by | Feb 21, 2017 4:03 pm | Comments (2)
Paul Bass Photo
City Chief Administrative Officer Mike Carter and Brogan at the celebration.
For a 130 year-old, New Haven’s public library is going strong, with a seemingly bright future ahead.
by | Feb 16, 2017 9:11 am | Comments (1)
Brian Slattery Photo
Amy Vensel, Blurt, acrylic on canvas (foreground).
From now until May 31, as you browse the shelves of the Institute Library on Chapel Street, you may find your eye drawn to a bloom of color along the library’s main thoroughfare. A pair of pen-and-ink drawings, one all serenely flowing shapes, the other frenetic activity. Other bright bursts of paint appear at the ends of the library’s stacks, like the last chocolate in the box.
Then, as if your eyes have adjusted to a new light, you start to see ways that the art and the library — one of the vibiest spaces in the city — merge, so that it’s hard to tell sometimes which things are part of the art exhibit and which are just features of the library itself. And that’s when the title of the exhibit — “Looking Then Reading” — suddenly makes sense.
Continue reading ‘Art Exhibit Becomes A Card Catalog Of Life’
by | Jan 30, 2017 9:01 am | Comments (0)
Lucy Gellman Photo
Gertie the Common Ground Rooster was nervous about his first trip to the New Haven Free Public Library. Until he arrived, spread out on a checkered towel, and found that he had an adoring public, and a particularly agile translator.
by | Jan 23, 2017 8:44 am | Comments (1)
Beinecke Library
A black novelist was so sick of the portrayal by his fellow writers of the Negro as fundamentally different from other homo sapiens that he wrote a satire, Black No More, starring a doctor who invents a procedure to lighten skin pigment.
A white champion of the new black lit himself penned a novel called Nigger Heaven, featuring sexual promiscuity; it sold well, and he was accused of exploitation.
And one of Langston Hughes‘s earliest blues-inspired poems was called “Fine Clothes to de Jew”; it broke new ground but its subject infuriated the black middle class — and, yes, there already was one in the Harlem of the 1920s and 1930s.
by | Jan 6, 2017 11:16 am | Comments (0)
Courtesy Lee van der Voo
Friday’s programs on WNHH Radio take a dip in the Bering Sea to look at sustainable seafood, applaud parental advocacy, bring back the world’s best pundits, and take Talladega College to court for joining Donald J. Trump’s inauguration lineup.
by | Dec 23, 2016 1:22 pm | Comments (1)
Shumway.
Nine-year-old Amari Torres was apprehensive Friday morning when she saw Officer Scott Shumway come through the door of her fourth-grade classroom at Lincoln-Bassett school. Until he pulled out a brightly illustrated copy of Max Brallier’s The Galactic Hotdog, and opened to page one.
by | Dec 15, 2016 3:14 pm | Comments (0)
Boylan’s upcoming novel.
Thursday’s programs on WNHH dive into policing politics, explore LGBTQ media rights, catch up on community events, and review movies past and present.
by | Dec 14, 2016 8:50 am | Comments (0)
Paul Bass Photo
Wadleigh at WNHH.
Wednesday’s shows advocate for minority contractors’ rights, add a black feminist voice to the wage gap fight, introduce listeners to a new book, and look at Obamacare in Connecticut.
by | Dec 7, 2016 8:53 am | Comments (1)
Allan Appel Photo
Detail of two of the seven figures in Tora Bora.
There’s a two-faced CIA agent who wears both faces at the same time.
There’s a desperate villager, a U.S. soldier, and a Soviet general.
And those pretty decorative patterns on the various surfaces? On closer inspection, they just might turn out to be a lovely visual marriage of opium poppies and Kalashnikovs.
by | Nov 9, 2016 3:07 pm | Comments (1)
Lucy Gellman Photo
Washington and Grinberg.
Wednesday’s programs on WNHH radio examined the big question of the day — what just happened in Tuesday’s elections? — and offered some roadmaps (and road trips) for what to do next.
by | Nov 2, 2016 2:04 pm | Comments (0)
The NMAAHC.
The most recent programs on WNHH radio add to New Haveners’ perspectives on the Smithsonian’s new National Museum of African American History & Culture, get into the nitty gritty of partisan politics and voting, and highlight new fiction.
by | Oct 31, 2016 11:27 am | Comments (0)
Lucy Gellman Photo
Smith and Ficklin.
Monday’s programs on WNHH Radio explore a centuries-old manuscript about the origins of mass incarceration and misuse of the 13th Amendment, dissect the city’s news with Mayor Toni Harp, check in on a new movie, and explore sports programs in the Naugatuck Valley.
by | Oct 26, 2016 11:56 am | Comments (0)
Allan Appel Photo
Boss Brogan (left) hails Carolla at her 50th annviersary party.
