It’s a sunny weekend in early April, kicking off the Open Farm days that run every Saturday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., with opportunities to explore the farm. This particular day is a special one, featuring a $10 seed planting workshop with full-time staff member and Farm Manager Shannon Raider. She uses organic soil and guides visitors through the process of planting flowers and vegetables like tomatoes (okay, okay, technically a fruit), green beans, and pumpkins.

Jessamyn Ramona, 6, is visiting with her dad and friend, Pauline Makinano, 11. They gladly pose for photos while watering their freshly planted seeds. “Gardening was my favorite part of the trip,” says Jessamyn, while Pauline says with a wide smile, “I loved getting my hands dirty!”

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Jessamyn will attend Common Ground’s summer camp, one of many community programs geared toward families. “A big part of our mission is to connect kids, parents, and the New Haven community to both the natural world and the sources of their food,” says Joel Tolman, Director of Development and Community Engagement. “We try to open as many doors to do that as possible,” whether that means captivating the 4,000 students who visit each year as they dig their first carrot out of the ground or motivating a family to take a first hike in the surrounding West Rock Park.

Either way, Tolman hopes community members find a compelling reason to return—after-school workshops and summer programs, perhaps, or visiting the Saturday market to buy fresh eggs raised right on the farm. Those eggs are cleaned by students like sophomore Stephanie Torres, by the way, who works on weekends to help kids pick up those elusive chickens, collect eggs, and prepare them for sale.

The piglets are also a popular attraction. They just arrived a couple weeks ago and will remain on the farm for the season. A dozen or so students will be involved with their daily care as the piglets mature. The pigs will also be involved in lessons, including a comparison of their digestive tracts to humans’.

Come fall, the pigs will be sent to a local slaughterhouse, then served for school lunches. Some students will eat them and some will not.

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None of those students is likely to feel compunction about eating from the 15 campus maple trees that were recently tapped for maple syrup, at least. The harvest was celebrated with an early March pancake brunch open to the whole community, which featured a fully operational Sugar Shack, part of the outdoor classrooms at Common Ground.

That outdoor learning theme is extended by more than a dozen exhibit boards and posters along trails throughout the grounds, each written and designed by Common Ground’s high school students and young participants in after-school programs. They worked with staff at the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History to create the exhibits, which outline “lessons from the land” on a variety of topics including human and natural history, science and technology, and environmental and agricultural practices.

Common Ground will put some of those principles into practice as plans get underway to build a new community-gathering and teaching space in time for the fall 2014 semester. The construction will allow the high school to expand to 225 students from its current enrollment of 175. Energy will be generated by solar panels and geothermal heating and cooling; trees felled to clear the site will become lumber for the building and campus. Architectural highlights include airline hanger doors that open to nature for a seamless indoor/outdoor flow.

In the meantime, there are plenty of spring activities to engage the community (and engaged we are; more than 10,000 visited Common Ground last year). You can try your hand at cheesemaking with locally produced milk, or participate in a family cooking class that will harvest strawberry and rhubarb and then transform the bounty into healthy fruit tarts. You could take a lesson on home composting, or listen and sing along during a barnyard jamboree for kids.

Beyond the campus, Common Ground gets around, with a mobile farm market in collaboration with City Seed to get to elderly housing complexes and public housing neighborhoods, increasing their access to fresh food.

But it all comes back to the farm, which is the classroom and focal point of the community programs. “It may seem like a lot of different pieces,” says Tolman of their many initiatives and accomplishments, “but our job is to make sure all those pieces connect.”

Not just with each other, but also with the students and their community. “Our students do their best work when they do something they really care about, and it has a public purpose,” says Tolman. “I think that’s a reason our students have had so much academic success. They’re doing something real.”

Common Ground High School, Urban Farm, and Environmental Education Center
358 Springside Avenue, New Haven (map)
(203) 389-4333
www.commongroundct.org

Written and photographed by Jane Rushmore.

Or maybe now is just the right time to rejoice in the spirit of winter. Complex and unexpected city that it is, New Haven offers a chance to participate in a classic cold-weather activity even after spring has officially sprung.

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The city-owned Ralph Walker Skating Rink stays open until the end of March, offering public skating sessions on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays from 12 to 1:30 pm, as well as Friday evening sessions from 8 to 9:20 p.m. Weekend public skates run from 12 to 1:20 p.m. and 6 to 7:30 p.m.

You won’t pay much for a spin—and hopefully not too many falls—on the ice. New Haven adults only pay $4, and it’s $3 for under-18ers; for non-residents the prices jump just a buck higher. There’s also a universal senior fee of $3, and skate rentals are $4. Hockey enthusiasts can join regularly scheduled “stick time” and pick-up hockey games at $10 a session (usually in the evening; check the website for details).

