Join your neighbors on Saturday, June 23, for a STOOPendous party that is as big as the Slope! Mark the start of summer with your neighbors on your own stoops and sidewalks. Celebrate the summer solstice, the day when planet earth enjoys the most sunlight during the year.

This short guide offers you suggestions for how you can create a simple yet engaging solstice event on your block, in your building, or along an avenue.

Resources

For event updates, check here at www.stoopendous.org.

If you want to talk with a STOOPendous leader, contact Louise Crawford: 718-857-5842 or louisecrawford@gmail.com.

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

For more information about the Park Slope Civic Council visit http://parkslopeciviccouncil.org/

Background on the solstice

Saturday June 23 is between 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 summer 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 about to celebrate 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.

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

• Part of the excitement around STOOPendous is the STOOPendous Children’s Art Show.  Anyone under 18 can enter a Summer Solstice themed entry and there will be a show in Park Slope June 22^nd and 23^rd
  For Details Click HERE
  For the Entry Form Click HERE
  
  
• Bring out the sidewalk chalk. Up and down the block, kids can decorate stairs, stoops, and sidewalks with lovely, summery pictures of the sun and what it produces--rainbows, trees, flowers, and such.

• 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, and little flowers. 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 some pools on sidewalks and consider adding a sprinkler too, so the kids can have a cool start to summer.

• Bob for plums. 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. Find 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-season 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 site 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 Good Day Sunshine, You are my Sunshine, Here Comes the Sun, and such.
  

For the All-Slope-Solstice-Shout-Out

Get ready to get loud!

• 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 ones you bought at all those museum gift shops.

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

• Sing! Summer is a-hummin in.

With STOOPendous, we will "take back the solstice" for our lives. Make the most of this gorgeous time of year.