by | Nov 14, 2024 10:16 am | Comments (1)
Lisa Reisman photo
Aerialist Ky Adams represents mothers and their children soaring.
From a table crammed with leaflets in the gymnasium at the Dixwell Community “Q” House, Sharnasia Booker watched a circus artist perform gravity-defying stunts on an aerial hoop, seemingly leaping through the air and taking flight — a representation of what young mothers and their children can do with the right support.
by | Jul 3, 2024 9:25 am | Comments (9)
Lisa Reisman photo
Sykes brainstorming with Asst. Chief Bhagtana.
Back in 2019, then-NHPD Lt. Manmeet Bhagtana and then-Newhallville Alder Delphine Clyburn drove around the neighborhood identifying the light posts that were either out or low. At night Bhagtana had her officers check the same. Bhagtana wrote up a list for UI, and gave them the crime stats from CompStat. Then she learned UI would replace the light posts.
“After that, residents felt safer and they started talking to us because that’s what they wanted, to know that we see them and we respect them and we care,” Bhagtana, now assistant police chief, said at Saturday’s lively “I Love Newhallville” symposium at Albertus Magnus College’s Behan Community Room.
Continue reading ‘Symposium Shows The Love For Newhallville’
by | Jun 11, 2024 9:13 am | Comments (1)
Abiba Biao Photos
Eric, Jordan, and Cathy Strother: "A life cut short, a future stolen away."
Through poetry, Jordan Strother is able to capture the complex emotions he feels when he remembers his brothers Eric Lewis and Anthony Strother: he holds happy memories of their endless vitality, but then he’s hit by a wave of sadness when he thinks of how their lives were cut short from gun violence.
He shared some of that poetry at an “Annual Day of Remembrance” ceremony at a Valley Street memorial to homicide victims.
by | Jun 10, 2024 9:44 am | Comments (4)
Lisa Reisman photos
Doug Rae with Dave Rodriguez of CT Junior Soccer Association ...
... at Saturday's dedication ceremony in East Shore Park.
A spirited group of 75 gathered on the edge of the East Shore Park soccer fields on a sunny, wind-swept Saturday morning for a dedication ceremony honoring Doug Rae — who founded New Haven Youth Soccer in the early 1980s with a vision that “players from all backgrounds can develop as members of the community through mentoring, teamwork, and friendship.”
by | Jun 10, 2024 9:42 am | Comments (1)
Lisa Reisman photo
Nancy Jordan (right), with Mike Downing Jr. and Langston Dennis, checking out the threads.
There were t‑shirts and button-downs and pullovers, dress pants and jeans and sweatpants, jackets and hoodies and windbeakers, each meticulously organized by size. There were shoes of every style and make. There were household items like cleansers and kitchenware, and personal care essentials like deodorant, shampoo, and conditioner.
None of it was for sale, including the food. At Saturday’s 12th annual Free Market and Health Fair just outside the Dixwell Community “Q” House, everything was, as advertised, free.
by | May 7, 2024 12:26 pm | Comments (3)
Lisa Reisman photo
Well-wishers gathered Sunday for Sister Geneva.
The late Geneva Pollock.
Geneva Pollock showed up.
She showed up for the three generations of students she taught English to at Jackie Robinson Middle School; for the neighbors she met on her Newhallville door-knocking tours; for anyone she heard had lost a loved one and was grieving.
On a brisk, grey morning, 125 people showed up to honor the legacy of Pollock, who died in May 2020 at 76 years old, with a street corner renaming.
The four-foot-nine dynamo who grew up picking cotton in Alabama went on to become “a teacher, a ward co-chair, an usher, a mother and grandmother, a friend, my friend, and so much more,” said Claudine Wilkins-Chambers, as she waited for the street renaming ceremony to begin. “She did so much for so many of us.”
by | Jan 2, 2024 1:37 pm | Comments (2)
Winter Wonderland celebration in full swing.
There were toys, every kind of toy, over 2,000 in all. There were remote-control cars and action figures and explorer kits and puzzles and Legos and Slime and board games and magnetic building blocks and light boxes and glow-in-the-dark basketballs and crystal balls, as well as dolls of every age, model, and style.
Young partygoer amid snowflakes.
Under the brights lights of the Dixwell Community‑Q House gymnasium at the first annual Winter Wonderland Celebration toy giveaway on the Saturday before Christmas, there was music booming and people dancing and kids tearing around the hardwood floors, and snow swirling from a snow machine, and cotton candy, and Santa and Mrs. Claus perched on a sleigh for photo-ops.
by | Dec 18, 2023 2:58 pm | Comments (0)
Asher Joseph photo
Students sing loud and proud at Elm City Montessori's eighth annual Winter Sing.
Students, families, and teachers bundled together in the subfreezing temperature at Elm City Montessori School (ECMS) to lift their voices in song during the school’s eighth annual Winter Sing — which played out as candles flickered, under the silhouette of West Rock.
Continue reading ‘Elm City Montessori Welcomes Winter Through Song’
by | Nov 15, 2023 7:30 am | Comments (4)
Lisa Reisman photo
Kwadwo Adae (center) with friends at Grand-Blatchley mural unveiling.
For nine weeks, they painted, enduring darkness of night, thick humidity, and driving rain.
The result: Las Flores de Esperanza, a mural color-saturated with flowers that spans 50 feet of concrete wall at the corner of Blatchley and Grand, and the latest street-beautifying creation of the Ghanaian-American visual artist and muralist Kwadwo Adae.
by | Jul 25, 2023 12:56 pm | Comments (1)
Mia Cortés Castro Photo
Shoot-off between the high school girls' and boys' teams on Monday.
After 10 rounds of hoops shoot-offs against the Lady Heat, New Haven Heat basketball players Amir Durant and Romel Holmes-Gordon took to the sidelines to reflect on the “big family” that their team has become.
Continue reading ‘Basketballers Bring The Heat In Fair Haven’