- [Narrator] Funding for this edition of One-On-One with Steve Adubato has been provided by The New Jersey Education Association.

Bank of America.

Summit Health a provider of primary, specialty, and urgent care.

Johnson & Johnson.

MD Advantage Insurance Company.

New Jersey Sharing Network.

Fedway Associates, Inc.

The Adler Aphasia Center.

And by The Fidelco Group.

Promotional support provided by Northjersey.com and Local IQ.

Part of the USA Today Network.

And by BestofNJ.com, all New Jersey in one place.

- This is One-On-One.

- I'm an equal American just like you are.

- The jobs of tomorrow are not the jobs of yesterday.

- Look at this.

You get this?

- Life without dance is boring.

- I don't care how good you are or how good you think you are, there is always something to learn.

- Do you enjoy talking politics?

- No.

- People call me 'cause they feel nobody's paying attention.

- Our culture, I don't think has ever been tested in the way it's being tested right now.

- That's a good question, high five.

(upbeat music) - Hi, I'm Steve Adubato.

Welcome to a very compelling program, looking at a whole range of issues that matter most.

And we kick off with Michelle Acito, who's the Executive Vice President and Chief Nursing Officer at Holy Name Medical Center.

Michelle, good to see you.

- Thank you, Steve.

Good to see you.

- Michelle, we're taping on the 20th of May, be seen later, put it in perspective for us.

What has the experience been like for nurses?

Most nurses, at this point, dealing with the pandemic?

- You know, Steve, what we faced as nurses is something we've never faced before and hope never to face again.

What we saw come into the hospital last year was overwhelming, unbelievable, and you know, very scary.

It was scary because everyone came to work, knowing that they had to take care of these patients, sacrificing everything they had at home, because at the end of the day, they had to go home.

And that fear of, am I bringing the virus home?

Will my family gets sick?

Will I get sick?

It was something that was daunting, but something we were driven to do, and the adrenaline kept us coming back.

We knew that families couldn't visit.

So we had to be not only the caregiver, but the family member.

That was very difficult at times because it meant helping family say goodbye to their family member, knowing that they couldn't be there.

So we had to be that connection.

It was a very, very difficult time.

And, you know, for patients who were sitting in the hospital with no visitors, doors shut to provide negative pressure in the room, with only a television in front of them, where they watched coronavirus and the death toll taking place, they had to be thinking to themselves, am I going to be one of those numbers?

And so, you know, the additional comfort that the nurses were able to provide really became so important to them.

It became their connection to the outside.

You know, when you talk about what is different from last year to today?

Today we have a 2% positivity rate at our testing center.

And remember these people are really coming because they've either been exposed or they're not feeling well.

It's not just the general population.

So to have it at 2% makes us feel very good.

One year ago today, our positivity rate was at 41%.

So we've come a very long way with that.

- Michelle, let me ask you this.

And by way, Holy Name is one of the healthcare systems supporting our healthcare programming.

Michelle, let me ask you this, the longterm impact on the nursing profession, moving forward later into 2021 and 2022 and beyond, meaning, are there more people, fewer people, who's signing up to be a nurse, who is not, what impact has this had?

- This has had a significant impact.

I mean, I don't want to let you think otherwise, but everyone was mentally impacted by this, but because we came together and we were strong together and we got through it together, what we saw from the community was a 100% increase in the application rate to our school of nursing.

100%.

That meant that people saw in the community, the impact nurses have on patients, the impact that we can have on care.

And they want to be part of the solution.

That was very encouraging for all of us, because your initial fear is nobody's going to want to do this.

They've seen what we've gone through.

They've seen the risks we've taken, and yet we saw the exact opposite.

Opposite.

The community has overwhelmingly decided that they want to be part of the solution.

And to have that kind of increase in the application rate made us feel very encouraged by what's going on in the world today.

- Let me ask you this, Michelle, I'm a student of leadership as you know.

Your CEO, Mike Marin, and I talk about leadership all the time, online, offline.

Nurses as leaders, particularly in this crisis.

Describe it.

