Linda Quinn new director of Long Valley Arts

Once a teacher, always a teacher. At least that's the case for Linda Quinn.

She retired from Long Valley Middle School, where she worked for 28 years as a band director, and now has taken the post as director of Long Valley Arts.

She also still oversees the Color Guard for West Morris Central High School.

"I'm trying to pick up the slack where the schools cut out because of the budget cuts," Quinn says. "We're also trying to make it reasonable enough so that all kids can participate."

Long Valley Arts is a nonprofit organization founded in 2007 to cultivate the arts in the area and to support local cultural organizations. It's an all-volunteer group, so it needs people from the community to come together and teach for free, and that's where Quinn comes in.

"I get it all organized," Quinn says, "I got the teachers, I chose them, they had to create a (brochure), and they put it on a website."

Quinn, who has been working with the town for a long time, always promised that when she had the time to do it, she'd take over as director.

"So the minute I said I was retiring, I took over the Long Valley Arts."

Even though Quinn's field is music, she says that music won't be the only activity that Long Valley Arts has to offer. For example, tutoring and learning how to sew also will be available. Other activities that are creative and even physical will be available as well.

"We have crafts, and we have Zumba classes," Quinn says.

The group will offer music lessons "because the schools are no longer teaching it," she added.

Quinn always has had an interest in teaching music. When she was in middle school, music was her favorite class, and when she went to college at William Paterson University, she got her bachelor's degree in music. She then got her master's degree in music education for kindergarten through 12th grade at Montclair State University.

She had not meant to retire at the time that she did, but because of changes in the state's education system, she didn't want to lose her benefits. Still, that hasn't kept her from being with the children.

"I had to retire from teaching, but I don't want to separate myself from the kids," Quinn says, "I enjoy being with them too much."

Anyone interested in being a part of Long Valley Arts can visit the group's website at www.longvalleyartsnj.com.

Check out their signature sandwiches

What goes well with wine? Well, cheese, of course. But why stop there, when you can get a gourmet roast beef sandwich with horseradish mayonnaise, lettuce and marinated onions. Or how about a turkey salad with cranberries, celery and fresh dill to go along with your Chardonnay or Merlot?

"We make unique signature, gourmet sandwiches," says the sole sandwich-maker at Chester Wine, Spirits and Gourmet, Michelle Piraneo. "And our quiches are to die for. People come far and wide to come and buy our quiches."

Piraneo, who has no formal culinary experience but learned everything she knows on the job, has been serving some of the best sandwiches in the area for almost a decade now.

"I started here nine years ago selling wine part time," Piraneo says. "I gradually migrated to (food), they tapped into my culinary creativity and talents, and that was that," she says with a laugh.

She attributes her transition from selling wine to making food as a part of being both a lover of food and a mother.

"You learn to multitask and get creative," Piraneo says. "I'm a foodie at heart; more of a live-to-eat rather than eat-to-live kind of person."

Her love for food has transferred to the food she makes. Piraneo has been dabbling with many different flavors to come up with some of the great selections offered in the store.

"I make all the salad dressings here, so we have a sandwich that's grilled chicken, fresh mozzarella, roasted red peppers, homemade balsamic vinaigrette and field greens," Piraneo says. "Another sandwich that's a favorite is turkey, mango chutney and French brie."

Because it is a wine and spirits shop — with wide selections of cabernet sauvignon and pinot noir, for example — cheese also is a huge factor at the business, and Piraneo has quite a bit of knowledge to offer in that area, as well.

"Learning cheese is as complex as learning the varieties of wines — the aging process and the molds," Piraneo says. "It's just a huge, huge topic, and while I have lots of choices, it's just a smidgen of the whole cheese world."

That said, Piraneo offers a nice selection of cheeses that complement the wines in the store and she knows which wines work best with which cheeses. She even has a printed guide that she can lead customers with.

"I always have a folder handy to have the cheeses at my fingertips to complement the wines that customers are looking for," Piraneo says. "I did a wine and cheese tasting myself once, and it was amazing. You could just go hog wild because there's so many wonderful marriages between (wine and cheese)."

Customers at the shop can request a sandwich, cheese or soup, and Piraneo welcomes all comers to her counter.

