John Francis Homan
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Turning Back the Pages - July 16, 2026
Norma Bosworth
Jul 14, 2026
125 years ago — July 1901
LIME ROCK — Emil, the fourteen-year-old son of Alfonso Ruet, was severely burned Sunday afternoon by falling into a burning coal pit on one of the wood-jobs south of Lime Rock station. The boy walked up on the pit to see if the fire was feeding properly and broke through into the burning coal.
100 years ago — July 1926
This is the time of year when many have to get back on the job to take a rest after their vacation.
Some of the automobilists who run around late at night with their muffler cut out wide open evidently imagine that they are “Hot potatoes from Cripple Creek”, in fact they feel they are regular “gol darn hot sports, by heck”. The truth of the matter is that they lack a lot of filling above the ears.
50 years ago — July 1976
The murder charge against Peter Reilly was dropped by Judge Luke F. Martin in Litchfield Superior Court Wednesday. Reilly can still be tried for manslaughter but State’s Attorney John F. Bianchi must now file a motion of intent if he wishes to try Reilly on that charge. On Tuesday, Reilly’s lawyer, T.F. Gilroy Daly, had filed a motion asking for dismissal of the murder indictment against the 21-year-old Canaan man.
An iron salamander, believed to be from Ethan Allen’s furnace, was lowered into place in Lakeville Bicentennial Park recently. Weighing over a ton, it is believed to be over 200 years old.
By fall, citizens band radio buffs across the state will no longer be able to pick up police broadcasts on their scanners as they are presently equipped. The state police commissioner’s office this week confirmed reports that the two channels now used for police communications will be abandoned and the 12 state barracks will talk to their patrol cars on four new higher-frequency channels. The new numbers are “classified information,” according to a Canaan Troop B spokesman.
SALISBURY — Mr. and Mrs. Richard F. Corroon of Wilmington, Del., have announced the engagement of their niece, Susan Brannack Skakel, to Curtis Gordon Rand, son of John A. Rand of Salisbury and Mrs. Harrison E. Salisbury of Taconic and New York City.
SALISBURY — Although there have been few reports of “lake bites” in the past week from swimmers at Lake Wononscopomuc, samples of lake water and snails will be tested by the state Department of Health in Hartford. First Selectman Charlotte Reid said Monday she personally will take the samples collected by Dr. Henry Gallup to Hartford Tuesday for examination, although, she added, she did not expect analysis results immediately.
KENT — Templeton Farms Apartments, Kent’s 24-unit project for senior citizens, will be dedicated this Saturday at 3 p.m. The project, first discussed by local organizations in 1973, has been completed in less than three years.
25 years ago — July 2001
The Sharon Laundromat at the shopping center closed its doors last month. Owners Barbara and Norman Johnson owned the business for 20 years. “We just got tired and wanted to relax,”
Shannon Perotti, daughter of Bonnie and Charles Perotti of Canaan, has been named to the dean’s list for the spring 2001 semester at St. Joseph College in West Hartford.
These items were taken from The Lakeville Journal archives at Salisbury’s Scoville Memorial Library, keeping the original wording intact as possible.
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Lessons learned from Brexit
Bill Schmick
Jul 14, 2026
It has been ten years since Brexit took center stage in the politics of the Western world. The populist furor of an unhappy electorate triggered Great Britain’s exit from the European Union. How has that worked out for the Brits?
The populist rhetoric of a “Global Britain,” their answer to MAGA, was supposed to secure their borders by reducing immigration. Bureaucracy would be jettisoned; regulations and the budget would finally be restored after 14 years of Conservative Party mismanagement.
It would be the first populism-led attempt to overhaul one of the world’s oldest and wealthiest democracies. A decade later, it appears the nation is up to its ears in chaos. Prime Minister Keir Starmer resigned this month after serving less than two years despite a landslide Labor Party victory. He was supposed to save the country from years of successive Conservative Party prime ministers.
Instead, the country is struggling with low growth, higher inflation, faltering public services and an electorate that is every bit as angry and partisan as our own. Over the past decade, the country has had six prime ministers. David Cameron, Theresa May, Boris Johnson, Liz Truss, Rishi Sunak and now Keir Starmer are some of the names you may recognize. Brexit itself, scandal, market panic, immigration, and electoral rejection are just some of the factors that have sunk Britain’s leaders.
Back when, many economists were predicting an immediate recession if the country left the EU. It didn’t happen. What happened was that, over time, the British economy grew far less than it might have if it had stayed in the trade bloc. At the same time, business investment and productivity slumped as trade suffered. The typical family is worse off by thousands of pounds per year.
The pound dripped sharply after the Brexit vote, collapsing by 10%, the largest one-day drop in its history. That triggered a sharp increase in import prices, leading to an inflation shock that affected everyone across the board. The exit from the EU also involved erecting trade barriers that hit goods exports, since the EU was still the UK’s largest trading partner until last year.
