Updated: Friday, August 29, 2008 at 5:14am
Some call it a sidewalk; others call it art. Walk down Chapel Street, turn right on Orange, look down, and you’ll find the New Haven Path of Stars: a two-block line of eight-pointed stars nestled in the Ninth Square. Every 15 feet, a star announces the name of a past local “celebrity.” If you read closely, you’ll learn that Joseph McAlphone was a janitor for the...
For two years, Megan Danna ’08 had been dutifully swallowing her birth control pill at the same time every day. The daily dose of estrogen and progestin in Ortho Tri-Cyclen Lo helped keep her severe premenstrual symptoms at bay. Even better, it was dirt cheap. She remembers paying as little as four to eight dollars for four months worth of her pill of choice when her...
Every morning, two kinds of students file into New Haven public high schools. One group is spread among the city’s magnet schools, where the first class of the day is boat building, or interpretive dancing, or organismal biology. At the seven interdistrict magnet schools — the largest of which has 400 students — New Haven natives and North Haven commuters can...
Safe in the sturdy branches of an oak tree, the first bald eagle nest in the recorded history of the Quinnipiac River hangs 75 feet above ground, overlooking a stretch of marshland by the riverbank. On this brisk October day, the sun is shining and ducks are gliding across the surface of the water, unaware that hunting season in North Haven is imminent. In the cool shade...
The regulars, alums with tufts of grey hair pulled back behind Yale insignia sweatbands and varicose veins peeking out of their tube socks, seem a little befuddled by the noise coming from the courts. Above the familiar smack of a hard, black squash ball, the squeals of 33 New Haven middle-school students in their fourth week of squash lessons ricochet off the...
Golfing as the sun inches over the horizon instantly conjures up poetic images. Golfers who make the rounds as the sun rises are known as dew-sweepers, since they’re the only ones each day to see and feel the pleasure of early-morning droplets of water trickling upward from the turf after a well-struck shot. But at many courses, the mornings aren’t all that pleasant...
On a Thursday night at six o’clock, the Catwalk Club is virtually empty. Four middle-aged bald men stare with thin smiles at the naked girl twirling around the pole. Maya, a 28 year-old stripper, evaluates them from her perch on a barstool. “Pervert. Pervert. Pathetic. Loser,” she says, sipping a cranberry juice and pointing. “But in five minutes I’m gonna go up...
This semester, Graham Radman ’09 devised a strict schedule for optimizing his energy so that he can stay awake most of the day. He takes three 20-minute naps, generally at 12:30, 5:30 and 10:30 p.m. Then he sleeps for three hours, usually from 3:15 to 6:30 a.m. (allowing himself an extra ten or fifteen minutes to fall asleep). So far, he is enjoying the extra time his...
On a bright spring morning, all blue skies and sweet breezes, the gelato vendors along New Haven’s Grand Avenue have gotten off to a good start. Jose Torres, a clean-cut Honduran who came here seven years ago, is having trouble keeping up with orders for his pink and blue ice treats. As soon as he puts the finishing touches to one teetering gelato, another impatient...
The woods are quiet tonight. A soft rain has sent the animals into hiding and turned the air thick with moisture, so the dome of light from the campfire bleeds into the darkness. Hedge sighs and wipes a dollop of mud from her boot. If she had a burrow to go into, she’d be there too. The scent of mold seeps up from the ground, the fire before her burns down and the...