Linda Chicoine, who manages the rink, confirms that March is a great time to visit. Traffic tends to dwindle as folks move from a winter- to spring-sport mindset, leaving hockey pucks and sticks behind in favor of soccer balls and tennis rackets. In short, there’s more room to glide at the Rink.

And to breathe, too. Although it has a roof to protect from rain or snow, the Ralph Walker Rink is open-air. (A compressor keeps the ice floor solid despite rising temperatures outside.) The fresh air isn’t the only invigorating factor; music plays during public skate sessions.

Still, chances are decent that this month has plenty of chills left to deliver, and the indoor facility adjacent to the rink is a great place to warm up. Every day, the Zamboni driver on duty is responsible for building the fire that roars during open hours; nearby wooden benches and picnic tables are a great spot for sipping a hot chocolate (vending machines provide that, as well as other drinks, snacks and ice cream) and warming your toes.

“We try to be a community place where people can come and do a winter activity. It’s a very family-oriented atmosphere,” says Chris Bartlett. While the city owns the rink, which has been open since the late 1960s, it’s run by Rink Management Solutions, which Bartlett co-owns; Linda Chicoine is an employee.

The two have known each other since the sixth grade, when they both lived in North Haven, and have been close since. Chicoine says she’s an enthusiastic skater, though Bartlett may be the more serious skater of the two; he competed in Olympic-eligible men’s figure skating, was in Disney on Ice for five years and has coached skating students for over a quarter-century. He still coaches (including for Chicoine’s daughter) in addition to running the business.

Even this late in the season, you might catch some advanced skaters practicing their double Axels at the skating rink, as well as plenty of beginners gathered around the sides before shakily making their way around the ice. Either way, a good skate is the perfect way to say goodbye to winter.

Ralph Walker Ice Skating Rink
1080 State St., New Haven
(203) 946-8007
www.cityofnewhaven.com/parks/parksinformation/walker.asp

Written and photographed by Cara McDonough.

Sound familiar? If you’re reading this easily, you’re proficient with your phonetics, so it literally does sound familiar. The written words effortlessly translate to corresponding sounds and, therefore, to comprehensible words in your mind. If “reading is fundamental,” as other TV spots have reminded us, phonetics proficiency is even more so.

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No wonder, then, that New Haven Reads—the community-wide book bank and learning center dedicated to helping kids improve their literacy—is hooked on phonics, too. Executive Director Kirsten Levinsohn says studies confirm the intuitive notion that there’s a high correlation between phonetic aptitude and reading ability. People who have problems with the former tend to struggle with the latter.

New Haven Reads is here to help, though. “When our kids first arrive to the site,” Levinsohn explains, “we evaluate their abilities through [phonics-based educational software programs] Lexia and Explode the Code and then have them read aloud to us.” After evaluation, “we know exactly where they are and can then design a personalized program for them with their weekly tutor.” NHR’s tutors assist over 500 students on a weekly basis at the non-profit’s three locations at Bristol Street, Dixwell Avenue and Science Park.

And there are a lot more students who could use the help. For example, less than 33% of New Haven third-graders read at or above the goal in 2012, according to a Connecticut Mastery Test evaluation.

On the other hand, that’s up from about 18% in 2006, and New Haven Reads has played an important role in that improvement. Founded by the late Christine Alexander in 2001 with the endorsement of the mayor, New Haven Reads was formed in the wake of dismal test results declaring that only a third of New Haven’s adults were reading at or above a third-grade level. That revelation prompted city leaders to tap Alexander to wage a yearlong campaign emphasizing the importance of literacy and education.

The organization evolved to its current state—tutors, courses, the works—after a family friend asked Alexander for help on how to teach her children to read. Since then, New Haven Reads has opened two additional locations, employed hundreds of volunteer tutors to work closely with children in need and developed relationships with local teachers as well as a variety of innovative and educational programming—SAT prep classes, Summer Literacy Camp, homework help, educational clubs.

At the organization’s main hub on Bristol Street, the walls are plastered with colorful posters depicting pronouns and prepositions and lined with dozens of shelves holding thousands of books. Staff members click away at their computers, parents converse with their child’s tutors and the kids stuff as many books into their bags as they can (the Harry Potter series is still the favorite). It’s a warm and welcoming environment where kids and teenagers can develop an essential life skill.

It’s a need and a process Levinsohn knows exceedingly well, not only as the Executive Director but also as a tutor herself. No matter how hopeless or difficult the situation may be, at New Haven Reads a kid can receive highly individualized support from a trained professional—something they could very well be missing from the classroom or at home.

