Strathmore Speaker Series

East Meets West!

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The Strathmore Speaker Series is delighted to announce the fall 2017 season of the Eastside Neighbors Lecture Series! The Eastside Neighbors Lecture Series is held on Sunday afternoons throughout the spring and fall at the Westcott Community Center. Like the Strathmore Speaker Series, all Eastside Series events are free and open to the public.

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The 2017 Fall Season of the Eastside Neighbors Lecture Series will feature:

Sunday, September 10th, 3 pm – Tula Goenka: Behind the Scenes: Syracuse University Human Rights Film Festival

Tula Goenka is Professor of Television, Radio and Film at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University, where she teaches multimedia storytelling, film production and Indian cinema. She is the Newhouse Endowed Chair of Public Communications for 2016-19. She is the founder and co-director of the Syracuse University Human Rights Film Festival. She is the author of Not Just Bollywood: Indian Directors Speak.
Discussion will touch on topics such as: How the Syracuse University Human Rights Film Festival started and why it is so important today. The roles films can play in human rights and social justice movements. The history and politics of film festivals and why they are important in today’s media ecology. She will also give a sneak peek at this year’s festival.

Sunday, October 15th, 3 pm – Paul Harvey: Morningside Cultural Trails: A Unique Community Treasure, Developed by the Community for the Community

Long time resident, community member, teacher, facilitator of community, school and Agency programs. Paul has been walking these trails with his family and friends, for over 6o years and working with local groups to develop them as a public resource for the last few years. He is available to lead walks along any of them.
Discussion will touch on topics such as: The history of the area and trails, specific description of the trails, interesting anecdotal tales and legends. How all of us, individuals and community groups, can keep developing these valued resources.

Sunday, November 5th, 3 pm – Vanessa Rose: (Re)discovering Syracuse

Vanessa grew up in Syracuse, NY, left for college in 1990, she returned with Ken Keech, 15 years later. They live in the Westcott neighborhood with their three kids and small, barky dog. Vanessa is an elementary school teacher and community activator.
Discussion will touch on topics such as: What has been wonderful about returning to Syracuse; family, our neighborhood, our school community and more. How they became active community organizers of The Salt Market, Syracuse Improv Collective, Super 8 Film Festival, Sherman Park Baseball, etc. Finally, the appreciation that we have for the city of Syracuse, and the many opportunities that we have here as a family.

Strathmore Speaker Series on Facebook Live

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Don’t want to brave the cold or can’t make today’s Strathmore Speaker Series event, but still interested in what Roy Simmons Jr. and Alf Jacques have to say? Why not watch live or later from home?

The Strathmore Speaker Series will be broadcasting live from the Onondaga Park Firebarn via Facebook Live. 2 pm doesn’t work for you? Still not a problem! A full recording of the event will be available after the event.

Both can be found on the Strathmore Speaker Series Facebook page at facebook.com/strathmorespeakerseries.

 

Famed Stickmaker Alf Jacques to Join Roy Simmons Jr. at the Strathmore Speaker Series

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The Strathmore Speaker Series is delighted to announce that famed Iroquois wooden stickmaker Alf Jacques will join legendary Syracuse University coach Roy Simmons Jr. in a presentation on lacrosse. The event will be held on Sunday, March 12th at 2 pm at the Onondaga Park Firebarn. Like all Speaker Series events, it’s free and open to the public.

Can’t make it? Tune in live or after the event to watch it all on Facebook Live at facebook.com/strathmorespeakerseries.

Jacques grew up making wooden sticks alongside his father, Lou, and has been making them for more than half a century. His skill and reputation draws fans, photographers, writers and filmmakers to his shop – some from hundreds of miles away. Evidence of his renown came just this past weekend, when the University of Virginia men’s lacrosse team went out of their way to visit Jacques’s shop and pay homage to the sport they love when in town to face off against the Orange. Incidentally, the Orange defeated the Cavilers 14-13 in the final seconds of the game.

The Strathmore Speaker Series is Proud to Announce its Spring 2017 Season

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The Strathmore Speaker Series is proud to announce its Spring 2017 lineup. The season will kickoff on Thursday, February 18th at 7 pm with a presentation by fitness guru and life coach, Nick Murphy, who first gained fame for helping a local man lose 425 pounds. Our second event of the season will feature a presentation by legendary Syracuse University Men’s Lacrosse Coach, Roy Simmons Jr., on Sunday, March 12th at 2 pm. Strathmore resident and founder of the Syracuse University Law School’s Cold Case Initiative, Janis McDonald, will headline our third event about seeking justice for civil rights-era crimes on Thursday, April 13th at 7 pm. And new for the spring 2017 season – a fourth event! – will feature the Syracuse Parks Department on Celebrating 100 Years of Syracuse Parks on Thursday, May 18th at 7 pm.

