Trade Secrets still ‘a success’ in year 24
Bunny Williams opened her garden for Trade Secrets tour visitors.
Natalia Zukerman
Guests of the rare plant and antique sale took in the sights and smells Sunday, May 19.Simon Markow
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SALISBURY — Peter Godwin described writing his memoir, “Exit Wounds: A Story of Love,” as a “literary Heimlich maneuver” at a book talk at Scoville Memorial Library Sunday, Oct. 26.
Speaking with New York Times travel editor Amy Virshup, Godwin said he wrote the book during the Covid-19 pandemic.
He said he was having trouble with another project and started writing the memoir instead.
It was a difficult time, he continued. His mother was ill and in the last year of her life and his marriage of 25 years was ending.
As he approached the age of 60, he found himself wondering who he was and where he belonged.
Godwin grew up in Zimbabwe when it was still Rhodesia. His mother was a doctor and his father was a “quintessential” Englishman abroad in the last days of the British empire.
It wasn’t until his father was old and sick that he told Godwin the truth. His father was a Polish Jew from Warsaw, whose parents had sent him to England on a language immersion trip just before the start of World War II.
“He couldn’t get back, they couldn’t get out.”
He never saw them again.
Godwin’s mother came from a “posh” family in England, and when she married his father, she was disinherited and shunned.
“That’s why they wound up in Africa.”
Even though the family lived in a remote part of Rhoidesia, and his companions growing up were African children, the family remained “culturally English.”
So when he went to England for school, “it was like looking through the wrong end of a telescope.”
“I finally got there and there were these small houses and angry faces.”
Virshup asked about his experience in Salisbury, where he and his then-wife bought a house that once belonged to bandleader Artie Shaw.
Godwin described the house as “a squat, ugly little house wedged into a hill.”
He was out of the country at the time of the sale, so he didn’t have much input.
He was happy to discover that however uninspiring the outside was, the interior offered a 270-degree view of the valley below.
And there was the Artie Shaw connection.
Godwin said he learned that Shaw owned the house when he was married to Evelyn Keyes, an actress. (Shaw was married eight times.)
He said Shaw had a much fancier house not far away in New York state and was “on the run from the IRS.”
So Shaw used the Connecticut home as a “hideout.”
Godwin said he was away from the Northwest Corner for five years, and when he was driving back he started getting nervous.
“I realized what I’m used to is from my African background, going back to places to find them degraded.
“I realized how little continuity I’ve had in my life.”
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P&Z signs off on review of Pope property
Oct 29, 2025
SALISBURY — On Monday, Oct. 20, the Planning and Zoning Commission heard a presentation from Chairman Michael Klemens on the current preliminary plans for the tri-pronged conservation, housing and recreation project that is proposed for the downtown-adjacent Pope property.
Klemens, who serves as a consulting expert for the Pope project’s wood turtle conservation strategy, recused himself from his P&Z duties and remained in the discussion solely as a consultant.
The plans call for a vast area of conserved land meant to protect vital wood turtle habitat, which is listed by the state as a species of special concern.
The proposal divides the rest of the land into two much smaller parcels, one for recreation and the other for housing.
When any town-owned land is sold, leased or faces a major use change, the proposed use is statutorily required to undergo an 8-24 referral process in which P&Z determines whether it complies with the Plan of Conservation and Development.
P&Z, with alternate Danella Schiffer sitting in for Klemens, voted unanimously to approve the review. The 8-24 referral is a preliminary step in developing formal plans, which will eventually go to a town meeting.
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Costumed runners set off from Kent Green Boulevard Sunday, Oct. 26, for the Pumpkin Run.
Lans Christensen
KENT — Runners couldn’t have asked for a nicer day than Saturday, Oct. 26, to take part in the 49th annual Kent Pumpkin Run.
A kids race started the day, with a large field of happy, costumed kids completing either a half-mile or one-mile course.
Many adults wore costumes to the starting line of the main event on Kent Green Boulevard. Promptly at noon, they got the “go” and about 370 runners began the five-mile race through town.
Only 25 minutes, 55 seconds later, William Sanders crossed the finish line, marking his third consecutive victory in the Pumpkin Run.