“This is what I always say to the kids: ‘It’s not that you can’t do it—we just haven’t worked on it hard enough.’ We just keep at it. ‘Expect great things’ is my motto and I feel very strongly that these kids can, in fact, do great things—and they do.”

New Haven Reads
Main Location—45 Bristol Street, New Haven (map)
(203) 752-1923
www.newhavenreads.org

Written by Courtney McCarroll. Photograph courtesy of New Haven Reads.

One hundred years later, the non-profit serves 18 towns around the area and sees approximately 1,600 children a year for a range of issues, says Alice Forrester, who came to the center 16 years ago as a PhD student and has been Executive Director for five years now. Forrester is sitting in a cheerful office decorated with pictures and a few toys; the building is comprised of many such sunny offices housing the administrative staff, psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers and researchers who make up the dynamic Clifford Beers team. The décor tends to fit the clientele: one office features a small collection of toy dinosaurs; a meeting room’s wall is covered in brightly colored paper mache masks.

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The center’s impressive array of services is delivered via the onsite clinic, school-based clinics in New Haven, programs for military families and a 24-hour hotline, to name just a few. Children who come through the door may have experienced any kind of trauma, abuse, neglect or other mental health-related problems.

“We understand that these early childhood adversities really affect their mental and physical health,” Forrester says. “Chronic and persistent stress takes a toll on a child.”

The concept of adverse childhood experiences—ACEs for short—is getting a lot of attention these days. The ACE Study, an ongoing project between the Centers for Disease Control and Kaiser Permanente, has revealed a strong connection between early childhood trauma and various health and social problems later in life.

But Forrester and others at the Clinic think it could use more attention still, and that’s why they’re using the 100th anniversary to look into the future, proposing new projects and looking for new partners to make them a reality. According to the Clinic’s website, it’s “one of the oldest community-based non-profit outpatient mental health clinics in America,” so it’s unexpected when Forrester begins to speak excitedly about the unorthodox ideas being floated for creating a new, multi-faceted “wellness center.” There, families might see medical doctors as well as mental health professionals, complete with a café or yoga studio. The approach speaks to the Clinic’s emphasis on treating not only the child but also the entire family.

In that same vein, they’d like to expand intervention services to target troubled families and very young children who may have experienced a traumatic event, thereby nipping associated mental health issues in the bud. Forrester says they hope to increase services aimed at parents as well.

Mostly, the Clinic aims to bring its message and services to the wider community in years to come. “In a lot of ways we have a stigmatized society of silence,” Forrester says. Her broad prescription includes “reducing cost and improving access to care, making it easy and relaxed to talk about things that are difficult.”

Forrester says that, in its next 100 years, the Clifford Beers Clinic will simply ask the question, “What more can we do?” Backed by a solid staff, board and history, her ideas seem more than just wishful thinking.

Clifford Beers Clinic
93 Edwards Street, New Haven (map)
(203) 772-1270
www.cliffordbeers.org

Written and photographed by Cara McDonough.

These are some of the denizens of this year’s Fantasy of Lights, which features 55 sparkling light displays sponsored by local businesses along a roughly mile-long route through New Haven’s Lighthouse Point Park. The spectacle runs every year throughout the holiday season; this year it operates through December 31st, from 5 p.m. until 9 p.m. Sundays through Thursdays and until 10 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays.

Visiting is as easy as hopping in a vehicle, driving over and paying the entry fee: $10 per car (more if you happen to be traveling in a mini-bus or full-size bus). Rest assured when handing over the money: 100 percent of the proceeds go to event organizer Easter Seals Goodwill Industries, a group dedicated to enhancing opportunities for people with disabilities in the greater New Haven area.

During a time of year often wrought with anxiety-laden episodes—from kids crying in Santa’s lap to overindulging at the 11th party you’ve attended in a month’s span—a holiday happening that allows you to remain in the comfort of your own car and requires minimal planning ahead can seem like a fantasy. But it’s not. It’s the Fantasy, where you can wear pajamas and bring your own hot chocolate along for the ride.

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In the spirit of the season, rotating volunteers from different partner organizations make the event possible, helping with everything from setting up and breaking down the light displays to manning posts at the park’s entrance and exit, according to Fiona Paterson, who works in the Development Department at Easter Seals. It’s a volunteer who provides you with a program when you first arrive and tells you where to turn your radio dial; the Fantasy of Lights creates a temporary radio station each year with holiday music and promos recorded by WTNH News Channel 8, which is also one of the light display sponsors.

