The other day I posted a story about Mike Greenberg’s new book, “MVP: Most Valuable Puppy.” The children’s tale honors the memory of Heidi Armitage, a beloved Westporter. She died in 2009, after battling breast cancer.
Heidi Armitage and Walker Green
Heidi’s son Walker Green was a young boy when his mom died. Now — a couple of weeks before graduating from Staples High School — he’s working with Staples Pink Aid and the Cancer Couch Foundation on a fundraiser for metastatic breast cancer.
And — in keeping with his mother’s personality — the “fun” part of “fundraiser” is important.
The Scoops Challenge is really an old-fashioned ice cream-eating contest. Teams of 4 eat as many scoops as they can, in 3 minutes. Winners earn trophies.
Teams can also win by raising the most money. Each team must raise at least $100 to enter.
Action from last year’s Fairfield contest.
Westport’s first-ever Scoops Challenge is set for the Staples courtyard on Thursday, June 14 at 5 p.m., for high school students. Middle and elementary school students have their own challenge on Friday, June 15 (4 p.m., at Saugatuck Sweets).
Saugatuck Sweets is donating all the ice cream. Owner Al DiGuido started the event in Fairfield, and has raised $20,000. Staples is the first high school to do it.
To register, click here for the high school challenge; click here for the middle and elementary school challenge. Then share your team page via social media with everyone you know.
The Scoops Challenge is a great idea, for an excellent cause.
PS: Don’t forget to practice!
(From left) Organizers Alex Laudico, Walker Green, Rohan Goswami (MC of the event) and Pink Aid head Bianca Bicalho prepare for the Scoops Challenge, at Saugatuck Sweets.
When Richard “Deej” Webb was 14, he read “The Great Gatsby.”
Through his bedroom window across from the Minute Man monument, he could see the house that — decades earlier — F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald once rented.
In between was Longshore. Deej caddied, biked and ran there. He knew every inch of the property well.
In 1996, when Barbara Probst Solomon wrote a New Yorker story claiming that Westport — not Great Neck, Long Island — was the inspiration for Gatsby’s “West Egg,” Webb was fascinated.
By then he was teaching US history at New Canaan High School. But the 1980 Staples graduate’s heart — and home — remained here.
Webb studied Solomon’s theories. He researched Longshore, and environs. Convinced she was right — and that Westport, in fact, influenced both Fitzgerald and his wife far more than anyone realized — Webb spoke to whomever he could.
Many Fitzgerald scholars and fans were interested. Most Westporters, he says, were not.
In 2013 Webb participated in a Westport Historical Society roundtable examining the town’s literary past. Organizer Robert Steven Williams — a novelist — asked Webb if he’d like to collaborate on a documentary about Fitzgerald’s time here.
The film will be shown on public television this fall. A companion coffee table book — “Boats Against the Current” (taken from a famous “Gatsby” line) — will be published next month.
The book cover shows the iconic photo of F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, in front of their South Compo house. The image was Photoshopped — long before that term came into general use.
“Boats” is thoroughly researched, lavishly illustrated, and immensely educational. It should be required reading for every Westporter.
Webb and Williams took Solomon’s original thesis — that Fitzgerald’s home next to the 175-acre estate of reclusive millionaire Frederick E. Lewis (now Longshore) informed not only the author’s physical description of Jay Gatsby’s mansion, but also much of the novel’s emotional power — and expanded it to encompass nearly the entire Fitzgerald ouevre.
In 1920, his first book — “This Side of Paradise” — had just been published. Fitzgerald was making great money. He and Zelda were newly married — and kicked out of New York’s finest hotels, for debauchery.
Westport was their honeymoon. It was also their first home. Here — especially at Lewis’ next-door estate — they enjoyed celebrity-filled orgies. And they skinny-dipped at Compo Beach.
Zelda at Compo Beach — before (or after) skinny-dipping. (Photo courtesy of “Boats Against the Current”)
Their experiences and memories — along with the town’s sights and smells — all became part of “Gatbsy”; of “The Beautiful and the Damned”; even of Zelda’s paintings, Webb says.
In fact, he adds, “Westport shows up in their works more than any other place they lived.”
The back story of Lewis — a descendant of one of the wealthiest families in American history — is particularly fascinating. He’s not a familiar name. But his parties at what later became Longshore — which the Fitzgeralds surely must have attended — were beyond legendary. One even featured Harry Houdini. (Yes, he performed an escape trick right there.)
His and Williams’ painstaking work has been accepted by many Fitzgerald scholars, as well descendants like granddaughter Bobbie Lanahan.
