Street Fair celebration echoes spirit of service

Street Fair celebration echoes spirit of service

State Rep. Maria Horn (D-64) talks with Anne Childs in the nonprofit organization tent at The Lakeville Journal Street Fair Saturday, Aug. 2. Childs was representing Great Mountain Forest at the event on Academy Street in Salisbury.

Patrick L. Sullivan

SALISBURY — The Lakeville Journal Street Fair took place on a blocked-off Academy Street Saturday, as families brought children to get their faces painted, receive a custom-tied balloon, a toy duck and/or octopus, and sing along with Danny Tieger.

Meandering down Academy Street attendees encountered the sibling team of Izzy and Charlie Wolff, who were selling bracelets they made themselves for $10 apiece to benefit Camp Jabberwocky, a camp for persons with disabilities in Martha’s Vineyard.

Missy Wolff, their mother, said that this was the third summer the children had been selling the bracelets. They had raised some $6,000 over that period, which is impressive at $10 a pop, and even more so at $5, which was the original price.

Audrey Cole, whose business card refers to her as being with the “Senior Medicare Patrol” for the Western CT Area Agency on Aging in Waterbury, was securing her signs and pamphlets from a persistent breeze.

She said her specialty is Medicare fraud as committed against unwary senior citizens.

In a nutshell, her advice to anyone who gets a dodgy phone call about their Medicare status is “Don’t engage.”

What makes a call dodgy?

“If you didn’t initiate the call.” In other words, this isn’t someone calling the senior back with an answer to a question.

Other signs of skullduggery are calls that raise fear in some way. (Sometimes it’s as crude as a threat to cancel a person’s Medicare unless they give up bank account information.)

Or calls that come during holidays.

Cole said that when banks and government offices are closed, it gives the crooks more time to empty a victim’s bank accounts.

On a more bucolic note, Danny Tieger (with his guitar) was singing to an ever-shifting group of children, most of whom seemed to know him.


Danny Tieger played guitar and sang for a group of children during The Lakeville Journal Street Fair Saturday, Aug. 2.Patrick L. Sullivan

As parents held up phones to record the doings for posterity, Tieger got a group to pitch in on a number called “Penelope Poppins.”

Over in the non-profit organization tent, State Rep. Maria Horn (D-64) chatted with Lakeville Journal Editor John Coston as well as Anne Childs and Caroline Collins from Great Mountain Forest.

Christine Gevert was urging visitors to sign up for season tickets for Crescendo, and Craig Davis and Lynn Martorell were spreading the word about East Mountain House, a new hospice facility opening soon in Lakeville.

Vance Cannon from the 21st Century Fund for HVRHS had a special treat for the younger set: little octopi that were made with a 3D printer at the Mahoney-Hewat Science and Technology Center at Housatonic Valley Regional High School.

The octopi made an excellent set when paired with the toy ducks available at The Lakeville Journal tent.

At the balloon and face painting tent, the youngsters who weren’t having their faces adorned were choosing from a balloon menu that included a sword, dog, flower, snake and magic wand.

Northwest Passage, with Ed Thorney, Scott Camara, Greg Riess and Dave Mallison started their set at about 1 p.m., opening with “Drift Away.”

Those with an appetite could try a lobster roll, tacos, specialty candy and vegan wraps and burgers.

Latest News

Robin Wall Kimmerer urges gratitude, reciprocity in talk at Cary Institute

Robin Wall Kimmerer inspired the audience with her grassroots initiative “Plant, Baby, Plant,” encouraging restoration, native planting and care for ecosystems.

Aly Morrissey

Robin Wall Kimmerer, the bestselling author of “Braiding Sweetgrass” and a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, urged a sold-out audience at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies on Friday, March 13, to rethink humanity’s relationship with the natural world through gratitude, reciprocity and responsibility.

Introduced by Cary Institute President Joshua Ginsberg, Kimmerer opened the evening by greeting the audience in Potawatomi, the native language of her ancestors, and grounding the talk in a practice of gratitude.

Keep ReadingShow less

Melissa Gamwell’s handmade touch

Melissa Gamwell’s handmade touch
Melissa Gamwell, hand lettering with precision and care.
Kevin Greenberg
"There is no better feeling than working through something with your own brain and your own hands." —Melissa Gamwell

In an age of automation, Melissa Gamwell is keeping the human hand alive.

