The Medina Community Design Committee hosted its first annual Garden Tour June 29.

The event, originally coordinated by the YWCA, was adopted by the CDC to show off historic and beautiful treasures in the City of Medina.

Jenni Kurilko, chairperson of the event, said the goal is to raise money to help preserve the architectural structures of Medina and help homeowners restoring homes to keep a cohesive look. This was her chance to remind Medina residents and all who appreciate beauty there are historic neighborhoods off public square.

She and her husband bought a home in the South Court Historic Neighborhood three years ago. Their home is about to celebrate its 150th birthday and they redesigned and added to the gardens.

“I’ve always liked old homes,” she said, “This house is so sturdy. Things aren’t made the way they used to be. I love the look of it. I love the history of it.”

Her home was the second stop on the garden tour. Her garden is actually a certified wildlife habitat providing food, shelter, water and a place for animals to raise their young. Her water garden attracts frogs, toads, dragonflies, herons and other wildlife. She also has Koi in one of her ponds.

When asked why she decided to participate in the event she said, “People are proud of their gardens and beautiful yards. We’re featuring some really interesting ones. It’s a nice, family day.”

The Casey family has featured its Spring Grove home gardens on several tours. The backyard was a grassy volleyball court for their nine children before it was transformed by Harold and Rosemary.

The garden features not only plants and flowers, but also a hand-built gazebo, various statuaries, waterfalls and birdhouses. Rosemary Casey said she and her husband spent 20 years working in their gardens and this will probably be the last year they participate in a tour.

Five homes participated in the tour along with the Friends of Spring Grove Cemetery and the sponsor of the event, A.I. Root. Paul Becks, secretary for the Community Design Committee, said the tour gives people a chance to see special places in their community they wouldn’t ordinarily explore.

“All the homes have something special to offer, but in most cases it’s not something you can see from the street,” said Becks. “People put a lot of time and effort in their gardens and no one gets to see them. We’re trying to pull back the curtain a bit to show the public the beauty these homes have to offer.”

“People are happy,” said Nancy Mattey, a trustee for the CDC. “People like to garden. It’s an uplifting event to do.”

See more Medina news at cleveland.com/medina.

(216) 986-2371 Twitter: @taraquinnsun

‘Gordes’ a classic Provencal image, although the top of the sky seems a little too ‘burned in’. ‘Yannik’ has such strong highlights, and such deep shadows, but it combines into a lovely portrait, well processed indeed! The composition of ‘Museo de Arte…’ is quirky, but effective! I still think the sky has been darkened too much though. There’s something about ‘At Cindy Sherman Exhibition’ that is just pure Photography, I love it! But my favourite image here is ‘Melanie’; the low viewpoint, wonderful subtle tonality, and some mystery make for an informal and engaging portrait. The impressive detail of ‘Paysage D’Hiver’ shows this old camera at its best, and the lovely combination of medium format FP4 film in a Rolleiflex gives these photos a timeless quality

Editor’s note: The author is a landscape designer and author of several books on the subject. He is also the designer and owner of Evergreen, a one-acre woodland garden in Goffstown, which will be open to the public this weekend.

GOFFSTOWN — The display garden at Uncanoonuc Mt. Perennials is actually much more than an exhibit of some of the plants grown and sold at the nursery on Mountain Road. It’s also an all-too-rare example of superb landscape design.

The garden is located on a low mound just off the parking area. You enter it by climbing up a very short, very gentle grade, partly on wide fieldstone steps. This quick ascent helps gives you a clear sense that you’re entering a different space — a special garden-not only physically separate but distinct in character from the rest of the nursery.

This welcome sense of differentiation is enhanced by the large shrubs and specimen trees planted along the edges of the space. They help screen out the rest of the nursery, so once you’re inside the display garden, your attention is on the garden, and almost nothing else.

This screening illustrates an essential principle of landscape design: that a landscape isn’t just the land on which the landscape is created. It’s everything you can see from that land. If, for example, you can see cars and telephone poles and other people’s houses from your garden, then those things are every bit as much a part of your landscape as your flowers. To preserve the integrity— the unity and special character—of a landscape you need to screen out anything that doesn’t relate to it.

The smaller plants in the display garden (mostly perennials) are arranged in large groupings—what designers often call sweeps, or drifts—and each group consists of just one variety of plant. It perfectly illustrates the designer’s rule of thumb: one sweep, one plant.

