
Cristina and Kayla Garcia shared their story with The Lakeville Journal Nov. 19.
Jennifer Almquist
Cristina and Kayla Garcia shared their story with The Lakeville Journal Nov. 19.
Here in the Northwest Corner of Connecticut, where the first frost comes early, and black bears hibernate, the woods are inhabited by hundreds of people sleeping rough.
There has been a 14% rise in homelessness in Connecticut since 2022. There are now 482 “people in need of homeless response systems”, according to Connecticut Coordinated Access Network (CAN), many of them senior citizens.
Cristina and Ricardo Garcia asked a simple question, “Why is there no place in the world for us?”
The Garcias, with their 22-year-old daughter Kayla, are a family who spend each night sleeping in a tent city in Waterbury. They take a bus in the morning to the Gathering Place in Torrington for warmth and showers, then eat their meals together at the Community Soup Kitchen in town. Their fierce desire to stay together as a family has its genesis in years of suffering, deprivation, substance abuse, prison, and escape.
Family is all that matters to them. It is all they have.
“My daughter is shy, so speak quietly to her,” Cristina whispered, explaining further that Kayla and her sister Jessica, who is 18, are on the autism spectrum. Cristina and her girls escaped years ago from her abusive husband. Her girls were then taken from her when they were 12 and 14. Cristina, who has been clean for two years, suffered from substance use disorder. It has been six years since Cristina has seen Jessica.
Her daughter Kayla, her long braids tucked under a watch cap, was wearing headphones to mask out loud shouts of men heatedly discussing the mistreatment of criminals. Kayla’s expressive brown eyes gave away her discomfort. The homeless resource center was packed with women and men in from the November cold; some on cellphones, some waiting with their towels for a warm shower, others quietly sipping hot coffee.
The Gathering Place in Torrington is a daytime drop-in center for the 482 homeless neighbors who live in Litchfield County, Connecticut. The food pantry at Friends in Service to Humanity (FISH) in Torrington serves more than 2,000 people.
There are currently 51 shelter beds in Northwest Connecticut: 16 in Winsted and 35 in Torrington with 5 restricted to veterans. As of today, there will be 30 overflow shelter beds for the winter season.
Cristina Garcia, left, working at the Community Soup Kitchen in Torrington.Jennifer Almquist
At the Community Soup Kitchen in Torrington’s Trinity Episcopal Church Nov. 19, Cristina folded her family’s laundry on the table she had just cleared from the breakfast crowd. She paused to talk and reflect on her difficult journey.
Cristina Garcia:My husband Ricky just started working. He’ll be coming home with literally $72. a week. Sometimes I feel like no one cares. We’ve been clean for two years. We’ve had our ups and downs with our kids. My adoptive mom passed away and my dad passed away in a housefire. So, I don’t have any family. I had an abusive relationship basically, which I escaped with my daughters because it was very bad. My new husband Ricky and I met here, and we’ve been together for almost four years. Because of my earlier situation, my kids were taken from me.
Jennifer Almquist:How old were they when they were taken from you?
CG: They were taken away for six years when Kayla was 14.
JA:During that time were you allowed to have any communication, or hear how the girls were doing?
CG:Like I said, I was in an abusive relationship, and he was in charge. Kayla came back to me last January. It was rough. It is hard when you have no family, nothing to fall back on. Family is just me, my husband and my kids. Now there’s the Gathering Place, and the soup kitchen people that I consider family. They open their arms to us and have been very good, very kind to us.
JA:Did you have housing at some point?
CG:I did, but I lost my housing voucher because I was out of the household for over 20 days. I was incarcerated due to charges from five years ago. I was legally married, but they wouldn’t take in consideration the impact on the girls. The rent was still being paid - it was still being paid the whole time but they took the voucher away. So now it’s like, “do you have a lawyer - somebody to step forward?” Nobody comes forward. We didn’t appeal. We lost everything, so altogether we’ve been out on the street since I got out, so in and out, trying to keep the apartment, but we got notice from the city to quit the apartment, so now we’re on the streets.
JA: Do the charges on your record mean you have to start all over again to get a housing voucher?
CG: We’re just hoping for another voucher.
JA:Is that a lot of pressure when you are trying to stay straight?
