Profiles | Northshore Magazine

Liz Jaques

Petcare specialist Liz Jacques provides unusual services for those who’ve gotten more than they bargained for when adopting a dog. By Kiley Jacques // photograph by Paul Lyden

There are animal lovers, pet sitters, and dog trainers—and then there’s Liz Jacques. The 29-year-old Salem native and owner of Companion Synergy is something of an anomaly in her field. Armed with degrees from Wheaton College and Harvard, as well as a diploma in Advanced Canine Nutritional Sciences and a certification from Pet Sitters International, Jacques knows a thing or two about science and our four-footed friends.

With clients in Beverly and Salem, Jacques provides petcare services that include in-home and overnight stays, simple medication administration, dog walking, group play sessions, and socialization training. What sets her apart from her colleagues, however, is her aptitude for working with fearful and reactive dogs.

Jacques employs a positive reinforcement training method called clicker training, which she describes as a tool for creating a bridge between right behavior and reward. “As soon as they hear the click,” she explains,“they know they are doing the right thing and a reward is coming. Anything that gets rewarded gets repeated.”

Getting “No!” out of your repertoire is important, she explains. It interrupts, but it doesn’t give dogs useful information. “You want your dog to trust you, not fear you,” she says. Trust-building communication relies heavily on what are called calming signals—avoiding eye contact, turning sideways, yawning, crouching down—that are employed to put the animal at ease and reduce the likelihood of behaviors like lunging and biting, which occur when dogs are overstimulated and emotional.

Jacques feels the “click and treat” method is infinitely more effective than tools used in Dominance Theory training. While punishing undesirable behaviors may yield immediate responses, the method doesn’t address poor behavior; rather, it suppresses it, making it likely to come back later, often unexpectedly. “With fearful dogs in particular,” she says, “you can create a state of learned helplessness.” She aims to redirect behaviors, not simply arrest them. “Animals,” she says,“will shut down and stop trying if they don’t have a clear idea of what they should be doing.”

Surrounded by her three Huskies, a retired Greyhound, three house cats, and an iguana, Jacques says,“It’s all about helping people understand and communicate with their [animals].” Hers is a mission that both clients and pets clearly support. companionsynergy.com

Recommended Reading: Jacques’s go-to tools for helping dogs live a harmonious life.

- Positive Perspectives: Love Your Dog, Train Your Dog by Pat Miller (for those with new puppies)
- Bringing Light to Shadow: A Dog Trainer’s Diary by Pamela Dennison (for those with fearful dogs)
- Bones Would Rain From the Sky by Suzanne Clothier (for those wanting to build positive relationships with their dogs)
- WiggleBums! Dog-friendly Training and Behavior Consulting (owned by Jacques’s mother, Jo Jacques, a canine behavioral specialist), wigglebums.com
- Canine University (for private clicker training classes), canineuniversity.com

The Good Fight: The Story of Reid Sacco

Lynnfield native Reid Sacco’s memory lives on with the opening of a unique Boston cancer clinic. By Alexandra Pecci // photograph by Patrick Marasco

Gene and Lorraine Sacco

Reid Sacco managed to cram a lot of life into 20 years.

He was a scholar, a musician, and an athlete. He was in the National Honor Society. He played violin for Marblehead’s Symphony by the Sea Youth Orchestra and tenor saxophone at Lynnfield High School. He co-founded the Lynnfield High School swim team and competed nationally, despite having the degenerative hip disease Legg-Perthes. At 18, with a state record-smashing breaststroke and an acceptance letter from Columbia University, Sacco’s world was wide open.

“Anything he touched turned to gold,” recalls his mother, Lorraine Sacco. “I had the all-American family, everything you could ever dream of.”

But Reid never made it to Columbia. Just weeks before his high school graduation, he was diagnosed with cancer, and two years later, that cancer took his life. Reid’s golden touch, however, never faded. This spring, eight years after his death, the Reid R. Sacco Adolescent & Young Adult Clinic for Cancer and Blood Diseases is opening at Tufts Medical Center in Boston.

Lorraine remembers wanting to face her son’s diagnosis head-on. “I figured we’d go out [to doctors and hospitals], find out what we’d have to do, do it, and he’d be fine,” she says.
But the Saccos met an unexpected obstacle: Reid’s age. At 18 years old, Sacco wasn’t a child, but he wasn’t quite an adult, either. Despite the advances in treatment for cancers in children and older adults, the options are slimmer for adolescent and young adult (AYA) cancers. In fact, Lorraine notes that the survival rates for this age group (18-39) haven’t changed in more than 30 years.

“There’s this gap,” she says. “We looked at each other and we realized: We were in the gap.”

For two years, Reid fought hard to climb out of that gap, enduring chemotherapy, surgeries, radiation, and even getting his leg amputated. But the disease kept surging back, invading his muscles, his lung, his abdomen. On April 16, 2005, Reid lost his battle with cancer. And he wasn’t the only one.

“Every person who he was in the hospital with for two years died,” Lorraine says. “That’s never in the statistics, is it? Not one of those kids lived.”

Determined to do something to change those grim figures, Sacco’s family began working to raise money and awareness for AYA cancers. Just three months after his death, they launched the first annual Reid’s Ride, a fundraising bike-a-thon from Lynnfield High School to Gloucester’s Stage Fort Park that funds AYA research and clinical programs. (The ninth annual ride is July 21.) And now, the Reid R. Sacco AYA Cancer Alliance is supporting the Tuft’s clinic in Reid’s name, the first of its kind in Boston.

“A clinic,” Lorraine says, triumph and determination swelling in her voice. “A physical place that does everything that has been missing. We want to fill the gap. Not one crack.” reidsaccofoundation.org

Karen Scalia, Owner of Salem Food Tours

Karen Scalia outside of Finz in Salem.

Karen Scalia, owner of Salem Food Tours, strolls the streets with groups in tow sharing all kinds of tidbits—from George Washington’s penchant for seafood to wasabi caviar oysters infused with raspberry vodka. by Kiley Jacques // photographs by Fawn Deviney

“This is something i would do if I were visiting an area,” says Karen Scalia, a spirited food lover, professional actor, and history enthusiast who has wed her eclectic interests to form Salem Food Tours: A Taste of History. Less than a year after her idea took flight, the walking culinary tours are hot and happening. With more than 20 restaurant and business partners, including Finz, 43 Church, and Salem Wine Imports, Scalia knows how to titillate taste buds and inspire intellects.

By digging into library archives and resources at the Library of Congress, Mount Vernon, and Johnson & Wales, Scalia delves into Salem’s food history. The spice trade, which had its heyday immediately after the Revolution, is of particular interest, so most of her tours include a stop at Salem Spice Shop. “When food and spices move over the centuries,” says Scalia,“[they have] an amazing impact on world history.” This fascinating world view of the power of the palate underlies her every tour.

Beyond her enthrallment with Salem’s dining days of yore is Scalia’s respect for kitchen craftsmanship. Watching chefs at work “inspires me on every level,” she says. Each tour is carefully orchestrated to showcase the town’s culinary talent. “There is such artistry and creativity happening all around us,” she says. “I’m in the arts, and I can really appreciate the passion that’s behind what people are doing.”

After 14 years in New York working as a corporate event planner, Scalia was ready to come home to the North Shore. She sought a “walkable [waterside] town in an area full of culture and good food.” Salem had it all, along with the historical aspect she craves. “That’s another reason I am doing this: to open the lens to Salem,” she says. “It is full of history that is so much richer than what people know it for.” Also important are the origins of Salem’s table offerings. “The thing all my [restaurant and business] partners have in common is that they source at least one thing locally,” says Scalia. “You are really getting that local flavor. That’s my mission: to get the local flavor.”

By celebrating its cuisine scene, Scalia hopes to put Salem on the map as a “destination food town.” She’s been told that joining one of her tours is akin to an afternoon’s respite; she appreciates the sentiment. “There is something so sublimely satisfying about having a taste, talking to the chef, meeting new people, and then strolling to the next stop.” salemfoodtours.com

Amesbury’s Kitchen Local

Opened in January, Amesbury’s Kitchen Local gives talented chefs and business owners a place to practice and produce their craft. By Alexandra Pecci // photographs by Shannon Yates

Kitchen Local founder Lisa Sutton

Lisa sutton leans against a gleaming stainless steel worktable and looks around with a proud smile. She’s standing in the middle of a brand new, state-of-the-art, 1,200-square-foot commercial kitchen that’s housed in one of Amesbury’s revamped mill buildings. Despite its newness, Sutton feels at home. She is well accustomed to the idea of owning a kitchen that’s equipped with, among other things, a 30-quart floor mixer, a 24-quart electric steam kettle, a six-burner range and griddle, a double convection oven, and a walk-in refrigerator.

Still, there were times during construction that Sutton would find herself suddenly overcome with sweeping feelings of disbelief. “There were moments,” she remembers, “not when I doubted myself, but of just being awed by what I was doing.”

What Sutton was doing was building Kitchen Local, the first certified, shared-use commercial kitchen on the North Shore. It’s a business venture that’s not only good for its owner, but will help to give a much-needed boost to the North Shore’s local food economy.

Not every small food business has the means to build its own commercial kitchen. Shared-use kitchens allow chefs and bakers to share certified commercial kitchen space with other businesses on a set schedule. These “foodpreneurs” can sign up to use the kitchen when they need it, allowing them to cook or bake for hours at a time using large-scale commercial equipment. Kitchen Local also allows its clients to rent dry and cold storage space.

Shared-use commercial kitchens are more common in other parts of the country, but in Massachusetts, they’re rare. Before Kitchen Local opened in January, there were only a few shared-use kitchens in Massachusetts, and the nearest one to the North Shore was in Jamaica Plain. The lack of a shared-use kitchen was a gaping hole in the North Shore’s food economy, which is thriving in every other way, with an abundance of farms, farm stands, small-batch food producers, and other culinary businesses. So when Sutton started working in 2012 on Kitchen Local, she tapped into a groundswell of need.

“I had been looking for a space for over a year,” says Katie Habib, a caterer and personal chef who owns the Newburyport-based Habib’s Home Cooking. She needed one so badly that she’d been considering starting one herself. Although Habib has been a personal chef for more than 10 years, she’s been working up until now on a small, individual scale.

“I could not cook from my own kitchen,” Habib says. “I would have to go to my client’s home, pretty much take over their kitchen for the morning, prepare their meals, package them, and put them away. So I was carrying my equipment with me and stopping at the grocery store that morning because I didn’t have commercial storage space.” And she’d have to do the same thing for catering clients, too. “I would have to go to the client’s house the day before or the morning of—pretty much take over their kitchen the day of their party—and that’s a real inconvenience,” she says.

Kitchen Local’s spacious facility

There was also the question of scale. By cooking in each client’s home, Habib was only able to cook in small batches, creating each customer’s order one by one. So to say that having access to Kitchen Local is a game changer for Habib’s business is no exaggeration. She’s now able to serve many clients at once, spending a single morning cooking meals for seven or eight different families instead of just one family, for example.

Kitchen Local is also allowing her to extend her business into cooking classes and the Newburyport Farmer’s Market, where she’ll sell Lebanese cuisine like hummus, tabouli, spinach pie, and stuffed grape leaves. And for the first time, she can accept orders from multiple clients at once, like the orders she got the other day for 15 dozen grape leaves, seven dozen meat pies, and 10 dozen spinach pies. “I’ve never been able to market that way because I couldn’t cook and transport food before,” she says. “But now I can.”

Katie Habib of Habib’s Home Cooking can prepare, cook, and package dishes at Kitchen Local.

It’s a storyline that’s repeated among many of Kitchen Local’s first clients, including Lauren Suszczewicz, owner of Haverhill’s 19 Steps Bake Shop. The shop has been Suszczewicz’s part-time labor of love for the three years she’s been in business. By day, she sells computers, but by night, Suszczewicz bakes, making popovers, cookies, banana and zucchini breads, granola, brownies, and gift baskets to sell at local fairs and farmers markets. For the past three years, she’s grown her business slowly out of the certified kitchen in her home, but like most home kitchens, it’s small. Suszczewicz knew that if she wanted to expand, she’d need to find a new kitchen. “I’ve been wanting to take it to the next level, but I haven’t been able to find a place,” she says.

Like Habib, Suszczewicz says having access to Kitchen Local will give her the chance to dramatically expand her business practically overnight, which includes increasing her output. For instance, making her signature popovers at home yields only 12 per batch. But she can make 96 popovers per batch using the 30-quart mixer and double convection ovens at Kitchen Local. Now, Suszczewicz plans to get her wholesale commercial license, and she is fulfilling her dream to expand her business. “It’s going to be a reality,” she says. “It’s very exciting. Sometimes I feel like I have to pinch myself to make sure that it’s real.”

Donna McDonough, co-owner and co-founder of the Peabody-based Alex’s Whey, says cooking at Kitchen Local is giving her the same chance to expand her business. With a wholesale license, stores will be able to stock her company’s organic, all-natural protein cookies. “It will open me up into a whole different market that wasn’t open to me before,” she says. “I think it will help people have some of their dreams come true.”

While some local businesses are using Kitchen Local to expand, others, like Newburyport-based Fresh Beginnings, LLC, are using it to start. Fresh Beginnings, which makes 100 percent organic homemade frozen baby food for delivery to North Shore parents, is a brand new company; it just started taking orders in March.

“Since we’re a company that’s just starting out, we’re not at the place where we’ll need a full-time kitchen,” says co-owner Sara Calapiz. And Calapiz’s business partner, Tamea Bacon, says that without Kitchen Local there’d be no business at all. “Our biggest obstacle was finding a kitchen,” Bacon says. “There is nothing else like Kitchen Local anywhere near here that would have been an option for us…we wouldn’t have been able to do it without [the] kitchen.”

In addition to food producers, Sutton has also opened Kitchen Local to businesses like Carolyn’s Farm Kitchen, which provides hands-on, farm-to-table cooking classes that end with a full, sit-down meal. Owner Carolyn Greico of Haverhill says that by the beginning of March, she’d already booked classes at Kitchen Local for the next four months.

It’s clear that the benefit of having a shared-use commercial kitchen on the North Shore goes beyond simply giving a business the capacity to make a few more popovers or extra batches of cookies. The cumulative effect it could have on the growth of local businesses is hugely important to the local food economy, says Christine Sullivan, CEO of the Enterprise Center at Salem State University, a small business growth center that recently added a Local Food Initiative to its work.

Local food “is a very large and complicated sector of our economy here on the North Shore,” Sullivan says, something she didn’t fully realize until the Enterprise Center hosted a local food workshop in January 2012. About 100 people showed up, many wanting access to shared-use kitchen space.

“Until that day, I never understood how extensive the desire for [kitchen space] was,” Sullivan says. Because of that workshop, the Enterprise Center’s Local Food initiative was born. Now it’s working to create more shared-use resources for North Shore food entrepreneurs, including manufacturing and distribution space. And Sullivan is hailing Kitchen Local as a critical first step toward expanding the local food economy.

“I think the demand for it will be large and prove the need for it in other areas. I think it will be the symbol of what local food can do in the North Shore,” Sullivan says, calling Sutton a “shining icon for how to do this in the region.”

Like Sullivan, Sutton is excited to help grow local food businesses. She seems to have the perfect pedigree for owning Kitchen Local—she not only honed her business development and community engagement chops as a former Opportunity Works director, but also hails from a foodie family (her brother’s a caterer; her parents are former restaurateurs). And Sutton herself makes quiches so divine that her neighbors in the Amesbury mill have taken to giving them pet names. “We called it Lorraine,” one grateful man said reverently when he popped his head into Sutton’s office to thank her for delivering a quiche to him and his colleagues. And it wasn’t even a Quiche Lorraine, Sutton quipped back.

“There’s a much higher chance of your business being successful if it aligns with your values and your passions,” says Sutton, who wears her passions on her sleeve: growing small businesses, helping local farmers, making and eating good food, and building strong communities. They add up, in short, to all the ingredients needed to help give a little extra kick to the North Shore economy. kitchenlocal.com ●n

Sharron Cohen, Cape Ann Light Station Host Keeper

Sharron Cohen, Cape Ann light station host keeper, Thacher Island. photograph by Patrick Marasco

Sharon Cohen

The job: “Keepers are basically park rangers. We keep an eye on people to make sure they don’t do anything that would damage the structures on the island. We call the Rockport harbormaster if we think boaters or kayakers are in trouble. We work the winch that pulls the launch onto the ramp; greet visitors; manage the gift shop, campground, and museum; mow paths and cut brush; sweep the lighthouses; paint; pick up trash; and maintain and repair structures and equipment…whatever needs to be done to keep the island safe and pleasant.”

Why: “Thacher Island is a magical place. When I’m there, I feel [like] the steward of something that matters. I want to take care of it and [for] others to experience that specialness, too.”

Memorable moment: “There is an hour between first light and dawn when the sky and sea undergo a breathtaking array of color changes. The birds wake and, if it’s June, their chicks wake with them. Every single morning is different and wonderful.” thacherisland.org —K.J.

Textile Designer Ashley Conchieri

Ashley Conchieri

Amesbury native Ashley Conchieri followed her heart to a career in high-end textiles. By Megan Johnson // photographs by Dan Watkins

Textile designer Ashley Conchieri spends her days tucked inside a Beverly studio, perched behind a massive loom that looks like it belongs in Old Sturbridge Village rather than on the North Shore. But for the 26-year-old emerging artist, it’s just another day on the job.

“Sometimes, this process helps me think about a lot of other ideas while I’m working,” says Conchieri, as she delicately weaves merino wool through her loom. “I’ll come up with ideas for other fabrics I want to try.”

Growing up in Amesbury, Conchieri was fascinated by “anything that sparkled.” She took a few years off after high school to figure out what she wanted to do with her life and always came back to the same conclusion: She was meant to become an artist. Conchieri enrolled at the Massachusetts College of Art and found her niche in the fibers department.

“The whole time I was there, I was super focused [and] did a million internships,” Conchieri says. But after graduating in 2011, she wasn’t so sure her dreams of being an artist were attainable.

“For artists…it’s such an extreme; you’re in studios, and working all the time and then you graduate and you say, ‘Okay. Now I need to either figure out a way to sell my work and live off it, or get a job,’” she says.

But live off it she did. Conchieri learned the retail business while carefully cultivating her own creations out of felted merino wool and hand-painted silk. Her trademark design is the Armour scarf, a hand-woven, merino wool wrap. But some of her most unique work is done with hand-painted silk in a process she refers to as the “Slow Fashion Movement.” Like the Slow Food phenomenon, Slow Fashion focuses on quality over quantity, and ethically produced goods made of sustainable materials. Each piece is created individually, with love.

“I make all my own colors,” Conchieri says. “I actually try to source whatever I can from New England, and I think once you start to look at what’s around you, there’s almost everything you need. And most of my yarn comes from Maine. You get really brilliant colors with the acid dyes, but I do want to explore natural dyes and [their] the advantages. Naturals are basically made using plants, vegetables, or whatever’s available. Mushrooms, onion skins, indigo plant, even beetles.”

On hot summer days, you can find Conchieri basking in the sunshine outside her Newburyport home, where she can paint up to 50 yards of material a day. “I could paint all day outside,” she says. It’s a far cry from her days fresh out of art school, when Conchieri’s parents were skeptical about the bleak prospects out there for aspiring artists. But these days, their attitude has changed.

“[My parents are] really supportive, but when I first graduated, they said, ‘You need to get a job; you have to pay student loans.’ I think now they’re just like, ‘Wow, look at our daughter!’” ashleyconchieri.com

Tim Collins, President of EBSCO Publishing

Tim Collins

Inspired by a devoted stepdad, Tim Collins, president of Ipswich’s EBSCO Publishing, turned an ingenious idea for indexing magazine content into one of the world’s most widely used research services. By Meg Quinn-DeBoer // photographs by Sean Litchfield

In 1984, Tim Collins was a driven Topsfield 18-year-old armed with two essentials for success: an entrepreneurial spirit and a new stepfather with a clever idea.

Collins was in high school when his father Larry passed away at age 43. Gerald Seaman became his stepfather about two years later. “Jerry became my stepdad when I was a senior in high school. I walked my mom down the aisle,” Collins proudly recalls. “I had a different relationship with my stepdad. I consider him one of my best friends, so he was not in the standard stepfather role,” he explains.

With a background in writing and editing at Boston publishing houses and experience running a small newspaper, Seaman had the idea to start Magazine Guide with Collins, who was studying business at the University of New Hampshire. Magazine Guide provided synopses of articles running in current magazines. “We would get advanced copyrights from publishers for articles and [consumers] would get a little guide at the newsstand about the stories that were covered, so they could decide what magazine to buy,” Collins explains.

Due to distribution problems, Magazine Guide was not a success, but it appealed to libraries. After refining the idea and renaming it Popular Magazine Review (PMR), Collins and Seaman successfully launched their product to 33 library customers, who paid $289 for an annual subscription. In a few short years, the company had grown to a staff of eight. EBSCO Industries, a multinational corporation located in Alabama, acquired the company after learning about PMR at a library conference. “I graduated from UNH in 1985, and we sold the company to EBSCO in 1987,” Collins recalls. In doing so, Collins became the president of the new company, called EBSCO Publishing.

Today, EBSCO Publishing is headquartered in Ipswich. The technology powerhouse employs over 1,000 professionals in its Ipswich and Topsfield offices, and it supports over 1,350 employees in 40 countries worldwide. The product line has come a long way since PMR. Now, its databases include both summaries and full texts of articles from journals, magazines, and other publications, as well as e-books. Previously distributed on CD-ROMs, the databases are now accessible online, and EBSCOhost is the leading online research portal in libraries, universities, hospitals, and corporations worldwide.

The company is housed in the mill buildings along the scenic Ipswich River, and the location was chosen for a few reasons. “The first is just practical,” Collins explains. “We started in Topsfield and as we grew, we took into account that the employees lived within a certain radius,” he says. “Ipswich had buildings that were pretty unique and had a lot of character, and I didn’t want to be in a standard office park.”

While Ipswich is a beautiful town that offers amenities within walking distance for EBSCO Publishing employees, Collins admits that the North Shore location has a drawback. “One of the biggest challenges we face right now is not the competition; it’s getting enough technical talent to finish the projects that we’d like to do.We need to get the word out that we have jobs for [software engineers] in Ipswich. There are plenty of people driving down Route One every day who may not know that a great opportunity is right here.”

Collins was born in Danvers and lived out of state briefly, but he considers the North Shore his home. “My dad was a G.E. man, so we moved to Ohio for his work, but I came to Topsfield in third grade, so my childhood was here,” Collins says. He attended Masconomet High School, where he was the captain of the football team. “My identity in high school was as an athlete, and I was good, but I was not a great athlete. I was more of a hard worker,” he emphasizes.

EBSCO’s HQ along the Ipswich River

Hard work is one of the cornerstones of Collins’s success, and it was instilled at an early age. “I’ve always had drive, but if I had to credit anybody for it, it would be my dad,” Collins says. “My memories of him are that he was a very dedicated father and a hard worker. For example, when we raked leaves, he attacked it. He raked leaves with gusto. We had fun with it and took it on as a challenge, so we didn’t dread it. That was his kind of attitude, and I always liked that,” Collins says.

Aside from hard work, Collins cites two other elements necessary for success: vision and a bias for action. “You’ve got to have a vision for what you want your business to look like, and then you have to have a bias for action to try to accomplish your vision. No one wakes up and knows what their business will be like in 10 years. Our business today is nothing like it was when it started.”

The North Shore has been good to Collins, both personally and professionally. “I’m a firm believer in visualization, so I visualized in general terms the life I’m leading now.” With his wife Emily, Collins has two children, 13-year-old Charlotte and 10-year-old Nate, who both attend the Glen Urquhart School in Beverly. The family lives in Topsfield and has many North Shore favorites. “The kids love White Farms Ice Cream, especially the soft serve, because they have so many flavors. I used to go there as a kid, too,” Emily says. “And lately, we’ve been going to the Four66 on Route One because Nate loves the pizza there.” The proud father praises his children’s accomplishments. “Nate is an athlete on many sports teams. He plays hockey, lacrosse, and basketball, and Charlotte is a prolific reader. She reads [several] books every week.” Clearly, the driven businessman is raising his kids to succeed.

