Union to watch the New York Giants take on the Chicago Bears. They cheered on the Giants and although the Giants didn’t take home a win, Trinitas did! You helped us raise over $35,000 in net proceeds!

The afternoon also included football trivia, box pools, and raffle fun. Thank you to everyone who supported this year’s Tailgate with Trinitas event; you are the real MVPs! And a special thank you to our event chairs; Mitch Grossman and Jean McAllister.

Save the Date!

20TH ANNIVERSARY GALA

Thursday, May 14, 2020

The Venetian – Garfield, NJ

For more information on events, please contact Kim Boyer, Director of Operations at (908) 994-8249 or kboyer@trinitas.org.

The Chef Recommends

Edge takes you inside the area’s most creative kitchens.

Paragon Tap & Table • Beef Ramen

77 Central Ave. • CLARK

(732) 931-1776 • paragonnj.com

As we constantly introduce new flavors from around the world to our customers at Paragon Tap and Table we have added an Asian inspired Noodle Dish with a touch of the south. Our beef ramen noodle showcases all the characteristics of a traditional ramen but twisted with the smokiness of the smoked beef brisket.

— Eric B. LeVine, Chef/Partner

Arirang Hibachi Steakhouse • Wasabi Crusted Filet Mignon

1230 Route 22 West • MOUNTAINSIDE
(908) 518-9733 • partyonthegrill.com
We prepare a crusted 8-ounce filet mignon served with gingered spinach, shitake mushrooms, and a tempura onion ring.

Daimatsu • Sushi Pizza

860 Mountain Ave. • MOuNTAiNSiDE

(908) 233-7888 • daimatsusushibar.com

This original dish has been our signature appetizer for over 20 years. Crispy seasoned sushi rice topped with homemade spicy mayo, marinated tuna, finely chopped onion, scallion, masago caviar, and ginger. Our customers always come back wanting more.

— Chef Momo

The Barge • Cioppino

201 Front Street • PERTH AMBOY
(732) 442-3000 • thebarge.com
Our Cioppino, the signature dish of San Francisco, features a fresh, healthy selection of
clams, mussels, shrimp, Maine lobster and Jersey scallops—drizzled in Greek virgin olive
oil, with fresh garlic and white wine—over homemade Italian linguini. I know it will become
one of your favorite dishes.
— Alex Vosinas Chef/Owner

Luciano’s Ristorante & Lounge • Warm Goat Cheese Salad

1579 Main Street • RAHWAY

(732) 815-1200 • lucianosristorante.com

Pan-seared scallops over butternut squash risotto and wilted spinach, finished with a brown butter emulsion. This is one of the signature dishes featured on our menu since we opened 10 years ago.

— Joseph Mastrella, Executive Chef/Partner

Morris Tap & Grill • The Monster Burger

500 Route 10 West • RANDOLPH
(973) 891-1776 • morristapandgrill.com
As the leader in the gastropub world in New Jersey, Morris Tap and grill has been
providing creative, quality, fresh certified burgers for over 6 years. Here’s an example of what we do creatively with our burgers, The Monster Burger. Two certified angus beef burgers topped with chorizo sausage, slaw, bacon, cheddar cheese and a fried egg!

— Eric B. LeVine, Chef/Partner

Garden Grille • Grilled Chicken Paillard

304 Route 22 West • SPRINGFIELD

(973) 232-5300 • hgispringfield.hgi.com

Grilled chicken paillard with roasted corn, asparagus, cauliflower, baby arugula and grape tomato, extra virgin olive oil & aged balsamic.

— Chef Sean Cznadel

LongHorn Steakhouse • Outlaw Ribeye

272 Route 22 West • SPRINGFIELD
(973) 315-2049 • longhornsteakhouse.com
LongHorn Steakhouse of Springfield is celebrating its One Year Anniversary. Come celebrate with us! Join us for Lunch or Dinner. We suggest you try our fresh, never frozen, 18 oz. bone-in Outlaw Ribeye – featuring juicy marbling that is perfectly
seasoned and fire-grilled by our expert Grill Masters.
— Anthony Levy, Managing Partner

Outback Steakhouse • Bone-In Natural Cut Ribeye

901 Mountain Avenue • SPRINGFIELD

(973) 467-9095 • outback.com/locations/nj/springfield

This is the entire staff’s favorite, guests rave about. Bone-in and extra marbled for maximum tenderness, juicy and savory. Seasoned and wood-fired grilled over oak.

— Duff Regan, Managing Partner

Arirang Hibachi Steakhouse • Volcano Roll

23A Nelson Avenue • STATEN ISLAND, NY
(718) 966-9600 • partyonthegrill.com
Hot-out-of-the-oven, crab, avocado and cream cheese rolled up and topped with a mild spicy scallop salad.

Ursino Steakhouse & Tavern • House Carved 16oz New York Strip Steak

1075 Morris Avenue • UNION

(908) 977-9699 • ursinosteakhouse.com

Be it a sizzling filet in the steakhouse or our signature burger in the tavern upstairs, Ursino is sure to please the most selective palates. Our carefully composed menus feature fresh, seasonal ingredients and reflect the passion we put into each and every meal we serve.

Do you own a local restaurant and want to know how your BEST DISH could be featured in our Chef Recommends restaurant guide?

Call us at 908.994.5138

Heirloom Kitchen

“Duck is Viana’s signature dish, and no matter the micro-season, he works what’s fresh and what’s purposeful into his nightly duck program.”

By Andy Clurfeld

When it comes to people with one-of-a-kind voices, New Jersey has given birth, or a place to work and live, or prominence to more than its share of singular talents.

Think Sinatra. Springsteen, of course —now a newly minted Broadway star. Count Basie, Whitney Houston, Queen Latifah, Sarah Vaughn, and Patti Smith. Then there are Einstein and Edison; Yogi Berra and Derek Jeter; Vince Lombardi and Bill Parcells. And also Annie Oakley, Shaq, “Marvelous” Marvin Hagler, Philip Roth and John McPhee, all peerless in their respective fields.

Now consider that Alice Waters, impresario of the ground-breaking Chez Panisse in Berkeley, CA, founder of the Edible Schoolyard initiatives and modern-day instigator of eating local and organic food, is from Chatham.

Yes, Alice Waters, whose influence on what and how we eat today is comparable to The Beatles’ influence on rock, is Jersey born and raised.

Time to take your medicine, Garden State denizens. Time to toss to the curb the cliches of New Jersey’s mass-produced culinary past promulgated by those intent on keeping original voices at bay while promoting the same old pizza and pork roll places, the overstuffed hoagies and subs and leaden bagels, as well as the ‘dogs, doughnuts and diners that give credence to out-of-town critics’ rants.

For there’s a new breed of chefs in New Jersey, and they are skilled, savvy and seeing things clearly now.

Leading the way are nationally regarded chefs, such as Dan Richer of Razza in Jersey City; Maricel Presilla of Cucharamama and Zafra in Hoboken, and Drew Araneo of Drew’s Bayshore Bistro in Keyport, as well as critically acclaimed voices with relatively new restaurants that include Ehren Ryan of Common Lot in Millburn; Greg Vassos of Brick Farm Tavern in Hopewell; and Randy Forrester of Osteria Radici in Allentown.

Factor in the wealth of ethnic restaurants that reflects the vibrant cultures and communities rooted in this, one of America’s most diverse states, adding both talent and a gastronomy that extends to all parts of the globe, and you have a collective table that groans glorious. It’s a simple mix of good ingredients and good people.

Photography courtesy of Heirloom Kitchen

It’s just what the doctor ordered as a prescription for eating in 2018.

David Viana, now chef-partner at Heirloom Kitchen in Old Bridge, could be the poster child for the vanguard born out of old guard.

He is Portuguese, raised in the traditions of the table, and took in the ways of professional cooking at some of the best restaurants in Europe, New York and New Jersey. Anthony Bucco, executive chef at the empire that is Crystal Springs Resorts in Sussex County, lauds Viana as the “most talented, gifted chef” he’s worked within a pro kitchen. Visionary chefs including Vassos and Ryan are honored to be part of collaborative dinners with Viana; young chefs, notably Jon Boot, now at Ryland Inn, Whitehouse Station, and Sean Yan, current pastry chef and assistant to Viana at Heirloom, are inspired by his food.

Because it’s unlike any other.

I’ve eaten a half-dozen dinners in as many months that either Viana created or collaborated on and find his voice to be, at present, the most original in the Garden State.

Viana starts with a main ingredient as his inspiration, be it duck or spring peas, apples or porcinis, scallops or cauliflower, and builds from there. His accents challenge and enlighten, yet they stop shy of being fussy. They are always artfully applied.

Photography courtesy of Heirloom Kitchen

Art on a plate scares me. I’ve seen and tasted too much artifice. Viana’s washes, pin-dots, and arcs of sauce, spears of vegetable, frothy poofs of concentrated herb and ringlets of leafy things never do anything but enhance the main element. The “art” supports, and shows, Viana’s control over a plate.

I’ve watched Viana in his open kitchen at Heirloom Kitchen—which is a restaurant three nights a week and a classroom other evenings—break down a duck: butcher the duck, score its fat, prep it till it’s ready to be called upon for a precise 40-minute stove-top sear that will star in a seasonal preparation. In the space of a few weeks late last year, there were two of note: johnnycakes and oatmeal, persimmon and delicata squash and a rush of pomegranate on a regular-dinner night in early December at Heirloom, and one with herbed wheat berries and granola, parsnips and date puree, coffee and pecans, and the unmistakable umami of maitakes with a squirt of duck jus at the venerable James Beard House in New York, where Viana was invited to cook dinner days before Christmas.

