Sock Dropping Sonnet
by | Aug 25, 2020 11:10 am | Comments (1)
The kids say I make ordinary things fun
Like straddling baby and dropping tiny socks
Arts & Culture
Auden Redux, A Covid Sonnet
by | Aug 24, 2020 1:28 pm | Comments (2)
We share the darkness and the air
We even occasionally talk of despair
The Cellar Takes Dinner And Show To The Patio
by | Aug 24, 2020 8:35 am | Comments (0)
Karen Ponzio photos
David Taylor Coffey.
New Haven-based singer-songwriter David Taylor Coffey was at the Cellar on Treadwell again on Saturday — not virtually, as he was in April, but on the venue’s new expanded patio, as part of the Cellar’s latest Dinner and a Show.
Continue reading ‘The Cellar Takes Dinner And Show To The Patio’
Remodeled And Resilient, Claire’s Reopens
by | Aug 21, 2020 5:42 pm | Comments (6)
Thomas Breen photos
Vegan treats back on display, behind plexiglass.
Claire Criscuolo at her reopened restaurant.
Downtown New Haven feels just a little bit more like Downtown New Haven again, now that Claire’s Corner Copia — remodeled, expanded, and replete with vegan baked goods and a supportive community 45 years in the making—has reopened.
“It’s gonna take more than a pandemic to get rid of us,” said Claire Criscuolo, a faint smile visible behind her face mask.
Continue reading ‘Remodeled And Resilient, Claire’s Reopens’
Musician Makes Psychedelia For Now
by | Aug 21, 2020 1:10 pm | Comments (1)
Brian Slattery Photo
Hoffman.
“Gardener,” the first track from The Alex Butter Field’s first release, Psychedelipop, begins with a flourish of guitar and drums, splashy yet focused, somehow both anxious and comforting. The introduction proceeds from one idea to the next, winding toward a key, toward resolution, then settles at last. “Gardener,” the vocal declares, “bury your seeds in my heart and we’ll see what blossoms.”
Affordable Mill River Townhomes Deal Advances
by | Aug 21, 2020 11:05 am | Comments (1)
Urbane NewHaven
A rendering of the proposed townhouses.
City plans to sell a vacant Jocelyn Square lot to a developer interested in building six new two-family houses advanced — even as city staff cautioned that the proposed development will likely require zoning relief.
Continue reading ‘Affordable Mill River Townhomes Deal Advances’
State Signs Off On Historic House Move
by | Aug 21, 2020 9:39 am | Comments (8)
Thomas Breen photo
The historic Pinto House at 275 Orange St.
A developer’s plan to move a 200-year-old house several dozen feet up Orange Street won a key state recommended approval — paving the way for a seven-story apartment building slated to be built atop an adjacent downtown parking lot.
NHDocs Rolls From Romeo And Juliet To Jelly Doughnuts
by | Aug 21, 2020 8:02 am | Comments (0)
The weekend offerings of the NHDocs festival include two films at two live events — the first in the Park of the Arts on Saturday, featuring a local legend and the literary pursuits that defined her and many others; and the second at Whitneyville Cultural Commons on Sunday, featuring the story of a man and the legendary donut empire he created.
Continue reading ‘NHDocs Rolls From Romeo And Juliet To Jelly Doughnuts’
Reinaldo’s Corner
by | Aug 21, 2020 8:01 am | Comments (0)
Crime Of The Century
by | Aug 20, 2020 7:59 am | Comments (1)
Ted Littleford
I once saw a bank being robbed but didn’t know it
It was a normal afternoon, August, in the middle of the day
Narrative Project Tells “These Truths”
by | Aug 20, 2020 7:58 am | Comments (2)
Scenes from These Truths.
There is a “gravitational pull” dragging down Black men in America. “There’s no respect in our community for each other as brothers.” “There are not enough men who are positive role models.” “What can we do as a society to lift Black men up, because y’all did a hell of a job tearing them down?”
These and many other hard truths came to light Wednesday night in the screening of and panel discussion about the short film These Truths: A Documentary on the State of the Black Community, hosted online by The Narrative Project and drawing an audience of about 100.
NHDocs Looks At Police Killing And Riot Past
by | Aug 20, 2020 7:47 am | Comments (0)
When Liberty Burns.
Friday night’s offerings from the NHDocs film festival include “a film under the stars” event in the Park of the Arts on Audubon Street, featuring When Liberty Burns, an incisive and engaging examination of the life and death of Arthur McDuffie at the hands of Dade County police in Florida in 1979, the trial and acquittal of the officers charged with his murder and the subsequent riots that ensued in Miami in 1980.
Continue reading ‘NHDocs Looks At Police Killing And Riot Past’
New Coffee Shop Brings Majlis To Westville
by | Aug 19, 2020 12:07 pm | Comments (6)
Lotta Studio Photos
Inside the new Westville cafe, Pistachio.
The coffee was silky and smooth, with a rich, complex flavor. The foam on the top was thick and creamy, with a stripe of sweetness in it, a mystery ingredient. What made it taste like that? “You start with the best bean you can find,” said Mohamed Hafez, architect, artist, and now owner of Pistachio, the new coffee shop opening imminently at Lotta Studio in Westville. “Good milk that is fresh and coming from close by.” And maybe, he said, the sweetness came from a dash of agave.
