Join your neighbors on Saturday, June 23, for a STOOPendous party that
is as big as the Slope!  Celebrate the solstice and start of summer
with your neighbors on your own stoops and sidewalks.

In the continuation of this post, a short guide offers you suggestions for how you can create a simple
and engaging event to take back the solstice and mark the longest day
of the year on your block, in your building, or along an avenue.

Your celebration can occur any time of day, but at 8:31 pm, when the
sun sets, the All-Slope-Solstice-Shout-Out will start. Use kazoos, bang
pots and pans, swing bells, play drums–make a racket to bid farewell
to the sun and ring in the new season. 

Sponsor

The Park Slope Civic Council is sponsoring this event to support:

•    all of us strengthening the community spirit in our Park Slope village
•    neighbors connecting with neighbors
•    children learning more about the impact of the sun cycle on our lives
•    residents joining together to create one day of spectacular home-grown fun.

Help the Civic Council continue its community leadership work by becoming a member…

Additional Resources
For event updates, check our web site www.xxxxxx.org. If you need to talk with a STOOPendous leader…

For STOOPendous regalia (great-looking T-shirts, hats, totes, and
what-have-you) take a look at our official shop at
www.cafepress.com/stoopendous. Proceeds go toward next year’s event.

When all is said and done, blog on how your event went…at stoopendous.org. Let’s learn from each other how to do STOOPendous.

Background on the Solstice
Saturday, June 23 is in the midst of two important summer evenings–the
summer solstice, which falls this year on June 21, and the traditional
Mid-Summer’s Day, which falls this year on June 24.  The solstice is
the longest day of the year, and Mid-Summer’s day was considered the
halfway mark in the growing season in old Europe.

The word solstice comes from Latin words for sun and stand still. At
the solstice, the sun cannot go farther in its current direction and
reaches its maximum or minimum length from earth, depending upon where
you are in the world—in the northern or southern hemisphere. The
solstice happens twice a year, when the earth’s axis tilts the most
toward or away from the sun.  In the Northern Hemisphere, we’re
celebrating the summer solstice.  Below the Equator, people will be
celebrating the first day of winter.

The summer solstice is considered a powerful time, and has been marked
through the ages with dancing and lightheartedness, garlands of
colorful flowers, bonfires, and rites of purification, including the
removal of unwanted items from the home. 

For links to more information about the history and celebration of the summer solstice, go to the STOOPendous website.

Inventing your STOOPendous Event
Step by step, stoop by stoop, you can make your solstice gathering a communal celebration of the earth and its seasons. Here are some suggestions for what you can include.

For kids

•    Bring out the sidewalk chalk. Kids can draw big signs of summer all up and down the block.  Decorate stairs, stoops, and sidewalks with lovely, summery pictures of the sun, rainbows, trees, flowers.

•    Hold a bubble blowout.  Get out your bottles of bubble soap and see who can blow the biggest bubbles.  Watch as the sun makes the bubbles sparkle and shows off their magical rainbows.  Every contestant wins some bubble gum, just for trying. 

•    Organize a bike parade.  Use bright streamers, colorful pipe cleaners, ribbons, and more to dress up the bikes.

•    Take sun pictures. Gather leaves, twigs, little flowers and arrange them on special Sunprint (R) paper.  Expose your print to the sun for five minutes; then rinse it off in water.  Presto, you have a nice little memento of the start of summer.

•    Revive tradition. Get rid of what you no longer need by holding a toy-and-book swap. Ask everyone to pay a nominal fee to donate to the block’s favorite eco-charity.

•    Build sun mobiles. Use bright yellow and orange gum drops and toothpicks

•    Make home made ice cream. If you have a hand cranker somewhere, make sure everyone does a turn at the handle–before everyone gets a turn at the ice cream.

•    Set up an ice cream bar. Ask each family to contribute part of a great sundae.

•    Create wading pools. Place a few on sidewalks and consider adding a sprinkler too, so the kids can have a cool start to summer. 

•    Bob for plumbs. Set up a clean galvanized or plastic tub with clean, clear water and give the kids a chance to bob for plums.  Silly sunglasses are a nice favor.

•    Create a stoop sand box. Fill an empty wading pool with sand, and at the end of the evening, everyone can take a bucket of sand home for gardening.

•    Set up a potting table. Help kids transplant goof-proof seedlings to enjoy during the sunny days ahead.  For pots, use peat pots or recycle plastic containers such as deli or yoghurt containers.  Before the event, put a drainage hole in the bottom of each container and have a piece of sponge available to place over the hole before filling with potting mixture.  Generally, the lid will make a good saucer for the plant.  Try transplanting herbs from seed flats. 

•    Hold a circle dance. Play favorite music. Try Celtic music with a lively beat to see what kids do with it.

•    Paint faces and hands. Find the most talented face painter on the block and give each kid a sun motif on hand or face.

•    Construct sun-hats.  Roll tall cones, sized to fit, out of construction paper and put lots of rays of golden crepe paper streamers beaming out of the top.  Add strings or rubber bands to keep the hats on.

•    Make sun-crowns. Take construction paper and make crowns like the one on the Statue of Liberty.  Add beautiful gold stick-on stars at the points, if you want, since the sun is, of course, a star!  Or, find shining Celtic stickers or glow-in-the dark planets, available in sticker books at stationery stores.

•    Offer a sunny lemonade stand. Put bright circles of lemon in each glass.

•    Invent solstice taglines, poems, and stories. Post them on the STOOPendous blog.

