Holly Fair has come and gone, but don’t worry if you haven’t gotten the perfect gift – there are still plenty of options at CCAE!

For instance:

For: The Film Geek, The Artist, The Go-Getter and Multi-Tasker:

-Pamela Tanner Boll, a long time CCAE student, created a wonderful documentary, entitled “Who Does She Think She Is?” about the challenges of balancing one’s home, work, and creative lives.  A must-see for all the go-getters in your life!  And a bonus – 10% of each purchase will be donated to The Cambridge Center for Adult Education! Just click here to purchase!

For: The History Buff, The Local, and The Bookworm:

-CCAE board member Dorothy Dahl has co-authored a fascinating book about The Window Shop – which was what our 56 Brattle Street building used to be before we made the purchase in the 1970s and expanded.  The Window Shop evolved from a thrift shop to a restaurant and was finally founded as a non-profit organization by concerned Cambridge residents to help European refugees during and after World War II, and was a favorite haunt of European intellectuals like Walter Gropius and frequented by Eleanor Roosevelt.  Purchase the print-on-demand book by clicking here, or visit our 42 Brattle Street registration office to buy yours.

For The Hard To Shop For and Gift Certificate Fanatics:

Gift Certificates from The Cambridge Center for Adult Education are available online or in person at 42 Brattle Street.  Learning never goes out of style!  Get them what they really want – the gift of knowledge, skill, and most of all, FUN! goes out of style – and gift certificates are good for any class or event!

T’was two days to Holly Fair, and all through the house

Every creature was stirring – but that’s not a mouse!

Our signage was hung from the windows with care:

In hopes that cool vendors would soon sell their wares!

The staff were all busy, so Susan said,

while White Elephant sale prices danced in their heads;

And Paul with his tables and Scott with his cap

had just gotten in from salvaging scrap;

Dance floor transformed, the music room cleared,

Our excitement is growing as Holly Fair nears!

Will out in the courtyard there arise such a clatter?
We’ll be happy to have all the people and chatter!

If you need gifts and housewares, come visit our tables -
Come out to the Holly Fair, as soon as you’re able!

For the past 56 years, the Cambridge Center for Adult Education has been holding a crafts fair to raise money for our scholarship fund.

This year’s Holly Fair takes place on December 12 and 13, 2009, in CCAE’s two historic buildings in the heart of Harvard Square and features a bunch of great artists and crafts people.

Shoppers can find hand made jewelry, hats, bags, sweaters, scarves, natural beauty items, soaps, ceramics, stained glass, ornaments, photographs, cards, prints, paintings, puppets, pens, masks, food, yoga-related items and much, much more – ranging in price from $2 to $200.

Each year approximately a third of the 60-plus vendors are new to Holly Fair.

Jerome Berkeley, our CCAE bookkeeper talks about the events and vendors at this year’s Holly Fair:

As Cambridge’s oldest crafts fair, we have customers who come back year after year; so we like to have a balance of old favorites and new discoveries. There’s a jurying process in choosing vendors, where we ask potential vendors about their products, and have some interaction with them to make sure the items for sale at the fair are quality and diverse. This year, we have a new vendor who makes delicious gourmet dessert sauces as well as a woman selling baked goods, including a soft kind of biscotti unlike anything I’ve ever tasted. I thought the fig version, in particular, was outstanding. There’s also Liann Graf, who makes soaps, oils, and creams with ingredients that she largely grows herself – plus, she’s a beekeeper!

All of our vendors have wonderful stories to share about their products, which are all, in one way or another, labors of love. That’s what makes shopping at a crafts fair like our Holly Fair such a fun and inspiring experience.

Members of the Boston Comics Roundtable will be participating in Holly Fair for the first time as well. They meet regularly in Harvard Square and have just created a collective history of Boston in graphic novel style.

Some of this year’s vendors have a direct connection to the Cambridge Center for Adult Education. A few women who met in Jen Sherr’s decoupage class will be selling their work, and students in one of our jewelry classes will be actively making and selling their work on site as well.