For Collins, success in the workplace has to do with people living up to their potential. “I judge myself and everybody around me on whether they are able to realize their potential. To me, there’s nothing worse than wasted potential,” Collins says.

Coworkers agree that Collins’s attitude is the key to a rewarding workplace. Senior Vice President Stratton Lloyd says, “Tim embodies the many attributes that make working at EBSCO so enjoyable. He is entrepreneurial with a unique enthusiasm for embracing new opportunities.” Sam Brooks, executive vice president of sales and marketing, provides similar accolades. “Under Tim’s leadership, I have seen us grow from a small company with only hundreds of customers to a global information industry leader with tens of millions of end users.” And CIO Michael Gorrell adds, “Tim is one of the smartest people I know, and he’s incredibly driven. A lot of our success stems directly from his drive and tenacity.”

While colleagues praise his work ethic, Tim’s wife provides a glimpse of the man outside of the office. “As driven as he is, one thing he doesn’t do is bring work stress home with him,” Emily explains. “He’ll have his laptop on at home, but at the same time, he will interact with the kids, answering their questions, and he can switch right back and forth. It’s amazing to me that he can do all that he does and still be such a regular guy.”

Sometimes, when a regular guy does well, he ends up in the spotlight. Collins says he feels uncomfortable with the recognition that he receives, especially when EBSCO Industries insisted on putting his name on one of the Ipswich campus’s buildings. “I struggle with it, because I feel like it doesn’t give enough credit to everybody else. I understand the intentions and it is a nice honor, but I would have been satisfied with a plaque,” he insists. “It’s not like this is a one-man show.”

With more than 1,000 employees based around the North Shore, EBSCO Publishing may not be a one-man show, but today it is a global information leader, thanks to the vision of one man and the “bias of action” of another. ebscohost.com ●n

EBSCO Publishing supports local schools and sports teams, as well as organizations, including:

The Topsfield Fair – EBSCO sponsors the Green Pavilion at America’s oldest fair, which runs for 10 days each fall. topsfieldfair.org
The Boston Lobsters – EBSCO is a presenting sponsor of New England’s professional tennis team, located at the Manchester Athletic Club in Manchester-by-the-Sea. bostonlobsters.net
The Trustees of Reservations/Appleton Farms – EBSCO sponsored renovations to the farmhouse at Appleton Farms. thetrustees.org
Beverly Hospital at Danvers – EBSCO donated a gymnasium to be used by both patients and staff. beverlyhospital.org

North Shore-based Band Transit

Transit Transit celebrates the North Shore on its new album.

Absence makes the heart grow fonder. Especially when you’re living on a tour bus.

“We spend six to nine months out of a year traveling. The more you do that, the more you appreciate where you’re from,” says Tim Landers, guitarist and vocalist in the North Shore-based band Transit. At just 22 years old, the Stoneham resident has gone from gigging with his buddies at “every church and VFW within a 50-mile radius” of their North Shore hometowns to hitting the road on a national headlining tour. (They play Cambridge’s new concert hall, The Sinclair, on May 14.) Their new album, Young New England, plays like a pop-punk paean to the land of the bean and the cod—and the Red Sox, too.

Influenced by Saves the Day, Taking Back Sunday, and other “emo” (emotional) rock bands that emerged in the late-’90s, Transit has rapidly earned devoted fans and critical thumbs-up from the alternative music press. Like those groups, Transit pairs rollicking, fist-pumping tunes with melancholy lyrics about love and the (magnificently misspent) glory days of suburban youth. Every energetic anthem is tinged with nostalgia, making it the perfect soundtrack for hopping like a pogo stick at a crowded club show or singing aloud as you cruise through town.

“We wanted to write an album about how blessed we were to grow up around here,” says Landers. Recorded at Maximum Sound Studios in Danvers, Young New England features lyrical tributes to everything from Lynn, “the city of sin,” to the cobblestone streets of Boston. Even the album cover is a composite photo of scattered autumn leaves and houses on the Rockport shoreline.

Beverly’s Caspian

Transit may now be touring with their idols and selling out their own shows on a cross-country trek, but that just makes the group appreciate its small-town roots even more. “It’s cool growing up in a close-knit town where everyone knows one another,” reflects Landers. It won’t be long before even more people know their name. transitband.com —Scott Kearnan

Where Transit tracks chug along with verve, Beverly-based instrumental band Caspian is masterful at building slow-burn drama. The experimental act serves up ambient, orchestral rock arrangements, with synthesizers swelling and bass guitars throbbing. Listening to the results—like their latest album, Waking Season—is the aural equivalent of walking across a gorgeous lunar landscape. They’ve played everywhere from North Shore venues to renowned national events like SXSW—next is Boston Calling at Boston’s City Hall Plaza, May 25-26. They’ll share a bill at the Hub’s inaugural indie music festival with major names like fun., The National, and Of Monsters and Men. caspianmusic.net, bostoncalling.com

Linda Shepherd of Buyers Desire Home Staging

Linda Shepherd, Buyers Desire Home Staging

Linda Shepherd of Buyers Desire Home Staging

Talking real estate turnover with Linda Shepherd of Buyers Desire Home Staging.

Standing out among the rest is vital when it comes to selling a home. With the ease of online market research comes the need to give buyers a reason to investigate a property in person. By creating visual appeal, Linda Shepherd allows prospective buyers to see a home’s potential. Her neutral settings lure the broadest pool of buyers and help increase chances that a home will sell.

What do you keep in mind when staging a home? We conduct an assessment of the buyer demographic for the home by analyzing factors of the town, such as school systems and median income. We stage with the target buyer in mind by setting up “emotional connection points” that will subconsciously grab buyers’ attention and tell them that this is the perfect home. The architecture also inspires our choices. We’ve seen traditional homes decorated in all modern furniture. This creates a disjointed feeling that turns potential buyers off. We also take the homeowners’ current belongings into consideration. Staging shouldn’t be expensive; using lots of what the homeowner already has and mixing in fresh florals, bright pillows, and interesting accessories may be all the home needs.

What do homeowners need to address before you arrive to stage? Most commonly, the problem is the paint color. Bold paint colors scare potential buyers off. We once recommended that a seller tone down bright blue walls to more neutral colors. She chose not to paint because it was “too much work.” However, potential buyers will also be thinking it will be “too much work” and they’ll move on to the next house. Potential buyers should never see anything broken or needing repair. Removal of personal photos, lighting, cleanliness, evidence of pets, and even smells. These can be delicate subjects to discuss, but we talk to the homeowners compassionately. They’ve hired us, and they want our honest opinion.

What concerns do clients often have when considering staging? Some question whether staging really works. A seller once told us that she didn’t believe it would make a difference. The realtor was adamant that the homeowner stage, so she did. She received five offers at her first open house, four above asking price. Homeowners are also concerned that they will spend the money to stage and the house won’t sell. While we cannot guarantee the home will sell, last year’s statistics from Real Estate Staging Association showed that staged homes sold 73 percent faster than homes that hadn’t been staged.

What’s in your collection of props? Any “lucky” pieces that help make a sale? We do have one lucky piece of art that seems to work well in any house. It’s an abstract series of squares in rust, blue, and gray tones. Most of what we have in our inventory are florals, pillows, and art. The art is rather neutral subject matter. Done properly, artificial plants and flowers can look just as good as, if not better than, live ones and will stay beautiful throughout the buying process. It’s easy to make an outdated couch look new by adding bright pillows and a throw in a contrasting color. We also have a lot of accessories for bookcases, built-ins, and coffee tables. Our goal is for the home to look like a magazine picture.

Salem’s Gardner Mattress

Gardner Sisk at Gardner’s Salem facility.

Gardner Mattress has been using time-tested methods to craft beds in Salem for 80 years. By Jeanne O’Brien Coffey - photographs by Michael Basu

Not many people have to deal with sleeping customers for a living. But it’s something Kirk Forsyth, general manager of Gardner Mattress in Salem, has faced more than once—and can usually turn to his advantage. When one man fell asleep on a mattress in the corner of the store early one Sunday afternoon, Forsyth let him enjoy his snooze while other customers busily shopped around him—even occasionally lying on the bed next to him. Forsyth kept the store open a bit late, helping people with their selections. When the napper finally roused himself, nearly two and a half hours later, Forsyth walked over with an order form and said, “Let’s write this one up.” And the man happily did.

This personal touch, combined with a commitment to a high quality product, has kept Gardner Mattress in business for 80 years, explains Gardner Sisk, who bought the business from his grandfather, founder Alan Gardner, in 1976. “Customer service is the one thing we can do better,” says Sisk. “We make sure our service is second to none—superior to anybody else’s. It’s something that the bigger guys can’t do, because it’s costly.”

Cost is the top concern for large bedding manufacturers these days, Sisk says. As the bedding industry at large has become increasingly commoditized, with investors seeking to squeeze out every penny, materials that used to be standard in mattresses are being left out. For example, a border rod—a six-dollar piece of metal that gives structural support—doesn’t add much to the cost of a mattress at Gardner, which produces roughly 6,000 units a year. But larger manufacturers that can churn out 50,000 mattresses annually view dropping that six-dollar piece as a significant cost savings, explains Forsyth, who is Sisk’s stepson and also in charge of the company’s day-to-day operations. Gesturing toward a cut-away in a mattress manufactured by a competitor, Forsyth notes, “All it is is a piece of plastic, two layers of foam, and a piece of fabric. These things are cheap to manufacture. There’s nothing inside them, and they don’t wear well.”

Commercial bedding, with very few exceptions, is designed for price, agrees Sisk. “The internal materials, the way they are put together—they are not very well made. They feel good, they look good, but they don’t perform well.” He admits that his company took a hit when Sleepy’s, a discount chain with more than 600 retail outlets, came to Massachusetts. The recession in 2007 compounded the pressure and caused them to reexamine their business model. As a result, the company cut staff levels 30 percent and reduced overhead to stay in business.

Now, with the business back on firm footing, Sisk says people are starting to recognize the difference and return to Gardner. “If somebody comes in here and isn’t [focused] strictly [on] price [and] if we don’t sell them, we feel as though we haven’t done a good enough job educating them, because our product is so much better,” Sisk says. Over the past two years, at least, education has paid off, with healthy double-digit increases in the percentage of sales since 2010.

Unlike the large manufacturers, who fill their mattresses primarily with polyurethane foam, Gardner uses domestically sourced cotton to fill its mattresses—and no chemical flame retardant. “As people are getting more conscious of their environment and wanting to subject their bodies to fewer chemicals, it fits right into what we do really well,” Forsyth says. “We don’t have to change what we do. It’s come full circle, where people are once again interested in what we’ve always made.”

Take a walk through the Gardner factory, and you won’t smell anything harsh or unpleasant, because the company uses properly treated, high quality materials and water-based adhesives. The facility is clean and brightly lit, with employees constructing mattresses much the way they have for the past 80 years, as the framed historic photos dotting the store show. “It’s a good place to work,” Sisk says. “We listen to our employees about the kind of environment they want.”

Perhaps that’s why so many of the 18 employees, who work in three stores, the front office, and the factory, have been with Gardner for so long. Foreman Eddie Carter has been with the company for 28 years, and over the last 25 years, Steve Popp has built all the box springs, working nights until the 1990s, when an expansion brought with it enough room to make mattresses and box springs at the same time.

Gardner staff constructing mattresses.

Gardner keeps no inventory, so each mattress is built when a customer orders it. Fabrication can take anywhere from 45 minutes for a memory foam mattress that simply requires a cover to two hours for an innerspring mattress, which needs to be filled, tufted, and covered.

The menacing tufting machine, with needles that are more than a foot long, demands to be approached with care. But it is not nearly as threatening as the inner springs for the mattresses, which come tightly compressed in bundles of about a dozen. Traditionally, workers cut the bundles apart in a specific order or risk getting seriously hurt, as thousands of pounds of pressure released. Fortunately, the factory now has a machine to unpack the springs automatically, eliminating that danger from the process.

Forsyth knows the factory like the back of his hand; he’s been working there since his early teen years, at first sweeping the floors and “trying to be helpful without getting hurt,” his stepdad says with a laugh. “There’s nothing here I don’t know how to do,” Forsyth adds. As if on cue, a quilting machine jams; Forsyth takes over the machine, helping the 16-year-veteran seamstress sort out the problem.

Seeing Stars
With all the manufacturing done in house, it is easy for Gardner to repair mattresses and craft custom products. In fact, when U2 needed bedding for the jet the band leased for its “U2 360°” tour, they turned to Gardner to retrofit a mattress. As a result, Forsyth went where many U2 fans would love to go—on the band’s private jet. He met the plane at Logan Airport to take measurements, then delivered and installed the mattresses at Hanscom Field, likely bringing some relief to lead singer Bono, who suffers from back pain.

Bono isn’t the only one who sleeps on a Gardner mattress; Donald Trump has several on his private jet as well, and Sisk says that most of the radio and TV personalities in the area are currently sleeping on or have slept on Gardner mattresses in the past. “They may not be able to promote it because of commitments to their employers, but they shop here.”

While much of their custom business caters to athletes and other extra-tall clients who need special-size beds, the company also gets the occasional order for round beds, as well as custom orders for yachts, small cruise ship lines, the Coast Guard, and area fire stations, which have maintained peculiar size requirements over time. Beyond sizing, Gardner is mulling a return to offering historic materials, such as striped ticking fabric and horse hair, which has excellent wicking characteristics and breathes well, offering a cooler bed in summer and a warmer one in winter.

While most of Gardner’s business is in New England, the company regularly ships to Bermuda and the West Coast, and, occasionally, to Hawaii, London, and Costa Rica.

The Road to Restful Sleep
Shipping is the primary headache for Gardner these days. “Salem doesn’t have any main roads,” Sisk says. “It’s hard to get in and out of here.” Getting materials in and shipping mattresses out is slowed by Salem’s congestion. Combine that with the growth of Salem State University, across the street from the factory, and a move may be unavoidable. If the factory does move, Sisk plans to keep the business in the area, but closer to routes 128 and 93.

For a company that relies on word of mouth for 85 to 90 percent of sales, though, Sisk says central Salem is hard to beat. “Our location is phenomenal—we’ve been doing business in the same building for almost 80 years, and our customers know how to find us.” Multigenerational customers aren’t unusual, with the children and grandchildren of past Gardner customers continuing to buy bedding locally.

“People don’t always realize how good our bedding is and what a piece of junk the other one is,” Sisk says. “What they will realize is how well they’ve been treated. They can’t go wrong buying from us because we…make sure they are happy.”

Mattress Mindset In the market for a new mattress? The best tip might be to shop Gardner Mattress, joke owner Gardner Sisk and manager Kirk Forsyth, but here are some other things to keep in mind.

Skip Shopping the Internet Especially if you sleep on your side. If you’re a side sleeper, says Forsyth, you definitely have to go to a store and lie down on the bed.

Ask What’s Inside “Most salespeople have no idea what’s inside their mattress, and they don’t even pretend to,” Sisk says. “People really want to know about the quality of the materials.”

Consider Firmness Firmness is not a measure of whether or not a mattress will sag over time. “What breaks down in a mattress isn’t the springs—it’s what you put over the springs,” Forsyth says. “Springs have nothing to do with what’s going to wear out.”

Nightingale Arts of Salem

Marie Barron, owner of Nightingale Arts of Salem.

A whimsical art and furniture store in downtown Salem is a thoroughly relaxed and creative family affair. By Andrew Conway – photographs by Anthony Pira

Whoever coined the saying “Business and family don’t mix” clearly hasn’t visited Nightingale Arts of Salem.

On any given day, owner Marie Barron, her partner Michael Chouinard, his nieces Melissa and Heidi, their parents Rick and Anna, and Barron’s sister Kathy Hutchins all stamp their creative talents on a business that gives new meaning to the phrase “keeping it in the family.”

“It sounds a little crazy, but it just works,” admits Barron, who runs this delightfully whimsical art, jewelry, and furniture store on historic Boston Street and sources all of the distinctive handmade merchandise.

While many small business owners would run away from the thought of working with their partners or family members on an everyday basis, this hands-on retailer begs to differ. “We all bring different creative talents,” Barron says. “Everyone does their own thing; we have fun every day, and I just love it.”

Chouinard, a former house painter, does all of the reconditioned furniture painting. Melissa and Heidi are talented artists whose work sells in the store, while Rick makes unique sun/moon sculptures and Anna crafts beautiful dolls and scarves. Hutchins sews, paints mailboxes, and makes luggage tags, while Barron herself sources quality one-of-a-kind products from local artists, scours craft fairs in Boston and New York, and buys vintage furniture at auctions around New England. The furniture she brings back is given a loving makeover by the Nightingale team in the family garage.

The result of this family affair is a charming and eclectic store filled with high-quality art, furnishings, jewelry, sculptures, baby blankets, pillows, drinks trays, reconditioned lighting, art cards, prints, and an array of other must-have home wares.

“Everything is handmade—nothing is mass manufactured,” explains Barron. “We put our hearts and souls into everything we make, and even when we do buy something, we make sure it’s a Fair Trade product.”

No two days are the same at Nightingale Arts of Salem (2012 BONS Award winner for Best Home Décor). “Whatever we think of, we just kind of do it,” says Barron, pointing to a quirky but eye-catching “bird condo” made from birdhouses. “It can be totally different from one week to the next here,” she says. “We bring something in, we sell it, and we do something new.” Barron, Melissa, and Heidi don’t confine their artistic talents to the store. During the summer of 2012, they completed a large wall mural for the new Orange Leaf frozen yogurt store in Salem, featuring town landmarks.

As if one family-run business isn’t enough, Barron plans to open a second store in Kennebunkport, ME. Not surprisingly, she is already eyeing her daughter and son, Annie and Abe, to run it for her. nightingalearts.com

Inside the shop.

Billy Sweet Chimney Sweep

Billy Sweet of Billy Sweet Chimney Sweep

Billy Sweet, owner of Billy Sweet Chimney Sweep in Swampscott. By Kiley Jacques – photograph by Patrick Marasco

The tools: [Our] traditional set of rods and brushes are the same type you see Dick Van Dyke and his fellow sweeps dancing with when they sing “Step in Time” in the movie Mary Poppins. Of course, we don’t actually go up inside the flue as they do in the movie. And wouldn’t everyone like a girlfriend like Mary Poppins!

The clientele: We like to educate our customers, and a smart customer has us come every year. But before a customer has talked with us, they may never have had a chimney cleaned before. Fire is the ultimate teacher.

Notable findings: We have found some funny stuff inside the chimney…old empty beer and liquor bottles, a Playboy magazine in the fireplace of a boy’s bedroom. I [did] the chimney of the neighbor of a man I later found out had roomed with my father in the polio ward of Children’s Hospital some 70 years ago. That was kind of neat.

Job satisfaction: I enjoy the view from the rooftop! I enjoy erecting an elaborate scaffold on a complex roof to provide a safe workplace at the top of the chimney, building fancy chimneys, and solving homeowner’s problems, so they can enjoy a fire safely. But mostly I enjoy our customers’ satisfaction in a job well done. billysweetchimneysweep.com

Super Producer: George Howard

Marblehead’s George Howard is bringing digital music forward—by going back to basics. By Scott Kearnan – photographs by Tim Cook

Howard, COO of Norton LLC, believes in fair sharing.

Authenticity. it’s an important word to George Howard.

Howard stands at the kitchen counter in his Marblehead home, whipping up an all-natural smoothie of fresh fruits and veggies. “You should try one,” he says. Howard is a healthy guy; he starts every day with a run, practices yoga, studies Buddhism, and consumes a mostly raw, vegan diet. It’s a restorative lifestyle that helps him stay energized and balanced as he juggles life as a husband and father with a wide professional repertoire.

Nowadays, Howard is mainly focused on his work as COO of Norton LLC, the parent company of Concert Vault, Wolfgang’s Vault, Daytrotter, and Paste magazine, each a unique property in a music empire. Throughout his storied career, Howard has had a hand in nearly every aspect of the music business; he’s run a seminal record label, managed major artists like Carly Simon, and helped found TuneCore, now the world’s largest distributor of digital music.

Howard pops kale and kiwi into the blender; it whirs, stirring up a green tornado. He pours the mixture into a glass. “Here you go,” he says, handing it over. “If you don’t like it, I won’t be offended.”

It’s tasty. Really green—but tasty. And unmistakably unadulterated—an earthy flavor that could only be made by Mother Nature. It makes sense that Howard would place such a premium on organic eating. Whether in food or business, he appreciates what is authentic, and he uses each of his innovative ventures as an opportunity to buck an outdated music industry that too often exploits performers, turns art into assembly-line merchandise, and feeds consumers manufactured claptrap.

“Eventually, you have the same reaction to over-processed music that you do to over-processed food,” explains Howard with a smile. “You get sick of it.”

Music Business Beginnings
Howard was born in North Carolina and grew up in Philadelphia; he came to New England to study English literature at Boston University. But he was also writing music, playing guitar, and gigging with bands in the teeming early-’90s rock scene, one that predated Kurt Cobain and Co.’s ushering of grunge into mainstream pop culture. “It was pre-Nirvana, and the last gasp of true indie [music],” recalls Howard, kicking back by a crackling fireplace in his living room. His tone is slightly professorial, which makes sense; he teaches management at Berklee College of Music. But he has a sense of humor, too. Before long, he’s demonstrating his skateboard skills, and tumbling head over heels into a yoga pose.

“It was an awesome, creative time,” he continues. “I was surrounded by all these insanely talented people.” Among them was college acquaintance Mary Timony, who went on to play guitar and sing in the post-punk bands Helium and Wild Flag. “I remember listening to her play and thinking, ‘More people need to hear this.’”

Though he had already been pressing vinyl records, it was during post-grad studies at Brown that Howard officially launched his own record label, Slow River, in 1993. It released a number of successful singles, and signed the popular band Sparklehorse. Soon larger labels, looking to capitalize on the exploding indie-rock genre, were making Howard lucrative offers to release his Slow River records. Though those with “bigger pocketbooks” came calling, Howard chose to work with the North Shore’s Rykodisc. It had especial credibility among artists, and Rykodisc, then based out of Pickering Wharf in Salem, was the first CD-only record label. That unique combination—respect for musicianship and forward-thinking innovation—was attractive to Howard.

In 1999, 30-year-old Howard was named president of Rykodisc by its new owner, Chris Blackwell, the music industry pioneer who founded Island Records and signed legends like Bob Marley and U2. Howard ran Rykodisc out of Gloucester, where he lived, and remained there until 2003, when he left amid another transition in ownership. But a non-compete clause in his contract prevented him from moving to another label. Cue the sound of a record screeching to a halt.

A Different Tune
Stepping outside the label world was an abrupt transition. “Since I was 19 years old, my job was putting out records,” says Howard. “That was all I had ever done.”

But he found other ways to employ his music industry expertise. He wrote his first book, Getting Signed!: An Insider’s Guide to the Record Industry. He started teaching management courses: first at Northeastern University, then Berklee—and then, after moving to New Orleans for several years, at Loyola University. It was a pretty good time for a professional detour. In the first decade of the new millennium, record labels were struggling to keep up with a technological revolution. CD consumers were replaced by a generation that freely file-shared MP3s, and the consequences were devastating for labels and artists; according to Forrester Research, annual revenue from U.S. music sales plummeted from $14.6 billion in 1999 to $6.3 billion in 2009.

