• POEMobile Rides Again • Roots of Broadway • Celebrating Celia Cruz
• Halloween • Place Matters Awards • Deaf Jam on Independent Lens
• City Lore awarded a Cobblestone

Dear Citylorists,

Please enjoy our Tours and Tales October 2011 e-letter!

Photo by Tal Bar-Zemer

• POEMobile Rides Again • City Lore’s traveling cinema of words illuminated Greenpoint on Saturday night as part of the 2nd Bring to Light Festival. Youth poets from Urban Word stood three stories tall as the POEMobile cast its magical spell of letters and words onto the brick behind them. The poets’ cries for social justice seem to echo the protestors on the Brooklyn Bridge just a little further south. Projecting words on buildings, the POEMobile, cosponsored with Bowery Arts & Science, frames a magical experience joining ancient oral traditions with modern technologies. Catch us if you can – thePOEMobile will be pulling up to the Nuyorican Poets Café on the evening of Tuesday, November 8th – stay tuned for more info.

• Roots of Broadway – Harrigan and Hart • City Lore is pleased to partner with the Irish Arts Center to present, A Tribute to Harrigan & Hart, The Original Men Who Owned Broadway. The concert features our good friend, master musician, and fellow folklorist Mick Moloney and an All-Star Line Up with Vince Giordano and the Nighthawks, The Green Fields of America: Athena Tergis, Billy McComiskey, Brendan Dolan, and Niall O'Leary, Susan McKeown, Dana Lyn, John Roberts, Dave Ruch, Murray Callahan, Chris Simmons, Poor Baby Bree, Maureen Murphy, The Washington Square Harp and Shamrock Orchestra & more…

In the 1870s, decades before George M. Cohan burst onto the Broadway stage, the songs of his hero Edward "Ned" Harrigan were the toast of New York. Harrigan’s ballads of working class immigrants—filled with lovable characters like Dan Mulligan, John McSorley, the owner of McSorley’s Irish Ale House, Tammany Alderman Old Boss Barry, and Mary Ann, the schoolteacher—set the stage for an entirely novel genre of musical comedy.

When: Thursday, October 13, 8:00pm
Where: Peter Norton Symphony Space, 2537 Broadway at 95th Street, Manhattan. #1,2, 3 train to 96th St Station 
Admission: Orchestra: $45 general / $35 City Lore members with code HARRIGAN; Tier 2: $38 general / $25 students
For more information: SymphonySpace.org or 212-864-5400

Photo by Alexis Rodríguez-Duarte

When: Sunday, October 9, 1:00pm
Where: Woodlawn Cemetery, Bronx. Take the #4 to Woodlawn station and enter at the Jerome Avenue entrance to the Woolworth Chapel.
Admission: Free!!!
For more information: Dr. Brian Sahd, bsahd@thewoodlawncemetery.org

Then, on Thursday, October 20th, we present a celebration of Celia Cruz’s birthday, with a panel devoted to Ms. Cruz as a icon and her image in different media. The panel will be moderated by Elena Martínez of City Lore and will feature: filmmaker Leon Gast, who will show an assortment of clips from his films which feature Celia, Celia’s hairdresser, Ruth Sánchez, and scholar Licia Fiol-Matta. The opening reception of Alexis Rodríguez-Duarte’s photography exhibition, "Presenting Celia Cruz" will follow. Refreshments will be served.

When: Thursday, October 20, 6:00pm
Where: Casita Maria Center for Arts and Education, 928 Simpson Street, Bronx. #6 train to Hunts Point Station or #2, 5 to Simpson St Station. 
Admission: Free!!!
For more information: Joseph McCarthy, jmccarthy@casitamaria.org

These two events are sponsored by the Women’s Housing and Economic Development Corporation which has worked for nearly twenty years to build a more beautiful, equitable, and economically vibrant Bronx.

Poet and artist Raúl Hurtado recites acalavera poem for Charles Lopez, a Mexican sculptor, in front of his tombstone at Woodlawn Cemetery in 2010. Photo by Sergio R Reyes

When: Saturday, Sunday, & Monday, October 29, 30, & 31, 6:00pm and 7:00pm 
Where: Woodlawn Cemetery, meet at Jerome Ave Entrance, Bronx. Take the #4 to Woodlawn station.
Admission:$20
For more information: Dr. Brian Sahd, bsahd@thewoodlawncemetery.org

• Place Matters Awards and Dance Party •Place Matters is thrilled to announce the recipients of the third Place Matters Awards. Join us for a celebration on Wednesday, October 26th at The Museum of Chinese in America for an evening of klezmer music provided by Hot P’stromi and a talk by writer T.J. English to celebrate these six extraordinary places in Lower Manhattan:

• Streit’s Matzos, 148-154 Rivington Street, Lower East Side
• The Bowery Mission, 227 Bowery
• Tenement at 109 Washington Street, Financial District
• Economy Candy, 108 Rivington Street, Lower East Side
• The Chinatown Senior Citizens’ Center, 70 Mulberry Street, Chinatown
• Ear Inn (The James Brown House), 326 Spring Street, Tribeca

What: The Place Matters Awards and Dance Party
When: Wednesday, October 26, 6:00pm – 9:00pm
Where: The Museum of Chinese in America (MOCA), 215 Centre St., Manhattan (N, R, Q, J, Z, and 6 trains to Canal St.)
Admission: Free, RESERVATIONS REQUIRED. Call Molly at 212-529-1955, x303 or emailmolly@citylore.org.
Funded by American Express

• Deaf Jam on Independent Lens • In 2004, with funding from the Rockefeller Foundation and NEA, City Lore createdThe Poetry Dialogues in collaboration with Urban Word, assembling a series of "poetry teams" with youth poets and mentors who developed artful presentations designed to generate dialogues in community settings. Among these was a team of Deaf teenagers from Lexington School for the Deaf. Judy Lieff, who worked with us to develop the workshops recently directed a major documentary film that emerged from the project, coproduced by City Lore. The film will be broadcast on the PBS series Independent Lens on November 3 at 10 pm.

As Barbara Pokras wrote at the film’s North American premiere at the Woodstock Film Festival, "Aneta Brodski, a spirited and vivacious Israeli-born girl living in Queens, dreams of seeing the world, but for her and others at The Lexington School for the Deaf, communication with the hearing presents obstacles. How to bridge the divide? ASL Poetry, a powerful and passionate visual language in which body movement and expression create meaning, presents a possible path toward understanding… Delightful and endearing, utilizing upbeat music and clever graphics, Deaf Jam immerses us in the richness and complexity of deaf culture and gives us a unique perspective into a world so vibrant, so diverse, it may forever change the way we see the non-hearing " (Barbara Pokras, A.C.E.)

You can watch a trailer of the film here.

What: Deaf Jam documentary directed by Judy Lieff, cosponsored by City Lore
When: Thursday, November 3, 10:00pm
Where: On TV! PBS, Indendent Lens

• City Lore awarded a Cobblestone • We hope that you took a moment to reflect back on 9/11 before the 10th anniversary. We were pleased to put up 9/11: the City Lore Chronicles, bringing together a number of our projects to document and present the poems, shrines, and memorials that helped city cope with and survive the tragedy. We were so pleased the 9/11 Memorial awarded City Lore a cobblestone with our name in perpetuity at the memorial in thanks for our work back then.