KD Liepolt, a 15-year-old wirehair, was the elder stateswoman at yesterday’s Dachshund Festival.
Like many participants, she is a rescue dog. (That means she was rescued – not that she trots into snowy mountains to rescue imperiled adventurers.)
Congratulations, KD. Arf!
KD Liepolt
The Yankee Doodle Fair opens this week. There’s cotton candy, a roller coaster, semi-rigged games — all for less than the cost of a water bottle at Six Flags.
Though the Yankee Doodle Fair has been a Westport tradition for 100 years, it was not on my radar growing up. In junior high — the fair’s target age group — I was a Long Lots boy. An event on Imperial Avenue was irrelevant.
We had our own carnival. It sprawled across an empty, weed-filled Post Road lot, next to Dairy Queen (now Swanky Frank’s). That’s right: Every May there was a fair where Barnes & Noble now stands.
What I remember most were not the nights spent prowling the grounds, trying to impress other young teenagers by smoking cigarettes, sneaking into the sideshow and generally acting cool.
It was the fact that my friends and I set up the rides.
I don’t know where OSHA and state regulators were, but the carnival operators actually hired 13-year-old boys to build Ferris wheels, roller coasters and Tilt-‘Em whirls.
We had minimal training — toothless, tattooed men in T-shirts handed us wrenches and pointed us in the right direction — and even less supervision. We were not, at 13, the most conscientious of workers. And as Westport kids we were not exactly mechanical whizzes.
It’s a miracle the entire carnival did not collapse in a heap of twisted, teen-constructed metal.
But who thought about things like that? We did our “work.” We pocketed our $2 pay. And as we strolled around Long Lots all week, we thought of ourselves not as suburban boys, but as carny roustabouts.
As proof, we smoked the cigarettes the real ones — our bosses — had given us.
Sundays behind the Saugatuck Congregational Church: It’s not your father’s farmers market.
Quietly, quickly and convincingly, the Sunday Farmers Market has moved far beyond raspberries, rhubarb and goat milk soap. It’s become a community event — with ripples way beyond our own community.
Every Sunday, organizers distribute paper bags to shoppers. They’re invited to bring them back next week — filled with food, toiletries and household items. (Shoppers can also fill the bags right there with produce and other items.) The bags are then distributed directly to area soup kitchens.
At the end of each Sunday market, all unsold food is given to local food pantries.
But the farmers market folks do far more than hand out food. They invite community organizations to join them in the Saugatuck Church parking lot. Today was Metro Kidz, an after-school anti-drug program that teaches life skills to Bridgeport children. Metro Kidz is affiliated with the Bishop Jean Williams Food Pantry, recipient of this week’s farmers market donations.
Metro Kidz sang gospel songs, providing an unusual — but quite welcome — soundtrack for a farmers market.
Westport non-profits are well represented too. The Community Garden had a table today, and Bill Meyer was hustling sign-ups for the Westport Sunrise Rotary’s upcoming Great Duck Race.
Of course, mixed in with all the food donations and good-works stuff was this quintessential Westport farmers market scene:
Chef Tor Sporré handed out “Lobster Cooking and Wine Tasting Seminar” flyers. They included lobster menus — for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
Bridgeport's Metro Kidz sing at today's Farmers Market.
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Posted in Organizations, Westport life
Tagged Bridgeport Metro Kidz, Saugatuck Congreational Church, Westport Farmer's Market
After a long and costly renovation, Bob Corroon re-opened Christie’s Country Store last August. The economy immediately tanked.
Two weeks ago he added a separate ice cream stand. Instantly, a cold, wet rain settled in.
Fortunately, both spots are thriving.
Bobby and Bob Corroon
The Christie’s story — how Bob parlayed his faith that the Cross Highway neighborhood (with help from Staples, Bedford and local workers) would support a 1920’s-era store, updated with 21st-century food (and tacos!) — is well known. Now he’s replicating it with ice cream.
The 6-sided stand was built in Redding in the 1930s. In the ’40s the Masiello family brought it to Christie’s property. But the last cone was served years ago.
Bob is counting on the same update-the-basics formula that works for his grocery store. The ice cream — made by Pat West, wh0 lives around the corner — comes in over a dozen flavors. There’s basic chocalate, vanilla and strawberry; flavors like Oreo bomb, creme caramel and honey coffee, plus sorbets and gelato.
Picnic tables invite ice cream lovers to linger.
Bob’s sons — Bobby (soon to enroll at William & Mary) and Green’s Farms Academy student Nicky — run the stand. It’s open from noon to 8 p.m. “Or maybe later,” Bob says, in that laid-back, we’ll-figure-it-out way that made Christie’s cool again.
His ice cream will be cool too — if warm weather ever arrives.
Staples’ valedictorian is murdered. Evidence points to the salutatorian. But the killer is really a jealous teacher.
No, it’s not breaking news, nor a tale from Westport’s sordid past. It’s the story line of a movie made by students in Forensics, one of Staples High School’s most innovative and popular elective courses.
Over the past couple of weeks juniors and seniors wrote a script, then filmed and edited a video drawing together much of what they learned about pathology, biology, chemistry, physics, psychology and the law.