Duck is Viana’s signature dish, and no matter the micro season, he works what’s fresh and what’s purposeful into his nightly program. Viana’s regulars might have duck every month at Heirloom, without duplication.

They also might have pork belly with a bacon marmalade and loops of Vietnamese caramel, the richness of which is offset by thick-cut half-moons of celery and salty peanuts. They might have pork-smoked apple raviolo and come across on the plate a bacon-pine nut crumble there expressly to play off the pasta pockets with a slyly silky texture—as well as pivots of delicata squash and sweet potato and a splash of mustardy jus.

Scallops in cold weather will be appropriately accompanied by dug-up vegetables such as fingerling potatoes and carrots, both of which are roasted and—with the scallops —given a choice of playmates: almond-mint pesto, chestnut puree, and lemon-brown butter emulsion. The accent editing is pitch-perfect. Likewise, halibut will see kohlrabi smoked and pureed, chanterelles gently warmed, an egg yolk scented with truffle and mustard seeds pickled to give them added depth and a defiant edginess that the mild, dense, meaty fish appreciates.

Viana rises to the challenge of sides: Cauliflower gets a sultry-snappy lift from pomegranate molasses and mint pesto; kale is laced with duck confit and topped with a fried egg; Brussels sprouts are plied with a gastrique that bristles with mustard and then all’s calmed by the inherent sweetness of butter infused with, of all things, parsnip. You have to think: Sides? These are sides? They could comfort and cosset and fill in a bowl by themselves, eaten on a couch. Yes, they could. But they appear on Viana’s Heirloom menu, to be passed family-style at the table or counter, depending on where you sit.

If you are at Heirloom Kitchen, which is owned by Neilly Robinson, you will be seated (depending on your choice and the availability) at the chef’s counter, facing the stoves at which Viana cooks. A row back, there is another counter, also with a “view,” but without the same opportunity to watch, and converse with, the chef. Then there are tables of the regular dining-out sort—two-tops and four-tops, and a larger one for parties of perhaps 10.

I’m not forgetting dessert, made by Sean Yan to suit the Viana style. Lemongrass mousse, for instance, is backed by gingerbread and plated with white chocolate that’s been roasted and mint that’s been pulverized to the texture of dust. There’s the suspicion of bourbon in the mix, and a whiff of Asian pear.

But don’t count on repeats of anything you read here right now. In the world of a singular voice such as David Viana, yesterday is history to learn from, today provides a chance for change, and tomorrow is the opportunity to play out a dream deemed a privilege to share.

New Jersey, after all, thrives on its one-of-a-kinds

Heirloom Kitchen

3853 Route 516, Old Bridge • Phone: (732) 727.9444

Major credit cards accepted. Open Friday, Saturday, and Sunday for dinner and, generally, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday evenings for cooking classes. Menus change weekly and special collaborative dinners are planned seasonally. Visit www.heirloomkitchen.com to view schedules for classes as well as current menus. Reservations are required, and tables book early. Heirloom is a BYOB, but offers a small selection of wines from Domenica Winery for purchase on site.

Entertainment on the Edge

In town as the seasons change…

Cameron Yee

February 16

Jeff Dunham: Passively Aggressively

Prudential Center 7:00 pm

Comedy superstar Jeff Dunham brings his cast of ill-behaved characters to The Rock for his Passively Aggressively tour. Fan favorites, such as Bubba J and Peanut, consider what a new member to their dysfunctional family could mean.

February 16-24

Pippin

Kean Stage

(See web site for showtimes)

Pippin’s Leading Player tells the powerful story of his travels with a troupe of talented actors. Music, song, and dance weave a narrative of selfishness, deceitful first impressions, and the power of redemption.

February 17-18

Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus Live!

NJPAC/Victoria Theater

(See web site for showtimes)

For more than two decades, John Gray’s hilarious Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus guide to the battle of the sexes has remained an audience favorite.

Joe Satriani

February 18

G3 2018: Joe Satriani, John Pertucci, Phil Collen

NJPAC 7:00 pm

The G3 2018 tour features Satriani and fellow six-string legends Pertucci and Collen in an action-packed, live-wire celebration of guitar wizardry.

February 18

Hot Latin Nights with the Mambo Kings:

New Jersey Symphony Orchestra

State Theater 3:00 pm

Bringing some serious heat, The Mambo Kings celebrate the sizzling, jazz-infused music of Latin America and the United States.

Amazon.com

February 23

Art of Rap: The History of Hip Hop Tour with Bone Thugs-N-Harmony, EPMD, N.O.R.E., Big Daddy Kane, Onyx, MR. Cheeks, Brand Nubian, and Roxanne Shanté

NJPAC 8:00 pm

This electrifying concert features some of the most influential Hip Hop artists of today—and back in the day. It’s a celebration of the far reach of rap and the amazing stories of its unforgettable artists.

February 24

Jon Secada

UCPAC Main Stage 8:00 pm

Grammy Award-winning artist and songwriter Jon Secada, acclaimed for his romantic sound, takes the Main Stage in Rahway with his soulful and melodic voice.

February 24

Brahms’ First Symphony: New Jersey Symphony Orchestra

State Theater 8:00 pm

Rune Bergmann conducts mezzo-soprano Marianne Beate Kielland and the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra in Brahms’ First Symphony, a masterwork for all time.

The Duprees

March 3

Golden Oldies Spectacular

State Theater 7:00 pm

An evening of beloved oldies in New Brunswick! Featuring classics like The Duprees’

“You Belong to Me,” The Marcels’ “Blue Moon” and many more.

March 4

Staatskapelle Weimar

State Theater 3:00 pm

Founded in 1491, the Staatskapelle Weimar is one of the oldest and most illustrious orchestras in the world. It’s the organization’s first North American tour to present three of Beethoven’s greatest works.

Thefallofitall

March 9

Colin Quinn: One in Every Crowd

NJPAC/Victoria Theater 7:00 pm

Quinn’s rough-hewn urban humor has entertained MTV, Saturday Night Live, Comedy Central, and Broadway audiences. He comes to Newark with an entirely new show.

PeterPan23

March 9

Kid Rock: Greatest Show on Earth Tour 2018

Prudential Center 7:30 pm

Kid Rock brings his The Greatest Show on Earth Tour to The Rock—to promote his new album, Sweet Southern Sugar

March 11

Zhang Conducts Tchaikovsky: New Jersey Symphony Orchestra

State Theater 3:00 pm

Acclaimed conductor Xian Zhang conducts the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra in Tchaikovsky’s Sleeping Beauty and Francesca da Rimini, Danielpour’s Carnival of the Ancients, and Haydn’s Sinfonia Concertante.

NJPAC

March 16

Los Tigres del Norte

NJPAC 8:00 pm

One of the most influential Latin music groups of all time, Grammy-Award winning Los Tigres perform high-energy norteño music that celebrates the vibrant culture of Mexico.

State Theater

March 17

Dublin Irish Dance

State Theater 8:00 pm

Stepping Out offers an extravaganza of sights and sounds from the Dublin Irish Dance company. The troupe of accomplished step-dancers and musicians explores Celtic history and culture.

State Theater

March 18

Academy of St. Martin in the Fields with Joshua Bell

NJPAC 3:00 pm

Known as one of the greatest American violinists of his time, Bell has recently become one of the world’s most accomplished conductors. He now leads the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields.

FOR the KIDS

February 9-10

Rogers & Hammerstein’s Cinderella

State Theater

(See web site for show times)

February 10

Beauty & the Beast

Kean Stage 3:00 pm

February 10

Year of the Dog: The Nai Chen Dance Company

NJPAC/Victoria Theater 2:00 & 7:00 pm

February 19

Mr. Popper’s Penguins

State Theater 10:00 am, 12:30 & 3:00 pm

March 3

Moon Mouse: A Space Odyssey

NJPAC/Victoria Theater 2:00 pm

March 3

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban in Concert

NJPAC 2:00 & 7:30 pm

March 15-18

Marvel Universe Live! Age of Heroes

Prudential Center

(See web site for showtimes)

March 17

Popovich Comedy Pet Theater

NJPAC/Victoria Theater 1:00 & 5:00 pm

YouTube

March 18–19

Mummenschanz

State Theater 7:00 pm

Sibuachu

March 20

Judas Priest

Prudential Center 7:00 pm

One of heavy metal’s iconic acts hits the road to support the new Firepower album. The lineup features Rob Halford, Glenn Tipton, Richie Faulkner, Ian Hill, and Scott Travis.

Sibuachu

March 21

Demi Lovato & DJ Khaled

Prudential Center 7:30 pm

Grammy-nominated, multiplatinum singer Demi Lovato brings her tour to North America timed with the release of her critically acclaimed album Tell Me You Love Me. She is joined by special guest DJ Khaled.

March 23

National Symphony Orchestra of Cuba

NJPAC 8:00 pm

Conducted by Enrique Pérez-Mesa—with guest pianist Yekwon Sunwoo—the orchestra makes its NJPAC debut with a Latin-flavored and dance-inspired program.