Robert Steven Williams (left) and Richard “Deej” Webb flank the Fritzgeralds’ granddaughter Bobbie Lanahan.
The New York Times recently published a story on Webb and Williams’ project. The international attention was gratifying.
But the duo have a more local concern too.
All around town — including Webb’s boyhood Compo Beach neighborhood — homes are being torn down. Big new houses are replacing older ones with important histories.
Webb and Williams worry the same fate may befall Fitzgerald’s house. And, they fear, few people will care.
The current owners, Webb says, “are fantastic. They’re well aware of the significance, and treat it with great respect.”
But there’s no assurance a future owner will not tear the 1758 structure down.
F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald slept — and partied — here, on South Compo Road.
There is only one museum in the world dedicated to F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald. It’s in Montgomery, Alabama, where he wrote portions of 2 novels.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful, Webb and Williams ask, if at some point the town could buy the house, and turn it into a “Fitzgerald Center”?
“Sometimes Westport has amnesia about its history,” Webb says. “It’s an incredible past. It’s hard to find an American town that has more. But it’s disappearing in front of our eyes.”
Of course, as a history teacher — and amateur historian – Webb knows the one thing that never changes is change.
When the Fitzgeralds arrived in 1920, he says, “farmers in Westport worried about all the New Yorkers coming in.”
With their lavish parties and skinny-dipping orgies, those newcomers had a new way of doing things.
One hundred years later — thanks to F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald — those Westport days live on.
And — thanks to Deej Webb and Robert Steven Williams — they’re memorialized forever.
(To pre-order “Boats Against the Current” on Amazon, click here; through Barnes & Noble, click here.)
Growing up with 20,000 records filling his basement, a new-fangled stereo in the living room and a Wollensak tape recorder in his bedroom, it’s no surprise Mike Joseph spent the rest of his life around music.
The Westporter’s father — Mike Joseph Sr. — was a radio executive. In the 1960s he turned WABC into an AM powerhouse. In the ’70s he flipped more than a dozen major market stations to the “Hot Hits” format he created.
Mike Jr. got the music bug, and never let go.
In 1960s Westport, he recalls, “everyone was either in a band, or listening to one.”
He took his reel-to-reel tape recorder to Mike Mugrage’s basement, and recorded classmates Jeff Dowd, Dave Barton, Brian Keane, Rob McClenathan, Julie Aldworth, Peter Rolnick, Harry Miller and others.
In 1971, Jeff Dowd practiced guitar in a Staples High School music rehearsal room.
It was quite a crew. Dowd went on to become a noted opera singer. Keane is a Grammy Award winner. McClenathan and Aldworth — who got married — still make music. So did Mugrage and Barton.
That’s the milieu Joseph remembers fondly.
At Staples High School, the Class of 1971 grad says, “people sat outside the cafeteria playing guitars and harmonicas.” He had a morning shift on the school radio station WWPT-FM. Music was everywhere.
Rich Bradley — Joseph’s English teacher at Coleytown Junior High School, who later taught at Staples — was the first director of the Youth Adult Council. Concerned that teenagers were just hanging out downtown, he recruited Joseph and Guy Rabut to put on a coffeehouse.
Held first downstairs at the Saugatuck Congregational Church, then at Bedford Elementary School (now Town Hall), the shows harnessed the talents of local singers.
As audio director for Staples Players, Joseph served as stage manager for acts that played at Staples: the James Gang, Delaney & Bonnie, Taj Mahal, the Byrds, Mahavishnu Orchestra and more. He showed roadies where the electrical tie-ins were, and shepherded the groups to and from the green room (usually a music rehearsal space).
Hiding mics in the catwalk, he occasionally recorded concerts for personal use.
Then he did sound for Jesup Green concerts. Joseph owned big Altec Lansing speakers, and borrowed power amps from his friend Bob Barrand. He’d rig up a PA system on the flatbed trailer that served as a stage.
Mike Joseph, in the early 1970s.
Back in the day, music and politics went hand in hand. In 1971 he and Barton hitchhiked to Washington for a May Day rally. Joseph wore bell bottoms and a t-shirt, had 39 cents in his pocket, slept on a church floor — and helped handle the sound on the Capitol steps.
At Ohio University, Joseph helped build one of the first large student radio and audio production facilities in the country. He recorded bands in the studio and the field — including the Pipestem Bluegrass Festival in West Virginia for a very young NPR.
He transferred to Syracuse University — site of the nation’s first 16-track student-oriented recording studio.