Then it’s time for some good old holiday wonder. This is the event’s 18^th year and, while there have certainly been changes along the way—16 of this year’s displays now feature eco-friendly LED bulbs and brighter colors than ever before—the Fantasy of Lights is pretty classic. There’s nothing like a Christmas lights display to summon your inner child; seeing so many all at once is bound to have you “wow”-ing in no time (and actual children will love it even more).

The displays are big—this year’s tallest goes all the way to the top of the park’s namesake lighthouse, at 75 feet—and many of them move. Watch for two teddy bears tossing a snowball overhead when you’re on the last stretch of the ride, in a display sponsored by AlphaGraphics New Haven.

Displays paying homage to the season offer up plenty of Santas and elves, while others represent their sponsors in more or less obvious ways. From less to more, the previously mentioned Victorian paper boy is sponsored by the New Haven Register; United Illuminating Company sponsors an Energy Star logo; and the Twin Pines Diner sponsors…drumroll please…a set of eerily similar pines.

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There’s a lot to see. But don’t worry about it going by too fast. As opposed to the crowded highways or mall parking lots at this time of year, dawdling is just fine at the Fantasy of Lights. Most cars creep through the route at a snail’s pace and many pull over to take pictures, or simply to prolong the fun.

Visitors will often get a parting gift as well, such as candy canes or a souvenir keychain with a company logo, depending on the organization at work that night. No matter how frigid the temperatures, the volunteers doling them out always seem to be smiling. Maybe it’s the close proximity to all those bright colors; all together, the displays feature over 100,000 light bulbs.

Other impressive numbers associated with the event: last year over 12,000 cars visited the Fantasy of Lights and the event raised over $150,000.

This year’s Fantasy of Lights started on November 16, meaning plenty of people have already made their way through, from the bright Goodwill logo—the very first display you’ll see—to the toy soldier with his drum, the very last. Until December 31st, there’s still time to see the lights.

Fantasy of Lights
Lighthouse Point Park, New Haven (map)
Sun-Thurs 5-9pm, Fri-Sat 5-10pm
www.eastersealsgoodwill.org

Written by Cara McDonough. Images courtesy of Easter Seals Goodwill Industries.

Dr. Darnell Young won’t say what his favorite candy was as a kid, although he admits to having a sweet tooth. “I was always at the dentist, that’s all I have to say about that.” Perhaps regular visits were a drag at the time, but they did pave the way for his future as a pediatric dentist and his dedication to doing it right.

“I can go back and remember what I didn’t like when I was a kid and implement those ideas,” he says. “That’s how I take my approach.”

His methodology revolves in large part around making friends with his young patients first and foremost. If a child is going to cooperate during a dental exam, it helps to be a fan of the examiner.

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Luckily for parents and kids, Dr. Young is a natural. With an easy smile and frequent, loud laugh, hanging out with him is immediately fun.

Young feels that too many in his profession treat children like they’re adults. In his practice at Elm Family Dental Associates in West Haven, the pediatric room is equipped with the goods necessary to win over kids of various ages. A stuffed Elmo might lie in the chair and show the kids there’s nothing to worry about. Beauty and the Beast and Sponge Bob are around, too, thanks to Young’s five-year-old daughter, who keeps him up to speed on what’s cool with her peers.

“I think where some dentists have a hiccup is they don’t interact with the kids,” he says. But, “if they don’t like you, you’re finished.” Which brings us to a pressing question: Ever been bitten?

That infectious laugh again, and Young answers, “Yes.” But it’s no big deal: “They say you’re not initiated into the pediatric family until you’ve been bitten and I have. It happens.”

It does, indeed, which is why with particularly anxious young children, Young suggests they sit in their Mom or Dad’s lap while he gets a good look at their teeth, explaining what’s going on the entire time so there are no surprises.

Young also emphasizes prevention, which is why he recommends bringing in children during their first year, sometimes even before their teeth have made an appearance. Parents who learn and implement good dental habits early—including babies not sleeping with bottles, and knowing that advertising campaigns boasting products with “100% fruit juice” that may still contain a ton of sugar—can help ensure good dental health later.

Beyond his seemingly effortless upbeat attitude, he readily imparts helpful tips: sticky candies (like those Tootsie Rolls) are the worst for your teeth; flossing at least once a day is a big yes, even for little kids; and parental supervision of brushing ensures children are actually doing a good job like they say they are.

On the flip side, it’s like pulling teeth to get him to talk about his roster of impressive accomplishments. The University of Connecticut School of Dental Medicine grad won both community service and research recognition awards while he was there. He is also trained in dentistry for children with special needs, and is involved in local community service, regularly providing dental education and dental screenings at the New Haven Boys and Girls Club, among other volunteer gigs.

