The inspirational Martin Luther King Day conversation between author/writer/ Columbia School of Journalism dean Dr. Jelani Cobb and Westport writer/ professor Trey Ellis is now online.
Click here; then use password Jelani_Cobb_2026. The video is available through February 27.
We’re just a week from Homes with Hope’s “Soup-er Bowl” food drive.
The event — next Saturday (February 7, 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., Stop & Shop), is sponsored by the Westport Police Department, and the Westport Rotary and Sunrise Rotary clubs.
It’s a way to help our town’s homeless shelter and food pantry stock up on most-needed items, before the game.
They include cereal, oatmeal, pancake mix, pasta sauce, canned chicken, peanut butter and jelly, rice, laundry detergent and deodorant.
Speaking of animals: Wakeman Town Farm just received 4 newborn lambs, from Bluebird Farm in Willington.
The southdown babydoll sheep — a sweet and loving breed — are 2 weeks old, all female, and related to the sheep that currently reside at WTF.
Farm educators, headed by Judy Panzer, train volunteers to help patiently teach the babies how to drink from bottles.
Wakeman Town Farm also offers “Lamb Cuddles,” a hands-on experience through which residents cuddle, socialize and connect with the animals while learning about their care and personalities. Click here for tickets, and more information.
To help defray the costs of care and feeding, WTF is running a fun “Name the Newest Farm Babies” contest.For $10, you can submit up to 4 name suggestions (one per lamb — remember, all are girls!).
We’re just a few days away from the Winter Olympics. The eyes of the world will be on Milan.
Of course, there’s a Westport connection.
Longtime resident/veteran sports and news journalist Dave Briggs has teamed up with Saatva — the luxury mattress company founded by fellow resident Ron Rudzin, and the official provider of mattresses and bedding for the 2026 and ’28 Olympic and Paralympic Games — on a series of “Superpower” podcasts.
Briggs interviewed gold medalists Tara Lipinski (figure skating), Jessie Diggins (the most decorated American cross country skier), Jessica Long (the Michael Phelps of the Paralympics), and gold medalist Brenna Huckaby (Paralympic snowboarder) — all in bed, on Saatva mattresses.
These are in-depth interviews about the athletes’ lives — including personal challenges. Despite the luxurious and sports-related settings, there are no softball questions. Lipinski, for example, talks about pressure and performance, infertility, pregnancy loss and the LA fires.
Click here or below to see Briggs’ interview with Lipinski. Click here for the podcast on iTunes; click here for Spotify.
Congratulations to the students involved with Soundings and QED.
Staples High School’s 2 literary magazines have been awarded “Superior” rankings, in the 2025 Recognizing Excellence in Art and Literary Magazines (REALM) contest. The honors come from the National Council of Teachers of English.
Publications are evaluated by a panel of judges. Criteria include the quality of writing, variety of genres featured, excellence of art and graphic design, and overall editorial layout.
At Staples, students oversee everything from the initial call for submissions to the final technical production. Editor-in chief Allison Cancro, and associate editors Eva Slossberg and Jack Robinson, worked with faculty advisor Kim Herzog.
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Westport is filled with entrepreneurs.
Plenty of youngsters are excited by the opportunity to run their own business. How can they start?
This Thursday (February 5, 5 p.m., Westport Library), they can head to the Mini Moguls Marketplace.
Staples High School junior Aanya Gandhi organized the event, for students in grades 5-8.
Participants will run their own business by selling a product (handmade items; gently used toys, books and games, etc. — no food please!), and creating posters explaining their product, pricing, and marketing strategy, while learning
valuable financial literacy and entrepreneurial skills.
Speaking of the Library: VersoFest audiences tap their feet to the music. Sometimes they dance.
On March 28 (10 a.m.), no one will be in their seats.
The Westport Library’s 5th annual music and media conference and festival welcomes master artist Andoche Loubaki. He’ll lead a lively traditional Congolese Dance and Drum workshop, presented by Brooklyn-based Cumbe Dance.
