Today’s high winds brought down trees and power lines in different parts of Westport.
Weston Road at Lyons Plains was closed for a couple of hours, while crews removed a tree that covered the street.
Meanwhile, a power line crashed onto North Maple, between Hyde Lane and Long Lots Road — and caused a fire.
Henry Blaikie took this video — from a safe distance.
The sign has been there for a long time.
“Westport Inc. 1835,” it says.
It’s not a legit, state- or town-issued sign. Hanging among trees, it’s easy to miss.
But Matt Murray, Mary Ann Batsell, David Sampson, Robert Mitchell, Seth Braunstein, Wendy Cusick and Amee Borys all knew that last week’s photo challenge hides in plain sight on Weston Road. It’s at the Westport/Weston border, on your right side as you cross into town from the north. (Click here for the photo.)
Congratulations, observant drivers. But we still want to know: How old is the sign? Who put it there? And how has it lasted so long?
Don’t know? No problem. Just turn your attention to this week’s photo challenge:
(Photo/Patricia McMahon)
If you think you know where in Westport you’d see this, click “Comments” below.
In 2013, Carson and Connor Einarsen made “Ryan Hood.” The 60-minute film cost $40. (They rented jackets for police officers).
Two years later, the brothers filmed “An Inconsistent Story in Stealing” here. That was more ambitious. Written by Carson, the neo-noir movie featured a former thief sucked back into the town she despises, to hunt down something she stole long ago.
With 17 speaking parts and 40 locations, it cost $4,000.
Carson (left) and Connor (middle) Einarsen, directing “Ryan Hood.”
Now Carson and Connor are moving up in the film world. “The Silent Beat” will be filmed in Georgia.
It’s more expensive too. The projected cost is $13,500.
Connor calls “The Silent Beat” “a live-action feature film that tells a small, intimate superhero origin story.”
The hero has incredible hearing. He listens to things no one else can, including an old radio that talks to him. When his best friend disappears, he dons a helmet and cape to get him back.
There’s a reason the young men are filming in Georgia. Carson — a 2012 Staples High School grad, and film and TV major at the Savannah College of Art and Design — now teaches film at Gatewood Academy, a private school in Eatonton.
Connor (Staples ’10, Carleton College with a major in cinema and media studies) is happy to travel south to help.
The new film was written — over nearly a dozen drafts — by Carson. He set it in the 1980s because that was a time of advanced analog technology. The world was about to go digital — but no one knew it.
“It was a time before total connectivity,” Carson notes. His characters are isolated — but not in the way modern technology has made us become.
In the ’80s, Carson says, “you couldn’t just pull out your cellphone and call someone. You had to talk face to face.”
He was not alive in the 1980s, of course. He used a writers’ group as “consultants” on the decade. (They told him, for example, to call a certain type of sneakers “Chucks,” not “Converse.”)
“The Silent Beat,” in the planning stages.
Filming begins November 27, and runs through December 20. When it’s done, Carson hopes it makes the festival rounds.
It’s perfect for those audiences: “an action-adventure film aimed at young adults nostalgic for the ’80s,” Carson explains.
You know: those days when life was so uncomplicated.
But before there was a YouTube to show his promotional video, and a Kickstarter website to help raise the $13,500 the young filmmakers need.
(Click here for a Kickstarter link to Carson and Connor Einarsen’s “The Silent Beat.”)
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Compo Beach skate park (Photo/Lynn U. Miller)
Last year, Staples and Darien tied in the state L (large schools) state title game. They were declared co-champs. That was quite an accomplishment.
But this year, there’s no sharing at all. The Wreckers edged the same team — the Blue Wave — 1-0 in the championship match, at Wethersfield High School.
Congratulations to coach Ian Tapsall, and his girls!
The 2017 state champion Staples field hockey team. (Photo courtesy of Sal Augeri)
They were not the only Staples team playing for a state crown today.
The girls soccer team — fresh off their FCIAC championship — fell 2-1 to Ridgefield, in the LL (largest schools) clash at West Haven High.