Continue reading ‘New Coffee Shop Brings Majlis To Westville’
New Butcher Provides For Upper State Street
by | Aug 19, 2020 10:46 am | Comments (4)
Allison Hadley Photos
McGowan and Mingrone.
Provisions on State — opening on Upper State Street in September — will be New Haven’s only whole-animal butcher shop that uses regional animals; it also plans to have “everything you’d need for a simple, excellent meal,” said chef Emily Mingrone, who is busily readying the shop for its opening with business partner Shane McGowan.
Continue reading ‘New Butcher Provides For Upper State Street’
First Day Of School
by | Aug 19, 2020 10:07 am | Comments (0)
Kevin Sanchez Walsh cartoon
Families, line up right here by twos and threes
And we’ll soon find out who it will be
Dogs, Restaurant Workers Get A Fair Shake
by | Aug 19, 2020 8:18 am | Comments (0)
Seniors.
Thursday’s virtual offerings of the NHDocs film festival include one from the executive director of the festival himself. Gorman Bechard writes and directs one from the heart with Seniors: A Dogumentary, a touching, invigorating, and inspirational film focusing on older dogs and the people who not only love and care for them but make it their life’s work to give them the attention and spotlight they deserve.
Continue reading ‘Dogs, Restaurant Workers Get A Fair Shake’
New Doc Focuses On New Haven’s “Mr. Wonderland”
by | Aug 18, 2020 8:14 am | Comments (3)
Mister Wonderland.
Opening Night of the live event portion of the NHDocs festival — happening Wednesday, Aug. 19 on Wooster Street at the legendary Sally’s Apizza — will be celebrated with a film that digs into New Haven’s theatrical past.
Continue reading ‘New Doc Focuses On New Haven’s “Mr. Wonderland”’
Making The Bench Of A Bad Situation
by | Aug 17, 2020 11:32 am | Comments (3)
Eamon Linehan
Sarahi Zacatelco painting a new bench on Grand Ave.
Local artists Sarahi Zacatelco, Eamon Linehan, Israel Sanchez, and Joel Celi faced a blank canvas in the form of a freshly painted white bench right outside of Evolution SD Hairstudio on Grand Avenue.
NHDocs Cashes In
by | Aug 17, 2020 8:32 am | Comments (0)
NHDocs
NHDocs: The New Haven Documentary Film Festival — now in its seventh year, a week of films by documentary filmmakers from all over the country — begins on Tuesday, Aug. 18, with two online offerings that have one thing in common: the incomparable country music star Johnny Cash.
Artists Peer Between The Words
by | Aug 14, 2020 8:15 am | Comments (1)
Titus Kaphar
Analogous colors.
On one wall of NXTHVN’s gallery is a possibly already-iconic painting: A Black mother, eyes closed, her hair kept from her face by a headband, cradling only the silhouette of a baby. New Haven-based artist Titus Kaphar painted it in reaction to the killing of George Floyd, and in June it ended up being on the cover of Time magazine.
Facing that image, on the opposite wall, are a series of black pieces of paper that contain faces and words and crossed out lines. One side of the gallery is a short shock; the other is a lake of layers to sink into.
Together, they make up “Pleading Freedom,” a small but deep exhibition of work by Kaphar in collaboration with memoirist, poet, and attorney Reginald Dwayne Betts that has much to say about the condition of being Black in America at a time when people’s ears are prepared to hear that message as much as they have been in a generation.
Today’s Op-Art
by | Aug 13, 2020 2:24 pm | Comments (2)
Joel Schechter
Sculptor’s Work Crosses Borders, Breaks Ground
by | Aug 13, 2020 9:30 am | Comments (2)
Brian Slattery Photo
Clinard.
Statues stand together, a small family of them, somehow radiating both fear and total resolve. A pair of shadows huddle under rafters. Another group stands together, bearing witness, demanding to be counted. The pieces are all part of a larger exhibit by New Haven-based sculptor Susan Clinard focusing on refugees, migrants, and border crossings, for a new journal seeking to use groundbreaking ways of representing art to perhaps change hearts, minds — and policy.
Continue reading ‘Sculptor’s Work Crosses Borders, Breaks Ground’
Jeff Mueller Presses On
by | Aug 12, 2020 11:01 am | Comments (0)
Brian Slattery Photo
Mueller.
The crisp rim shot from the snare drum snaps out the beat to start “ReRecorded Syntax,” from Revisionist: Adaptations & Future Histories In The Time Of Love And Survival, the new album by June of 44 and its first in 21 years. The bass joins, pulsing on the groove, followed by two guitars that work in unison to create a mood that’s both urgent and atmospheric. The vocals only heighten the vibe, with lyrics that are both fractured and focused. The picture is clear; we just can’t see all of it. “Without air, still breathing,” the voices intone.
Animation Series Grapples With Russian Master
by | Aug 11, 2020 9:08 am | Comments (1)
Before the latest installment of Animation Celebration! — a film discussion series hosted by the New Haven Free Public Library — a participant beamed as the Zoom meeting for the discussion began to fill up.
“I’m watching all these movies I wouldn’t have watched!” she said. And “talking more about it makes you feel connected to it more.”
Continue reading ‘Animation Series Grapples With Russian Master’
Isaias, Meet Covid
by | Aug 10, 2020 12:05 pm | Comments (1)
All the huge strong limbs toppled down
Long beautiful maples, old and young, on the ground