The problem deepened since no one in government had a clear plan on what to do once the votes were counted. This led to years of political infighting and indecision. A weaker currency should have led to a surge in exports, but the uncertainty around Britain’s future clouded business judgment and investment. Investment is estimated to be almost 18% lower and productivity 4% lower than it would have been if a plan had been forthcoming.
The currency has never recovered.
The Office for Budget Responsibility, the independent watchdog of the UK Treasury, predicts that the UK is on track to suffer a 4% hit to national income over a 15-year period. A U.S. National Bureau of Economic Research report claims that the country’s GDP per head is between 6% and 8% lower than it would have been without Brexit.
As for unemployment, that fell dramatically in the initial Brexit days to the lowest rates since the 1970s. However, Covid took its toll on the labor market. The employment rate has never really recovered and remains between 3% and 4% below what it would be under a “remain” decision.
Can I extrapolate from the Uk’s experiences to the present immigration, trade, and tariff policies of the Trump administration? Not really, at least in the short-term. Equity markets in both countries recovered quickly after the referendum and Trump’s Liberation Day. Both countries’ economists initially predicted a steep decline in economic activity, and both were wrong. However, over the long term (a decade in the UK), large trade policy shocks seem to lead to lower investment, productivity, and employment growth as supply chains and trade patterns unravel.
Not surprisingly, public support for Brexit has fallen since the 52% versus 48% leave vote. Today a majority of voters (56%) would back rejoining the EU, according to YouGov, and 70% of Britons support a closer relationship with the EU. Support is strongest among Labour and Green Party voters and weakest among Nigel Farage’s right-wing, Reform UK party. Reform UK members oppose rejoining the bloc by 83%. That party has gained support as immigration and affordability have become major issues for voters.
The next candidate for PM, at least among the Labour Party, is Andy Burnham, a Manchester mayor with authentic populist appeal. In a special election, Burnham beat the Reform Party, which pundits believe will clear the way for him to head his party and win the PM title in Britain. The question is how long he can last, given the issues and the populism in his country and around the world.
Readers may recall several of my past columns in which I have explained the populist wave of discontent in the U.S. and worldwide. I wrote that, here at home, over a twenty-plus-year period, no single president survived to serve a second term, except Richard Nixon (who was impeached without completing his second term).
Populist voters have a very short fuse. Promises are made, but unless real progress is made within four years, the electorate has no patience for incumbents who can’t or won’t deliver. Overseas, beyond the UK, France, Germany, and Hungary, several other countries are facing populist challenges to incumbent parties.
We are seeing this here in the U.S. as we head into the midterms. Promises made but not kept have sent President Trump’s approval ratings into the 30s. Within the Democrat Party primaries, a war is already brewing between a growing populist wing of the party and the more conservative incumbents. Established Democrats, their critics say, offer failed forty-year-old policy solutions that have been rejected out of hand by younger generations of disenfranchised voters.
Bill Schmick is a founding partner of Onota Partners, Inc., in the Berkshires.Bill’s forecasts and opinions are purely his own and do not necessarily represent the views of Onota Partners Inc.
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Looks like Democrats oppose any immigration enforcement
Chris Powell
Jul 14, 2026
Democrats in Connecticut are always looking for opportunities to deplore the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. But this week they jumped on what looked like an opportunity before determining what it was really about. They might have been embarrassed if journalists followed up about it.
It began when U.S. Rep. John B. Larson called a rally outside West Hartford Town Hall in support of a local businessman, Seyo Cecunjanin, who had been arrested and taken away by ICE agents nine days earlier as he exited a doughnut shop with his sons. Larson, joined by U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, some state legislators, and a few others demanded Cecunjanin’s release, and Larson and one of the arrested man’s sons described the arrest’s circumstances, which included guns and big black cars with covered license plates.
But WTIC-AM1080 talk show host Reese Hopkins also had shown up and unlike everyone else had brought a critical question: Did anyone know exactly why ICE had arrested Cecunjanin?
No one did -- not Larson, not Blumenthal, and none of the rally participants, including former Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin, who is challenging Larson in the Democratic primary for the party’s nomination in the 1st Congressional District, charging that Larson is too old and tired even as the rally was another proof that Larson is furiously running circles around him.
As good Democrats, they didn’t care why Cecunjanin was arrested. They came to the rally on the principle that any arrest by ICE is to be protested and in the confidence that as more illegal immigrants are admitted to the country or exempted from immigration law enforcement, the next census will lead to the creation of more Democratic-leaning congressional districts and fewer Republican-leaning ones. (It doesn’t matter that non-citizens aren’t supposed to vote; the Constitution requires that they be counted in the federal census for apportionment of congressional districts, and illegal immigrants concentrate in the Democratic “sanctuary” cities and states that subvert immigration law, states like Connecticut. With enough illegal immigrants, Democrats will have a majority in the U.S. House of Representatives forever.)