Perhaps the biggest mistake made by lay gardeners is that they do the opposite: The put way too many different varieties of plants in one group. That makes the garden confusing; there are no focal points. So many plants are competing for attention that the eye doesn’t know what one to look at first. Rather than making the garden restful or soothing — or a powerful statement of any kind — the plants have no emotional effect at all. They may be perfectly groomed, but visually they’re a mess.

The Display Garden thus illustrates another, more general rule of thumb: Good garden design is powerful design, and powerful design is simple design.

The garden also makes optimum use of bark mulch. Mulch does many practical things: It suppresses weeds, keeps soil moist and adds nutrients (thus reducing the need for weeding, watering and fertilizing). But the fine, dark much that covers the ground between the plants also unifies the space, because, like a solid sweep of plants, it carpets the space with uniform color and texture. It’s also the most pleasing bark mulch because it’s the most natural looking: It looks like top soil, which is what you expect to see in a garden (unlike, say, red or other dyed bark mulch, which looks surreal.)

The Display Garden is also enhanced by artful use of stone. Stone is nature’s sculpture. Like trees and evergreen plants, it gives a garden year-round structure and interest—-especially valuable in a perennial garden, which would otherwise be a bit bare before the flowers appear in the spring and after they wither away in the fall.

Most of the garden’s large, smooth stones enter the ground at or near their widest point, thus creating the illusion that, like the tip of an iceberg, they’re just the top of a much larger rock—or even ledge-that gets wider as it reaches deeper into the earth. This illusion that the garden is a part of something massive and permanent helps gives it a powerful sense of peace and rest.

This effect is the very opposite of that created when stones are merely dumped on the site, often resting on top of (not in) the earth at their narrowest point. As Frank Lloyd Wright said in another context, these misplaced rocks are on the site, but not of the site. They’re obviously not part of a larger stone or ledge that predates the garden. In fact they’re the very picture of impermanence. They look as if they could be spun around like tops.

Equally artful are the Display Garden’s occasional flights of stone steps. They’re luxuriously wide — two feet or more — and the height between them is low, only about six inches. As a result, climbing them is effortless. They not only look graceful, they feel graceful. They illustrate another rule of thumb: The easier it is to walk through a garden, the greater its pleasure.

A final note: Some sections of the garden path are bordered by squat, square stakes connected with rustic-looking rope. This low, Japanese-style edging is just high enough to keep visitors from trampling delicate plants, but also low enough to be unobtrusive and to draw the eye along the ground, thereby echoing and emphasizing the low horizontality of the perennials while also making them seem “higher.”

The garden is a co-production of Mark Rynearson, a landscape designer and contractor, and his wife Annette (“Nettie”) Rynearson, who runs the nursery. They met when they were undergraduates at Cornell. Mark majored in landscape architecture, Nettie in horticulture.

The nursery (497-3975) is open 9 to 5, Wednesday through Sunday. Come, look and learn.

Robert Gillmore’s books include “The Woodland Garden” and “Beauty All Around You: How to Create Large Private Low-Maintenance Gardens, Even on Small Lots and Small Budgets.” Evergreen, his one-acre woodland garden in Goffstown, will be open to the public July 13 and 14 as part of the Garden Conservancy’s Open Days program.

Article Summary:
Named in honor of Pat Plaxico, landscaping is part of an ongoing community effort to revitalize downtown Highpoint. Library plans to add a scholarship for Landscape Architecture and Garden Design to complement the existing $10,000 design competition scholarships for Interior and Furniture Design.

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Final plans are underway to break ground on Plaxico Gardens, named in honor of Pat Plaxico.

The Bernice Bienenstock Furniture Library announced that final plans are underway to break ground on Plaxico Gardens, named in honor of Pat Plaxico, a long-time Library board member who has a distinguished history of service to the furnishings community. Work will begin on the gardens this fall and be ready for dedication in the spring of 2014. Charles Sutton, President of the Library’s Board of Directors commented: “It is our way of saying thank you to Pat for her efforts and to celebrate her contributions in a way that is relevant and meaningful.”