"I try to accommodate everybody," Piraneo says. "There is no 'no' here. Customer service puts a smile on everybody's face."

Pizza? It's all in the family

If you want old school, New York-style pizza, then you probably want it from a place that's earned its reputation for making some of the best in the area — like Sorrento Pizza, a place that's been a fixture in Mendham for over 40 years.

Sorrento's owner, Jarrod Poggi, said that his father, Bob Poggi, owned what is now the Colonial Pantry. When the opportunity arose to purchase the pizza restaurant, "He switched from that to this, and it was a good transition then. It was something that he was passionate about, and he still is today."

Bob Poggi might be the oldest, still-working businessman in Mendham. He works at and visits both his shops, Sorrento and Village Pizza, which is in the Mendham Shopping Center and now owned by his other son, Guy.

"I've had it for about 18 years now, so it's a family-run, family-oriented pizzeria and restaurant," Jarrod Poggi said of Sorrento.

"We're involved in the community a lot," Poggi continues, "so we have parties that we do for people, the town and different events. We donate pizzas for different things, so as far as that goes, it's very good for the community."

Jarrod Poggi started working in Sorrento back when he was 11, at first cleaning up and then moving on to making pizzas and eventually owning the restaurant.

"When I first started, I was little, so all you really did was clean the tables, you did little tasks," Poggi says, "and then it grows to eventually being a pizza maker, and cooking dinners."

Like his dad, he likes the idea of having a family-run business, so he's already got his children excited with prospects of one day working at the shop.

"It's fun, because they love coming here," Poggi says, "so I love bringing them, making pizza, talking to their uncle — it's nice."

The menu has all the favorites that you want at a pizza shop: pizzas, calzones,strombolis, as well as some things you might not expect; Sorrento is willing to cater to many different needs.

"Some people come in for special things. We get a lot of people who want pizza (with) no cheese or no sauce, which is almost like a grilled cheese," Poggi says. "But we do a lot of different things for people, and we have a lot of regulars who come in for the same type of thing, and we'll do it different for them, and they like that."

Because he and his brother, Guy, use pretty much the same recipes, it's become a bit of a matter of preference for pizza aficionados in the Mendham area to choose between Village Pizza and Sorrento.

"It's interesting to talk to people and find out what they think about it," Poggi says. "It might be (that one place is) heavier on the sauce, a little bit lighter on the cheese. Some people flock to different places for different reasons."

Whatever the reason, it's all in the family for Poggi, who believes that family always comes first.

"I get to see my father and my brothers almost every single day because they're right here," Poggi says, "So that's a real important thing."

Got a hankering for chocolate? Hanker no more.

Few things in life are as good as chocolate, and if you're in the Mendham Shopping Center near King's Supermarket, you have a great opportunity to rev up those taste buds with the wide assortment of savory sweets at the Chocolate Shoppe.

"We have a wide variety," says Erin Carrajat, the store's manager. "We have liqueur cherries and almond butter crunch that we make all ourselves from scratch, simple things like chocolate-covered pretzels, chocolate-covered potato chips, [and] we make our own truffles."

The Chocolate Shoppe started in Washington in Warren County before Carajat's mother, Darleen Wizorek, decided to open another shop in Mendham, where a previous chocolate shop once was.

"My husband and I have lived here for five years, and we knew the other chocolate shop that was here, at this exact same spot," Carrajat says, "When it went out of business, I just said to my mom: 'I think we can make it.' "

And so far, things have been going well in this cozy little spot, as there are customers coming in to pick up a plethora of different items and not just chocolate alone.

"We sell candy buttons, rock candy, fireballs, all that kind of stuff," Carrajat says of some of the other candies sold in the shop that isn't their homemade chocolate.

"We have a wide selection of gifts as well," Carrajat continues. "What's really been popular right now is that we sell a lot of signs. We contract with about four U.S. companies (that make) signs that you just hang on a wall, like 'Enjoy life, this is not a rehearsal,' or 'Life's a beach,' things like that."

Front and center at this store, though, is the chocolate itself. Carrajat was the first to really get involved with making it, and her sister and mother took an interest in it as well, making it a passion of theirs that they would both pursue along with Carrajat.

"My parents are really the owners of the shop, and my sister and I work for my parents," Carrajat says.