“The record business was imploding,” says Howard, calling the mid-’00s “dark days” for artists. They lost sales to illegal downloads as labels, which obstinately resisted every format change—from cassettes to CDs and now to MP3s—and failed to innovate approaches to distribution. At the same time, new software like Pro Tools gave independent artists a cheap, easy way to make professional-grade recordings, which robbed record labels of a big bargaining tool. Previously, labels offered to fund expensive studio sessions for artists; in exchange, they owned the master recordings and paid artists slim royalties. There were suddenly fewer incentives for artists to work within the outmoded label system.

It was that environment into which Howard helped launch TuneCore in 2005. TuneCore offered independent artists the opportunity to place their music on iTunes and other online retailers. “TuneCore helped solve the biggest problem for artists, which was distribution,” says Howard. And whereas similar services took back-end percentages of sales, TuneCore charged artists a flat fee for its service. “Keep what you sell,” says Howard of the ethos that helped turn TuneCore into the world’s largest distributor of digital music.

Despite an increasingly crowded marketplace, it’s now easier than ever for unsigned artists to release music. But developing TuneCore is hardly the only way in which Howard has helped musicians—and fans—embrace new digital worlds.

George Howard with Carly Simon

A New Day
In many ways, it seems like the music industry is on the verge of another major change. Recent years have seen an explosion of subscription-based services, like Pandora and Spotify, which allow users to stream unlimited music to home entertainment systems and mobile devices. There’s no need to buy albums or songs; users simply queue up tunes on demand.
Howard isn’t a fan of what that means for music. “Something that upsets me, and that I’m trying to change, is that music has become devalued,” he says, adding that those services are filled with the same catalogs of ubiquitous hits, mainly by bubblegum artists like Katy Perry and Justin Bieber. The streaming model has encouraged a proliferation of mass-market Muzak: “Commodified wallpaper,” he calls it.

Enter Daytrotter, one of several Norton companies that Howard helped develop—first via his own consulting firm, Rock and Roller, and today as Norton’s COO. Daytrotter’s website offers its members streams and downloads of songs by hipster-friendly rock acts, both established names and emerging up-and-comers. But unlike other, interchangeable online music stores, Daytrotter boasts a catalog that is totally unique to its service. Participating artists stop by The Horseshack, a cozy studio in Rock Island, IL—a small city three hours west of Chicago—to rerecord their songs exclusively for Daytrotter members.

Daytrotter, which had been early to discover future stars like Mumford & Sons, fun., and The Lumineers, has compiled over 2,400 sessions since launching in 2006. These unique recordings eschew the bells and whistles of high-gloss studio wizardry in favor of intimate, stripped-down versions that ring with artistic authenticity. “I don’t want to create the musical equivalent of air freshener,” says Howard.

These special recordings offer more than artsy credibility for performers. Other streaming services, like Pandora and Spotify, cannibalize the music industry, says Howard; why would fans ever buy a record when they can listen to it over and over again for free? Plus, the per-stream payments to musicians are just fractions of pennies. Yet the services would like to pay out even less; they’re pushing Congress to pass the Internet Radio Fairness Act, a bill that critics like Howard say is an unconscionable attempt to slash the already-microscopic royalty fees owed to working artists.

Howard says Daytrotter sessions don’t supplant an artist’s existing recordings; they instead offer distinct additional versions. The artists might join Daytrotter on national “Barnstormer” tours, getting paid to play barn venues across the country. Daytrotter will often press limited-edition vinyl records, replete with original artwork and liner notes, and split sales with the band. According to Howard, vinyls are enjoying a minor comeback among music aficionados who miss having a tangible testimony to their fandom in an era where most music lives in a digital cloud. That also helps explain the success of Wolfgang’s Vault, a Norton company that bills itself as the world’s largest store for music memorabilia.

Howard knows that the rootsy vibe of Daytrotter won’t appeal to every music consumer; after all, compared to the music super-malls of Pandora and Spotify, it’s a niche boutique. But its innovative approach offers real benefits to artists, he says, and serves a growing audience of listeners who are tiring, at least for now, of manufactured pop.

“Look at this year’s Grammy nominations,” says Howard. Mumford & Sons, The Lumineers, and fun.—bands that Daytrotter featured several years ago—all received nods. “We reach these cultural moments where we can’t take it anymore. How else to explain Mumford & Sons, four guys from Britain playing banjos, selling millions of records? That is the culture saying, ‘Quit it with this manufactured stuff.’”

Luckily, Howard is ready to hand it a kiwi-kale smoothie, so to speak, which might just do the trick.

Super Producer As COO of Norton LLC, George Howard has his hands in a lot of projects. Here, a breakdown of each and what they’re all about.

Concert Vault
Cheaper than a time machine, Concert Vault unlocks access to hundreds of audio and video recordings from live concerts at legendary venues. Name an era, name an artist, name a stage; if YouTube is a digital junk heap, this is a finely curated museum of music. wolfgangsvault.com/concerts

Daytrotter
This unique digital music store is an antidote to overplayed Top 40. Big-deal bands like Vampire Weekend and Mumford & Sons rearrange and re-record their songs exclusively for Daytrotter members, who score virtual entry to intimate jam sessions with favorite artists. daytrotter.com

Paste magazine
This music-focused digital magazine attracts over 2 million monthly visitors, combining mainstream entertainment coverage with an indie sensibility, plus a knack for finding emerging artists that are bound to, well, stick. pastemagazine.com

Wolfgang’s Vault
With over 25 million individual items—concert tees, original posters, ticket stubs, you name it—this is Ground Zero for music memorabilia collectors, not to mention casual fans in search of a cool gift. wolfgangsvault.com

Authenticity At Elyse Fine Jewelers

Richard Berberian

The Ottoman Empire’s glory is found in the artisanship of gemologist Richard Berberian. By Megan Johnson - photographs by Robert Boyd

When Miss Rhode Island Olivia Culpo took hold of the Miss Universe crown back in December, she wasn’t the only person who scored the opportunity of a lifetime. The pageant queen’s win was also a major coup for her official jeweler, seventh-generation gemologist Richard Berberian and his family’s epic design dynasty. But despite the everlasting appeal of glittering diamonds and sapphires, the actual craft of gemology has fallen by the wayside.

“The art is gone,” says Berberian, who owns Elyse Fine Jewelers in Reading. “It’s like anything…how many cars are handmade now? How many suits are hand-tailored? The art of almost everything is gone.”

With the vast majority of commercial jewelry being manufactured in China, Berberian says there are very few authentic jewelers left in the business. “Most of the jewelry stores, [their owners are] not jewelers. They’re jewelry resellers. They buy designer lines,” says Berberian, whose own method entails having the customer “sit down and work with someone who’s going to hand make a piece for you, and then hand pick and match every stone that’s going into the ring so that the workmanship is flawless. That’s why people seek us out.”

Berberian’s devotion to the intricacy of his craft is rooted in his Armenian family’s history as some of the premier artisans of the Ottoman Empire. After settling in neighboring Turkey, nine members of his mother’s family, the Balians, served as designers, jewelers, and architects for royalty.

“I grew up as a young child hearing stories about how we built palaces and designed for the sultans,” says Berberian, who now resides in North Andover. “The kids would say, ‘These are tall tales!’ And as I got older, I started researching and I’d say, ‘Holy mackerel, this stuff is real.’ Everything that I heard growing up was reality.”

The Balian family’s expansive body of work ranges from jewelry and paintings to mosques and architectural landmarks that were created to serve as homes for monarchs and their families. That includes one of Istanbul’s most famous tourist attractions, Dolmabahce, widely known as the largest palace in Turkey. The decadent monument and expansive garden was home to a handful of Turkish sultans well into the 20th century.

Despite the Balian family’s prominence, nothing could protect them from the onslaught of danger that took over during the fall of the Ottoman Empire. When the genocide of 1.5 million Armenians ravaged the population, Berberian’s grandparents managed to find a way out of the country. They left Turkey in 1915 and settled in Milford, where they successfully built their jewelry company from the ground up.

Although Berberian had always been familiar with the family trade, following in the professional path of his ancestors was never part of his plan. “I was the first one in my family to leave the family business. I wanted to go to college and pursue something different. I went to music school,” says Berberian, who founded a company that made audio and video cassettes in the early 1980s. He sold the cassette company in 1999, satisfied with retiring young and raising his two children. But everyone in the Berberian household didn’t feel the same way about his idle time spent hanging around the house all day.

“I was in my early 40s at the time, and about a year or so after selling that business and being home, my wife said, ‘Get out of the house! You’re making everybody crazy. You’re too young; you’ve got to do something.’ But I had a five-year no-compete clause in the entertainment industry,” Berberian says. “I ended up going to work for one of the family jewelers in Worcester. It’s the only other thing I knew besides music.”

After studying at the Gemological Institute of America, Berberian found himself right back where he started: working alongside his family. In 1999, Elyse Fine Jewelers opened in Reading, bearing the name of Berberian’s only daughter.

“Interestingly, back then, if you told me I was going to reinvent myself, I wouldn’t have believed it,” Berberian adds. “But it turned out to be a blessing. I’m really happy with it.”

The Elyse Fine Jewelers showroom in Reading is the center of the Berberians’ booming jewelry design business, which is particularly known for catering to the needs of those who are preparing to walk down the aisle.

“We have, for example, over 300 perfectly matched wedding and engagement sets that are our own designs,” says Berberian, who imports diamonds himself from Belgium and Israel. “We develop our own lines. We have some designer names, but most people usually end up doing something custom. It’s a little more unique, not something everyone else has. The workmanship is always better, and we’re generally a step ahead of all the other jewelers because we import the jewels ourselves.”

But the path to bejeweled perfection isn’t a short one. Before a buyer walks out of the store with a custom-designed piece, it has to be built from the ground up.

“I’ll sketch [a ring design] for a client, and once the initial sketches are approved, we’ll carve a model of the ring out of wax to actually get to see it before it’s committed to expensive metal,” says Berberian, who has all custom pieces handcrafted by a team of trusted artisans—80 percent of whom are of Armenian descent—at the Jewelry Exchange Building in Boston. “We hand select all the stones, and then we craft the custom piece. It’s like having a made-to-measure suit.”

A multi-step process results in rings resembling crowns (the mold for Miss Teen USA’s is seen at left).

Some of those custom pieces often land Berberian’s clientele in the public eye. Because Elyse is the official jeweler to the Miss Universe Organization for several states in New England, Culpo’s win guarantees that Berberian’s jewels will appear on the new pageant queen as she appears in print and on TV across the country. She is his walking billboard, a 365-day advertisement that shows off his custom designs.

“When there is a new title holder, for the next year of her reign, I’ll dress her in my jewels for all major appearances and photo shoots,” says Berberian, who has similar arrangements with Miss Massachusetts USA Sarah Kidd and Miss Massachusetts Teen Madyson Milordi, as well as 2003 Miss USA Susie Castillo. (He even custom designed Castillo’s wedding bands.)

Berberian with Olivia Culpo, the reigning Miss Universe

But Berberian’s work isn’t only big with the hairspray and bikini crowd on the pageant circuit. He receives requests from celebrities like “American Idol” judge Randy Jackson, who sought out a diamond ring to sport on air during auditions. Former Boston Celtics star Kendrick Perkins even requested Berberian work with the Celtics’ team dentist to construct a diamond grill for him to wear in his mouth. And at the drop of a hat, Berberian fields calls to fly out to Hollywood, packing $800,000 worth of jewels (and a bodyguard in tow) to adorn celebrities for performances on shows like “So You Think You Can Dance” and Michael Flatley’s “Lord of the Dance.”

“It puts my work in front of a huge audience that probably wouldn’t otherwise see it,” Berberian says. “My best marketing is for somebody to walk out of here wearing a piece, and someone stops them, whether at a restaurant, or at a mall, and says, ‘What a beautiful piece! Where did you get it?’”

For serious buyers who are willing to throw down hundreds of thousands of dollars for custom jewels, Berberian is willing to go above and beyond the special treatment he bestows upon all his customers.

“A few months ago, we made a very significant ring for a woman in Florida,” says Berberian. “My wife said, ‘Okay, the ring is done, but she’s not coming up here to get it.’ So we said, you know what, let’s go for the week and deliver the ring. [The woman] was blown away. She got the perception from other jewelers that they were doing her a favor by waiting on her. She said, ‘I’m waiting to drop $150,000 on a ring, and I feel like they’re doing a favor waiting on me?’ So I got on a plane and went down and delivered the piece.”

But despite his comfortable seat at the top of the gemological industry, Berberian says he’s not looking to become the next Harry Winston.

“I mean, you could always use more business, but I’m not looking to build an empire. I’d like to continue my presence as the best place to go for an engagement ring. Once people have gone out and started shopping elsewhere and then they come here, the differences are alarming,” says Berberian. “Or so I’m told.”

Rug Life: Landry & Arcari Oriental Rugs and Carpeting

Jerry Arcari

When it comes to family and community, Landry & Arcari embraces its relationships with the strength of a well-tied knot. By Kiley Jacques – photographs by Jared Charney

It all began with Jerry Arcari’s after-school job in a Lawrence rug shop. His effort to earn a little pocket money quickly turned into a lifelong passion for the industry. Young Arcari was fascinated by the stories the rugs told of people and faraway places. The rugs he washed became a symbol of travel and commerce. It was this idea that has the North Andover native now saying, “Landry & Arcari: We bring the world to your feet.”

Following the flame ignited by his early job, Arcari pursued an apprenticeship with an Oriental rug expert from Beirut and spent 12 years working as a buyer for Jordan Marsh in Peabody. Then, in 1981, equipped with an impressive level of expertise, he and his wife, Connie, purchased Salem-based Landry Brothers Upholstery Furniture, whereupon the family-owned and -operated Landry & Arcari Oriental Rugs and Carpeting was born.

In time, the Arcari children—Jay, Julie, and Jeffrey—entered the business and now share ownership. Though establishing themselves in their current roles 15 to 20 years ago, all were required to work in the store as adolescents. On weekends, says the senior Arcari, “they were sweeping, flipping rugs, or doing whatever was necessary to make the business run properly.” Today, with a business management degree from Northeastern University, Julie Arcari, CEO, controls the finances; Jay, as operations manager, runs the Salem store and supervises rug installations; Jeffrey is the Orientals specialist, who does all overseas buying, controls production looms, manages the antique collections, and runs the restoration department; and father Jerry serves as senior adviser. Suffice it to say, the Arcaris are a very busy lot.

A third generation of the family is now lending a hand, too, with grandson Ben Cook—a student at Emerson College—taking an active role in the Boston store. “It’s the frosting on the cake for me to have my grandson and children in the business,” says Arcari. “I’m very, very fortunate and grateful for that.” He attributes their sustained interest and success in the business to the family’s ability to maintain balance, explaining that each of them has a distinct function and everyone plays an equally vital role. But, he notes, family comes first. “We’ve always said we would never let the business come between [us].” A fierce passion for the industry and a sustained commitment to familial ties, in concert with a long-ago ingrained work ethic, are at the root of Landry & Arcari’s good name.

An extension of this unyielding family bond comes in the form of community involvement—both locally and internationally. As supporters of Barakat, Inc.—a non-profit organization at work in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India to advance educational opportunities, especially for women and children—Landry & Arcari demonstrates a unique compassion for industry associates. Additionally, the company has helped build a school in India and contribute funds for a hospital currently under construction. Furthermore, proceeds from rug sales go back to the communities that made them. As former president of the Oriental Rug Dealers’ Association of Massachusetts and a member of the Oriental Rugs Retailers Association, the senior Arcari works in many capacities, ensuring that ethical guidelines for rug production are instituted and adhered to worldwide. It is this devotion to principles that gives Landry & Arcari its deserved credibility as a company with a conscience.

International working relationships began when a 19-year-old Jeffrey’s eagerness to travel led him to Afghanistan and India. He connected with people and saw a need for education and economic stimulation. Given his background, it made sense to start a production loom, and he did just that in tandem with another dealer. To this day, the Arcari family maintains close overseas ties, exchanging visits with weavers in Nepal, Pakistan, and India, where the Arcaris own looms. “[It’s] almost an extension of our family,” says Jerry Arcari. “Those relationships are cherished.” Jeffrey is now known worldwide for his ability to buy and buy correctly. He knows rugs and works well with older merchants and newer ones; he is the glue that keeps international relations strong.

Efforts to support non-profit endeavors for the betterment of society also include collaboration with Goodweave—an international organization working to prevent child labor by building schools and developing educational programs.Locally, Landry & Arcari cultivates a long-standing relationship with WBUR as its oldest advertiser; they also host fundraisers on behalf of the Peabody Essex Museum and have done so since its days as the Essex Institute. Furthering its education advocacy mission, Landry & Arcari holds free public lectures regularly. Presentations include information about antique and new rugs, weaving and rug repair, and the ever-popular topic of interior design.

Landry & Arcari still employs painstaking methods by hand.

At this stage in the game, Arcari works primarily in the company’s Boston store. He speaks fondly of his years spent surrounded by rugs and customers. “My favorite thing to do is work the floor. I love that,” he says. “It gives me an opportunity to work with clients that I’ve had for many years, and it keeps me in touch with all the products that are out there and available.” He describes how the advancement of technology has meant significant changes in the rug and carpet industry. “I started in the business in the Dark Ages,” Arcari says, joking that he adds the initials B.D. (before digital) after his name. Today, custom-designed, computer-generated images travel overseas with such speed that the idea for a rug can take shape on a loom within 24 hours; 20 years ago the process would have taken up to six weeks. Arcari notes that though the industry has changed, the process of making rugs remains the same; the knots are still tied by hand using traditional techniques that haven’t been touched by technology.

Custom-designed rugs now make up a large part of the business, sharing popularity with Belgium Wiltons, English Axminsters, and fine New Zealand carpets—to name but a few Landry & Arcari notables. Contemporary designs made of wools and silks are also en vogue—a trend that began about 10 years ago, when large antique Orientals fell out of favor as older suburbanites sold their spacious homes and moved into smaller city quarters. With the trading of historic homes for chic condos and brickstones came the desire for modern floor décor, alhough, as Arcari points out, Beacon Hill homes still “cry for antiques.” Another type of design, referred to as “Transitional,” is something between the old and the new; Arcari describes it as more moderate in its appeal. With each decade comes a traceable shift in trends—one Arcari compares to the age rings seen inside a cut tree.

Listening to Arcari talk about the industry makes one realize that buying a rug from Landry & Arcari is not just a matter of making a purchase; it’s also an educational opportunity in and of itself. “When we sell a rug, we let clients know where it was made and who made it,” he says. It’s this background information that excites him most. He explains how a $7,000 rug is inexpensive considering what goes into making it. “I’ve counted 22 different industries that are support[ing] the rug industry to get that rug on your floor.” He is referring, in part, to rearing and shearing sheep; spinning, dyeing, and drying wool; designing a rug; getting wool to the loom; weaving a rug; and shipping it to its final destination. To demonstrate the complexities of the process, he offers a 45-minute CD showing its entirety—from farm to floor.

The farmers, dyers, and weavers remain the constants in rug making, and they are what make the results so special. “The real thing,” says Arcari, “is the human spirit that goes into making a rug…it’s the person who’s woven that carpet and put it together.” Without that spirit, a rug is just a floor covering. “Some carpets,” he says, “just jump out of the pile at you. It’s a function of how it’s put together, as well as the materials that go into it.”

It’s this human element of traditional rug making that drives Arcari’s passion for the product, although it’s not just this spirit that makes a rug “sparkle,” as he puts it. The rug’s maker, materials, source, and design are all vital, but as Arcari explains, “If it doesn’t make you smile, it’s not the rug for you.” His goal is to help people find the rug that makes them walk into a room year after year and say, “Wow, I love that piece.” “That,” he says, “is the rug you’re searching for. You have to find the [one] that makes you smile.”

Family, both home and abroad, is the crux of Landry & Arcari’s success. Spirit, commitment, and compassion are woven into the fibers of their rugs and are the foundation of Jerry Arcari’s enterprise. “I want to do it all again,” says the patriarch. “If I could, I’d do it exactly the same [way]. It’s been a wonderful experience. The real gift is my three kids have the same passion for it.” His sentiment is part and parcel of his products. “A carpet that’s been in the family for generations is important—it carries the family’s history. Every rug becomes part of the family.”

Woodcarving With David Calvo

David Calvo

Ask David Calvo if he thinks woodcarving is a dying art and he’ll cut through the suggestion like a bandsaw through birch. By Andrew Conway- photograph by Joel Laino

“I’ve taught students from every state, as well as Canada and Mexico,” he says, referring to his ever-growing network of passionate craftsmen and women who come to his renowned woodcarving and sculpture studio and school in Gloucester to learn the ancient art for themselves.

“People think it’s a classical genre, and part of my job is to help them understand that woodcarving is a unique and dynamic skill that can have a very contemporary feel to it,” Calvo says. “When people take it out of the Queen Anne era and introduce it into the modern world, that’s where the imagination and skill of carving really shine.”

After training and working with some of the finest European woodcraftsmen, as well as teaching for 20 years, Calvo is supremely qualified to create unique custom designs and hand down his expertise.

Calvo’s classes, workshops, and seminars operate year round and vary in size from seven to 12 students. “I basically address everyone as a beginner, even if they’ve carved for a while,” he says, “because there are a lot of fundamentals that may have been self-taught and need to be relearned.” While most of Calvo’s students are amateurs, all hope to carve a niche for themselves in an array of personal projects, from home DIY jobs to creative woodcarving designs. Some even work on sharpening their skills to a professional level.

Regardless of people’s motivations, Calvo says woodcarving has a place in the modern world. “Arts and Crafts homebuilding is coming back into vogue, and people want to learn how to do things in their own home,” he says. “Carving is a hand skill where the human touch can personalize and add warmth to any environment.” davidcalvo.com

Wall Tale Updated designs and techniques give wallpaper new life.

Another home décor component—wallpaper—is being given a contemporary new twist by Wenham-based Zoe Design, which has specialized in murals, faux finishes, floors, stencils, Italian plasters, glazes, metal leaf, and panels for more than 30 years.

Co-owner Doug Garrabrants has struck on the ingenious idea of photographing sections of his artist wife Lena Fransioli’s exquisite hand-painted designs in ultra-high resolution, then repeating the digital image on a computer to create one-of-a-kind wallpaper.

Garrabrants is also experimenting with nature as inspiration for other unique wallpaper designs. “The detail in the digitized images is so good, you can’t tell it from the original,” he says. “Every bump and brushstroke is reproduced in minute detail. A homeowner or interior designer can come to us with a bit of shagreen or birchbark and I can make a wallpaper design of it.” zoe-design.com

Adam Benezra of Benezra Boxes

Adam Benezra

Adam Benezra knows just what you need for your next move. By Jeanne O’Brien Coffey – photograph by Shawn Negri

Fifteen years ago, when Adam Benezra started selling used moving boxes, recycling wasn’t cool yet. In fact, many of his friends at Gentle Giant Moving Company, where he’d been putting in 60- to 70-hour weeks as a crew chief, hassled him about his business idea. But he had been helping out with his aunt’s fledgling recycling business in Melrose, and he had been raised with a strong entrepreneurial spirit, so he knew he could make it work.

“Within a year, I was paying my mortgage,” Benezra brags of his company, Winchester-based Benezra Boxes. These days, demand for recycled boxes is so high that during the busy spring and summer moving season, when he sells as many as 3,000 boxes a week, he has to supplement his offerings with high-quality new boxes–still undercutting competitors when it comes to price.

Benezra and his company take the guesswork out of moving supplies. He’ll bring a van stocked with every conceivable kind of box to clients’ homes or businesses, check out everything that needs to be packed, then unload exactly what they need on the spot—all for less money than your average chain store retailer.

“When [people] are moving, no one has a clue what to do,” Benezra says. “I can walk through a house and know exactly what they need.”

