YS Homecoming

Although the word “homecoming” usually bring to mind football, the Yellow Springs Homecoming is an invitation to anyone who has attended school in, resided in or in any other way considered Yellow Springs “home” to gather together starting at 10:00 am on Friday, July 5, on the front lawn of the John Bryan Community Center for sharing fun and memories (including football players).

When Mary Morgan and her family came to Yellow Springs in 1951, they adopted the village as their own. Forty years later she led the creation of the Yellow Springs Homecoming in 1991, a celebration of a community reunited on the Fourth of July, bringing together Yellow Springs residents past and present, not to mention events of local and national significance. Put on by the Yellow Springs Historical Society, the original Homecoming lasted for three days, featuring music, food, theater, and dancing, most of it held on Mills Lawn, where the home of William Mills, who laid out the town as we know it, once stood.

This year, on July the 5th, the Historical Society puts the Yellow Springs Homecoming on again, this time to honor Mary’s outstanding contributions to and boundless enthusiasm for both the village she adopted so long ago and the Society, to which she devoted so much time and energy, conferring upon it a direction and a spirit that continues to this day.

A list of scheduled events can be downloaded from the 2013 schedule page of the Yellow Springs Historical Society website (yshistory.org).

Antioch names new VP for Advancement

Antioch College President Mark Roosevelt today announced that Brian Williams has been hired as the vice president for advancement, effective August 1.

Williams will be responsible for organizing, leading, and aligning the fundraising efforts of the College to best utilize the strengths of the institution’s donors, leaders, and staff in furthering its long-term sustainable fundraising operation. He replaces Reid. W. Crawford, who was appointed interim vice president for advancement in January.

“Brian is the right-fit candidate for this position and we were pleased to find him,” Roosevelt said. “He brings both a strong fundraising and administrative background to Antioch, a vital aspect to this institution. He is a skilled professional with eleven years of executive-level experience in higher education and non-profit administration, six years of teaching experience, and three years of experience in the legal world. He will be an asset to our senior leadership team.”

Williams will be joining the Antioch College staff from The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis in Indianapolis, Indiana, where he has been the vice president of development since May 2006. During his tenure, he managed the museum’s resource development program and helped to generate an annual average of $8.5 million in contributed revenue.

As vice president for advancement at Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois, a position he held from 2001 to 2006, Williams served as a member of the president’s senior staff, advising the college’s president, other vice presidents, and deans on strategic initiatives, including the strategies through which the college navigated a difficult financial period marked by a small endowment, a high discount rate, and low faculty salaries.

“I bring both a passion for liberal arts education and all that Antioch is working to achieve, as well as a long tenure of successful fundraising and capital campaign management at two nationally significant institutions,” said Williams. “I was attracted to Antioch for a number of reasons. There is no other place in the country that one can go and work on the project that is underway at Antioch—building a new brand of liberal arts college for the 21st century. I have enjoyed meeting the faculty and staff who are doing that work during my visits to campus and am enthusiastic about working with those individuals.”

Early in his career, Williams worked as an attorney at Vedder, Price, Kaufman and Kammholz in Chicago where his focus was labor and employment law. Following that position, he became a senior lecturer at Northwestern University School of Law, until 1997, when he moved on to Cornell University Law School, in Ithaca, New York, where he was named director of the Legal Methods Program.

Williams earned an MA in history from the University of Wisconsin in 1994 and graduated cum laude in 1989 with his JD from the Indiana University School of Law in Bloomington, Indiana. He earned his undergraduate degree in American studies from Knox College in 1986.

“Liberal education is in my DNA,” Williams said, having grown up on the GLCA campus of Wabash College, where his father was professor of religion and then chair of the religion department for nearly 45 years.

Saturday Afternoon at the Library

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Center Stage Auditions for 3-Penny

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Jeanne Ulrich & Devil's Backbone at Peach's Friday

Devil's Backbone (Jeanne Ulrich, Carl Schumacher, Tim Beach, and Jason McClean) will be playing at Peach's this Friday night- June 14th. 

The music starts at 10 pm.  There's no cover, so you can spend more on your beverages! 

Possible guest appearance by Tucky Bailey and her smokin' hot saxophone.

We hope to see you there!

Camp it up with YSKP!

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Springers in Xenia production

Opens tonight at the Xenia Area Community Theatre.

The cast includes three Yellow Springers: Olivia Graeco, Susan Hawkey and Jerry Buck.

The director, Olivia Gladman, is a former resident who had a long association with the old Center Stage.