March 23-25

Motown the Musical

State Theater (Check web site for showtimes)

Celebrate the music that transformed America and the story of Berry Gordy’s journey from featherweight boxer to heavyweight music mogul.

March 29-April 29

The Sting: A New Musical

Paper Mill Playhouse (Check web site for showtimes)

Based on the 1973 Academy Award-winning film, The Sting, this musical tells the story of two con men who plot to sabotage a corrupt racketeer in Depression Era Chicago.

April 4-7

Comedy of (Jersey) Errors

Kean Stage (Check web site for showtimes)

This version of Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors is filled with madcap characters, adventure, and everything “Jersey Shore,” as long-lost twins cross paths on the Garden State’s beloved boardwalk.

Louise Palanker

April 5-6

Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons

NJPAC/Victoria Theater 8:00 pm

Spend an evening with Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Frankie Valli, performing classic Four Seasons hits like “Big Girls Don’t Cry,” “Rag Doll,” and many more.

Liliane Callegari

April 6

Lorde

Prudential Center 7:00 pm

Grammy Award-winning artist Lorde takes the stage with special guests Run the Jewels and Mitski to support her new album UPROXX.

April 7

The Sleeping Beauty: Russian National Ballet

NJPAC 8:00 pm

This sumptuous company brings a traditional staging of the classic fairy tale to NJPAC with stunning precision and beauty.

World Economic Forum

April 8

The Silk Road Ensemble with Yo-Yo Ma

NJPAC 3:00 pm

Cellist Yo-Yo Ma returns to Newark with his ensemble to celebrate music that crisscrosses centuries, continents and cultures. Last performed in 1998, this program embraces the artistic traditions of more than 20 countries.

Dwight McCann

April 13

Johnny Mathis

NJPAC 8:00 pm

Music legend Johnny Mathis returns to NJPAC for another pitch-perfect performance of his greatest hits.

April 14

P!nk: Beautiful Trauma World Tour 2018

Prudential Center 8:00 pm

International pop icon P!nk brings her high-energy and imaginative performance to the Prudential Center to promote her highly anticipated seventh album, Beautiful Trauma.

Upper Case Editorial

April 15

Jason Alexander: The Broadway Boy

New Jersey Symphony Orchestra

State Theater 3:00 pm

Long before becoming inhabiting the beloved comic character George Costanza on Seinfeld, Alexander made his career as a Tony-winning Broadway song-and-dance man. Alexander returns to his roots for an afternoon of music, laughter, and fun.

Editor’s Note: This overview of local entertainment, curated by Rachel Stewart, is just a taste of our area’s overall performance picture. For full listings, log onto the following web sites:

Kean Stage • keanstage.com

Paper Mill Playhouse • papermill.org

State Theater • stnj.org

NJPAC • njpac.org

Prudential Center • prucenter.com

Union Country Performing Arts Center & Hamilton Stage • ucpac.org

Breathing Easier

New technologies have changed the landscape for pulmonologists.

By Mark Stewart

A lot of people joke that you can’t tell doctors anything. Don’t tell that to Dr. Carlos Remolina. And know that, when it comes to early detection of lung cancer, it’s no joking matter. On a Monday evening back in December, the Chief of the Pulmonary Division addressed the assembled Department of Medicine at Trinitas on how and when to employ the dramatic technological advances in his area of medicine. Much of his time was devoted to reviewing the fine points of Bronchial Navigation, a new way to detect the minute, shadowy nodules that could be the beginning of lung cancer.

“I presented several cases we have encountered here at Trinitas, one in which the nodule was as small as nine-by eleven millimeters,” says Dr. Remolina. “We were able to identify the nodule and use Navigational Bronchostomy to reach it and do a biopsy. The patient did have lung cancer, but because we detected the disease in its earliest stage, we were able to perform a resection and save that patient’s life.”

Where lung cancer is concerned, it is all about early detection. The 10-year survival rate for patients diagnosed in Stage 1 or 2 is 88 percent; in Stage 3 and 4, the five-year survival rate is just 17 percent. In his presentation, Dr. Remolina encouraged his fellow doctors to be more proactive when it comes to using the new technology. Medicare actually covers lung screening for “30-pack smokers” ages 55 and over, and Trinitas has a superb Lung Screening Program that employs a low-dose CT scan.

“Our program is not used as aggressively as it should be,” says Dr. Remolina, who adds that lung screening needs to become more ingrained in the medical community. Not only is it potentially a matter of life and death, he points out, it could soon be a matter of liability. When a woman goes to a doctor and that doctor doesn’t order a mammogram, the doctor could be liable if she develops breast cancer. The same could be true for a doctor who fails to refer an older ex-smoker for screening and a full workup if, years later the diagnosis is Stage 4 lung cancer.

HOW IT WORKS

Navigational Bronchostomy employs electromagnetic fields that create “GPS” to tumors when they are very small, so they can be reached and biopsied. A computer program generates a 3-D map that pinpoints the location of the tiniest tumors, and shows the twists and turns along the way. Prior to this technology, the diagnostic options faced by patients at risk for lung cancer were limited. They included traditional bronchoscopy, which often could not reach the area of concern or an invasive surgical procedure. Needle biopsies sometimes didn’t get to the target and came with a significant risk of pneumothorax, more commonly known as a collapsed lung.

“Another option was watching and waiting,” Dr. Remolina recalls. “When a nodule got big enough, you’d go after it. By that point, of course, the tumor had grown.”

The new technology, he adds, reduced the risk of lung collapse from a range of 18 to 30 percent to just 2 or 3 percent. What are some of the first signs that suggest someone should get a screening?

“An unexplained cough, especially one that brings up a small amount of blood, would be a major area of concern,” Dr. Remolina says. “Unexplained weight loss is something to watch for, too.”

These symptoms are much more likely to occur in smokers, but lung cancer can also affect people who never smoked a cigarette in their lives. Unfortunately, those individuals don’t meet the criteria for low-dose CT scans at the moment.

Another procedure that has come online in recent years is Endobronchial Ultrasound, or EBUS, which Dr. Remolina also says is a game-changer: “Before EBUS, you had to send a patient to a thoracic surgeon for a procedure on a lymph node. Now it can be done as an outpatient procedure.”

Dr. Remolina maintains that advances such as Navigational Bronchostomy and Endobronchial Ultrasound have changed the landscape of pulmonology. His goal is to encourage more physicians to embrace these procedures. It’s a matter of smart medicine and, potentially, life and death.

LOW DOSE/BIG RESULTS

The Trinitas lung screening program has been up and running for 18 months and, in that time, has already demonstrated its life-saving potential. The low-dose, non-invasive CT scan—which takes less than a minute—has detected tiny, early-stage tumors in dozens of patients, dramatically altering outcomes for those individuals. Lung cancer kills more people in this country than breast, colon and prostate cancer. Combined. The Trinitas screenings involve only a quarter of the radiation of traditional CT scans. For more information on the Lung Screening Program at Trinitas call (908) 994-5051.

Carlos Remolina, MD, FCCP, PA

Chief/Pulmonary Division,

Trinitas Regional Medical Center

Director, Care One LTACH

908.241.2030

Plan B-12

My unlikely encounter with a silent epidemic.

By Dree Andrea

Twenty-five years had passed since my last visit to a doctor’s office. Which is why, in 2016, finding myself in a constant state of fear and paranoia, the thought of doing so never even crossed my mind. It happened practically overnight. I grew increasingly afraid of leaving my house. My dreams were so vivid that I started to confuse nightmares with reality. In order to (literally) save the day, my subconscious ordered the insomnia that followed. After five days without sleep, however, I became terrified of my fellow human beings. I had always considered myself a grounded, healthy, joyous person who met all the responsibilities that come with living life. I did my best to remain calm and logical, but I was also aware that my emotions were on the verge of total collapse, and would get the better of me sooner rather than later.

A traumatic experience with the medical community early on in my life in Amsterdam (where I was born and raised) had motivated me to study a variety of holistic healing modalities after I came to America. When health issues arose that I could not address myself, I had worked successfully with a chiropractor and an acupuncturist, but never a traditional GP. Once, while experiencing severe pain after being clipped by a hit-and-run driver, a colleague convinced me to take an aspirin. It made me so sick that I decided to never touch over-the-counter medication again. Arnica gel for sprained ankles and Old Indian Wild Cherry bark for severe coughs were as far as I would go, no matter how grave the situation. I was a happy, healthy artist and documentary filmmaker living in the States for over 20 years when I began to “lose my mind.”

Of course, my American friends had long questioned my sanity, albeit jokingly.

www.istockphoto.com

My belief that diet is the key to physical, emotional and mental health has made me an object of curiosity. On occasion, I have been called stubborn or even stupid for living my holistic lifestyle. I ate solely organic food and avoided sugar, coffee, and alcohol. I also exercised and practiced yoga and mindfulness. I learned through my own success—and as a graduate of the Natural Gourmet Institute in New York—that staying healthy (and doctor-free) takes a lot of time and attention, willpower and discipline. Eventually, I started coaching others—acquainting each client with the tools and techniques necessary to discover the lifestyle that worked best. In some cases, I imparted knowledge I had acquired in other areas, like Reiki, a form of hands-on healing developed in Japan. I also believed the key to balance and happiness was connecting to your creative self, whether through journaling, painting, cooking, or some other passion. I held art and cooking classes, as well as dream workshops. I was a Jack-of-all-trades with a stack of certificates, but no conventional degree. Even so, as the years went by, with a track record of positive reactions and referrals, I was satisfied that my degree in Life Experience was an acceptable alternative.