It’s very difficult to beat the same good team 3 times in one season. The Wreckers of coaches Barry Beattie, Mackenzie Pretty and Dave Sharpe had knocked off the Tigers twice before, in regular season and FCIAC tournament play.
Christmas is coming! The holidays are almost here! Which means one thing: Westporters will soon be stressed to the max.
There’s plenty to worry about. Will my house look as wonderful as Martha Stewart’s and Hallmark’s? Am I a bad person because hearing “Have a Holly Jolly Christmas” 10 times a day for the next 6 weeks drives me batshit? When I find the perfect tree, how the hell am I supposed to get it home?
The answers to the first 2 questions are: no and no.
The answer to the final one is: Tree Transporter.
The TT is a soft-sided, frameless carrier. It attaches easily to a car roof, and the tree fits just as easily into it. It catches sap drippings and random needles.
And it’s the brainchild of a Staples High School grad.
Bobby Donofrio got his diploma on a hot day in 1999. Now — as the weather turns cold — he hopes to make hay off of pine trees.
His big product is actually pretty small. You can shove it in your pocket or purse, like a reusable bag.
When you’re ready to haul your tree home, just unroll it, put it in place, buckle it and tighten it. It takes just 60 seconds — far less than the amount of time you spend putting that !@#$%^ angel on the top, once it’s home.
Merry Christmas! For more information, or to order a Tree Transporter, click here.
Now get back to stressing out…
Last month, “06880” profiled Clay Singer. The 2013 Staples High School graduate was getting ready to play Peter in the Westport Country Playhouse production of “Romeo and Juliet.”
His background — including starring roles in Staples Players, and as a Carnegie Mellon musical theater major — sure paid off.
Last Sunday at 1 p.m. — while driving from New York for his 3 p.m. matinee — Clay learned he’d have to step in for an actor who was ill.
In addition to his own role, he’d play Prince Escalus.
Clay got a quick costume fitting, learned all his lines and blocking with his scene partners, and went on stage.
Clay Singer and his new costume.
He’d already planned to arrive at the Playhouse early — to watch football games on the green room TV.
Instead, he asked his family to record them.
The show, after all, must go on.
And it has, with Clay playing his — and Prince Escalus’ — roles, ever since.
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Posted in People, Staples HS, Westport Country Playhouse
Morning at the Greens Farms train station (Photo/Robert Augustyn)
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Tagged Green's Farms train station
As Westport heads toward the holidays, many of us will dine well.
We’ll enjoy meals at fine restaurants, with friends, family and colleagues. It’s the most wonderful time of the year.
But it’s not such a great time for our neighbors who are hungry. So, as we eat and drink, we should also look for this logo:
“Hunger Bites” is a month-long campaign to end local hunger. Co-sponsored by Food Rescue US — a national organization (with a strong Westport presence) that moves fresh, usable food that would have been thrown away by restaurants and grocery stores to families that desperately need it — and the CTBites website, the month-long drive is a way to make a donation on your restaurant bill. It goes directly to folks in need.
With the cost of delivery just 5 cents a meal, adding just $1 to your check provides 20 meals.
National board member (and Westporter) Simon Hallgarten notes that this is far below the norm for most food non-profits. Food Rescue US is so efficient because there is no cost of storage or delivery. They crowdsource their volunteers, so there is no direct cost for pickup or delivery.
Participating restaurants in Westport include The Cottage, Jesup Hall, Kawa Ni, Match Burger Lobster, Tarry Lodge, The Whelk and Winfield Coffee & Deli.
We’ve got a lot of choices for great dining over the next few weeks. Those places should be on everyone’s list.
Recent Friday Flashbacks have featured interesting sites at the head of Main Street: Needle Park (the old library plaza) for example, and West Lake Chinese restaurant.
This week’s flashback goes way further back — all the way to the turn of the 20th century.
This circa-1900 photo of E. Lehn’s Bakery shows that same area of downtown. It looks a lot different today — and also very similar.
(Photo courtesy of Paul Ehrismann)
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