TED: Ideas worth spreading

TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) calls itself "a small nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading". It carries out its mission through two annual conventions (TED, held in Long Beach, CA, and TEDGlobal, held in Oxford, England, UK). As well as occurring on only two weeks throughout the year, the cost of admission ($6,000 USD) makes it tough for many people who are interested to attend. Even with the cost of admission and a less expensive satellite event at the same time as the California TED (TEDActive, $3,750 USD), the conference is booked well in advance. What if you have the means to attend, but your funding won't be available until after the conference and hotel are both booked to capacity?

Fortunately for those people-- and for the rest of us-- the TED website has launched a service called TEDTalks. Instead of hiding videorecordings of previous conferences away in a dusty vault somewhere, eighteen-minute talks from previous conferences are offered On-Demand and free of charge on the TED website. The talks are Creative Commons copyright, so it's not only free to watch them, but to spread and embed them; you can even take them with you on some personal media players*.

So far, my favorite talks are by Temple Grandin, Eve Ensler, and Jamie Oliver. What are yours?

*I have an iPod, and was able to download the talks through the podcasts service of ITunes. A search of the Zune homepage revealed they also have TEDTalks available for download.

Listen Here!

The Arts Council of Greater New Haven, New Haven Review, and New Haven Theater Company are pleased to announce the return of Listen Here, the weekly short story reading series in which actors from the New Haven Theater Company read short stories chosen by New Haven Review editors.

The spring Listen Here series will take place on Tuesday evenings, from 7:00 to 8:00 p.m., with reading occurring on a rotating basis at Willoughby’s Coffee & Tea (194 York Street), Lulu: A European Coffee House (49 Cottage Street), Bru Cafe (141 Orange Street), and Manjares Fine Pastries (838 Whalley Avenue, on the corner of West Rock Avenue).

View the 2010 Spring Series Schedule>

Classical TV

Classical TV offers videos of the best classical performances from around the world. The site hosts an exclusive library of full-length videos of current and recent performing arts events, all available for streaming on your home computer. In addition, Classical TV offers a wealth of lively, informative, feature articles, topical playlists, insider columns, and cultural news.

Classical TV's core library contains more than 1100 hours of exclusive performances of opera, ballet, concerts, jazz, drama, musicals, and documentaries - many from the world's most prestigious cultural venues, including New York's Metropolitan Opera House, London's Royal Opera House, the Paris Opera, Milan's La Scala, Moscow's Bolshoi Theater, St. Petersburg's Mariinsky (Kirov) Theater, and many others. While some of the newest performances are pay-per-view, the site provides access to over 200 videos for FREE!

Script Frenzy

“All the world’s a stage,/ And all the men and women merely players” wrote poet and playwright William Shakespeare. How appropriate, then, that as well as being National Poetry Month, April is also Script Frenzy.

Script Frenzy, like its better-known counterpart NaNoWriMo, is run by the Office of Letters and Light, a 501©(3) nonprofit charity. It’s free to join and free to participate, and anyone who completes one hundred pages between now and midnight April 30 is a winner!

If you’re looking for resources on playwriting, cinema, or teleplays, need inspiration, or just want a quiet place to write, you can find them at the Hamden Public Library.

National Start Walking Day April 7

Support the fight against heart disease by participating in National Start! Walking Day
on Wednesday, April 7. Take just 10 minutes three times a day to walk and it will help you live longer.

Check out our display of walking and hiking books for Hamden and Connecticut.
Rebecca Solnit in her book Wanderlust argues that creativity has been linked to walking and explores many literary references as well.

April is National Poetry Month

National Poetry Month is a month-long, national celebration of poetry established by the Academy of American Poets. The concept is to widen the attention of individuals and the media—to the art of poetry, to living poets, to our complex poetic heritage, and to poetry books and journals of wide aesthetic range and concern. We hope to increase the visibility and availability of poetry in popular culture while acknowledging and celebrating poetry’s ability to sustain itself in the many places where it is practiced and appreciated.

