The $12 Potato Chip- And Other Horrors [Podcast]
“The Colin McEnroe Show” – WNPR
In 2016, a Swedish brewery offered for sale artisanally-prepared potato chips. $59 for five chips in what looks like a jeweler’s box. They sold out. Crazy, right?
But be honest: Have you gone to more than one place looking for just the right coffee bean or golden beet or …something? Meanwhile, behind all this posturing, what do Americans really cook and eat?
The audio at the top of this page is the radio version of this show. The full-length, unedited, from-start-to-finish, fully-40-minutes-too-long-to-air-on-the-radio version of Colin’s Freshly Squeezed at Watkinson School is below.
GUESTS:
Alison Draper – Toxicologist; director of the Center for Interdisciplinary Science at Trinity College
Chris Prosperi – Chef/owner, Metro Bis in Simsbury, Conn.
Marlene Schwartz – Director, Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity; professor of human development and family studies at UConn

Connecticut Arts Day Features Performances, Speakers, Panels
Hartford Courant/CT Now
The theme of Connecticut Arts Day 2018, celebrated on April 25 in Hartford, is resiliency. Keynote speaker Bettina Love fits right in. Love has made her name theorizing on a new approach to education of urban youth: by embracing hip-hop not just as a genre of music but as a distinct culture, and using the norms of that culture to reach kids who can’t relate to traditional teaching methods.
“These kids come from a beautiful culture that prepares them for education. There is resistance and there is resiliency in this culture,” Love says. “Hip-hop comes out of African-American culture, the civil-rights movement, which is all about people resisting and fighting. It comes out of the black power movement. It’s all about getting knocked down and getting right back up again.”…
…Lunch will be followed at 12:30 p.m. by the presentation of a lifetime achievement award to dancer-choreographer [Professor of Theater & Dance, Emerita] Judy Dworin, who founded Judy Dworin Performance Project in 1989. The ceremony will include a speech by Greg Galle of Future Partners…

Amid funding crunch, CT colleges look to diversify revenue streams
Hartford Business Journal
Trinity College generated headlines earlier this year when it announced that for the first time in the school’s history, its tuition — inclusive of room, board and annual fees — would exceed $70,000 beginning in 2018-2019.
Yet, the 195-year-old private liberal arts college in Hartford’s Frog Hollow neighborhood is not alone at that price point. In fact, several private schools across New England, including Middletown’s Wesleyan University, Amherst College in Massachusetts and Dartmouth in New Hampshire, are all on the threshold of the $70,000 mark.
“The cost of our physical plant and operations goes up every single year,” said Angel Perez, Trinity College’s vice president, noting that the school’s costs — from housing and feeding students to providing health care and compensating a highly educated workforce — adds up. “It’s like running a small city, 24-hours a day.”
Yet, as average tuition and fees for higher education have skyrocketed nationally over the past decade, American incomes have not kept pace, narrowing the affordability gap. At the same time, federal and state aid used to offset those costs is shrinking, forcing institutions of higher education — both public and private — to figure out how to diversify their revenue streams…