- You know, we really had to be at the forefront of trying anything new that could work, and our leadership and guiding the other members of the community here in our own hospital, whether it was any discipline and working with them and showing them how we can get through this together and reminding them that we're stronger.

You know, nurses went into this profession knowing we were going to be at the bedside and at risk, but you look at the number of employees who joined an organization for a job in either food service or housekeeping or transport.

You know, they really didn't sign up for this.

So as leaders, we helped to guide them.

We followed their lead, but they followed our lead to not be afraid to use the protection that we were giving them, and to, you know, really follow us, work with us, so that we could as a team, get through this together.

- Final question.

2021?

Was it the year of the nurse, team?

Or was it a 2020?

I can't even- - 2020.

- 2020.

Why is it not 2021, 2022, 2023?

I don't get that part.

(laughter) - Well, you know, Nurse's Day is celebrated every year in May and last year before the pandemic even hit, it was deemed year of the nurse.

So somebody knew something that we didn't, and, you know, it made all of us feel very proud.

- Oh, that was before?

- Yes.

Yes.

- Well, I don't know what year is not the year of the nurse.

And so big picture before I let you go, more professionals committed to going into the field of nursing then pre pandemic, in spite of all these extraordinary challenges.

And not just at your hospital, but at hospitals and healthcare systems across the nation.

- That's correct.

That's correct.

You know, people really saw what impact they could have, how they could help, how they could care for, you know, every day when they clapped and they cheered for us leaving, you know, we realized that everybody appreciated it, but we didn't realize just to the extent, and that was driven by the number of applications, we saw how much they really respected, that they wanted to join us in the fight.

- Michelle, from all of us who have family members who suffered with COVID or people personally watching, suffered and dealt with COVID.

There is no way to say thank you enough to the nurses out there.

Physicians as well, but definitely our nurses.

Michelle, thank you so much for joining us.

- Thank you, Steve.

Have a great day.

- You too.

I'm Steve Adubato, we'll be right back.

- [Narrator] To watch more One on One with Steve Adubato find us online and follow us on Social media.

- We're now joined by Professor Dr. Matthew Adams, Assistant Professor at New Jersey Institute of Technology.

Good to see you Dr. Adams.

- You too, thank you for having me.

- Listen, here's the deal, you've heard a lot of scholars 'cause we have a lot of higher ed partners, including NJIT, but you've never heard one who's a scholar and an expert on concrete.

Dr. Adams is such a scholar, by the way what is the difference between concrete and sustainable concrete?

- You know, we make a lot of concrete that is already somewhat sustainable.

It's just a matter of intention, making sure that we're not just designing for strength or making it last long term, but we're also designing it with reducing our impact on the environment in mind.

- So this matters in our lives, concrete matters and the president Biden's infrastructure plan looks at concrete in a certain way as part of infrastructure.

Talk about it.

- Yeah, so, you know, concrete is everywhere.

We walk on it, we live in it, we work in it.

It's a huge part of our infrastructure.

Concrete is actually the second most used material in the world after water.

And so even though an individual unit of concrete is, you know, fairly sustainable compared to other types of building materials, we make so much of it that we end up having, concrete has about an 8% of the total carbon footprint from human produced carbon in the world.

So it has a huge impact on our climate change.

- What kinds of policy changes slash recommendations do you have Dr. Adams for how we utilize concrete in our lives?

What changes should we be making?

- So the, we can start policy by changing our procurement and making sure that when we write our construction documents, and those are the documents that tell us how strong things should be, how long they should last, that we also include requirements in those for reducing the carbon and trying to minimize that.

So if you actually, if you look right now in the New Jersey Senate and assembly, there's a bill going through called the Low Embodied Carbon Concrete Leadership Act.

It's also going through in New York that is trying to do this, trying to incentivize people using lower embodied carbon concrete.

- Hold on a second.

When we say people using it, are we mostly professor talking about governments, say local governments who have to make all kinds of decisions about what they build, what they don't build, how they build it, how they don't build it, but isn't this to incentivize local governments who hire contractors, who are obviously using concrete to use the form of sustainable concrete that you're talking about that lessens the carbon footprint.

And apparently makes more sense.

By the way, is it just as good?

- It's just as good, if not better.