Sure, during a study session the salutatorian told the valedictorian “I could kill you.” And yeah, the valedictorian was then found floating in a pool. But was that evidence enough to arrest the student?
No — not when a teacher left a hair on some masking tape, and fingerprints on a note. Teacher Mike Lazaroff’s students examined the medulla inside the hair, matched DNA through gel electrophoresis, and — by the end of the film — got their man.
Director/cinematogrpaher Zach Wheat edited writer Rachel Gofman’s script into “CSI Staples: You Got Schooled.” The most difficult part, he says, was “balancing education with the movie we all wanted to make.”
That’s not all the Forensics students did this month. For their final exam they spent days examining an elaborate crime scene (a woman’s head was bashed in) and whittling down lists of suspects, then another week preparing for a court trial. Students play all roles, including prosecution and defense.
That’s education 2009-style: multi-discipline. Complex. Hands-on. Collaborative. Engaging. And totally, completely real-world relevant.
Students analyze the "crime scene."
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Posted in Education, Staples HS
Tagged Forensics, Staples High School
Westport’s 11th annual Dachshund Reunion is set for tomorrow. From 1-3 p.m., all dachshunds — on leash, and current on rabies vaccine, of course! — are invited to Jesup Green. They’ll enjoy a silent auction, parade, games and events.
(I am not making this up.)
Let’s hope the dogs have a great get-together, sharing wonderful memories and lots of laughs. That’s what a reunion should be, right?
Not another bitch-fest.
Some teenagers will spend this summer babysitting, or at the beach or camp.
Four Staples girls plan to pick up your garbage, compost it, then return it for use as natural fertilizer.
The only thing better than their idea is the new company’s name: Soil Yourself Composting.
From left: Sasha Berns, Casey Richardson, Venetia Stanley, Molly Pieper.
The great green idea germinated with Casey Richardson’s research paper. She chose urban agriculture, and learned that small steps can have major environmental impacts.
She and fellow juniors Sasha Berns, Molly Pieper and Venetia Stanley realized they could take those steps. They batted around ideas like delivering organic food to Westport homes. Eventually they settled on a logical, doable project that is practical, important, and involves something everyone has: trash.
Starting June 22, Casey and her cohorts will go around town. Utilizing 5-gallon buckets they’ll pick up kitchen scraps, dead plants, lawn clippings — anything natural — and bring them to Casey’s back yard. There they’ll be dumped into 1 of 4 composters, and nature will begin working.
They’ll repeat the process every Monday. When the composting is done — it takes a few weeks — the girls will deliver it back to the “owners.” Compost — similar to potting soil — is far better than chemical fertilizer. It cleans contaminated soil, reduces carbon dioxide and methane, saves landfill space and prevents land erosion. (For more composting facts, visit Soil Yourself’s website).
The cost is $5 per week. The buckets — all recycled from area stores — are free.
The Soil Yourself girls are as green — as in ecology — as they come. They bought used composters at a New York City urban agriculture seminar.
“We went to the Lower East Side to learn about composting,” Sasha says. “There were a lot of ex-hippies and Brooklyn hipsters — and us. We were the only people there who actually had lawns.”
Their friends and families are not certain what to think. A few have said, “So you’re going to be a garbageman?”
Others totally get it. Fellow junior Caroline Hershey came up with the Soil Yourself name. A few classmates — mixing the environment with entrepreneurial zeal — have offered to invest.
Right now, the profit motive is less important to Soil Yourself than the idea behind it.
“If you don’t want to sign up and pay $5 a week, at least check out our website,” Casey says. “You can learn how to do composting yourself. That’s free, and it’s totally fine.”
(To sign up, click on Soil Yourself’s website. They’ve also got a Facebook page.)
Posted in Environment, Staples HS, Teenagers
Tagged compost, Environment, Soil Yourself Composting, Staples High School
Re: Weather for the past month
Remember how worried we were about global warming?
Maybe it wasn’t so bad after all.
Yesterday I gave a workshop for coaches, in the boonies of Massachusetts.
I made a pit stop for coffee on the appealingly rustic Mohawk Trail.
In 5 minutes there:
I was merely in a neighboring state. So how come I felt like I’d stumbled on an entirely new universe?
Posted in Totally random
Tom Jones
In what may be a nod to the economy — or an acknowledgment of Westport’s changing tastes — there will be no formal dinner at Tom Jones’ Levitt Pavilion fundraiser this year.
But there will be beer.
Magic Hat Brewing Company is selling brew during the event (and at the ticketed concert with Don McLean on August 7).
Despite the lack of dinner, there will be a pre-concert cocktail reception, and dessert after.
On the fence about going? Westport attorney Jim Randel may persuade you.
In 1965, he recalls, Jones was scheduled to play a concert in Jim’s Ohio home town. A blizzard struck — and “about 8 people” showed up.
But, Jim says, “Tom Jones came out and performed as though he was playing a full house at Caesar’s Palace. He gave the audience 110 percent. It was tremendously impressive.”
Randel — who saw the Welsh crooner perform a few years later, with similar results — uses Jones as an example when he gives motivational speeches.
“He loves what he does,” Randel says. “He is a great showman. If you go to the Levitt Pavilion performance, you’re in for a treat.”
(Click here for Tom Jones ticket information.)
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