There are many ways you can participate in National Poetry Month, including:

* Receive a Poem a Day in your inbox. Beginning April 1, Poets.org emails a new poem to your inbox each day to celebrate National Poetry Month. The poems have been selected from new books published in the spring. Sign up>

* April 29th is Poem in Your Pocket Day. Simply select a poem you love during National Poetry Month, then carry it with you to share with co-workers, family, and friends.

* Take part in one of the many Poetry Month events happening in Connecticut! View Calendar>

You can visit Poets.org for more information and ideas about National Poetry Month, or go to the Sleeping Giant Poets Guild web site for information on the poetry scene in Hamden. And don't forget to stop by the library and check out one of our many poetry books!

April Literary Birthdays

Literary Birthdays for April include William Shakespeare, Anthony Trollope, Charlotte Brontë, Hamden's own Thornton Wilder, Eudora Welty, August Wilson, Maya Angelou, Samuel Beckett, and Isak Dinesen.
April 1 - Edmond Rostand (1868 - 1918)
April 1 - Anne McCaffrey (1926 - )
April 1 - Milan Kundera (1929 - )
April 2 - Hans Christian Andersen (1805 - 1875)
April 2 - Emile Zola (1840 - 1902)
April 4 - Maya Angelou (1928)
April 3 - Washington Irving (1783 - 1859)
April 5 - Booker T. Washington (1856 - 1915)
April 7 - William Wordsworth (1770 - 1850)
April 9 - Charles-Pierre Baudelaire (1821 - 1867)
April 10 - David Halberstam (1934 - 2007)
April 12 - Beverly Cleary (1916 - )
April 12 - Tom Clancy (1947 - )
April 12 - Scott Turow (1949 - )
April 13 - Samuel Beckett (1906 - 1989)
April 13 - Eudora Welty (1909 - 2001)
April 13 - Seamus Heaney (1939 - )
April 15 - Henry James (1843 - 1916)
April 16 - Kingsley Amis (1922 - 1995)
April 17 - Thornton Wilder (1897 - 1975)
April 17 - Isak Dinesen (1885 - 1962)
April 21 - Charlotte Brontë (1816 - 1855)
April 22 - Henry Fielding (1707 - 1754)
April 23 - William Shakespeare (1564 - 1616)
April 23 - Vladimir Nabokov (1899 - 1977)
April 24 - Anthony Trollope (1815 - 1882)
April 24 - Robert Penn Warren (1905 - 1989)
April 24 - Sue Grafton (1940)
April 26 - Bernard Malamud (1914 - 1986)
April 27 - August Wilson (1945 - 2005)
April 28 - Harper Lee (1926 - )
April 30 - Annie Dillard (1945 - )

Hamden's Earth Day Celebration

Hamden's 2010 Earth Day Celebration will be held on April 24th from 10am - 3pm at the Hamden Middle School at 2623 Dixwell Avenue in Hamden. This year's family oriented celebration will feature: over 30 exhibitors promoting earth friendly services and products, organizations, school exhibits including recycled art/sculptures, Long Island Sound – Past, Present & Future, Ecological Footprints of the World, Worm Composting Display, Fashion and Style The Recycled Way, Sounds to Save the Planet, and more!

Over a dozen FREE ACTIVITIES will be offered including face painting, a scavenger hunt, wood making projects, decoupage water bottle vases, bookmarks and books for children, a coloring contest, energy footprint project, recycling games and more!

Entertainment will be provided by Dr. Mel Goldstein from WTNH Channel 8 Weather, “Clink the Clown”, T-Bone's Recycling Assembly Show, and Wind over Wings (including a Golden Eagle), C.J. May's Magic Show and the Hamden High School Reptile Show.

Come to Hamden’s Earth Day Event to learn how our individual efforts can really have an impact on global warming, find out simple things you can do personally to help solve the climate crisis and learn how our choices impact the global environment. We can each make a difference by educating ourselves on what we can do to minimize our waste and resources.

Learn more>