All events are held in the Onondaga Park Firebarn and are free and open to the public. We hope to see you there!

Colgate and Ivory Tower’s Tim Byrnes and the League of Women Voters to Speak at the Firebarn

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The Strathmore Speaker Series is proud to announce that Dr. Timothy A. Brynes and the League of Women Voters will speak on “Election 2016: How We Got Here and Where We’ll Go” at the Firebarn on Thursday, November 3rd, 2016 at 7:00 pm. Like all Series events, this non-partisan presentation is free and open to the public.

Tim Byrnes

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Byrnes holds a bachelors degree from Le Moyne College and a Ph.D. from Cornell University. He is the Charles A. Dana Professor of Political Science at Colgate University and chair of the Department of Political Science. He has held visiting faculty appointments at The Graduate Institute for International Affairs in Switzerland and Nicolas Copernicus University in Poland, and he is a past winner of Colgate’s Alumni Corporation’s Award for Distinguished Teaching.

Byrnes is the author of a number of books on the role of the Catholic Church in politics, among them Catholic Bishops in American Politics, Transnational Catholicism in Post Communist Europe, and most recently, Reverse Mission: Transnational Religious Communities and the Making of US Foreign Policy.

He has been a weekly panelist on WCNY-TV’s Ivory Tower for over ten years, and he also currently appears regularly on News Channel 9’s Newsmakers with Dan Cummings.

See Tim Byrnes discuss the second Presidential Debate.

The League of Women Voters

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The League of Women Voters of the Syracuse Metropolitan Area is a nonprofit and nonpartisan political organization encouraging the informed and active participation of citizens in government.

The League influences public policy through education and advocacy, with two separate and distinct roles:

Voters Service/Citizen: The League presents unbiased nonpartisan information about elections, the voting process, and issues

Action/Advocacy: The league is also nonpartisan, but, after study, it uses it’s positions to advocate for or against particular policies in the public interest

Andrew Lunetta, Founder of A Tiny Home for Good, to Speak at the Firebarn

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The Strathmore Speaker Series is proud to announce that Andrew Lunetta, Founder and Executive Director of A Tiny Home for Good, Inc., will speak at the Strathmore Speaker Series on Thursday, October 13th, 2016 at 7:00 pm.

Lunetta, who lived in Syracuse as a child and attended Ed Smith Elementary through third grade, grew up in Massachusetts before returning to Syracuse in 2008 to attend Le Moyne College.  He graduated from Le Moyne in 2012 with a degree in Peach and Conflict Studies and went on to earn his Masters in Public Policy from Syracuse University’s Maxwell School in 2014.

Drawn to helping others since a gap year spent substitute teaching in Cleveland, Ohio through the AmeriCorps program, Lunetta quickly sought out ways to help others upon his return to Syracuse. As a freshman at Le Moyne, he started volunteering regularly at the Brady Faith Center, an organization which would eventually invite him to join its board. Through the center Lunetta became involved with helping the city’s homeless and quickly found his calling. He created a drop-in center, started a program that provides sandwiches, and began a bike give away program for the Center’s homeless patrons.

His involvement with the Center eventually led to the establishment of his latest endeavor, the A Tiny Home for Good project in 2014, which aims to provide affordable, safe and dignified housing for Syracuse’s homeless. With the help of volunteers, the project completed the construction of its first two homes on Rose Street in Syracuse earlier this year.

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Each modest home measures 12′ by 20′, and contains a single room that includes a living area, bed, kitchen, and bathroom. They also include a small outdoor shed to store they occupants’ bikes. Costing less than $25,000 each to construct and making use of already vacant lost, the project’s homes are a compelling alternative to VanKeuren Square, a state-of-the-art East Side housing complex for homeless vets that cost $11.4 million for 50 units, or $228,000 per apartment.

Since finishing his first two homes, Lunetta has begun construction of three new homes on South Salina Street which are expected to be completed this fall and plans are already in the works to build more new homes near the Rescue Mission.

tiny-home

What are you doing this fall?

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Summer break may be fast approaching, but the Strathmore Speaker Series committee is hard at work planning our fall lineup. Here’s a little teaser of what we’ve got in store:

September

beer

Beer and Syracuse have a long history. And no, we don’t just mean Empire, Middle Ages, or that green stuff they sell around St. Patrick’s Day. Since its days as a mecca for German and Irish immigrants in late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Syracuse has long been a center of beer brewing activity. Come learn about our beer brewing past, present, and future this September at the Strathmore Speaker Series.

