by Elizabeth J. Normen, Fall 2017
With this issue, Connecticut Explored celebrates its 15th anniversary! Since our first issue in Fall 2002 we’ve produced 60 issues, more than 3,800 pages, hundreds of stories, a book, a website, a podcast with more than 30 episodes (approximately 900 minutes of Connecticut history), and—launching this fall—a social studies resource about Connecticut for third-graders.
It’s fitting that we celebrate this milestone with an issue organized around the theme “breaking barriers.” No one was confident we’d succeed, and for years people regularly asked me if we were going to run out of things to write about. Happily, despite our having lost (as of press time) our CT Humanities funding (due to state budget cuts to that organization’s funding), we’re still here and plan to be here, counting as we have for 15 years on reader support and our organizational partners.
We’re just the baby in the bunch of stories featured in this issue and can’t remotely compare our breakthrough with the struggles and accomplishments of the Greater Hartford Chapter of the NAACP, which celebrates its 100th anniversary this year, The Amistad Center for Art & Culture, celebrating its 30th anniversary this year, and the American School for the Deaf, celebrating its 200th anniversary this year. We tip our hat to these organizations and to the others whose inspiring stories we share in this issue.
15th-Anniversary Friends Campaign
This fall please think about what you love about Connecticut Explored, your favorite stories—stories that surprised and delighted you over the years—and show your support with a gift to the 15th-Anniversary Friends of Connecticut Explored. A symbolic gift of $150 or more this year will help us fill the budget gap caused by the loss of CT Humanities funding and help support our education initiatives, including the roll-out of Where I Live: Connecticut, the new social studies textbook and website about Connecticut that supports the state’s new third-grade social studies frameworks.
Elizabeth J. Normen
Publisher