Terrain — the new garden/home/gift/organic cafe store on the site of the old Curran Cadillac on the Post Road — has sent out invitations to a preview party this Thursday evening.
The opening is set for the next day — Friday, May 11.
For the past couple of weeks, Westporters have watched non-stop, feverish construction.
Can Terrain do it? Will they open on time?
The race is on!
There are 2 people Westporters always wonder about.
Who was “Staples,” they ask.*
And, equally importantly, who is “Fiona”?
For several years a sign — “Fiona’s Disappearing Island” — stood at the corner of Soundview Drive and Hillspoint Road. An “island” indeed appears and disappears near the Schlaet’s Point jetty, changing with the tide, but no one knew where the sign came from, or who named the spot.
Then the sign disappeared.
Now it’s back — as sea-like and jangly as ever.
No one still knows who Fiona is — though, I’m told, an inscription on the back of the new sign refers to “a gypsy who loved the sea.” (It’s pretty high up — presumably to thwart thieves. Yao Ming would find it hard to read the back.)
Meanwhile, here’s a closeup of the front:
How’d I get it?
Let’s just say “Fiona works in mysterious ways.”
(* Horace Staples — a very wealthy banker/businessman/merchant/farmer — founded Westport’s high school in 1884, age 80. He’s a fascinating man. But if you’d read my book on the history of Staples High School, you’d know all that.)
Posted in Arts, Beach, Totally random
One of Westport’s best-kept secrets is the White Barn Theatre.
The White Barn Theatre.
Founded in 1947 by actress/producer Lucille Lortel on her Newtown Road property straddling the Norwalk line, the 148-seat White Barn has always played second fiddle to the bigger, better-known red barn Westport Country Playhouse.
But despite its low-key presence — it may be the last organization on earth without a website — the White Barn Theatre deserves its place in arts history.
Lucille Lortel
Lortel envisioned the former horse barn as a showcase for daring plays and new playwrights, composers, actors, directors and designers. It has been called “one of the greatest American experimental theaters of the 20th century.”
It presented works by Ionesco, Albee and Beckett, and premiered or staged early versions of plays that went on to successful Broadway and Off-Broadway runs, including Paul Zindel’s “The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds” and Terrence McNally’s “Next.”
Among the actors who got their start there were Peter Falk and Geoffrey Holder.
The White Barn Theatre and Athol Fugard, featured in a 1964 1994 Norwalk Hour story.
Marilyn Monroe and Arthur Miller were regular guests for plays by Athol Fugard, Bertold Brecht and Tennesse Williams.
It’s the real deal — even if you’ve never heard of it. And many Westporters have not.
This Saturday (May 12, 2 p.m.), you’ll get a chance to peek inside the White Barn Theatre. The Westport Historical Society is sponsoring a tour. Former general manager Mark Graham and British stage designer Peter Ling will show off the building and grounds (Lortel’s private residence still stands).
There will be a reading, and refreshments in the garden.
Eva La Gallienne
Plus, Ling says, through “the magic of theater” Lortel and Eva La Gallienne — the actress/producer/director long associated with the White Barn — will “live again.” I can’t say more than that, but it should be very cool.
Just like everything about the White Barn Theatre. Whether you’ve been a fan for 6 decades, or heard of it for the first time 6 seconds ago.
(Tickets are $10 each. For reservations, call 203-222-1424. The White Barn Theatre is located on Newtown Turnpike, near the corner of Cranbury Road.)
The Minuteman — a Compo Beach icon since 1910 — looks as watchful as ever, as work proceeds on a new fence at his base.
(Photo/Tom Feeley)
For over 100 years, Westporters (not all of them teenagers) have decorated the Minuteman with scarves, Christmas caps, baseball hats, flowers and, let’s just say, a second “gun.”
He’s seen it all.
We’re betting his new fence — replacing the old, rusted one — will not deter a new generation of Westporters, as they too get “up close and personal” with our favorite statue.
Everyone knows who really runs a school: the secretaries and custodians.
Last week, Staples’ custodial staff was thanked for their hard — and often unappreciated — work.
There was special breakfast food, and more in the afternoon for the 2nd shift. Posters were hung, hand-written cards handed out.
Yet the day-long celebration was inspired — and organized — not by the administration or PTA. The idea came from a group of students, and Staples’ National Honor Society carried it out.
Senior Lexie Schachne called the day “extremely successful. The custodial staff felt quite special.”
Still, she said, “the truth is that every day should be Custodian Appreciation Day.”
See what your kids do when you’re not looking?
Staples’ popular head custodian Horace Lewis leads a great staff.
Jarret Liotta is a 1983 Staples grad. He’s now a writer (New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Connecticut Magazine among many credits), and a blogger.