"If you're familiar with Mangel's in Chester, the previous owners, Bob and Sandra Bisk, were our mentors. We worked there for several years under them before we went out and bought our own shop," Carrajat says.

In addition to their dessert trays and sweets, they have sugar-free chocolates as well. They have pretty much everything that you could want from a chocolate shop and more, and Carrajat attributes their success to the fact that they're family owned and run.

"We really pride ourselves on (being) a small mom-and-pop shop," Carrajat says.

Review: Ivy the Kiwi?

Well, here’s a game I would clump in the, “It’s not for everybody” pile. It’s also a game I would clump in the "Some people are going to adore this game" pile. Ivy the Kiwi?, created by Yuji Naka, the mastermind who created Sonic the Hedgehog, is definitely a polarizing experience that some people will totally adore while others will loathe beyond belief. It really all depends on what you’re looking for in a puzzler, as this game can be extremely frustrating if you’re the type of person who wants total control of your character. Others will probably like how helpless your character is and how you yourself act as a sort of a god hand to guide your character to safety. The most direct comparison I can give it is Kirby: Canvas Curse for the DS, but that game is way more action-oriented than this one, which again, might be a turn-off for some right off the bat.

You take on the role of Ivy, a Kiwi who can’t fly and basically can’t do anything for herself but walk back and forth like an idiot. It’s your mission to string out vines (up to three at a time) that will help guide her on her way to the finish line, and the further you advance in the game, the more and more obstacles get in your way. When you first start out, your greatest perils are spikes but later on, you’ll have to deal with rats, water drops and crows that will do their best to give you a headache. Your only means of defense are the vines, which you can stretch out to stop Ivy in her tracks or even pull back like a sling shot to aim her at rats or rocks that get in your path. You’re screwed when it comes to the crows, though, as nothing can stop crows, in this game or in real life.

But what makes this game frustrating and what’s going to make some people curse out loud and wave many a fist is the fact that Ivy never stops moving, so you’re constantly in a mad dash to throw vines together in order to make her leap over a crow, or catapult past a row of spikes or any of the other obstacles that get in your way. And this is where some gamers are just going to wish that they could control Ivy herself instead of guiding her to safety. It’s certainly not the kind of game that everybody’s going to flock to. In fact, I can actually see a specific audience liking this game, and I’m going to call it the Angry Birds community. If you don’t know what Angry Birds is, it’s a puzzle game for the iPhone where you have to knock down structures and crush pigs with a variety of birds. For each level, you’re limited to what kind of bird you can use, so basically, you have to figure out the best way to knock down the structures with the birds the level gives you even though you may not like some of the birds that they give you at all. Well, for some gamers, Ivy may be that bird that you just don’t like and wish that you had a more proficient one to guide along for your journey.

Still, I’m just trying to see this game from the other point of view. After playing it for awhile and getting the hang of it, I have to say, I kind of enjoy it. There are 100 levels in here, so you won’t get tired of it anytime soon if you’re really into it. It’s still not the kind of title that I would recommend for everybody but it’s a cutesy kind of game that has a lot going for it. Give it one extra point if you’re in that Angry Birds community I was mentioning before.

Players: 1-4
Platform(s): Wii, DS, Windows Mobile
Developer: Prope
Publisher: XSeed Games
ESRB: Everyone
Rating: Three stars

Former Marine: There's No Such Thing

John Andrews of Mendham is Commandant of the Lance Cpl. Robert J. Slattery Marine Corps League Detachment 206 in Whippany. He uses "ooh rah" in his e-mails. And when talks to people, he seems to command the respect that only a Marine could get.

That's because even though Andrews finished his active military service (1986-1993), he'll always be a Marine, and he joined the Slattery Detachment to continue helping his military brothers who are overseas or back home in New Jersey and around the country.

The Slattery Detachment is involved in a variety of activities, such as raising money with various charities or pairing up with other military-minded groups, all in an effort to help others in need.

He's been the group's commandant — the equivalent of a club president — for the past two years. The League Detachment formed after Slattery was killed in 1967 in Vietnam. He was from Whippany, so a Marine Corps League was formed in his name and honor.

