Every year I get inundated with requests to donate to the Great Give. I went through every organization participating in the 2023 Great Give and picked my favorites
Top 3 Picks:
10selden – My passion project facilitating artists to make their creative dreams come true. I am planning some great things in the coming year!
https://www.thegreatgive.org/organizations/10selden
Bethany Land Trust – an amazingly active and passionate group of environmentalists, naturalists, and natural historians. Another passion project of mine is being able to catalog and map native american stone structures.
https://www.thegreatgive.org/organizations/bethany-land-trust-inc
Clark Memorial Library – Fantastic community hub for Bethany. They were lifesavers for us as the kids grew up with our weekly visits to see Ms. Dorothy. Now the library is my primary source for all digital borrowing of audiobooks. For a small community library, they have done an amazing job of keeping relevant in ever-changing times.
https://www.thegreatgive.org/organizations/bethany-library-association
Honorable mentions:
Halfway Home Rescue – We’ve adopted multiple dogs and cats from Halfway Home. They are so great to work with and so passionate and caring. It’s so wonderful that they have partnered with Petsmart to help adopt these pets. We love them!
https://www.thegreatgive.org/organizations/halfway-home-rescue-inc
Best Video Film and Cultural Center – Seems to be the hangout for our New Haven Friends from the 80s and 90s. Comfortable cozy location to see live music with great coffee and wine and beer.
https://www.thegreatgive.org/organizations/best-video-film-and-cultural-center-59a8bc82-da49-4085-bf60-0277f2f0fcf3
Massaro Community Farm – Where I take my bee-keeping classes and where we get our CSA vegetables!
https://www.thegreatgive.org/organizations/massaro-community-farm
Neighborhood Housing Services of New Haven – They run this great program called I heart my home where they help navigate through the complexity of adding solar, heat pumps and making your home as energy efficient as possible.
https://www.thegreatgive.org/organizations/nhsnewhaven
A Broken Umbrella Theatre – We LOVE the Regicides improv comedy troupe!
https://www.thegreatgive.org/organizations/a-broken-umbrella-theatre
Lost In New Haven – such an amazing collection of New Haven history curated by Robert Greenberg. So excited about their new location. I strongly recommend signing up for a sneak peek visit as part of Arts and Ideas https://www.artidea.org/event/2022/4831
https://www.thegreatgive.org/organizations/lost-in-new-haven-inc
Haven’s Harvest – Ali set up a partnership with Amity High School that saved thousands of pounds of food from going into the landfill.
https://www.thegreatgive.org/organizations/lost-in-new-haven-inc
Sleeping Giant Park Association – An amazingly dedicated group of volunteers that maintains over 30 miles of trails on the iconic Sleeping Giant. Ali did her thesis research on miles of trails in the park. She’s also a giant master!
https://www.thegreatgive.org/organizations/sgpa
The Astronomical Society of New Haven – We always loved their star parties at the former Yale Bethany observatory. We haven’t been to one of their star parties for years but have very fond memories.
https://www.thegreatgive.org/organizations/the-astronomical-society-of-new-haven
The New Haven Documentary Film Festival – We’ve seen some AMAZING films over the years including a pleasant surprise with our son playing piano (we had no idea he was filmed!)
https://www.thegreatgive.org/organizations/nhdocs-the-new-haven-documentary-film-festival
Site Projects – brought amazing outdoor art to New Haven that makes me smile every time I see it.
https://www.thegreatgive.org/organizations/site-projects
Edgerton Park Conservancy – probably my favorite park in New Haven. Many fond memories of the CT folk festiva and green expo, and who cant forget sledding in the winter?
https://www.thegreatgive.org/organizations/edgerton-park-conservancy
Evan’s tweet is going viral. Gotta admit this is pretty cool!
I saw Richard Thompson do his song 1952 Vincent Black Lightning from the 1991 album Rumor and Sigh live at the 1991 Newport Folk Festival and then some years later by Greg Brown at the Falcon Ridge Folk Festival. Both versions completely blow me away!
The boys and I got to see two phenomenal music documentaries last night at the Whitney Humanities Center as part of the 2015 New Haven Documentary Film Festival.
The first film was Salad Days written and directed by Scott Crawford. It documents the DiY Washington DC punk music scene from 1980 to 1990. It was so inspiring to see all these artists starting and building a music scene who’s wake is still felt to this day with bands such as Fugazi and Minor Threat. The rise of the independent record labels such as Dischord and the rise of the fanzine such as Metrozine (and many others) was so amazing. The best part for me was to see that young teenagers making it all happen! I was so happy that my boys got to see this film! Guys like Ian MacKaye were trailblazers that give them a framework for what their trying to do with the music scene with The Foresters and their music label Dord Music Group.
The second film was Danny Says directed by Brendan Toller. This gave us an inside look into the birth of the New York City art and music scene from Andy Worhol and The Velvet Underground in the early 60’s all the way through The Ramones in the 70’s. The film really highlighted Danny Fields passion for the music as a journalist, photographer, record label executive and manager, but most importantly as a fan. He liked what he liked first and the money was secondary. It was so amazing to see how he made it up as he went along and invented job titles in the music industry where none had existed before. I’m so excited the Danny Fields archives will be acquired by the Yale Beinecke Library
Danny Says Fundraising Video, Kickstarter Fall 2012 from Brendan Toller on Vimeo.
I strongly encourage you to see both of these films!
Posted by Michal Avidor on Sunday, July 19, 2009
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