Lime Rock revs up for 2025 season of milestones

Lime Rock Park President and CEO Dicky Riegel inspected progress on the venue’s new car storage facility during a tour of the construction in mid-March.
Debra A. Aleksinas
Lime Rock Park President and CEO Dicky Riegel inspected progress on the venue’s new car storage facility during a tour of the construction in mid-March.
SALISBURY — Bucolic Lime Rock Park was abuzz with activity on a recent weekday morning in early March. With less than three months to go before the historic park’s 2025 Memorial Day season opener, several new construction projects were underway.
Ground has been broken on a new beer garden, steel beams are shaping a garage condo storage facility and a new pit lane designed to accommodate 36 vehicles and enhance driver safety is taking shape along the main track, along with newly installed fencing and guardrails.
The park, nestled in the heart of Lakeville, is also upgrading corporate entertainment this year by unveiling a series of premium hospitality experiences including private gatherings at the Connecticut circuit which will debut at the highly anticipated NASCAR CRAFTSMAN Truck Series weekend June 27 and 28 and is expected to lure 12,000 to 15,000 guests.
“We are on the cusp of the 2025 season, and April 1st marks the 4th anniversary of our purchase by the LLP and change in ownership,” said Dicky Riegel, the park’s president and CEO, explained. “I can safety say it’s never been in better condition and better shape to host events.”
The historic venue, in its 68th year, is expected to reach a major milestone this season asthe NASCAR event, which is expected to be one of the largest events in Lime Rock’s history, will be broadcast live on the FOX Network to millions of viewers, a first for the iconic venue and its unique 1.53-mile, seven turn road course, according to Jamie Kistner, the park’s chief marketing officer.
In March, Lime Rock Park named the Laborers’ International Union of North America as the official title sponsor of the NASCAR race weekend.
“With LIUNA’s support,” said Riegel, “We’re not just bringing NASCAR back to Lime Rock Park, we’re making history.”
850-horsepower V8’s
Lime Rock will open its 2025 season with the highly anticipated Trans Am Memorial Day Classic, providing a family-picnic atmosphere on the hillsides. The weekend will kick off summer and include an array of racing, plus a car show and beer fest.
The Trans Am Series presented with Pirelli will feature the thunder of 850-horsepower American V8 engines showcased in the premier TA category. The TA2 class revives the muscle car wars of the late 1960s, featuring Ford Mustang, Chevrolet Camaro and Dodge Challenger in a 100-mile race. Import and domestic sports cars will be highlighted in the XGT, SGT and GT classes.
Park guests are invited to bring their Sunday driver to the popular Royals’ Garage Car Show and see if they can take home bragging rights, and possibly a trophy. Proceeds benefit a local charitable organization. The Connecticut Craft Beer Grand Prix will complete the Memorial Day weekend event.
Not to be missed is the 43rd Historic Festival, once again held over Labor Day weekend, Aug. 28 through Sept. 1, beginning with a 17-mile Vintage Race Car and Sports Car Parade on Thursday and on-track action the rest of the weekend.
The 2025 season will wrap up with Lime Rock Park celebrating every generation of the Mazda MX-5 as MiataCon returns Oct. 24 and 25, following a successful second year with over 500 Miatas. Riegel revealed that he will be among the Miata drivers participating in the event.
“We really celebrate the fact that we are a park and unlike many other racetracks in the world, we don’t have ticketed seating here and we intend to keep it that way.”
Building new traditions with race fans
In addition to offering a season full of high-octane thrills, including the 2025 arrival of the ARCA Menards Series, Riegel said he is thrilled that the park will be hosting one leg of the GRIDLIFE Festival Tour, the fastest-growing, youngest motorsports event paddock in the world. The festival will feature a three-day format at Lime Rock, August 15 through 17.
Beyond the track, GRIDLIFE blends car culture with live music, offering structured racing, showcasing vehicles from the ‘80’s, ‘90’s and 2000’s, and delivering high-energy performances on its musical stages.
Riegel noted that roughly 80 percent of those who attend GRIDLIFE are first-timers to Lime Rock Park.
“It’s really more of a community racing group than it is a championship series,” drawing younger crowds and family fun, he noted. “We are 68 years old and have a lot of fans, but we do need to build new traditions with new fans to ensure our future.
Supporting local causes is a priority
Lime Rock Park is dedicated to strengthening its local communities through charitable work and community partners, said its CEO, who had met earlier in the morning at the infield chalet with representatives from Women’s Support Services, a nonprofit domestic violence agency serving the Northwest Corner, to discuss plans for this year’s Trade Secrets Rare Plans and Garden Antiques Sale at the park.
