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Concert, scholarship will honor De Carolis

A Big Band Benefit Concert to honor Mario "Chic" De Carolis and to fund the first music scholarship in East Brunswick is planned for 3-5 p.m. on Oct. 28 at East Brunswick High School, Cranbury Road.

De Carolis, who died in February, was a music teacher and bandleader at East Brunswick High School, Middle School and elementary schools for 30 years. He was especially well-known for founding the Indigos Dance Band, a 24-member jazz stage band made up of the high school's elite musicians, many of whom have become successful music teachers and/or professional musicians.

In honor of "Mr. D's" life and longstanding contributions to the community, his daughter, Yvonne Amalina De Carolis, his family and his former students including Steve Kaplan and Noreen Braman, have created the first music scholarship and benefit concert in his name.

The Mario "Chic" De Carolis Music Scholarship Concert will feature former Indigos Band alumni, musicians from Musicians Local No. 204-373 (of which De Carolis was president) and current students in the East Brunswick High School Jazz Band, under the direction of John Kish.

Former students and colleagues who wish to participate in the event or who cannot attend but wish to make a donation are invited to call Yvonne De Carolis at (609) 275-8474.

Concert donation is $10. All proceeds will benefit the scholarship fund.

Sticks and Stones and Names

“Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me!”

That was chant we learned in grammar school, the response we were taught, for bullies who were calling us names. It was supposed to give power to us and show the bullies they couldn’t get to us (not with words anyway).

Unfortunately, it was a false promise. Growing up taught us that the bullies COULD get to us, with sticks, with stones and with words. And sometimes, it is the words that inflict the most painful damage of all.

Don Imus was the playground bully, and the Rutgers women’s basketball team was his victim. The team held its head up high, got an apology and, for the time being at least, saw the silencing of a bully. However, the damage done by the words uttered by Imus is not so easily healed. Unlike most broken bones, which can heal in a matter of weeks or months, the wounds opened by words can remain raw for a long, long time. How long will it be before any mention of the Rutgers women’s basketball team will not conjure up an echo of the terrible names they were called?

This week, we saw another example of the terrible power of words, the damage of name calling. When Alec Baldwin left that message for his daughter, he may have been justified in his anger, but was he justified in calling his daughter a “pig?” Does being angry excuse telling a young child that she doesn’t have “the brains and the decency of a human being”?

There probably isn’t a parent who hasn’t said something to his or her child that was regrettable. There are things, I am sure, that most parents wish had been handled differently. I’m sure Alec Baldwin is feeling that way now.

This is something that should never have been played for the public. Yet, there is something we can learn. Not only from Alec Baldwin’s rant, but Don Imus’ cheap shot comments too.

Words are powerful. Words can hurt. Did my stepfather think he was inflicting long lasting pain on me each time he called me “the Brainless Wonder?” Probably not, but I still wince today, even to type the words. And so it will be for the Rutgers team, and for Alec Baldwin’s daughter. Every time those words are repeated, in public, in private or in print – those wounds will open up again.

It is not the pen that is mightier than the sword, but the word.

Earth Day, Babyboomers and Global Warming

Earth Day, 1970. To mark the event, a local radio station holds a writing contest, calling it the “Pollution Solution” contest. What can be done to clean up the environment, and especially the air?

I am in junior high school. On my bedroom wall is a chilling poster. A skeleton is driving a bulldozer, under which he is crushing animals, plants, rivers, flowers. Behind him is “progress” depicted as a smoky morass of skyscrapers, bridges and flaming factories the resemble the refineries along the turnpike in New Jersey, the state where I live. I am inspired to write something, anything, to voice my concern. The result is a poem that the judges pick for “special honors” because of my age, and the fact that it is more of a dire warning than a suggestion of actual solutions. I am invited to read the poem on the air, and a poster of it is hung in my school. The only other entry read on the air is the winning essay, which offers this surprising solution to our ecological problems – population control.

Earth Day, 1990. The same local radio station hosts a show looking back on what has changed since the first Earth Day. I’m a call-in guest on the show and asked if I have seen any positive improvements in twenty years. I cite the emission regulations for cars, the spreading recycling programs initiated in New Jersey and other states, even the ban on harmful aerosols. Smog, once the watchword of the environmental set, seems well on its way to being a thing of the past. And Rachel Carson’s predictions about a “Silent Spring” had not come to pass, thanks to the multitude of chemicals and pesticides that had been banned. In general, I feel optimistic. In my understanding of environmental issues, there is no talk of global climate changes or holes in the ozone layer.

Earth Day, 2007. The spectre of Global Warming now hangs over our heads. In a recent article in the Rutgers Daily Targum, writer Patrick McKnight goes so far as to blame it on the babyboomer generation – that somehow everyone born between 1945 and 1965 is impeding solutions to this problem. He states, “But now, at a time when we need similar social change more than ever, it is the baby boom generation in power who are stifling our progress.” Yet, who has garnered the most attention about this subject, bringing discussion of it to dinner tables around the nation? Babyboomer Al Gore. And I would say with some certainty, that it is not just those identified as Gen X or Gen Y who are paying close attention to this and are doing what they can to change things. In fact, I would guess that plenty of Gen X and Gen Y people, along with Babyboomers and beyond are out there driving gas guzzlers and tossing the spent batteries from all their electronic gadgets into landfills. Yes, there is a culture of rampant comsumerism in today’s United States – but it involves all ages, all generations – everyone. Putting the brakes on our appetite for oil, electricity, gas and other resources is the responsibility of all. Babyboomers felt as if their parents left them a polluted, tainted world, and out of that came much positive work and change. The job is not done, the job may never be done. The one thing that will impede progress however, is wasting time pointing fingers.