Front view of the Library from Main Street, High Point, NC

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Plaxico is a nationally recognized interior designer renowned for the reuse of historic buildings — adapting old structures for new purposes. Her portfolio includes Historic Market Square, the EJ Victor building, the Phillips Building (now High Point Convention and Visitors Bureau) and the Bernice Bienenstock Furniture Library. “I’ve been a member of the Furniture Library board for 38 years.

Working on the recent restoration and renovation of the library was a real treat. This gardens and grounds project will further enhance the property — and invoke the interests and passions of the Library’s founders. The main street location will be an oasis of beauty and respite, a gathering place, and a destination for learning in the uptown area of High Point” said Plaxico.

Greensboro-based landscape architect and garden designer, Sally Pagliai, created the design and has been retained to install the project. She has fashioned gardens throughout the United States and Italy, including many in North Carolina. When asked about her inspiration, she replied “Gardens are lasting monuments to the human spirit and are an integral part to the promise of a beautiful home. They are personal sanctuaries of calm in a stressful world.”

Philip Gibbs, Senior Art Director at Alderman Company worked with Plaxico and Pagliai to create renderings to help visualize what the gardens will look like at maturity. Russ Bienenstock, Vice President of the Board of Directors commented, “The Gardens will be a wonderful place for students, designers, and all visitors with an interest in design, can find inspiration. The landscaping plan will make the Library more visible from Main Street, which will increase traffic and usage of the library’s resources. The gardens, as is the Library, will be open to the public and will help to encourage research, collaboration and scholarship. They will also make the Library more versatile for events during and between furniture markets.”

Rear view of the Library.

The Library intends to add a scholarship for Landscape Architecture and Garden Design to complement the existing $10,000 design competition scholarships for Interior and Furniture Design. The library estimates that it will cost approximately $150,000 to design, construct and maintain the gardens and to fund scholarships over the next three years, and is seeking contributions to support this effort. For more information contact the Library. You can view a brochure on the Library’s website athttp://www.furniturelibrary.com/what-we-are-doing

About Bernice Bienenstock Furniture Library:  The Bernice Bienenstock Furniture Library is a worldwide center for research, design and collaboration, which holds the world’s largest collection of rare and significant books on the history, and design of furniture. Founded in 1970 and endowed by the Bienenstock family, the Library is devoted the advancement of knowledge about design, furniture, interiors, architecture, textiles, finishes, and construction.

The rare book collection contains volumes published since 1640. With the exception of Yale, it is the only library in the United States that houses the original works of 18th century furniture masters Chippendale, Sheraton and Hepplewhite, as well as a complete set of Diderot’s Encyclopedia (26 volumes published in the 18th Century). Unlike Yale, the Bienenstock Furniture Library is open to the public. A special climate and humidity-controlled room houses these rare volumes. An appointment with the curator is required to examine these books, and you must wear white gloves, but they are available to the public. The library also contains rare drawings and furniture details. It is a treasure trove of inspiration for anyone interested in design.

The Library operates a specialty bookstore selling significant contemporary works, out-of- print, and hard-to-find volumes. Most Library services are free. The Bienenstock Furniture Library, located in High Point NC, is open to the public and welcomes professionals and scholars for research, collaboration, meetings, seminars, lectures, and events. Visit www.furniturelibrary.com. The easiest way to stay up to date on the developments of the library is to “like” its Facebook pagehttps://www.facebook.com/BienenstockFurnitureLibrary.

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Furniture World Magazine-Business solutions for furniture retailers

Newswise — SYRACUSE, N.Y. — Landscape architects who want to design healing gardens to help people struggling with serious illness need to first understand more about the needs of the people who will use those spaces, according to a recent college graduate who did his independent research project last winter while undergoing treatment for leukemia.

Kevan Busa, who graduated from the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Foresty (ESF) here with a bachelor’s degree in landscape architecture in May, based his study on his battle with acute lymphoblastic leukemia and the bone marrow transplant that kept him hospitalized for three months at Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo.

“It was not the foreign culture I set out to study, but I got a whole new view on designing landscapes from living in a hospital,” he wrote.

Busa started on his unexpected journey in May 2012.

After four years as a member of the ESF Mighty Oaks soccer team, he was headed for a change in the fall of his fifth year. He was preparing to travel to Barcelona for his off-campus semester, the centerpiece of ESF’s landscape architecture program, when he sought treatment for a fever, dizziness and leg pain. He was quickly diagnosed with leukemia and he spent most of the summer hospitalized in Syracuse before he was transferred to Roswell for the transplant.