Recently, he wrote about his close encounter with the CL&P tree guys. Here’s an excerpt:
Jarret Liotta
How ironic it was to return home on Earth Day to find a representative of Connecticut Light and Power tagging trees in our neighborhood for take-down. (CL&P apparently hires local “gardening” businesses to do this sort of work, and I have to assume — it only makes sense — that the more trees they cut down — the more they tag — the more money they can make.)
So it shouldn’t have surprised me that he was suggesting a beautiful, large healthy tree at the corner of our property — at least 12 feet off the lines, and in no way presenting a danger — be given the ax (or chainsaw, as it were).
What was also hysterical (and frightening) was that the CL&P flyer — entitled “You Can Help Prevent Power Outages” — ONLY talked about PRUNING trees, and referenced their “tree-trimming program.” But on the enclosed permission sheet — the empowering written consent form that CL&P NEEDS to do their dirty work — they had a little line checked for “taking down,” with the numeral “1” next to it.
Were you to see the tree, you’d laugh that CL&P (or in this case, its paid assassin) would even TRY to argue this lovely life form should be taken down. But what’s so scary is that — and I have no doubt — many people throughout the town, throughout the whole state, are going to quickly sign these consent forms without even realizing it means they’re going to kill a healthy tree simply because 1) the tree killers will make more money and 2) it may save CL&P trouble in the long run.
Jarret Liotta is not a big fan of tree cutting. (Note: This is NOT Jarret Liotta.)
The carelessness with which people take axes to healthy trees — ESPECIALLY so-called gardeners and tree caretakers, ironically — is pitiful. Modern housing construction starts with clear-cutting lots, rather than trying to design structures that work in tandem with the natural world (meaning big, beautiful trees).
Homeowners consider fine landscaping cutting down everything that makes shade and grows on the ground, planting the most artificial-looking chemical-saturated grass money can buy, and surrounding it all with wood chips, wood chips, wood chips — the stinkier, the better!
On a parallel note, the state is taking great steps to cut down as many trees as possible along the scenic Merritt Parkway. Apparently everyone is feeling paranoid because of some lawsuits involving trees and death and storms, so the logic is to always blame the trees (because we can’t blame the state, or the drivers), and so they must be cut down en masse, and scenery, nature and trees be damned …
(To read Jarret’s entire post, click here.)
Westport has no direct living links to the Titanic tragedy, 100 years ago last month.
But 86-year-old Elwood Betts remembers another disaster well. 75 years ago today the Hindenburg burned in a hellish fireball, as it attempted to dock with its mooring mast in New Jersey.
Just a few hours earlier, it had flown gracefully over Westport. Here is Elwood’s story.
May 6, 1937 was just another routine day. I was probably daydreaming about the last day of school. I would leave Westport for rustic Norwich, Vermont, to spend the summer on my grandfather’s farm. I’d drive the cows to pasture, feed the horse, and take him to the blacksmith shop. I’d carry a couple of bags of last year’s potatoes to pay the smith. Good potatoes would be a treat this time of year.
Elwood Betts today. The Evergreen Cemetery restoration is one of his many civic projects.
But in the back of my 11-year-old mind, there was the excitement of seeing photographs in Life magazine. Soldiers in Italy strutted in their stiff lockstep, and thousands of German youths gathered in the stadium saluting the Nazi swastika.
If my mind wandered as I sat in Mrs. Caswell’s 6th grade homeroom at Bedford Elementary School (now Town Hall), it was jolted by the PA. Word came to go quickly into the playground, in the back of the school.
As we burst outdoors we saw the massive circle of the nose of the monstrous airship Hindenburg. It loomed directly toward us. Its altitude was so low, and the path so close to the edge of our playground, that we actually saw passengers lean out the gondola windows. We all waved frantically.
Above the roar of the engines, we were mesmerized by the huge swastika emblazoned on the tail fins.
The Hindenburg. It carried the only swastika ever to fly over the United States.
We soon were dismissed from school. We left exhilarated, having seen another great technological advance that was becoming the hallmark of the new Nazi Germany.
The next morning I rose very early. I biked downtown to Lamson’s Newsy Corner on Taylor Place (across from the Y), to pick up the morning newspapers to deliver on my regular route.
To my complete amazement, there were the now-famous pictures of the Hindenburg burning explosively as it docked at the Lakehurst Naval Air Station. The scene of horror, as people jumped from the windows we had seen only the afternoon before, and running among sheets of flaming debris falling all around, will never leave me.
The New York Daily News sent a bundle of extra copies. They were distributed to each of us, to sell for 3 cents apiece. I went directly to Smitty’s Diner, next to the then-new post office.