On paper, I was the last person who should have been swept away by this tsunami of negative energy. Over the previous seven years, I had dealt successfully with a series of unexpected stressful events, including a separation, the passing of a few dear friends, and working with a psychotic life-coaching client who turned out to be far more dangerous than I had been willing to admit while working with him. Also, I had recently made a major quality-of-life decision that I considered to be very positive. After two decades in a New York rental apartment, I had initiated a project that opened up the opportunity to purchase a fairytale weekend home in New Jersey, the perfect place to one day create a coaching practice and writer’s den. I knew the city eventually would become too demanding for the sensitive soul that—at age 50—I recognize that I am.

Most of my life I had been told to “not be so sensitive” and to “get over myself.” In 2010, however, I learned from one of the professionals with whom I worked that I am indeed an unusually (physically and emotionally) sensitive individual. Which is to say that I need a little less stimulus and a little more nature than the average person. So the location of the house—in a national historic district, with unpaved roads winding up and around a hillside overlooking the ocean, an absence of streetlights, friendly neighbors and lots of wildlife—was a dream come true. As technology has rushed forward, time has barely moved there. I saw it as a new phase in life. I hoped to find the community I missed in New York and I intended to practice what I preached, in order to eventually obtain my “Master’s” in Life Experience. Even if the unsettling experience with the aforementioned coaching client had taken place in this house, when my emotions started to unravel, I still felt peaceful there, protected by nature, thankful for this safe haven.

One day in November 2016, I entered my home and something seemed terribly wrong. Panic struck me like a bolt of lightning. I ran outside, finding myself standing under a full moon, in freezing weather, without a coat. The chill I felt was not from the cold. The house was haunted. The hill was haunted. “You’re going crazy,” I said out loud, trying to compose myself. “No one knows about it yet. And you better make sure they don’t find out!” Hearing my own words grounded me. I would rather die than get locked away in a psych ward. Thinking of the birds, crickets and squirrels with whom I cohabitate in this magical place, I took off my shoes and connected with Mother Earth. I had trained with shamans in Peru a decade earlier; Patcha Mama would come to my rescue, I just knew it. I had never felt so grateful in my life. “I’m no lunatic,” I declared, looking up to the huge, bright full moon.

www.istockphoto.com

However, in the ensuing months, I grew more and more tired. I started to lose my ability to concentrate or focus. I had completely lost my grip. I reacted to everything like a deer in the headlights. My self-confidence crumbled. It was like living outside of a box made of unbreakable, soundproof, see-through glass looking in, but at the same time being locked up inside that very same box, reaching out to myself for help. Neither of us could find a door to even knock on. I was a documentary filmmaker trapped in a horror movie.

Deep down inside, I sensed that I had just lost my way. I never lost my identity. Yet it was hard to continue to believe in myself as more and more people who had known me for a long time, when confronted with my personality change, seemed to be looking to create a little distance. I kept hearing that I appeared pretty healthy and, therefore, it could not really be that bad. Some suggested antidepressants, others that I get a dog. In my world, those were not solutions. I just wanted people to be part of my life again; I was desperately looking for support from humans, not animals. A caring neighbor who had attended and appreciated my dream workshops—and who was familiar with my diet— offered up another idea. She is all about finding balance, but seeks it in different places, in different ways than I do.

Dree AndreaShe suggested I might have a vitamin deficiency. The one thing I had not considered or tested were the levels of my vitamins, minerals, and hormones.

So it came to pass that I found myself in an examination room for the first time since the early 1990s. I was terrified of how an M.D. might approach whatever the outcome of the lab work would be but fortunately managed to find a doctor who was open to holistic modalities. It turned out that I did indeed have severe vitamin deficiencies—caused by long-term stress, which had taken its toll on both my sleep as well as my digestive system. Due to malabsorption, she said, I was dangerously low in B-12.

Dree Andrea

It turns out B-12 is a really big deal. It is one of the essential vitamins affecting various systems of the body. Neurologic, hematologic, gastrointestinal, as well as psychiatric symptoms, arise in cases of deficiency. The reason? Neurotransmitters communicate information throughout the brain and body, relaying signals between neurons. The brain uses neurotransmitters to let your heart know to keep beating, your lungs to inhale and exhale, and your stomach to digest. A lack of B-12 can also affect mood, sleep, concentration, and weight. Vitamin B-12 helps increase brain serotonin and dopamine levels because it is a cofactor in the synthesis of these neurotransmitters, as well as in norepinephrine and gamma-Aminobutyric acid (aka GABA)—the chief inhibitory neurotransmitter in the central nervous system. In humans, GABA also regulates muscle tone.

As I read up on B-12 deficiency, it was like reading my own story: Although not common, psychiatric symptoms may precede the physical ones, including fatigue, forgetfulness, loss of muscle strength, a feeling of pins-and-needles and change in vision. And wouldn’t you know it? The agitation, irritability, negativism, confusion, disorientation, amnesia, impaired concentration and attention and insomnia that a B-12 deficiency can also cause is often misdiagnosed as depression, bipolar or panic disorder, psychosis, phobias, or even dementia.

My doctor administered my first B-12 shot that very day. She warned me that it would take quite some time to start feeling better—up to six months. Me being me, I rushed home to do more research and discovered an alarming number of stories about people who had taken years to recover. A few had to get B- 12 shots for the rest of their lives.

As of December 2017, I had completed my fourth month of replenishing. From onset to diagnosis, almost a year had passed. I am glad to know that I am not going out of my mind.

During those months of self-doubt and uncertainty, a friend convinced me, quite forcefully, to see a therapist who, in turn, referred me to a trauma therapist. Those sessions actually left me questioning whether I would rise out of the ashes ever again. Therapy is not for everyone, and I sensed that this, at least for me, was not the right path. I continued exploring other options to find answers. Looking back, what now seems “crazy” to me is that going down the therapy path might very likely have resulted in a prescription for mood-altering psychotropic medication before my levels of vitamins, minerals, and hormones had been checked out first

And it is dawning on me that B-12 deficiency may be a silent epidemic. According to some studies, four in ten Americans, for example, are not getting enough B-12, while 60 percent of vegetarians and 90 percent (!) of vegans apparently are deficient. A growing number of medical professionals and therapists have also begun talking about a vulnerable third “high-risk” group: highly sensitive people, to which I belong. We perceive emotions, thoughts, and moods, energies, in such an intense way that we are often physically affected or even depleted by other people or situations, or by stimuli such as lights, sounds, or wifi radiation. In my case, adding a B-12 deficiency to an often confusing energy mix could have led to my personal short-circuit. Honestly, I felt I was blowing an emotional fuse. Had I wavered from the belief that I was not mentally ill, I could easily have ended up misdiagnosed with a mental disorder, on lithium or some other antidepressant.

In fact, I looped back to my physician after noticing my mood sink a few days after each B-12 injection—and then rise again while taking the sublingual (under-the tongue) B-12 in between shots. After a little more research, a new gameplan was formulated with the help of an orthomolecular practitioner, which involved no injections and a combination of two different types of sublingual B-12, 3000 mcg methylcobalamine and 3000 mcg adenosylcobalamine. Each one includes folic acid and is held under the tongue for a half-hour for optimal absorption.

Long story short, B-12 deficiency can be a complicated and highly personal journey. And because it is not part of the standard ordered lab work, it requires asking your doctor to test for B-12 if you suspect you have symptoms.

While my viewpoints on health and wellness have not significantly changed, I understand that the mind-body connection is not for everyone. I remain firm in my belief that physical problems arise as a result of something emotionally off-balance in life. During this whole ordeal, I knew that the path back to my old joyous and energetic self would require continuous truthful self-exploration, a combination of the right foods and supplements, and most of all patience. I am still not a huge fan of doctors, but I do recognize the value of a second opinion.

READ THE LABEL

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My blood work revealed a number of vitamin and mineral deficiencies, for which I took various supplements to replenish. It was suggested that I try melatonin to help me sleep. That first night I woke up more often, feeling more severe disorientation and terror than ever before, so I immediately stopped taking it. A few weeks prior to this writing, I suddenly recalled that in my shamanic education we were told to take melatonin in combination with B-6 to enhance practicing lucid dreaming and astral travel. I myself had chosen not to take the supplements at the time. I decided to check the label on the bottle I bought a year ago. Sure enough, on the front in huge letters it said MELATONIN, but in examining the small print I found that the capsules contained a whopping 10 mg of B-6—500% of the daily recommended value!—in addition to the 1 mg of melatonin in each pill. I was shocked to find, returning to the health food store, what other ingredients are added to many vitamin supplements without a clear indication. Turns out we have to start reading those labels as carefully as we read the ones on our food.

HUNTER GATHERER

During my ordeal, a number of my friends brought up the fact that I do not eat meat, which is a good source of B-12. The suggestion I think is that my wounds, on some level, were self-inflicted. It is true that vegans and vegetarians are more likely to be confronted with this problem. Having been a vegan myself for about a year in 2005 during my education as a chef, I respect their choice, even if it means committing to a regimen of B- 12 injections to avoid killing animals. I have opted for eating fish and organic eggs again, thanking the fish and chickens for their offerings. And I have upped my intake of sardines and salmon, which are two of the best B-12 sources, making peace with the fact that I am, like many other animals, a hunter, and gatherer.