As for his patients at the office in West Haven, he’s looking forward to serving them for years to come, and is welcoming new mouths as well. He can name several “best parts” of working with children. Their honesty, for one thing, is both refreshing and hilarious.

He also likes the self-assurance a good visit instills, especially if a child started out nervous but left the appointment beaming, equipped with their complimentary toothbrush, flosser, toothpaste and stickers. Always stickers.

Plus, they leave with the knowledge necessary to take care of their teeth. “What we like to do is build confidence,” Young says.

With that, dental hygiene goes from tedious to terrific. And as for that Halloween candy? Not thoroughly enjoying it the night of would be criminal, but after that, brush your teeth, says Young. Then throw the rest away. There’s always next year.

Dr. Darnell Young
Elm Family Dental Associates
233 Elm Street, West Haven (map)
(203) 933-2223
www.elmfamilydentalassociates.com

Written and photographed by Cara McDonough.

At CT RollerGirls, parts of that history remain. The campy, questionable names—like Puke Skywalker and Banana SlamHer, VelociSlaptHer and Your Mom—are still there. And the skaters, who play their home bouts at the CT Sports Center in Woodbridge, definitely are a bunch of tough girls. (I feel strange calling them “girls,” because these are women we’re talking about. But they call themselves girls, and they could, each and every one of them, beat the stuffing out of me at will. So, “girls” it is.) They skate hard, they skate fast, they knock each other down, they get back up, and they keep skating. And they skate to win.

That’s the biggest difference about today’s roller derby. Sure, these days the track is flat, not banked, and the girls skate on an open floor, not into and up against walls. But bigger than that, the sport is now a sport. There’s no script here, and the competition is full-contact. Fierce.

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Meanwhile, the rules are as sophisticated as any other sport. Each game consists of two thirty-minute halves made up of an unlimited number of “jams” (think innings in a baseball game) of up to two minutes each. Each team has five players playing three positions: a “jammer,” who does the scoring; three blockers; and a “pivot,” who acts as a sort of field general, setting the pace, giving direction to blockers and providing the last line of defense when the opposition has a chance to score. Jammers score points by lapping members of the other team, and the blockers run elaborate formations and coordinated plays designed to thwart the opposition’s jammer, all while opening a lane for their own jammer to skate through.

Like other sports, there are rules of play and refs. There are legal blocks and illegal blocks, packs and no-pack calls. There are penalties. Privileges, too: the jammer can call off a jam at will, and the jammer and pivot can trade positions.

Confused yet? I was too at the beginning of the doubleheader I attended on October 20th, but a night of CT RollerGirls roller derby is set up to make the sport accessible to newcomers and veteran fans alike. An introductory video explains the basics before the first game starts. The program includes a rundown of the rules.

Still, roller derby “needs description,” Sean Fowler, a.k.a. Sean the Shark, told me. Fowler is one of the league’s announcers, and they’re the ones who really open the sport up to all 300-odd people in the audience at each game. Announcers entertain and involve the crowd and fill the breaks in the action. (Sean even has an “Awkward Pause Theme Song” that he sings.)

Primarily, though, they provide a running play-by-play of the competition, a slightly goofy, slightly over-the-top real-time description of the action as you’re seeing it. By the start of the night’s second game, I wouldn’t quite say I felt like a roller derby expert, but I was schooled enough to really enjoy the high level of play and the intense competitiveness of the teams.

And I’m pretty sure I wasn’t the only one. The all-ages crowd at a roller derby bout is made up of equal parts serious fans—painted in team colors, cheering their favorite teams and players on with practiced chants—and families just out looking for a fun time on a Saturday night.

Perhaps surprisingly, roller derby really is a family-friendly sport. Some of the player names are slightly blue, sure, and the announcers don’t shy away from off-color campiness either, but the night is geared toward everyone. There’s music and candy, with raffles and half-time contests for kids, who, if they’re under 12, get in for free. And the sport is so fast-paced, the competition so closely matched—the last game I saw hinged on opposing penalties in the final seconds—that it’d be hard for anyone not to have a good time.

The league itself is just as inclusive. CT RollerGirls is a skater-owned and -operated, not-for-profit and full-on democratic sporting league. The players are a diverse group of girls in their twenties, thirties, and even forties—lifelong athletes and sports rookies alike. Tryouts are open to everyone 18 and over (and out of high school), and new players are voted in by the league’s membership. Most who try out—even relatively new skaters—make it onto a team after a pair of introductory bootcamps and a twelve-practice training program.

