by | Dec 5, 2017 2:08 pm | Comments (22)
Allan Appel Photos
The other sideswiped driver fills in cops at the scene.
My thoughts of “true piety” and “virtue” were suddenly interrupted Monday evening when a speeding driver sideswiped my car and hightailed it away from the police.
by | Nov 24, 2017 9:35 am | Comments (0)
Markeshia Ricks Photo
Claribel Fernandez, center, was among the recipients of a Thanksgiving basket Wednesday.
Claribel Fernandez has been in New Haven for only a week but she and her son already feel welcome and at home.
That feeling of welcome grew Wednesday just in time for the Thanksgiving holiday, thanks to the efforts of Fair Haven alders, police officers, firefighters and the neighborhood management team.
Continue reading ‘A 1st Thanksgiving In Fair Haven For Hurricane Maria Evacuees’
by | Nov 22, 2017 8:51 am | Comments (0)
Markeshia Ricks Photo
Gatto at Mary Wade Tuesday.
The speed with which Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s claimed Dom Gatto’s elderly father and mother is only a glimpse at the crisis families will face when Baby Boomers like him start to need more care.
by | Nov 16, 2017 5:03 pm | Comments (16)
Newman Architects
Lazarus plan design: Not likely to rise from the dead.
Despite a determined effort to sell off the vacant former Strong School in Fair Haven, the city is back where it started six years ago, unsure what to do with a deteriorating, century-old building.
by | Nov 16, 2017 2:10 pm | Comments (1)
Cara McDonough Photo
Terreace Riggins and Tenisi Davis Rehearsal for Topdog/Underdog.
The room in Erector Square on Peck Street that houses Collective Consciousness Theater seats 60 at the most, and that’s pushing the limit. Its small size means that during a show audience members — sitting on folding chairs, with the front row just a few feet from the stage — are incredibly close to the actors. And each other.
Continue reading ‘Erector Square’s “Underdog” Theater Has BIte’
by | Nov 3, 2017 12:17 pm | Comments (8)
Allan Appel Photo
Locked door of Victors Market on Grand and Blatchley, with Stop Work order posted on the Grand Ave side.
In response to to a spate of quality of life complaints from neighbors, four convenience stores in Fair Haven were fined for violations like selling loosies and untaxed cigarettes and two of them were temporarily shut down last week for wage and labor violations.
More enforcement is on the horizon.
Continue reading ‘Convenience Store Crackdown Hits Fair Haven’
by | Nov 1, 2017 12:27 pm | Comments (2)
Christopher Peak Photo
Fair Haven Students display Puerto Rican flag at assembly.
Principal Heriberto Cordero.
In the wake of a devastating hurricane, city public schools have taken in 50 students, and counting, from Puerto Rico.
by | Oct 31, 2017 7:43 am | Comments (0)
Donald Brown Photos
Burnett, Nelson, and Singleton.
On a recent rainy night, I arrived at the packed parking lot at Erector Square, then waited outside a glass door to be admitted to hallways and stairs. Two people led me to a double door on the second floor, and the rehearsal and performance space of Collective Consciousness Theatre. My guides were Production Stage Manager Brionna Ingraham and Assistant Stage Manager Eddie Chase. I entered and walked into a down-at-heels bedroom. Cracked plaster, a bed, a mirror, some wall art. A big chair. Jamie Burnett was on a ladder, hanging lights.
It was David Sepulveda’s set for the first CCT production of the new season: Suzan-Lori Parks’ Topdog/Underdog, a play described as “two brothers in a room.” It won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2002, making Parks the first African-American author to win that award.
by | Oct 25, 2017 8:00 am | Comments (1)
Christopher Peak Photo
Parents Sarah Miller and Fatima Rojas at Monday’s Board of Ed meeting.
Two Columbus Family Academy moms in Fair Haven have launched a grassroots effort to help school officials and other members of the community communicate better.
Continue reading ‘Parents, School Board Give Listening A Try’
by | Oct 24, 2017 12:54 pm | Comments (2)
Cara McDonough Photo
Chapin at work.
At the end of a long hallway in Erector Square on Peck Street, luthier Kevin Chapin sits in his shop, surrounded by tawny instruments in various stages of completion. There’s a comfortable couch in one corner and detailed technical drawings in lined notebooks on his desk. His friendly pugs, Frank and Fester, relax in a dog bed on the floor, awaiting the next guest.
by | Oct 13, 2017 7:59 am | Comments (7)
Allan Appel Photo
One of the two existing NHPD blue phones, at Lamberton & Kimberly.
Fair Haven’s cops and neighbors are dialing up a formula for hope-for crime deterrence, quicker police response time, and maybe even economic development: the installation of “blue light” emergency response phones at well-trafficked public spaces with a direct line to 911.
by | Oct 9, 2017 3:15 pm | Comments (14)
MacMillan File Photo
Patriot would build at this former Shantytown.
As some better-known companies flee Connecticut for Massachusetts, a dredging and maritime construction company is sailing in the opposite direction, planning to set anchor in riverine Fair Haven.
by | Oct 5, 2017 2:50 pm | Comments (1)
Allan Appel Photo
The artist beside her “Jutice Has No Mercy” series of digital photos.
At the art school in upstate New York that 2016 Educational Center for the Arts (ECA) grad Ruby Gonzales Hernandez attended after leaving New Haven, some of her fellow minority students encountered death threats and other harassments — some written on the white boards of their dormitory rooms — especially in the days after the election of Donald Trump.
