A few months ago, on Friday, May 13th, a sunny spring morning, we gathered for a press conference at the Radisson Hotel, New London, anxiously awaiting word of the future of our beloved Sub base. Politicians with sadden faces gave themselves away upon entry before taking their positions at the podium.
Governor M. Jodi Rell announced, “This is not the news we hoped for and worked so hard to avoid. But it is one battle in a far longer campaign, and we are a long, long way from being defeated. We have 31,500 reasons to keep fighting and fight we will.”
Senator Joe Lieberman followed, “It insults our history, and endangers our future.”
Congressman Rob Simmons added, “We are together. We are strong. We are ready to fight!” ….” We’re at step 4 of a 10-step process. It’s not over ‘til it’s over and it’s not over yet!”
John Markowitz, hats off to you for your brilliance and outstanding leadership! On behalf of the residents of southeastern Connecticut and Southern Rhode Island, thank you for your beautiful teamwork! Click here.
Today, we have another challenge ahead and residents are already orchestrating efforts to assist the victims of the devastating Katrina. Governor Rell conveys her deep gratitude to CT residents and businesses for the initial outpouring of bottled water and supplies to aid the victims. 100 members of the CT National Guard are being activated to provide assistance in the stricken Gulf States. Get involved – click here.
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The 14th “Taste of Italy,” sponsored by the Italian Heritage and Cultural Committee of Norwich, will take place on Saturday, Sept. 10 at the Howard T. Brown Memorial Park on the waterfront in Norwich.
Every year since 1991, the crowds have continued to grow, according to Frank DeMicco, vice president of the Italian Heritage and Cultural Committee. “A couple years ago, UCONN did a head count as an independent study and it came out to about 15,000 people. I can tell by the crowds that they’re growing, and I’d estimate that about 17,000 attended last year. Everyone looks forward to it.”
Every year, the festival is held due to popular demand, and it’s easy to see why. Everything is free except for the food and beverages, and with 21 food vendors, there is a lot of different food to choose from. “The food is only Italian food, and no one is allowed to duplicate,” Frank said. “That means there is only one lasagna booth, and the price of the food ranges from $1-$4.”
Besides food, there is something for everyone. There is a moon bounce for children, and free pontoon boat rides around the harbor.
Two bands, the local musicians in the Silver Coronet Band and the Sound Attraction Band will perform in a concert while the strolling musicians, the Vesuvians, provide additional Italian music. Tater the Gater, the mascot of the Norwich Navigators baseball team, will be present as well.
An art exhibit is on loan from the Slater Museum at the Norwich Free Academy, and will be housed in a tent during the day.
Spectacular fireworks round off the event at 9 p.m. over the harbor.
This year’s festival is free of admission, with free parking in the three nearby parking garages. “Parking in the garages is free all day, with no time limit,” Frank said. One of the parking garages is a part of the Mercantile Exchange, owned by the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation.
On August 27, 2005, at 11:00 a.m. StoneRidge Retirement Community celebrated its grand opening with speakers and a ribbon cutting ceremony. The residence is located at 186 Jerry Browne Road in Mystic. For over the past 40 years, Life Care Services has planned and developed or managed over 180 retirement and assisted living communities throughout America. More than 45,000 residents have chosen to live in these communities. StoneRidge is a fine example of their success.
Governor M. Jodi Rell sent a proclamation declaring: ‘August 27th is StoneRidge Retirement Community Day.’ After the ceremony a BBQ lunch was served and wagon rides and live music added to the fun!
Chris Cryder, Executive Director of StoneRidge, welcomed the guest speakers, the residents, their friends, families and visitors.
Stonington First Selectman, William Brown, said, “This is a wonderful place to live! I am really glad the residents are here. Besides being well built, it has that extra quality that all of you can enjoy!”
Senator Catherine W. Cook exclaimed, “What a week! We saved the sub base and we have so much to contribute from this part of the country. We will pick up the wonderful legacy that the people from StoneRidge offer us. I am happy to celebrate with you. The quality of life at StoneRidge is great!”