The Cornwall, Connecticut-based calligrapher is practicing an art form that’s been under attack by machines for nearly 400 years, and people are noticing. For proof, look no further than the line leading to her candle-lit table at the Stissing House Craft Feast each winter. In her first year there, she scribed around 1,200 gift tags, cards, and hand drawn ornaments.

Keep ReadingShow less
Regional 7 students bring ‘The Addams Family’ to the stage

The cast of “The Addams Family” from Northwest Regional School District No. 7 with Principal Kelly Carroll from Ann Antolini Elementary School in New Hartford.

Monique Jaramillo

Nearly 50 students from across the region are helping bring the delightfully macabre world of “The Addams Family” to life in Northwestern Regional School District No. 7’s upcoming production. The student cast and crew, representing the towns of Barkhamsted, Colebrook, New Hartford and Norfolk, will stage the musical March 27 and 28 at 7 p.m., with a 2 p.m. matinee on March 29 in the school’s auditorium in Winsted.

Based on the iconic characters created by Charles Addams, the musical follows Wednesday Addams, who shocks her famously eccentric family by falling in love with a perfectly “normal” young man. When his parents come to dinner at the Addams’ mansion, two very different families collide, leading to an evening of secrets, surprises and unexpected revelations about love and belonging.

Keep ReadingShow less
google preferred source

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

‘Quilts of Many Colors’ opens at Hunt Library

Garth Kobel, Art Wall Chair, Mary Randolph, Frank Halden, Ruth Giumarro, Project Chair, Maria Bulson, Barbara Lobdell, Sherry Newman, Elizabeth Frey-Thomas, Donna Heinz around “The Green Man.”

Robin Roraback

In honor of National Quilt Day, a tradition established in 1991, Hunt Library’s second annual quilt show, “Quilts of Many Colors,” will open Saturday, March 21, with a reception from 5 to 7 p.m. The quilts, made by members of the Hunt Library Quilters, will be displayed through April 17. All quilts will be for sale, and a portion of each sale goes to the library.

At the center of the exhibit is a quilt the Hunt Library Quilters collaborated on called the “Quilt of Many Colors,” inspired by Dolly Parton’s song”Coat of Many Colors.” Each member of the Hunt Library Quilters made two to four 10-inch squares for the twin-size quilt, with Gail Allyn embroidering “The Green Man” for the center square. The Green Man, a symbol of rebirth, is also a symbol of the library, seen carved in stone at the library’s entrance. One hundred percent of the sale of this quilt benefits the library.

Keep ReadingShow less

New in at Kenise Barnes Fine Art

New in at Kenise Barnes Fine Art

New works on display at Kenise Barnes Fine Art in Kent

D.H. Callahan

Since 2018, Kenise Barnes Fine Art in Kent has been displaying an impressive rotation of works across a range of artists and mediums. On Saturday, March 14, art enthusiasts arrived to see a new exhibition at the gallery featuring a wide variety of new pieces.

Large-scale paintings by David Collins and Melanie Parke alongside small 3-by-3 inch oil-on-panel works by Sally Maca.

Keep ReadingShow less
Trailblazing divorce attorney Harriet Newman Cohen to speak at Norfolk Library

Harriet Newman Cohen

Provided

Harriet Newman Cohen weathered many storms in her five-decade-long journey to become one of the nation’s most celebrated divorce attorneys. Voted one of the top 100 attorneys in New York for many years, Cohen served as president of the New York Women’s Bar Association and has been a champion of divorce reform. She and her co-author, journalist David Feinberg, will give a book talk about her memoir, “Passion and Power: A Life in Three Worlds,” at the Norfolk Library on Sunday, March 22 at 2 p.m.

What began as a personal record of her life, intended for her family, grew into a memoir that journalist Carl Bernstein describes in his endorsement as “wise and riveting.” Born in 1932 in Providence, Rhode Island, to parents who immigrated in 1920 from Ukraine and Poland, Cohen traces the arc of her life and the challenges she faced entering a legal profession that was overwhelmingly male at the time, leading to her success as a maverick divorce attorney fighting for women’s rights and equity in the law. She received her Juris Doctor, cum laude, from Brooklyn Law School in 1974, one year after Roe v. Wade was decided. She is a founding partner of Cohen Stine Kapoor LLP in New York City, a family and matrimonial law firm she formed in 2021, at age 88, with her daughter Martha Cohen Stine and Ankit Kapoor.

Keep ReadingShow less
google preferred source

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

google preferred source

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