Many of the things that we use to reduce the carbon footprint of concrete actually tend to make it more durable and stronger.

It's just a matter of taking the time to know what we're actually putting in there and what the impacts are.

You can make really great concrete with reduced carbon, or you can make really bad concrete with reduced carbon.

It's all a design task.

- So as the contractors out there, and we all hope that you continue to work and create great employment and make a difference, particularly with the infrastructure initiative, moving forward as we are moving into summer 2021 as we tape this program.

But to what degree do you find that most contractors are sensitive to and aware of and care about what you're talking about?

- I think most of them are aware of the fact that we need to reduce our carbon.

But when I speak with contractors, they're always worried about cost and, you know, any change in standard practice, is seen as coming with a cost.

And so, you know, this is where policy can help 'cause it can try to offset some of those costs up front, but realistically the materials we use are not that much more expensive.

We are already actively using them for other reasons in concrete.

And so, you know, and the concrete industry understands that if it's more expensive, nobody's gonna buy it.

So it either has to be way, way, way better, or relatively the same price.

So, you know, these things aren't that much.

- Professor before I let you go, another time we'll talk in greater depth about the Biden infrastructure plan and its implications of it.

But I have to ask you, why concrete for you?

How did that, I've got a few seconds left, tell us how that happened.

- So growing up, I really wanted to design amusement parks, not like the rollercoaster itself, but I was really into the entry lanes.

You know, the queues that people wait in.

I thought they were fascinating.

I wanted to design the buildings and everything.

So I went into civil engineering and I had my first class on construction materials and I learned about concrete and it was just this fascinating material that everybody ignores.

- You were hooked.

- I was hooked, right on.

- Academic scholarly love at first sight.

- Exactly, exactly.

- I've been doing this for 30 years and when I see people and meet people like you who have a passion to do the work you're doing, first I wanna know why and how, and then I want all of us to understand why it matters so much.

So Dr. Matthew Adams, Assistant Professor at New Jersey Institute of Technology, I wanna thank you for joining us and sharing your story because it matters to all of us.

Thank you, professor.

- Thank you for having me.

- Stay right there, I'm Steve Adubato, we'll be right back.

- [Narrator] To watch more One on One with Steve Adubato find us online and follow us on Social media.

- We're now joined by Ira Wagner, who is Executive Director of the Montclair Art Museum.

Ira, great to have you with us.

- Thank you for having me.

It's wonderful to be here.

- Now, I said this right before we got on the air, we live in Montclair, you're right down the street.

It's just a tremendous arts organization making a difference every day.

But how would you describe the most significant challenges the museum has faced?

By the way, you took over on the 26th of 2021.

- Right.

- How would you describe?

- Sure.

I became the Interim Director about a year ago in May of 2020.

So, I've been working through the pandemic, which obviously was (chuckles) quite a challenge for the organization.

And then, I became the permanent Director, the Executive Director just recently.

And I look forward to continuing in that role.

The Montclair Art Museum is, as you said, a wonderful resource for the community.

As, I think you know, it's been there for over a hundred years.

We had our Centenary in 2014, and we have 14,000 objects, works of art.

But you know, the challenge that was brought home in the pandemic is how do we stay relevant to the community?

How do we continue to reach the community?

And I think we did that in a lot of creative ways, but it's going to continue to be a challenge.

I think we see signs that people very much want to engage again, personally, by coming back to the museum.

We have some good indicators of that.

But, you know, what we've seen is there's a much broader way of reaching people than we ever knew about.

And we need to incorporate some of the best things we discovered over the last year together with the traditional way that we have worked with the public, our exhibitions, our in-person programming, art classes, all the many things that we make available.

- Let me ask you this.

We're actually taping on the 20th of May for only a couple more weeks.

The Fragile Freedoms exhibit is there 'til the 13th of June.

First of all, let everyone know what that has been, why it's important, then let's talk about the fall.

- Sure.

Great.

Well, Fragile Freedoms is really a wonderful exhibition.

It is there until June 13th and I hope if anyone hasn't seen it yet, they will make an effort to come.

It's work by a photographer named Maggie Minors.