“We’ll teach you to skate. We teach endurance, we teach competitiveness, we teach team cohesion,” says Parker Poison (Cassandra McNeil, the league’s chairwoman). “We even teach you to fall”—which happens a lot—without injury. Nobody wants to do any serious damage to anybody else, because, however competitive it might get on the track, the league is ultimately about teamwork and community.

This makes sense of the pervasive humility of the players, even amidst all the outward swagger. Speaking with relative newcomer to the sport Folsom Bruise (her real name is Laurie Lawless, ironically enough) after the bout, I somewhat indelicately mentioned the obvious talent of one of the opposing skaters Folsom had just played against. The spirit of the league, and probably a certain amount of inborn sportswomanship, shined right through: “I can never be that skater,” she said. “But I can certainly try.”

CT RollerGirls
League Championship: Saturday, November 10, at 6pm (doors at 5pm)
CT Sports Center, 21 South Bradley Road, Woodbridge (map)
Website | Tickets

Written and photographed by Jonathan McNicol.

That’s the stuff of a child’s dreams, and you’ll find all of it within the interactive exhibits of the CT Children’s Museum. Located in The Children’s Building on the corner of Wall and Orange in New Haven, the museum lets kids touch, play and explore their way—with help from a stuffed monkey or a toy piano or a piece of chalk and a little freedom—to mental development.

“Our goal is to teach kids without anybody really thinking you’re teaching them,” says museum director Sandy Malmquist, “because, after all, that is how we learn best, when we’re just experiencing things.” And that little bit of educational sleight-of-hand comes into play everywhere in the museum.

Its eight permanent exhibits were designed around the developmental psychologist Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences, which argues that our cognitive abilities can be broken down into a series of discrete modalities, that we each excel (or don’t) in certain ways of interacting with or understanding the world around us. Likewise, the rooms in the museum are named according to specified modalities, like “bodily-kinesthetic” or “intrapersonal” or “logical-mathematical.”

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Not that the theory itself matters much to the little ones. Take the Spatial Room, for instance, which facilitates interacting with and mentally representing dynamic spaces; for kids, it’s just the building room, the one with the dump trucks and the building blocks and the hard hats, with the chalkboard playhouse—a large, black structure where every surface can be written on with chalk, inspired by the classic children’s book Harold and the Purple Crayon.

Or take the Naturalistic Room, which is designed to nurture a more intuitive grasp of nature. Kids will remember it as the room with the sea shells and the seahorse—the room with the butterflies in glass and the real, live honeycomb where they watched thousands of bees working to make honey to serve their queen.

Then there’s the museum’s most famous exhibit, where, dark and quiet, a few beams of sunlight carve the shapes of the moon and the stars into the red carpeting. It’s called the Linguistics Room, but really it’s the great green room from Margaret Wise Brown’s classic picture book, Goodnight Moon, reproduced utterly faithfully. (It’s got the telephone, the red balloon, the two cats, the bowl of mush—even the fireplace. Every detail from the book except one—and I won’t give it away—is there.) The museum uses Brown’s well-known words to focus on language. There’s a station for learning braille and sign language. There’s a magnetic wall where children can rearrange magnets of the just 130 words in Goodnight Moon to try to tell their own story. There’s also a collection of books which includes a number of non-English versions of Moon from around the world.

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In fact, the museum, which is geared toward kids aged 3 to 9, is brimming with children’s books. “We’re literacy-based,” says director Malmquist, and she’s not kidding. Each room has dozens and dozens of books, and they often serve as inspiration for the exhibits. Meanwhile, storytime programs are offered on Saturdays at 2pm for the general public and weekday mornings for elementary school groups and family childcare providers. And the museum gives away more than six thousand books to kids who attend its programs and the providers who bring them each year. “We know that how many words [kids] hear every day really matters, and what kinds of words. And we know that children’s picture books have more unusual language in them than the conversation of college graduates,” she adds, citing a line from Where the Wild Things Are and words like ‘wolf’ and ‘mischief’ that adults use rarely, but that kids learn from seemingly simple children’s literature.

That playing-vs.-learning duality exists in Malmquist too. She’s an academic—her background is in both anthropology and early childhood education—and she can spout factoids about the language in picture books or figures from studies concluding that a child needs to understand a vocabulary of 35,000 words before s/he turns six to avoid falling inextricably behind her peers. She serves on the board of New Haven’s Early Childhood Council. But as soon as kids are around, she morphs into something like a model kindergarten teacher: She squats to talk to children at eye-level. She plays with toy elephants and chicks with them. She starts races to see who can roll a ball through a tube the fastest.

“I love this town,” Malmquist says, having lived in New Haven for nearly fifty years and worked at the Children’s Museum for almost twelve. “I love this city. They’re all my kids.”