“I still wanted to graduate on time and do my off-campus project,” he said. “But when you’re spending two straight months in a hospital room, there really isn’t any other culture.”

Busa wasn’t the only person who wanted his education to stay on track. “We wanted him to graduate on time,” said Richard Hawks, who recently stepped down as chair of the ESF Department of Landscape Architecture. “So we decided to build on the experience he was having and not pretend it wasn’t happening. He did the research and wrote a paper. He did a very nice project.”

With guidance from Hawks and his advisor, Scott Shannon, who teaches in the LA department as well as serving as associate provost and dean of the graduate school, Busa plunged into online research, learning how healing spaces are designed and how they differ depending on their intended audience, be it the elderly, children or veterans. He learned that although existing research extolls the natural environment’s ability to speed the healing process, he wasn’t even allowed to have flowers in his hospital room because of his compromised immune system.

“How are these healing spaces going to help me if I can’t even have one teeny plant next to me?” he said. “Healing spaces are meant to help you but they’re not safe for someone who has had a bone marrow transplant.”

Busa said he was not allowed to visit Kaminski Park Gardens, an outdoor space designed for use by hospital patients, their family members and the staff. His magazine story details the problems: The chemotherapy and radiation had made him sensitive to sunlight and there was little shade in the park. The pollen, dirt and fungi that occur normally threatened his immune system. The use of mowers and leaf blowers stirred up particles that hampered his breathing. Sometimes there were crowds of people there, which he needed to avoid. Even a walk on bumpy pavement was difficult because of the IV pole that was by his side for two months.

In the hospital, Busa surveyed 90 people about healing gardens and found what they most enjoyed was the plantings and exposure to the sun, the very things he needed to avoid.

He wrote: “For many patients with compromised immune systems, the solution may be gardens that can be experienced from indoors, through glass. This idea may not sound terribly inviting, but it is a far preferable alternative to 100 days of brick walls.”

He wrote a first-person piece about his experience in the June 2013 issue of Landscape Architecture Magazine, published by the American Society of Landscape Architecture.

Busa is working full time this summer as an intern with the Syracuse Metropolitan Transportation Council, where he focuses on planning issues. He is interested in pursuing opportunities in the field of health care design. In the meantime, he has been invited to speak Sept. 26 at the American Institute of Architects state convention in Syracuse. He will give a 45-minute presentation to share his study. His presentation falls one day short of the one-year anniversary of his bone marrow transplant.

Hawks said Busa has already given professional landscape architects something to think about.

“People in the profession are now able to look at an area of practice that, fortunately, many people don’t get to see from Kevan’s perspective,” Hawks said.

He said it’s rare for a recent graduate to have a first-person piece published in the professional magazine. “I don’t recall it happening,” he said. “But from a human interest angle, it was a unique story and worth telling.”

Brad McKee, who has served as editor of the magazine for three years, said it’s unusual to feature the work of an undergraduate.

“They usually don’t get a lot of attention but that doesn’t mean they haven’t done much,” he said. “Kevan’s story was really interesting, it really struck a chord with me. He was there and he used his time wisely. He had a really unusual point of view. We don’t get a lot of stuff like that. All the pieces came together in a really profound and sobering way. Plus, given his situation, who’s not going to read it?”

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Monday, July 08, 2013

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• Illness Gives ESF Student ‘Whole New View’ on Garden Designs
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2013 graduate publishes reflection in Landscape Architecture Magazine
7/8/2013

• Landscape Architecture website

Landscape architects who want to design healing gardens to help people struggling with serious illness need to first understand more about the needs of the people who will use those spaces, according to a recent ESF graduate who did his independent research project last winter while undergoing treatment for leukemia.

Kevan Busa, who graduated with a bachelor’s degree in landscape architecture in May, wrote a first-person piece in the June 2013 issue of Landscape Architecture Magazine in which he described his battle with acute lymphoblastic leukemia and the bone marrow transplant that kept him hospitalized for three months at Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo.

“It was not the foreign culture I set out to study, but I got a whole new view on designing landscapes from living in a hospital,” he wrote.

Busa started on his unexpected journey in May 2012.

