Points of Departure
King of Pop
FROM THE SOUND OF HIS NAME, NEWTON Carroll III could be a federal judge or a member of the British Royal family, but he presides over neither a palace nor any court of law. Carroll's domain is a street corner in downtown New Haven from which, for the past three years, he has been selling his own variety of kettle corn. Here, he reigns supreme-the only vendor on his side of the street.
Across the way, in the delta where medical school students, doctors, and hospital staff empty out of Yale-New Haven Hospital for lunch, food vendors abound. Steam and smoke rise up from shining metal carts; sweat pours down from the arms and faces of vendors; swells of scrubs-clad customers clog the sidewalks; shouted orders mingle with the clink of tendered change and the occasional wail of a siren.
Spotting easy pickings in over-zealous kernels that pop their way straight onto the sidewalk, birds are the most clamorous customers around Carroll's eclectic cart. Painted in primary colors, printed with the words, "Protected by God's Hands," and sporting a pink-orange-and white-striped deck umbrella, the cart was built by Patricia Carroll when she and her husband founded the Elm City Kettle Corn Company in June of 2004. Their treat will soon be available away from the cart and free from the birds.
When the renovated Cross Campus Library opens in late October, the new Library Café will open with it. A joint project of the Library, the Yale Sustainable Food Project, and Yale University Dining Services, the Café will serve sustainable food that is, whenever possible, sourced locally. When it comes to snack food, nothing could be more local than Newton's kettle corn. Except that he will be using organic popcorn instead of conventional popcorn, the kettle corn Newton makes for the Café will be made with the very same equipment and in the very same cart that he uses on York Street.
Six by nine feet in footprint, the cart Patricia built is fashioned of wooden boards and 2x4s. Mounted onto its base is a large box that houses a propane-fired flame. The stainless steel bowl that is Newton's kettle sits sunken into the box's hinged lid, which, when opened, causes the kettle to dump its contents into an enormous copper container called "the bin." From here, Newton bags and serves his kettle corn.
Kettle corn shares its essential ingredient with popcorn, though it bears very little relationship to the too-yellow, cheap-smelling, "I Can't Believe It's Not Butter"-saturated variety one finds in movie theaters. Perhaps best characterized as a confection, kettle corn is popcorn popped with sugar and hot oil until a thin, caramelized crust forms over the burst kernel, then sprinkled generously with salt. Sweet and salty, bite-size and slightly crunchy, kettle corn might just be the perfect snack food. Carroll's customers certainly think so.
On a good day, Carroll can sell as many as one hundred three- and five-dollar bags of kettle corn. On the sidewalk and in the road beside his cart, people and cars line up to wait for service. And according to one woman who bought a large bag as she was leaving work, "the hospital people swear by this stuff."
Carroll has only recently become a kettle corn aficionado, but his skill and finesse on the job come from years of popping at home. To hear him tell the story of Elm City Kettle Corn, selling popcorn was a simple, almost obvious choice. "I just like popcorn," he says, explaining how he used to make it at home, "and everybody says how good it is." Recalling how highly his coworkers used to praise the popcorn Carroll brought them, and seeing her recently retired husband "at loose ends," Patricia suggested he sell the confection. A few internet searches later, the two of them had discovered the kettle corn business, found a man in Alabama who was selling his equipment, driven south to pick it up, and set to work. Now, Carroll pops kettle corn every weekday from noon to five.
Though Carroll's enthusiasm for his new job is contagious, there are few other retirees who would choose to spend their free time risking constant burns over a huge pot of hot oil and bursting corn kernels. Newton must don protective gear for his hands and arms-gloves and what look like arm socks that reach from his wrists past his elbows-before making each batch.
Suited up, and wearing a bright yellow "Elm City Kettle Corn Co." shirt, a blue apron, and a Yankees cap, Newton looks like something of an anachronism as he stirs the corn with both hands, gripping a three-foot-long wooden rod that might well be the end of a sawn-off broom handle. His feet planted wide, his arms working in clockwise circles, he recalls one's childhood visions of witches bent over boiling potions in dark, enchanted woods.
But there is nothing magical about Newton's brew, and his recipe is no secret: three cups vegetable oil to two cups corn and one cup sugar, with salt to taste. The cooking instructions are equally straightforward: heat oil in the kettle, add corn and sugar, stir until the rapid-fire staccato of bursting kernels beating against the sides of a steel pot subsides, add salt, allow to cool, serve. Nonetheless, Carroll will allow no apprentices-he does all the preparation himself. "I'm very particular about the way it comes out," he explains. "Very particular."