"We unfortunately have added to our roles. It was as recent as 2006 that Lance Cpl. Christopher Cosgrove (of Hanover) was killed in Iraq, and his mother and father are very active members of our detachment," Andrews says.

"We partner with many different organizations," Andrews says, "and one of the organizations that we've been involved with for the last several years is Operation Jersey Cares, so I have many points of contact with them."

Operation Jersey Cares collects items such as foods and soaps to send overseas to servicement and women. A few weeks ago, volunteers with Operation Jersey Cares were in Mendham in front of the Kings supermarket, collecting donations and goods for soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines currently serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. The goods will be shipped overseas to those in uniform and the donations will be used for postage and shipping costs.

Other organizations that the Robert J. Slattery Marine Corps League Detachment support are the Heart of a Marine Foundation, the Family and Friends for Freedom Fund, Inc., and the Picatinny Arsenal community.

"Because it's a military community, we partner with them," Andrews says about Picatinny.

Slattery Detachment members also make trips to deliver items such as watches, razors, and gift cards to places such as the Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., where they visit wounded warriors, some of whom who have suffered from IED explosions.

"We do a hospital trip report, every time we come back from Bethesda," Andrews says, adding that it gets written into the group's newsletter.

Andrews is proud of his group and acknowledges how much his League Detachment likes to give back to others.

"We are one of the most active Detachments in the state, if not the country," Andrews says.

"We get a great deal of satisfaction from helping out," Andrews says, "I've dedicated a lot of time to it and it's just a worthwhile organization."

The Lance Cpl. Robert J. Slattery Marine Corps. League Detachment 206 is always looking for new members. Its monthly meeting is held at 7:30 p.m. the first Wednesday of each month at the American Legion Hall on Legion Place, just off Mount Pleasant Avenue, in Whippany. To learn more about their organization, visit www.mclslatterydet.org or www.oohrah.net.

Review: Ys Seven

I’ve never played an Ys game (pronounced, "Ees," I believe), but if they're all like this latest entry in the esteemed franchise, then they all require patience; lots and lots of patience. That’s not to say that Ys is a bad game, because this is actually one JRPG that strays away from the norm (action wise, anyway, not story wise). And I found the combat system to be surprisingly enjoyable, which is much more than I can say for some of its contemporaries, which have been rehashing turn based combat since the very first Final Fantasy.

Interestingly, the story actually takes backseat to the combat in this game, which is pretty refreshing, because the story is a total bore. It’s a real yawn inducing yarn. It’s all about this character named Adol Christin, who, after doing some research, I found out has been the in every installment of the franchise, except for one. Adol and his pal, Dogi, go on a quest with dragons and adventuring, and blah blah blah, it’s really not important. In fact, back to the whole patience issue, if you don’t have much of it, then you’re likely going to give up on this game early on as the text in the very beginning is really a slog. Trust me when I tell you this, though, it picks up later on. It doesn’t stay too boring for long.

The battle system in this game, as I keep bringing up, is pretty kick ass. It actually kind of reminds me of a cross between God of War and The Legend of Zelda, as you’re constantly rolling out of the way of attacks, and then coming in with counter-attacks, varying with your characters. Adol is more of a slasher, while someone like Dogi is more of a bruiser. The coolest thing about this is that you can constantly switch your characters during the fights with just the press of a button. It makes for some really interesting battles, especially with the bosses who have their own specific patterns. This can be a little annoying at first when you keep continuing over and over again with the bosses until you get their pattern down, but like I said earlier, this game takes patience, and it can be quite rewarding if you stick with it. I certainly did.

Luckily, you can pretty much save wherever you want in the game and don’t have to wait for checkpoints, so that’s a plus. Since the story can be so plodding at times, you can always press your way through the text and then just save the game and come back to it later, which is definitely a plus that I wish more RPGs followed. Also, this game is not too long and took me about 28 hours (most of those spent on beating the bosses), so you don’t get bored of it for too long. Overall, if you’re a fan of JRPGs and want something very different, combat wise, at least, then Ys Seven is a pretty solid title for your PSP. I recommend it.

Players: 1
Platform(s): PSP
Developer: Nihon Falcom Corporation
Publisher: XSeed Games
ESRB: Teen
Rating: Three and a half stars out of five