Editor’s Note: Dree Andrea is an international award-winning filmmaker, artist, and energy coach working in New York and New Jersey. Her B-12 journey has taken her in some fascinating directions and led her to some eye-opening studies on B-12 deficiency. There is research that suggests that her hypersensitivity may have been further amplified by the fact that her mother carried twins, but that her sibling died in the womb. She is currently enrolled in the only training that specializes in coaching highly sensitive people and empaths. Dree is working on her second book, The Empath and the Psychopath, and on the documentary Losing Your Marbles; A B-12 Side Effect. Dree can be found at dreeinthebigcity.com.

Vision for a Healthier Haiti

A trinity of benefactors advances nursing education.

By Kathryn C. Salamone

Haiti… where natural disasters like the 2010 earthquake and Hurricane Matthew in 2016 exacerbate already unforgiving conditions for its 10 million-plus people who live in abject poverty; where more than half of the population is undernourished and 800,000 people experience food insecurity every day, and where nearly 10,000 people have died of cholera since an outbreak in 2010, the first in a century.

Despite being the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, despite the existence of an ill-equipped and under-staffed healthcare system—25 physicians and 11 nurses serve 100,000 people—Haiti can now look forward to better health among its people.

Thanks to the combined efforts of the Trinitas School of Nursing (TSON), the College of Saint Elizabeth (CSE), and the Sisters of Charity of Saint Elizabeth (SC), healthcare leaders in New Jersey form a virtual league of healthcare “Avengers.”

As the program began to take shape, The Haiti Student Nurse Project soon became known as Global Connections in Nursing Education: Haiti and the USA – a name that aptly communicates its essence: assuring that Haitian nurses have access to learning the best practices used in the US that they can then apply in responding to the needs of their fellow Haitians. Since 2014, the program has educated student nurses enrolled at Université de Notre Dame in Jacmel, Haiti, located about 100 miles south of Port au Prince. Its goal: to improve healthcare by strengthening the competence of its nurses. The student nurses have flown to New Jersey to undergo total immersion in US nursing practices and procedures, making the program one of the very few, if not the only one of its kind, to bring students to the United States for their learning experience.

Sister Janet Lehmann, SC, a past chair of the Nursing Program at the College of Saint Elizabeth, envisioned an innovative collaboration with the TSON and CSE. As the current Dean at the Jacmel campus of the Université de Notre Dame, Sister Janet knew that a partnership between the two New Jersey learning institutions could be invaluable to a nation so desperately in need of improved healthcare.

She called TSON and CSE to propose a bold, lasting and beneficial venture. “I asked for faculty and curriculum support plus the opportunity for 12 of my junior nursing students to gain bedside patient care,” Sr. Janet explains. “In Haiti, nursing education relies heavily on memorization which can limit a nurse’s ability to retain the knowledge needed to respond quickly, efficiently. It’s a constant challenge to call to mind what’s needed for competent patient care. From the planning stages, we realized the education program should concentrate on teaching
‘hands-on’ care.”

During the two-week immersion programs in 2014 and again in 2016 at the TSON’s Simulation Lab located in the Elizabeth I. Kellogg Building at the Union County College Elizabeth campus, the student nurses cared for computer-controlled “sim patients.” Sister Janet added, “The student nurses could perform their nursing care in different scenarios with greater confidence as they improved their critical thinking skills.”

Seasoned nursing professionals at TSON and CSE bought into the partnership without hesitation: Mary Beth Kelley, recently retired Dean of TSON, who served more than 40 years in that role, and Professor Eileen Specchio of the CSE Nursing Program who herself has 30 years
behind her.

Dean Kelley notes, “From the beginning, we took great care in developing the in-depth curriculum. Creolespeaking faculty members of TSON translated in both Creole and French and CSE Nursing program graduate students and alumni were heavily involved. Experienced clinical specialists from Trinitas Regional Medical Center and Saint Clare’s Hospital in Denville, another SC sponsored hospital, and those like SC who provided administrative support became a team of ‘super heroes’ who helped bring our vision to reality.”

The program received support from a trinity of benefactors. In addition to the use of the TSON lab, the Trinitas Health Foundation approved a grant that funded the purchase of the simulation equipment specifically designed for countries like Haiti. CSE offered its dorms for the students during their stay.

“We created a challenging environment to educate Haitian nurses so they could gain greater competence and confidence in patient care,” says Dr. Specchio. “Our vision of a global outreach to initiate real change in nursing care in Haiti, our experience with the students, the results we’ve seen in Haiti, all show that we’ve succeeded.”

FOCAL POINTS

Global Connections in Nursing Education: Haiti and the USA has lived up to its goal of answering global health needs that the World Health Organization and the International Council of Nurses have identified: to design education programs to promote better health, reduce disease burdens, and lower risk factors.

Here’s what the Trinitas program has concentrated on:

• Hygiene, sanitation/waste control
• Infectious disease, asepsis, and wound care
• Maternal emergencies: hemorrhage, eclampsia, and dystocia
• Women’s health: STD’s, HIV, condom use, self-breast exam, breastfeeding
• Cardiac disease: hypertension, stroke prevention, congestive heart failure
• hydration/dehydration fluid management
• First aid and disaster management: infant, child and adult CPR, choking
• Mental health: communication/active listening, empathy, learned helplessness, domestic violence, parenting principles
• Children issues: malnutrition, assessment, diarrhea prevention and management, and choking

To learn more about the Trinitas School of Nursing, visit:
www.trinitasrmc.org/school_of_nursing.htm

Presence & Pleasure

Maureen Chatfield has distinguished herself as one of the state’s most talked about painters. The Hunterdon County resident embraces experiment and change in the creative process, achieving a compelling balance between abstraction and representation in her work. In a 2015 review, Art News described Maureen as a natural colorist, adding that she “fearlessly mines the spectrum, from the gorgeous reds of Matisse to the rich blacks that conjure Franz Kline’s swashbuckling brushwork and Robert Motherwell’s Elegies to the Spanish Republic to the muted, nuanced shades of Richard Diebenkorn.” By applying layer upon layer of color, the story added, she makes paintings of “palpable presence and pleasure.”

Alex 24″x30″ oil on canvas

Bedminster Field 16” x 20”
oil on canvas

Boulder Hill Cabin 8” x 10”
oil on canvas

Flowers in Urn 11” x 14”
oil on canvas

Bedminster 2 16:x20″ oil on canvas

Still Hollow Farm 14” x 18”
oil on canvas

East End 60″x30″ mixed media

Against the Wall 48” x 60” mixed media

Moontide 30″x60″ mixed media

Maureen Chatfield lives and works just outside the Mountainville section of Tewksbury Township. The structure she uses as her studio housed an apple jack still in the 1780s. She teaches painting at the Hunterdon Art Museum and her work is exhibited at the Rosenberg Gallery on East 66th St. in New York and Cacciola Gallery in Bernardsville, as well as galleries in Greenwich, Nantucket, Atlanta, and Vail. To see more of her work, visit maureenchatfield.com.

Foundation People

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.

Food for Thought

For more and more summer camps, nutrition is now on the menu.

By Mark Stewart

Of my many vivid summer camp memories, I am struck by how often they revolve around some aspect of food. I was a reluctant eater back then (not anymore) so naturally, I have quite a few culinary-nightmare tales to tell. I was horrified when I discovered that the much-celebrated campfire burgers were cooked on a metal bed frame from the 1930s. The camp spaghetti sauce, which I refused to touch much less eat, looked like it came from Custer’s Last Stand. I also recall being deeply offended that the toast served at breakfast each morning was brown and rock-hard on one side and essentially uncooked on the other. I’m pretty sure it was broiled Wonder Bread.

And yet, lo these many decades later, I am still tempted to purchase a quarter-pound of the cheap bologna at our local grocery store, pair it with a slice of imitation cheese food, and then slather on so much yellow mustard and fake mayo that it oozes out the sides of the sandwich. Ah, memories.

The backstory is that a group of us older campers had set out deep into the Adirondacks on an overnight hike. A three-day storm surprised us and we had to ride it out in a lean-to, with little more than meticulously rationed Gorp to sustain us. I almost strangled a kid over an unclaimed M&M. Anyway, when we dragged our famished 13-year-old bodies back into camp, the cooks were nowhere to be found and all we could scrounge were the aforementioned mystery-meat sandwiches. On my initial bite, the MSG, sodium, and preservatives ignited in my mouth like Sweet Tart fireworks and literally made me shudder. I’m still not sure what cyclamates are, but I’ll bet there were tons of ’em between those flabby slices of white bread.

And curse it all…I don’t think anything has ever tasted that good since.

If I’ve ruined your appetite, I apologize. The good news is that it’s highly improbable that your kids will share anything like this experience when they go off to camp this June or July. Day camps, sleep-away camps, tech camps, sports camps, you name it, have really stepped up their game where nutrition and food quality are concerned. Okay, they still serve burgers and dogs and chicken nuggets. But the meat is no longer the mystery. It’s probably low-fat and preservative-free. In fact, any of those three camp classics may even be meatless. It’s all about providing healthier meal options—a goal that begins with a nutritional philosophy at the top of the camp food chain and trickles down to the cooks and counselors.