Among the community groups with planned events at the park in 2025 are the Little Guild’s Great Country Mutt Show, the Salisbury Rotary Club’s Lighting Up Lime Rock Park fireworks display and the Litchfield Hills Highland Games.
Riegel said an estimated 225,000 people visit the park annually to drive, spectate and attend community events.
“We are not just a racetrack. We want to be a venue that is most welcoming, most beautiful and has all the amenities so that people will be comfortable here, have a great time and want to come back.”
New garage condos, beer garden
The prior night’s downpour caused huge puddles around the worksite where construction on a 20-unit car storage facility is expected to be completed in June, just in time for the big NASCAR event, Riegel explained as he navigated the mud to check on progress.
The garage condos offer secure storage, direct track access and premium owner amenities, overlooking the track’s West Bend.
“The drivers can park cars on site instead of trailering them to and from Lime Rock Park on rural roads,” said Riegel, who noted that park officials worked closely with the town’s Land Use Office on the project.
Another new project in the works merges craftsmanship and camaraderie: a 26-foot by 52-foot beer garden crafted by the Connecticut-based Country Carpenters, which specializes in post and beam construction.
A ceremonial groundbreaking took place in late February, with a ribbon-cutting planned in May.
Author and cartoonist Peter Steiner signed books at Sharon Summer Book Signing last summer.
The 27th annual Sharon Summer Book Signing at the Hotchkiss Library of Sharon will be held Friday, Aug. 1, from 4:45 to 7:30 p.m.; Saturday, Aug. 2, from 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.; and Sunday, Aug. 3, at noon.
Friday’s festivities will honor libraries and the power of the written word. In attendance will be 29 locally and nationally recognized authors whose books will be for sale. With a wide array of genres including historical fiction, satire, thrillers, young adult and non-fiction, there will be something for every reader.
The event will include a selection of hors d’oeuvres and drinks, followed by eight festive author dinners where writers will read and discuss their work one-on-one with attendees.
Saturday will feature a new Page to Plate program that merges the literary and culinary worlds. Just as writing is a practice of patience and love, so too is the art of cooking. Cookbooks and food writing make cooking teachable to those excited to learn and celebrate the art of a perfect meal.
Through a combination of demonstrations and conversations, acclaimed cookbook authors and chefs will cover a variety of delicious topics. Highlights include a discussion with Chris Morocco, food director of “Bon Appetit” magazine and “Epicurious.” Sharon resident and chef Jessie Sheehan will demonstrate recipes from her cookbook “Salty, Cheesy, Herby, Crispy Snackable Bakes: 100 Easy-Peasy, Savory Recipes for 24/7 Deliciousness.”
With the combination of vetted recipes and thorough discussion from food experts, attendees are sure to leave knowing how to cultivate the ultimate act of service: the gift of a full stomach.
Sunday will be brunch at a private Sharon residence hosted by Graham Klemm and Cody O’Kelly to celebrate author Carolyn Klemm and her cookbook “Culinary Collection: Favorite Country Recipes.”
For more information and to purchase tickets, visit hotchkisslibraryofsharon.org
All proceeds support the programs at The Hotchkiss Library of Sharon.
Ukraine Emergency Fundraiser at The Stissing Center in 2022 raised over $120,000 for Sunflower of Peace.
The spirit of Ukraine will be on display at the Stissing Center in Pine Plains on Sunday, July 27. Beginning at 5 p.m., the “Words to America from Ukraine” fundraiser is set to showcase the simultaneous beauty of Ukrainian culture and the war-time turmoil it faces, all the while fundraising in support of Ukrainian freedom.
“Words to America from Ukraine” aims to remind and spread awareness for the suffering that often gets forgotten by those who live in comfortable worlds, explained Leevi Ernits, an organizer for the event. “We are trying to make an attempt to remind people that we are human, and we are connected with human values,” she said. “With very few words, poetry can express very deep values.”
Sponsored by the Town of Stanford, Friends of Ukraine, L.E. Design LLC, Bartelby & Sage, Oblong Books and Borshch of Art, the fundraiser will host the recitation of war-time Ukrainian poetry. Readings will include the works of Vasyl Sagaydak, Oksana Lutsyshyna, Serhiy Zhadan, Victoria Amelina, Marjana Savka, Ostap Slyvynsky, and Mariana Harahonych.
“Poems are fishhooks into our souls,” added Mark Lagus, another event organizer, explaining why poetry was chosen for the main event.
Guests will also enjoy a performance by Ukrainian Village Voices, a New York City- based band dedicated to preserving and promoting traditional Ukraining Folk music. The evening will also feature speakers Jed Sunden and Maria Genkin, along with a live auction. Food and drink will be provided by Bartelby & Sage, a sustainable, local and female-owned company.