Chairperson, Gary Bennett, from the Stonington Development Commission, shared, “We are delighted with StoneRidge. In 15 years, people over the age of 65 will increase. In this area, we are aging a little faster, so we will need more residences like StoneRidge. Thank you to the residents for choosing our community!”
Kip Wyper, a resident of StoneRidge, was part of the planning process that started in 1995. “After many meetings and time spent, I would like to thank Life Care Services for their carefully thought out plans. It took a lot of patience and hard work.” She added, “The staff at StoneRidge is always caring and thoughtful!”
Executive Vice-President, Life Care Services, Ed Kenny related, “We are glad to offer the residents quality housing and amenities. New friendships are made here and many lives will be enhanced. Ninety per cent of the units are sold! We are planning Phase II at StoneRidge, which will include 51 additional units, a swimming pool and expanded fitness room. We pledge that first and foremost that this is your home and neighborhood.”
StoneRidge offers one-bedroom, one-bedroom with den, two-bedroom, and two-bedroom with den apartments. An on-site skilled nursing center provides recuperative care, assistance in living and long term nursing care.
There is convenient access to restaurants, shopping, places of worship, cultural activities, parks and Long Island Sound. StoneRidge encourages an active and full lifestyle. Transportation is provided for planned trips or destinations nearby.
Residents can enjoy a delicious meal in the beautiful main dining room or make plans to dine in the privacy of a smaller dining room. There is a fitness center, creative arts studio, computer room and a cozy library with a fireplace. The coffee shop and pub are great places to meet friends and the country store and the salon are conveniences that are really appreciated! StoneRidge also offers gardening areas and hiking paths for those who enjoy the outdoors.
Chatting with residents in the library was a delightful experience for me. It was easy to see that Shirley and Deane Avery are very much at home. Shirley shared, “We just lived two miles from here in a country setting. Winters can be hard, so it seemed the right thing to do.”
Pat Carlson and her husband moved into StoneRidge from Mumford Cove in Groton. “Meeting wonderful people and the accommodating staff make this a wonderful place to live!”
The setting of the residence is very beautiful and tranquil and the residents have the freedom of enjoying a relaxing way of life, while choosing only to participate in the activities they wish to do!
Paul Malo is the best male vocalist I’ve heard since I began covering the concert circuit. Similar to the late Roy Orbison, whom he often sounds like, Malo has tremendous power (but it’s restrained) and range and emotion and honesty.
On August 22, at Mohegan Sun’s Cabaret Theater, it was Malo and his guitar, and Robert Chevrier and his piano. That was it. Barebones. There was no back up band. It was enough. Malo and Chevrier achieved a perfect balance of singer/guitarist and pianist.
Malo, the former leader vocalist/guitarist for The Mavericks, began his set with a haunting rendition of “Indian Love Call.” He kept the audience enthralled to the very end, when he sang a four-song encore, which included the classic “Blue Moon” and Harry Nilson’s sweet “Remember.”
If I had to pick the concert’s highlight, it was Malo’s rendition of “At Last,” which will appear on his newest CD, scheduled for January release. Well, on second thought maybe it was “Besame Mucho.” Wait. Perhaps it was “La Vie En Rose.” Malo and Chevrier tossed tonsils on that one. But maybe the highlight was either “Blue Moon” or “Remember.” You get my point, right? Every number was a highlight.
Because of the Connecticut Sun’s crushing 81-47 victory over the Washington Mystics on August 26, the team gained home court advantage in the playoffs. The playoff game began August 31, at the Palace of Auburn Hills, against Bill Laimbeer’s Detroit Shock. The remaining games will be played at Mohegan Sun Arena.
Some stats: In defeating Washington, Nykesha Sales scored 20 points for the Sun. Lindsay Whalen pumped in 17. Margo Dydek blocked three shots and grabbed 11 rebounds. For Washington, the very physical and talented DeLisha Milton-Jones was high scorer with 11 points. Washington’s shooting percentage was 29.2, a season low.