Then came a long career as a recording engineer, record producer and club designer. He collaborated in Nat King Cole’s Hollywood studio with Natalie Cole, Gladys Knight, Blue Cheer and others.
Mike Joseph, at the mixing board.
In San Francisco — as chief engineer for Oasis Recording Studio and producer for BBI Productions — he worked with George Lucas’ Skywalker Ranch, Tower of Power, Santana, Journey and dozens more new wave and disco-era bands.
In 1989 Joseph became editor of Recording Engineer/Producer Magazine, and founded another publication. In that capacity he traveled the world, visiting studios like Abbey Road.
These days — decades after leaving his Westport home with its 20,000 albums, stereo and tape recorder — Joseph is still in Kansas City. He’s a strategic marketing and business planning consultant.
Mike Joseph today.
He’s just built a home production studio, to digitize vintage analog tapes.
He does it all: concerts, weddings, lectures. And — of course — old recordings for his many musician friends.
He’s happy to talk to anyone who has tapes they want to save.
Particularly if they also have stories about the very vibrant, really rich Westport music scene of the 1960s and ’70s.
(For more information, email mike.joseph@sbcglobal.net)
In March, over 1,000 Staples High School students walked out of class. Massed in the fieldhouse, they honored the 17 slain students and teachers of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, and demanded sensible gun legislation.
It was a powerful display of activism. But many Westporters wondered whether the teenage leaders could sustain their momentum.
A month later, a smaller — but still substantial — group of students headed to the high school courtyard. In the afternoon, a few dozen assembled on Veterans Green, across from Town Hall.
Again, their message centered on stopping gun violence.
And again, the question hung: Are these kids in it for the long run?
They are.
Last month, Staples High School students stood in the courtyard to demand action on gun violence. (Photo/Ali Feder)
There’s now a Staples chapter of Students Demand Action. That’s the national organization — affiliated with Everytown for Gun Safety — fighting for common sense gun reform and usage. Westport leaders include Elana Atlas, Audrey Bernstein, Ruby Coleman, Kaela Dockray, Brooke Kessler, Peri Kessler and Eliza Oren.
The end of the school year is in sight — the busiest time of year. Seniors have already headed off to internships.
But Students Demand Action are in the thick of things. They meet regularly, to strategize and plan activities.
Their first big event is a #WearOrange campaign. That’s the official color of gun violence — because it was what Hadiya Pendleton’s friends wore to honor her. She was killed at age 15 — just a week after performing at President Obama’s 2nd inauguration.
On the weekend of June 1-3, the group will paint the town orange. It’s part of a nationwide effort.
“We’re fighting to take back power from the gun lobby,” says Staples chapter co-founder Elana Atlas.
“We would love for the rest of the community to fight with us as we demand action from legislators on a local, state and federal level, as well as businesses and schools to implement common-sense gun reforms. We need to end the epidemic of gun violence in America.”
(For more information, email westportstudentsdemand@gmail.com)
Staples High School’s many choral ensembles — male, female, mixed, from freshmen through elite Orphenians — came together last Friday for a special “One Voice Concert for Unity.”
They sang by themselves and together. There were featured solos, and soaring, intricate group selections. Orphenians performed 2 pieces by Jake Runestad, the heralded composer whose work they’ll showcase this summer in Australia.
And there was a compelling rendition of “Tell My Father,” Sullivan Ballou’s tender Civil War letter to his wife, put to music.
It was an outstanding evening. Just when you think choral director Luke Rosenberg and our town’s teenagers can’t set the bar higher — they do.
When Justin Paul was a Staples High School student, he played piano for the Westport Library’s signature Booked for the Evening fundraiser.
The Class of 2003 graduate returns to the event this year.
This time though, he’s not the entertainment.
He’s the honoree.
Justin Paul
Paul — the Oscar, Grammy, Tony and Golden Globe Award-winning songwriter whose collaboration with Benj Pasek includes “Dear Evan Hansen,” “La La Land,” “The Greatest Showman,” “A Christmas Story,” “Dogfight” and “James and the Giant Peach” — joins the likes of Tom Brokaw, E.L. Doctorow, Pete Hamill, Martin Scorsese, Doris Kearns Goodwin, David Halberstam, Patti Smith, Alan Alda and fellow Westporters Nile Rodgers and Lynsey Addario as “Booked” recipients.
Not bad for a 33-year-old.
Paul admits that he doesn’t have the “life experiences” of honorees. But he’s got plenty of riveting acccomplishments.
And he knows the Westport Library well.
“Growing up, it was a constant in my life,” Paul says. “I went there to research school projects, to find new books to read, and everything else. It’s a cornerstone of Westport.”