I was a shy boy. But I surprised myself by bursting into the diner, shouting like I had seen in the movie newsreels, “Extra, extra! Hindenburg burns!”
I sold all the papers immediately. Most people gave me a nickel — a 2-cent tip. I was rich.
On reflecting that 36 people died — in just 37 seconds — I was humbled thinking of my previous day’s exaltation at the mastery of Germany technology.
The disaster, as reported in the Westporter-Herald the following day.
The next fall, we had the privilege of having Al Scully — future first selectman of Westport — and Frank Kaeser as our social studies teachers at Bedford Junior High School. These gentlemen took pleasure in holding after-class arguments with us boys about the headlong fall of the rest of the world into the chaos of aggression and local wars.
One believe that the American continents should be isolated from the turmoil of the world, as Teddy Roosevelt had championed in another era. This was the position taken by most of this country at that time.
The other side felt we must prepare with urgency to meet the rapidly mounting aggressive advances of the militant regimes of Germany, Italy, Japan and Russia. Thrown out was the challenge that we, the United States of America, should step in and eliminate the “plague” before it could completely overwhelm the world — perhaps including even ourselves — if we were not prepared.
To this day, the Hindenburg disaster of May 6, 1937, is held in my mind as the inflection point when my attention was diverted from dreaming of a future life as a country farmer, to the events leading to that day on July 4th, 1943, when I boarded a train to leave home.
I did not return for 3 1/2 years, after service in the United States Navy.
On that day in May, my view for the future was changed in entirely new directions.
God bless America.
(Click below for remarkable footage of the tragedy, with commentary by radio newsman Herbert Morrison.)
Posted in History, Looking back, People
Tagged Bedford Junior High School, Elwood Betts, Hindenburg disaster
Erica Lehrer is a 1976 Staples grad. As far back as Hillspoint Elementary School, recalls Sue Holliday Windrick, she was “light years ahead in terms of poise and intellect.”
Six years ago, the mother of 2 — in the prime of her career in law and journalism — was diagnosed with ataxia. The disease strikes 3 people in every 100,000.
Erica Lehrer
It has affected her mobility, speech, body temperature, blood pressure and eye muscles. The Princeton graduate now struggles to speak and walk. She uses an iPad to write.
Yet, Sue says, “her voice has not been silenced. Erica now writes beautiful poetry.” Dancing with Ataxia — a compilation of Erica’s poems — was published last year.
A reviewer wrote:
In this exquisite collection, Erica Lehrer offers the reader one treasure after another. She has a voice that is…strong, elegant, poised. The emotional impact of these poems never feels contrived.
What I find so remarkable is the wonderful intelligence she communicates. Balancing pain and humor, adversity and resolve, she has put together a book that is at once engaging and aesthetically sophisticated. Bravo!
Another praised:
Her work captures the meaning (to her) of a life cut short, and most unfairly so….
She brings to us her accomplishments as lover, mother, wife and friend, without being maudlin, or forgetful that death comes to us all, and the most important things may have happened without being witnessed or acknowledged.
“So many people think I’m retarded, mentally slow because I cannot talk quickly or well anymore, but so far so good,” says Erica.
Erica Lehrer, enjoying the outdoors.
On Thursday, Erica turned 54. Fox News Houston interviewed her about her disease and her poetry.
Her husband Richard told the station, “It’s given her a world, a virtual world, of poets around the country and world that communicate and support her.”
With Richard and her readers by her side, Erica Lehrer keeps dancing.
(Click here for Erica’s website. Click here for the Fox News Houston interview. Click here to order her book through Amazon. )
Eileen Ogintz and Andy Yemma’s first experience with a Fresh Air Fund child was not fantastic.
Their 2 oldest kids were away at camp. Their youngest did not want another older child in the house, just when she could have her parents to herself. But Eileen and Andy hosted the girl the next year too.
Years went by. Last spring Eileen — a syndicated columnist and national expert on traveling with kids — was interviewing Fund officials. They mentioned that 800 — 800! — youngsters still were not placed.
She and Andy quickly agreed to host 2 boys — both 12 years old. That’s the hardest age group to place. But their own 3 kids were gone. Elaine and Andy had plenty of room.
And Camp Mahackeno took both boys into their day camp, so Eileen could work.
Oh, yeah: Mahackeno took them for free.
Jason (left) and Enesi, enjoying themselves.
Enesi was a 12-year-old Albanian. He’d been in the US less than 2 years, but his English was flawless. He was open to every new experience: kayaking, fishing, eating crab cakes.
Jason — the middle of 9 children, with an absent father — was tougher. Still, Eileen says, “in the end he really opened up and enjoyed himself.”