We as parents know that healthy food can be delicious. Fruit and yogurt are smarter breakfast choices than Lucky Charms; salads and whole-grain sandwiches beat Sloppy Joe’s for lunch; and lean grilled meats and vegetables are a vast improvement over high-fat, high-carb, high-sodium dinners like the one the cooks at my old camp titled “turqué alla king.” (I hope at least they used real king, since it was the only part of the dish that was not misspelled.) We can’t always convince our kids to eat right, but it’s encouraging to know that camps now have our backs when it comes to sending the right message.

As anyone in the camp business will tell you, doing so is in their best interest. It requires a lot of energy to plow through a typical day of activities, and healthy food and snacks are the fuel that makes campers go. You definitely don’t want kids to crash and burn in the middle of a robotics showdown or in the front of a canoe.

What should campers be consuming? The U.S. Department of Agriculture—the same folks that brought you the much-maligned food pyramid—actually has an answer. The USDA’s MyPlate initiative lays out an ideal, albeit aspirational, set of guidelines for kids to follow. It’s no longer a pyramid. It’s a pie chart and pie is nowhere to be found. It suggests a daily diet of 30 percent grains, 40 percent vegetables, 10 percent fruits, and 20 percent proteins. A smaller circle is dedicated to dairy products, including milk and yogurt. The MyPlate program also preaches portion control. Do summer camps adhere to these guidelines? Some do. The rest are getting there.

As a parent, it is probably unreasonable to expect a dietary expert to be looming over the shoulder of each and every camper. But you can ask good questions about a camp’s nutritional philosophy. For example:

How often does the camp provide sweet snacks and desserts, such as cookies and ice cream? Once a day is okay. More often might be reason for concern.
What kind of proteins are on the menu? Lean meats, chicken and fish are ideal; the healthier versions of burgers and dogs are fine.
Are sweet and sugary drinks always available? If so, you know your kid is going to go for those. Low-fat milk and water are preferable, along with some juice in the morning.
What percentage of bread, rice, cereal and other grains served at camp is whole grain? It’s not difficult or expensive to achieve a 50–50 split.
What percentage of the food consumed is fruits and/or vegetables? Again, a 50–50 split is an achievable goal.

In many cases, summer camps cover this territory well on their web sites. Food and nutritional information may be listed under a Medical or Wellness tab on the home page. The word you want to look for (or ask about, if it’s not there) is “dietician.” This is a food professional who oversees the content and quality of the camp’s menus and hopefully is involved on some level in educating campers about healthy eating.

A good example of this shift is Campus Kids, a weekday sleep-away camp in Blairstown. Eight years ago, the camp added a staff specialist who oversees the menus and helps manage food allergies, as well as the overall medical needs of campers. Owner/operator Tom Riddleberger acknowledges that more and more children have allergies and food preferences that must be accommodated and managed, but says it’s actually not a big deal.

“This is a trend we are seeing throughout society,” he says, “which in general has become much more open to recognizing individual needs. Food service personnel have moved with the times, and have that expertise. I think the key from a camp perspective is not to have an attitude about accommodating someone’s requests or needs. Homesickness is a need, and camps have always dealt with that. If a child is vegetarian or gluten-free or lactose intolerant, we deal with that smoothly, too, in a way that doesn’t make the child feel singled out.”

I think it’s safe to say that, back in the bologna-sandwich Stone Age days of summer camp, the concept of hiring a staff member with actual nutritional expertise never crossed anyone’s mind. Camp directors were more focused on swimming, boating, hiking, sports, outdoor skills, arts & crafts, and activities and challenges that nourish a young person’s spirit.

Which is where the emphasis still should be.

Indeed, the search for the right-fit summer camp is all about the quality of experience available to your child, about the confidence- and skill-building opportunities offered. Today’s camps are all about nourishing the body and mind, often in ways we could not have imagined a generation ago. Just don’t forget that they’re feeding your kid, too.

DEALING WITH ALLERGIES

According to the CDC, food allergies among children have increased by more than 50 percent in the last two decades. This has had a huge impact on summer camps, which need to understand who they can and cannot accommodate—and communicate this clearly to parents. In this case, communication is a two-way street. It is incumbent upon parents to be crystal clear with prospective camps about the nature and extent of a child’s allergies, both to food and also environmental allergies.

Another hurdle that summer camps may soon encounter is the possibility that childhood food allergies will fall under the Americans with Disabilities Act. Indeed, there are a great many camps right now that are ADA-compliant but might lose that designation if allergies are classified as a disability.

PEAK PERFORMANCE

With the steady rise in the number of sports camps in the country, diet and nutrition have become part of teaching athletes to hone their competitive edge. U.S. Soccer, which oversees the training of the sport’s elite competitors, has issued a set of guidelines for its players, including:

Choose the least processed foods possible
Consume lean protein and fruits/vegetables at each meal
Eat healthy fats (i.e. fish, nuts, avocados)
Have breakfast within 30 minutes of waking up for max energy
Make 4 to 6 small meals throughout the day
Have a high-carb, high-protein recovery meal or shake after workouts
Stay hydrated at all times

Doctor’s Notes

An examination of songs in the key of M.D.

By Luke Sacher

Everyone, at some point in their lives, needs a note from the doctor. So don’t doctors deserve a note or two? During the Rock n Roll age, writing pop tunes about healthcare professionals hasn’t always been a prescription for success, but every so often the result is solid gold. The all-time Top 10 includes songs by legendary groups like the Rolling Stones and Ramones—and individual stars such as Jackson Browne and Robert Palmer—as well as throw-away novelty hits that have managed to stand the test of time. If you’re feeling the end-of-winter blues, here’s my prescription for a little fun…

ADDICTED TO LOVE

ROBERT PALMER

Palmer’s signature song won the 1986 Grammy Award for Best Male Rock Vocal Performance and also was nominated for Song of the Year. It entered the Billboard Hot 100 in February 1986, hitting #1 after 13 weeks and was #10 overall for that year. It also hit #1 in Australia and #5 in the UK. “Addicted to Love” was one of the last 45 RPM singles to receive a million-selling Gold certification.

Palmer, who died of a heart attack in 2003 at age 54, said that he wrote the song about his own addictive personality. Originally, he intended it to be a duet with Chaka Khan, but Palmer had to cut the track without her when her record company (Warner Brothers) would not grant her a release to work on his label (Island Records). The anchoring guitar chords for the song came to him in a dream: “That noisy riff woke me up. I went downstairs, got out the tape recorder, then went back to bed. Next morning, I thought, Phew, caught one there!”

The iconic music video for the song, directed by British photographer Terence Donovan, featured Palmer performing with a “band” of top female fashion models. Their visual style—pale skin, heavy makeup, dark hair, and seductively detached expressions—was derived from the paintings of Southern California pop artist Patrick Nagel. They were cast precisely because they had no musical training. As a result, each was keeping her own time and moving to a different beat. Palmer and Donovan reprised the visual concept for his videos for three other songs, including “Simply Irresistible.”

COMFORTABLY NUMB (THE DOCTOR)

PINK FLOYD

First released on the band’s 1979 album The Wall, “Comfortably Numb” was one of only three songs on the album co-written by guitarist David Gilmour and bassist Roger Waters. They were at loggerheads while working on it. “We argued over ‘Comfortably Numb’ like mad,” Gilmour later said. “Really had a big fight, went on for ages.”

They finally agreed to use Waters’s preferred opening and Gilmour’s second solo in the final mix. The lyrics are a counterpoint between the remarks of a doctor treating embittered rock star Pink (verses sung by Waters) and Pink’s inner monologue (chorus sung by Gilmour). The inspiration for Waters’s lyrics stemmed from a personal experience during the band’s 1977 In the Flesh tour: “I had stomach cramps so bad that I thought I wasn’t able to go on. A doctor backstage gave me a shot of something that I swear to God would have killed…an elephant. I did the whole show hardly able to raise my hand above my knee…That was the longest two hours of my life.”

When the band came out for an encore, Waters was unable to join them.

“Comfortably Numb” was ranked #5 on BBC Radio’s Desert Island Discs list and is lauded for its two virtuoso guitar solos. It also claims the distinction of having been the last song ever to be performed together by the original band members (Roger Waters, David Gilmour, Richard Wright and Nick Mason), in 2005.

DOCTOR MY EYES

JACKSON BROWNE

“Doctor My Eyes” was the first single from Browne’s 1972 debut album and was a surprise hit for Geffen Records, reaching #8 on the Billboard Hot 100. The lyrics are essentially the reflections of a young man explaining to his psychotherapist how he had managed to endure the slings and arrows of life by steeling himself with stoicism—only to discover that it had rendered him isolated, emotionally bereft, and despondent. At the suggestion of David Geffen, Browne reworked what was composed as a slow ballad by upping the tempo, adding conga drums, background vocals and a catchy guitar solo—and turning the lyrics’ message of suicidal despair into resigned acceptance.

Browne’s good friends David Crosby and Graham Nash sang harmony vocals. Geffen asked Nash if he thought there was a single on the album, and Nash picked this one, while also recommending that Browne write a high vocal harmony into the chorus. There was originally a third verse to the song, which can be found on rare bootlegs

of the original demo recording. The late Glenn Frey of The Eagles said that he learned how to write songs when he and Browne were neighbors in Echo Park, by listening to him working on the opening piano riff over and over until he got it exactly right. Frey said to him, “So that’s how you do it. Elbow grease.”

