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

One book transforms a school

WEBUTUCK — The Webutuck Central School District’s Board of Education (BOE) unanimously decided to provide funding this year toward grades K-3 at Webutuck Elementary School for the One School/One Book reading program that was held last year as a part of the People As Reading Partners (PARP) month-long event.

Last year’s program was held in the Amenia Elementary building, where staff toiled to transform the classrooms and hallways into a blossoming rainforest in honor of the book, “Snake and Lizard,� by Joy Cowley. A private donation of $2,000 allowed the school to buy hardcover copies of the book for every student.

Teacher Lynn Buckley said the project was met by the students with “lots of enthusiasm,� and got the students (and their parents) actively participating in the event, which took place over an entire month and culminated in the “rainforest day.�

School librarian Beth Murphy mentioned that participation in the PARP program, which is held every year, went up 10 percent as the result of the reading initiative; 89 percent of the students were actively involved.

The staff has already decided that this year’s book will be “Akimbo and the Lions,� by Alexander Smith, giving the PARP-filled month an African theme to work with. The problem, Buckley explained to the Board of Education during its Feb. 1 meeting, was that the staff didn’t want to go back to the same donor to ask for another contribution, yet it was having trouble raising the approximately $1,250 needed to put on the program again.

It was a no-brainer for members of the BOE, who had nothing but positive things to say about a program that showed such significant and concrete results.

Board of Education President Dale Culver went on to add that he would like the program’s budget to be incorporated into the elementary school’s budget every year.

“It’s a small input [financially] for a large return,� he said. “It’s not hard to figure out how to find that [money]. It will happen.�

Feb. 26 will be the day that Webutuck Elementary is transformed into the grasslands of Africa. Buckley and Murphy confirmed that the staff has plenty of surprises for the event.

“It’s about interaction to the point where the child is thinking on another level,� Murphy said.

“The students are actively participating,� Buckley said. “One of the parts of the reading is engagement, and this is a perfect way to encourage reading.�

Lakeville Journal

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.