She was inspired by visiting the Norman Rockwell Museum and seeing those kinds of classic images, illustrations of Americana, but really thought about, "How can I bring that up to date and make it relevant to today?"

And she's done that in so many ways and so many really smart additions to the work.

Taking, you know, the Four Freedoms, for example, freedom from want.

The classic Thanksgiving image with a much more diverse group of people at the table.

Works like freedom of religion, where we see people in headscarves and things like that, which you wouldn't have seen in the original by Norman Rockwell.

When we planned the exhibition and came up with the title about a year ago, actually, we came up with the idea of playing on the four freedoms with fragile freedoms, thinking about what we were seeing in our society even then.

And obviously it's even more so as to what's occurred since.

And so, I think fragile freedoms is really a call to a reminder of how, frankly, how fragile these freedoms really are, how we have to work to preserve them every day.

And related to that, you know, we had a virtual town hall that discussed these things as they, as they applied to our local audiences.

- Talk about the fall.

- Sure.

The fall's going to be big at the Montclair Art Museum.

Unfortunately, we will be closing the galleries for the summer to get ready, but then it will be a very big fall.

We have an exciting, special exhibition called Color Riot.

It is Navajo weavings and blankets borrowed from, probably, the premier museum of Native American art in the country, The Heard Museum.

We recently hired a Native American curator.

So, she is working hard on that and you'll see her influence in that exhibition.

We have another new exhibition from the permanent collection, which is going to be called Transformed Objects Reimagined by the Arts in America.

And that is based on a work of Jasper Johns, a saying that he wrote, which is "Take an object, do something to it, do something else to it."

So, it will be work interpreted by our curator, a whole variety of media creators, Native American artists, African-American artists, artists from throughout the history of American arts.

And we also have one more really exciting exhibition, which is called By Their Own Hand, which is being sponsored by a local group that works with veterans called Frontline Arts.

And what that is is that group works with veterans to process, you know, their experiences in Iraq and the Middle East, and they transform their uniforms into paper that's made into flags and banners, and that will be in our Lorie stairway.

So, there's really a lot coming in the fall that's very exciting.

- Before I let you go, real quick, Ira, in the summer months, there are summer camps, are there not?

- Yes.

Summer camp and it is in-person.

We've had great registration.

That's why I say, think we can see- - Our daughter has gone through in the past.

It's exceptional.

- Excellent.

I appreciate the endorsement!

And, you know, it's actually, some of the sessions already have waiting lists.

We do have a little bit of capacity constraints due to the coronavirus, but really a wonderful response for in-person camps.

It's going to be a great summer there.

- Ira Wagner is the Executive Director of Montclair Art Museum.

First-class operation.

Ira, thank you so much.

The arts are more important than ever before in our lives.

We appreciate it all the best to everyone at the museum.

- Thank you so much.

It's great to great to be here and I hope to see your audience at the museum.

Thank you.

- Absolutely.

I'm Steve Adubato, that's Ira.

We'll be right back.

- [Narrator] To watch more One on One with Steve Adubato find us online and follow us on Social media.

- We're now joined by Jacqueline Mroz who's director of Succeed2gether's Montclair Literary Festival, and program director of Succeed2gether.

Good to see you, Jacqueline.

- Thank you for having me.

- Let everyone know what Succeed2gether is all about.

- So, it is a nonprofit based in Montclair, but we serve the greater community and we provide free educational services for underserved children and their families.

- How'd you get involved?

- My son was a tutor, a volunteer tutor when he was in high school.

So I learned about it.

- That's awesome, and the literary festival, it's just, I was talking to our good friend, Don Lemon from CNN who actually, check out our website SteveAdubato.org, you'll see the interview with him, he was together with our other good friend, Joy Reid of MSNBC, Joy interviewed Don about his book, This Is the Fire: What I Say to My Friends About Racism.

And I know that the Literary Festival had both of them.

That had to be huge.

- It was amazing, yeah.

And um, yeah, Don was a little bit late, and so Joy was just talking about the book and she's amazing, I mean, they were just incredible together.

