Richard Stratton
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125 years ago — October 1900
An electric car, one of the three running together and returning from the fair grounds, was derailed by the breaking of an axle on Wooster Street, Danbury, Sunday evening. The passengers became frightened and jumped from the car and several were cut and bruised but none seriously hurt.
SHARON — Miss Kathryn Hotaling is assisting Miss Fanny White at the bakery this week.
LIME ROCK — Carpenters are at work enlarging W.W. Norton’s cottage on Elm Ave.
The remains of Andrew Brasie were brought to Lime Rock for interment last Friday from Middletown asylum, where he died a week since. It will be remembered that Brasie was the person who made the assault upon C.W. Barnum with a knife two years or more ago.
LIME ROCK — The Tire Setting Machine Company shipped, the first of the week, one of its new model tire machines to New York, where it will be exhibition at the Carriage Makers’ Convention, which will convene next Monday.
Hon. Hubert Williams is driving these days in a very handsome rubber tred runabout.
Valuable Millerton Main Street business property for sale on easy terms. For particulars apply to Col Card, Millerton.
Quite a number took to the excursion to New York via the C.N.E. road and the Hudson river by boat on Wednesday.
It will make no difference in our fare to Chicago whether Mr. McKinley or Mr. Bryan is elected. You can go first class $17.50, second class $16.50 via the Central New England Railroad.
The first rain of any importance in many weeks arrived on Monday and gave the drought a pair of black eyes. More rain is needed before the ground freezes, but people are thankful for what we have had.
Large numbers of wild ducks are reported at Twin Lakes. They are the black variety and are more numerous than in years past, but are very wild and timid.
100 years ago — October 1925
J.G. Kimmerle of Salisbury has a new Cadillac 7-passenger sedan. Mr. Kimmerle went to Detroit to drive the car home arriving here on Saturday.
An oil stove became ignited at the home of Mrs. Margaret Norton last Friday evening and created considerable excitement for a short time. The floor was scorched and there was the makings of a serious fire. Prompt action on the part of those near at hand extinguished the blaze before it had gained great headway.
H. Roscoe Brinton and a friend flew from Mr. Brinton’s flying field in Hartford to Mitchell field at Mineola Wednesday afternoon. Roscoe is fast becoming an efficient aviator and greatly enjoys it.
Boardman & Amundson of Lime Rock, who recently purchased the mercantile business of Charles Benjamin, took possession of the store on Monday.
Mr. and Mrs. Wesley J. Tobin of Highland Park, New Jersey, have purchased from the Salisbury Iron Corporation the two houses in which George W. Belcher and Mr. Bulman were living. They also purchased the furniture from Mr. Belcher and they moved into the Belcher house Tuesday. They also purchased some acreage in the Village and they expect to improve the properties at once.
James Goggin of Canaan left his car standing in front of Lyon’s store Saturday night. When he came out the car could not be found, but was discovered in the morning in the meadow.
FOR SALE--- 5-tube radio complete. Price $160. Will sacrifice for $60. Magnivox speaker. 3 sets of ear phones, new tubes and batteries. Has to be heard and seen to be appreciated. Patrick Gibben, Salisbury School, Salisbury, Conn.
The electric current will be shut off this afternoon as the Power Co. are making changes in their lines in Lakeville and Salisbury.
Robert H. Scott of New York purchased three houses and 185 acres of land at Lime Rock from the Salisbury Iron Corporation, this also includes the quarries and the upper power dam. It is expected that Mr. Scott will start new activities in connection with his new holdings.
M.G. Fenn, the local telephone trouble expert, is working in Winsted this week.
50 years ago — October 1975
Dozens of teachers and students from Housatonic Valley Regional High School traveled to Yalesville Tuesday night to pay respects to the late Anthony J. Dichello, killed by a car Sunday night in Litchfield. Dichello was the popular and successful freshman basketball coach at HVRHS.