CG:It is great to keep my mind straight by volunteering at the Soup Kitchen. When we first started coming here, my husband and I kept telling the boss DJ, if you guys need help, just let us know. You’re helping us out by giving us breakfast, giving us lunch. Suddenly one day the foundation that helps them provide the food wanted to interview somebody that was coming here. Someone that could explain to them the impacts, and how welcoming it is here. They interviewed me, and since that day I’ve been volunteering here. I basically go to the Gathering Place in the morning, take the shower and do laundry, come straight here by 9:30. From that time until around 2:30 I work in the kitchen and prep and serve food. I like it because it’s community. I love being here just because they are so kind to us. My daughter has a hard time talking to new people or getting to know new people. She has a close relationship with someone here now.
JA: What was her living situation when you weren’t with her?
CG: Kayla and Jessica were in foster care. I had no access to anything. Now it’s like starting all new, trying to apply for Social Security, Kayla’s been denied numerous times, and getting a copy of her birth certificate is expensive. That’s what I’m going through right now. She needs help. They say “we can’t help” because they don’t think she has that many issues because she doesn’t hear voices, and she’s not, in their minds, crazy like other people. Kayla does have mental health issues. Jessica didn’t start talking until she was six. It’s just sad that people don’t take in consideration what the impact of situations like being in foster care, or being homeless, are on kids. Especially if you’re a sensitive kid. Kayla is 22 but her mentality sometimes isn’t like her age.
JA: How does Kayla do with the sleeping arrangements and the cold?
CG: No, it’s horrible. All you just have is a tent in the world. People take your stuff; you can’t trust anybody -that’s just how it is. We have a small U-Haul as a storage unit that is expensive. We had to get rid of most of our stuff. It’s just hard, really hard especially with the holidays coming up.
JA: How do you three get warm in your tent?
CG:We layer up with four blankets on, then jackets and sleeping bags. Ricky puts a wooden pallet under the tent, but it’s like sleeping on the floor.
JA: What are you doing for Thanksgiving?
CG:The soup kitchen is not open on Thanksgiving. When you’re homeless you don’t get a break, you don’t get time, the days are endless. Holidays are just another day, not like anything special. We can’t plan anything. We have no way to cook anything. Every day in the woods, it’s just eating out of cans. We may not be able to have a Thanksgiving feast this year, but for Christmas, for my kids and my step kids, there’s no hope of getting them something special. Sometimes I just feel like I’m screwed. I just feel like as much as I try, it’s like I’m trying for what is not possible. It’s hard to keep hoping. These holiday times hurt the most. This is our first holiday back together in six years now that she’s back with us. I want am waiting until my youngest is 21 and graduates this June. For her to be allowed to come home, I must have housing. I feel like it might be a lot to ask, but I just want my family back together.
JA:What are you grateful for?
CG: Kayla loves her stepdad, and he’s very good to us. He walks up the mountain to work at Target. He walks because he can’t drive. We want to get him a bike. Hopefully by December the warming center will reopen. Lori at the Gathering Place helps us so much. She’s an amazing person. I had open heart surgery. They put in a pacemaker that needs replacing, but they can’t do the surgery and then discharge me to the street, so my surgery is being put off. I have seizures, so I need a calm setting. I’m grateful for Lori because she watches out for us. I have met amazing people through her, like the people in this kitchen, for DJ and Bill, and the opportunity to give back, you know. It’s important because I want to make sure I stay on track with my sobriety. Being around positive people helps me. I am trying not to cry. I want to have everyone together for Thanksgiving.
There is magic in a home filled with the things we love, and Mary Randolph Carter, affectionately known as “Carter,” has spent a lifetime embracing that magic. Her latest book, “Live with the Things You Love … and You’ll Live Happily Ever After,” is about storytelling, joy, and honoring life’s poetry through the objects we keep.
“This is my tenth book,” Carter said. “At the root of each is my love of collecting, the thrill of the hunt, and living surrounded by things that conjure up family, friends, and memories.”
The creative director at Ralph Lauren for almost four decades, Carter began writing this book during the pandemic, a time of rediscovering comfort. “I found more time to appreciate those special things that give our homes warmth and connection.” Working with Ralph Lauren, she learned that the best spaces tell a personal story. “His desk was filled with toy cars, miniature shoes, superheroes, English dandies, cowboys on horseback. The walls? A gallery of his children’s paintings, iconic photos of Frank Sinatra and Gary Cooper. Everything told a story.”