When the recession hit in 2007, people stopped buying boxes and started handing off their used moving boxes to friends or tried to sell them on their own. That’s when Benezra began offering packing services. While he won’t name names, he has packed everyone from hedge fund managers to professional athletes, along with everything from prize mounted marlins to a set of fine china that was a gift from Prince Charles and the late Princess Diana. With such A-list moves under his belt, rest assured that your most treasured possessions are in good hands with Benezra. benezraboxes.com

Pack Like a Pro Adam Benezra’s tips for an efficient moving day

Size Matters Choosing the right box size is essential, according to Benezra. “People always get the wrong-size boxes,” he says. “They’ll put books in a box even the Incredible Hulk couldn’t lift.”

Top Shelf Lightweight crushable things like lampshades, dried flowers, or baskets should be put in boxes labeled “top load only.” This tells the movers to stack those boxes on top, keeping them from being crushed by heavier ones.

Unbreakable When packing china and other fragile items, use paper to create an even layer of cushioning in the bottom of the box, then pack dishes standing on edge—not flat. “This is what I call ‘the egg theory,’” Benezra says. “A lot of weight on an egg sideways will crush it. However, vertically, an egg can withstand much more pressure.” For more tips, visit benezraboxes.com.

Salvatores Opens Its Doors in Andover

Family Man: Sal Lupoli

Salvatore’s, the wildly popular and authentically Italian family of eateries, opens its doors in Andover.

Last November, Salvatore’s Restaurants celebrated the grand opening of its fifth outpost, located at 34 Park Street in Andover, by offering buy-one-get-one-free entrées. Such a move might be considered by some as little more than a marketing ploy, and while that might be partially true in this case, the offer also speaks to the generous nature of Sal Lupoli, the group’s affable founder and president.

Lupoli is, after all, a family man whose success in the restaurant business has done little to lead him astray of his naturally warm personality. But, as he tells it, his restaurant group’s success is thanks more to the genuine methods employed by his staff than to anything else. In fact, Lupoli is so devoted to maintaining that familial feel that despite operating restaurants in Lawrence, Medford, and Boston, he is still hesitant to refer to his business as a chain.

Looking back on the early days of his restaurants, Lupoli says, “We had a different vision. We wanted to blend in with the [area in which each restaurant is located]. Even though [the restaurants] all carry the same Salvatore name and same perceived value and quality, we just wanted something a little different [for each location].”

As for why he chose Andover for his latest location, Lupoli says, “The people are unique in Andover. They’re very family oriented. The location [in downtown Andover] is fabulous. It is a bedroom community. You want to be a part of that, and it’s something I’m very excited about.”

The new Salvatore’s will comprise nearly 140 seats, with outdoor seating and music a possibility in the summertime, according to Lupoli. “It’s going to be a very sexy and trendy place.”
“The free public parking lot will also be a huge plus for the downtown area,” Lupoli says. For anyone who has fruitlessly circled downtown Andover in search of a spot, Lupoli’s latter point will be well received.

Buzz and success aside, Lupoli’s motive in opening his first restaurant—and, thus, getting into the business—was touchingly pure. “I wanted to have a place for my father to hold court. My father had a lot of friends who always came to visit him at the pizza place [Sal’s, the family’s pizza restaurant]. I thought, ‘Now, he can go to the restaurant, and I can have a place to cook for my father.’ I just saw him at the head of the table and [thought], ‘What a way for him to enjoy the later part of his life.’”

Sadly, the restaurant wasn’t yet finished when Lupoli’s father passed away, but despite what he says could have been viewed as a reason to throw in the towel, Lupoli forged on. “Something in me said, ‘I have to see this forward. I have to show him that this was going to be his,” Lupoli says. His father, undoubtedly, would have been proud. salvatoresrestaurants.com. —Lindsay Lambert and Kayla Carignan

Rising Star: Chelsea Berry

Singer Chelsea Berry

Cape Ann native and singer Chelsea Berry is striking a chord in the music industry. By Jill Diver

When you listen to 29-year-old Chelsea Berry and her Joni Mitchell-type voice, you’d never guess that she was formally trained in opera and classical music. You’d be even more surprised to learn that she started touring at the age of 15, accepting every invitation she was given to play at festivals, coffeehouses, and bars. Right away, however, it’s plain to see that Berry is a woman who knows that her success depends on her commitment to hard work.

Berry, a Berklee College of Music alumna and Manchester-by-the-Sea resident, says that living in her Cape Ann town has been a great incubator for her folk music. “Folk music can be a narrow window,” she says. But it seems that even in such a niche genre, she has done well. She recently played with Marshall Crenshaw, best known for his songs like “Someday Someway” and “There She Goes Again,” and has opened for Chris Isaak, known best for his song “Wicked Game.” She’s even played at New York’s Carnegie Hall.

Until now, all of Berry’s work was based on folk music by the likes of Carole King. She explains that while her other albums “never had a cohesive idea to them—they were just songs that I put together,” she hopes that her new project will segue into something that’s more like a combination of Ani Difranco, Florence and the Machine, Sheryl Crow, and Alanis Morissette, complete with loud, rippy guitar.

Berry’s current project is titled Devil and the Deep Blue Sea. “The thing about this album is that I’m trying to get away from the singer-songwriter thing,” she says. “I’m trying to make the album have a more cohesive sound, and I want it to sound like a band and be a rock album.” Berry has already laid two tracks, which are, according to her, “so far, beyond awesome.”
Most of Berry’s recent shows have sold out, which is what her team expects of her February 9 show at the Shalin Liu Performance Center in Rockport. All the same, she continues to work toward new and ever-changing goals. “I’m hoping we’ll always be doing bigger shows,” she says.

Of her future, Berry says, “I’m interested in always doing something different and not settling for anything…I would rather be doing something I love and not [making] any money. Any other way and I don’t function.”Although she’s happy with her musical life as it is, Berry says she’s finally signing contracts and earning “legit money.” “It’s not for tips anymore,” she says.
Devil and the Deep Blue Sea is a work in progress, and the message Berry wants to send is one she says she tries to convey all the time: “Take care of each other. [The idea] comes from my dad. He’s always said, ‘Do something good for someone and don’t tell them.’ I love to inspire people to go out in the world and do good.” chelseaberry.com.

Pat Brown Talks Happily Ever After

Pat Brown

Love Proctor. Talking “happily ever after” with Rockport Town Clerk Pat Brown. By Kiley Jacques

Pat Brown, Rockport’s town clerk, is a big part of the marriage process. She’s one of the first faces couples see when they’re ready to take the plunge, so she’s borne witness to her fair share of excitement, tears, and fears. Serving as Justice of the Peace means keeping an eye on community affairs, documenting memorable occasions, and storing a mighty history inside the old Town Hall.

What’s the historical role of town clerks in providing marriage certificates? Early town clerks were paid with the fees they collected. Some clerks in Massachusetts still keep a portion of the fees they collect. As keepers of records, town clerks would gather information, and sometimes it would take months for things to be recorded. Physicians were not as prevalent as they are today, and often births would be [documented] months after the event when parents or midwives would [report] the information. With marriages, couples had to file a marriage intention before they were issued a marriage certificate. Town clerks filed the intentions, issued the certificates, and were paid a fee for performing ceremonies as Justices of the Peace.

Any typical couples’ blunders? One of the major hang-ups [couples have] is which name they will use after marriage. I’ve seen people in tears at the counter, arguing over whether or not they will change their names. Also, in Rockport, there is a fee of $20 to file a marriage intention; I’ve had couples argue over who is going to pay the fee and others insist on splitting it.

How far back do the town of Rockport’s marriage records go? Rockport’s records date back to when it was incorporated, on February 27, 1840. Prior to that, records would have been kept in Gloucester. The first couple to file an intention was Mr. Robert Eaton and Miss Betsy Smith on March 11, 1840. They both lived in Rockport and the intention was published on March 15, 1840. They were married by Reverend Wakefield Gale (a graduate of Phillips Academy in Andover) on March 24, 1840.

Any advice for couples taking the plunge? One thing that couples are not aware of when they file a marriage intention is that there is a three-day waiting period between when an intention is filed and when a marriage certificate is issued. There are also legal impediments to marriage in Massachusetts like “No man shall marry his mother, grandmother, granddaughter, sister, stepmother, grandfather’s wife, grandson’s wife, wife’s mother, wife’s grandmother…” [the list goes on!] town.rockport.ma.us

Kori Feener

Filmmaker Kori Feener gives voice and vision to six months on “The People’s Trail” with her deeply personal documentary. By Kiley Jacques

For 29-year-old Topsfield native Kori Feener, walking 2,184 miles from Georgia to Maine was nothing short of life changing. When she headed out one March day, all Feener knew was that there was a film to be made. So, with a pair of solid boots, a worthy backpack, two tiny GoPro Hero2 cameras, and one heavy audio recorder in tow, Feener hit the Appalachian Trail hard, with sights set on finding her story.

Inspired by the likes of Ross McElwee, David Fincher, Kathryn Bigelow, and Sofia Coppola, Feener, who is completing an MFA in media art at Emerson College, approaches film as an interactive tool. “Your subject needs to be relatable,” she says, “and what they are saying needs to be emotional; there has to be some sort of connection between your audience and the film.”

The act of filming, for Feener, is itself a way to get people to open up, though she is quick to note the challenge of filming subjects in a time marked by media mania. “When you pull out a camera,” she says, “people are wary.” Attributing that wariness to troubling Internet misrepresentation, Feener is gratified by what she calls her “ability to make people feel at ease” despite the camera in her hand. And that’s just what she did in the making of Alpine Zone as she met, spoke with, and bonded with countless folks tromping the trail.

With titles to her credentials including shorts “Wrigley and King,” “Mission: Sneak,” and “It’s Personal,” as well as the full-length documentary Where There is a Will, Feener has a deep well of future film ideas, including the story of a chilling 1978 murder that occurred across the street from her home. Editing, shooting, and producing films for more than 10 years has taught her some valuable professional lessons, not least of which she says is “keeping the integrity of the subjects [I’m] shooting.”

In the next few months, Feener will begin the lengthy process of submitting her banjo-, steel guitar-, and fiddle-accompanied Alpine Zone to a number of film festivals. Locally, the Boston Underground, the Hampton, and possibly the new Beverly Film Festivals are on her radar.

While on the trail, Feener never strayed far from her camera, despite having to keep herself nourished, sleep alone in the deep woods, and walk mile after mile trying to make her deadline. She learned about other people and about herself, and she found what’s at the heart of it all: “Ambition,” she says, “is a huge part of anything we do.” kickstarter.com/projects/628286646/alpine-zone.

Food Revolution

Corey Marcoux, Nancy Batista-Caswell, chef Patrick Soucy

Corey Marcoux, Nancy Batista-Caswell, and Patrick Soucy

At Ceia Kitchen + Bar in Newburyport and its brand new sister restaurant Brine, diners enter an adventurous world of forward-thinking fare without being pushed too far from their comfort zone. By Jeanne O’Brien Coffey – Photographs by Fawn DeViney

Think your holiday season is hectic? Nancy Batista-Caswell, proprietor and wine director at Ceia Kitchen + Bar in Newburyport, most likely has yours topped. Two days after Christmas, Batista-Caswell and her chefs will be cooking at James Beard House in New York City—the first restaurant team in Newburyport ever to be invited to that prestigious kitchen. Four days later, Ceia (pronounced SAY-yah) will serve a sumptuous New Year’s Eve prix fixe meal, plus brunch on New Year’s Day, then shutter for a move across the street to reopen in less than a week in a new space with triple the number of seats. Then, at the beginning of February, just in time for Valentine’s Day, she plans to debut Brine, a new raw bar/chop house, in the space formerly occupied by Ceia.

It’s an ambitious schedule, but not at all daunting for the 30-year-old Batista-Caswell, who, at age 19, was working as an assistant general manager for celebrity chef Chris Schlesinger at his Westport restaurant, the Back Eddy, while simultaneously earning a degree in business with a minor in hotel and restaurant management from Johnson & Wales in Providence, RI.

“[Schlesinger] taught me that the restaurant experience should be genuine, the food should be simple, and that it should really be a group effort,” Batista-Caswell says.

That philosophy has been a winning one for Batista-Caswell. Since opening in late 2010, Ceia has drawn accolades from Zagat, Boston magazine, The Boston Globe, and, of course, Northshore for its blend of welcoming hospitality and creative cuisine.

Batista-Caswell’s focus on hospitality begins the minute a customer walks in the door. When she opened Ceia, she brought in local etiquette expert Jodi R.R. Smith (Smith has also been featured in our pages) to train the staff with the goal of making all guests feel welcome and important. The strategy paid off so well that she plans to invite Smith back to train the new hires in January.

“We want to recognize everyone,” Batista-Caswell explains. “Anyone who comes in the door can become a loyal customer. We [need to] win them so that when they have money to spend, they are going to spend it with us.” To that end, servers even walk guests to the door after dinner, shaking hands and thanking them for dining at the restaurant. “Our wait staff knows that these are the steps that make service memorable,” she says. “We want to know people’s names, how they heard about us, and what their experience was like.”

Of course, all of this excellent service would be useless without great food, but as the James Beard invitation proves, Ceia is indeed making its customers very happy. Executive Chef Patrick Soucy, who joined the restaurant in early 2012, is passionate about every part of every dish he creates, from the hand-snipped baby salad greens he helped plant, to the house-made mustard that blooms for three weeks before serving, and to the best pan for searing pumpkin (cast iron, if you’re wondering).

“Being a European restaurant, [Ceia doesn’t] cut any corners,” Soucy says. “Whether or not the customer knows that, hopefully when they taste [our food], they understand.”

: Corey Marcoux, Nancy Batista-Caswell, and Patrick Soucy

: Ceia’s squash salad

: Cast iron skillet

: Halibut dish at Brine

: King Salmon at Brine

: Bar at Ceia

: Dining table at Ceia

: Ceia’s copper-topped bar

Soucy is out at local farms just about every day, planting, tasting, and getting his hands dirty as he works hard to source the best ingredients. What he aspires to do with those ingredients is to challenge diners, bringing them outside their comfort zones just a step at a time. As an example, Soucy points to one of the menu items introduced for fall— Ricotta and Beef Lingua Ravioloni. While beef tongue, the star of the dish, is unfamiliar to many North Shore diners, this preparation is evocative of something they are very familiar with—pot roast. The house-made ravioli, served on a potato purée that forms the sauce, with roasted local baby root vegetables and aged balsamico, is reminiscent of the best pot roast you’ve ever had.

“I love the way that I’m challenged to serve beef tongue in Newburyport, Massachusetts, and make it successful,” Soucy says. “It’s marketing. It’s psychology.” It’s also where Soucy hopes American cuisine is headed. “This is what American food should be,” he says, adding. “We are a new land—we don’t even know what we’re doing yet.” Europe has had thousands of years to evolve its food culture, Soucy explains. “In coastal New England, in 400 or 500 years, we’ll know exactly who we are.”

In the meantime, Soucy will soon have a much larger audience to charm with the restaurant’s coastal European food roots interpreted through the lens of what’s local and fresh on the North Shore. Ceia will be moving across the street to the space formerly occupied by Rockfish, a popular local eatery co-owned since 2001 by Batista-Caswell’s husband, Jeff Caswell. The new space will have 150 seats on three levels, with the first floor replicating the current Ceia—right down to the copper bar, which will also be moving to the new space. Batista-Caswell envisions the second floor will feel like dining in her own home, while the third floor will be a sophisticated lounge, allowing for an expansion of the restaurant’s inventive signature cocktail list.

Brine, the restaurant that will occupy Ceia’s old space, will be somewhat of a departure from the typical Newburyport restaurant design, with a marble bar, stainless steel and black accents, and architectural lights lending more of a funky feel. The centerpiece will be the raw bar, with cooks shucking oysters and prepping other raw delicacies right out front. “I told the designer I want that to be the art—people shucking oysters and diners seeing how awesome and fresh everything is,” Batista-Caswell says.

While a traditional raw bar is familiar to denizens of the North Shore, Brine will also be introducing the Newburyport dining scene to crudo—European-style raw seafood. Chef Soucy’s longtime friend and former coworker Corey Marcoux—the pair worked together at Not Your Average Joe’s, helping the chain to open new restaurants—will be stepping into the executive chef position at the new restaurant.

“People in this area have really changed their attitudes about food,” Marcoux says, noting that he thinks the dining scene is ready for something new. “Nancy has been thinking about this for a long time. She knows what the area needs.”

That isn’t to say there won’t be a learning curve, but Batista-Caswell believes Newburyport is up to the challenge. “Crudo requires a bit of confidence from everybody to jump into the idea of eating raw fish like that,” she says. “But the educational part is the best part when you are dealing with a guest. To hear them say, ‘Wow! That was delicious.’ When you know maybe it’s the first time they’ve had that dish, [it’s] very satisfying.”

Gaining guests’ trust doesn’t come without service from a staff that is passionate and well educated. To that end, every Friday servers taste new wines destined for the specials board, which are often paired with the specials Soucy has prepared. New additions that prove popular with guests are often added to the wine list, so staff has tasted most of the wine offered in the restaurant. Additionally, every other month, Batista-Caswell holds meetings that last around three hours to educate staff on food and wine, as well as to discuss any concerns or ideas her employees may have.

While Batista-Caswell is clearly central to the success of Ceia, she is quick to give credit to her team. “All of the uniqueness and passion that our staff has [is what] created the Ceia that everyone wants to be a part of.” Batista-Caswell believes that combination has been the key to Ceia’s success and will be the key to her operation’s continued growth. “It’s really about creating memories,” she says. “Restaurants need to do that.” ceia-newburyport.com. ●n

Bar at Ceia

Skip the Chardonnay and Pass on the Pinot
At Ceia, the mission is to open patrons’ eyes not only to new types of cuisine, but also to a whole new world of wine.

At most restaurants these days, Pinot Noir is the most popular wine by the glass. Not so at Ceia, notes proprietor and wine director Nancy Batista-Caswell. In fact, that’s way down near the bottom of what patrons drink at her restaurant, which has been twice honored by Wine Spectator for its wine list.

“I wanted to provide Newburyport and the area with wines that people weren’t familiar with, wines that would become unique to the space,” Batista-Caswell says. “We spend time with our guests, selecting a glass most suitable for their palates.” So instead of a buttery California Chardonnay, customers might be guided toward a Petite Arvine from Valle d’Aosta, a grape indigenous to Northern Italy packed with apricot and honeysuckle.

Batista-Caswell credits her upbringing for her interest in and success with wine. Her father is an importer of Portuguese wines (and provides many of the gems on Ceia’s menu), and her grandfather used to make his own wine.

These days, she says, the Wine Spectator awards have opened a lot of doors for the restaurant. “Our reputation for quality and excellence has allowed Ceia to offer wines that many [restaurants] cannot [offer],” she says, adding that this holiday season, Ceia is only one of two restaurants in all of New England pouring Henriot Rose Brut Champagne. With offerings like this, patrons are likely to be surprised by the wine-by-the-glass program, which includes many bottles unique to Ceia.

“Our wine-by-the-glass program isn’t normal,” Batista-Caswell says. “We have a lot of boutique pours that are not traditionally offered by the glass, at a price point that pairs well with our menu.”

It isn’t just the unique nature of her wine list, which is heavy on boutique vineyards of the Old World (Italy, France, Portugal, and Spain), that attracted the attention of Wine Spectator—it’s also the pricing. When it comes to markup, however, Batista-Caswell says it isn’t a set formula, but a flexible system. “Sometimes, I don’t mark up the wine at all because I want people to experience it,” she says. “I want people to come to Ceia not just for food, but for wine.”

Engines of Change: GE Aviation

Since the 1940s, the brilliant minds at GE Aviation’s facility in Lynn have been revolutionizing air travel. By Scott Kearnan

Entrance to private GE campus

It’s the american dream: Build something big out of something small, watch it take flight, and then be rewarded by moving up a chain of command. But in the information age, when many people are pouring their sweat and elbow grease into cyberspace instead of onto an assembly line, that sort of sentimentality sounds hopelessly nostalgic.

You might think you’d have to time travel back to Mayberry to see such old-school ingenuity in action. Instead, set your coordinates to Lynn, home of one of the original GE Aviation facilities. It was here in the early 1940s that General Electric revolutionized air travel by designing, manufacturing, and demonstrating America’s first successful jet engine.

Now, over 70 years later, GE Aviation has become the world’s leading producer of jet engines for commercial and military aircraft. Its Lynn plant is a centerpiece to the local economy; it employs 3,200 workers, making it the largest employer in Lynn and one of the largest on the entire North Shore. It continues to develop groundbreaking products while functioning as a reminder of milestones in aviation history.

One man preserving that history is David Carpenter. The Danvers retiree has written six books on GE Aviation’s Lynn facility and is the curator of the plant’s Jet Pioneers Museum—a small but tenderly cared for space where a timeline of engines and other machines shows the evolution of the company and its technologies. Carpenter is a walking encyclopedia of aviation, able to fire off facts, figures, and engine model numbers in the way some people spout baseball stats. But there is also an earnestness with which this warm and friendly man reflects on the company, his time there, and his responsibility of documenting its history. “When a place educates you, gives you a good life, cares for your family’s health—you have to give back,” he says, smiling.

David Carpenter on the job at GE Aviation in earlier days

In 1963, Carpenter moved down from Maine to take part in an apprenticeship program that GE’s Lynn facility ran from about 1897 to 1989. General Electric was born (well, sort of) in Lynn, formed by an 1892 merger between the North Shore plant and a New York facility, and it played a huge role in the Second Industrial Revolution. For decades, GE’s renowned apprenticeship program lured young people like Carpenter to the Lynn plant, which by the mid-1940s was dedicated to GE’s aviation manufacturing. “Poor boys from Maine and locally, who couldn’t afford an education, would come here,” says Carpenter. In Lynn, the apprentices would be exposed to everything from management training to the manufacturing floor, where workers built and tested engines for military aircraft and commercial airplanes. GE paid Carpenter’s way through Northeastern University, and by night he worked at the plant.

Carpenter also worked his way up. His first job, while he waited for the apprenticeship program to start, was at the bottom of the totem pole. “They told me I was going to be a servicer. I thought that meant I’d be checking oil and filters,” he chuckles. “Basically, I was a janitor. I took out the trash.” By the time he retired in 1999, Carpenter was a sales manager. Now he continues to volunteer as its historian, a keeper of its place in the community. “Working here was like working for your mother. [GE] was good to me,” explains Carpenter.

It’s that kind of nose-to-the-grindstone American work ethic, the kind that can build a career from scratch or an engine from thousands of parts, that keeps GE Aviation in Lynn a vital business. The rambling campus off Route 107 stretches over 220 acres and contains over 20 buildings. The “city within a city,” as Carpenter calls it, has boasted everything from a 12,000-square-foot health and fitness center to a restaurant and auditorium; at one point, it even produced its own weekly newspaper. But most important, of course, is its manufacturing space—all 1.5 million square feet of it. The facility creates specific parts that are supplied to other GE Aviation facilities and it designs, produces, and assembles entire aircraft engines from start to finish.

Of course, engine model numbers may not be as recognizable as a brand name, like Pepsi, and they don’t come with snazzy slogans, either. But you’ve probably reaped the benefits of GE Aviation’s creations without even knowing it, as products for commercial jets represent about a third of what comes out of Lynn. That includes the CF34 engine, launched by GE in 1992 and credited for kick-starting the commercial regional jet industry. It’s now the best-selling engine of its kind, with over 5,000 in use today. That means that somewhere in the world, one is lifting off the ground every eight seconds, according to GE. In fact, if you’ve ever hopped a regional flight on a major carrier such as Jet Blue, your trip was probably powered by a CF34.

Assembling the F414 engine

The other two-thirds of products created at the Lynn plant are for military aircraft. That explains why the building—which, from the road, could be mistaken for a prison complex —is so highly secure. (In a post-9/11 world, background checks are required for visitors like customers and suppliers to get inside certain buildings, while employees can only access areas based on their restriction level.) The F414 engine is built soup to nuts here; it powers the military’s famed Apache and Black Hawk helicopters, the Navy’s Super Hornet fighter jet, and the T700, the most popular medium-sized helicopter engine in the Western world.