Marianne Carolla remembers when there were eight neighborhood library branches, not only the five current (including the main). In particular she remembers the storefront branch on Chapel at Norton, where the paperbacks hung on spindles as in an old book store window.
Once a man, a library patron, came in and said to her, “I want something that’s hot to trot.”
Continue reading ‘“Miss Librarian” Passes Half-Century Mark’
by | Oct 23, 2016 10:15 am | Comments (3)
Lucy Gellman
Garlick.
Valerie Garlick’s journey to executive director of the Institute Library started with a single thought, while her eyes were glued to the building’s extensive water damage: I could fix that.
Continue reading ‘New Institute Library Chief Seeks To Branch Out’
by | Oct 21, 2016 8:05 am | Comments (0)
Courtesy Jim Collins Foundation.
Ferraiolo.
The most recent programs on WNHH radio dive headfirst into trans youth activism and the New Haven Pride Center, question the notion of collective memory and historical narrators, expose listeners to some old films made new, and revel in both local news and the impending fall harvest.
by | Oct 19, 2016 12:00 pm | Comments (0)
Courtesy GirlTrek.
Today’s programs on WNHH radio take on mass incarceration and Ava DuVernay’s 13th, encourage girls and women in the black community to take back the streets through physical fitness, delve into city politics and Bob Dylan, and introduce listeners to a new work of literature that has been getting some high praise.
by | Oct 19, 2016 8:02 am | Comments (2)
Lucy Gellman Photo
Should Yale University change the name of Calhoun College?
Adding his voice to a debate that has been raging for over a year, Yale professor and film historian Charlie Musser, director of the five-DVD box set Pioneers of African American Cinema and author of the new Politicking and Emergent Media: US Presidential Elections of the 1890s, says yes. He came on WNHH radio’s “The Tom Ficklin Show” to discuss why.
Below is a selection of the interview.
by | Oct 6, 2016 12:07 pm | Comments (0)
Lucy Gellman Photo
A mysterious Radio Date.
• It’s getting hot!
• New fiction, please!
• Mayor … Thursday?
• Attorney General reports.
• Two takes on heroism.
• Makeup?
by | Sep 8, 2016 12:14 pm | Comments (0)
• CT Folk Fest.
• Behold the Dreamers.
• Monkey Business.
• School reform.
• The Drug War.
• Welcoming September.
by | Sep 6, 2016 1:17 pm | Comments (0)
Claire Bien survived two breakdowns and years of hearing hostile voices in her head — and has produced a book intended to show other people that they can, too.
by | Jun 14, 2016 7:53 am | Comments (0)
Paul Bass Photos
Bandhary-Alexander and Lugo at WNHH.
The latest programs from WNHH radio check in with community members about the massacre in Orlando, revisit immigration reform and the Brock Turner case, meet new authors with new summer reads, and time-travel to a simple time that actually wasn’t so simple.
by | Jun 9, 2016 2:19 pm | Comments (0)
Paul Bass Photo
Betsy and Roz Lerner at WNHH.
Radio interviewer: Roz, do you remember saying you love Betsy?
Roz: I may not have said it. But I certainly felt it. I adore my three girls.
Radio interviewer: So you love Betsy?
Roz: Absolutely.
Radio interviewer: Betsy, do you want to start telling your mom that now?
Betsy: No. It’s like a game of chicken.
by | May 19, 2016 7:22 am | Comments (1)
Brian Slattery Photo
There’s a rack of linked sausages, drawn on the back of an envelope. In a collage, someone with the head of a fish is cozying up to a suspicious-looking woman in front of a church. At the orange entrance to a distillery, a long, unattended ladder is propped up next to the entrance to the safety shop.
What does it all mean?
It’s part of artist Tasha Lewis’s project Illustrating Ulysses, on view at the Institute Library until May 29. This multimedia show offers hundreds of delights, both for Joyceans preparing for Bloomsday and those who have never cracked open James Joyce’s famously difficult masterpiece — but might like to.
Continue reading ‘Yes I Said Yes You Will Go To The Institute Library’
by | May 18, 2016 7:07 am | Comments (0)
Should New Haveners be worrying about Zika virus hitting the state? What about maternal-fetal health as the state remains at an alarming infant mortality rate? Today’s programs on WNHH radio explore those questions.
by | May 12, 2016 7:11 am | Comments (0)
Poet, performer and curator Ifeanyi Awachie had a vision: Build a safe and supportive space in New Haven where writers from different backgrounds could convene, listen to each other, and learn about each other’s work, while kicking back after the workweek. She did her research: Nothing like it existed in the Elm City. So she would will it into existence, she reasoned.