After four years as a member of the Mighty Oaks soccer team, he was headed for a change in the fall of his fifth year. He was preparing to travel to Barcelona for his off-campus semester when he sought treatment for a fever, dizziness and leg pain. He was quickly diagnosed with leukemia and he spent most of the summer hospitalized in Syracuse before he was transferred to Roswell for the transplant.

“I still wanted to graduate on time and do my off-campus project,” he said. “But when you’re spending two straight months in a hospital room, there really isn’t any other culture.”

Busa wasn’t the only person who wanted his education to stay on track. “We wanted him to graduate on time,” said Richard Hawks, who recently stepped down as chair of the Department of Landscape Architecture. “So we decided to build on the experience he was having and not pretend it wasn’t happening. He did the research and wrote a paper. He did a very nice project.”

With guidance from Hawks and his advisor, Scott Shannon, who teaches in the LA department as well as associate provost and dean of the graduate school, Busa plunged into online research, learning how healing spaces are designed and how they differ depending on their intended audience, be it the elderly, children or veterans. He learned that although existing research extolls the natural environment’s ability to speed the healing process, he wasn’t even allowed to have flowers in his hospital room because of his compromised immune system.

“How are these healing spaces going to help me if I can’t even have one teeny plant next to me?” he said. “Healing spaces are meant to help you but they’re not safe for someone who has had a bone marrow transplant.”

Busa said he was not allowed to visit Kaminski Park Gardens, an outdoor space designed for use by hospital patients, their family members and the staff. His magazine story details the problems: The chemotherapy and radiation had made him sensitive to sunlight and there was little shade in the park. The pollen, dirt and fungi that occur normally threatened his immune system. The use of mowers and leaf blowers stirred up particles that hampered his breathing. Sometimes there were crowds of people there, which he needed to avoid. Even a walk on bumpy pavement was difficult because of the IV pole that was by his side for two months.

In the hospital, Busa surveyed 90 people about healing gardens and found what they most enjoyed was the plantings and exposure to the sun, the very things he needed to avoid.

He wrote: “For many patients with compromised immune systems, the solution may be gardens that can be experienced from indoors, through glass. This idea may not sound terribly inviting, but it is a far preferable alternative to 100 days of brick walls.”

His story ran in the magazine, published by the American Society of Landscape Architecture, about a month after his graduation.

Busa is working full time this summer as an intern with the Syracuse Metropolitan Transportation Council, where he focuses on planning issues. He is interested in pursuing opportunities in the field of health care design. In the meantime, he has been invited to speak Sept. 26 at the American Institute of Architects state convention in Syracuse. He will give a 45-minute presentation to share his study. His presentation falls one day short of the one-year anniversary of his bone marrow transplant.

Hawks said Busa has already given professional landscape architects something to think about.

“People in the profession are now able to look at an area of practice that, fortunately, many people don’t get to see from Kevan’s perspective,” Hawks said.

He said it’s rare for a recent graduate to have a first-person piece published in the professional magazine. “I don’t recall it happening,” he said. “But from a human interest angle, it was a unique story and worth telling.”

Brad McKee, who has served as editor of the magazine for three years, said it’s unusual to feature the work of an undergraduate.

“They usually don’t get a lot of attention but that doesn’t mean they haven’t done much,” he said. “Kevan’s story was really interesting, it really struck a chord with me. He was there and he used his time wisely. He had a really unusual point of view. We don’t get a lot of stuff like that. All the pieces came together in a really profound and sobering way. Plus, given his situation, who’s not going to read it?”

Just as a well kept home speaks volumes of the owner, a garden and its landscape too plays a vital role in reflecting the owner’s creativity, taste and style. A professionally designed landscape with its varied elements of water bodies and exotic greenery has, indeed, become an inevitable part of contemporary architecture, lending it depth and variety.

Landscaping can be broadly classified in two, traditional and contemporary. “A traditional landscape is one that’s not in order. But the contemporary style is one which is structured and where exists a clarity in style,” says Sandhya Mohandas an architect based in Calicut known for her designs with a minimalistic approach. “The quality of a landscape depends largely on its design,” she says. “The two aspects that have to be taken into account while designing is its softscape and hardscape.”