Conservation Officer Peter Begley gave an impressive display of his shooting ability last Sunday when he shot away a portion of the antlers of two deer locked together in combat. The deer were first observed by Dodie Clerk of Cornwall Bridge, who called retired conservation officer Gene Beeman who in turn called on Begley and Torrington-based officer Stanley Civco. Since it was a first for all involved, the officers remained on the horns of a dilemma for some time while they considered both lassoing the animals and tranquilizing them. Finally, [Begley] loaded his shotgun with a rifle slug and waited his chance. The bucks circled and fought for another half hour before they paused for a second where Begley had a clear shot. He blew away the offending portion of antler and the deer bounded away.
An early-morning ribbon-cutting ceremony on Tuesday Oct. 14 will mark the official opening of the new Shagroy Market in the off-street shopping center in Salisbury village. Proprietor George Ernst has invited the Salisbury Selectmen to take part in the 8 a.m. ceremony and promises “all kinds of surprises” for visitors of all ages.
Salisbury’s radar set has arrived and is now in operation, in the hands of Resident State Trooper Robert Smithwick. So, drivers had better keep a weather eye on their speedometers!
Pfizer Inc. workers returned to work last Thursday, less than 48 hours after they struck for the first time in the lime products plant’s history. Thursday’s settlement was brought about largely through the efforts of Calvin Kendall, GOP candidate for first selectman in Canaan, according to Steven Stupak, president of local 318 of the United Cement Lime and Gypsum Workers and Walter Lukkarila, plant manager. First Selectman Leo Segalla also visited the plant twice during the day, talking to both strikers and management.
Lakeville’s Blagden family of well-known artists will share an exhibition at The Gallery in West Cornwall from Oct. 17 through Nov. 19. Thomas Blagden and his four children — Allen, Tom, Anne Blodgett and Irene Longstreth — will show oils, acrylics, watercolors, drawings and photographs. This will be the first time in this area that the five have shown their works under one roof. Thomas, who taught art at The Hotchkiss School for some 20 years, is represented in half a dozen museum collections.
25 years ago — October 2000
SALISBURY — An unofficial town landmark has disappeared on the eve of the annual Salisbury Fall Fair. “Little Nick,” the almost-human fulltime resident of a green pickup truck parked by the Scoville Library has been missing since Saturday night. “Big” Nick Collins, owner of the Salisbury Antiques Center (and the model for the stuffed creature) said he suspects kidnapping. “I’m waiting for a ransom note,” he said early this week. “It’s probably kids or somebody who’s having fun, but if they’ve had their fun I’d love to have him back,” he said. “Just put him in the truck, no questions asked. You can even keep the chair.”
SHARON — When children and collectors proudly display a toy version of the blue and gray 1963 Ford 4000 tractor from Franklin Mint, resident Roger Elwood will know just how much the tractor looks like the original. Last week, a small team from Franklin Mint arrived at his business, Sharon Auto Body, and began measuring, drawing and taking pictures of his tractor. Part of the reason his tractor is unique and was chosen as a model for the replica toy Franklin Mint plans to create, Mr. Elwood said, is that it still has many of its original parts. The tractor still has its original tires and has never been repainted, he said, adding that it also has not been modified.
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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Connecticut is a case study of the fallacy that spending on public schools correlates with student learning. The state has been increasing spending in the name of education since the state Supreme Court’s 1977 decision in the school financing case of Horton v. Meskill, which prompted state government to increase financial grants to municipal schools, and again with passage of the Education Enhancement Act of 1986, which subsidized municipal governments for raising teacher salaries.
Ever since then student proficiency has declined or been stagnant. Indeed, education spending in Connecticut has correlated only with mediocrity and the support given to the majority political party by the teacher unions, the most influential special interest in the state. The political correlation, not the educational correlation, is what keeps education spending going up. For no one in authority in Connecticut cares much about educational results.
But the unions still seem terrified that maybe someday someone in authority will care.
The other day there was more evidence of what doesn’t work when Open the Books, a nonprofit government transparency organization based in Illinois, reported, after examining the spending of more than 12,000 school districts throughout the country, that there is a "mild inverse correlation" between spending increases and each state’s performance on the National Assessment of Education Progress, a test administered by the U.S. Education Department to measure the reading and math skills of students in fourth and eighth grades.
That is, Open the Books found that higher school spending is associated with lower test scores.
Of course that doesn’t mean that spending increases themselves cause student performance to decline. The study just suggests that other factors have far more bearing on student performance.