But if the rally had been postponed until Cecunjanin’s arrest was clarified, the Democrats might have not been as strident about it. ICE is usually slow to explain itself, but by the end of the day WFSB-TV3 had gotten a response. The agency said Cecunjanin, a native of Montenegro, was arrested because he came to the United States in March 1997 using a fraudulent Dutch passport and six months later an immigration judge had issued a final order of removal for him. Cecunjanin apparently had been violating the order for 29 years until last July, when he left for Serbia, returning two weeks later despite the removal order. In the meantime he racked up a conviction for drunken driving.
“Cecunjanin has made a mockery of our immigration laws on several occasions for more than two decades,” ICE said.
What do Larson, Blumenthal, Bronin, and the other rally participants think about that? What do they think ICE should have done about Cecunjanin’s repeated violation of immigration law? Should ICE have ignored them because the people at the rally say Cecunjanin is a good guy, or because they think all immigration law violations should be ignored until the violators are convicted of mass murder?
There was plenty of journalism about the rally. But it is unlikely to extend to critical follow-up questions. For critical follow-up questions about illegal immigration are politically incorrect in Connecticut.
No one would have needed any explanation from ICE to put a critical follow-up question to Blumenthal at the rally. He remarked that the immigration system is “gridlocked and dysfunctional.” He wasn’t asked why the system is overwhelmed and whose control of the federal government overwhelmed it with millions of illegal entrants and for what purpose.
Another follow-up question might be why the Democrats don’t just attempt candor and admit that their preferred solution to the problem they created is another mass amnesty, along with permanent Democratic control of the House.
Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years.
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Century-old rummage sale returns with rare finds and old treasures
Caitlin Hanlon
Jul 14, 2026
Tom Windas and Betsey Mauro try to decide on a price for a houseware item in preparation for the Cornwall Woman’s Society Rummage Sale that will be held July 18-20.
Ruth Epstein
CORNWALL– Residents are already sorting, pricing and arranging hundreds of donated items at the Mohawk Mountain Ski Area lodge as preparations begin for the Cornwall Woman’s Society’s annual Rummage Sale, a community tradition dating to 1924.
But this event is so much more than racks of clothing, tables of dishware, trays of jewelry and toys and crafts. It represents generations of Cornwall residents who have come together to support local students and nonprofits while bonding with one another to ensure the sale’s success.
Scheduled for July 18 to 20, the Rummage Sale has been held since 1924. The major event is held at the ski area, but there are satellite sale locations at Town Hall, where bargain hunters can find furniture, lamps and fine art, and the United Church of Christ Parish House, often stocked with books, small electronics and stationery.
Many volunteers sorting donations, pricing merchandise and hanging clothing shared stories of their families’ history with the sale.
Lory Bevans has vivid childhood memories of her grandfather giving her $20 and leaving her to shop for three or four hours. For years she would arrive at 5 a.m. when tickets were distributed so she could receive #1.
“I always would buy an antique suitcase to store all my purchases in,” Bevans said. “One year I was so excited to buy a calico dress. When I got home, my grandmother told me she had donated it.”
Betsey Mauro said the sale has been part of her life since infancy. Her mother, Cilla Mauro, and Thalia Scoville ran the event for many years. “I was in a playpen when I came to my first sale,” she said.
Spencer Markow also began attending the sale at a young age. His mother, Jennifer Markow, said he was born during one of the sales and spent many of his childhood birthdays there. For many years, Jennifer Markow brought cupcakes for everyone to celebrate his special day.
Cheryl Thibault is the current organizer and another who has taken the baton from her mother, Patricia Thibault, who ran it for years. It’s a real family affair with her mother, daughter and grandchildren helping out this year.
“I love being here,” she said, looking around at all the volunteers busy at work. “We raise money for important causes. This year we’re giving 10 educational gifts to students who have graduated from Cornwall Consolidated School, as well as money to a list of nonprofits.”
She spoke of the wide popularity of the sale. Many people schedule their summer vacations around it, she said.
The sale will be held Saturday, from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m., Sunday, from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. (half priced), and Monday from 9 a.m. to noon (fill a bag for $5).
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Children tour Hotchkiss’ Fairfield Farm, meet chickens
Patrick L. Sullivan
Jul 14, 2026
Children gather outside the chicken coop during a tour of The Hotchkiss School’s Fairfield Farm on Friday, July 10.
Patrick L. Sullivan
LAKEVILLE –A group of parents and curious children took a guided tour of The Hotchkiss School’s Fairfield Farm Friday, July 10 to learn how vegetables are grown using sustainable farming practices and to see the chickens in a program sponsored by the Scoville Memorial Library.