Even as Elm City Kettle Corn begins to expand its operations, Carroll will continue to man the kettle. But what will happen if he is suddenly faced with a demand for thousands of bags a day? Selling to Yale could be the first step toward putting his kettle corn on the shelves of local shops. Even if such expansion is years away, Library Café may soon be knocking on the Carrolls' door, asking for more. Will Carroll still spend time at his homemade cart, trading popcorn for stories?
On this point, his regulars needn't worry. For Newton and his wife, selling to Yale is a boon, a sign of God's providence. But only misfortune, never felicity, could cause Carroll to leave his York Street customers. Of the corner on which he has spent most of his afternoons for three years, Carroll says: "This is home; these are all my friends."
Sharing Needles
IN THE BATHROOM OF AN AIRPLANE; AT the back of ABP; even in the middle of jury duty, across the country bored and frustrated women are doing it everywhere, letting loose and rediscovering the joy of an age-old past-time. In a world of ready-made blankets and store-bought scarves, women have begun to remember the pleasure of making things with their hands. In recent years, knitting has come back in a big way, and with its rise have come legions of women looking to join social networks: New Haven's chapter of Stitch 'n Bitch, a nationwide group that organizes local knitting circles, now claims 283 members. Local founder Karen explains, "I bought Deb Stoller's first book, Stitch 'n Bitch: The Knitter's Handbook in December 2003, and taught myself how to knit. I made a New Year's resolution to join a knitting group, but I couldn't find one. So I convinced my friend Aileen to knit with me every Wednesday evening at Koffee? on Audubon St." As others filtered in, the small, local coffee shop couldn't afford to lose its chairs to a sit-in of a dozen women not buying drinks, so now they meet four times a week in retail chains throughout Connecticut. Sundays are held in the Yale Bookstore, Mondays in Woodbridge, Thursdays at the Panera Bread in North Haven, and tonight it's Wednesday at the Au Bon Pain on the corner of York and Elm Streets.
S'nB is refashioning the classic image of the knitter. Although the women continue the long tradition of gathering in a room with sewing projects on their laps, there are no white granny caps to be seen, and no one's hair is in a bun. Despite its name, none of the members are particularly prone to complaining; once in a while, someone will mention a dropped stitch. It's a bevy of bespectacled women in their 20s and 30s, and the gossip is strictly fiber-centric.
Early on, only Heather and Katy have arrived, two quiet women with skeins of yarn. Heather is busy knitting miniature pink and brown socks for her four-year-old daughter. "My daughter's tiny," she explains. "She doesn't grow." Right now she's teaching her how to knit. "I have high hopes for her," she says, crossing her fingers on one hand and her needles in the other.
Katy is making a sweater for herself, her most ambitious project yet. One sleeve dangles complete, and she contentedly tries it on as she goes. But when she's knitting for others, Katy's projects sometimes involve a kind of vague sorcery. "Every time I start making a baby blanket, someone tells me they're pregnant!" she says with a shrug, as if her knitting were somehow entwined with the reproductive future of her friends. Mostly she knits as meditation, and she loves to sneak her needles into forbidden places. "I did it on jury duty," she admits, "and it takes away the frustration of sitting on the airplane." She stitches away while we talk, her needles clicking steadily.
Jackie and Nancy, first-time Stitch'nBitchers, turn up next. They're coworkers at the New Haven Courthouse who've decided to extend their lunch break addiction into the evening hours. Nancy started knitting three years ago, and Jackie is her blonde protégée. Besides the standard sweaters, socks, and scarves, they've also made fingerless gloves, handbags, ponchos ("we never wear them, but they're beautiful") and stuffed animals: "I knit turtles with detachable shells for my kids last year," Jackie shares proudly, but reveals that they repaid her by playing limbo with her yarn, stretching a thread across the room and running under it. So tonight Jackie is a self-confessed "selfish knitter": she's making a checkerboard wrap, a patchwork of purple, gray and black squares, which she plans to use as a winter staple in her own wardrobe. "Actually," she says, "I recycle a lot-I'll wear a sweater a couple of times, rip it out and reuse the yarn." She's constantly inventing new clothes from old fibers.
The women arrive in pairs, but no one shares the same pattern or color of yarn. The methods vary, Heather tells me. Stitches can be traced to their owners' strings of DNA: different people knit with tighter or looser stitches, so their swatches will come out smaller or bigger, and each woman has her own trademark stitch.
Soon there are 15 gathered at the wooden table, and it's clear from the varying speeds of the needles that the world of knitting comes wrapped in its own hierarchy. The best knitters can produce a basic scarf in a few hours. A tote bag is a day, a sweater four weeks, and lace shawls can bleed into two seasons. A cedar chest is a must to keep moths away from fluffy skeins of wool, although a bag of lavender will also do the trick.