Carter acknowledges how homes can become overwhelmed with stuff but sees a difference between clutter and collection. “To live happily, create environments that inspire and comfort rather than encumber you! Look around and ask, ‘What is truly meaningful? What makes you smile? What recalls the people and places you cherish?’” Then, she added, “weed out the rest with discipline and courage!”
Provided
Each home in Carter’s book reflects its inhabitant’s spirit. “The first time I walked into Bethann Hardison’s apartment, I knew right away how authentic it was to who she is.” Hardison’s walls are lined with artwork from friends Keith Haring, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and Haitian paintings, testaments to a life well lived. “Though her mantra is, ‘the lighter the load, the freer the journey,’ she also admits some things ‘delight your environment’ and can’t be parted with. Amen to that!”
Having survived two childhood fires, Carter deeply understands what truly matters. “It’s not the things, but the people and memories they evoke.” She loves her collections, but they don’t possess her. “They make me happy, but they do not define me.”
She delights in how people showcase treasures. Paula Grief, for instance, lives in a ten-foot-wide house and had to part with many books. “She tucks the ones she can’t live without through the rungs of her staircase. I love that ingenuity!”
When asked about her most cherished possession, Carter tells a story of loss and serendipity. A childhood portrait of her in a blue velvet dress was lost in a fire. “Years later, the artist’s daughter found another version. Now, it hangs in our apartment, surrounded by flea market art and one of my favorite saints, Our Lady of Guadalupe.”
Adding to the cozy feeling of this book, Carter’s son, Carter Berg, took the photographs, and her sister, Cary, contributed the illustrations. “Cary once stayed in our apartment and painted a dozen objects from our cluttered kitchen. I hung them immediately. When I started this book, I knew she had to capture my favorite objects.”
Four of the featured homes are local to the Northwest Corner, including Carter’s in Millerton, Joan Osofsky’s in Lakeville, Robin Bell’s in Salisbury, and Paula Grief’s in Hudson. They all gathered at the White Hart/Oblong Speaker Series on March 27.
After perusing the richly colored pages of this book, you may feel tempted to shop. “You don’t need money to create a meaningful home,” Carter insisted. “Some of my favorite paintings cost no more than $10 or $25. Value is personal. It’s not about provenance but the story an object tells you or the one you make up.”
Carter’s advice? “Fall in love with the wackiest thing. Surround yourself with what matters, and you’ll live happily ever after.”
On Saturday, April 5, at 3 p.m., The Triplex Cinema in Great Barrington and Jacob’s Pillow, the dance festival in Becket, Massachusetts, are presenting a special benefit screening of the cinematic masterpiece, “The Red Shoes,” followed by a discussion and Q&A. Featuring guest speakers Norton Owen, director of preservation at Jacob’s Pillow, and dance historian Lynn Garafola, the event is a fundraiser for The Triplex.
“We’re pitching in, as it were, because we like to help our neighbors,” said Norton. “They (The Triplex) approached us with the idea, wanting some input if they were going to do a dance film. I thought of Lynn as the perfect person also to include in this because of her knowledge of The Ballets Russes and the book that she wrote about Diaghilev. There is so much in this film, even though it’s fictional, that derives from the Ballets Russes.” Garafola, the leading expert on the Ballets Russes under Serge Diaghilev, 1909–1929, the most influential company in twentieth-century theatrical dance, said, “We see glimpses of that Russian émigré tradition, performances we don’t see much of today. The film captures the artifice of ballet, from the behind-the-scenes world of dressers and conductors to the sheer passion of the audience.”
Hailed as one of the greatest films about ballet, “The Red Shoes,” 1948, is a dazzling fusion of dance and cinema, featuring a mesmerizing 17-minute ballet sequence performed by Scottish ballet dancer and actress, Moira Shearer. Directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, the film’s breathtaking use of Technicolor and evocative storytelling continues to captivate audiences, including legendary filmmakers like Martin Scorsese, Brian De Palma, and Steven Spielberg all of whom have cited the film as an influence on their work.
Garafola recalled seeing the film as a young dancer. “I remember being more taken with the plot then, but seeing it again recently, it was the color, the fantasy, and the glamour that struck me. Given how gray England was after the war, the film’s vibrant costumes and settings create an almost dreamlike escape.”
Owen echoed Garafola’s sentiment. “It’s magical. Color was their thing, and this latest restoration makes it even more breathtaking.”