CCAE faculty members are also represented by illustrator EJ Barnes, Japanese brush painter, Jan Zaremba and maskmaker Eric Bornstein whose work has been a familiar sight at Boston’s First Night parades for many years. One of our calligraphy teachers, Kitty Pechet, will also be here on Saturday with several of her students creating customized book marks, name tags and other stocking stuffers on the spot.

Don’t forget about the bake sale, or the delicious treats for sale in the kitchen cafe we set up at 42 Brattle.  And definitely check out the thrifty deals at the White Elephant sale in the basement of 56 Brattle Street.  Random Chants will also be back again, performing in the courtyard of 42 Brattle Street at noon on Saturday.  There’s a lot going on during Holly Fair – we don’t want you to miss a thing!

Holly Fair is a great place to find one-of-a-kind holiday gifts while supporting local artists AND raising money to hep us keep our classes as accessible as possible.

And if you don’t find the perfect tangible gift, you can always give someone a gift of learning and curiosity with one of our CCAE gift certificates, which will be for sale in both of our Brattle Street buildings!

For a more extensive list of vendors with websites, please visit our Holly Fair page.

Due to popular demand, extra sections have been added for two classes:

Gnocchi on Tuesday December 8th

Glassblowing: Holiday Ornaments on Sunday December 20

Don’t miss out a second time – get registered today!

The Cambridge Center is seeking Spanish, French, Portuguese, Chinese, and American Sign Language instructors for upcoming terms!

If interested, please send your resume and cover letter to Charlotte Silver.

It’s been quite awhile, hasn’t it?  We apologize for all the delay – we were just so excited about Susan Hartnett’s arrival!  We’ve taken some time to show her more of what we do and how we do it, and she’s gotten herself in place to be a great leader for the wonderful future of CCAE.  I’ll let her tell you herself – here’s her message from the Winter 2010 catalog (which just came out today!):

It is my great pleasure and honor to join the Cambridge Center for Adult Education as its new executive director. Like so many others, I am drawn to this warm and welcoming community that fosters creativity, curiosity, and growth.

We all need to learn new things every day of our lives, not just when we are young and in the nest, but every day. We need to learn to stretch our bodies, to follow our breath, to savor the bounty of this great good earth.

Some people who come here learn to listen like never before to great operas, to dance the tango, to get inside a poem, or up on the stage. Others investigate the challenge of facing a blank canvas, the empty page; some learn to see a photograph like never before, or learn to spot the ripe hazelnuts at Fresh Pond; some work to end racism in America, or learn a new language — all with the guidance of our stellar, supportive teachers. The Center supports learning in all these ways and more. There is just so much to learn, to explore, to share! Isn’t that just a lovely and delicious and extraordinary fact?

And there is no better time to pursue a new interest in the company of wonderful people than right now! Our teachers are passionate; our students, dedicated and enthusiastic. In our winter term, the Center offers you over 500 courses, including our extraordinary arts programming, classes in cooking, foreign languages, yoga, astronomy, web design, massage, and much more.

Take a moment to browse our catalog. You can visit our website to register and/or get updated information at ccae.org. (If you prefer to register by phone, feel free to call the Registration office at 617-547-6789.)

For those of you who will be returning for another term of learning, I hope you will take a moment to tell us what you think about the Center after you register online. We have a new survey designed to gather your ideas and suggestions as we work to make the Center better than ever!

Come by the Holly Fair in December for great crafts and warm wassail, or in January for a cup of cocoa — and register for a class while you visit. We invite all of you to stop in any time you are in Harvard Square!

Susan Hartnett
Executive Director

We’ve gotten our registration season off to a great start – so come by the office at 42 Brattle Street, or log on to ccae.org and grab a seat in your favorite class – because they’re filling quickly!

Today was the staff’s farewell to our beloved Executive Director, Jim Smith, who’s been adroitly leading CCAE for the past 23 years.

Here are some of the things he had to tell us on his last day:

Your turn:  Do you have memories of Jim through the years?  Share them in the comments!

Our very last day with Jim Smith, our wonderful Executive Director, will be this Friday.  We at CCAE just have one thing to say:

Jim Montage

We’re so sad to see Jim go on to other adventures, but wish him the best of luck in his retirement.