In June a study organized by the University of Virginia, titled "Good Fathers, Flourishing Kids," found that the academic performance gap between white and black students, a wide gap that is especially disgraceful in Connecticut, is completely closed when the fatherhood gap is closed. That is, the study found that black students do just as well in school as white students when their fathers live with them or are deeply involved in their lives.
Elected officials who cared more about educational results than supplicating the teacher unions might examine the correlations and lack of correlations here. The evidence is that the household poverty of students has far more bearing on their learning than school employee salaries. For raising school salaries doesn’t raise students out of poverty or bring their fathers into their lives.
But maybe things would change if elected officials ever became more interested in per-pupil parenting than per-pupil spending.
Of course such a change isn’t likely as long as teacher unions are more involved in politics than the public is. That’s why it increasingly seems that the only way to restore basic education is to break government’s near monopoly on it.
The private-school scholarship legislation recently enacted by the Republican majority in Congress and President Trump creates a mechanism for breaking that monopoly. The new law would give dollar-for-dollar tax credits to people donating up to $1,700 to private schools that use the donations for student scholarships.
But taxpayers in Connecticut can’t participate unless Governor Lamont or the General Assembly signify formal approval, and the teacher unions are furiously opposed.
The teacher unions complain falsely that the scholarship tax credits would take money from public schools. But the tax credits would come only from the federal government, not state or municipal government.
Indeed, the tax credits stand to put more money into basic education altogether while reducing public school expenses by moving students into private schools even as the public schools might keep getting just as much money from state and municipal government as their enrollment declined. Enrollment has been declining gradually in Connecticut but state law actually forbids schools from reducing spending even then.
What the unions really object to with the scholarship tax credits is greater parental choice and more competition with the schools the unions control.
Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years.
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SHARON — The Sharon Audubon Center, located at 325 Cornwall Bridge Road is once again offering Lizzie Mae’s brand bird seed to customers at a special discounted price through a fall pre-order bird seed sale in order to stock up for feeding the birds over the winter.
Seed varieties include a special custom Northwest Corner Blend, black oil sunflower, sunflower chips, finch favorite, woodpecker favorite, cardinal favorite, chickadee and nuthatch favorite, shell-free medley, in-shell peanuts, and various types of suet cakes. Descriptions of each variety can be found on the online order form.
Orders can be made online through the link on the Sharon Audubon Center website (audubon.org/sharon) and Facebook page, or by mailing in a completed form and payment. All orders and payments must be received by Oct. 20.
Additional bags may be purchased on the day of pick-up but will be sold at regular price.
Customers will be notified by phone or email when the orders are in, and seed can then be picked up during Audubon’s current regular business hours (Thursday to Saturday from 1 to 4:30 p.m.) or by appointment by making arrangements in advance with a staff member.
All pre-ordered seed must be picked up by Nov. 29.
Contact Wendy at 860-364-0520 x105 or wendy.miller@audubon.org.
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Johan Johnson is the new minister at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Salisbury.
Patrick L. Sullivan
SALISBURY — Rev. Johan Johnson is the new priest at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Salisbury.
He is also the chaplain at Salisbury School.
A native of New York, he is married to Gabriela Johnson. The couple have two daughters, Elizabeth and Madeline.
Johnson attended Clark University, where he studied psychology. He attended seminary at Columbia University and received a Ph.D in education from Fordham University.
Johnson said when he first came to Salisbury School in the summer of 2024 he attended services at St. John’s. “It was the first place I came to, and it had a nice feel.”
As luck would have it, there was a vacancy within six weeks.
Johnson filled in for six or eight months and then took the job.
“It was like dating, and then deciding to get married” he said.
The late David Bayersdorfer was active at St. John’s, and helped Johnson make his decision.
“He was so encouraging and welcoming,” he said. “Such a good spirit. He made me feel like this was a place that had energy.”
Johnson started in August. He said he is getting to know the parish and looking at how best to communicate “the good news we believe exists in Jesus.”
Coming up in November is a fundraiser for Haitian relief efforts. This will take the form of a trivia game, helmed by Bruce Paddock, and co-sponsored by St. John’s and the Salisbury Congregational Church.
“That way we can connect the two churches and develop the linkages between two faith communities.”
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