The film underwent an extensive digital restoration at the UCLA Film and Television archive between 2006 and 2008 and premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 2009. This is the version of the film which will be screened at the Triplex.
Owen said, “I love the depiction of young ballet audiences racing to their seats. That kind of enthusiasm is contagious. It’s what draws young dancers in.” Both Owen and Garafola epressed hope that young dancers will attend the event, sharing in the film’s enduring inspiration.
Owen and Garafola’s Q&A is sure to be lively and educational as they delve into the film’s legacy in both dance and cinema. “It’s not just a film for dance lovers. It’s a filmmaker’s film, too,” Owen added.
Join The Triplex and Jacob’s Pillow for this rare opportunity to experience “The Red Shoes” on the big screen, a film that continues to enchant, inspire, and ignite artistic passion.
Tickets are available for $75 at www.thetriplex.org.
Honeybees have developed interdependencies with early spring flowers.
Why are there no native super early flowering plants in our area?By “super early” I mean flowering some five weeks before forsythia. All the ones I know are alien.Most are “bulbiferous” and go dormant in summer. Snowdrops, Galanthus nivalis, and Snowbells, Leucojum vernum, are both in the amaryllis family; crocus species, in the iris family; and scilla, in the asparagus family belong to this category. Others, like cyclamen coum, primrose family; winter-aconite, eranthis hyemalis; and adonis amurensis, buttercup family; grow from tubers, thickened roots.None of them is a native plant. Although all mentioned families exist in the New World as well, none have produced super early flowering species similar to what exists in Eurasia, nor have other plant families.
We wait for our beautiful native spring wildflowers — Virginia bluebells, Dutchman’s breeches, Trilliums, Trout lily, etc.In our garden, the earliest native will be Bloodroot, by mid-April. By then, a large cohort of alien plants are already in full flower for several weeks, in some cases for over a month.
Why is this roughly four to five week temporal niche in the annual cycle unoccupied? It’s a niche of very low productivity for sure, but nature, famously, abhors any vacuum. Could it be that the physical habitat niche is too small here? What I found, doing some research, suggests it is possible — larger areas are correlated with more speciation according to p. 1149 in Science from March 15, 2025. Eurasia, broadly oriented from west to east, has a very long, uninterrupted temperate and mountainous zone, stretching from Spain to western China. With its many grassland habitats, it provides a huge playing field for evolution. America, by comparison, geographically laid out north to south, contains much less continuous temperate environments suited for crocus.
Until now. Our small, short-cropped lawn at winter’s end mimics aspects of Eurasian alpine meadows. There, before any green grass is visible, crocuses break through the edges of the melting snow cover on the late winter lawn. Species crocuses have conquered that new habitat, first in European gardens, and now here too. Before the grass grows too tall, they benefit from abundant sunshine to nourish their bulbs for next year. That’s another reason to delay mowing as long as possible. A lawn may not be a natural habitat, but if free of herbicides, pesticides and fertilizers, it is after all just another meadow.
Perhaps another reason for missing March flowers is a lack of early pollinators.On one of these rare sunny, warm days in early March, I wrote in my diary: “03/09/23 - many honeybees on winter aconite, also a fly …”and some honeybees on crocus as well. Like winter-aconite and crocus, honeybees are not native in America and I have never seen them again that early, ever since a nearby beekeeper gave up.Looking at the amounts of pollen in these crocus flowers, they must be an abundant food source for all kinds of bees and bumblebees. However, only honeybees — whose colonies survive the winter in hives — can quickly deploy a large number of pollen collectors. Flowers and insects co-evolved a myriad of interdependencies, so super early flowering plants, cold adapted, depend on enough pollinating insects to make flowering through the snow worthwhile. On high alpine meadows there may be other early up-and-about insect species, but here it is honeybees which profit most.
Snowdrops, snowbells, crocuses — they don’t compete with any natives, but fill a manmade, unoccupied niche.The very earliest to flower through the snow, adonis amurensis and cyclamen coum, grow in light shade and slowly form stay-in-place clumps. Unless in a controllable setting, I would stay away from squill — Scilla siberica — which is a very aggressive naturalizer and easily escapes.
As we wait for our many native beautiful spring flowers, how nice to have these aliens, such benign aliens for a change, to cheer up a March-brown lawn.
Fritz Mueller lives in Sharon.