Annual Samba Fest April 28
WRTC
The 12th-annual Samba Fest takes place April 28 on the campus of Trinity College in Hartford, Conn. The event runs 11 a.m.-6 p.m. and features a variety of local, regional and international artists. The fest takes place rain or shine and admission is free.
WRTC coverage starts at noon with Sam Braga, Chris Cowles and other staff members who will be interviewing artists, organizers, dignitaries and spectators as well as providing an overview of the proceedings. Click here to listen live.
The main stage will be located behind 240 New Britain Ave., with parking available around the Koeppel Community Sports Center, on New Britain Avenue, Summit Street and Broad Street.
Artists include 30-plus musicians directly from Brazil (Adrianna, Gilvan de Oliveira Trio, Meninos de Minas with Mai(accent)ra Baldaia and Guilherme Ventura, Jose (accent) Paulo, Ginga Brasileira, Friendz World Music, Zikina, representatives from the Congado Association Itabira) as well as local groups — Trinity Samba Ensemble, Trinity Steel and Hall High School Choirs.
In addition to musical performances, the event will also include drum building with Trinity alumnus Oludare Bernard ’15, Amazing Face Art, Juggle Joy, and various Trinity campus organizations. Several food trucks, including Samba’s Cuisine, Sweet Pan Brazilian Desserts, and Story and Soil Coffee will also be present the entire day.
“The 12th anniversary celebration of Samba Fest is a virtual panorama of Brazilian and world music and culture,” says Eric Galm, the creator and producer of the event. “There will be everything from the refined strains of contemporary jazz-influenced melodies and harmonies, the hard edge of grit and perseverance from working class communities and exciting dance workshops.”
Galm, an associate professor of music and ethnomusicology at Trinity, where he directs the Samba Ensemble and is the coordinator for the music track of the Trinity in Trinidad Global Learning Site.
“The optimistic musical carnival-like atmosphere,” says Galm, “is a great way to sample the flavor and feeling of Brazil.”
For directions and additional information, click here. For general information, contact the Austin Arts Center Box Office at 860-297-2199. The box office is open Monday-Friday, 11 a.m.-6:30 p.m. and Saturday from 1-6:30 p.m.

‘Monet & Architecture’ Review: Watching a Painter Build His Career – By Mary Tompkins Lewis
Wall Street Journal
London – The French Impressionist Claude Monet’s paintings of landscape, lush gardens and the sea as captured in sunlight or through veils of atmospheric effects have largely defined our perception of his art and its appeal to modern viewers. Though scholars have studied his works through the lens of history or as harbingers of 20th-century abstraction, a fresh approach to Monet’s exceedingly familiar painting has become a rare phenomenon. The National Gallery’s “Monet & Architecture,” organized by Prof. Richard Thomson of the University of Edinburgh, is one such event. The exhibition, in which 77 meticulously curated canvases (many rarely seen) trace a novel path through the painter’s long career, substantially enriches the way one approaches and remembers the art of an artist we thought we knew.
Architecture mattered to Monet. It provided geometric structure and formal order for Monet’s untamed natural vistas, and indispensable scaffolding on which to hang the evanescent effects he sought to capture on canvas. It could make recognizable a rural subject or urban street scene otherwise buried under the glimmer of his painterly touch, or establish a sense of time or a semblance of mood beyond the reach of his brush. Perhaps most evocative is the show’s suggestion that architectural subjects could stimulate the artist’s insatiable appetite for experimentation…
—Ms. Lewis teaches art history at Trinity College, Hartford, Conn.

Reagan Aide’s New Job: Downplay ‘Polish Complicity in the Holocaust
The Daily Beast
A former speechwriter and special assistant for President Reagan and then-Vice President George H.W. Bush has been quietly assisting a Polish Warsaw-based organization to minimize the Polish role in the Holocaust, a Daily Beast review of foreign lobbying records has found.
The records, filed under the Justice Department’s Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), include a document signed by Clark Judge, the former speechwriter, stating that he would “rectify the false narrative, dangerous to Poland’s national security and roles in NATO and the EU, of Polish complicity in the Holocaust, extermination camps, and other war crimes.”…
…The bill renders illegal the use of phrases like “Polish death camps,” making them punishable by up to three years in prison.
The bill has been championed by Poland’s right-wing Law and Justice party, to which Duda claimed membership until becoming an independent in 2015—–though he maintains a close relationship with Law and Justice.
“The most direct reason for (the law) is Poland’s internal politics,” Samuel Kassow, a Trinity College historian, told PolitiFact last month. “The Law and Justice Party in power has a base that is very nationalistic and that is very angry at what it sees as people ignoring Polish suffering during the war, people not paying attention to the Warsaw Uprising of 1944 where 200,000 Poles were killed.”
In response to the legislation, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Israel had “no tolerance for distortion of truth, the rewriting of history and the denial of the Holocaust.”
The U.S. has not been silent on the matter, either, though perhaps not in the way one might think. According to a report by Israel’s Channel 10 News quoting senior Israeli officials, the Trump administration—including Vice President Mike Pence himself—pressured Israel’s government and its opposition to shut down criticism of the Polish law…