The hardscape consists of elements that cannot be moved like pathways, water bodies, retaining walls, seating area and the compound wall, while softscape consists of plants such as shrubs, grass and trees and all the green elements. If a sprawling lawn is inevitable to a typical landscaped garden now it’s being increasingly replaced by gravel, wood chips, water bodies and pebbles. “Maintenance and upkeep of lawns have become an expensive affair,” says Sandhya as she goes on to elaborate how extensive use of hardscape elements have contributed to the water shortage in Kerala.

Pathways have become a highlight of most of the sprawling landscaped gar dens and the two popular ways of doing it is either by using concrete or by using interlocking tiles in a bed of gravel. These methods prevent water from reaching the ground thus reducing the water table. “This calls for responsible designing keeping in mind careful preservation of Nature and its various aspects.”

Sandhya is against the use of artificial green elements in a landscape. She even feels strongly for anything that restricts the free growth of plants.

“A reason why I am against the use of potted plants and even Bonsai in my designs.” Design according to the architect depends invariably on the texture and rigidity of the landscape and softscape. “They can even be whacky and weird and still emanate a positive energy with clever designing.”

She cites the example of a garden full of trees which was destroyed by a devastating storm. “The uprooted trees were carefully planted back into the soil upside down and blooms of different hues were made to grow on the roots, magically transforming them.”

A believer of minimalism, Sandhya is an advocate of ‘less is more’, which is vividly portrayed in her designs as well. She recommends Zen garden for houses with less com pound area. Zen gardens can lend any landscape a beauty without much clutter. It creates a miniature stylised landscape through carefully composed arrangement of rocks, water features, trees and bushes and uses gravel and sands to represent ripples in water. Zen Garden is relatively small, surrounded by a wall.

“They don’t replicate nature in its physical form but they replicate its essence in a very unique way. More than the elements it’s the placement that is of extreme importance. A Zen garden is ideal for meditational purpose and consists mainly of hardscape. Even lighting plays a major role in landscaping by creating points of interest.”

Coming back to contemporary designs, Sandhya cites the example of the Mughal gardens of a different era that came close to the style with its structured look and demarcations for each and every elements like the fountain and other water bodies. “To sum it up contemporary landscaping is clever designing with lot of thought for detailing. The landscape should integrate with the structure or building it holds and enhance its appearance.”

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Yoko Kawai, Owner, Penguin Environmental Design L.L.C.

Statewide

12:10 p.m. EDT, July 7, 2013

This summer, a Japanese garden designed by a Connecticut designer will be built at Frost Valley YMCA, in New York. The garden is to enhance the experience of culture sharing programs and to celebrate the long-time relationship between Frost Valley and Tokyo YMCA.

What does come to your mind when you think of Japanese culture, tasty Sushi, intricate Origami, or beautiful Kimono? They are wonderful elements of Japanese culture. Yet if you do not know why and how they are created and how they become a part of way of life, then you may not be able to really appreciate the value of culture surrounding them. Such is the belief of Tatsuo and Emiko Honma, founders of Tokyo-Frost Valley YMCA Partnership.

So when Tatsuo and Emiko met Takaya Kurimoto in 2008, they knew that they met a kindred soul: Takaya, a landscape architect and co-owner of Penguin Environmental Design in Hamden, had been designing Japan-inspired landscape, not as a static picture, but as a lived space which connects outside and inside.

All three of them soon agreed that culture sharing programs are highly benefitted from the spatial environment which suggests the culture in discussion. They also believed that Tokyo-Frost Valley YMCA Partnership, while it had been offering a rich series of culture sharing programs in Japanese-style house, was a missing an important element of such spatial environment, a Japanese garden.

For the last five years, they worked hard to materialize this dream garden. Takaya made sketches, and Testuo and Emiko raised the necessary fund in collaboration with Frost Valley YMCA. The workshop for the Japanese garden was held for the family camp last year. Many American families learned about and created their own miniature gardens. And this year, during the series of camps, American and Japanese campers will have a chance to see the construction of the Japanese garden.

The garden is also to celebrate more than 30 years of relationship between Frost Valley YMCA and Tokyo YMCA. In 1978, Tokyo YMCA sent Tatsuo and Emiko to New York as pioneers to provide programs for health originally to Japanese businessmen and their families in the area. With their efforts and creativities, Tatsuo and Emiko have been successful in catering programs not only to Japanese but also to American families, by developing programs to include the ideas of life and culture.

Copyright © 2013, The Hartford Courant

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