Get Legal, Saturday

INFORMATION REGARDING FREE LEGAL SERVICES

FOR SENIORS AVAILABLE THIS SATURDAY

at Y. S. Senior Center 9:00 am to 1:00 pm

Legal Aid of Western Ohio (LAWO) is a nonprofit law firm that provides free legal services to low-income individuals and seniors (age 60+).

Legal Aid may be able to provide legal information, advice, and representation to seniors regarding powers of attorney, advance directives, financial exploitation, public benefits issues, housing issues, family law matters, debt issues, domestic violence, elder abuse, and other legal issues.

Staff from Legal Aid will be available at the Yellow Springs Senior Center this Saturday, June 8, 2013, from 9:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. to provide information about its services and to talk with individuals who may be interested in applying for free legal assistance.

These services are made available with support from various funding sources, including United Way of the Greater Dayton Area.

For additional information, please call (937) 228-8088.

Come hear the band

Friday night at the First Presbyterian Church Strawberry Festival - music starts at 7 p.m.

More Strawberry Festival information here.

WYSO to host Dave Isay in Dayton

StoryCorps Founder Dave Isay to Speak at Schuster Center

WYSO Public Radio will host Dave Isay, the founder of StoryCorps, at a public event on Friday June 21. Isay will speak at 8:00pm at the Mathile Theatre in the Schuster Center for the Performing Arts. His presentation is called The History of StoryCorps and the Power of Listening. The event is a fundraiser for WYSO intended to support its Community Voices training project

StoryCorps is a national oral history collection project in which regular citizens are given the chance to interview each other and record their stories. Segments of these stories air each Friday during NPR’s Morning Edition, which airs on WYSO 91.3 FM Monday-Friday, 5-9am.

WYSO hosted StoryCorps on a month-long visit to Dayton in 2010. About two hundred individuals recorded interviews during that time. Twenty five of them aired on WYSO in 2010-2011 as “Miami Valley StoryCorps.”

Dave Isay is the recipient of numerous broadcasting awards including the MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship, four Peabody Awards, and two Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Awards. He’s the author of four books that came out of his experience as a public radio documentary work, including New York Times bestsellers, Listening is an Act of Love and Mom: A Celebration of Mothers From StoryCorps, and All There Is: Love Stories from StoryCorps.

WYSO General Manager Neenah Ellis says, “Dave Isay is one of the great radio producers of our time. Much like one of his heroes, Studs Terkel, he sees his work as collecting the wisdom of humanity. He’s a committed visionary. I know WYSO listeners will love meeting him and hearing his thoughts about the importance and power of listening.”

Isay founded StoryCorps in 2003. To date, it has collected and archived more than 45,000 interviews from more than 90,000 participants. It is one of the largest oral history projects of its kind. In 2007 it was awarded a rare institutional Peabody Award and again for its coverage of the 10th anniversary of September 11th. Most recently StoryCorps won a 2013 MacArthur Award for Creative and Effective Institutions.

Coming Home exhibit at Herndon Gallery

Antioch College is pleased to announce the opening of the newest exhibition at the Herndon Gallery, Coming Home, which will present visual art and written works from recent military veterans.  
 

The exhibition opening will take place Thursday, June 20, at 7:00 p.m. in the Herndon Gallery in South Hall on the Antioch College campus. Aaron Hughes, artist and Iraq War veteran, will discuss the exhibit and his work during the opening at 8:00 p.m. The exhibition will continue through August 16, 2013.

Co-curated by Antioch College alumnae Dennie Eagleson ’71 and Lynn Zimmerman Estomin ’72, Coming Home will include recent work by veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan who work with Warrior Writers and Combat Paper, two organizations that provide a safe space for veterans to express their experience in war and returning home through creative writing and visual art. The process also generates a much-needed conversation between veterans and civilians regarding our collective responsibilities and shared understanding of war.

Through Combat Paper papermaking workshops, veterans use the uniforms they wore in service to create works of art. The uniforms are cut up, weathered, and formed into sheets of paper. Participants use the transformative process of papermaking to reclaim their uniforms as art and express their experiences with the military.

Warrior Writers fosters artistic exploration and expression through casual, welcoming workshops and retreats for veterans. Art making becomes the creative tool through which veterans understand and transcend experiences of trauma and emotional disruptions that are not easily identified but constantly felt. Creative works are shared with the public in the form of books, performances, and exhibitions. Using art as language, Warrior Writers helps bridge the gap between veterans and civilians.

Coming Home will feature Aaron Hughes, Warrior Writer and Combat Papermaker, as artist-in-residence, and Ash Kyrie, an Iraq War veteran and sculptor.  Hughes and Kyrie will be creating a site-specific installation for the gallery that includes Kyrie’s work Palaver, which hopes to start a dialog about how predator drone technology removes accountability from our government and American citizens in the context of modern warfare.