The women’s winner and fourth overall finisher was Hayley Collins, who finished in 29 minutes, 11 seconds.
Full results can be found at fasttracktiming.com.
Start of the Kid’s Race.Lans Christensen
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This fireplace, located near the summit of Segar Mountain in Kent, incorporates a large boulder that would have been burdensome to place in the structure. Adjacent to a depression that may have been the base of a hut, the site would have had an expansive view over the landscape in the colliers’ day when the hills were largely deforested.
Alec Linden
KENT — Emery Park is experiencing a revival, with projects underway or soon to debut — including a renovated swimming pond, newly opened hiking trails, a public campground, and a mountain-top lookout tower — each promising to breathe new life into its open fields and rugged hillsides.
Long ago, the 200-acre parcel was home to a much tougher breed than today’s hikers and campers — the charcoal burners who once kept western Connecticut’s iron furnaces alive.
While Kent’s involvement in the iron industry is well chronicled, the traces of this specific site — its fireplaces, talus shelters, charcoal mounds, and old foundations — remained largely undiscovered until this fall.
In mid-September, Kent Parks and Recreation Director Matthew Busse invited Sarah Sportman, the state’s official archeologist, for a tour of the woods. After six hours tromping through the park’s steep, densely forested hillsides, the duo was confident that Emery Park would soon have another attraction to add to its growing resumé: archeological dig site.
“Just walking through, we realized this area was so vastly untapped,” Busse reported to the Parks and Recreation Commission during its Oct. 7 meeting.
Sportman agreed with Busse’s assessment: “Taken all together, it could be kind of a significant landscape related to early industry in the state.”
Sportman said that although the iron industry is a well-known part of the state’s history, it — alongside the charcoal burners, known as colliers, who fueled the iron production of the 18th and 19th centuries — remains an under researched topic in the state’s archeological record.
After visiting Emery Park, she said the site was promising for a number of reasons. “It’s preserved as a park, right? So there are a lot of cultural features there that have been untouched by any kind of development or interference, so they’re intact,” Sportman explained. “Charcoal mounds, remnant roads from the old industry — and then there are those fireplaces that are really interesting.”
Busse retraced a shorter version of his tour with Sportman. Trudging up the steep blue trail, known as the “Collier’s Climb” for its history as a roadway for coal burners lugging supplies and product up and down the mountain, Busse identified vestiges of a bygone way of life, some subtle and others more obvious.
He pointed out a pile of large stones in the woods: a fireplace he found himself this June despite being located only 20 feet off the trail. On the path’s border, he brushed away some leaves on a rounded bulge on the forest floor to reveal black, earthy soil stained by the centuries-old smoldering of a collier’s fire. “You can smell it,” he said as he rubbed the dirt between his fingers.
Busse said he’s aware of six fireplaces still standing on the property, as well as at least 32 charcoal mounds , where colliers would have kept long hours ensuring that the blaze, contained in a robust conical structure made of timber beams, stayed at a low burn and didn’t destroy the coal harvest. “It was a lonely, solemn job,” Busse said. “So kudos to them.”
The fireplaces range from vague piles of stones like the one off the blue trail to big, obvious oven-shaped structures made of huge round rocks. Many are located near or attached to an old building foundation. These may have been semi-permanent dwellings where colliers spent time during shifts up on the mountain.
Sportman said it’s likely many of the structures in the area are related, but it’s too early in the discovery process to make any certain connections. In any case, she said, the site clearly had an element of organization and intensive labor in its planning. Her next steps will be to figure out if and how it all worked together, using an array of archeological methods.
She and Busse are also planning on registering the hillside sites with the state, mapping the complex in greater detail, and maybe even digging some pits to look for clues that could help date some of the structures. Busse said he hopes to bring in volunteers from town in this next stage, maybe even incorporating an educational element for students at Kent Center School.
Busse said that it’s the unknown component of the discovery that excites him, and that he hopes will capture the curiosity of townsfolk as well. While showing a particularly well-preserved fireplace high on the summit of Segar Mountain, he gestured at the structure and said, “Not much is known…” — then he cut himself off.
“That phrase is thrown about here way too much,” he said with a grin. “It’s awesome!”
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