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Nikki Blass calls bingo numbers, July 2.
Patrick L. Sullivan
LAKEVILLE — The Canaan Child Care Center (CCCC) held a bingo and dinner fundraiser at Morgan’s Restaurant at the Interlaken Inn in Lakeville Wednesday, July 2.
Center director Fran Chapell said the center has expanded its reach.
It has taken over a community garden in North Canaan, and the produce goes to the Fishes and Loaves food pantry.
The center is hosting a group of guinea pigs from Housatonic Valley Regional High School over the summer, and has branched out into raising chickens, with nine chicks at last count.
CCCC provides backpacks, school supplies and winter outerwear for Region One families as well.
Chapell said the center’s ultimate goal is to “be helpful to families in need.”
Nikki Blass, an experienced bingo caller, handled the bingo game as the crowd of some 50 people finished their meals and got down to the serious business of the evening.
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Les Renards & Co. opened as Norfolk’s new book store benefiting the Norfolk Library. At left, Elizabeth Hilpman talks with George Cronin.
David Carley
NORFOLK — The parking spots in Norfolk’s town center were filled Thursday afternoon, July 3, for the opening of Les Renards & Co.
People packed into the new bookstore located in the Royal Arcanum building with opening day iced tea refreshments.
Used paperbacks are priced anywhere from $3 to $8, used hardcovers are anywhere from $8 to $18, and many new books at full price.
Les Renards & Co’s founder Tricia Deans described going to Barnes & Noble and buying a paperback for $24. “When did that happen?” she asked. This inspired one of the store’s goals of affordability.
For a long time, Deans has been in charge of valuing the books of better value for Norfolk Library’s summer book sale. She explained the library needed another outlet to sell these books. She said, “We have a day to sell them in the library, and we sell quite a few, but it’s only 24 hours. A lot goes back down in the basement.”
Around 30% to 40% of the books now in the store were originally donated to the library for the summer book sale, each marked by a label indicating the sale for the book is for the benefit of the library.
Deans said, “The genesis of this is to give those books a home where people can actually look at them over time and decide whether to buy them.”
The store will be open Thursday through Sunday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
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Dodge’s Pontiac Firebird
Jul 09, 2025
Photo by John Coston
Amy Dodge of North Canaan proudly shows off her 1969 Pontiac Firebird at the VFW Post Couch-Pipa Post 6851 on Saturday, July 5, at the post’s car show. Amy got the car 30 years ago when she was 18 and has restored it into a show-stopper.
Photo by John Coston
Each accordion is worth a thousand words
Jul 09, 2025
Paul Ramunni, owner and operator of New England Accordion Connection and Museum, with a small portion of his accordion collection.
David Carley
NORTH CANAAN — New England Accordion Connection and Museum is expanding to an upstairs room in the Canaan Union Station.
The “Community Music Room,” as named by Paul Ramunni, director of the museum, is intended to bring people together around joyful music.
In the spirit of preservation and the creation of new memories and stories, Ramunni’s vision for the new expansion of the museum is a place for people with any instrument to get together and jam. The inspiration for this was about a year ago when two students from the Yale Summer School of Music and Art in Norfolk came to the museum wanting to see an accordion.
Ramunni asked where they were from; one was from Iran and the other from Israel. He recalled, “At that moment, what was going on is what’s always going on over there: their families were in the middle of battles. He said ‘Paul, when we met here for the first time, there was something that connected. It was music. We both agreed that we would never let anything come between us that would ruin that bond.’”
After they left, Ramunni said the idea for a community room struck him. Regardless of background or beliefs, he said, music can bring people together.
Ramunni has more than 650 accordions in his collection, each with its own story to tell.
“When we started collecting,” said Ramunni, “I didn’t think much of the backstory. I was thinking, ‘Hey, that’s a cool little one.’” He soon found out that “there’s a lot of memories packed into each one of these things, because you only played them when you wanted to make other people happy.”
The new “Community Music Room” at Canaan Union Station.David Carley
42 years had gone by since Ramunni first picked up the instrument, and he found himself in the garage of a collector with more than a dozen accordions. He was sending them to a Holocaust Museum in Glen Cove, Long Island. “Those came out of the camps at Dachau during World War II,” Ramunni explained.
“That’s what got me going when I went around looking at accordions, I’d look for the stories. This is history here. It’s not just bottle caps that we’re collecting here. This is what people did with these things, and sacrifices they made. It’s important to preserve,” he stated.
Even the origins of the accordion, according to Ramunni, came from a desire for community. “Since the birth of the country, these things were being made in people’s shops because they wanted music… So, they came up with the first accordions,” which were smaller, wooden contraptions called flutinas, originally patented in 1829 in Vienna, Austria.
The beginning of the 20th century is when the instrument took its modern form with a larger body and piano keys. From 1900 to 1960, millions were made in the United States, and competing companies would distinguish their product with intricate case designs and impressive craftsmanship.
Perhaps more important are the stories imbued within, and as Ramunni shared, “They each have their own personality.”
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