In middle school, going downtown by himself to the library made him feel “very adult, very cool.”
The CD and DVD collections helped him on his career path. “I think they subtly encouraged my exploration of music, movies and plays,” he says.
Another library — the music one at the University of Michigan — played an important role in Paul’s life too.
“I spent a healthy percentage of time there,” he recalls. “They had scores of every classical piece, and every Broadway musical. It completely fed my hunger and curiosity.”
Justin Paul and Benj Pasek, at January’s Golden Globe Awards. (Photo/Paul Drinkwater NBC)
When Paul and Pasek began their songwriting careers, librarians would request official copies of their work.
“We always said yes,” Paul notes. “As 23-year-0lds, hearing from a librarian made us feel very grown up.”
A lot has happened in the decade since. And it’s been only a decade and a half since Paul went from playing piano at Booked for the Evening, to the main event.
What will he talk about on June 11?
“I could fill an hour just listing all the Westport influences on my life,” he jokes.
“But the library is all about story-telling. That’s what Benj and I do. So it will probably have something to do with stories.”
Book it!
(“Booked for the Evening” is set for Monday, June 11, 7 p.m. at Rolling Hills Country Club in Wilton. For tickets and sponsorship information, click here.)
Before post-season tournaments, some boys teams shave their heads. Others get Mohawks.
This year, the volleyball guys decided that instead of looking fierce (or stupid), they’d look good.
Yesterday, they headed to Effi’s Salon in Saugatuck.
There, owner Effie Andriotis colored the Wreckers.
The 2018 Staples High School volleyball team — and Effie.
But make no mistake: This team is tough.
The volleyballers finished their regular season last week with a perfect 19-0 record.
Even more incredible: They won 57 sets this spring, and lost just 2.
Tomorrow (Wednesday, May 23), the top-seeded Westporters take on Trumbull in the FCIAC semifinals. Game time is 5 p.m., at Fairfield Ludlowe High School.
They’d love a huge crowd to cheer them on.
They wouldn’t mind some props for their hair, too.
Nine years ago, Staples Players produced “Twelve Angry Men.” The classic courtroom drama was staged in the Black Box Theater — in the round.
The audience surrounded the set, on all 4 sides. I saw it 3 times — always in a different spot. Each vantage point was unique. I saw 3 versions of the same play.
This week, Players again produce “Twelve Angry Men.” Once again it’s in the round.
“With racial profiling and challenges to justice ever present in the news today, this felt like the right time to bring back the show,” Roth says.
“It feels like the actors are in a fishbowl — being watched and judged by society. That’s what we want.”
“Twelve Angry men” explores the dynamics between 12 jurors, from different backgrounds, as they meet on a hot summer day to decide one man’s fate. Though the play was first performed live on CBS in 1954, the preconceptions and assumptions of the characters are quite relevant today.
Tempers flare as jurors deliberate in “Twelve Angry Men.” From left: Tucker Ewing, Nick Rossi, Sam Gusick, Chad Celini, Jack Watzman and Kristin Amato. (Photo/Kerry Long)
Kristin Amato — Juror #8 — says, “The show really makes you think. It is all about the questioning of morals and personal prejudices. I think many audience members will go home reflecting on their own actions, and how they may have acted if they were in the same circumstances as the jurors in the show.”
She adds, “As much as I love the main stage, there’s something special about the intimacy of the Black Box. I love the interaction with the audience. Because we’re so close, when anyone claps or laughs or even gasps, we as actors can really play off of it. The energy just builds.”
For several seniors, “Twelve Angry Men” — which Roth and Long have cast to include female jurors — will be the final Players show before college.
Sophia Sherman — who will study acting at the University of Michigan — plays a Russian immigrant. Her passion for democracy, and strong statements about immigration, race and class difference, are “eye-opening,” Sherman says.
My eyes were opened — in 3 different ways — 9 years ago. I look forward to seeing the same show, in yet another way, soon.
(“Twelve Angry Men” will be performed this Thursday, Friday and Saturday, May 24, 25 and 26, at 7:30 p.m., and Sunday, May 27 at 3 p.m., in the Staples High School Black Box Theatre. Click here for tickets. A few tickets may be available in the Black Box Theatre lobby 30 minutes prior to performances.)
Posted onMay 15, 2018|Comments Off on Dick Leonard Memorial Service Set For June 3
A memorial service for Dick Leonard — the legendary Staples High School English teacher who died earlier this month — will be held Sunday, June 3, at 2 p.m. at Town Hall. The public is invited to attend.
