Got a story to tell? Longtime Canary client, First Person Arts, recently announced a new competition for memoir and documentary artists. First Person Impressions invites artists to tackle the first person story through three artistic mediums: the written word, video, and photography. Artists are challenged to find universality in the personal, make the exotic familiar, shock and amaze, or pause to reflect, all while crafting an engaging and true tale around a slice of real life. Everyone with a true story is encouraged to enter. Submissions for the competition are now being accepted through August 15th.

Check it out online here: www.impressions.firstpersonarts.org.

Mayor Michael Nutter keeps his word to support the Arts in Philadelphia and will announce tomorrow the incoming Chief Cultural Officer for the City of Philadelphia and the establishment of the Office of Arts, Culture and the Creative Economy and the Mayor’s Cultural Advisory Council.

They’re inviting the cultural community to attend the press conference on Friday at 11am in the Mayor’s Reception Room - City Hall, Room 202. “Enter City Hall at the NE corner (JFK and Juniper), sign-in at the
security desk and head up to the second floor.”

We’re looking forward to hearing more about this here at Canary.  Stay tuned.

This is how Philly celebrates Independence Day. Our best-known Ben Franklin impersonator and a Betsy Ross impersonator get married in front of a bunch of tourists while our mayor officiates. And they promote the heck out of it. Brings a tear to your eye, doesn’t it?

Join us at the Rosenbach Museum & Library today between Noon and 7 p.m. to celebrate the 16th annual Bloomsday. The Rosenbach, home of James Joyce’s original manuscript for Ulysses, holds this Philadelphia tradition every year on June 16th, drawing hundreds of friends, neighbors, Joyce enthusiasts, book-lovers, and curious passersby to Delancey Place. Bloomsday is free and open to the public and features readings on the steps of the museum from some of the city’s most interesting business, creative, and media personalities, along with performances from Academy of Vocal Arts singers and a special exhibition of Joyce materials. You can find a full list of readers, including Governor Ed Rendell, here.

Megan and I attended the Rosenbachannal at the Rosenbach Museum & Library a few weeks ago and got our first peek at the museum’s current Maurice Sendak retrospective, There’s a Mystery There: Sendak on Sendak. A few words of advice: Go see this exhibition! It’s fantastic. I have many, many memories of reading Sendak’s work (or more likely, having the tales read to me by my awesome mom), so as an adult, I found it particularly interesting and frankly, just plain cool, to see the sketches and final illustrations for books like In the Night Kitchen up-close-and-personal. Not only that, each gallery is equipped with touch-screen videos featuring interviews with Sendak himself, so museum goers get the added benefit of hearing Sendak speak about his work and the inspiration behind each story.

For an inside peek, check out this exclusive interview with Sendak:

Girls Rock Philly, Philadelphia’s ONLY rock camp for girls, wrapped up the inaugural camp session with a rockin’ showcase over the weekend but not before taking the local press by storm! The first ever camp session was a huge success. Campers kept busy all week long learning about women in music, forming bands, and writing their own music and lyrics, culminating in a live concert performance for their families and peers. Head on over to Philly.com to watch an exclusive video about GRP and hear the girls talk about what rocking out means to them HERE.

Interested in sending your kid next year? UWISHUNU got caught up in the rock n’ roll spirit and dispatched a blogger who spent the day exploring rock life with the girls. Get the inside scoop here: “You Go Girls”. And read more about the unique all-female summer camp in the Philadelphia Inquirer’s feature story HERE.

PS: Who do I have to track down to get a pair of those GRP guitar pick earrings???

Rainpan 43’s machines machines machines machines machines machines machines has got Philadelphia theater-goers buzzing about the imaginative production and fantastical machines. FOX Philadelphia even stopped by the garage to take a closer look. For an inside peek, check out the segment here: myfoxphilly.com.

If you’re in the area, you can still catch what the Philadelphia Inquirer calls “an elaborate goof that’s in gear” through June 17^th at the Alter(ed) Garage! For tickets and more information, visit the official show site.

I grew up in Philadelphia and remember going to The Rosenbach Museum & Library (one of Canary’s newest clients) many, many moons ago on a school trip. To my young eyes, the building itself was sort of magical - the museum is housed in a historic old house in the Rittenhouse district. After reading up on the museum’s current collection, I’ll definitely have to take another look-see. For all of you literary types, the Rosenbach is home to one of the nation’s great collections of rare books and manuscripts and also serves as a research center and library. Somehow, the museum got their hands on some pretty cool personal items belonging to Nathaniel Hawthorne including his copy of Moby Dick (I wonder if he marked any specific passages…) They also have James Joyce’s original manuscript for Ulysses and even Melville’s bookcase.

For the imaginative visual types, the museum boasts a selection of John Tenniel’s original illustrations for Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Look-Glass. I always found Tenniel’s drawings to be very intricate and full of wonderment. I’m really looking forward to seeing those in the flesh. Also on the illustration side, are over 10,000 drawings and manuscripts by Maurice Sendak. I remember reading his books as a child and loving the drawings. In the Night Kitchen was my favorite and of course, everyone loves Where the Wild Things Are. If you were ever wondering where the wild things actually are, now you know – they’re at the Rosenbach! Now that Canary is working with the museum, I’ll definitely have to check out more of their extensive collection. Oh, and just so you’re in the know, it’s not RosenBACH like the composer but RosenBACK, like well your back.

Lately, Anton Chekhov, the Russian dramatist and doctor famed for his masterful short stories, seems to be popping up all over Philadelphia. Both Villanova University and Arcadia University recently did productions of Chekhov’s play, Three Sisters. Now Pig Iron Theatre Company, the latest addition to Canary’s roster, is gearing up to present the world premiere of their new work, CHEKHOV LIZARDBRAIN, in late March. The play, which draws from the work of Paul D. MacLean (the mind behind the triune brain theory) and Chekhov’s Three Sisters, is a comic mash-up of neuroscience and surrealism. Sounds like the thinking man’s comedy, no?

I remember reading a Chekhov short in a Russian Cinema course a few years ago, but I’ve never read his work extensively. It’s looking like I’ll have to join the Chekhov bandwagon before I get left in the literary dust. Yesterday, I was paging through a January edition of Time Magazine and came across Lev Grossman’s review of J. Peder Zane’s The Top 10, which is basically the ultimate reading list guide created by some of the greatest living authors around. Zane asked the likes of Norman Mailer, Annie Proulx, Michael Chabon and over 100 other celebrated writers to weigh in on their favorites. Time Magazine printed the “all-time, ultimate Top Top 10 list” derived from the lists of all the writers combined and guess who showed up at #9? Anton Chekhov of course, with The Stories of Anton Chekhov. Looks like I’ll have to add him to my reading list for sure. Perhaps he’ll even sneak into my Top 10.

With all of the snow falling around the East Coast last week, I thought I’d check out PhillyHistory.org for some snowy pictures from Philadelphia’s past. I found this historic photograph of City Hall. Dated 1914, the image captioned “Snowing Like Hell” shows City Hall in the background, looking North from Broad and Walnut Streets, with the snow still coming down hard. I don’t think we’ll see a storm like this anytime soon, with all of the snow melting away now and spring just around the corner. Still, there is more to be found at PhillyHistory.org. If you’re a history buff, photography aficionado or from the Philadelphia area, spend a little time checking out the fascinating historic photographs from the city and surrounding neighborhoods. You can search by neighborhood, address, intersection, place name, year and other keywords. So far, there are over 25,000 images online with more being added each month!