All ticket proceeds, bids, and donations will go directly to Razom for Ukraine, a U.S.-based nonprofit. Razom, meaning “together” in Ukrainian, has the mission of “contributing to the establishment of a secure, prosperous and democratic Ukraine,” through “creating, inspiring, and collaborating on initiatives that motivate people to think, partner and do.”
Tickets, donation opportunities, and more information are all available by visiting www.wordsfromukraine.org
Celebrating its 45th year, the Grumbling Gryphons will perform at HVRHS Friday, Aug. 1, at 7 p.m.
The Grumbling Gryphons Traveling Children’s Theater is preparing to celebrate its 45th year — not with fanfare, but with feathers, fabric, myth, chant, and a gala finale bursting with young performers and seasoned artists alike.
The Gryphons’ 2025 Summer Theater Arts Camp begins July 28 and culminates in a one-night-only performance gala at Housatonic Valley Regional High School on Friday, Aug. 1 at 7 p.m. Founder, playwright, and artistic director, Leslie Elias has been weaving together the worlds of myth, movement and theater for decades.
“We’re a touring company that is participatory,” Elias said with her trademark storytelling cadence. “Even when there’s no pre-performance workshop, it’s still participatory. Always.”
Founded in 1980 “in a little basement apartment on the lower east side with co-founder Vanessa Roe,” said Elias,Grumbling Gryphons (recipients of the 2003 Connecticut Governor’s Arts Award) has long occupied a unique niche: part performance troupe, part educational outreach, part community ritual. Whether dramatizing Greek myths, Native American legends, or original tales about bees and bogs, the company’s ethos centers on inclusion, transformation, and hands-on engagement.
This summer’s camp offers children ages six and up five fast-paced days of storytelling, acting, mask-making, and rehearsal. The first three days will take place at Elias’s own home studio — a tucked-away space filled with costumes, puppets, and instruments — before moving into full performance prep mode.
“In the ideal world, we would have more time,” she laughed. “It’s a lot of pressure to be performing for the public after five days. But we’re going to do our best.”
The gala performance, she explained, is a kind of theatrical mosaic — scenes and excerpts from Grumbling Gryphons’ vast repertoire, some showcasing seasoned adult performers and others giving campers center stage. The cast will include returning campers, newcomers, and guest artists drawn from the Gryphons’ decades-spanning circle of collaborators including mask maker and artist Ellen Moon.
“We’re still figuring out exactly what we’ll do,” said Elias, “but it’s kind of like a smorgasbord… a celebration. And it’s open — if anybody wants to get their kids involved, or even volunteer, we welcome you.”
Photo provided
Elias’s own theater background winds through early improvisational schools, Viennese dance traditions, and experimental spaces like Henry Street Settlement. As a child on Long Island, she studied with jazz pianist Ivan Fiedel and dancer Rosalind Fiedel, eccentric mentors who nurtured her taste for the surreal and spontaneous.
“Mr. Fiedel was a character,” she recalled. “He would smoke a cigar… and take the cigar in his ear and the smoke would come out the other end. I don’t know how he did it.”
Elias built Grumbling Gryphons with this sense of magic — not as a traditional company, but as a living, evolving story in itself. Whether working with preschoolers or middle-schoolers, audiences in botanical gardens or historic town halls, the Gryphons invite kids to become creators — to chant, to improvise, to embody archetypes from ancient lore or environmental parables.
And that’s what this summer’s camp and gala are all about. “It’s more than theater,” Elias said. “It’s myth, poetry, movement — it’s about building self-esteem, imagination. It’s about transformation.”
For more information, to register a child for the 2025 Summer Theater Camp, or to inquire about volunteering, visit grumblinggryphons.org
Attendees practive brushstrokes led by calligraphy teacher Debby Reelitz.
Calligrapher Debby Reelitz came to the David M. Hunt Library to give a group of adults and children an introduction to modern calligraphy Thursday, July 17.
Reelitz said she was introduced to calligraphy as a youngster and has been a professional calligrapher and teacher for more than 25 years.
She said there is no age barrier to learning the basics. “Once children can hold a pen or pencil, they can do it.”
Reelitz said her 5th-grade teacher introduced her to the art.
Then her mother pressed her into service doing the lettering for “4-H certificates and gift cards.”
Reelitz handed out a sampler and blank sheets of paper and then turned to the easel for demonstration purposes.
She noted that the letters (I,T,H,L,E and F) on the top row of the sampler were not alphabetically arranged.
Rather, they comprised a “latter family” of similar shapes.
Soon enough the entire group of six adults and three children were concentrating and turning out decent versions of the letters
Reelitz alternately demonstrated and encouraged the novices.
“Remember, this is not an instant gratification skill.”