Before he goes, Jim has issued one last challenge:

Would you donate $23 to honor Jim’s 23-year-term as Executive Director at CCAE?

As always, donations – no matter how large or small – are deeply appreciated and tax-deductible!

Donate online today.

If you’ve gotten our Fall Catalog (have we mentioned that Fall Term courses are now online?), you may have noticed this guy in the back cover.  If you haven’t taken the time to read Carl’s story, take a moment now to enjoy!

In 2000 I completed a certificate program for Web Design. Bright-eyed, I entered the job market, just as the dot-coms fell. The job market went bust. I found out about CCAE by opening one of the catalogs on the stairs at Twisted Village in Harvard Square, and saw that The Center offered classes in Flash, which I really wanted to learn, but had found to be unapproachable in my lone attempts. I applied for a scholarship, and took the course. I loved it! After finding out how much education thousands of dollars could buy from my certificate course, I was thrilled that The Center could offer such quality at a fraction of the cost. I wanted in. I proposed a course and wrote a curriculum to support it. Accepted!

One of the best parts about being an instructor at CCAE is that you get to take a class for free. Hence, my thirst for knowledge found an eternal spring. I have been involved with CCAE ever since. I have completed 18 consecutive semesters of Polish language courses with the incredible CCAE instructor Elzbieta Hinke, whose sparkling outlook and thorough class preparation I dedicate this Faculty Perspective to. Through CCAE I have met many talented people. I have carefully tailored my class schedule to always follow Doug Kornfeld (CCAE’s illustrious Dreamweaver instructor), just for the few moments of conversation we share between classes. I have enjoyed The Center’s computer lab, with CCAE system administrator Scott Hall’s creatively thought-out and well-implemented construction.

There have been countless interesting people — students and staff alike — that have touched me though CCAE. Oh — interesting? Have a conversation with Bobby Bear at 56 Brattle Street. He is a Boston rock ‘n roll legend drummer with stories a creative writer’s workshop could mine for months. Yes, you can see, CCAE has touched me. Give The Center a try. You might learn a new skill, and make friends through the journey.

Check out Carl’s Class:  Advanced Coding Topics:  Using Fireworks in Your Workflow!

Be sure to sign up for this or for the MANY other courses CCAE has available ASAP!

August term begins in just ONE WEEK!

One of our writing students, Elliot Rosenberg, wrote the following in a class with Mopsy Strange-Kennedy, and was kind enough to share it with us!

Muse Mopsy

by Elliot Rosenberg

Try It. You Will Like It.
The Cambridge Center for Adult Education (CCAE)

We all live in a huge glass house cheek to jowl among strangers. We are invisible out there. No one really sees us or listens to us in the real world.  Which is good for us and the world up to a point.

In the Writing and Acting classes at CCAE , the cameras are rolling. That’s why we are here. To try out for different roles.  To try on different masks. With teachers to validate us.  Our break ins. Our break outs. Our breakthroughs. If for only a moment.

No matter the follies our flesh and blood are heir to, we can tell things about ourselves in a way that disarms our enemies within and parries and muffles the infinite life and death inflicted blows without.

At home, at work, in our dreams, we have our dependable ‘must play’ roles, but here it is safe to experiment, reveal our feelings about the unsung parts of our existence, play at new roles.

Even when the script is not ours, we are attentive to each other. Sometimes we do cross one another’s lines, but we do not often misconstrue what we hear about each other. Otherwise, excommunication could quickly follow and we might depart our CCAE  bubble, our garden of tranquility, banished back to real life.

As Peggy Atwood says in The Blind Assassin, p 329,  “If you get hungry enough they say you start eating your own heart.” It is like that with our minds, too.  In life in the streets, Hamlet style, we think too much, feel too much, see too much, sans friendly ears, sans understandings eyes, sans kind but honest words.

Here at CCAE we are treated to attentive ears and shoulders for us to cry on. Here we harbor no grudges. Here we stake out no territory.  We are usually ready when called upon.

Action!  Camera!  My turn?