As with any ancient art-form, knitting too has its own set of old wives' tales and superstitions: "Heather, you never get second sock syndrome?" Jackie asks in wonder. This happens when a knitter has finished one perfect sock but suddenly gets bored with the prospects of making its identical twin. Later, Karen tells me of the Boyfriend Sweater Curse: "Never knit a sweater for your boyfriend. He won't appreciate the effort you put into it, and it'll cause your break." Others in the circle propose a remedy to ward off such mishaps. They bring out a book of "Naughty Needles: Sexy, Saucy Knits for the Bedroom and Beyond," and are greeted by a round of general giggling. "That's probably the only kind of knitting my husband would like," jokes Jackie. I learn that it is possible to knit a corset, a whip, and even a straitjacket. A more benign sequel arrives with "Charmed Knits: Projects for Fans of Harry Potter." The book includes elaborate diagrams for making wizard robes, wand cozies, elf hats for babies, golden snitch balls, and even an invisibility cloak.
Karen points to the glass windowpanes behind us. Pedestrian onlookers stare as they cross the street. Suddenly it feels as if the group is inside an aquarium being watched by an audience. "I like knitting in this spot," she confesses. "It feels like performance art." For the women of Stitch'n Bitch, knitting is a chance to air out their domestic selves.
How Bequests Are Won
THIS SEMESTER, THE YALE UNIVERSITY ART Gallery will debut its most recent and eye-popping acquisitions. From September to January, an exhibit titled "Art for Yale" will display works the Gallery has received or purchased since Director Jock Reynolds' arrival in 1998. The exhibit will include over three hundred major works, only a few of which are currently on display. Jill Westgard, the Gallery's Director of Development, described all the works as "ones a student would study in Art History 101." Chief Curator Susan Matheson hopes the exhibit will embody the Gallery's recently revitalized aim "to inspire artists as much as art historians" and to incorporate the personal interests of Yale students, faculty, museum staff, and donors in their efforts to create an active dialogue and a dynamic, far-reaching institution.
As students and faculty rediscovered the Gallery's masterpieces at the Kahn Building's reopening last year, many may have wondered how such world-renowned art found its way to New Haven. The YUAG receives some bequests and endowments as unexpected windfalls. Several years ago, an elderly amateur art collector joined her local retirement home's field trip to the Yale University Art Gallery. She fell in love with the Gallery, and decided to anonymously donate her fifty Greek and Roman pieces to Yale.
However, most gifts result from an extensive series of conversations among museum curators, private collectors, and University faculty. With knowledge of the major private collections in his or her field, each curator approaches potential donors and works with the Development Office to capitalize on any Yale connections. Each of the Gallery's departments compiles a wish list of the art it is seeking. While these goals guide curators' recruitment efforts, flexibility also proves essential in order to seize singular opportunities, like an unexpected trove of antiquities recently acquired when the Albright-Knox Museum in Buffalo, NY auctioned off its collection.
When recruiting potential donors and negotiating conditions for gifts, the YUAG emphasizes its unique role as an active teaching museum. Still, the Gallery competes with other museums in its acquisition efforts. To persuade families to leave their art to Yale, curators remind donors that art from the YUAG often replaces slides in Yale classrooms while works at large civic museums may remain in storage for long and dusty stretches. Some donors to the YUAG take this further than the museum would like, and impose conditions on their gifts that stipulate how often the works can travel or how many of their pieces must be on display at a given time. The Gallery, however, prefers the flexibility to rotate exhibitions and loan items, and typically enters such negotiations only for extremely significant works. It also foregoes offers that overlap the existing collection, and instead works with donors to procure gifts that complement Yale's existing collection. If a person wants to donate twelve chairs by the same artist, the Gallery may negotiate to display two in its permanent collection, while selling the other ten to create an acquisition fund in the donor's name. The museum allocates such funds for purchasing art, usually in the style that the donor collected.
The YUAG hopes to parlay its new bequests into an increased presence in the academic life of the University. The Gallery has traditionally focused on acquiring pieces in areas, like American and Asian (especially Chinese) art, especially representative of the strengths of the History of Art Department. Since Reynolds became Director of the Gallery in 1998, however, he has sought to build the collection in all areas, encouraging curators to strengthen their research and address gaps in their collections.
The Curator of Academic Initiatives, a position established in 2004, seeks out professors and develops programs that take advantage of the new exhibits. The YUAG has begun to work with faculty from departments ranging from Medieval Studies to Gender Studies to Anthropology. Language classes now include field trips to the Gallery, where students practice conversational skills as they discuss foreign art. Students from the Law School study art law, while School of Management students have capitalized on Gallery resources to learn about the art market. In an exclamation that perhaps applies to the Yale University Art Gallery's new future as much as it does to the new exhibit, Mateson said: "You won't believe what you're going to see."
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