Prescription drug “take back day’’ scheduled

Residents in several Fairfield County towns who have unused, expired or unwanted prescription drugs may turn them in for safe disposal during the semi-annual “Take Back Day’’ on Sept. 26.

Prescription drugs will be collected between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. on that day, in the program sponsored by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. 

Syringes and needles will not be accepted for collection.

“The improper disposal of pharmaceuticals and over-the-counter drugs has also been reported to negatively impact the environment and public health, as some drugs cannot be safely flushed or poured down drains because wastewater facilities are not designed to remove them,’’said Rep. Pamela Staneski, R-Milford. 

“In some cases drugs can find their way into lakes, rivers and streams and into drinking water,’’ she said.

Reports indicate that 20 percent of teens intentionally misuse others’ prescription drugs to get high, and many obtain the drugs from raiding the medicine cabinets of friends and relatives, according to the DEA web site.

In other cases children and pets have gotten into medications that have caused long-term health problems and death.

Drop-off sites will be at the police departments in Fairfield, Greenwich, Danbury, Newtown and Weston.

Bridgeport police will collect unwanted prescription drugs at its Community Services Division, 1395 Sylvan Ave. 

Collection points will also be set up at Daniels Farm School, 710 Daniels Farm Road in Trumbull, and in New Canaan at the Walgreen’s Pharmacy, 36 Pine St.

There will also be a collection site in Milford, in the parking lot of the Milford Senior Center, 9 Jepson Drive, co-sponsored locally by the Milford Prevention Council and the Milford Police Department.

In the previous nine Take-Back events nationwide between 2010 and 2014, a total of 4,823,251 pounds — or 2,411 tons —of drugs were collected, according to the DEA. 

For more information on the national drug take-back program, visit www.deadiversion.

Farmer turns corn maze into birthday card for wife

Courtesy of Mark Goughan

From the Bangor Daily News

CARIBOU, Maine — Each year for the past 10 years, Goughan’s Berry Farm has created a variety of Maine themed, patriotic and seasonal corn mazes for people of Aroostook County and beyond to navigate.

This year, however, farmer Mark Goughan focused the maze on someone who is the backbone of the farm, who helped get it started and keeps it running, who creates the signage for it and who just turned 60 years old.

Goughan turned the corn maze on the family-run farm on Route 161 into a giant birthday card for his wife, Gloria. She had no idea about it until it was unveiled two weeks ago.

“We told her that we were making a pirate ship maze this year,” Mark Goughan said Thursday. “She had no clue.”

This is the farm’s 11th corn maze. In the past, the Goughans have etched out a variety of shapes, including a moose, the Maine Potato Board mascot Spuddy and the University of Maine Black Bears logo.

The maze represents one of the many farm events throughout the year that the farm offers to the public.

Mark and Gloria Goughan started the farm in 1976 and grow a wide variety of crops, including potatoes and strawberries. Hayrides, pumpkin patch treks and other seasonal events as well as the farm’s homemade ice cream are popular with visitors.

Goughan said Thursday he planted the corn in mid-May in both directions, so people can’t look down the rows for a way out. It also gave him a solid canvas from which to design his creation.

Goughan sketches out his own mazes on paper, then marks out his corn field into 550 20-by-20-foot squares after planting. Around July 1, Goughan used a weed whacker to cut the picture and trails out in the field while the corn was still 12 to 16 inches in height. It took him about 80 hours to cut out this year’s maze.

Goughan, who consulted with his three daughters on the card, said he was able to keep it a secret because the farm keeps the family so busy that after cutting on the corn maze began Gloria Goughan was occupied with her other chores and did not have time to check on its progress.

She got a big surprise two weeks ago, Mark Goughan said, when the entire family presented her with a blown up picture of the actual birthday card corn maze. Goughan invited a local television station along to capture the moment.

“She feels embarrassed about the attention on her,” he said. “She is good with the one on one from people saying ‘happy birthday’ and things, but all of the publicity has embarrassed her a bit.”

The corn maze opened on Aug. 29. Goughan said attendance is dependent on the weather, but a usual season can bring 2,000 to 2,500 visitors.

There are five different signs that accompany the five different games that maze-goers try to solve while walking through the maze. Anyone who completes any of the five games wins a free ice cream cone.

The animal barn also is open free of charge to children of all ages, and a merry-go-round is in operation on weekends. A new 18-hole agricultural miniature golf course also is open to the public.

The maze is open 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Saturday and 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday. Group rates are available with hayrides to the maze or pumpkin field. For information, call the farm at 498-6565.

Link to Bangor Daily News

Phoenix—Movie Review

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by Peter J. O'Connell

Phoenix. Released: July 2015  (USA). Runtime: 98 mins. Rated: PG-13 for some thematic elements and brief suggestive material.

In The Art of Fiction (1884), the novelist Henry James wrote: “We must grant the artist his subject, his idea, what the French call his donnee; our criticism is applied only to what he makes of it.” Alfred Hitchcock applied a similar idea to film, although he used the term “MacGuffin” (“a plot device that motivates the characters and advances the story”) instead of donnee.

Movie audiences usually readily accept the donnees/MacGuffins of certain genres, science-fiction, say—time travel is possible; some characters have superhuman powers; etc. But they sometimes at first resist them in other types of films. The question then is whether the skills of the filmmaker and his cast and crew are sufficient to overcome the initial resistance and bring about what the poet Coleridge called the “willing suspension of disbelief” that is essential for enjoying fiction and drama.