DR. ROBERT

THE BEATLES

Everyone knows today that The Beatles experimented with drugs and wrote songs about their experiences under their influence, including “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” and “Magical Mystery Tour.” Was their very first “Dr. Robert,” which was written in 1966 and released in the U.S. on their Yesterday and Today album? In Paul McCartney’s book Many Years From Now, coauthor Barry Miles revealed that the name was based on Dr. Robert Freymann, whose East 78th Street clinic was “conveniently located for Jackie Kennedy and other wealthy Upper East Siders from Fifth Avenue and Park to stroll over for their vitamin B-12 shots, which also happened to contain a massive dose of amphetamine. Dr. Robert’s reputation spread, and it was not long before visiting Americans told John and Paul about him.”

I was six years old in 1966. Growing up on East 81st Street in Manhattan, I thought that it was a song about my Park Avenue pediatrician. I’m pretty certain that my parents knew exactly who Dr. Robert actually was, since he lived only three blocks away. Robert Freymann practiced in New York for almost two decades, administering massive doses of legal amphetamines to silk-stocking district and celebrity clients. He was finally expelled from the New York State Medical Society in 1975 for malpractice.

“We’d hear people say, ‘You can get anything off him, any pills you want,’” McCartney said. “It was a big racket. The song was a joke about this fellow who cured everyone of everything with all these pills and tranquilizers. He just kept New York high. John and I thought it was a funny idea: the fantasy doctor who would fix you up by giving you drugs, it was a parody on that idea.”

I DON’T NEED NO DOCTOR

NICK ASHFORD, VALERIE SIMPSON, JO ARMSTEAD

Written by the legendary Motown husband-and-wife songwriting and performing team of Ashford & Simpson —in partnership with the equally marvelous “Joshie” Armstead—“I Don’t Need No Doctor” is considered one of the quintessential R&B tunes of the 1960s. It actually draws on elements of Gospel, Soul and Rock, which, over the years, has made it one of the most-recorded “doctor songs” in history.

Ashford & Simpson penned iconic hits including “Ain’t no Mountain High Enough” and “Ain’t Nothing Like the Real Thing,” while Armstead started her career as creator and lead singer of Ike and Tina Turner’s Ikettes, in 1961. “I Don’t Need No Doctor” was first recorded by Ray Charles and his orchestra in 1966. The 1971 version by Humble Pie still gets plenty of requests on oldies stations.

The tune has been covered by artists of all genres, from heavy metal to jazz, including: The Chocolate Watchband (1969), The New Riders of The Purple Sage (1972), W.A.S.P. (1986), Great White (1987), The Nomads (1989), Roseanna Vitro (1997), Beth Hart (2004), Styx (2005), Dr. Sin (2005), John Scofield (2005), John Mayer (2007), Joan Osborne (2012), Secret Affair (2012), Demented Scumcats (2014), The Sonics (2015), and the Lost In Paris Blues Band (2016), featuring guitarist Robben Ford

I WANNA BE SEDATED

THE RAMONES

One of the band’s best-known songs, it was originally released on their fourth album, Road to Ruin, in September 1978. Joey Ramone came up with the idea for the song after he burned himself severely with boiling water and was rushed to a hospital. (He regularly inhaled steam from a kettle before concerts to help clear his nasal passages.) The chorus lyrics Nothing to do, nowhere to go—oh oh were inspired by The Ramones’ tour stop in London, which they discovered completely shut down at Christmas time.

“There’s nothing to do, nowhere to go,” Joey recalled. “Here we were in London for the first time in our lives, and me and Dee Dee were sharing a room in the hotel, and we were watching The Guns of Navarone on TV. I mean, here we are in London finally, and this is what we are doing, watching American movies in the hotel room.”

Johnny Ramone played the same note 65 times in a row in his guitar solo. (How “punk” can you get?). It’s the recording on which Marky Ramone performed as the band’s drummer after replacing Tommy Ramone, who began producing their records. Marky said that it was completed very quickly in the studio, and that his part took only two takes. Ten years after the song was released, Director Bill Fishman made an iconic video for it: one continuous master shot of the Ramones sitting at a kitchen table nonchalantly reading and eating corn flakes while hyperkinetic nuns, acrobats, ballerinas, monsters, cheerleaders, clowns, naughty nurses, and schoolgirls (including a very young Courtney Love) run around them and try to grab their attention.

LIKE A SURGEON

“WEIRD AL” YANKOVIC

Of all the things that songwriters write about, surgery has to be one of the least popular. After a thorough search through cyberspace, this parody of Madonna’s “Like a Virgin” was literally the only hit song I could find. Recorded in 1985 by Weird Al Yankovic for his third studio album, Dare to Be Stupid, it was written by Yankovic and Madonna herself (who came up with the title), while guitarist Rick Derringer was its executive producer. Prior to this recording Weird Al had never used ideas from other musicians. A mutual acquaintance of both his manager and Madonna’s suggested that they would have good fun collaborating on it. It’s the only known time that he ever worked on one of his parodies directly with the original artist.

“Like a Surgeon” was well received by music critics. Many rated it on par with the original. Eugene Chadbourne congratulated Yankovic for “…perhaps his best ever. Turning the tacky Madonna hit inside out and upside down, he comes up with a hilarious satire of the medical profession.” The music video produced for the tune is set in a hospital, and vamps on elements of the original music video for “Like a Virgin.” In one scene, a Madonna lookalike sits in a corner, filing her nails. It has been a part of Yankovic’s live shows for decades.

MOTHER’S LITTLE HELPER

THE ROLLING STONES

Valium (aka diazepam) is a synthetic analog to the active ingredient found in Valerian root; both increase the amount of a chemical called gamma aminobutyric acid (GABA) in the brain, which helps regulate nerve cells, and has a calming effect on anxiety. “Mother’s Little Helper” is both an ode to this drug…

Mother needs something today to calm her down.

And though she’s not really ill,

There’s a little yellow pill.

She goes running for the shelter

Of a Mother’s Little Helper.

…and a biting commentary on the hypocrisy of American housewives abusing prescription drugs with the benediction of their doctors and the FDA, while the Stones themselves were being labeled dope fiends, simply for taking different drugs without a prescription. Both were seeking refuge from emptiness and despair. Recorded in Los Angeles from December 3 to 8, 1965, in a custom built studio with no windows (the Stones did not want to know if it was day or night), it was the first track on Aftermath, their first album with all original songs.

“It’s about drug dependence, but in a sort of like spoofy way,” Mick Jagger observed.

About his strange-sounding guitar work, Keith Richards said he used a twelve-string with a slide on it: “It’s played slightly Oriental-ish. The track just needed something to make it twang. Otherwise, the song was quite Vaudeville, in a way. I wanted to add some nice bite to it. And it was just one of those things where someone walked in and, ‘Look, it’s an electric twelve-string’. It was some gashed-up job. No name on it. God knows where it came from—or where it went. But I put it together with a bottleneck. Then we had a riff that tied the whole thing together.”

Stones guitarist Brian Jones played the Sitar on the recording. It was one of the first pop songs to use the instrument, just after The Beatles’ “Norwegian Wood.” Drummer Charlie Watts says the band never quite mastered playing it live, although they memorably performed it on The Ed Sullivan Show.

THEY’RE COMING TO TAKE ME AWAY

(FUNNY FARM)

NAPOLEON XIV

Music critic Dave Marsh called “Funny Farm” the most obnoxious song ever to appear on a jukebox. In 1966, Jerry Samuels (alias Napoleon XIV) was a top recording engineer at New York City’s Associated Recording Studios in Times Square. One night he and Barry Hansen (alias Dr. Demento) were “relaxing” when an old Scottish march called “The Campbells Are Coming” popped into his head.

“I thought, da da dat dat da dat, da da, da da. They’re coming to take me away, ha ha… We were doing work for some advertising agencies, radio spots. They had to come in at exactly 59 seconds, so if it was recorded a little slow or a little fast, we used a device to fix it called a Variable Frequency Oscillator. We only had a 4-track tape recorder at the time. But if you hooked up the VFO to the 4-track, you could do things that weren’t done before. I would be able to raise or lower the pitch of a voice without changing the tempo. By understanding what I could do with that piece of equipment, I wrote this thing.”

Samuels was hesitant to complete the song, which was a sick joke about a serious subject, mental illness. After many months he changed the last verse to say “They’re coming to take me away” because of his dog running away. “By doing that I felt I was lightening the sickness of the joke.”

Adding to the overall silliness, the B-side of the 45 rpm single was simply the A-side run in reverse, and titled “!aaaH-aH ,yawA eM ekaT oT gnimoC er’yehT” (Ha-Haaa! Away, Me Take to Coming They’re). The song was an overnight sensation, peaking at #3 on the Billboard Hot 100, but plummeted to #37 only two weeks later. Fearing outrage from those who thought that it was ridiculing mental illness, radio stations across the country— including New York City’s WABC and WMCA—banned it from their playlists. Airplanes flew protest banners and mobs of angry teenagers picketed WMCA, holding signs saying We’re Coming to Take WMCA Away.

