Roundup: Bolsheviks, CTBites, Blue Sunday …

An “06880” reader was intrigued by an item in yesterday’s “Roundup.” It previewed a November 1 discussion at the Westport Library on “How Public Policy is Putting Our Children at Risk.” The session will be led by CD Media’s chief investigative correspondent and senior editor Christine Dolan.

Hoping to learn more about Dolan the reader found a piece she wrote last year.

Headlined “Idyllic Westport, CT Is Ground Zero for CRT Infiltration by America’s Bolsheviks,” it begins:

The yellow and red leaves are drifting down quietly as they have for millennia in Westport , CT as the historic New England town sleeps towards a tipping point, one it may never recover from if the coming elections go the wrong way and vote in a continuation of its current path.

The Minuteman statue guards at Compo Beach where a ragtag group of American rebels fought the global tyranny of the once monolithic British empire, but Westport residents seem to want to forget this honorable history and welcome with open arms global tyranny of a different name — the Maoist doctrine of Critical Race Theory, or CRT.

Essentially, the agenda of the CRT movement is to teach young children their country is evil, that they themselves are racists and bad if they are white.  The ideology is racist, it is divisive, and is on purpose.  The doctrine is just a gateway drug to a more pernicious evil, re-imagining Westport schools.  In the CRT future, gone will be AP classes, music excellence.  Gone will be the gateway to Ivy league schools, replaced with a dumbed-down redistribution of educational wealth and excellence.

Along with this educational decline, property values will plummet as zoning laws are also changed to forever alter the nature of the community.  Physical safety will disappear.  Crime will increase.

Click here to read the full story.

Westport’s Minute Man, on guard against Bolsheviks and/or Maoists. (Photo/John Videler for Videler Photography)

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If you like to dine out — and, this being Westport, that means everyone — then CTbites is essential reading. Published by our town’s Stephanie Webster, it’s a weekly guide to new restaurants, special culinary events, food trucks, catering and more.

I always learn something from the site. But — until yesterday — I’d never actually laughed while reading it.

“Connecticut Restaurant Confidential: Strange Stories, Odd Orders & Twisted Tales in the Industry” is a collection of jaw-dropping tales, from owners, chefs, bartenders and wait staff.

It’s an insider’s look at what gets told after hours — about diners (hopefully un)like you and me.

They come from all over the state. Including our own Winfield Deli. Click here to read.

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Texas blues/New Orleans funk band Otis & the Hurricanes headlines the next “Blue Sunday” at the Westport Library (October 23, 2:30 p.m., Trefz Forum).

The free event is curated by Mark Naftalin. The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame keyboardist will be there of course, with his Blue Sunday Band of all-stars: Westport/internationally known saxophonist Crispin Cioe, guitarists JD Seem and Paul Gabriel, and special guest Chance Browne.

Lat month’s Blue Sunday — the first in the series — drew a large crowd, and plenty of raves.

And this one could make that seem like just a warmup.

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From jazz to blues:

This week week’s “Jazz at the Post” features pianist Michael Cochrane, drummer to the stars Steve Johns, and fiery young bassist Jason Clotter in concert with the Jazz Rabbi, Greg Wall.

There are 2 shows — 7:30 and 8:45 p.m. — on Thursday (October 6) at VFW Post 399 (465 Riverside Avenue). There’s a $10 cover. Food service starts at 6:30.

Reservations are strongly suggested. Email JazzatThePost@gmail.com.

Michael Cochrane

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This is an active weekend in Westport. Among the highlights: Westport Moms’ 2nd annual Fall Family Festival. It’s Saturday, October 15 (10 a.m. to 2 p.m., Greens Farms Academy; $20 per family).

The event includes food, crafts, games and fun (bouncy houses, ninja course, music, art projects, DJ, pumpkin and cookie decorating, face painting, hair extensions, glitter tattoos, magic, STEM activities and more).

Many businesses will show off their products and services — all with activities for kids.

Organizers Megan Rutstein and Melissa Post ask attendees to bring gently worn jackets, for donations to a local non-profit.

A scene from last year’s Fall Family Festival.

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Sunday’s Westport Weston Family YMCA Fall Festival drew a large crowd.

There was music, gymnastics exhibitions, bounces houses and s’mores. The weather was perfect for an outdoor event.

Best of all: You didn’t have to be a kid to have a great time.

Westport Board of Assessment Appeals member Ifeseyi Gaylel (left) and Westport Weston Family YMCA CEO Anjali McCormick take a break during the Y’s Family Festival.

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The Norwalk Symphony Orchestra takes center stage at the Y’s Women’s October 24 meeting (Green’s Farms Church, 10:45 a.m.). Jonathan Yates and Sandra Miklave will talk about the group’s long history, and share visions for the future.