Enesi returned for Thanksgiving (and made pumpkin pie). Both boys will be back for a 2nd summer this year.
Hosting the Fresh Air Fund children was easy, Eileen says.
The first night, Andy dusted off 2 old bikes. He challenged the boys to make it up a steep hill. They gave up.
The next night they went out on their own, and made it. The proud looks on their faces were matched only by the smile Andy wore.
Another Fresh Air Fund scene: The Filchock girls (center and right) and Essence, playing at the beach.
The next weekend — the last — Eileen and Andy took Enesi and Jason to Mystic Seaport and Aquarium. They played with a Beluga whale, and tried oysters for the 1st time. Their eyes were wide.
Eileen realized something too: “These kids don’t take those experiences for granted, the way ours might.”
The Mystic trip was special. Most of the time, Eileen says, they did not organize big events.
“We hung out. We went bowling. We watched movies, and the kids played Xbox. We had lunch at Shake Shack. They liked hanging out with our dog.”
Just having their own bedroom was an experience. Enesi sleeps in the living room with his sister.
Fresh Air Fund hosts Sophia and Zachary Lomnitz (from left), with JJ at Compo.
“The whole point is for them to have a vacation,” Eileen says. “We sometimes think we have to entertain our kids all the time, and vacations have to be special. They don’t.”
Like typical 12-year-olds, Andy says, “they were always hungry. After the 1st day we figured we should cook extra portions for dinner. They’d devour what we served, and be hungry for more by 10. Eileen fixed double-egg sandwiches every morning.”
With summer approaching, Fresh Air Fund officials are once again scrambling to find hosts for all their kids. Eileen has become a passionate advocate for the program.
“Honestly, I don’t have a lot of patience for people with big empty houses and a lot of time, who say they can’t make room for a kid like this. It’s only for a week.
“When we asked Enesi what he’d be doing at home he said, ‘sitting on the couch watching TV. It’s really boring.'”
Jenna Barcello (left) and Kaiya, having fun last summer.
And, she adds, “Andy and I have gotten as much or more from the experience as the boys. It was terrific being able to help Jason come out of his shell, and see Enesi be so enthusiastic about canoeing for the first time.
“Sure, I had to buy more food. But having them wasn’t really a lot of work at all. I wish more Westport families — especially empty nesters — would consider hosting a child who otherwise would sit in a stuffy apartment, in front of a TV.
“This is a perfect opportunity to pay it forward.”
And, Eileen adds: “You don’t have to take 12-year-old boys.
“There are plenty of 7-year-old girls out there too.”
(For more information on becoming a host family, call Martha Mintzer at 203-226-6627, or email martha_mintzer@yahoo.com. Click here to learn more about the Fresh Air Fund.)
Posted in Beach, Children, Organizations, People
Tagged Andy Yemma, Eileen Ogintz, Fresh Air Fund, Martha Mintzer
First there was Saugatuck.
Then came Church Lane.
Soon, another sleepy area of town may be revitalized, with the arrival of new restaurants.
This time it’s the west bank of the Saugatuck River. Though an easy walk from downtown, few folks bother. Mentally, that area — behind the Inn at National Hall, next to Save the Children — has been No Man’s Land.
Now it may play Brooklyn, to downtown’s Manhattan.
The Westport News reports that on May 17, the Planning and Zoning Commission hears proposals for 2 new dining spots.
The owners of Fairfield’s Safita hope to open a Middle Eastern restaurant at 6 Wilton Road. That’s the old Vigilant firehouse. It housed a couple of pizza places; more recently it was a kitchen store.
Plans call for 50 seats, a bar and an outdoor patio. Very cool.
The Vigilant firehouse that may house the Middle Eastern restaurant is the slender building in the left-center of this photo. The MOJA restaurant would go on its right.
Also on the menu: MOJA Restaurant & Bar, planned for 12 Wilton Road next door to the former firehouse. The News says the menu would offer Japanese cuisine and “elements of South American flavors to make a very tasty, healthy and distinctive fare that will resonate with kids, teens and adults young and old.”
Despite Westport’s many eateries, we do not have a Japanese/South American spot for every age group. So that’s good.
The restaurants are part of a broader redevelopment planned for the area, including National Hall.
More parking is in the works. But I’d still like to see some kind of footbridge, luring linking people over the river, to the interesting architecture and offerings — culinary and otherwise — across the way.
Until then, here’s wishing good luck to the intrepid owners serving up a couple of new restaurants in a section of town that certainly needs them.
Posted in Downtown, Places, Restaurants, Saugatuck
Tagged MOJA Restaurant, Safita restaurant, Saugatuck River, Westport News, Wilton Road
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