October

mystery

Who doesn’t love a good mystery? The Strathmore Speaker Series sure does! And that’s why we’re working to bring you a New York Times Best Selling Mystery writer this October. In keeping with the theme, we can’t say who it is yet, but we can say you’ll like it!

November

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Are you feeling like this current electoral season is a little bit out of the ordinary? The Strathmore Speaker Series is and we want to know why! So this November we’re bringing you a non-partisan explanation of how our electoral system works, how we got here, and where we we can expect to go in the future with Colgate University Political Science Professor and star of WCNY‘s Ivory Tower Half Hour, Dr. Tim Byrnes, and friends from the League of Women Voters.

Stay tuned for more details and don’t forget, our events are free and open to the public!

The Strathmore Speaker Series is Proud to Announce its Spring 2016 Season!

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SSS Spring 2016

The Strathmore Speaker Series is proud to announce its Spring 2016 lineup. The season will kickoff on Sunday, March 20th at 2 pm with a presentation by architect, artist, and founder of [re]think syracuse, Jason Evans. Our second event of the season will feature a presentation by Syracuse-native, former professional football player, and diversity and inclusion expert, Billy McBride on Sunday, April 17th at 2 pm. Hotel Syracuse developer Ed Riley and muralist Katerina Spilio will conclude our season with a presentation on the exciting restoration of one of Syracuse’s most historic landmarks on Thursday, May 12th at 7 pm.

All events are held in the Onondaga Park Firebarn and are free and open to the public. We hope to see you there!

“Social Impact and Syracuse” – Tim Rudd to Speak at the Firebarn

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Social policy expert and recent candidate for Onondaga County Legislature’s 15th District, Timothy Rudd will speak at the Firebarn on Thursday, November 19th at 7 pm. Timothy will discuss exciting new strategies to finance investments in people and their applicability to communities like Syracuse.

Timothy is a Research Associate for MDRC – a nonprofit, nonpartisan, social policy research organization headquartered in New York City. For the last four years Timothy has been heavily involved in the first Social Impact Bond (SIB) in the United States. The project used a $9.6 million loan from Goldman Sachs to pay for cognitive behavioral therapy for 16-18 year olds in the New York City jail system on Rikers Island. If the program can reduce the amount of time participants spend in jail by more than 10 percent, the City of New York will repay the loan using money saved by keeping program participants from returning to the jail system. If the program fails to reduce recidivism by the required amount then the City of New York pays nothing and investors lose their investment. The project examines a number of new and innovative ideas about how governments can most effectively invest in their people.

Timothy’s presentation will introduce the SIB concept and describe how it could change the way government pays for investments in people. Additionally, he will comment in a private capacity about how similar ideas might have value in places like Syracuse. He will examine questions such as: Is it appropriate to use debt to increase the level of investment in people? What are the costs related to the way government currently makes investments in people? Does a lack of investment in people perpetuate poverty? And, can financial innovations unleash new capital that can be used to disrupt the cycle of poverty?

Timothy was born and raised in Syracuse. He graduated from Henninger High School, Syracuse University, and has an MPA from the Maxwell School. He lived and worked in New York City for six years including three years working for the New York City Mayor’s Office of Management and Budget. He currently lives in the Elmwood neighborhood of Syracuse where he works for MDRC from his home.

Tim Rudd event

Sean Kirst “Sells-Out” the Strathmore Speaker Series

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Beloved Syracuse-area writer and journalist Sean Kirst presented to a standing-room-only crowd at the Onondaga Park Firebarn on Sunday, October 18th. Kirst, who recently announced his departure from the Post-Standard/Syracuse Media Group after 27 years of storytelling, addressed topics ranging from how he fell in love with Syracuse and the Strathmore neighborhood, to why he’s a Mets fan, and Roger Clinton’s love of “eatin.” He also discussed why he’s leaving the paper and what he plans to do next. A full audio file of Kirst’s presentation can be found here, while Time Warner Channel 10’s coverage of the event can be found here.

At the conclusion of the event, the Strathmore Speaker Series and the Greater Strathmore Neighborhood Association presented Kirst with a token of appreciation on behalf of the Strathmore community. The photograph of a “Sunrise Over Onondaga Park,” was taken by long-time neighborhood resident and avid photographer, Vincent Miller, whose work can frequently be seen in the Strathmore Neighborhood Facebook group and on his own Facebook profile.

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Photo by Vincent Miller.