In addition to the building of these cornerstone engines, development of new technologies is always happening at Lynn, says the facility’s spokesperson Richard Gorham. The site’s engineers are a think tank that is constantly buzzing with ideas on how to create new materials, parts, or products that are more powerful, more durable, more fuel efficient, and greener than the last. The best new ideas might become prototypes used in pitching clients, such as the U. S. military. It’s those successful pitches that result in the multi-year, multi-million-dollar contracts that keep GE Aviation purring like one of its own engines.

More importantly, the products developed in Lynn keep America’s servicemen and women safe, says Ralph Gray. Gray has worked in the engine assembly area for 28 years, building and prepping for inspection engines like the T700. He says what keeps him motivated are the stories he hears from customers who have experienced firsthand the value of his work on the line. He was visited by an army sergeant who was critically wounded in the Middle East but was saved by a chopper with a GE Aviation engine. He’s heard stories about how overhauled parts have helped add 50 knots of speed to an aircraft, which makes a big difference when you’re evading enemy fire. And he’s seen with his own eyes the battle-worn yet still-working parts from returned aircraft that were able to return their pilots along with them. “When you realize [service men and women] came back because of the product you made, it’s a proud moment,” says Gray, sporting a sweatshirt with an American flag and the words “Support Our Troops.”

But Gray also feels loyal to GE Aviation because of the support it showed to him, he adds. Though he was once laid off, the company rehired Gray when it was able to do so. GE took that loyalty a step further when Gray’s 13-year-old son became infected with Triple E, a virus with a high mortality rate. It was a serious situation; his son had severe brain swelling and was put into a medically induced coma to prevent irreversible brain damage. He spent 20 days in Boston’s Children Hospital and required regular rehabilitation after his release. Throughout the ordeal, GE gave Gray as much time as he needed to be there for his son.

“It was no questions asked. It was just, ‘Go take care of your family,’” says Gray, tears welling in his eyes. “I get emotional talking about it, because I don’t know if many businesses would do that.”

Then again, a company that thrives on a good old-fashioned American ethos would certainly include support of family values as one of the perks. geaviation.com. ●n

North Shore’s Authors

The North Shore is home to a prolific community of authors whose ties—to the area and to one another—run deep. By Julie Batten

Notable titles by North Shore authors

Kevin Carey

Kevin Carey is a writer—not a very famous one (yet), but like so many writers, a man who “writes because I can’t imagine not writing.” As an English professor at Salem State University and the author of a new volume of poetry that just came out last spring, The One Fifteen to Penn Station, he’ll be the first to tell you that “poetry starts in the gut, not in the head.”

Carey writes about growing up in Revere, playing basketball with a high school team that slayed giants, fatherhood, and “places I’ve been, people I’ve known.” As a longtime member of the Salem Writers Group, which meets twice monthly at the Athenaeum in Salem, Carey has been writing everything from plays to poetry to essays to documentary films since the ’90s. “The writing community on the North Shore is a lot larger than people realize—and a lot busier,” he says.

“The kind of commitment to the arts that you expect of a literary haven like Cambridge has migrated, says Askold Melnyczuk, founder of Boston’s internationally renowned literary journal, AGNI magazine, and author of numerous award-winning books, including House of Widows and Ambassador of the Dead (as well as the forthcoming Smedley’s Secret Guide to World Literature). “No longer is the cultural calendar under central control of a handful of gatekeepers.”

Askold Melnyczuk

Melnyczuk is an English professor at UMass Boston and Bennington Writing seminars and originally founded AGNI with the intention of creating a platform for promising young writers to debut their work alongside seasoned professionals. Therefore, he knows how to grow writers and the communities they inhabit. Melnyczuk sees the wealth of writing organizations springing up and literary events taking place in the area outside of the city as inevitable, with technology making it “difficult to think about geographic place of birth because [the process of creating] seems to be universal.” Quite simply, good writing begets good writing, and it’s here on the North Shore by the droves.

On a recent Saturday night at Jabberwocky Bookshop in Newburyport, the folks who run the Tannery Reading Series there invited renowned writer Andre Dubus III and first-time author Anthony D’Aries to read excerpts from their memoirs to a standing room-only crowd. Dubus’s Townie and D’Aries’s The Language of Men promised to deliver “red-blooded, blue-collared stories about dishing manhood in the 21st century,” and they didn’t disappoint. Sidling up to the podium in cowboy boots and Doc Martens respectively, Dubus and D’Aries delivered, with a stilling candor, moving accounts of their upbringings, their relationships with their fathers, their children, and their adolescent battlegrounds.

Anthony D’Aries

“So, what does it really mean to be a man?” jibed Karen Kapur, one of the founders of the series (which will be moving to the Peabody Essex Museum in 2013).“I used to think it meant using your fists,” said Dubus, a Haverhill native. “But I can tell you that I’ve never felt more like a man than when I’ve held my children in my arms as they slept.”

Dubus, a Guggenheim Fellowship recipient, chose to live and raise his children in the Newburyport area because “there’s a physical beauty here that is good for the soul.” With such titles as House of Sand and Fog and The Garden of Last Days behind him and another feature film in development (The Citizen), it makes a case for looking out the window with pen in hand. Dubus claims that reading a smattering of poems each morning also helps him slide into the subterranean channels of his imagination. “Making art doesn’t feel good—most of what [writers] unearth [is what] most people don’t want to unearth.”

That morning poetry is Dubus’s way into a creative space could please few people more than it does January Gill O’Neil, executive director of Mass Poetry and author of her own volume of poetry, Underlife. In collaboration with Salem State University, O’Neil has been working alongside fellow poet and Mass Poetry founder Michael Ansara since the festival was first held in Lowell in 2009. The event brings poets together from all over New England to share their words and teach workshops to all who attend the three-day celebration. “There is a convergence of art and talent and interested people who care about poetry and connecting to the unique synergy that is the North Shore’s literary community,” says O’Neil. “People are gravitating toward a shared experience—it’s something that Twitter and Facebook can’t offer.”

Andrew Dubus III

This year, the poetry festival will feature Academy of American Poets Chancellor Sharon Olds, as well as Terrence Hayes, Tracy K. Smith, and Nick Flynn, among others. Once again, downtown Salem will throw open its doors to poets and their poetry from May 3-5. Readings and workshops will take place in bookstores, restaurants, gift shops, the Old Town Hall, on trolleys headed across town, and amid the Old World charm of the Gables. Headlining events will be held at the Peabody Essex Museum, whose atrium each year becomes the backdrop for such literary gurus as Mark Doty and Major Jackson.

“The North Shore is absolutely a literary center, of course, and has been since its founding,” says Newburyport resident and award-winning poet Rhina Espaillat. Her own group, the Powow River Poets, which includes such notable talents as Mike Juster, Alfred Nicol, Debra Warren, Len Krisak, and Bill Coyle, was started 20 years ago, when Espaillat moved to the area from New York City. As a group that meets bi-monthly to workshop their poetry at the public library in Newburyport, they have been coaching each other for the past 20 years, racking up quite a share of such prestigious honors as the Robert Penn Warren and Robert Frost Book Awards, among others. The group will be presenting again this year at the Newburyport Literary Festival, an event that showcases all genres, on April 26 and 27.

January Gill O’Neil

Espaillat’s other group, Melopoeia, which in translation means “the making of poems or music,” is a performance collaboration between herself and fellow Powow poet Alfred Nicol, set to the music of John Tavano and vocalist Ann Tucker. Espaillat joins a few other area poets who have turned to this amped-up literary delivery, including Robert Pinsky, former Poet Laureate of the United States, whose work with Grammy Award-winning pianist Laurence Hobgood was on tap at the Regatta Bar in Boston last year and is the focus of his recently released CD, PoemJazz. Confluence, a piano and poetry duet featuring J.D. Scrimgeour, founder of the Salem Writers Group and professor of English at Salem State University (SSU), and renowned musician Phillip Swanson, is also of this new hybrid blend of genre. “I love knowing of all the possibilities that exist for people, especially young people, to get drawn into literature and poetry in the area,” says Espaillat.

In Lynn, poet Enzo Surin couldn’t agree more. When he started up the City Unplugged Coffeehouse there, it was with the intent of engaging non-traditional reading communities in the literary scene “in a way that wasn’t intimidating,” he says. “We also wanted it to be family friendly, so that there would be no added expense [for childcare] to coming out to listen and share.”

Surin, who grew up in a tough part of Queens, NY, found early on that writing was his way out. “Literacy was a way for me to escape the neighborhood and see it from a different perspective; what I understand now, though, is that my function as an author is diminished if the people I am writing for can’t read my work.” The poet, a Pushcart Prize nominee who teaches at SSU and Bunker Hill Community College, has published his own volume of poems, Higher Ground and has seen the impact of his open mic readings in “so many moments where the light clicks on and someone’s face lights up because something has been expressed that would have otherwise been lost.”

Faces lit up on a recent Saturday afternoon in Gloucester, when the Gloucester Writers Group, in collaboration with the Cape Ann Museum, and the Charles Olson Society hosted a conversation about poetry with Anne Waldman. As a poet, Waldman is arguably one of the great literary voices of our time. Having caught the attention of the Beat Generation’s Allen Ginsburg, Waldman traveled extensively with the Rolling Thunder Revue, a poetry caravan of sorts that attracted musicians like Joan Baez, Joni Mitchell, and Joe Cocker in the ’70s. She later co-founded the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at the Naropa Institute (now Naropa University) in Boulder, CO, where she remains a Distinguished Professor of Poetics and the director of Naropa’s famous summer writing program. Waldman’s poetry is as beautifully startling as her über-theatrical delivery of it.

That a poet such as Waldman should be reading on Cape Ann rather than in some swanky gallery on Newbury Street is not at all surprising. After all, the North Shore’s literary heritage is extensive, with names like Nathaniel Hawthorne, John Updike, Anne Bradstreet, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and Charles Olson existing in the same milieu as Rhina Espaillat, Andre Dubus III, Askold Melnyczuk, and all the Kevin Careys in the world climbing their way to the forefront. Says Espaillet with regard to the preponderance of talent and literary happenings in the area: “A rising tide raises all boats.” ●n

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The Wedding Singers

The Flipside Crew

Corin Ashley, Singer, Flipside, Malden. By Kiley Jacques

His job: Singer/guitarist in the wedding band Flipside.

His bandmates: “I’m the classic rock guy, and I play a lot of acoustic guitar; our lead singers are a bit younger and more attuned to what’s happening in Top 40 pop. We have a monster soulful Hammond organ player, and an awesome drummer; the sax player is a jazz genius—he’s from Barbados, so he’s got the island vibe. Our bass player is a professor at Berklee; plus, everybody in the band sings.”

Favorite covers: “The songs that make people yell ‘Wooo!’ involuntarily and run to the dance floor. There’s nothing like the honest joy people feel when they hear a song they love.”

Favorite North Shore venue: “All of them! But I particularly enjoy playing at the Crane Estate, and the team at the Peabody Essex Museum is always great. I really like Willowdale in Topsfield, too. I think that’s a great spot to do an acoustic guitar cocktail hour.”

Silliest thing a wedding guest has done: “I [saw] a man fall down on the dance floor and get up and continue dancing with a wine glass stuck in his back. I’ve got some good stories, but I’m saving them for my book someday.” murrayhilltalent.com/product/boston-band-flipside

Pair Of Aces: Maria Lekkakos and Marc Harris

Harris and Lekkakos

Individually, Maria Lekkakos and Marc Harris own successful salons on the North Shore and in Boston, respectively. Together, the newlywed couple is a force to be reckoned with, pouring their passion into industry projects—and a new life together at home. By Karyn Polewczyk

A Chance Encounter
Perhaps it was destiny that brought together Maria Lekkakos, the former Miss Massachusetts-turned-proprietor of the eponymous Wenham salon and spa, M. Lekkakos, and Marc Harris, a South Boston native with a West Coast rockstar vibe. Both were drawn to the salon industry at a young age—she became an esthetician at 19; as a teenager, he felt inspired by his first Newbury Street haircut—and both went on to carve out paths that would lead to their subsequent rises to the top. Despite these similarities, and despite traveling in the same social circles for years, it wasn’t until a mutual friend introduced them at a party that the spark ignited. Maria’s smile—“that big, warm, vivacious smile”—plus a firm handshake (“very important,” he adds) left Marc intrigued—and inspired— by the woman who would eventually become his wife.

Lekkakos, who maintains the poise and polish of her days as a beauty queen, says it was Harris’s firsthand understanding of the salon and spa industry that stood out and helped forge their connection. “I’d had relationships where my boyfriends didn’t want me to succeed,” she says. “Marc gets it. He’s strong, he’s independent, he’s driven, and I love that about him.”

Five years of dating, four salons, two cities, and one joint venture later, the couple was engaged—and then came that big fancy (Greek) wedding.

“M&M”
Of planning the couple’s wedding, Lekkakos says, “I kept saying I wanted things to look dramatic, and Marc would say he saw dollar signs.” It was rumored that the bride’s desire for drama include a yacht, which was said to have transported the couple between their Greek Orthodox ceremony and their lavish reception (attended by former Miss USA Shandi Finnessey and Congressman Steven Lynch, among other A-listers) at the Boston Harbor Hotel. No yacht, it turns out, but there was plenty of sophistication. The couple worked closely with their vendors (including Andrianna’s of Exeter, NH—who was “there every step of the way,” raves Lekkakos) so that every detail of their August 2012 wedding, down to each guest’s place setting, had a touch of “M&M.”

“It was about cultivating this taste of happiness, this extension of our everyday style: luxurious, contemporary, modern. I viewed the wedding planning the same way I’d view planning a business,” Lekkakos says.

The couple cite their rock-solid foundation as the core of their partnership. “There was a moment of realization at the reception [when we thought], ‘We’re together, we’re one,’” says Harris. “You could feel the love and support in the room. It was very powerful.” Lekkakos nods, adding, “It gave me a high to see everyone so happy—that we got to see everyone just have the time of their lives. I’ll have those memories forever. The material stuff just doesn’t matter.”

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On Working Apart
“I don’t want to [run my business like] Salon Marc Harris,” Lekkakos says. “And he doesn’t want to [run his business like] M. Lekkakos Salon & Spa. But we think of how we can make each other’s individual brands stronger; we give each other advice. It works for us.”

That also means a different approach to management. Harris has an operational team to help with his staff of 100; his role, he says, is to massage the relationship between team members—“the gray area,” he calls it. He also spends up to three days a week behind his chair, providing the sleek signature styles for which his salons are known. “I love the art of cutting hair. I love fashion. I love style. I’m a passionate person,” he says.

Lekkakos, on the other hand, is fully engaged in managing her staff of 12—no easy task, says Harris, who spent his own time in the trenches while building his empire. “She wears a lot of hats,” he says, “so she’s driven, she’s task-oriented, and she has success in mind.” Lekkakos admits to picking her husband’s brain for inspiration as the salon side of her business evolves; Harris also relies on Lekkakos as a sounding board for trends in the spa industry.

“Our mantras are different,” Harris says. “Hers is, ‘Hurry up, let’s get going.’ Mine is, ‘Let’s make it happen, and if you hurry up, it’s a job done poorly.’ She says, ‘No, not if it’s the right track.’ We spar. We laugh about it. But you know what?” he asks, glancing again at Lekkakos with a smile. “She’s right.”

Working Together
Inspired by the success of Restaurant Week, the couple in 2010 began to lay out plans for a similar concept within the salon industry, where top salons would borrow Restaurant Week’s discounted pricing model as a way to attract new clients and create a buzz. In April 2012, Salon Week was born; it ran successfully again in October, including salons from Massachusetts, New Jersey, and New York, with another one in the works. “Salon Week encompasses an energy the industry is hungry for,” Harris says. “We know we’re on the first step of the ladder. We want to bring this nationwide. Yeah, we’ve got a mountain to climb—but this is special, and we’re tenacious.”

So are there are any additional plans for collaboration, like a product line, perhaps, or a co-branded salon? After acknowledging the intensity of their individual pursuits and the dedication needed to continue with Salon Week, neither sees the potential for additional joint projects just yet. Lekkakos’s clients will make sure of that, too—they’re constantly checking in to make sure M. Lekkakos Salon & Spa is staying put in Wenham. “I grew up in Rockport,” she says, “and I love Wenham, how beautiful it is, and my clients.”

At the end of the work day, the couple retires to their home in the Back Bay (“I get the best of both worlds,” says Lekkakos, referring to her scenic commute up the coast). They admit it can be difficult to turn the switch to “off”—especially when they share so many of the same career joys and frustrations, not to mentiom a mile-long list of ideas. “We don’t have a traditional relationship,” says Harris. “All day long, our plates are full, and a lot of it is very high stress. We know when we work hard and share a common goal, collectively, we’re stronger, and we feel equipped to handle whatever comes our way. But,” he adds, “like any couple, we try to create an awareness. We say, ‘Okay, the day is over. It’s time to let it go, to sit down and have dinner, to be present.’”

Lekkakos adds, “When you deliver what you want and it happens, it’s [powerful]. It’s [inspiring]. It makes you feel so good that what you’re delivering is working. It’s an honor.” In simpler terms, she says, “it’s magic.”

M. Lekkakos Salon & Spa is located at 154 Main Street in Wenham. Salon hours, gift certificates, and additional information can be found at mlekkakos.com. Salon Marc Harris has multiple locations in Boston. For locations, hours, and more, visit salonmarcharris.com. To learn more about Salon Week, visit salonweek.com. Andrianna’s is located at 155a Front Street in Exeter, NH. Their products and services can be found online at andriannas.com. ●n

Finding Food

Organizing an altogether different kind of North Shore dining experience. By Kiley Jacques

Food pantries nationwide tend to have a lot of empty shelves these days, and, for less fortunate members of our community, serving a special holiday meal can be downright undoable. Recognizing the problem and, in an effort to bring to the fore the warm-hearted spirit of holiday giving, the Northshore staff is collecting in-house food donations on behalf of Lazarus House Ministries, Inc. http://www.lazarushouse.org/food

As our little box of canned contributions started to fill, there was talk of food banks and the kind of work they do. Given we devote many of our pages to the North Shore’s great eateries, we thought it made sense to give this one to another kind of food expert: The North Shore Hunger Network.

With the mission to alleviate the impact of hunger on the North Shore’s disadvantaged, the umbrella organization oversees operations of eleven food pantries from Amesbury to Beverly. For over twenty years The North Shore Hunger Network has represented agencies working to provide nutrition and advocacy services to people in need. Cuts in social services spending slice deep into non-profit organizations like the Hunger Network. Recent years have seen an increased reliance on private donations, which means rifling through the cupboards for those items that never seem to get eaten, or heading to the market and picking out a few “3 for 1” sale items really helps.

We’ve learned it’s easy to get people to give a few cans (and sometimes inspires giving that goes beyond the perimeter of the food bin). But, for starters, consider organizing a miniature food drive. A company-wide email, a list of donation ideas posted in the lunchroom, a sturdy box, and a quick delivery run to a nearby pantry—it’s that simple. With such little effort, a holiday meal could land on an otherwise empty table. When we think of all the great food coming out of North Shore chefs’ kitchens, it feels good to pull a little something out of our own.

For a complete list of North Shore food pantries accepting donations, please visit: http://www.foodpantry.org/01_About_Us/Service_Area.html

Changing Lives

The war against poverty is a long and difficult battle, but one Lawrence nonprofit is rolling up its sleeves and fighting the good fight—and winning. By Kiley Jacques

With a background in communications, marketing, graphic design, and photography, Kathie Clark—public relations/communications officer at Lawrence’s Lazarus House Ministries—works tirelessly on behalf of the community’s less fortunate members. Interviewing clients and writing about their stories, developing newsletter and e-letter designs and content, generating publicity, photographing events, updating social media posts, and educating potential clients, as well as the community at large, about Lazarus House’s mission are just some of the duties Clark may perform in a given week.

At the root of the organization is an undertaking to “help heads of households and individuals living in poverty regain their dignity and become self-sufficient members of our community.” “Dignity” is a word heard often around the Lazarus House, and approximately 40 staff members and over 100 volunteers spend a good portion of their time promoting its attainability.

All Lazarus House Ministries services and programs aim to instill hope in their clients, as well as provide basic needs and tools for laying the foundation for success. Its advocates help fight penury and helplessness so their clients can focus on more than survival—so they can imagine a future in which they are fed, clothed, and safe. As Clark puts it, “The adrenaline of being homeless is decreased when the worry of food and shelter is lifted.” But that isn’t the end point, she explains. “It’s not time to stop and relax…[it’s] time to focus on moving out of poverty. The goal is to permanently break the cycle of poverty.”

Under the umbrella organization Lazarus House Ministries, Inc., an army of people provides services in hopes of making that break. The agency’s ministrations include an emergency shelter (called “the last line of defense and the first ray of hope”), a community center with soup kitchen, food pantry, three thrift stores, and three transitional housing complexes. In addition, English as a Second Language (ESL), SPARK*L.E. Cleaning Services, and culinary training programs comprise the educational piece of the mission.

Monique Gosselin, a 22-year-old staff member at the Holly Street emergency shelter and a Lawrence native, attended nearby Central Catholic High School. While there, she received academic credit for time spent working with shelter clients. Having recently graduated from Merrimack College, Gosselin is now pursing a master’s degree and has settled into the Lazarus House as an excellent place to earn a little extra money. She speaks very fondly of her experience there, saying, “It’s a family environment; it’s like going to see my friends.” She also takes her responsibilities very seriously and explains that clients cannot be there unless they follow strict rules, and she is there to help enforce them. She believes “structure” is important for the house to best serve everyone.

The truth is, house rules completely govern clients’ daily lives. Tenants are required to relinquish 90 percent of their income upon admittance; only 10 percent is available to use freely, with the idea being that when they’re ready to leave, money will be accessible for a successful transition. Gosselin says the checking in of cell phones at the office is another condition (for reasons of safety, privacy, and respect for others). Cleaning rooms and common spaces, exiting and returning according to set hours, and keeping personal property tidy are all part of the greater plan to instill dignity and self-respect. Additionally, kids must do their homework and adults must “have a plan in place and actively be pursuing it,” says Clark.

Like most rules, those at the shelter are instituted for a reason. “This is not a hangout,” explains Clark. Gosselin nods in full agreement; she supports the Lazarus House’s philosophy, which is succinctly stated by Clark when she tells clients, “We positively and greatly want to help you, but you have to help yourself. We want you to leave as your own biggest advocate.” Gosselin adds, “They must be proactive[ly] trying to better their lives.” It is the collaboration of staff members like these that allows people to do just that.

Once clients have put out the fires that accompany crisis, many move on to transitional housing facilities, like Lazarus House’s Capernaum Place. Here, families and individuals continue to build upon their plans for a brighter future in a relatively stable environment. It is not easy to find a place to call home in the meticulously maintained complex; there is a one- to two-year waiting list, and the 20 one- and two-bedroom apartments are only available to those who can demonstrate a clean record of paying bills. Additionally, applicants must meet regularly with two on-site social workers who check in with tenants to be sure they are working on their plans to move to more permanent housing, which they must do in two years’ time.

The housing complex is completely self-contained and offers spacious units, laundry facilities, an outdoor garden and play area, and a communal meeting place where women gather monthly to discuss their struggles and their triumphs.

In fact, at the end of each of these meetings, they are asked to share a “mini-success.” This little ritual is part of the ongoing effort to build self-esteem and help the women recognize that they are succeeding. By writing a few things down and posting them to the wall, they are made to see just how far they’ve come. The result is a room papered with tiny stories from the women of Lawrence. One such story reads: “I am my own person again. I am a mom. I can be confident. I am happy.” This makes Kathie Clark smile. “It’s important that they keep aware of the positives in life,” she says, “to see that [each of them is] a wonderful, valuable, unique human being.”