It’s a great family event. After all, who doesn’t want to dance in a library?
Club203 — Westport’s social group for adults with disabilities — gets a jump on Valentine’s Day.
Their next event (February 4, 6:30 to 8 p.m., VFW Post 399) includes music, dancing, art by MoCA\CT — plus heart-shaped pizza from Planet Pizza, sweet treats, and plenty of Club203 love.
As the snow flew last weekend — and many Westporters lit fires, sipped coffee and hunkered down — our artists and photographers went to work.
They gathered their brushes, picked up their cameras, and created even more beauty and wonder out of all that lay around.
And while many of us grappled with the horrific news from the day before in Minnesota, some channeled their emotions into their work.
Today’s online gallery begins with nature, makes a brief stop for Valentine’s Day, and ends with humanity.
As always, we invite you to be part of next week’s exhibition. No matter your age; the style or subject you choose — and whether you’re a first-timer or old-timer — we welcome your submissions. Watercolors, oils, charcoal, pen-and-ink, acrylics, mixed media, digital, lithographs, collages, macramé, jewelry, sculpture, decoupage, needlepoint — we want whatever you’ve got.
Just email a JPG to 06880blog@gmail.com. And please include the medium you’re working in — art lovers want to know.
“Baby, It’s Cold Outside!” (Pat Saunders)
“A Long Winter’s View” (Cohl Katz — Available for sale; click here)
“Tired of Snow Yet?” (Copyright Ted Horowitz)
Untitled (Jerry Kuyper)
“Aurora Borealis” — digital illustration (Ken Runkel)
“Frigid Cold Water’s Edge”– impasto crafted with lace for the clouds; acrylic landscape on canvas (Dorothy Robertshaw — Available for sale; click here)
“Burnt Sienna” — acrylic and resin on 24 x 36 canvas (Patricia McMahon — Available for purchase; click here)
“Blue & Orange Color Splash” — acrylic on plastered wood panel (Eric Bosch)
Untitled — mixed media collage (June Rose Whittaker — Available for sale; click here)
“Landscape, Possibly” — digital (Tom Doran; Available for purchase; click here)
Untitled — collage made from all the “love” words in Westport Lifestyle magazine’s February issue (Frannie Faith Southworth)
“Angel Valentine Tree” (Lauri Wieser)
“Peaceful Panoramas” — acrylic (Ari Shervinrad — 2nd grade, One River Art student)
“Beneath the Rush” — under the I-95 Saugatuck River bridge (Nancy Breakstone; Available for purchase; click here)
Photographer Mike Hibbard says, “A blissful watering hole? No! It’s a hundred hippos farting non-stop. Do not light a match downwind of these beasts.”
“It’s Never Too Late to Get a COVID Shot!” — watercolor (Steve Stein)
“Boo Hoo” (Lawrence Weisman)
“Passport on I.C.E.” — sculpture (Mark Yurkiw — Available for purchase; click here)
“Enough is Enough” (Duane Cohen — Available for purchase; click here)
(Entrance is free to our online art gallery. But please consider a donation! Just click here — and thank you!)
This is the final story in a 4-part series about the splintering of the Westport Arts Center, into what is now MoCA\CT and the Artists Collective of Westport. (Click on Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3.)
Our “06880” culture correspondent Robin Moyer Chung writes:
In 1996, Westport’s population was booming. Officials needed another school.
Despite a signed lease, and a promise from the schools superintendent that the Westport Arts Center would have the Greens Farms Elementary School building through 1999, he broke the lease and demanded they leave.
Greens Farms School, during its Westport Arts Center days — as portrayed by an artist with a studio there.
Greens Farms Elementary had been WAC’s home for almost 20 years.
Despite this, parents — many of them new to Westport — were upset that artists were taking up school space that could belong to their offspring.
Parents and other residents deemed the artists “frivolous,” and chastised WAC artists and board members.