Join Me in the Dark Ages

Check out my Dark Ages profile!

An Eagle Flies in Princeton

The first time I saw him, I thought, no, my eyes are fooling me. What I was seeing as a bald eagle was surely one of those vultures that have been populating central New Jersey in recent years. But this week, I saw him again, and this time there was no mistaking that profile, that wing span, those powerful talons. As I sat in morning rush hour traffic on Route One in Princeton, it WAS a bald eagle that was swooping low overhead. According to a 2004 article in the Princeton Packet (which I found using my usual keen web surfing skills) a nest near Lake Carnegie was, at that time, confirmed. Apparently, the eagle family has decided to stay.

It is a testament to the tenacity of nature to see such a magnificent bird swooping over what is becoming one of the worst commuting spots in central New Jersey. For once, I was grateful for a traffic pace so slow that I could actually take in the scenery around me. On the same morning I was treated to the sight of a crane balancing delicately on the edge of frozen lake ice. It was certainly a more refreshing thing to look at than at the woman in the car next to me who was actually reading a paperback book that she was balancing on her steering wheel. And it kept my eyes off the phalanx of tractor trailers clogging up the highway in front of me.

I don’t advocate sight-seeing behind the wheel as a general rule, we all know what happens when that line of traffic comes to a sudden stop in front of us. It’s just nice to know that sometimes, when you aren’t moving and the clock is slowly counting off how many minutes you are going to be late for work, that overhead, a bald eagle is soaring.

Google forgets to spellcheck

I love to go to the Google search page on a holiday to see how they have dressed up their logo. Today, Valentine's Day, they feature a chocolate covered strawberry in place of the letter "g." But, am I crazy, or is another letter completely missing here? I think it is embarrassing when you spell the name of your own company incorrectly.....

In Memory of Mario DeCarolis

Last year, I published an article about playing in a swing band in high school. It was a light-hearted trip down memory lane, mostly a reminisecence about playing 1940s music in the middle of the 1970s. In it, I recalled how our director, Mario DeCarolis, would pick up his saxophone and show us all how it was done.

Today, I received word that, at age 81, Mario DeCarolis passed away on February 9. I spent a few minutes re-reading my article, and thinking back to those high school days, when my life was in chaos and playing music with the high school band was the one thing that kept me sane. How I lived for the marching band practices, the football games on Saturdays, and the Monday evening rehearsals for the dance band, The Indigos.

I was a passable musician, able to hold my own playing the deep throated bass clarinet and the baritone saxophone. I also did a stint as the dance band vocalist, trying my best to keep my teenage voice in tune with the band. Through it all, Mr. “D,” as we called him, would instruct, encourage and tolerate my squeaks, squawks and flubbed lyrics.

I look back at the photos, mostly shots of a drenched band in the football stands, it rained 7 out of 9 games my senior year. I also still have the photo of the entire band assembled in front of the falls in Niagara, from the time we went there to march in a parade. And somewhere, in a place where my kids can’t see it and laugh at it again, is my official band photo, better known as the “I Love My Clarinet” shot. In my closet still hangs my band jacket, a little musty, and way too small, and on the shelf overhead is the little black clarinet case that still has a EBHS Bears sticker on it. Souvenirs of my days in the band.

Tonight, I find myself looking over those old things, thinking about those old days, and remembering a teacher who left a lasting influence on my life. While giving me the gift of music, he also gave me the gift of self-confidence and helped me get through some very tough years.

His music has not been silenced, not as long as it still plays for those of us whose life he touched.

Business as Usual at Harvard

Even while touting the fact that two women are among the finalists for the presidency of the institution, it seems like it is business as usual in other areas of Harvard. Somehow, this recent revelation does not surprise me at all.
Harvard professor: Department is bastion of sexism - CNN.com

A Tale from the Bible Retold for Today's Teens

The Missing Commandment

When the number of US military casualties hit 2,000, I posted the number above my desk, somehow believing that by force of will, I could keep the number from growing, And this week, when the number hit 3,000, I felt even more grief-stricken. This entire situation our country has gotten into seems endless and hopeless. We interfered in a culture rife with hate and violence, bringing our 21st century weapons into a land of 14th century mentality. We had completely forgotten that JFK had said that we couldn’t possibly police the entire world.
Now I read and hear that the President is going to give us a speech about sacrifice. Sacrifice? Have we not sacrificed enough? How many more deaths of promising young Americans must it take? And what is especially offensive is the fact that sacrifice is a word full of religious connotations – the offering up of something precious to God. And yet, the term “human sacrifice” conjures up entirely different images.
But here we are, about to be told, in veiled language, that we should continue to make human sacrifices – how much different does that make us from those who preach the sanctity of “martyrdom?”
I do not believe in a Supreme Being that sanctifies any of this. I believe in a civilization that can follow the one commandment so logical, so understandable, that it was never written down. I am sure that God, or Allah, or Buddha expected us to hear this commandment in our hearts:
“Thou shalt not commit war in my name.”