Another of Lazarus House’s transitional housing sites is Corpus Christi—an impressively renovated eight- bedroom Victorian house for individuals living with HIV/ AIDS. As diagnosis of the disease was once virtually a death sentence, the house’s original aim was to offer HIV/ AIDS-positive clients a place to “die with dignity” by providing them with comfortable accommodations and support during their terminal illness. Today, with the advent of life-saving treatments and long-term medical care, the goal has changed—the focus now is to help people “get and stay healthy” while living fulfilling lives. Bethany House does the same for families with one or more members living with HIV/AIDS.

Yet another of the organization’s programs is St. Martha’s Food Pantry. The 2.5-year-old facility is the direct result of a fundraising effort that pushed for an enclosed space in which clients can “shop with dignity.” Prior to its opening, people were made to wait outside in all types of inclement weather—on view for anyone to see—a situation many found shameful. Now serving 750 families (2,000 individuals) per week, clients are given four days of supplemental food. The few bags of dry goods they receive are not meant to be a main food supply, but very often, they are. “We make sure what is given to the first person is also available to the last,” says Clark, once again demonstrating the relentless effort to give every one of Lazarus House’s visitors equal access to the means for getting out of poverty.

At a time when many food pantries are closing their doors or reducing their hours, St. Martha’s has yet to take such measures—thanks to the determination of Ken Campbell, who has been running the pantry for the last five years. Campbell’s days are spent trying to put food on the shelves. “We are conscious of the food we provide,” he says. “Lawrence has the highest obesity rate in the state, and with that comes high rates of diabetes.” He goes on to explain that it is also the poorest city in the state, and poverty restricts access to healthy food. It is expensive to eat nutritional foods, but Campbell does his best to find fresh produce and protein-rich items.

“There are really two things we do here,” says Campbell. “We provide food and we try hard to provide a positive experience. Our greeters and volunteers are awesome. It’s a social environment for people in similar [situations] to gather.”

Campbell doesn’t hesitate, however, to share the other side of what goes on inside St. Martha’s Food Pantry. He describes how stressful it is to try to feed the poor and the hungry when supplies are in high demand and running short. But he keeps at it; he says he doesn’t let his temper get the best of him, and he makes use of the Lazarus House chapel now and then—“to catch my breath, even if it’s just for 15 minutes.” Glancing around the bare shelves just hours before the doors are due to open, he says with worry in his voice, “It’s week-to- week. We do what we can, and that’s all we can do.”

Clark is quick to share how impressed she is by Campbell’s weekly accomplishment; somehow, he manages to fill these shelves again and again, even when it seems he won’t be able to manage it. He knows there will always be a line of people waiting, and it’s his job to let them in and send them away with food in their hands. So he does.

Clothing—in addition to shelter, food, and dignity—is another of the provisions supplied by Lazarus House Ministries. The Good Shepherd building, which also houses a community center and soup kitchen, as well as the St. Martin of Tours and St. Frances & St. Claire thrift shops—all offer affordable items and additional places for the clients to socialize, learn about the organization’s many services, and become part of the Lazarus family. Once again, the idea at play in all three stores is to provide clients opportunities to shop with dignity. It is in the thrift shops that people are able to find clean clothes suited for all kinds of occasions—like that hard-won job interview, or the passing of a loved one, or just seasonally appropriate attire. Everything is always priced according to an individual’s ability to pay or else given freely, explains Clark. She feels there is something about making a purchase with one’s own money that helps foster self-esteem, which is why a shirt may cost 50 cents for someone with 50 cents, but doesn’t cost anything for the customer without means.

The segment of Lazarus House’s mission that seems to most excite Clark is the educational aspect. In addition to learning some of life’s basics, like “financial wellness,” good nutrition, and parenting skills, clients who work with advocates beyond the crisis point have access to job training opportunities. English as a Second Language (ESL) classes are vital for the primarily Hispanic demographic. The SPARK*L.E. Cleaning Services and culinary training programs are described by Clark as “area[s] where you can really see the hope; the other programs deal strictly with survival.” It’s here that the staff sees things change. “They come in beaten and overwhelmed, and they leave with dignity and self-confidence, knowing that they have a skill and they are ready to face the world,” says Clark, smiling.

The first six weeks of the culinary program are spent training in Lazarus’s kitchen facilities, followed by three months working as paid interns in professional settings. Local participants in this program are many, and include the Andover Country Club (whose head chef, Elaine Chirichiello, helped build the program), Salvatore’s Pizzeria, the Irish Cottage, China Blossom, and Cakes by Erin. Joe Faro, owner of Tuscan Kitchen in Salem, NH, has supported the organization’s mission for over 15 years. Faro serves on the Lazarus House board and continues to help develop the program.

Clark sums things up by saying, “As long as [people] are hungry or cold or seeking shelter, they can’t think about getting out of poverty because they are locked into survival mode. We provide all of these services; when [clients] don’t have to think about survival, then we say, ‘OK, now you need the education…’” With this simple mission as its goal, Lazarus House Ministries makes ambitious plans. On the table is a $5 million capital campaign to bring existing facilities up to code and strengthen established programs. Additionally, they are looking to build another transitional housing facility, expand “social enterprise” programs to include more/different types of training and education, and develop a stabilization fund in case of emergencies (like empty food pantry shelves).

Recognizing the organization as a highly valuable institution where people not only survive, but learn, grow, and move out of poverty, advocates like Clark, Gosselin, and Campbell should be commended. Clark describes the place where she devotes so much of her time as “a spiritually based, nondenominational organization that adheres to the Gospel stating: ‘If you come to my door in need, I will feed you; I will clothe you; I will shelter you.’” It may be said that the people at the heart of Lazarus House Ministries take it one step further: I will give you the tools for change. lazarushouse.org.

Video Visionaries

Combining content and style are the keys to success for In the Car. By Jeanne O’Brien Coffey

Dan Stevens and Dave Ells have found themselves in some pretty unique locations and situations since launching In the Car, a video production company based in Beverly. For example: a basement in Tennessee packed with trophy racks of antlers. Or the suburban Michigan home of passionate Detroit Red Wings fans watching their team lose a critical playoff game this spring.

“We couldn’t help but feel like intruders,” Ells says. “We kept wondering when we should leave.” Rather than letting that awkwardness get in the way, these coastal Massachusetts natives always leave shoots having formed bonds with their subjects. The owner of that Tennessee antler collection offered to ship them some venison, and rather wishing them away, the Red Wings fans invited them out for drinks after the game.

“Our work often puts us in situations we wouldn’t normally be in,” Stevens says, displaying pictures of the antlers covering the couch of that Tennessee home. The pair, who graduated from Gordon College in 2007, credit their liberal arts education, which included everything from psychology classes in exposure therapy to studies of youth engagement, for their ability to connect with their subjects.

“I don’t think we would have intuitively learned [how to help subjects feel comfortable in front of a camera] if we’d just gotten a technical education,” Stevens says. After graduating from the Wenham-based college, the pair worked on their own projects, and Stevens could also be found as a barista at Atomic Café in Beverly. But over time, they found themselves collaborating more and more on projects, until they decided to combine forces and formally established In the Car in February 2012.

“We tiptoed into it—either one of us could have walked away, but now we’re kinda married [to each other],” Ells says. These days, the business partners spend so much time together that Stevens says his wife will occasionally wonder which “us” he is referring to—him and his wife or him and Ells.

The adjustment was tricky at first— with both doing their own freelance gigs, deciding what money went to whom was a challenge. But now, when a client hires one of them, they are getting the In the Car team, and all the money goes into they business, which has become self-supporting. “We weren’t intending to start a business—we were friends first and the business was a slow evolution,” Stevens says.

The spirit of their working relationship is captured by their unusual name. In the Car comes from a road trip the pair took with another friend to visit Gordon State College in Barnesville, GA, a small school that bears the same name as their alma mater. They thought it would be funny to make a documentary about visiting the unrelated college in the Deep South, wearing their Gordon College gear and talking with the students.

“We wanted to capture the feeling of that trip with the name of our company,” Ells says, noting that “in the car” became a constant refrain on that spontaneous trip—and in everyday life. “We never realized how many times a day people say, ‘in the car,’” he adds. While they technically run a video production company, specializing in stylish videos that get to the hearts of their subjects, they prefer not to be pigeon-holed, seeing themselves more as creative collaborators than as technicians, and their clients agree.

“Working with [In the Car] is pure collaboration,” says Neela Sakaria, EVP/ Managing Director at Latitude, a media consulting firm based Beverly. “They are consistently bringing new ideas to our work, inspiring us to do even better, and helping us innovate with each new video. After our first project together, it became obvious they would be one of our key partners going forward.”

Latitude has worked with In the Car on projects for big media companies, including Viacom Media Networks, NBC Sports, and BBC America. Sakaria says they have created what the company calls a Latitude Insight Reel—a high- quality mini-documentary that showcases new engagement opportunities for clients, integrating research in a concise and inspiring storytelling format. “Our collaboration with In the Car has been a key part in our development of this offering to clients,” she adds.

Stevens and Ells say they get as much fulfillment out of working on these corporate videos as they do from working on a music video or a documentary lifestyle piece. “Many creative types will say, ‘This is what we do to pay the bills,’” Stevens says. “We are more holistic than that. We say, ‘Why not have fun with both?’”

“People are often asking us, ‘When are you going to do something for yourselves?’” Ells adds. “We spend a lot of time trying to convince people we are not just hiding our dreams in the closet. We learn just as much from a music video as from a corporate one.”

That attitude is one of the keys to the team’s success, says Tim Ferguson-Sauder, creative director at Gordon College and at Return Design, a studio affiliated with Gordon that does creative work for arts and nonprofit groups. “What’s great about [In the Car] is they do a really good job of integrating concept and design,” says Ferguson-Sauder, who taught both men at Gordon and has since hired them for projects. “They have an understanding of client needs and branding that is hard to find,” he adds, explaining that that kind of understanding is also increasingly in demand.

“People are realizing that the lines between video production and marketing are blurring,” he says. “Nobody wants to watch a five-minute commercial to get you to buy a car, but a lot of people may want to watch a five-minute video about the making of the car.” This turns the project from something a videographer might not want to do into something they do want to do, he says, adding, “While the marketing person sees it as marketing, the videographer sees it as a creative outlet.”

Listening to Stevens and Ells talk, it is evident that they love their work—and they love working in a space that combines marketing and creativity. They also love being a part of the North Shore community. “Everyone who does film thinks they should move to New York or L.A.,” Stevens says. “We like the North Shore because it’s a place we can call home, not just a place to run our business.”

There is also a very practical side to being based here. The North Shore offers a panapoly of video vistas—everything from Boston’s skyscrapers to Gloucester’s gritty docks, not to mention the quaint charm of many small cities and towns. “In a big city, we’d have to travel far to get such diverse vistas,” Stevens says. “It says a lot about our area. A lot here can look like many different places.”

So appealing is the location that many clients, like New Jersey-based rock band I Call Fives, travel to the North Shore to work with Stevens and Ells. That was a smart decision on I Call Fives’ part—the video for their single “Late Nights,” featuring a tangled love story playing out among the woods and oceanfront of Gloucester, was displayed on the front page of MTV.com and even spent some time as the #1 video in September.

“That was a big surprise,” Stevens says. “Our goal wasn’t to be #1 on MTV.” While many people might think that the team would use that as a jumping off point to head more deeply into music videos, they say they’re satisfied with the mix of corporate, music, and lifestyle shorts that is currently their bread and butter.

One area that the duo is hoping to do more work in is the nonprofit sector. They have already completed projects for the Whittier Street Health Center, where they documented the work of inner city doctors at the Roxbury facility, and the Not For Sale Campaign, which aims to abolish human slavery. Both are projects they point to as being especially fulfilling. “We’re hoping we’ve made a difference,” Stevens says.

In the meantime, Stevens’s and Ells’s ability to put a creative spin on a corporate brand or a music video is likely to bring them a lot of success, says Ferguson-Sauder. “They have a mature approach to videography,” he says. “ Many young designers want to put their own style ahead of the needs of their clients. [Stevens and Ells] have their own style, for sure, but it doesn’t override the clients’ needs.”

Latitude’s Sakaria is just as big a fan. “These guys have helped us get the shots we need and uncover the stories we didn’t know we needed…In very simple terms, Dan and Dave are the rare partners that just get it.” inthecarmedia.com.

Cheer Leader

Decking the halls with interior designer Linda Hentschel of North Reading’s i-Designs Interior Design Solutions.

December is a special—and stressful—time of year for many. Endless preparations and celebrations can overwhelm in a heartbeat, and round-the-clock shopping, cooking, and merrymaking can justify a little extra help. This is the point at which North Reading-based interior designer Linda Hentschel steps in to lighten the load for those with holiday spirit and one too many ornaments to juggle. Choice décor is her specialty, and during this time of year, her imagination is on fire—making her just the elf to warm the hearth for seasonal festivities.

What is your professional background? I started Renaissance Interiors in 1993. The focus at that time was primarily residential projects. Over the past 19 years, the business has grown to include a broad range of design styles, inspiring us to change our name to i-Design. We now serve the greater Boston area, addressing both residential and corporate design needs.

What sparked your interest in the field? A Raggedy Ann and Andy mural my elementary school friend painted on my baby-blue bedroom wall!

What special materials do you enjoy working with? Fresh greens. They scent the home with an unmistakable aroma. It’s simple to embellish this natural staple by adding colors or textures to blend into any décor. My secret lies in the power of ribbons (sheer silk, satin, or plaid) to make an instant impact.

What’s the greatest seasonal challenge? Blending old collections of family treasures with new pieces to create an updated holiday look. I like to add a few specially chosen accents that pop a new color and make everything look fresh. I also enjoy adding fun fabrics to pillows or table linens.

Have you ever received any especially fun or unusual holiday requests? Custom-made, matching stockings for four-legged family members.

What inspires your designs during this time of year? Hotels are my inspiration this season. They have rich and varied interiors that are luxurious and a bit decadent. Isn’t that what everyone wants for the holidays? idesigninteriors.biz. —Kiley Jacques

Gear Heads

Two makers of top-shelf outdoor apparel and gear— one’s specialty is marine, the other, mountains— make their home on the Marblehead waterfront. By Alexandra Pecci

Gangs all Here: Atlantis WeatherGear

From fishing to yachting to the early days of the U.S. Navy, Marblehead and boating have long gone hand in hand. So it’s only fitting that one of the country’s most notable sailing and marine apparel brands would find a home in a Marblehead boatyard a few doors down from The Landing Restaurant. What might come as more of a surprise is that the same boatyard is also home to an equally iconic Western mountain clothing brand with roots in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.

On the surface, the two brands—Atlantis WeatherGear, for the boating lifestyle, and Cloudveil Mountain Works, for the mountain lifestyle—are very different. Atlantis makes clothing and outerwear for boaters and sailing enthusiasts—think people who love racing around buoys and chasing striped bass. Cloudveil is synonymous with the mountains, making gear for skiing, hiking, and backcountry enthusiasts. But both have found a home with RockHopper Group, LLC, a small company that has been making a name for itself in the technical apparel market for the past five years. And both have something else in common: the enthusiasts themselves. These are people who love the outdoors and who expect high performance from their clothing and outerwear.

“I think there are a lot more similarities between the two brands than there are differences,” President Charles “Chaz” Bertrand says. His Marblehead office in the Atlantis/Cloudveil headquarters is on the third floor of a building that overlooks Marblehead Harbor and is adjacent to a boatyard on Front Street. Downstairs are other nautical businesses like Jordan’s Marine, The Forepeak, and Eastern Yacht Sales.

By coming to Marblehead, Atlantis WeatherGear seems to have come home. It’s not only located in the yachting capital of America, but it’s also helmed by chief marketing officer Bill Lynn—an accomplished competitive sailor—and Bertrand, a sailor himself and former Navy diver.

Before finding its place in Marblehead, though, Atlantis had faded from its former glory. First established in Boston in the 1970s, Atlantis spent much of the 1980s as the #1 brand of sailing apparel in North America, says Lynn. During the following years, though, ownership of Atlantis bounced around between several companies, including the Stratham, NH-based Timberland and the Chelsea-based CranBarry. Eventually, the innovation and technology that had defined the brand began to slip, and Atlantis lay dormant for years. Or, as Lynn says, the brand “lost its mojo.”

Meanwhile, Bertrand was working in Boston, looking to make a career change after spending years in investment banking. “I had not in a million years thought that going into the apparel or branding world was the next step for me,” Bertrand says. But a colleague happened to play golf with Atlantis’s current owner, and the conversation turned to a desire to sell the brand. That colleague told Bertrand about the business opportunity, knowing Bertrand’s interest in sailing.

Despite his lack of experience in the branding and apparel industry, Bertrand is a self-professed “technical apparel geek— a gear head” who’d been sailing with his family for most of his life. So he recruited Lynn, a branding expert whose “reputation in sailing sort of preceded him,” Bertrand said. Together, they purchased the brand and began working on Atlantis’s rebirth.

The team relaunched Atlantis in 2007, with the goal of reviving the beleaguered brand and “re-authenticating” it in the performance sailing world. It was a task that Lynn and Bertrand were uniquely positioned to tackle. As sailors themselves, Lynn and Bertrand were able to take advantage of their connections in performance sailing. Lynn says they were able to “tap into some of the best sailors in the world” and not only ask them what they want in their gear, but actually have them test it, too.

“I spend an awful lot of time racing boats, offshore [and] inshore, and we all have very strong opinions about what we want in a piece of gear,” Lynn says. He reaches over to an Atlantis jacket hanging on a rack and holds its sleeve in the air. “We sit around in this room and have fist fights over whether this is the right kind of cuff. Whether it should have a Velcro closure…should the zippers go up or down?” Moreover, being Marblehead sailors themselves allows the folks at Atlantis to tie the brand to a place. Marblehead is synonymous with boating, the ocean, and the marine lifestyle. So for the team at Atlantis, reclaiming the brand’s “mojo” became about more than once again making it relevant and exciting for the sailing community. They also sought to tie Atlantis directly to Marblehead itself. In that way, it could become relevant for more people, not just the ones who spend their weekends racing around buoys.

“If you sort of root it in the Marblehead story, then all of sudden, it becomes something that if it’s relevant in Marblehead, it’s relevant for Atlantis,” Bertrand says. “If you like chasing striped bass, if you like just taking a walk on the beach or over the causeway,” then the brand means something to you, too, he says.

From which playbook did the Atlantis team draw when they were busy tying their brand to a place? Oddly enough, it was from Cloudveil, which has been deeply tied to Jackson Hole since it was founded there in the late 1990s. “More often than not, it was Cloudveil that was that reference point that we chose,” Bertrand says.

Long before Bertrand had any business associations with Cloudveil, before he started to bring Atlantis back to life, Bertrand was a devotee of the Cloudveil brand. After visiting Jackson Hole in 2001, he “easily became their biggest fan and/or customer east of the Mississippi for the next five or six years.” He says he still has the first jacket he ever bought from Cloudveil 12 years ago.

“It’s amazing how well it’s held up, and I wear it pretty much every time I go skiing,” he says. He was also intrigued by the way Cloudveil was so deeply associated with Jackson Hole and the hardcore backcountry mountain lifestyle that the Wyoming town represents. The brand seemed to carry within it an element of the West itself, something rugged and pioneering. The team wanted that kind of association for Atlantis, too.

Both brands “come from a place where the lifestyle revolves around the activities that the gear is designed for,” Lynn says. “In the case of Cloudveil, it’s Jackson hole. In the case of Atlantis, it’s Marblehead.”

Bertrand says they got invited to the Cloudveil table in February 2010, when a friend of his was among the principals in talks to buy the brand. The folks at Rock- Hopper were recruited because of their experience in the technical apparel space with Atlantis. That led to them having a role operating the brand. At first, they were only the online face of Cloudveil, but within a couple of years, they were responsible for everything, including product development. “We were doing all of the operations at that point; we just didn’t own the brand,” Bertrand says. “It was like renting as opposed to owning your apartment.”

Now, they’re in the process of buying Cloudveil; at the time of their interviews with Northshore, they were in the “ninth inning” of the acquisition, says Bertrand. Last fall, the company also opened a retail space for Atlantis and Cloudveil called the A&C Store on Washington Street in Marblehead.

On the surface, Cloudveil and Atlantis seem very different. But they’re two sides of the same coin—technical apparel brands that are highly functional for specific outdoor activities. Atlantis apparel is meant to keep you warm and dry while withstanding the abuse of a marine environment. Cloudveil provides cold weather mountain gear that ranges from light base layers made from antimicrobial fabrics that wick away moisture to skiing jackets that will hold up at 20-below.

Over the years, Atlantis has successfully re-authenticated itself among performance sailors, even sponsoring the U.S. Olympic sailing team. But over the past several decades, brands like Cloudveil and Atlantis have moved beyond the slopes and sloops and into everyday wear. People wearing Atlantis gear can easily move from the deck of a ship to the bar at Maddie’s without looking like a stereotypical slicker-clad fisherman, says Bertrand. And Cloudveil’s softshell jackets look as natural on the streets of Boston as they do in the foothills of the Rockies.

“When particularly [our clothing is] being worn in the city, both of these brands should be speaking a little bit about who you are on Saturday and Sunday, or where you’d rather be,” Bertrand says. “If someone sees you wearing it, there’s a sort of understanding that you spend a fair amount of time on the water or in the mountains, that you’re an active enthusiast.”

In that respect, Cloudveil and Atlantis are also aspirational brands. Just as not everyone who wears Nike is a professional basketball player, not everyone who wears Atlantis and Cloudveil apparel is the kind of hardcore enthusiast that the brands target. And therein lies their strength: They’re relevant to the hardcore people and attractive to everyone else.

“People who want to wear the stuff may not necessarily be out there wandering around the backcountry in the Tetons, or out there beating the crap out of themselves in the ocean,” Lynn says. Atlantis and Cloudveil prove that good looks and functionality aren’t mutually exclusive. But in the end, the key to their success will always be authenticity.

“Authenticity is something that you either have or you don’t,” Lynn says. “You can’t create it. And if you lose it you can’t get it back.”

Dream Drives

A Salem restorer is creating a new “golden age” of motoring for vintage and classic European car enthusiasts.

Ask Roberto Donati when he first discovered his passion for cars and he’ll take you back to his early childhood, tinkering in his father’s workshop in Modena, in the heart of Italy’s “Gran Turismo” country.

“This comes naturally to me. It’s in my blood,” he says with a smile, recalling the many happy times he spent at his father’s side learning the meticulous detail and precision craftsmanship of car restoration. Four decades later, those invaluable lessons, passed from one generation to the next, form the bedrock of Volante Classics, a burgeoning restoration, maintenance, and storage service for vintage and classic European sports and touring cars, in downtown Salem. While the company is relatively new—Donati joined forces with Swampscott-based businessman and classic car enthusiast Robert Salter only a year ago—this talented Italian transplant has never steered away from his lifelong career as a car restorer.

After moving to America in 1986, Donati honed his skills at the renowned Paul Russell and Company in Essex for 10 years before launching his own successful Scuderia Donati restoration business in Ipswich.But it was his and Salter’s passion for pedigree European cars from the 1950s, 1960s, and early 1970s—widely regarded as the “golden age” of motoring—that fueled their decision to launch Volante Classics. Services include full coachwork, interior and running gear renovation, restoration, and maintenance at the Salem workshop, as well as secure onsite storage in a new climate-controlled facility in North Canaan, CT.

Volante also offers an inspection, evaluation, and delivery service for customers wanting to buy vintage and classic cars from Europe, capitalizing on Donati’s deep knowledge of car authenticity, model histories, factory specifications, period-correct modifications and accessories, not to mention his extensive contacts in Europe.

“I’m not your typical vintage car dealer because I hand pick them,” he says. “I like to know the history, ownership, and provenance—all things that come into play. I don’t buy online. I go and make sure the car is what it’s claimed to be.”