CT Children’s Museum
The Children’s Building, 22 Wall Street, New Haven (map)
Open to the public Fri-Sat 12-5pm
(203) 562-5437 | info@childrensbuilding.org
www.childrensbuilding.org

Written and photographed by Jonathan McNicol.

This particular crowd knows Messore as a master of children’s songs, performing rousing renditions of “You Are My Sunshine” and making silly faces while he “Skips To My Lou.” After the performance, however, he occasionally delves into something a little more complicated—just messing around on his guitar the way musicians often do. Listen, especially during these unstructured moments, and it’s clear: this guy can play.

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Messore is a mainstay in the New Haven area music scene. He can hold his own with breathtaking solo guitar work, but his musical life is hardly solitary. Messore, who organizes the St. John’s coffeehouse events at St. John’s Episcopal Church, has joined long lineups at the CT Folk Festival, plays cantina and barn dances with flute-fiddle-guitar trio Wry Bread and partners with vocalists for special shows at spots like Lyric Hall in Westville and The Space in Hamden, is known for collaboration and gathering.

All of that is in addition to studio work and solo shows. His various gigs pay for rent and insurance, something that remains an unattainable dream for so many creative individuals.

Music wasn’t always the plan, however. Back in 1995, after graduating from Hampshire College with a degree in Cognitive Science, then moving to New Haven, Messore, who is originally from Connecticut, assumed he’d get a PhD. After all, if you’re already studying something like psycholinguistics—Messore’s specialty while in school—you’ve pretty much locked yourself into academia.

“But then life happened,” Messore says. At the time, his grandmother was experiencing health problems, and as he hadn’t yet finalized further education or career plans, he offered to help her out. Caring for her yielded an unusual schedule, so Messore turned to his musical background as a means of making some money.

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He had worried that utilizing that talent to pay the bills would turn him against it. “I thought it would ruin it for me, if music was my job,” he says. Little by little, though, he started booking gigs, expanding his connections and building up his skill set, including doing his own PR. Messore eventually made a name for himself throughout Connecticut and beyond.

So how’d a solo guitarist who does everything from jazz to folk to rocking out end up playing to the sippy cup set?

He adopted the gig from Peter Roger, who started Toddler Tunes at St. John’s in the East Rock neighborhood in 1991. Messore has been leading the bi-weekly program—on Wednesday mornings and Sunday afternoons—for nearly ten years.

“I had no idea how much I would love doing kids’ music,” says Messore. “I feel like everyone should have a job where they get to have three-year-olds smile at them.”

Planned career move or not, the kids adore him, and so do their parents. As moms, dads and their young children gather for Toddler Tunes, Messore offers friendly hellos with a wide smile and warm eyes. He enthusiastically strums and sings, and if he ever tires of playing the same songs each week, he doesn’t show it. Instead, he’s dancing with the tots who congregate at his feet. He’s throwing his hands in the air. He’s doing the Hokey Pokey.

No, this is not exactly the way he thought life would turn out. But as he walks through his East Rock neighborhood, a familiar figure with guitar slung over shoulder, all is right in his world.

“One of my favorite things about music is I can really use it as a way of loving people,” Messore says. Judging by the reaction of audiences at Toddler Tunes and at his other frequent New Haven-area performances, the feeling is mutual.

Robert Messore
Artist Website | Toddler Tunes

Written by Cara McDonough.

The grassy locale has not changed, but several other things about the festival have. For one thing, the whole event is now free, not divided into separate free and paid segments. For another, the programming is continuous on one day—not spread over several nights or overlapped. The result of these shifts should be a more community-oriented, open-ended and inviting event. Not that the CFF ever felt uninviting, but, with folk music, it seems one can never be too gracious.

Or grassy-ous. The expansive lawn of Edgerton Park frames and informs the Folk Festival like few other areas could. There was talk that the festival would shift downtown to New Haven Green this year, and that would be fine—the Green already hosts just about every other genre of music. What’s crucial is that it be an outdoor setting with room with lie back on a blanket and gaze at the sky. Or dance about. Or just mill around with abandon, enjoying the smiling faces which surround you.

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The Connecticut Folk Festival is a time of comfort and community. It’s a sort of harvest festival for folks who work in offices. It’s a beautiful marker of the transition of seasons in urban New England.

This year’s festival is sweetly streamlined, eleven straight hours on this coming Saturday, September 8th, in the same tranquil location. It starts at 11 a.m. with the Beth Patella Band. A singer/songwriter of eclectic tastes, Patella has resuscitated her performing career after a decade on hiatus, returning with a pronounced jazz/blues bent.