The opponents did not know that the WAC had poured perhaps a million dollars — from studio rentals, dues, donations and ticket receipts — into repairs and maintenance.
Artur Holde Hall — an exhibit and performing arts space, in the former Greens Farms School gymnasium.
Greens Farms Elementary School was built in 1925. In 1991 it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Any work needed had to preserve its integrity. Such work was costly.
Opponents failed to acknowledge the WAC’s unique contribution to the community. It brought together national award-winning painters, musicians from international symphonies, well-known cartoonists, illustrators from major publications, an art instructor from the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art, and emerging talent.
One artist calls the decision to take back the school “a cultural crime.”
Compo Shopping Center offered WAC administrators a small office above Gold’s Delicatessen.
Artists, staff and board members took advantage of any exhibit space they could, including Earthplace and school auditoriums.
In 2002, they moved into their own space: a gallery on Riverside Avenue.
Westport Arts Center, on Riverside Avenue.
They remained there until 2019, when Mo\CA CT opened on Newtown Turnpike (see Parts 1 and 2).
Once again, many artists had no home.
But not all.
In a prescient move in 2014, 5 artists and WAC artistic director Helen Klisser During created the Artists Collective of Westport. The goal was to retain the WAC’s values and mission.
Four years later — amid rumors of the WAC evolving into MoCA — two Artists Collective members incorporated the organization as a 501(c)3 not-for-profit.
Their aim was to be “a more collegial group” — member-driven, with “renewed respect for local artists.”
Today there are roughly 150 ACW members. Painters, sculptors, photographers and other artists in Fairfield County inspire and assist each other in their creative process.
Artists Collective of Westport member Nina Bentley with her work, at one of the group’s quarterly shows. (Photo/Dan Woog)
A founding artist says that while some members enjoy renown and commercial achievement, the collective’s true measure of success is “how many of our members donate their time and talents to the community, and how much wall space we give to local artists who might not have any other opportunities.”
The Artists Collective partners with the Westport Country Playhouse. They host pop-up exhibits, special events and monthly meetings at the Lucille Lortel Barn.
One member says the Collective “opened the door to this whole new group of people that I wouldn’t have had the chance to know.”
The Artists Collective of Westport also opens doors for area art-lovers to meet, enjoy — and buy the works of — local working artists.
Last month — nearly a decade after the Artists Collective was formed, and Mo\CA CT opened its doors — Mo\CA’s outgoing and incoming executive directors, Pamela Hovland and Robin Jaffee Frank, attended the opening reception for the Collective’s holiday exhibit.
It was the first time a MoCA director had attended an Artists Collective exhibit.
Though the “divorce” was difficult, and my interviews with artists from those periods dug up still-raw emotions, both sides agree that MoCA\CT and the Artists Collective of Westport have made the town’s arts community more vibrant.
That is the power of a collective passion.
(“06880” regularly covers the Westport arts scene, in all its forms. We highlight the history of our town too. If you enjoy stories like these, please click here to support our work. Thank you!)
Holding candles, singing “This Little Light of Mine,” and gathering in solidarity with the people of Minnesota, a few dozen frigid yet determined residents gathered on the steps of the Saugatuck Congregational Church tonight, for a vigil.
All residents, of all faiths — and none — were welcomed by the church, and the vigil’s organizers.
Last weekend’s snowstorm reminded longtime residents of the Old Days.
It’s been a while since we’ve had a winter like this.
When we did, artist Al Willmott painted them.
In 1994, he was on the Ruth Steinkraus Cohen Bridge. Not much has changed (though the trolley was poetic license).
(Courtesy of William Webster)
Nearly 2 decades earlier — in 1978 — he painted Railroad Place. It looks a bit different today — not the streetscape, but the businesses.
(Courtesy of Christopher Maroc)
(Friday Flashback is one of “06880”‘s many regular features. If you enjoy this — or anything else on our website — please consider a tax-deductible contribution. Just click here. Thank you!)