WITCH DOCTOR

ROSS BAGDASARIAN

(aka DAVID SEVILLE)

Ross Bagdasarian (David Seville) was a successful songwriter by the time he released “Witch Doctor” as his first single. Seven years earlier, he’d written “Come On-A My House,” one of Rosemary Clooney’s signature hits. The lyrics were based on lines from the novel The Human Comedy, written by his famous cousin, William Saroyan. Bagdasarian was the creator of Alvin and The Chipmunks, a group of three animated rodents with high-pitched human voices. He created the effect by recording his voice with a tape recorder running at half speed, then playing it back at normal speed. “Witch Doctor” was the first song ever to use this technique, and he used the name David Seville for the recording. At that point, he hadn’t yet created The Chipmunks. The song is about a young man seeking advice from a witch doctor on how to woo his girlfriend. The wise witch doctor offers him some magic words that, six decades on, way to many of us still know by heart: Oo ee, oo ah ah, ting tang, walla walla bing bang.

“Witch Doctor” soared to #1 in April 1958 for three weeks. Seville became a pop culture sensation, and performed the song on The Ed Sullivan Show that May. It was also a #1 R&B hit. Many R&B art-toppers of the day were comedic or novelty recordings, including “Get a Job” by The Silhouettes and “Yakety-Yak” by The Coasters. A few months later, using the same technique, Seville created and recorded three distinct voices in close harmony and branded it “The Chipmunks.” In November, he released “The Chipmunk Song (Christmas Don’t Be Late),” which went to #1 for four weeks, won three Grammy Awards, and became a perennial Christmas favorite. The Alvin Show cartoon series followed in 1961—and was resurrected in 1983, and again in 2015.

Album Art: Addicted to Love/Island Records • Comfortably Numb/Columbia Records • Doctor My Eyes/Asylum Records • Dr. Robert/Capitol Records • I Don’t Need No Doctor/A&M Records • I Wanna Be Sedated/Sire Records • Like A Surgeon/Scotti Brothers • Mother’s Little Helper/London Records • Funny Farm/Warner Bros. • Witch Doctor/Liberty Records

The Chef Recommends

EDGE takes you inside the area’s most creative kitchens.

Paragon Tap & Table • Beef Ramen

77 Central Ave. • CLARK

(732) 931-1776 • paragonnj.com

As we constantly introduce new ﬂavors from around the world to our customers at Paragon Tap and Table we have added an Asian inspired Noodle Dish with a touch of the south. Our beef ramen noodle showcases all the characteristics of a traditional ramen but twisted with the smokiness of the smoked beef brisket.

— Eric B. LeVine, Chef/Partner

Arirang Hibachi Steakhouse • Wasabi Crusted Filet Mignon

1230 Route 22 West • MOUNTAINSIDE

(908) 518-9733 • partyonthegrill.com

We prepare a crusted 8-ounce ﬁlet mignon served with gingered spinach, shitake mushrooms, and a tempura onion ring.

Daimatsu • Sushi Pizza

860 Mountain Ave. • MOUNTAINSIDE

(908) 233-7888 • daimatsusushibar.com

This original dish has been our signature appetizer for over 20 years. Crispy seasoned sushi rice topped with homemade spicy mayo, marinated tuna, ﬁnely chopped onion, scallion, masago caviar, and ginger. Our customers always come back wanting more.

— Chef Momo

The Barge • Cioppino

201 Front Street • PERTH AMBOY

(732) 442-3000 • thebarge.com

Our Cioppino, the signature dish of San Francisco, features a fresh, healthy selection of clams, mussels, shrimp, Maine lobster and Jersey scallops—drizzled in Greek virgin olive oil, with fresh garlic and white wine—over homemade Italian linguini. I know it will become one of your favorite dishes

Luciano’s Ristorante & Lounge • Jumbo Lump Crab Cake Bruschetta

1579 Main Street • RAHWAY

(732) 815-1200 • lucianosristorante.com

Jumbo lump crab cake bruschetta, ﬁnished with virgin olive oil and a balsamic reduction has been one of Luciano’s signature appetizers since we opened.

— Joseph Mastrella, Executive Chef/Partner

Morris Tap & Grill • The Monster Burger

500 Route 10 West • RANDOLPH

(973) 891-1776 • morristapandgrill.com

As the leader in the gastropub world in New Jersey, Morris Tap and grill has been providing creative, quality, fresh certiﬁed burgers for over 6 years. Here’s an example of what we do creatively with our burgers, The Monster Burger. Two certiﬁed angus beef burgers topped with chorizo sausage, slaw, bacon, cheddar cheese and a fried egg!

— Eric B LeVine, Chef/Partner

LongHorn Steakhouse • Outlaw Ribeye

272 Route 22 West • SPRINGFIELD

(973) 315-2049 • longhornsteakhouse.com

LongHorn Steakhouse has opened in Springﬁeld, and we are looking forward to meeting all of our future guests! When you visit us, we suggest you try our fresh, never frozen, 18 oz. bone-in Outlaw Ribeye—featuring juicy marbling that is perfectly seasoned and ﬁre-grilled by our expert Grill Masters.

— Anthony Levy, Managing Partner

Outback Steakhouse • Bone-In Natural Cut Ribeye

901 Mountain Avenue • SPRINGFIELD

(973) 467-9095 • outback.com/locations/nj/springﬁeld

This is the entire staff’s favorite, guests rave about. Bone-in and extra marbled for maximum tenderness, juicy and savory. Seasoned and wood-ﬁred grilled over oak.

— Duff Regan, Managing Partner

Arirang Hibachi Steakhouse • Volcano Roll

23A Nelson Avenue • STATEN ISLAND, NY

(718) 966-9600 • partyonthegrill.com

Hot-out-of-the-oven, crab, avocado and cream cheese rolled up and topped with a mild spicy scallop salad.

Galloping Hill Caterers

Galloping Hill Road and Chestnut Street • UNION

(908) 686-2683 • gallopinghillcaterers.com

Galloping Hill Caterers has been an incredible landmark for nearly sixty years. We pride ourselves in delivering “over the top” cuisine, impeccable service and outstanding attention to detail. That is the hallmark of our success! Simply, an unforgettable experience. Pictured here is one of our crepes ﬂambé that really creates lots of excitement!

— George Thomas, Owner

Ursino Steakhouse & Tavern • House Carved 16oz New York Strip Steak

1075 Morris Avenue • UNION

(908) 977-9699 • ursinosteakhouse.com

Be it a sizzling ﬁlet in the steakhouse or our signature burger in the tavern upstairs, Ursino is sure to please the most selective palates. Our carefully composed menus feature fresh, seasonal ingredients and reﬂect the passion we put into each and every meal we serve.

Vine Ripe Markets • Filet Crostini with Horseradish Cream Sauce

430 North Avenue East • WESTFIELD

(908) 233-2424 • vineripemarkets.com

Savory, tender, with a touch of aromatic and toasted ﬂavors that tantalize the senses! Filet Mignon served rare and shaved onto homemade Garlic Crostini, topped with our Horseradish Cream Sauce is a medley of tender and crispy textures perfect for sharing with family and friends, any time of year!

— Frank Bruno, Chief Culinary Ofﬁcer

STOP THE CLOCK!

ACADEMIC EXCELLENCE

TRINITAS MINTS 71 NEW NURSES

MLB MVP’S

GALLOPING TO THE RESCUE

LASSO-CUTTING ON 22 WEST

Simply Outstanding

LET THERE BE LIGHT

A SLUG’S LIFE

QUICK AND PAINLESS

EARLY ONSET DEMENTIA BREAKTHROUGH

NEW WEAPON AGAINST SUPER BUGS

MOSAIC VACCINE

SLOWING ALZHEIMER’S

SPECIAL K

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Positive Deflation: Can It Happen?

Recommended Reading (and Viewing)

Crunch Time

FIVE STARS FOR BROTHER BONAVENTURE

BUMBLE DOLLS FOR ALL

NURSE OF THE YEAR

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ANGELS AMONG US

PINK LIVES MATTER

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TAILGATE WITH TRINITAS

Save the Date!

Paragon Tap & Table • Beef Ramen

Arirang Hibachi Steakhouse • Wasabi Crusted Filet Mignon

Daimatsu • Sushi Pizza

The Barge • Cioppino

Luciano’s Ristorante & Lounge • Warm Goat Cheese Salad

Morris Tap & Grill • The Monster Burger

Garden Grille • Grilled Chicken Paillard

LongHorn Steakhouse • Outlaw Ribeye

Outback Steakhouse • Bone-In Natural Cut Ribeye

Arirang Hibachi Steakhouse • Volcano Roll

Ursino Steakhouse & Tavern • House Carved 16oz New York Strip Steak

Heirloom Kitchen

3853 Route 516, Old Bridge • Phone: (732) 727.9444

February 16

Jeff Dunham: Passively Aggressively

February 16-24

Pippin

February 17-18

Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus Live!

February 18

G3 2018: Joe Satriani, John Pertucci, Phil Collen

February 18

Hot Latin Nights with the Mambo Kings:

New Jersey Symphony Orchestra

February 23

Art of Rap: The History of Hip Hop Tour with Bone Thugs-N-Harmony, EPMD, N.O.R.E., Big Daddy Kane, Onyx, MR. Cheeks, Brand Nubian, and Roxanne Shanté

February 24

Jon Secada

February 24

Brahms’ First Symphony: New Jersey Symphony Orchestra

Golden Oldies Spectacular

March 4

Staatskapelle Weimar

March 9

Colin Quinn: One in Every Crowd

March 9