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Cornwall achieves top voter turnout rate in state

CORNWALL — Approximately 90% of Cornwall’s electorate turned out in the most recent cycle to cast their votes.

The voting rate was the highest in Connecticut in the 2024 election, announced First Selectman Gordon Ridgway at a meeting of the Board of Selectmen Nov. 19.

“I do believe we get a trophy for that,” said Ridgway.

He noted the turnout was “almost identical” to the town’s voting rate in the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections, each a hair above 90%.

Ridgway reported a nearly even split between early voters and Election Day voters.

“I think a lot of people did appreciate the early voting.”

Per state law, 5% of all voting precincts must have machine totals audited following any election. This year, Cornwall was chosen to be audited.

On Saturday, Nov. 23, the ballots from the audited precincts were matched against the vote totals from the machines. No errors were found.

Riley Klein

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Cornwall Historical Society celebrates Connecticut’s Black patriots

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On Saturday, Oct. 24, at the Cornwall Historical Society, author and genealogist John Mills will breathe new life into the stories of some of Connecticut’s more underappreciated patriots. The reason these heroes were forgotten? They were Black.

At a time when white colonists were fighting for their own liberty and political independence, many Black men who fought alongside them remained enslaved. Some risked their lives only to return to bondage. Though enslaved people were promised freedom from both sides of the Revolutionary War in exchange for their service, Great Britain, too, was still deeply dependent on slavery. For Black people in America, the war presented both extraordinary risks and uncertain paths to the freedom that white colonists were demanding for themselves.

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Provided

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From Friday, Oct. 23, through Sunday, Oct. 25, Lenox, Massachusetts, will host the inaugural field festival, a three-day gathering of writers, artists, scholars and cultural figures at Shakespeare & Company. Billed as a festival of ideas, entertainment, learning and discovery, field brings together an impressive roster of voices to explore everything from the deeply personal to the profoundly political.

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The Pink House AM is serving up community

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It all started with a yoga class. Mare Rubin was working on her second act after leaving the Upper West Side, where she’d raised a family and worked in corporate marketing. Newly empty nesters, she and her husband decided to move to the wilds of northwestern Connecticut, where they had spent 15 years as weekenders, to see what life in the woods had in store for them.

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No matter where they are in the world, musicians seem to find other musicians. There’s a shared language, a shared experience of being on stage and performing, and a shared enthusiasm for making those melodies by themselves or together. Such is the case with Norfolk and Brooklyn-based cosmic Americana band Sons of Astro.

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