Hughes’ work seeks out poetics and moments of beauty, in order to construct new languages and meanings out of personal and collective traumas. He uses these to create projects that attempt to de-construct systems of dehumanization and oppression. Hughes plans to create a space where visitors will ask questions about their relationship to the world—a world that’s filled with dehumanization, war, and destruction; a world that is filled with beauty, love, and humanity.

Veteran artists represented in the exhibition are: Chantelle Bateman, Drew Cameron, Toby Hartbarger, Amy Herrera, Aaron Hughes, Kevin Kilgore, Ash Kyrie, Iris Madelyn, Robynn Murray, Jennifer Pacanowski, John Turner, and Eli Wright. 

Also represented will be the Veterans Book Project, a project conceived by Monica Haller to allow veterans to tell their story through writing and visual art.  The resulting artist books are referred to as “Objects of Deployment.”

The exhibition will also include three of Estomin’s multimedia collaborations with veterans. The Warrior Writers website (www.warriorwriters.org) showcases the creative writing and visual art of 40 veterans; Out of Step, a music/dance/video collaboration, features the voices of four young female veterans; and a video collage of readings by veteran writers created for this exhibition.

In addition to the opening reception for the exhibition, Antioch College and the Herndon Gallery will host a curatorial talk by Lynn Estomin on Friday, June 14, at 8:00 p.m.  On campus July 26 and 27, Warrior Writers will offer two days of writing workshops and trainings for veterans and local allies.  There will be a poetry reading by workshop participants on Saturday, July 27, at 7:30 p.m. in the Herndon Gallery that is open and free to the public.

Call for script submissions - 10-Minute Play Fest

Yellow Springs 10-Minute Play Festival 2013

Script Submission Guidelines

Submission deadline: September 1, 2013

Festival Production: October 25 & 26, 2013

The name Yellow Springs 10-Minute Play Festival is somewhat of a misnomer employed to distinguish this annual Center Stage production from the annual one-act play production at Yellow Springs High School. While we like our plays to come in it at 10 minutes or less, running over by a couple minutes is not a big deal. Beyond the competitive submission process, this is not a contest. So, there is no strict rule regarding length. That being said however, if a play is too long, in fairness to the other submitters; we will not be able to include it. The shorter the plays, the more we can include. Last year we had eight plays on the program.

The Yellow Springs 10-Minute Play Festival is a showcase for local talent, therefore we accept submissions only from playwrights with a strong YS connection, e.g. current or past residents or those currently employed in Yellow Springs or Miami Township; and past or current participants in Yellow Springs Center Stage. The local connection is important for several reasons: we hope that the playwrights will be actively involved in the production of their plays, including casting and directing, or will, at least, be available for consultation; we like our playwrights to introduce their plays to the audience during the two nights of the festival; and we seek to limit the number of submissions for review to a manageable number. In the past, and in spite of this requirement, we have received submissions from playwrights from afar with no connection to our community, hoping to have their scripts produced with no intention of even showing up to see the production. Some have even had the nerve to ask us to send a video tape. No, no, no…

Our hope is to do a lot with very little. This is the very essence of the 10-minute play. As such, playwrights are advised to keep their sets simple and their casts minimal. In the past, we have received scripts that looked like they were written for the big screen. Keep in mind that we have limitations in terms of lighting, sound, and special effects. Additionally, rehearsing a large cast for a very short play can make scheduling and finding rehearsal space problematic. If we see production difficulties that we feel cannot be overcome by creative direction, the play will be rejected in spite of the quality of the writing.

The deadline for script submissions for the Third Annual Yellow Springs 10-Minute Play Festival is September 1, 2013. Scripts may be submitted as email attachments to gunchpress@yahoo.com or by mail to Center Stage, P.O. Box 544, Yellow Springs, OH 45387. Feel free to address further questions to Virgil Hervey at gunchpress@yahoo.com.

Food, music, community and Street Fair

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YS-Opoly INFO

YS-Opoly – Get Your Game On!

Pre-Launch Party, June 2, 2013, 2-4pm, Antioch University Midwest

After Party, June 2, 2013, 4-6pm, Yellow Springs Brewery

Official Launch, June 8, 2013, YS Street Fair

You are invited to PLAY at the YS-Opoly Pre-Launch Party for the new customized game about the Village of Yellow Springs on Sunday, June 2 from 2-4pm at Antioch University Midwest.  Show your YS-Opoly Spirit by representing your favorite aspect of the game – “Be The Board”!  The YS Brewery will be hosting an After Party from 4-6pm, with music from local buskers and Ringo’s North Star Mobile Eatery serving up stone hearth pizza, gourmet burgers & quesadillas.  Bring your lawn chairs and hang out on the MillWorks patio.  Let the games & festivities continue all afternoon!