Donati has made three trips to Europe this year, inspecting 50 to 60 cars, and buying only four, including a Lancia Fulvia 1970 rally car from Italy, which he sold recently to a high-profile East Coast collector. While he has restored many rare and expensive cars, including a 250 GTO— “The Holy Grail of vintage Ferraris” as he describes it—Donati says Volante will largely trade cars under $100,000.

“These are cars you can buy for a reasonable amount and have the same fun as a $2 million vintage Ferrari,” he adds. “Our cars are for people who are not flashy with their cars but who want a dream drive. It’s all about enjoying your passion for driving.” volanteclassics.com. —Andrew Conway

The Bee-Keeper

Joe Gaglione, Crystal Bee Supply

Why bees: “I’ve always worked with nature. It makes you more in tune with your surroundings.” About the business: “It’s a family operation, with my mom, my dad, and me. My parents have been doing it for over 30 years. We are breaking in my seven-year-old daughter; she’s been playing with bees for years. We probably have between 100 and 150 hives and belong to nearly a dozen clubs.” The most common misconception about bees: “Everything that flies and stings is a bee.” Advice for someone who wants to work with bees: “Start slow, get as much education as you can. Don’t rely on the Internet; it could be someone with less education than you just making things up.” Little known fact about bees: “People immediately think that if a sting swells, they’re allergic. A lot of the time, it’s nothing; it will go away the next day.” Beekeeping and traveling: “We belong to one international club that meets every two years. We went to the jungles of Panama and Costa Rica on a beekeeping tour. We’ve been to Ukraine and Australia; we traveled for 17 days through South Africa just playing with the bees. There is always something new to learn.” crystalbeesupply.com.

Taste Makers

Talking food with twin sisters Kara and Marni Powers of the blog Twin Tastes. By Alyssa Rosenthal

Sisters Kara and Marni Powers love food and culture. On their blog, Twin Tastes (twintastes.com), the 26-year-old Manchester-by-the-Sea natives share their experiences and the dishes they create to reflect them while providing readers with unique and fun ways to spice up meals of their own. Here, the Powers sisters talk about their inspirations, aspirations, and everything in between.

What inspired you to start blogging? Why food? Whenever we travel, meet up with friends or family, or just walk down the street, our brains are constantly spinning, looking for creative and interesting inspirations for food. Food is art. We see the act of cooking and entertaining as a form of creative expression that encourages the mixing of flavors, spices, techniques, and stories.

Does your heritage influence your food? Immensely! Our mom is Greek and our dad is Irish, and we credit much of our inspiration to our yia yia (grandmother), whose open-armed approach in the kitchen encouraged us to try everything and experiment at an early age. Our cooking has a strong Mediterranean influence; our yia’s spanakopita recipe in particular is a feature at all family gatherings, and we use lemon and oregano in almost everything.

A lot of your recipes incorporate ingredients and ideas from around the world; do your travels have a large influence on your cooking? Yes! Kara lived in Madrid for a semester in college and a year afterward. [Marni] lived in Florence in college. While living with host families abroad, we immersed ourselves in the cultures and exquisite local cuisine. While traveling, we are constantly taking notes and snapping pictures. We always challenge ourselves to taste test anything.

Have you ever had a recipe attempt go horribly wrong? Of course! A caramel sauce fiasco sticks out in our minds. We have failed on multiple occasions to make this delectable ice cream topping, either by burning the sauce or not getting it to the right temperature. After three attempts and a lot of smoke, we finally decided to let this one go. It was the first time we came close to not speaking to each other in the kitchen, but now, we can just laugh about it.

Brendan Cronin: North Shore’s Swiss Master

Swiss Master Chef, Brendan Cronin

From Irish farming and family cooking to world traveling and earning the prestigious title of Swiss Master Chef, Brendan Cronin has learned and mastered the ins and outs of the hospitality and culinary industry. Residing on the North Shore, Cronin is a professor at Endicott College in Beverly where he teaches Hospitality Management and administers the La Chanterelle Restaurant. Cronin takes a look back at his past accomplishments, hardships, and life experiences that have lead him to his success today. By Kayla Carignan

Cronin’s accomplishments are greatly rooted in his desire for traveling and love of food, but his culinary starting point dated back to the 1950’s. To cope with the tough times and economical effects of the war, Cronin’s mother decided to take in lodgers as a way of income. As a young child, Cronin helped his mother with the kitchen work, feeding fourteen hungry stomachs for breakfast, lunch, and dinner day after day. Cooking was seen to him as a daily routine, not a talent or future career for a man.

It wasn’t until years later that he realized the potential that the culinary industry had. He could use his talent as a way to get out of Ireland, but what Cronin wasn’t expecting was that his talents would land him endless career choices.

“Over seven years, every chef helped me find a next job, so I never applied for a job. I’ve applied for one job in my life.” said Cronin, referring to his time spent in Switzerland.

The numerous job offers continued to follow him, with his thirst for food and travel becoming hand in hand as he moved from one prominent position to another.

After a great deal of traveling and having a hand in many hotel restaurant start-ups, he decided to switch from the hectic days of a chef to a calmer, stable lifestyle of teaching. He took an offer at Les Roches International School of Hotel Management back in Switzerland, which is now among the top three hospitality management schools in the world. It was here that Cronin decided to study in becoming a Swiss Master Chef, after discovering that many of his colleagues had already gained the prestigious title, which in return helped them with their teachings and accreditation. After one year in a preparatory course and two intense weeks of practical, theoretical, and oral tests along with an extensive cooking component, he was awarded the respected Swiss Master Chef title.

Researching into culinary records Cronin discovered that, to date, he is the only Irish chef to hold the Swiss Master Chef title. “I didn’t think about it until I left Ireland. Of course, here you are among chefs. You have Austrians, Italians, French, all these great countries we see with good food, Swiss, German, and then you’ve got the Irish guy in the corner,” he says laughing, “Where did he come from? We’re not on the international cooking radar. Now beverages are a different story.”

While at Les Roches, two of Cronin’s students went abroad to intern at the student-run restaurant at Endicott College. Cronin recalls that Dr. Richard E. Wylie, President of Endicott College, loved the idea of the hospitality restaurant, and was intrigued by the concept of giving students on the North Shore the ability for to learn, hands-on, in a professional environment within the industry, the exact concept Les Roches followed. Dr. Wylie was interested in bringing this idea to Endicott, and thus, The La Chanterelle restaurant was born. Then in 1995, after the restaurant had been running for a year, Cronin was brought on to spearhead the restaurant, and with that his whole family moves from Switzerland to Beverly, Massachusetts.

“I provide the pathway, but it’s the students with their interaction with the clients. There’s an energy in here that you don’t get in the industry,” he states about La Chanterelle. “You’re talking about 18 and 19-year-olds. Who gives them compliments today? They’re in that critical stage where they need that confidence, they need to be helped to believe in themselves. That’s what I think is missing today for the younger generation, that the generation before them needs to believe in the younger generation a little bit more.”

Cronin’s first memoir, Cheffin‘, of a trilogy to come.

Today, he is very pleased with where life has taken him. The ocean side living reminds him of his childhood in Ireland, his daughter is successful and his son graduating. He is able to cook and teach his craft every day to eager students, and traveling has remained a passion throughout the years. He has been able to see many different American lifestyles and through the Study Abroad program at Endicott, he has taken numerous Endicott students to Switzerland to show off his lifestyle.

While at Endicott, between teaching, traveling, and being a family man Cronin was studying to get his Bachelors degree in Hospitality. For a class assignment he started writing a piece called ‘Cheffin’: From Potatoes to Caviar’ which documented his early childhood, work, travel, and culinary education. While writing Cronin realized he had started something bigger than a classroom paper. He decided to develop the assignment into his first memoir (of a trilogy to come) and to give readers a literal taste of his experiences, he added recipes to conclude each chapter.

Dedicating the book to both parents, Cronin continuously mentions how integral his mother’s presence and encouragement had in the writing process, as well as being his original inspiration for cooking. “I was very happy to give a copy of the book to my mother” he said. “For three weeks, every day she got out of bed at 7 a.m. and waited for the book to arrive.”

Cronin has been as active as ever, going to universities to speak about the hospitality industry, attending book signings at numerous places around the North Shore, and talks of a TV spot coming soon. Cronin continues to be incredibly humble and astonished with his success. Published in March, there are currently just under 6,000 Amazon Kindle downloads of Cheffin’ in addition to print sales.

“I didn’t start out to write a bestseller. The satisfaction to me came in writing the book and the satisfaction also of seeing my family read it.”

Cheffin’ can be purchased through brendancroninbooks.com or at the Endicott College bookstore.

**Cronin supplied two recipes which can be found in his book: Cheffin’ From Potatoes to Caviar. Photographs by Shannon Cronin Photography

Irish Brown Soda Bread

My Mother’s Irish Brown Soda Bread

Ingredients:

8 oz. white bread flour (high gluten)

8 oz. whole wheat flour or bran (bran adds density – and fiber – to the baked loaf)

2 teaspoons baking soda

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon salt

1.6 cups buttermilk or sour milk

2 oz. butter

Optional: 4 oz. raisins or 1 teaspoon caraway seeds

Directions:

Heat the oven to 350F degrees.

In a bowl, combine the dry ingredients.

Add the butter and rub in with the finger tips until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs.

Stir in the buttermilk to form a soft dough.

Turn the dough onto a floured surface, knead very briefly and shape into a round flat loaf about two inches thick.

Cut an “X” in the top with a sharp knife.

Sprinkle with a little flour and bake on a floured baking sheet for approximately 50 minutes. Makes one 9 inch round loaf.

Tip: To check if the loaf was baked my mother would lift the hot bread off the baking sheet and knock on the bottom of the loaf with her knuckles. A hollow sound indicated it was baked. A dull sound meant it required further baking.

Lobster Salad with Mango

Lobster Salad with Mango: Serves 6

6 cooked, shelled lobster tails

12 cooked, shelled lobster claws

6 cherry tomatoes

6 finely shredded romaine lettuce leaves, (mesclun greens are a good substitute)

Two ripe mangos

2 tablespoons sherry vinegar

4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

Salt and black pepper mill to taste

Optional: chopped black truffles

Directions: Salad:

Place the shredded romaine in the center of a large plate.

Slice the lobster tails and arrange attractively on the romaine.

Decorate the lobster tails with the mango sauce.

Finally add the lobster claws with the point facing upwards and add the cherry tomatoes and a sprig of chives.

Directions: Sauce:

Remove the stone and skin from the mango and cut the flesh into pieces.

Puree in a blender and drizzle in the oil with the motor running.

Add sherry vinegar to taste.

Season with salt and pepper mill.

Tip: Stir in a little sour cream or plain yoghurt to the sauce for added creaminess and an extra sharp flavor

Noisettes D’agneau Aux Gambas

Noisettes D’agneau Aux Gambas – Lamb Cutlets with Jumbo Shrimp: Serves 4

12 lamb cutlets approx 3 oz each – well trimmed

12 pieces of large deveined shrimp with the shell on

24 pieces of Parisienne potatoes- small potato balls

16 oz. julienne* of carrots and green beans

2 oz. butter

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 cup demi glace – brown stock

Salt and pepper to taste

Sprigs of thyme for garnish

Directions:

Boil or steam the potatoes until partially cooked.

Pan fry them in olive oil until golden brown, season – keep warm.

Sauté the julienne in butter until cooked but still crunchy, season to taste – keep warm.

Season and sauté (or grill) the shrimp until firm – keep warm.

Season and pan fry the lamb to medium or medium well – keep warm.

Assembly:

Arrange the julienne in the center of each plate.

Place each lamb cutlet with one shrimp around the julienne with the bones upright.

Decorate with the potatoes around the outside.

Drizzle with demi glace.

* Julienne – very fine two inch strips of vegetables.

Potatoes can be made using a melon baller and can be replaced with sautéed potatoes slices or

Fingerling potatoes.

Tip: Use the touch method described in Chapter 14 of Cheffin’ to check the degree of cooking for the lamb.

I Call Fives

Before jetting off to the Warped Tour, pop band I Call Fives hit the North Shore to shoot their newest video “Late Nights” produced by In the Car Media. We got a behind-the-scenes look at the making of their video which took place at Monseratt College of Art, Gordon College, and Lanes Cove. Photo Essay by Fawn Deviney

The guys behind I Call Fives, with Dave Ells (In the Car -videographer), and Dan Stevens (In the Car – creative & video director)

Listen to “Late Nights”

Horse Sense

Equine encounters work wonders at Windrush Farm.

“Our horses do the magic,and we assist them,” says Amanda Hogan, executive director of Windrush Farm. The special relationship that exists between horse and rider is the heart of the matter at this 35-acre working horse farm. Located on the North Andover/Boxford town line, Windrush provides equine-assisted activities and therapies to people with disabilities.Clients run the gamut in age from 2 to 86 and deal with a variety of challenges, including neurological disorders, learning and mental health issues, physical disabilities such as cerebral palsy, multiple sclerosis, head injury, spinal cord injury, and visual or hearing impairment. Some clients want to build social skills and self-confidence, while others aim to improve their upper body strength, muscle tone, balance, or range of motion. That’s where good old-fashioned horse sense comes into play.Horses are the ultimate teachers, Hogan explains. “These large, wonderful animals are so clear in their responses. They do not judge. They respond very clearly to stimulus, both physical and emotional. Our instructors and volunteers are the facilitators of the work that the horses do,” she says.For example, an adult client with PTSD was terrified to ride his horse in the outdoor ring near the woods, fearing he would be an easy target for a sniper’s bullet.

“Fortunately, he developed such a strong relationship with the horse, he felt that the horse would keep him safe,” Hogan says. “He made it through the class without losing control or jumping off.” This was huge step, one that will help him cope with other threatening situations on a daily basis, she says. windrushfarm.org

The Flying Wallendas

The Flying Wallendas make daredevilry look easy

Hot on the heels of conquering one of acrobatics’ most daring acts ever, the Flying Wallendas headline this year’s Topsfield Fair.

When most families sit down to dinner, they discuss the ins and outs of their days, maybe upcoming vacations, and swap opinions about recent movies or shows. The Flying Wallendas, on the other hand, are the show—so their dinnertime chatter is decidedly different. “We talk about things that went right or wrong up on the wire,” laughs Tino Wallenda, patriarch of the team, which just so happens to be one of the best-known circus families on earth. (Or, more specifically, above it.)

Performing at the Topsfield Fair this October, the Wallendas are enjoying an even brighter spotlight than usual at the moment. After all, in June of this summer Tino’s nephew, Nik Wallenda, became the first person to cross over Niagara Falls on a tightrope. The troupe ‘s history stretches back to the 1800s, when they became known for their daredevil stunts and group performances that included tightrope walking, acrobats, jugglers, animal trainers, and of course, clowns.

Since then, the family has blossomed into a multi-branched troupe—seven generations of performers who are as talented as they are fearless. “I started out when I was a little boy, setting the riggings for my grandfather’s wire walks,” explains Tino, who is himself sixth generation. “Now I walk wires myself, and my own kids have come onboard.” (His acts have included walking over everything from lions and rivers to waterfalls and between buildings. His highest walk ever was 3,300 feet in length and 179 feet high, above Denver.) He and his family also recreated and made famous the Seven Person Pyramid—one of the trickiest and most intricate acrobatic acts out there, but also one of the most impressive to behold. “It’s always exciting, of course,” he says. “Every new thing we try is a challenge.”

This year’s act at the Topsfield Fair will be no different. “We have some new surprises we can’t wait to do,” he says, adding that the Fair’s arena is a particularly fantastic space for performing. Oh, and the audience is always the very best kind of boost for their act. “Everyone gets incredibly excited to have us there,” he says, “and that just makes us that much more enthusiastic.” The Flying Wallendas will perform as the premiere act at The Topsfield Fair this year on October 6, 7, and 8; topsfieldfair.org —A.H.

Cafeteria Confidential: Talking with Cindy Cole, the Lunch Lady

The Lunch Lady, Cindy Cole

Cindy Cole, cafeteria lady/comedian, Bishop Fenwick High School

Why the dining hall for a gig: “This year, a few students gave me their senior pictures with nice notes on the back. One of them wrote ‘You made my day brighter, even though you may not have known it.’ That’s what this job is all about.”

What the kids like best: “Chicken fingers. We can serve them with tots, on a Caesar salad, or buffalo style—it doesn’t matter; the line is longest on Mondays for chicken fingers.”

Biggest gripe: “We don’t hear a lot of gripes because this is not like the school lunches we grew up with. Although, [students] don’t like anything new; they are creatures of habit.”

Having fun at work: “One day, we all wore shirts with the logo LLU—Lunch Lady University. One student asked, ‘Is there really a Lunch Lady University?’ We said, ‘Heck yeah, we don’t just know this stuff, we have to study!’”

Coworkers: “Patty and Aggie. Aggie is a Lunch Lady Action Figure. She makes the kids laugh; they took her to the senior prom this year. Patty and I made a Facebook page for her called “Fans of the Lunch Lady.” We’ve posted pictures of her at school, on vacation, and at a Bruins game! We’ve been trying to get Ellen Degeneres to log on, but she hasn’t yet.” —K.J.

Mister Write: Israel Horovitz

Writer Israel Horovitz

Prolific playwright and Massachusetts native Israel Horovitz is the heartbeat behind Gloucester’s theater scene. By Julie Batten – Photographs by Dana Smith

It used to be that on a hot afternoon in July, the Horovitz family of Wakefield would pile themselves into the family car and head up to Pleasant Pond in South Hamilton, where the senior Horovitz, Julius, had bought a lakeside “shack” for $1,200.

“We were really more on the swamp side of the lake,” explains Julius’s son, the internationally renowned playwright Israel Horovitz, over breakfast at Zeke’s in Gloucester one day this past summer. “That’s really when theatre came into my life,” he goes on, ordering a glass of ice water to go with his omelet. “My mother was a big welcomer, and theatre, after all, is a form of feeding an audience.”

Well, either that, or back then there was something in the water beyond a few lily pads, because Horovitz has gone on to write more than 70 produced plays in his lifetime—including Line, which has run for nearly 40 years off-off Broadway—many of which have been translated into more than 30 languages.

For the last three decades, the playwright has lived on and off in Gloucester, in part because he served as the Artistic Director of Gloucester Stage Company for 28 seasons before handing the reins over to current Artistic Director Eric Engel in 2007. He still summers in Gloucester, however, when he isn’t living in one of his other residences around the globe. When he does return to Gloucester, he says, “I feel like I’ve come home.”

Then again, it’s all part of the craft. “Writers are pretty steady people,” says Horovitz. “They tend to come back to places.” Horovitz decidedly still has a life here, with a “good size” group of cousins left, along with five children and a few grandchildren, all touching down at different times of the year in one of the “best places I’ve ever seen.” And boy, he’s seen a lot.

Horovitz first went to Paris with his first wife when their daughter, Rachael, was a mere 18 months old. “I remember seeing Simone de Beauvoir at a café. She smiled, and I smiled, and I thought, ‘Wow—this is a lucky place for me.’” Now in his 70s, Horovitz is the most translated American playwright in France, with over 50 of his plays having been produced in Paris. This past year, he spent as much time there as he did in New York, Gloucester, Moscow, Florida, California, Washington, London, and Ireland combined.

“I travel a lot, but never like a tourist; I get to be in people’s lives in a very intimate way,” Horovitz says. That’s because playwriting, the theatre business itself, is about the act of listening to people, according to Horovitz. And as long as people keep inviting him to see their productions of his plays performed anew, it seems he will continue to have plenty of opportunities to do just that. After all, what better method than traveling the world to learn the ways people talk when you’re in the business of producing dialogue?

“I always tell young writers that if they can write the way people talk, they can do this,” Horovitz says. In many of the places that Horovitz has traveled to, he has encouraged the troupes of actors he encounters to start their own theatre companies.

“They always ask me, ‘How can we continue to do this? What can I do with my life?’ And I tell them, ‘Well, the phone’s not going to ring. It’s not ringing for me or anyone else. If you want to do something, you can’t wait to be invited, you’ve just got to do it.’” For evidence that he actually lives that philosophy, there’s Harlequin Productions, a professional theater in Olympia, Washington; the Arts Garage in Delray Beach, Florida; the Compagnia Horovitz Paciotto in Spoleto, Italy; and the Festival d’Avignon in the south of France—all places, among many, where people have been touched by an Israel Horovitz play or been inspired to go on and produce other works by the author.

Horovitz’s work is, arguably, welcomed in all theatres, but never more than in his very own Gloucester Stage, where he has an agreement with Engel to contribute one new work to the line-up every two years.

“I [always] saw Gloucester Stage as a birthing center; [the audience] was happy to see a new play developing and I would tell them, ‘Some day, when this play is in New York and costs a hundred bucks a ticket, you can say you saw it in Gloucester for 20 dollars,’” says Horovitz.

Often, it was plays that came out of Horovitz’s work with the renowned New York Playwrights Lab, a group that he started in 1975 and with which he continues today as Artistic Director, that made it up to the North Shore. In his characteristic manner of turning playwriting into a collaborative event, the New York Playwrights Lab existed originally as something of a secret society for an elite cartel of playwrights—except it wasn’t. The playwright insists it was mostly a word-of-mouth thing that was going on in New York those days; “There was a small group of us, about 10 or 15, that came together each week for 20 weeks and had to bring five pages with us. At the end of that time, we’d each have a new play.”

By the time Horovitz found himself reciting poetry to Beckett in Paris bars, he had already had great success with his own minimalist plays, such as Line, a play about five characters waiting in line for a ticket booth to open, that is now in its 35th year playing off-off Broadway at the 13th Street Repertory Company. The Indian Wants the Bronx, a play about racism that introduced future film and stage star Al Pacino and won an Obie Award in 1968 for Best Play. At the New York Playwrights Lab, he continued to write plays that carry his trademark blend of what he calls “funny, dark, scary,” earning numerous awards for himself in the process, including a second Obie, the Drama Desk Award, The Sony Radio Academy Award (for Man In Snow on BBC-Radio 4) and an Award in Literature from The American Academy of Arts and Letters, among many others.

Horovitz attributes his playwriting style to the way he learned to deal with some of life’s inequities early on. “My mother was very funny; she had a wonderful sense of humor and a terrible life—I learned from her that the easiest way to involve an audience in a very serious play is to make them laugh and feel comfortable.” Horovitz explains that “All art is born of the suffering of the child—there is no exception.”

When asked how it is that all of his children have become artists in their own right and what this might imply about the suffering in their lives, he is quick to laugh. “If you asked them one at a time, they would probably complain that they were dragged to rehearsals of my plays and speeches and all of that stuff,” he says. Horovitz’s five children include film producer Rachael Horovitz, television producer-director Matthew Horovitz, and hip-hop star Adam Horovitz, best known as Ad-Rock of The Beastie Boys, all with his first wife, artist Doris Keefe (now deceased). He also has twins Hannah and Oliver with his current wife, notable marathoner Gillian Adams. “The thing that amazes me is how your kids pick up where you left off,” Horovitz says. “The twins are both very sporty, very athletic. But all of them are doing things closer to what I do than they might like to admit.”

On his 70th birthday three years ago, Horovitz was decorated by the French government as Commandeur dans l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, and the 70/70 Project celebrated production of 70 of his plays around the world, including in the national theatres of Nigeria, Benin, Greece, and Ghana. He recently published his memoir, A New Yorker in Paris (the publisher nixed the possibility of A Bostonian in Paris, apparently, saying it didn’t have quite the same panache) in French and will begin shooting a film adaptation of his play My Old Lady in Paris this fall. “I wasn’t born into this, you know. My father was a truck driver.” Sure. If only those Pleasant Pond bullfrogs could talk.

Important Records

The Brien family

From his Groveland farmhouse, John Brien—along with a close-knit team of friends and family—quietly operates an influential music label. By Jeanne O’Brien Coffey

John Brien is living proof that rumors of the demise of the record industry are premature. Since 2001—right about the time Napster was roiling labels with pirated downloads—Brien has been making a living selling music with his own independent label.