Such issues as these come to the fore in considering the German film Phoenix, recently released in the U.S. Phoenix, directed and with a screenplay by Christian Petzold, is set in the devastated Berlin of 1945. Nelly (Nina Hoss), a Jewish singer, has survived a concentration camp but suffered facial disfigurement there. Brought by her friend Lene (Nina Kunzendorf) to Berlin, Nelly undergoes plastic surgery but insists on having her face restored as much as possible to what it was like before her imprisonment rather than what the doctor recommends, something closer to that of a popular celebrity. The doctor does what Nelly asks.

When her operation is over, Nelly sets out to find her husband, Johnny (Ronald Zehrfeld), who is not Jewish and does not know that she survived the camp. She finds him working as a busboy in a nightclub, the Phoenix. But Johnny does not recognize Nelly as Nelly! What he thinks is that she is simply someone who resembles Nelly, resembles her enough to be passed off as Nelly to a Swiss bank, which would enable Johnny to obtain control of money owed to Nelly as a result of the deaths of her entire family at the hands of the Nazis.

Johnny persuades Nelly, now calling herself “Esther,” to go along with his scam. “Esther,” struggling to recover from both physical and psychological trauma, finds herself being “trained” by Johnny to be Nelly. Seeking love and caught up in a world of multiple—and lost—identities, Nelly disregards warnings from Lene and other sources about Johnny's true nature. The scam proceeds through various twists and turns to a stunning conclusion in which Nelly/Esther sings again after years of fear.

Yes, Petzold and his cast and crew do bring about that “willing suspension of disbelief” of which Coleridge wrote. Petzold directs in a spare, straightforward way that, paradoxically, makes his plot, with its demanding donnee, more convincing than if he had attempted various maneuvers to make it more “believable.”

“Believability” comes from the superb acting of Nina Hoss and Ronald Zehrfeld. Seldom has the tentativeness of trauma been more tenderly depicted than in Hoss' performance here. And the ruggedly handsome Zehrfeld masterfully walks the line between attractiveness and sleaziness. Both Hoss and Zehrfeld deserve international recognition. And so does director Petzold.

“Footnote” to the film: Impersonation or “doubling” or assumption of a new identity figured in a number of entries in the popular film noir genre of the World War II and postwar years. Hitchcock's Vertigo (1958) is a notable example. Interesting films dealing with plastic surgery from that era include Dark Passage (!947), with Humphrey Bogart, and Strange Impersonation (1952), with Paul Henreid.

Irrational Man—Movie Review

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by Peter J. O'Connell

Irrational Man. Released: July 2015. Runtime: 95 mins. Rated: R for some language and sexual content.

Some movies written and directed by Woody Allen are “Woody Allen movies.” You know, those films in which intellectual and professional types involved in awkward relationships—say, a Brooklyn Jew and a Wisconsin WASP or an older man and a younger woman—engage in witty dialogue or become involved in amusing situations.

Other movies written and directed by Woody Allen seem to have had ghostly collaborators—say, the Marx brothers or Federico Fellini or Ingmar Bergman or adventure serialists of the 1930s and '40s or Alfred Hitchcock—because they replicate so well the characteristic themes and techniques of these auteurs. If, for example, Allen's Match Point (2005) suddenly had appeared on screens without any credits or provenance information, one might readily have thought it directed by Hitch from beyond the grave.

                                                                                                                                                             Irrational Man, the latest movie written and directed by Woody Allen, also seems to have had the portly British genius as co-auteur. In it, Abe Lucas (Joaquin Phoenix), a famed but now floundering philosophy professor, arrives in Newport, R.I., to teach at a small college. Abe's reputation for masterful exposition of existentialist philosophy has the college community eager for contact with him. Abe, however, is burned out. He has overanalyzed life to the point where it has lost all meaning for him. And now, as he says, “So much philosophy is just verbal masturbation.”

Nonetheless, Rita Richards (Parker Posey), a chemistry professor, seeks a passionate relationship with Abe despite his anomic response to life and his anemic response to her overtures. A student, Jill Pollard (Emma Stone), is also smitten with Abe but claims that her interest is platonic rather than physical. She is passionate—but about philosophy.

Abe's interest in life revives when he and Jill overhear a conversation about a cruel decision by a local judge, a judge who is later found murdered by means of poison. Discussions about self-defined morality, etc., between Abe and Jill take on exciting new dimensions for Abe. His reborn liveliness is amusingly depicted by his increasing desire for big breakfasts. The discussions inspire Jill to attempt to solve the judge's murder. What she discovers is hard for her to accept “philosophically.”

Joaquin Phoenix, unexpectedly paunchy and brooding in appearance, turns in, as expected, a fine performance. Parker Posey, dubbed by critics “queen of the indies” for her frequent appearances in such films, gives her usual competent performance. The real standout here, though, is Emma Stone—wide-eyed, with cascading chestnut hair, and lithe-limbed in shorts and sleeveless blouses—she embodies both youthful innocence and feminine allure. And when she starts to do detective work, she is as convincing as any hardboiled cop out of film noir.

Irrational Man is intriguing and enjoyable in plot and characterizations, and its cinematography and use of Newport locations are superb.

“Footnote” to the film: The popular book Irrational Man (1958) by William Barrett, a professor of philosophy at NYU, has been described as “the introduction to existentialism for the English-speaking world.”