From 2-4pm, enjoy food & festivity with an array of VIP guests including Young’s Jersey Cow Barnabe, the YS Schools Bulldog and several of our favorite local musicians including Will C, Ryan Stinson and Warren Kearney (a.k.a. That Uke Guy).  Games will be set up in the YSI Multipurpose Room if you cannot wait until you get home to play, and make sure to get your pictures with the Corner Cone Golf Cart and RE/MAX Balloon.  Notably, the “Project Peace: Confronting Bullying through Art” student-produced artwork will be on display, and tour the YS Arts Council’s Permanent Collection housed at AUM.  A special treat will be a mini-performance from the Yellow Springs Kids Playhouse!  Don’t miss this opportunity to have fun with the YS community!

We invite everyone to “BE the Board” with awards for the best costumes, and enter our “Free Parking” lucky draw for a chance to win such fabulous prizes as an autographed print of Kathy Moulton’s YS-Opoly board artwork, a Main Squeeze Brewing Kit, Art by Sandi Sharp, YSAC’s “Keep Yellow Springs Weird” t-shirts & Permanent Collection Notecards, Johanna Mosaics Garden Cookies, Sessions with Yogini Marie Hertzler, a YS Brewery Goodie Bag, and an autographed NFL football from RE/MAX Victory, The Chris K Group.  One winner will choose a Yellow Springs nonprofit to receive the Free Parking lucky draw donations.  Several local organizations such as the YS Bicycle Enhancement Committee, YS Senior Center, Yoga Springs Studio, Village Cyclery and Reiki Gong Dynamic Health will be highlighting their work, and there will be loads of Free Art from around the world to enjoy!  Meet Behrle Hubbuch and other artists who have made YS-Opoly a true work of art.

Don’t forget to wear your official YS-Opoly Button!  The YS Brewery will be giving discounts on its local craft brews to button wearers – pick one up at the Visitors Center in the Yellow Springs Station.  And, make sure to Grab a “Piece” of Yellow Springs with your YS-Opoly “Get Your Game On!” t-shirts screen printed using eco-friendly practices by Basho Apparel, A JCox Company.  At the Party, Bing Design will unveil the YS-Opoly Box Top, highlighting the intense creative effort involved in making the game.

Through a collaborative creative community effort involving over 200 business, organization, family and individual sponsors, Yellow Springs has created a customized Monopoly-themed game representing the true flavor of our cultural oasis, promoting the many wonderful aspects that make YS “Everyone’s Favorite Place.”  YS-Opoly maintains the classic feel of the original Monopoly game while embodying the unique character of our Village.  Ultimately, YS-Opoly provides a cool experience reflective of personal interactions that Villagers & Visitors have with Yellow Springs.

With a charitable giving goal of $5000, YS-Opoly has already generated proceeds to benefit more than 15 local nonprofit organizations, including the YS Arts Council, YS Kids Playhouse, YS Schools, YS Senior Center, Tecumseh Land Trust, YS Skatepark, YS Bicycle Enhancement Committee, Community Children’s Center, YS Center Stage, Friends Care Community, John Bryan Community Pottery, Children’s Montessori Cooperative, YS Heritage, Little Art Theatre and Yellow Springs Home, Inc.

There are a limited number of first edition YS-Opoly games available (retail price $25), so make sure to reserve your copy by contacting Brian Housh at ysopoly@gmail.com or 937-319-1116.  You can order games online at www.YellowSpringsOpoly.com or send your payment to “YS-Opoly” at PO Box 735, Yellow Springs, OH 45387.  Follow us on Facebook!

Books, Bees and Blooms - June 15

Saturday, June 15th, is the date for the Books, Bees and Blooms event at the Yellow Springs Library. Join us outdoors on the library grounds from 10 to 1.  In case of rain, the programs will be indoors in the meeting room. Representatives from the Greene County Beekeepers' Association and Greene County Master Gardeners will be present with exhibits and information on beekeeping and composting. There will also be children's activities including face painting, seed planting, crafts, coloring, cornhole and a storybook reading corner. Volunteers who maintain the flower gardens will also be on hand to answer questions. Join us on the 15th for information and fun. This is a collaboration of Greene County Public Library, Yellow Springs Library Association and Greene County Master Gardeners.