Important Records, based in Groveland, is well regarded in the music industry for its eclectic roster of off-the-beaten-path artists. As online music magazine Indieville put it, “Important has carved out a discography that reads like a who’s who of unconventional music. Simply put, if you could choose one label and listen to its releases alone for the rest of your life, Important wouldn’t be a bad place to start.”

That broad spectrum is very much by design, Brien says. “I wanted the label to be like a good record shop, where you walk in and there’s great stuff in stock in every section,” he says.

While there has been much handwringing in the past decade over the state of the record industry, Brien may have chosen exactly the right moment to launch a deeply personal independent label. “It seems like independent artists and labels are getting a lot more attention now, which is clearly how it should be,” he says. “The major label industry grew off of existing independent labels and as it retracts, it’s nice to see indies having some serious success.”

Important releases recordings from artists around the world, coordinating the manufacture of the physical format and the packaging, then shipping to distributors, record stores, and fans, from a farmhouse in Groveland where Brien lives with his wife, Jill, and three children, Henry, 7, Jonah, 5, and Helen, 2.

“Shipments come in the front door and go out the front door,” Brien says. “In the five years we’ve lived here, I’ve probably processed 150,000 units through the front hallway.”

Because Brien runs the label from a sun porch that wraps around the side of his house, and stores and ships merchandise from a barn out back the label has necessarily become a family affair, with his wife handling accounting and the negotiation of digital rights. “Over the years, I’ve been taking on more and more,” Jill says. “John has slowly come to realize that he is more interested in the creative aspects—choosing the artists, graphic design work…. The day-to-day, staying on top of paying the bills, doesn’t really interest him,” she says, adding, “I like numbers and he doesn’t, I like spreadsheets and he doesn’t, so it’s worked out well.”

Other employees, like Matt “Maurice” Mellor, who handles most of the packaging and shipping, are also drawn into the family dynamic, Jill says. “Whoever [works for the label], and especially Maurice because we’ve known him so long, becomes an integral part of the family,” she says. “They are forced into spending quality time with our kids, just because of proximity.”

Especially in the height of summer, with the children home from school, the Important Records office can be a bit chaotic, Mellor admits. “I’ve been a part of this family since before the kids were here, so it’s been interesting to see them through the phases of their lives,” says Mellor, who has known the couple since college and has been working for the label full-time for about two years. “It’s good, but it’s a little hectic. Sometimes I wish it was more quiet, but I prefer it over a more typical environment.”

Since the only access to the Brien family backyard is through the office, kids stream in and out daily. “No matter how hard John tries, there is always some amount of traffic through the office,” Jill says. “And [the kids] know he’s there, so if they don’t agree with something I said, they will try to feel him out for a different opinion. If he’s doing a project and needs to concentrate, we try to make ourselves scarce, because no matter how many times I say, ‘Don’t bother Daddy,’ they’re just going to run right in there.”

Despite the disruptions, Brien thinks working from home is good for the whole family. ”It’s probably a good thing that [the kids] have the opportunity to grow up in an environment where people are working hard at something they love,” he says. “I end up doing a lot of parenting when I should be working and a lot of work when I should be parenting but it all evens out in the end and my goal is to keep things as peaceful as possible for everyone involved.”

Important’s eclectic catalog means Henry, Jonah, and Helen are exposed to a lot of different music—and often the performers as well. “The kids are always fascinated by new people in the house, so if an artist or band comes to stay, there’s a good chance that they’ll leave with some drawings,” Brien says, adding that the family recently spent a lot of time with Japanese musician Kouhei Matsunaga when he visited between gigs in Boston and Brooklyn. “He spent some lazy summer days just hanging out in the backyard with the kids and watching Japanese cartoons on the Internet.”

Brien says there’s a lot of common ground between what he releases and what his kids listen to. “The nice thing about the kids is that they don’t have any preconceived notion about what music is, so they approach everything with very open minds.”

One of the many releases the whole family agreed on was from the Chicago band Cave. Brien says when Jonah was 3, he used to yell for Cave from his car seat. “If he wanted it louder, he’d demand it,” he says. “It was a family favorite, for sure.”

While there is musical common ground, the kids have more populist tastes as well—unlike his parents, who eschew digital downloads, Henry has an iPod and has downloaded music—legally, of course—with the help of his parents. Until recently, Important has intentionally stayed away from offering digital downloads. Currently about a quarter of its releases are available via iTunes, and Jill is working on making more of the catalog available digitally. “I was reluctant to do this at first, because my focus had been on physical formats for so long,” Brien says, “but I was assured many times that digital would be an alternate revenue stream and it wouldn’t replace the physical sales.”

While Brien occasionally unearths something from the hundreds of demos that cascade into his office every month, for the most part he releases music from artists he’s familiar with through seeing them live, from a recommendation, or from something they’ve released on another label.

“I’ve discovered so much incredible music in the process of running this business,” he says. “It’s a natural part of my life that has always been there—an understanding that the best music isn’t going to find you—you’ve got to search. Anyone with a curious attitude toward art and music is going to find a world of wonders in the Important catalog.”

It’s a gig Brien enjoys showing up for each day. “As the label’s reputation has grown,” he says, “so has my ability to work with the people who I want to work with,” Brien adds.

That catalog is heavy on avant-garde, early electronic, and minimalist music that Brien favors—but he says the label’s most popular sellers tend to be any music he is passionate about. “The biggest successes I’ve had have been working with artists who I have a deep love and personal respect for: Pauline Oliveros, Eliane Radigue, CC Hennix, Folke Rabe, Christina Kubisch, Duane Pitre, James Blackshaw, and so many more.”

“John does a really good job sourcing the material,” says Mellor. “I thoroughly enjoy at least 90 percent of what we release—and not just because it’s ours.” Mellor says he loves constantly listening to new music, although he admits that it’s changed his habits when he’s at home. “It used to be that I would always want to put on music at home—now when I am at home, I keep it a little quieter, because I listen to music all day. John does most of the choosing here—I never even have to lift the needle.”

That said, one of Brien’s best discoveries was actually unearthed from the demo pile by Mellor. “One day, Maurice pointed out a Grails record that was in a big pile of demos,” Brien recalls. “There’s a good chance it would have been lost in that pile never to be heard, but because he put it on and I liked it, I ended up working with them. They’ve done very, very well for Important, and I’ve become good friends with the guys in the band. If Maurice hadn’t pointed it out, Important would have missed out on so much.”

Of course, Brien is happy when one of his artists does well, but not too well, because that’s when he might lose them to a bigger label. “Early on, I was interested in finding a band and blowing them up, since it seemed like that was what labels did,” he says. “I saw the Dresden Dolls opening for my lawyer’s band and there were about 20 people watching them, but their fans were really, really excited.” They started working together, but Brien only managed to release a live CD and a 7” before they were signed to a major label. “That was pretty much the first and last time I ever tried to blow up a band in a big way. It became clear to me that I would always lose a band to a bigger label, which has happened many times over the years.” While he rarely takes it personally, when family fave Cave signed to Drag City after releasing a full length on Important, it was disappointing. “My whole family loves Cave and it was really sad to lose them,” he says.

One unexpected revenue source has been the film industry. Important artist Kimya Dawson’s music played a major role in the film Juno. “Her career absolutely exploded after the success of the film,” Brien says. Noah Baumbach licensed a Diane Cluck song for Margot At The Wedding, starring Nicole Kidman and Jack Black, and the label just released a record with independent filmmaker Jim Jarmusch, among other brushes with Hollywood.

The success of the label has been a bit of a surprise, Jill admits. “There are moments when we look at each other and say, ‘Wow, I guess it worked.’ We still view it as a pleasant surprise – a wonderful thing that happened and is still going strong.”

As for Brien, he tries not to focus too much on the future. “I don’t feel any desire to grow Important beyond the point we’re at now. In fact, I’ve never done very much to intentionally grow the business in any way. Things seem to evolve naturally.” importantrecords.com

Brotherly Love

The mystery behind the Masons

In Newburyport, masons— their organization largely mysterious to the public— make their Green Street Lodge a warm, welcoming, and active asset in the community. By Kiley Jacques

When the words “he’s a Mason” are uttered, many people’s ears perk up. There is mystery, perhaps even suspicion, surrounding one of the world’s oldest fraternities and its origin. But a little research quickly reveals the good will mission of the Masons. And though it is a complicated calling with a disputed history, there are some very simple ideas underlying the brotherhood.The Masons are all about “good old community spirit,” says Eddie Powers, a high-spirited and jolly Master Mason, who has been a member for the last two years. “Masonry,” he explains, “takes good men and makes them better. It teaches you about yourself, about who you are and what you can do.” The ancient tenets of the Order include Love, Relief, and Truth, and the strengthening of a man’s character is the intent.Opportunities for “fellowship, charity, education, and leadership” are available inside a Mason Lodge, and they are the reason Powers gets such obvious pleasure out of being a brother. “The Masons,” he says with a teary glint in his eye, “quietly help people.” They don’t participate in all the hype and fanfare as do some charitable organizations; acknowledgment is not the brothers’ aim. “In some cases,” says Powers, “individuals don’t even know it’s the Masons helping them.” That is how the men prefer it. Altruism is at the core of their camaraderie, and altruism, they feel, is a mute mission.Despite its clear creed, demystifying Freemasonry is no easy matter. The stately Newburyport Masonic Center at 31 Green Street, with its second-floor “armory” brimming with swords, staffs, pins, jewelry, aprons, chapeaux, and all manner of unfamiliar regalia, is often overlooked as a place worth visiting— its ancient paraphernalia feeding the notion that Masonry is private and suspect. But, as Powers explains, “we are develop[ing] plans to take away the shadow that surrounds us. We never miss an opportunity to let people know who we are.”Though some rituals remain esoteric, the sentiments from which they stem are easily understood. Not all of the Masons’ customs are enigmatic; there are a few that are practiced, in some form or another, by nearly everyone. Take, for instance, G.E.M., the tradition whereby Masons “Greet. Eat. And Meet.” A warm welcome and a member-made or catered meal precede every Mason meeting and are among Eddie Power’s many reasons for loving the Masonic Order. It’s part of the Breaking Bread With the Brothers program and, he jokes, it is why “you’ll never see a thin Mason.”

In addition to well-fed members, the Newburyport Masonic Center is quarters to the region’s three “Blue Lodges”: St. John’s, the oldest, was established in 1766, followed by St. Mark’s in 1803, and Bethany in 1868. All three lodges were once housed under separate roofs, but in the early 1900s, they were consolidated in the Green Street Federalist Building and began serving not only as the Massachusetts 11th Masonic District Lodge, but also as a community center. In 1929, a $100,000 cornerstone was dedicated. Powers declares with enthusiasm, “The Masons love to lay cornerstones,” and he appears quite proud of what it represents: the solid foundation on which the Masons stand and serve.

Though the Newburyport Lodge sits in the center of town and is passed regularly by pedestrians, ask residents from whence the Masonic Order came and any number of responses may be given. For many, it is a complete unknown and perhaps something to which not much thought, if any, has been given. But the Freemasons’ history is a dramatic and ever-unfolding tale.

Though today’s Masons need not be stone layers, a commonly held belief links the Freemasons’ ancestry to the builders of King Solomon’s temple. Another idea recognizes their beginnings with the work of stonemasons in building the cathedrals and castles of the Middle Ages. The brotherhood of today, however, believes its history dates back to the early 1700s, with men who met in taverns to discuss and establish a constitution for free (nomadic-like) and non-working expert stonemasons. No matter the theory, it is to the men who lay ancient stone that modern Masons are related, and symbols of that trade’s tools are their inheritance—chief among them the compass and square, in honor of geometry’s role in their proud profession.

It is, in part, this symbolism that seems at the root of society’s unease around Freemasonry. Things like secret handshakes and signs, fraternity rings, and membership cards, make people question Masons’ objectives. But many of these customs, sometimes labeled “occult-like,” have rather straightforward underpinnings. As roaming freemasons of old moved around, means for identifying skilled versus novice laborers were necessary. Therefore, this kind of ritual-rich communion was a way to keep work in the right hands. Perhaps Masonry is less a cabalistic clan than an elite philanthropic club.

Monthly Lodge meetings are another source of suspicion. There is a widespread notion that strange doings define these gatherings. Truth be told, there are two primary things that happen: New members are initiated with “ritual degree work,” and business is attended to. Clearly, it is the former that fosters people’s cloak and dagger prejudice. Although the details are unknowable to all but Masons, Russell Hussey—the Newburyport Masonic Center’s Facility Coordinator—explains that this work consists of lectures designed to educate new members about the Masons’ history and doctrines. The initiation segment focuses on the Order’s allegorical aspects, the temple’s architecture, the members’ seating arrangement, and the costumes—all of which have ceremonial meaning and require lengthy explanation and study. The business portion of meetings tends to have an agenda similar to that of any organization: upcoming events, potential projects, the lodge’s maintenance, and related issues.

The dark veil shrouding Masonry has been tough to lift. During the 1960s, a significant drop in membership was the result of radical social and political restructuring. At a time marked by complete cultural upheaval, the Masons seemed anachronistic. Today, things continue to change with the times. As brothers age and pass on, the Mason population wanes further. But recruitment efforts are in full swing and include some very contemporary approaches. Social media, for example, is used to attract young people. The Internet, video games, e-books, podcasts, television, and the big screen are all used as educational resources to stimulate new interest in Masonry.

The written word also serves as a tool to reach potential members. Inside the Green Street Masonic Center, for instance, a table full of literature includes Scouting magazine, which is a publication for former Eagle Scouts. On the magazine’s cover is an image of a young man scaling a seven-story wall of ice dressed in top-of-the-line athletic gear; the photo hardly evokes the Mason image many hold. Additionally, The Rainbow Girls and the Order of the Eastern Star are sister organizations representative of the fraternity’s move to be more progressive and to form relationships with the community. According to Powers, such efforts are beginning to pay off. The Green Street Lodge now boasts a few new members ages 19 to 21.

There are many undertakings that point to the Masons’ community-aimed interests. Take, for instance, the newly installed rose garden, which was a restoration project resulting from a photograph taken in the 1930s and given to the Center by a visitor. The idea was to bring to life a piece of lost history, as well as beautify the neighborhood. A website created by Master Mason Steve Wieder and his wife Cathy not only documents the garden’s past and step-by-step reconstruction, but it also provides helpful gardening advice for anyone interested in designing and building his or her own slice of Eden. The colorful little plot is a warm and familiar welcome before a foray into a world of swords and symbols, paintings and prayers. This historic landmark, with its three floors of photographs, furnishings, and masons’ stories, is a place offering a unique education, not for only its members, but for all visitors.

Masons are one of many groups and individuals making good use of the Green Street Masonic Center. Their long-standing tradition of extending a hand to the community has led to an active social calendar and a slew of events hosted at the hall. Whether organizing its own happenings or renting the space for subsidized fees or pro bono, the fraternity is busy booking. Russell Hussey happily lists the various groups that have occupied the Center: Theatre in the Round; Newburyport Literary Festival committee; Link House, Inc., an addiction recovery program; Department of Training and Development, which offers community job fairs; Newburyport Education Foundation; Newburyport Youth Soccer Association; Northeast Outreach Center for Veterans; and the Red Cross, to name but a few. Additionally, the space is home to the Newburyport Food Bank, Clinical Social Work Therapists, Health & Human Services, and a host of neighborhood organizations. Weddings, spaghetti dinners, pancake breakfasts—even Oktoberfests—have also been known to take place in the Masonic building. Such gatherings are hardly indicative of “men who keep secrets behind locked doors.”

In addition to providing a community center, the Masons offer public resources such as the free Child Identification Program (CHIP), which is a collaborative effort with the Massachusetts Crime Prevention Officers Association and the Massachusetts Dental Society, enabling parents to gather DNA, fingerprints, and dental impressions as a protective measure should a child go missing. The Professional Geriatric Care Management (Overlook C.A.R.E.), another assistance program, provides comprehensive health care management for the elderly. Additionally, the Masonic Angel Fund raises money to “change kids’ lives—one community, one child at a time.” Whether it’s activities for young people, basic provisions for the disadvantaged, money for medical research, or college scholarships, the Masons’ work showcases their simple objective as stated by brother Powers, “We just want to help people.”

Within the walls of Newburyport’s Masonic Lodge, there are things that could be deemed spooky. Like the King Solomon-esque temple featuring a domed ceiling with pinpoints of light, which are visible when the room is darkened; they are said to represent the overhead constellation as it appeared when the building was erected. An old-timey projector adds simulated clouds and red/orange light indicative of the coming dawn, a demonstration that makes Powers chuckle and say, “Disney’s got nothing on us.” There are columns and altars and ancient rickety chairs. In the center of the temple floor, a Holy Book rests in a bright beam of light. On the long “Wall of Brothers” hang photographs of serious-looking men draped in suits and aprons, donning Knights’ and Commanders’ swords. There’s even talk of strange things and ghosts found in the attic. Such “theatrics” are, perhaps, to blame for the general public’s apprehensive attitude toward Freemasonry and its Lodges. But, all told, the Masonic Center at 31 Green Street is just a venerable old building, alive with well-intentioned people. And the Mason Brothers are at the core, just behind gladly opened doors.

Equine Advocates, the Chase Family, from Hope4Horses

Lexi Chase and her horse Monaco

A young Beverly resident crusades to save retired and forgotten horses from slaughter. By Alyssa Rosenthal – Photograph by Tracy Emanuel

Watching Monaco, an 18-month-old colt, thrust his nose into the palm of Lexi Chase, his new owner, it was hard to believe that the first time he was handled by humans was only a few weeks earlier, when he arrived at the Hope4Horses holding barn in Hamilton. Before adopting him, “I saw a video of him online, completely terrified,” says Chase, a 19-year-old college student from Beverly. “He’s still very unsure.”

Monaco is the second and newest addition to the Chase’s family of rescued horses, joining Pippa, a five-year-old mare that Lexi adopted in April. “I looked at the photo for a few days, and knew it was something I had to do,” says Chase, who placed an 11th-hour bid for the horse through Another Chance 4 Horses, a nonprofit broker program that works to find homes for horses that would otherwise be shipped to slaughter houses in Canada or Mexico. Bids are placed “sight unseen, so you have no idea what you are getting into,” explains Chase, who filled out forms and sent in a payment of $805 without telling her mother, Lisa, and unsure if she had even submitted the bid in time. After buying Pippa, Chase looked up the horse’s pedigree, only to find that the former racehorse was a great-granddaughter of Secretariat, the record-setting racehorse and Triple Crown winner.

Even though Lisa didn’t learn about the new addition to her family until after Lexi’s bid, she and her daughter were very involved in taking care of Pippa when the horse arrived in Hamilton. Avid volunteers at Hope4Horses, a local organization that works to save horses from slaughter, they worked full time at the barn while Pippa was quarantined there before moving her to a barn closer to their home. Lexi explains the need for the quarantine period, as the horses come from kill pens where they are in very close proximity to hundreds of other horses and “sometimes come with fevers and illnesses,” or, in Monaco’s case, fear of human contact. “Information about the horses’ past is little to nothing,” Lexi adds.

Though she isn’t sure if she will continue to personally rescue horses, Lexi is constantly communicating with people online who work together to raise funds and find homes for horses headed to auction, where anyone from horse enthusiasts to, yes, meat buyers can bid on them. “Everyone [online] is a stranger, but we all have the same goal,” she says. So far, Lexi has been instrumental in the rescue of about 20 horses, finding them new homes or reuniting them with past owners.

Even Chase’s 11-year-old sister, Laina, is involved with the cause. Laina recently organized a lemonade stand and set up a whiteboard bearing the words “Your lemonade will save a horse from slaughter.” On July 7, the youngest Chase adopted her own horse, a miniature horse named Summer. Together, the Chases hope to continue carving new paths for horses heading to a premature end. “Even if it’s not myself [doing the] rescuing, I’ll constantly network,” she says.

RAW Art Works

At RAW Art Works in Lynn, conflicted youth find a creative outlet and unwavering emotional support. By Kiley Jacques

Growing up is tough. Growing up in the inner city is even tougher. Violence, alcohol and drugs, crime, poverty, and broken families are often part of kids’ everyday lives. They are faced with choices kids shouldn’t have to make, so they need to choose wisely. And RAW Art Works is a very wise choice.

After earning a master’s degree in art therapy from Lesley College, Mary Flannery, founder of RAW Art Works in Lynn, began working with young men incarcerated for sexual violence. Seeing the artwork those young men created and hearing the stories behind their crimes, Flannery was inspired to take her work to the next level. When she learned many inmates intentionally returned to prison in order to belong to a group, Flannery thought, “There must be a better way.” So, in 1994, RAW Art Works was born.

At RAW Art Works, young people ages seven to 18 learn to identify and depict the “frames” that showcase their stories. Flannery explains how the content of their creations is visible and matters to the world, so they should give serious consideration to what they reveal. That was the idea behind the exhibit that is now on view at 37 Central Square in Lynn. The pieces on display are as revelatory, expressive, thought-provoking, and emotionally raw as those created by trained artists.

From 3 o’clock in the afternoon until 8:30 at night, young artists can be found applying paint to canvas, pointing cameras at all manner of subjects, sculpting materials of every fathomable origin, and writing about their inner worlds. They are working hard to earn an A.F.A, or “Adventures in Fine Art,” certificate. With eyebrows knit in concentration, they listen as instructors share ideas for how to make sense of their turbulent lives. Flannery tells them, “There’s not much distance between your head and your heart. If you walk the world realizing that, you’re going to be so much more connected.” As they create and share, they learn life skills, like making eye contact, articulating feelings, contributing to a group, committing to activities, and taking responsibility. The outcome is profound: Not only are they evolving into mature adults but, for the first time, many are also experiencing what “family” is all about.

Much of RAW Art Works’s aim is to get young people into college and to see them graduate. And they do just that. “What I love about RAW is that it is so full circle,” says Flannery. “What we say we’re going to do, we do.” She is eager to share stories of RAW’s success. “I want people to know that these are the most courageous kids in the whole world, and people need to come here to find out more about them.” rawart.org

Talking School and Sports with Lilly Donovan

Lilly Donovan

Talking school and sports with student-athlete extraordinaire Lilly Donovan.

High school can be a hectic time in a young person’s life, and Newburyport High School junior Lilly Donovan has it tougher than most. Instead of the typical after-school routine involving homework and socializing, Donovan leaves school each day and heads to the field or the court for practice. We talked to the triple-threat athlete (she plays soccer, basketball, and lacrosse for the Clippers) about balancing academics and athletics, and what makes it all worthwhile.

How did you get into sports? I’ve always been a very competitive person, and [sports] help to keep me in shape. Playing three sports, I play with a wide range of females, and I get to play against a lot of girls who I have gotten to know better through camps and tournaments over the years.

The Cape Ann League is a tough league full of rivalries. Are there any big wins you want to score this year? Competitively, Masco, Pentucket, North Andover, and other big schools have become the big wins that we strive for. For soccer, Amesbury is still a big rivalry.

What will you miss most about high school sports after you graduate? Playing with all my friends, who will most likely be going off to all different colleges, and the people I’ve met along the way, like my coaches.

Do you want to continue to play in college? Although three sports may be unrealistic in college, I would love to continue playing at least two. I am still undecided as to which ones I would choose. I’d love the opportunity and challenge to play sports at a Division I school.

Do any of your teams have special traditions? After practices on the day before a game, we get together and have a pasta party. We talk about strategies and things that we want to accomplish throughout the season. On the day of a game, the whole team dresses up in weird outfits. My favorite and the weirdest outfit that we have to wear is a cape. We dress up in all black under a random cape that you find around your house and then wear it during the school day. Some people show up with capes from vampire costumes and other people show up with fuzzy purple capes. —Alyssa Rosenthal




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