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Today’s “Westport … Naturally” photo is striking.

Even more impressive: this Montauk daisy — on the Bonnie Brook/Silver Brook Road corner — was taken by 13-year-old Emae Forman. What an eye!

(Photo/Emae Forman)

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And finally … if you’ve never heard Otis & the Hurricanes (see story above)  — well, click below, and you will:

16 responses to “Roundup: Bolsheviks, CTBites, Blue Sunday …

  1. The anti-CRT crowd swings from lyric poetry (“the yellow and red leaves are drifting down quietly as they have for millennia”) to dour prophesy (“global tyranny,” “pernicious evil”). Apocalypse is always nigh. Bolstered by a wellspring of RINOs, MAGAs, and QAnons, the group has plenty of proponents. One sympathetic right-winger recently explained—at length and in detail—some of the other things she believes. (And yes, this is a true story.) She kept a room of clients at a local Post Road business rapt with her revelations:
    • We can all stop worrying about earthquakes. When you hear about the earth shifting, it’s just the extensive network of pedophile escape tunnels collapsing as the world pivots to law and order. (So…pray for earthquakes?)
    • Hillary and Bill Clinton like to scare children before they drain their blood. They don’t want the blood. They want the adrenaline released into the blood by the fright. (It’s very complicated.)
    • There is an emergency warning system that will alert everyone when humans are free. If you don’t know if you are free or not, check your birth certificate. If your name was typed in ALL CAPS, it means you are a slave. (Makes sense.)
    • On the day of freedom, all the money you have paid in taxes will be returned to you. It’s now being held, safely, in gold bars.
    • The Trump family helped develop a new medical instrument that resembles a tanning bed and enables users to regrow missing limbs and missing organs. It will not be revealed until Trump is reinstated as the rightful president. (2024 can’t come soon enough!)

    Just a fresh perspective? Is she, too, worried about the coming apocalypse like Christine Dolan, the November 1 speaker at the Westport Library? (“Doors open at 5:45.”) Who knows? I just want my gold and my freedom. In that order.

  2. John D McCarthy

    Bolsheviks? Why is the Westport Public Library dignifying this wackadoodle?

  3. Susan Thomsen

    Dan, I don’t think this is open to all. On the Centinel website, it says that tickets are $25 and premium tickets are $100.

    • John D McCarthy

      Correct. The website also states that “THIS EVENT IS NEITHER SPONSORED NOR ENDORSED BY THE WESTPORT LIBRARY.” So looks like a money-making proposition by the Library. So the Westport Library can be rented out by anyone with any message as long as they pay upfront. KKK, American Nazi Party, Greenpeace, these kooks. Anyone.

    • Susan, I meant that they open their doors to all organizations.

  4. I left an eviscerating comment on the site where this “article” appears. It’ll be interesting what, if any, response I get.

    • Stephanie Frankel

      The publication which we all know to be right wing extremist Trumpian whack jobs, will delete your comments and they just might report you to your boss and try to get you fired! They do not believe in freedom of speech or labeling them what they actually are.

      • I don’t have a boss (I’m retired). But my last “boss,” a university where I was a professor of English language, would have drop-kicked into the Pacific any effort to censor my professional views, on the subject of CRT or anything else. It’s important not to cave to these people. If they write dumb things, call them out. Loudly. If they threaten you, publicize the threats. If they threaten your livelihood, have your lawyer inform your boss of the legal cost of this sort of nonsense. No more Mr. Nice Guy. Or Ms. Nice Gal either.

  5. Henry Washburn

    It might be worth showing up to talk about how unwritten rules prevented my grandparents (and mother) from living in Darien because they were Jewish. Is she stating that Darien’s school district is now terrible because those rules were abolished? Wasn’t that also the case in Westport a generation (maybe a generation and a half ago)?

    I have not delved too deeply in CRT but my cursory review of what CRT teaches is to think critically about what has happened in the past, “those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it.” It doesn’t appear to dumb people down or be the start of a slippery slope argument that culminates in armageddon. Calling people who want to teach children to learn from history Bolsheviks and Maoists just stokes hate and scare tactics by someone who claims to be a journalist is reprehensible and not based on fact.

    On the grounds of the Library hosting someone like this, the Library is a community space and should be open to all, what I feel should be changed is the ability to charge for something like this. The Library is a free and open location and platform for people and the town, if she truly wanted to “spread the word” she would do it for free and open it up to debate from multiple points of view..not just her own.

  6. JUST DON’T ATTEND…PLEASE!!
    Why honor her by paying her to spew hate?

  7. Stephanie Frankel

    That woman is a nutcase. Period. Her entire angi-CRT group and publication are out of their minds. I can not believe this group is who our piblic school system is up against, Frightening.