Hernandez has returned to New Haven, an emerging artist, with work created to understand and heal from that experience. She’s showing that and new works reflecting the trucha, the slang Spanish word for “resilient strength,” of her Fair Haven family and neighbors, many undocumented, a quality that she had not fully appreciated before.
by | Oct 2, 2017 7:42 am | Comments (7)
Lucy Gellman Photo
Angelique Quiñones, whose grandmother “lives between New Haven and Farjado, Puerto Rico.”
Angelique Quiñones hadn’t planned to spend her Saturday fundraising for Puerto Rico. But when her mom Elizabeth Reyes spotted a social media post asking for volunteers, she and her sister Alexandra signed on, donning new Puerto Rico themed jerseys and heading at full speed toward Grand Avenue.
by | Sep 29, 2017 1:58 pm | Comments (1)
Allan Appel Photo
Thousands of fragile and vulnerable patients — including many potentially arriving from the unfolding humanitarian crisis in hurricane-ravaged Puerto Rico — may lose access to health care at community centers in New Haven and across the cities of Connecticut. Meanwhile, others will be helped by fewer staffers coordinating their care.
Continue reading ‘Community Health Centers Put Out Funding SOS Call’
by | Sep 15, 2017 1:00 pm | Comments (0)
Gallery Photo
Wheeler’s “Unbound,” drawing and mixed media.
We all get a little smaller as we get older, but an entirely new perspective on aging — tiny parents in a haunted diorama — will make you think of The Incredible Shrinking Man or the revenge of Hansel and Gretel, or maybe the graphic correlative of a lyric poem.
by | Sep 12, 2017 1:04 pm | Comments (4)
Paul Bass Photo
Bria Holmes, with Paca in Westville, greets voter Wendy Samberg.
The news cycle gave Marcus Paca’s mayoral candidacy a last-minute boost Tuesday, as voters woke up to learn that a the headquarters of a marquee new-economy New Haven company is moving to Boston.
Continue reading ‘Paca Catches A Late Break — & A Wing Guard’
by | Sep 12, 2017 1:01 pm | Comments (1)
David Sepulveda Photo
Sandra Trevino at Friday night’s gala.
Following months of internal turmoil, the executive director of a Fair Haven-based agency that has helped lead New Haven’s emergence as a “sanctuary city” for Latino immigrants is stepping down.
by | Sep 5, 2017 8:30 am | Comments (12)
Allan Appel Photo
Hosts Gerry and Kathy Wenner and Patricia and Kirby Long flank Paca.
Marcus Paca won over a voter the other day with some old-fashioned one-on-one campaigning in the most intimate of settings: a gathering in a private home.
by | Sep 2, 2017 8:30 pm | Comments (1)
Allan Appel Photo
U.S. Rep. Sanchez offers her Harp endorsement.
Lucia Colon is already registered to vote and has decided to cast her vote for New Haven “alcalde” for incumbent Mayor Toni Harp.
Her son Johnny has not yet registered, but said he is going to do so as soon as possible and vote the same way as mom.
Continue reading ‘Endorsing Harp, Visiting Congresswoman Joins Push For Latino Turnout’
by | Sep 1, 2017 12:19 pm | Comments (4)
Markeshia Ricks Photos
Mauro Sheridan Principal Kaliszewski at bus arrival Friday.
A crossing guard was hit by a car near the intersection of Grand and Ferry Friday, just as city officials were across town urging drivers in school zones to slow down and stop passing school buses.
Continue reading ‘Crossing Guard Hit, Enforcement Stepped Up’
by | Aug 30, 2017 2:43 pm | Comments (4)
Katrina Clark, a former Peace Corps volunteer who spent 40 years growing the Fair Haven Health Clinic into an anchor for the community and a model that provides accessible care for thousands of patients a year regardless of the ability to pay, died Aug. 25 two days after her 72nd birthday.
Continue reading ‘Katrina Clark, Health Care Hero, Dies At 72’
by | Aug 29, 2017 8:05 am | Comments (2)
Allan Appel Photo
The “clean road” under construction at English Station.
A shiny new asphalt “clean road” is being constructed from Grand Avenue to the iconic English Station power plant and the 1890s-era building fronting the avenue, itself an old coal-powered electricity generating station, is also being remediated.
by | Aug 22, 2017 1:19 pm | Comments (3)
Allan Appel
Lucky new dad Pena with older daughter Lia.
Young dad Chris Pena drives a truck; having just qualified for a commercial driver’s license, he’ll be able to move up and continue to pay the rent two-bedroom apartment, where his wife stays home to care for the couple’s kids, 2 1/2‑year old Lia and baby Zoe, born just three weeks ago.
Still the baby supplies do run out on Fridays, and Pena’s wife often has to wait until he comes home with his paycheck before she can go out and buy another batch of diapers.
by | Aug 21, 2017 4:32 pm | Comments (0)
Allan Appel Photo
Librarians Morrison and Blume in back row with fellow gazers at around 1:40 p.m.
Thirteen-year-old Judah La Rose was generous about sharing the special and much sought-after special light-filtering glasses through which he viewed today’s rare total solar eclipse.
“There’s no point in keeping them. I’d have to wait 99 years to use them again. I’d be 114 years old and I’d be blind by then,” said the witty and mathematically-minded incoming Sound School freshman.
Still when he viewed the eclipse at around 2:45, the moment of near “totality” when about 60 percent of our star was covered by the moon’s shadow, he pronounced what he saw “cool” and proceeded to try to make a photograph and send the image of the historical moment to himself.
Continue reading ‘Eclipse-Watching Fair Haveners Share The Glasses’