This Week in New Haven (November 5 – 11)

W e’re always voting with our time and our dollars, but this week we’re also voting with our votes. 

Monday, November 5
The latest New Haven Restaurant Week began yesterday and continues through Friday. Until then, diners can enjoy $17 two-course lunches and/or $34 three-course dinners, all prix fixe, at any of 30 local restaurants, from 116 Crown to Olives & Oil and Miya’s Sushi to Union League Cafe.

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Hopkins School - Fall Tours

It’s not every day that you can listen to a major intelligence service insider talk about his heavily redacted field—even this week, because Christopher Andrew, former Official Historian of MI5, is taking a break on Wednesday. But today, tomorrow and Thursday, he’s giving talks under the umbrella “The Lost History of Global Intelligence—and Why It Matters.” Today’s lecture, “How the Lead Role in Strategic Intelligence Passed from Asia to the West,” happens at 4:30 p.m. in Yale’s Luce Hall (34 Hillhouse Ave, New Haven), while tomorrow’s and Thursday’s talks, also beginning at 4:30 p.m. in Luce, focus on “The Strange History of American-British Intelligence Relations: from George Washington to Donald J. Trump” and “Russian Intelligence Operations and the West: from Tsar Nicholas II to Vladimir Putin,” respectively. Free.

Tuesday, November 6 – Election Day
From 6 a.m. to 8 p.m., voters go to the polls to elect Connecticut’s next governor, lieutenant governor, secretary of state, treasurer, comptroller and attorney general; its next class of representatives in the US Senate and House; and some local positions as well, including probate judges and registrars of voters. Find your polling place here, and familiarize yourself with a sample ballot here.

Wednesday, November 7
Today and tomorrow at 7:30 p.m., the Institute Library (847 Chapel St, New Haven; 203-562-4045) hosts its next Tellabration—two evenings “of stories for adults, told by members of the Institute Library’s Storytelling Workshops.” Tonight, “hear about an urbanite learning what she can and cannot assume about rural Vermonters and a mother challenged by delivering a speech at her son’s wedding.” Tomorrow, “hear about childhood adventures with insects, a guy who stops to help a young woman with her car and a child curious about neighbors’ numbers on their arms in the Bronx, shortly after World War II.” Covering both nights, admission is $15, or $10 for library members and free for students with school IDs.

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Paradise Blue at Long Wharf Theatre

Thursday, November 8
Starting at 5:30 p.m. in the Yale University Art Gallery (1111 Chapel St, New Haven; 203-432-0601), five Yale undergraduates are set to “talk, sing and write in blue across the Gallery’s collection” while “contemplat[ing] the vastness of blue as a visual and conceptual category.” The performance, called “Gallery+Blue,” is a preamble to exhibition Sights and Sounds of Ancient Ritual, which officially opens tomorrow. Sights and Sounds has a section about humanity’s “obsession with the color blue,” which “dates back to ancient times, when societies from around the world used the color to decorate sacred objects that they associated with divinity.” Free.

This Sunday, New Haven’s earliest black congregation, that of Varick Memorial AME Zion Church (242 Dixwell Ave, New Haven; 203-624-6245), celebrates an amazing feat—200 years of existence—with bicentennial worship services featuring guest preachers at 7:30, 9:30 and 11:30 a.m. But the celebrations begin today, when a theatrical recounting of Varick’s history happens at 7 p.m. at James Hillhouse High (480 Sherman Pkwy, New Haven). Meantime, on Saturday, a 10 a.m. street corner renaming ceremony outside the church honors founder James Varick, and a 6:30 p.m. black tie gala at Seasons (990 Foxon Rd, East Haven; $60) features Miles Caton, a 12-year-old gospel star who’s appeared on the Steve Harvey-hosted youth talent show Little Big Shots.

At 7:30 in Woolsey Hall (500 College St, New Haven), the New Haven Symphony Orchestra presents Carl Orff’s epic Carmina Burana and, to do it extra justice, has recruited 300 singers from three choirs to line the balconies surrounding the audience below. Before then, “this evening of mystery and enchantment will open with Tchaikovsky’s Sleeping Beauty Waltz and Weber’s story of the Elf King, Oberon.” $15-74, with $10 tickets available for college students.

Friday, November 9
Sign Languages and the Mind: their History, Science and Power—a mini-conference shedding light on “the importance of sign languages in the cognitive development of deaf children, what they reveal about the human mind and the history of attitudes toward the deaf and sign languages”—happens from 1 to 4 p.m. in Yale’s Sheffield-Sterling-Strathcona Hall (1 Prospect St, New Haven). Free to attend with registration requested, the itinerary includes individual talks by experts and a joint panel discussion.

From 6 to 9 p.m., MakeHaven (770 Chapel St, New Haven) is hosting a BYOB Retro Video Game Social Night “so you can relive playing the classics”—including the original console games of the Mario Kart and Street Fighter series—but also to show off the power of the Raspberry Pi, a mainstay device of build-your-own computing that tinkerers often use to make their own classic gaming emulators. Free, with snacks provided.

Saturday, November 10
Yesterday from 6:30 to 9:30 p.m. and today from 11 a.m. to 3, Paier College of Art (20 Gorham Ave, Hamden; 203-287-3031; pictured above in summertime) is hosting its annual Fall Art Show and Sale, which seems like a good chance for collectors to discover new talent and buy early-career works.

Sunday, November 11 – Veterans Day
Back in Woolsey Hall (500 College St, New Haven), the Yale Concert Band is performing a Veterans Day matinee from 2 to 4 p.m. The program includes Jodie Blackshaw’s Twist, Walter Piston’s Tunbridge Fair, selections from Leonard Bernstein’s musical On The Town and “a collection of patriotic songs and marches to commemorate the Yale Bands Centennial and the signing of The Armistice to end World War I.” Free.

Written by Dan Mims. Photographed by Daniel Shkolnik. Readers are encouraged to verify times, locations and prices before attending events.

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Dan has worked for a couple of major media companies, but he likes Daily Nutmeg best. As DN’s editor, he writes, photographs, edits and otherwise shepherds ideas into fully realized feature stories.

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