Westport’s former 1st Selectwoman today announced her candidacy for Connecticut state comptroller. The state’s chief financial officer also serves as an independent watchdog, responsible for protecting taxpayers and ensuring accountability across state government.
Jen Tooker
Tooker — a Republican who did not run for re-election in November after serving one term, following previous stints as second selectwoman, an on the Board of Finance, Board of Education and Conservation Commission — suspended her campaign for governor last September.
The current comptroller, Democrat Sean Scanlon of Guilford, was elected to his 4-year term in 2022. He is running again. The election is November 3.
In announcing her comptroller run, Tooker said:
For Connecticut families and businesses, every dollar matters right now: daily expenses, energy costs, and property taxes, they all add up.
The comptroller’s job is to make sure the state treats your tax dollars with the same discipline you must use. I’m running to be the independent watchdog who protects taxpayers, demands answers, and makes sure the government earns back your trust.
This office exists for one reason: to protect taxpayers. As comptroller I will tell the truth about our finances, shine a light on long-term liabilities before they become crises, and make sure every dollar collected from families and businesses is tracked and accounted for.
Her campaign announcement says:
With nearly 25 years in business and 14 years in elected office, Tooker brings a rare combination of private-sector financial expertise and hands-on government leadership to the role. As First Selectwoman of Westport, she managed annual budgets and made calculated long-term financial decisions — including ensuring Westport’s retiree medical benefits (OPEB) were fully funded using transparent reporting and oversight, along with a taxpayer first discipline.
As 1st selectwoman, Tooker helped create StartUp Westport. She received support from Cliff Sirlin, president of the public/private venture for entrepreneurs and innovates. He said:
Jen understands how decisions made at the state level affect the business world. In Westport she communicated clearly, embraced the business community with innovative programs and didn’t hide behind bureaucracy. She’s transparent, data-driven, and relentlessly focused on outcomes. That’s exactly the kind of financial leadership Connecticut business owners need right now.
Tom O’Dea — deputy minority leader and state representative for New Canaan, Darien and Stamford — added:
As 1st Selectwoman, Jen didn’t just talk about fiscal responsibility, she delivered it. She balanced budgets, controlled spending, and protected taxpayers while delivering exceptional services. Jen will bring that same discipline to Hartford — asking the hard questions, following the money, and making sure families aren’t stuck paying the bill for waste and mismanagement.
Tonight (Friday, 6:30 p.m), a candlelight “solidarity vigil” is planned, by Saugatuck Congregational Church.
Everyone — all towns, all religions — is invited to join, on the front stops. Bring candles, if possible.
The vigil will last half an hour. The church will be open, for attendees who wish to place candles in the windows.
Saugatuck Congregational Church (Photo/Jonathan Prager)
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The Flowerfall — the beloved Post Road East shop that for years has provided Westporters with beautiful floral arrangements for weddings, birthdays, anniversaries, funerals, and many other occasions (plus countless boutonnieres and wrist corsages for proms) — has closed.
Stacy Bass sends along this announcement, posted on social media: “Cyrus & Julie have retired. Thank you for your patronage, and for choosing us. It has been a pleasure. The shop is closed.”
A dozen years ago, “06880” gave a shout-out to Cyrus. In the Comments section, Kim Crowther Manning described her first encounter with him:
“What a wonderful, kind, generous and talented man Cyrus is! I will never go to any other florist ever again…. He is a true artist.
“He was hard at work, surrounded by bits of stems, leaves and heads of flowers, scissors, hot glue and wire. He told me at first that he wouldn’t have the time to create a corsage for me, but then had his son (I think it’s his son?) show me an extra one he had made that was in a box in the refrigerated room behind is workstation which was stacked with probably 30 other boxes of corsages and boutonnières waiting for pick-up. Even that room was like a museum full of his beautiful work.
“I joked that if I bought this corsage it would be the most expensive corsage ever, considering that I had already spent $30 on another one elsewhere. With that Cyrus said “oh, I can’t let you do that” and took $5 off his price.