The Sun finished the regular season with the best record in the WNBA. In fact, the team’s 26 wins were the best in WNBA history. But against Detroit this season, the going has been tough for Connecticut: Detroit emerged victorious three times in four meetings.
I asked several fans for their views about the 2005 season and the Sun’s chances in the playoffs. Said longtime fan Jim LaTourette of Quaker Hill, “It was a great season, with minimal injuries. Now it’s nail biting time. No losing streaks are allowed. We have a very good group of players led by great coaching. I think our chances are good to go all the way.” Waterford’s Bill Maynard said, “The Connecticut Sun is a class act both off and on the court. Great coach, great staff, great team players – thus a great season. They’re deserving of the WNBA championship. Go Sun!”
From Groton, George Marshall summed up the season as “Fantastic! Almost unbelievable! If you had told me at the beginning of the season that they’d win 26 games, I would’ve told you’re dreaming. I would never have thought they would’ve won the Eastern Conference by as much as they did.” As for the playoffs, George said he’s optimistic, adding “I think they’ll go the finals and they have a good chance of knocking off the team who makes it from the Western Conference. They took care of the West during the regular season.”
According to her Web site, as a child during WW II Petula Clark sang for the troops in Piccadilly Circus. When she was sixteen, she had her own television show. In 1949, she recorded her first record. She has been awarded the most gold records in the history of British popular music. The internationally famous Clark appeared at Mohegan Sun Casino’s Cabaret Theater from August 31-September 4.
Clark, still in fine voice, sang her big hits, including “I Know a Place,” “Kiss Me Goodbye,” “I Couldn’t Live Without Your Love,” “Don’t Sleep on the Subway,” “This Is My Song,” and “Downtown.”
In addition, she played the piano and later in the show recited a poem about the theater (“It’s a funny thing, the theater, when you come to think of it/…The magic is here in you, in me. It’s a funny thing, the theater”). Clark chatted and joked with the audience. She offered songs from two films she appeared in, “Finian’s Rainbow” and “Goodbye, Mr. Chips,” and talked fondly of Fred Astaire and Peter O’Toole. She also did a tune from “Blood Brothers,” her Broadway debut, and one from “Sunset Boulevard.” (Actress Glenn Close, who played silent screen actress Norma Desmond before Clark, advised Clark not to stay in the production for more than a year. Playing Norma Desmond might make you wacky, Close warned.)
When Eartha Kitt appeared in concert at the Cabaret Theater several months ago, the seventy-eight year old performer told the audience, “I just don’t pay attention to my age.” Apparently Clark, born in 1932, doesn’t either. Like Kitt, Clark is apparently ageless.
It’s an easy snobbery to dismiss the larger Californian wineries, but true wine aficionados know that some of them were groundbreakers (metaphorically as well as literally), that their high-end wines are apt to be spectacular and that even their mass-produced wines can conceal some pleasant surprises. A case in point was the Robert Mondavi dinner that I attended on August 19th at Octagon in the Mystic Marriott.
I have been a food and wine journalist too long to “write off” a powerhouse like Mondavi, but even if that weren’t the case, I have such faith in the instincts of Octagon executive chef John Trudeau that I would still have come with an open mind. I have attended dozens of his dinners, and I can’t recall a single instance of Trudeau allowing a bad wine to make it to the table or failing to design a dish that would marry well with its wine.
And believe me, I’m not easy to please. A few months ago, I dined at Per Se, the Thomas Keller restaurant located in the Time Warner Center in Manhattan, christened in May the best new restaurant in the country by the James Beard Foundation, and concluded that Connecticut had at least a dozen better restaurants, Octagon being one of them.
On this occasion, hors d’oeuvre and glasses of ’02 Robert Mondavi Sauvignon Blanc, Stags Leap District, were enjoyed, not on the patio and not in the usual back room in which such events are held, but rather in the hallway for Vines, Octagon’s casual dining cousin. And so we sipped shot glasses of a pretty green chilled gazpacho topped with an orange splash of tobiko, then noshed on a summery salad of mixed greens, goat cheese, locally grown asparagus and marinated onions in a pleasing vinaigrette.