If you’re like me, you can solve a Rubik’s cube in about the time it takes a spaceship to reach the Andromeda galaxy.
And return.
If you’re like Krish Shah-Nathwani though, you can do it in 1 minute, 41 seconds.
Blindfolded.
He’s been cubing since 2014. He was a Bedford Middle School student, and spent days teaching himself with an online tutorial. Very quickly, Krish got hooked.
Pyraminx
His first competition came a few months later, at Yale. His time of 17.89 seconds — yes, you read that right — was not good enough to earn honors (you read that right too). But Krish had fun, made friends, and loved the cubing community.
He began specializing in pyraminx (a tetrahedron puzzle with nearly a million different positions). Before year’s end, he placed 2nd at an MIT event.
2015 brought Krish’s 1st sub-10 second solve; his 1st win, and a trip to the nationals in Portland, Oregon.
He loved competitions. “They’re a great social gathering with like-minded people,” Krish — now a Staples High School sophomore — says. “I’ve made friends all across the country.”
Last year, he entered 13 competitions. Computers generate “scrambles.” Each cuber gets 5 different “solves.” The best and worst scores are discarded, because a lucky scramble can allow a contestant to skip a few steps. Scores are based on the average time of the middle 3 solves.
Krish got his first sub-10 second average. That was a “huge milestone.”
Kirsh Shah-Nathwani intently works a cube.
He also had his first blindfolded success. When the timer starts, cubers memorize what they see. He imagines a sequence of letters, then solves the cube using a mnemonic.
So that 1:41 time? It includes the seconds he spent memorizing the cube.
Last year, at nationals in Fort Wayne, Indiana, Krish reached 2 semifinals and 1 finals.
At Penn, he finished second in the “normal” category (a regular Rubik’s cube solve). The winner was the North American record holder for fastest solve. “He’s one of my idols,” Krish says. “So I didn’t feel that bad.”
6×6 Rubik’s cube
Competitions involve many different categories. Krish can do 2×2, 3×3, 4×4, 5×5 and 6×6. He’ll do 7×7 this June. (It’s worth noting — though Krish says it very casually — that he does 3×3 with only one hand — and blindfolded.)
He also does square 1 (shape-shifting) and megaminx (a dodecahedron).
Is there anything Krish can’t do?
“I can’t solve with my feet,” he admits. “It takes me like 10 minutes. I have a friend who did it in 16.9 seconds.”
A key characteristic of a good cuber is resilience, Krish says. You do not need “genius IQ,” or a mathematical mind. “Once you understand how a cube works, it’s simple,” he claims.
As you may have figured, Krish is the real deal. He’s sponsored by Speed Cube Shop, an online seller of cubes, timers, lubricants, carrying bags, and anything else a competitive cuber could want.
Krish gets his cubes for free (and displays their logo prominently).
That’s a big help. Each cube turns differently, he explains. And each cuber has his particular style. A serious cuber needs lots of cubes.
Krish puts them to good use. You can see them on his YouTube channel. He has over 1,500 subscribers. He’s so well known, in fact, that at competitions he gets asked for autographs and selfies.
In March, Krish won his first competition, in Poughkeepsie, New York, with an average time of 8.36 seconds. He set a personal best time there too: 6.73 seconds. That got his name on the World Cube Association home page.
This summer, Krish heads to Nationals in Salt Lake City, to compete against some of the best in the world.
But, Krish insists, all this competition is not about beating others.
“It’s cool to get accolades. But it’s more about competing against yourself. I’m ecstatic when I better myself.
“And we’re all supportive of each other. When Daniel Gutierrez beat my state record, I was so happy. He practiced so long, and worked so hard.”
Speaking of practice: Krish spends 2 to 3 hours a day on his cubes.
“It’s not an obligation. I enjoy it,” he says. “I do it while I’m on video calls with friends in other states. We talk with each other about everything. And we race too.”
Every month or so, he sees those cubing friends in real life, at competitions.
Krish and friends, at a cubing competition.
His other friends — those at Staples — think his cubing is cool. Teachers are impressed too.
The entire school saw see Krish in action recently, at the talent show. He was just as entertaining as the singers and dancers.
Which leads to this important detail about Krish Shah-Nathwani: He has a life beyond cubing.
A member of Staples Players, he has performed onstage in “Music Man,” “Newsies,” and the One-Act Play Festival.
“It rounds me out as a person,” he says. “Cubing brings out my analytical side. Players brings out my artistic side.”
But he can’t resist one final plug for his greatest passion.
“Give it a try!” he urges. “We need more Connecticut cubers.”
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