- Yeah, lemme ask you this, how do you select, because I also saw an email coming through because I'm on the E-list, the digital list, that Salman Rushdie's coming in June 22nd.

This may be seen beforehand or after.

How do you decide the authors who you select to come in and participate?

- Well, we've been trying to get Salman Rushdie for the past two years, so we were thrilled that he could finally come.

He has a new book out, so, you know, we just look at who has books coming out that we're interested in, that would be interesting to our audience.

We just did an amazing talk with Richard Thompson who lives in Montclair now on his memoir, and we had Elvis Costello doing the talk with him.

- I saw that.

- That was, yeah.

- Let me ask you something.

We just actually had a segment from the head of the Montclair Art Museum, and this is not a show about Montclair, we're seen in New Jersey and in many other states.

What do you think it is about our town of Montclair that so many authors, I happen to be one, not of one of great note, like so many others, why do we have so many people involved in the literary field here?

What do you think it is?

- I think it is an amazing town and we're really close to New York City and we're on the train line, so, and then it's kind of like a lot of places where, you know, a couple people move and then they bring their friends and then they tell the other people about it.

So that's, we have a little a line from like Brooklyn to Montclair (both laugh) with all the authors coming.

- I know, I've picked that up.

Hey, what's happening in October?

- So we are, we've moved our festival to October, we're making it a hybrid, but we're actually hoping to make it mostly in-person.

We're gonna get a big tent and put it outside a church where we have it and we'll try and, - Is that the church across the street from the library?

- Yeah, the First Congregational Church.

Yeah.

- Yeah.

And we'll try and do most of the events outside, but we already have, and then we'll have some insight if it's considered safe and we'll be socially distant, but I think everyone is very excited to be in person again.

So, um, we're, - That's a big deal though, it's a big deal to bring people together, to talk about books, to talk about the whole concept of the role of books in our lives.

Someone was saying today, my wife and I have this debate all the time, because I'm a hard cover book guy.

Like, I like books.

- Mm hm.

And she's constantly on her pad reading.

That's fine, however you choose to read.

I have this obsession, and thinking that particularly during the pandemic, Jacqueline, people felt more of a connection to books than they have in a long time.

Is that just me?

- No, I think that's true, book sales definitely went up.

And right after the lockdown, we were supposed to have our festival last March, we actually canceled it I think like a week before, cause that's when everything shut down last year and we pivoted, we went online, and people were just like, all through the spring and early summer we did, we moved all of our events online.

We had like Nicholas Kristof, Bill Buford, it was amazing.

And people were just so grateful to have something to do.

(laughs) That was interesting.

- Sure.

But, but Jacqueline, how did they, online, I'm curious about this.

I do a lot of seminars online, and obviously we're doing this digitally.

How did people participate online?

Did the authors see the other people?

Were they just, how do they engage back and forth?

- We do our events, we've been using Crowdcast and it has a chat function.

And so we also had Colum McCann who did a talk with Garth Risk Hallberg and they did like a little pre-event where people could actually come on and go see them face to face and talk to them.

But the chat function is great, cause everyone's like, I mean, we had people coming from all over the world.

It was amazing.

So, - It's funny, sorry, it's based in Montclair, but people participate all around the region.

I know when the, in October, you're having a lot of New York based authors as well.

It's, it's a worldwide event.

It's Jacqueline Mroz's, director of Succeed2gether, the Montclair Literary Festival, program director of Succeed2gether.

They're going to be doing it October 2nd, 2021, a huge event.

Jacqueline, I wish you all the best.

- Thank you so much, thank you for having me on.

- It's great to have you, I'm Steve Adubato, make sure you catch us tomorrow night.

- [Narrator] One-On-One with Steve Adubato has been a production of the Caucus Educational Corporation.

Funding has been provided by The New Jersey Education Association.

Bank of America.

Summit Health Johnson & Johnson.

MD Advantage Insurance Company.

New Jersey Sharing Network.

Fedway Associates, Inc.

The Adler Aphasia Center.

And by The Fidelco Group.

Promotional support provided by Northjersey.com and Local IQ.

Part of the USA Today Network.

And by BestofNJ.com.

- Hi, I'’m Joe Roth.

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