Thank you!
Your support is sustaining the future of local news in our communities.

North Canaan celebrates with poetry and song

North Canaan celebrates with poetry and song

Selectmen Jesse Bunce (left), Melissa Pinardi (middle) and NCES Principal Beth Johnson water the newly-planted cedar near the close of the Arbor Day proceedings on Friday, April 24.

Provided

NORTH CANAAN – The North Canaan Elementary School’s arboretum was expanded yet again on Friday, April 24 in celebration of Arbor Day. With much fanfare, music and verse, the school community welcomed an eastern red cedar as the Class of 2029’s class tree.

“We are probably the best shaded campus in Litchfield County,” said local tree preservationist Tom Zetterstrom, reflecting several days after the event. Friday’s ceremony was NCES’ 36th observance since its first ceremony in 1990, and the cedar, which was planted by the Town Crew the day before, is the 36th tree Zetterstrom has personally ushered into the school’s lush grounds.

“Diversity promotes resilience and stability in forests,” he said, explaining that since he started coordinating Arbor Day at NCES in 1991, his goal has been to introduce a new native shade tree each spring.

The real focus, though, is the students. “We need to nurture and educate the environmentalists of the future if we’re going to sustain life on this planet,” Zetterstrom said.

The Class of ’29 seems up to the task. During Friday’s proceedings, five fifth graders recited arboreal odes to the gathered crowd of NCES students, staff, and community members, including selectmen Jesse Bunce and Melissa Pinardi.

Following the verse came ecological education, presented by Zetterstrom and fellow North Canaan Beautification Committee member Christian Allyn, both NCES alums. The two, who are both deeply involved in the regional fight against invasive plants, advocated for caring for local trees.

Lower school students then performed Arbor Day songs and mulched the freshly planted cedar, and the eighth grade presented former music teacher Mary Davidson with a signed poster in thanks for her years of teaching the same songs“that everyone in Canaan now knows,” as Zetterstrom said. NCES Principal Beth Johnson thanked the Canaan Foundation for funding the yearly additions to the school’s arboretum, the town staff and officials who helped plant the tree, Laurelbrook Natural Resources for providing soil, Tallon Lumber for mulch and finally Zetterstrom and Allyn as the North Canaan Beautification Committee.

Alec Linden

Latest News

Cornwall Historical Society celebrates Connecticut’s Black patriots

Cornwall Historical Society celebrates Connecticut’s Black patriots

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.

Keep ReadingShow less
education

A sanctuary for second chances

A sanctuary for second chances

Stephanie Saetta runs Charlie Chicken Bones, a sanctuary in Salisbury.

Madi Long
You only get one or two of these soul connection dogs, so I do this in his honor.
— Stephanie Saetta

Stephanie Saetta has spent much of her life caring for others. A physician at White Plains Hospital, she has another calling at home in Salisbury — one that has four legs and a wagging tail. She runs Charlie Chicken Bone Sanctuary, a nonprofit dog rescue that brings dogs from overcrowded pounds and the streets of Texas to foster homes in northwestern Connecticut, where they can begin again.

The sanctuary is named for Charlie, the dog who taught her how special a bond between a person and rescue animal can be.

Keep ReadingShow less
our community

Big ideas come to Lenox for inaugural field festival

Big ideas come to Lenox for inaugural field festival

Hunter Runnette, founder and board chair of field, has spent years fostering arts and cultural programming in the Berkshires.

Provided

What do joy, gardening, artificial intelligence, the American experiment and the creative process have in common? Quite a lot, as it turns out, at least when some of the world’s most compelling thinkers get together to talk about them.

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.

Keep ReadingShow less
community
google preferred source

Want more of our stories on Google? Click here to make us a Preferred Source.

The Pink House AM is serving up community

The Pink House AM is serving up community

Mare Rubin and Maggie Levine of the Pink House AM.

Madi Long

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.

Rubin started teaching yoga classes at the Union in West Cornwall, a space designated by the town of Cornwall as a community hub with couches, Wi-Fi, occasional events and a growing yoga class schedule. She was adjusting well but missed one important thing about city life: a casual coffee shop.

Keep ReadingShow less
business

Sons of Astro are musicians, friends and bandmates — in that order

Sons of Astro are musicians, friends and bandmates — in that order

The Sons of Astro will be at the Common Pub in Housatonic on Oct. 24 and the 2nd Home Lounge in Winsted on Nov. 14.

Provided

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.

That magnetic musicians’ bond drew Brooklyn-based singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Mike Cobb into the orbit of singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Matt Statler. The two neighbors took to each other right away and were soon playing open mics together. As an ethics professor at NYU’s Stern School of Business, Statler made the case that if he sat in for Cobb’s set and Cobb sat in for Statler’s, they could play together and double their stage time. Clearly, these men wanted to make as much music as possible. That became a little harder when Cobb and his family moved up to Norfolk, Connecticut.

Keep ReadingShow less
concerts

One more weekend to get inside the art at ArtEast

One more weekend to get inside the art at ArtEast

The participating artists in this year’s ArtEast open studios.

Provided

ArtEast’s annual October Open Studio Tour is already underway, but there’s still one more weekend to step inside the creative worlds of artists working throughout eastern Dutchess County. On Saturday and Sunday, Oct. 24 and 25, artists will once again open their studio doors, inviting visitors to see where the work happens, meet the people who make it and perhaps discover something worth taking home.

Now in its 21st year, the ArtEast October Open Studio Tour offers a self-guided journey with participating studios in Holmes, LaGrangeville, Hopewell Junction, Pawling, Patterson, Poughquag and Wingdale. Visitors can explore painting, photography, sculpture, mixed media and other artistic practices, and get some leaf-peeping in at the same time.

Keep ReadingShow less
open-studio
google preferred source

Want more of our stories on Google? Click here to make us a Preferred Source.