The still-new but already established CFF tradition Singer/Songwriter Competition is held at 11:30 a.m. The contestants in this third annual contest are Fred Arcoleo, Loretta Hagen, Hannah & Maggie, Brian Kalinec and Jake Klar. There’s a panel of judges, but audience reaction is also factored in.

Keeping with the multi-performer mood, the Connecticut Artist Song Circle follows. Song circles are one of the natural formats of this festival. This low-key gathering of local artists Shawn Taylor, Amanda Kaletsky and Kate Callahan is what the festival is all about—sharing tunes and good spirits outdoors with new friends.

By 1:30 p.m., it’s time to shrug and say “Whatever.” A good-humored jammy guitar band from Woodbury, the band name Whatever doesn’t just denote an open-minded aesthetic; it’s the title of a curious beaten-down-by-love song in the band’s repertoire, punctuated by a cawing crow.

At 2 p.m. comes John Ciambriello. The Christian-based singer/songwriter performs regularly in nursing homes and also rocks out with his band After Autumn.

Half an hour later, Anne Marie Menta, a busy local performer, blends folk, pop and rock influences into her original tunes, and at 3 p.m., distinct performers Kristen Graves and Glenn Roth—she a chirpy lyricist, he an instrumentally minded fingerstyle guitarist—have been doing some shows together lately.

At 3:30 p.m., Professors of Bluegrass, comprised of actual Yale profs (including Yale Provost Peter Salovey on bass and vocals, Matthew Smith of the Philosophy department on fiddle, Davenport College Dean Craig Harwood on mandolin and others), go on. Somehow they haven’t yet convinced the university to offer a degree program in their music of choice. They have, however, earned tenure at the Connecticut Folk Festival, returning every year.

At 4 o’clock, we have The Levins. Folk music isn’t always upbeat—unless it comes from the harmonic, optimistic, old-timey Levins. They are not, by the way, another Yale spin-off like the Professors of Bluegrass, bearing no relation to outgoing Yale University president Richard Levin.

4:30 p.m. brings the other key song circle of the CFF, the Grassy Hill Song Circle. It’s a chance to relax with some fresh faces on the national folk scene. Putnam Smith (from Maine), Danielle Miraglia (from Massachusetts) and Kevin Neidig (from Pennsylvania) fill in the circle.

Stick around at 6 p.m. to celebrate a victory, and hear a couple of songs by whoever won the Singer/Songwriter Competition earlier in the day. Then, at 6:15 p.m., in rolls The Sea, The Sea—otherwise known as Connecticut State Troubadour (really) Chuck E. Costa and West Virginia native Mira Stanley.

Then it’s back to full-band oomph at 7 p.m. with String Fingers, a multi-instrumentalist ensemble that blends strains of old folk, new folk, Americana, jazz and even rock, followed at 8 p.m. by Pesky J. Nixon, a fun-loving four-piece which has become a favorite of the Falcon Ridge Festival and has scored on folk and roots radio charts.

From there it’s on to the fest’s finale at 9 p.m. featuring headline attraction Cheryl Wheeler, a New England folk institution since she moved to Rhode Island from her native Maryland in the mid-1970s. Wheeler writes about people and places she’s known, with such familiarity and empathy that her songs have been successfully covered by artists such as Bette Midler, Garth Brooks, Holly Near and Dan Seals. Wheeler’s comic sensibilities gained her membership in the funny folk group Four Bitchin’ Babes, but most of all she understands how people need to gather on hilltops and lawns this time of year, to celebrate their lives and their friendships and their experiences in the breezy September air. She’s an ideal choice to close the 2012 Connecticut Folk Festival, a gathering which remains full of surprises yet always promises comfort and bliss.

While some delight in the music, others hear it as full-bodied soundtrack to the sights and sounds of future New Haven, courtesy of the Green Expo which augments the concert experience. The expo is an overwhelming event in itself, with over 75 information tables, plus workshops, kids’ activities, performances and food vendors. It offers a valuable glimpse of green trends in consumer products, home energy awareness and global environmental movements. The expo is also wonderfully self-aware, arranging non-polluting pedicab transport to and from the park and Renewable Energy Credits (donated to by 3Degrees) to cover the electricity used to power the expo and festival.

The Folk Festival and Green Expo always felt freeing, even before it was completely free of charge. There’s nothing to match its spirit of giving, gathering and gamboling in the grass.

Connecticut Folk Festival and Green Expo
Edgerton Park, 75 Cliff Street, New Haven (map)
Saturday, Sept. 8 from 11am-10pm
www.ctfolk.com

Written by Christopher Arnott. Photographed by Judy Sirota Rosenthal.