•    Sing sun-songs. Get the words to the Beatles’ Here Comes the Sun or On the Sunny Side of the Street.  Take the Pete Seeger song Inch by Inch, Row by row, Going to make this garden grow and turn it into a STOOPendous song: Step by step, stoop by stoop, going to…what? You decide.

For grown-ups

•    Clean up and green up. Organize a block sweep so it is welcoming for the festivities.   
•    Spotlight flowers. Support neighbors adding pots of flowers with some white flowers in the mix–they’ll look stunning as the sun starts to set. 

•    Feature the arts. Invite performers to offer a short show. Organize art-making. Showcase local artists’ work.

•    Honor diversity. Learn about how different cultures celebrate the solstice and incorporate various kinds of traditions.

•    Organize a classic stoop sale.  Create a STOOPendous sale with stuff from everyone who wishes to contribute.

•    Make magic. Bring out your wind chimes and glass prisms and put them up where the wind will rustle them and the sun will catch them. Or hire a magician to do a sidewalk show.

•    Tie golden or silvery helium balloons on fences.  Make sure you dispose of them responsibly.  Latex balloons are biodegradable, but the clips and the ribbons are not.  Mylar balloons can be recycled as gift-wrap. 

•    Hold a teach-in.  Ask the science teachers, scientists, and historians to educate you about the solstice.

•    Invite an eco-speaker.  Hold a street-seminar on greening up, with solar power, plantings, and other alternatives.

•    Add light. In the spirit of the old bonfires, bring out the lights. Get out your favorite little white electric outdoor holiday lights and give them a go for just a few hours.  They look great on a stoop amidst the flowers.  Or make punch-tin lanterns by freezing water in coffee cans, using a screwdriver and a hammer to punch sun-ray patterns into the cans, and putting a little votive candle inside.  Group them in a spot out of harm’s way.

•    Make sun tea. In the early morning before the party, set up clear glass bottles of cool water with several tea bags each and put them out in the sun to brew for the festivities.  Sun tea is the clearest, most refreshing of summer teas.  Since the solstice sun is most powerful at noon, your beverage will already pack a metaphysical wallop.  Serve it in the evening over ice with a little fruit juice or a little more wallop, if you prefer.  Who can come up with the best Brooklyn (tip of the hat to Long Island) tea?

•    Invent a drink. What will become your block’s STOOPendous drink classic? Gingerale or bubbly with yellow and red fruit?

•    Plan a potluck or progressive dinner.  Set up a few tables for the buffet and ask people to contribute a favorite dish and drink.  Sit on stoops to eat. Or provide various parts of the meal at different stoop sites—appetizers on one stoop, main dishes on another, desserts someplace else. Consider an elegant Swedish-inspired mid-summer’s feast. 

•    Hold a pizza bake-off. Buy pizza crusts or dough so that each family can make and bring out a different, sunny bright pizza with lots of summer veggies on top. 

•    Feature fresh foods. Make the biggest bowl of baby greens and other veggies and complement it with other foods for a simple, festive meal. Or offer different kinds of finger foods along the street.

•    Make a yellow meal. Set up grills and do dogs. When they are done, slather on the golden mustard. Serve with grilled yellow squash. Think about how to use bananas, pears, and cornmeal.

•    Dance the sidewalks.  Bring out music–such as Martha and the Vandellas–and set up a place for groovin’.   A light coating of sand on the stoop mixed with a little silvery or golden glitter will look great as the sun begins to set. 

•    Do the classic games of summer.  Choose ones that are small enough to stay on the stoop.  Let little video-game-conditioned fingers try the challenges of jacks and marbles.  (Set up a marble court in an empty plastic pool to minimize run-off.)  Play cards. Showcase board games.

•    Organize a visit to Coney Island. For part of the day, walk the boardwalk and ride in the bright sun.

•    Make music.  Set aside some stoops for musicians to jam and for appreciative listeners.  Ask them to mix in a few solstice favorites such as Sunny Afternoon.

For the All-Slope-Solstice-Shout-Out
Get ready to get loud!

•    Pick up an official STOOPendous kazoo. Visit the STOOPendous website.

•    Create comb-and-waxed-paper noise makers.  Get a clean comb.  Cut the waxed paper to the width of the comb and twice its depth, so you can fold it over and cover both sides.  Press your lips against the wax paper and comb and vocalize. 

•    Make sunny-bright paper plate shakers.  Fold a paper plate in half.  Paint the bottom side with two summer or sun motifs (one on each half) and let them dry. “Fill” the plate with a handful of uncooked dried beans, and staple the edges.

•    Construct a rattle.  Place three or four uncooked dried beans or chickpeas into a plastic egg left over from last Easter’s hunt.  But, remember, this is not for the littlest ones–small parts, potential choking hazard.

•    Blow across the top of a glass soda bottle. What a satisfying, deep, round sound.

•    Get out the pots and pans.  Use pans, lids, and spoons to improvise percussion sections, including cymbals and gongs.  Grab your ridged broiler pan.  Strum it with a stick.

•    Make drums. Use yoghurt containers, oatmeal boxes, and more.  Create lots bigger drums out of empty cat litter barrels. 

•    Raid the family toy box. Gather up little tambourines, toy xylophones, even glockenspiels!

•    “Play” wind chimes. Use a long-handled metal spoon.

•    Improvise rhythm sticks. Two chunky pieces of a wooden building set make great rhythm sticks.

•    Gather whistles, horns, and flutes. Find one you bought at all those museum gift shops.

•    Run the noisiest battery-operated toys in your home.  Find the roaring race cars, toy fire trucks, yapping toy dogs. 

•    Sing!  Summer is a-hummin in.

Whatever you do, keep the “us” in STOOPendoUS!