“I was ready to buy it as is and leave him to his work, but he took it out of the box and began walking around the shop looking for flowers he could add to match my son’s prom date’s dress. He brought the corsage and the other flowers he chose back to his workstation and began to recreate the corsage, turning what was already a work of art into a masterpiece!
“While he worked we chatted about his shop and his clients. It was very easy to see his passion for his work. He told me he hadn’t slept the night before because he was worrying about how he would get everything done – he puts so much care into each piece he creates that it takes time and he gets overwhelmed sometimes.
“But he wasn’t complaining. He said, ‘this is how I know things are good – when I can’t sleep I know I’m doing well.'”
Speaking yet again of the weather: This igloo on Tamarac Road caught several “06880” readers’ eyes:
(Photo/Tom Cook)
At first glance, it looks like a clever, creative use of time and energy.
But we also wonder about its adherence to town regulations.
Is it a legal ADU, or some other type of structure? Does it have the required building permits? Is it within the proper setback? Was a wetlands study conducted? Has the fire marshal checked it for exits? Is it ADA-compliant? Might it be considered a blight property?
So many questions … so few answers …
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Speaking (still!) of the weather: With daytime temperatures far below freezing, last Sunday’s snow ain’t going anywhere, anytime soon.
(Nor will they. Today’s high is predicted to be 20. Tonight’s low will be … are you ready? … 1 degree.)
Readers continue to sent photo of their (least) favorite piles. This one’s at Saugatuck Elementary School:
Eli Sharabi — who was kidnapped by Hamas on October 7, 2023, and spent 16 months as a hostage before his release last year — spoke to an overflow audience Wednesday night, at the Westport Library. He is on a US speaking tour.
Former CNN journalist and Westport resident Alisyn Camerota moderated the event. “06880” correspondent Robin Moyer Chung reports:
After being greeted with a standing ovation, Sharabi began his harrowing story of survival.
A CFO of a private equity firm, Eli lived in a kibbutz 3 miles from the Gaza border with his wife Lianne, and daughters Noiya and Yahel. Life was peaceful, living among Palestinians who worked in the kibbutz.
Eli Sharabi, with Alisyn Camerota. (Photo/KT Kaminski)
But on October 7, Hamas stormed into his home. They kidnapped Sharabi, and forced him into an underground tunnel for 491 days.
He and his fellow captors were starved, shackled together, physically and psychologically tortured, and in constant, excruciating pain.
He said of his “living” quarters, “There’s no running water, no toothpaste, no toilet paper. The toilet backs up onto the floor. The stench is unimaginable. Worms infiltrate your living quarters. The relentless hunger starts changing everyone’s personality. The filth starts affecting everyone’s health. Hostages start getting sick. It’s hard to imagine a worse hell.”
Eli Sharab — before and after his capture.
Sharabi described his guards too. They cried into their pillows at night, and had panic attacks. Two of them once excitedly told him “about this wonderful movie that they just saw, called ‘Titanic.’”
His audience realized: His guards were human. They watched movies, missed their families and were overwhelmed by the stress of their jobs.
Still, they felt entitled to beat and starve other humans in horrific, unconscionable ways.
On February 8, 2025 — the day he was released — Sharabi asked to see his wife and daughter.
Instead, a social worker from the Israel Defense Forces said that just his mother and sister were waiting for him in Reimkamp. Without her telling him, he knew his wife and daughter had not survived.
But Sharabi is adamant about making his life larger than his experience. “My memories will be alongside of my life, not part of my life,” he said. “I’ll make them proud of me.”
His hope and determination to stay alive for his family saved his life, and perhaps the lives of others around him.
Today, Sharabi travels the world. He talks about his experiences, and helps people understand the terror of being a hostage of Hamas.
Audience members were emotional, as they offered another standing ovation at the end of the evening.
A portion of last night’s Westport Library audience. (Photo/KT Kaminski)
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