When we shifted to the back dining room, it became apparent why we had engaged in the preliminaries elsewhere. There had been much activity in our absence. Our seats were already assigned, and at each place setting were six goblets of varying size and shape resting on a paper placemat that doubled as a “cheat sheet.” This was clearly not destined to be a typical Octagon wine dinner.
Kevin McGill of Hartley & Parker, a wholesale wine distributor based in Stratford, was the keynote speaker. It turned out we were not only learning about Mondavi wines but also Riedel Crystal. It was a natural pairing – it was by persuading Mondavi to use Riedel stemware that the Austrian company first made significant inroads into the American market. In my case, McGill was preaching to the choir, because I never fail to compliment an eatery that uses Riedel or Spiegelau stemware to maximize enjoyment of its wines. So imagine my amusement upon learning that Riedel, which has been in business for hundreds of years, recently bought out its chief competitor, Spiegelau.
What followed was an elaborate, and enlightening, seminar in which Riedel stemware designed to optimize the characteristics of specific varietals was contrasted with ordinary goblets. While I had previously raved about the difference good stemware makes, I had never before had the opportunity to engage in side-by-side comparison. Afterward, my companion and I resolved to bring our own Riedel goblets to restaurants not sufficiently enlightened to provide them. Octagon, of course, has been utilizing them all along.
With proper stemware, we were able to appreciate fully an ’02 Robert Mondavi Fumé Blanc, Napa Valley (note that Fumé Blanc is another name for Sauvignon Blanc, a Mondavi marketing coup). Mondavi takes the unusual (and successful) step of oaking its Sauvignon Blancs to make them a little less one-dimensional than their overseas counterparts.
With this wine, we enjoyed an extraordinary tempura-battered squash blossom filled with lobster mousse, which balanced atop a lobster tail bathed in corn coulis, which in turn rested on thin slices of red, yellow and green tomato in a vaguely sweet vinaigrette. We asked ourselves (as we always do), how does Trudeau come up with these creations?
While some chefs are repositories for mostly bad ideas (or good ideas poorly executed), Trudeau never fails to dazzle with his brilliant inventions.
Just as unusual, the next dish paired cooked and raw fish. A lovely tartare of marinated yellowfin tuna rested on gently poached black sea bass in a truffled hollandaise sauce. My companion and I disagreed on how to eat this dish, I relishing the combination, he feeling like he doubled his pleasure by eating the two fishes separately.
We both agreed, however, that an ’02 Robert Mondavi Chardonnay, Carneros, with notes of honey and toasted oak, was ideal accompaniment.
With our meat course, we savored a lovely ’02 Robert Mondavi Pinot Noir, Carneros. And what a meat course it was! Generous slices of well-marbled Kobe beef from Snake River Farm in California were escorted by thin shavings of local heirloom squash and an orange mound of puréed sweet potato.
Until this point, all of our wines had been quite nice, but now we stepped into the “big time,” exclaiming over a fabulous ’96 Robert Mondavi Cabernet Sauvignon, Oakville, that is essentially unavailable. The 2001 can be purchases at stores, and if you pick it up and age it a few years, you’ll have some idea how fortunate we were to taste this wine. For dessert, we relished a delightful black cherry pound cake with caramel-chocolate mousse.
At the conclusion of this wonderful dinner and Mondavi wine/Riedel stemware seminar, Chuck Bowe of Grand Wine & Spirit (two stores in Groton) added a few words, then each guest was gifted a tall tapered goblet perfectly suited to drinking Pinot Noir, (possibly my favorite varietal).
The next Octagon event, planned for October, will feature the products of state-of-the-art Californian winery Sonoma-Cutrer. Tickets can be obtained by calling 860-326-0360. Be there or be octagonal!