Farm Manager Bridget Lawrence-Meigs, carrying her daughter Alana, and the library’s Kyla DeRisi got the children started creating artwork with construction paper, glue and dried beans.
Cousins Wynter Landau and Jack and Charlotte Swanner took to this activity with enthusiasm, using plenty of glue.
The completed artworks were put on paper plates to dry, and the group of 16 headed off to see the farm.
The children were anxious to see animals. Lawrence-Meigs explained that apart from the occasional cow in a nearby field, the farm does not have a lot of livestock. Except for the chickens.
She explained that this batch of chickens was still young and had just recently been transferred to a large coop.
She cautioned the youngsters to be quiet, as loud noises disturb the chickens, and not to touch the fencing around the coop until she turned off the electrified part.
En route to the coop the group stopped by an unmowed area, dominated by milkweed and meant as a haven for monarch butterflies, bobolinks and kestrels.
Then it was chicken time. The children raced to the coop but heeded the warning about the electric fence.
The children suggested names for the chickens. “Henry” was popular. The chickens didn’t seem to mind.
Back under the shade behind the farm’s Grange building, the children admired their now-dry artworks and ate fresh cucumber slices.
Fairfield Farm was established in 2008 under the direction of Charlie Noyes. The farm grows 35,000 pounds of vegetables on 287 acres each year. Lawrence-Meigs said that 90% of that is consumed at the school’s dining hall, and 10% donated to local food pantries.
Lawrence-Meigs said she has an assistant and summer crew of five students. During the school year a larger contingent of students work on the farm.
The farm is open to the public, and there is a self-guided tour kiosk.
And if the timing is right, “We’ll probably send you home with a couple of cucumbers.”
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Lifelong Sharon resident launches business to help families navigate aging
Aly Morrissey
Jul 14, 2026
Meghan Kenny, left, and Taylor Miller founded Alumni Care Advisors to fill what they perceive as a gap in the market when it comes to geriatric care management.
Aly Morrissey
SHARON – Meghan Kenny is on a mission to support an aging population with the launch of a new company, Alumni Care Advisors. From small day-to-day tasks to major life transitions, Kenny’s vision is to become a trusted resource for families and individuals navigating the challenges of aging.
Kenny, a lifelong Sharon resident, is no stranger to caregiving. After serving as the director of the Salisbury Visiting Nurses Association Home Assistance (SVNA) for more than a decade, she said the time to start her own venture became evident as a growing gap in the market emerged.
“We’re in a rural area, and geriatric care management is essential in alleviating emotional, financial and physical worries,” she said. “But you really have to know what’s going on.”
Her business helps older adults and their families navigate the challenges of aging by coordinating care, assisting with insurance and Medicare paperwork, advocating with healthcare providers and connecting clients with resources.
Kenny grew up in a funeral home and eventually earned her degree in mortuary science in college. She said growing up in that atmosphere and being exposed to uncommon situations as a child and teenager prepared her for a lifelong commitment to supporting an aging population.
“It was extremely common for somebody to knock on the door when I was home, and I had to learn how to respond to different types of situations,” Kenny said.
One day, she recalled, a distraught man visited the funeral home and told Kenny that his wife had just died. “It really gave me an idea of what people go through during such an emotional and confusing time.”
Today, Kenny brings that compassion to Alumni, providing personalized geriatric care management and patient advocacy services “because no aging journey is the same.”
To date, she has supported clients with long-term care planning, insurance and Medicare paperwork, and medical bill management. But the support doesn’t stop with logistics, Kenny said. For a dementia client, Kenny recently toured a memory care facility and designed the resident’s room based on color psychology.
“Different colors and different shapes can be more calming than others when it comes to dementia,” Kenny said, “so we designed the room based on her diagnosis.” She continues to visit that client once a week to check in and communicate with the family.
The company’s name was chosen intentionally out of a deep respect for the aging community, Kenny said, and was inspired by the way high school and college alumni are often honored.
“They are the alumni of life,” she said. “They deserve the best, they deserve every option available to them and they should be given that same respectful treatment.”
Kenny launched the business alongside co-owner and senior care advocate Taylor Miller, whom she met while working at SVNA. The two spent five years working together before deciding to build Alumni.
“Taylor came in green, but she molded into this field quickly,” Kenny said. “Our morals and ethics are completely consistent, and we work really well together. Having a partner allows us to serve people around-the-clock.”
Although the business officially launched just weeks ago, Kenny and Miller already have their sights set on a larger goal.
“We want to eventually create a senior hub here in the Northwest Corner,” Kenny said. “A place for exercise classes, crafts, and opportunities for people to socialize and come together.”
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