As we hunker down in winter with the final Friday Flashback of 2022, what better choice than a photo from mid-summer, 1983.
(Photo/Arthur Nager)
For anyone born 20 years after this photo was taken: It shows a “pay phone.” This primitive pre-cellphone technology operated with “coins.” You put a “dime” in a slot at the top. You lifted the receiver, punched in a phone number (no area code required, if local), and hoped someone would answer.
Want to know more? You could dial 411 for “Directory Assistance” (an “operator” would give you someone’s number). You could place calls “collect” (the person at the other end would be charged for the call). You could even get your dime back (and collect those of previous callers), if you knew certain tricks and were juvenile delinquently inclined.
There’s no telling how often this phone was used by young kids calling to be picked up, teenagers calling friends to find out where the party was, and anyone else needing to communicate from Compo Beach.
BONUS FACTOID: Look at those 4 poles surrounding the pay phone. They’re the remnants of a “phone booth” — indicating that at one point, it was enclosed, for privacy and to guard against the weather.
The Westport PAL skating rink at Longshore has enjoyed a banner vacation week.
Westport PAL Longshore skating rink. (Photo/Rowene Weems)
The ice — just a few yards from Long Island Sound, between the tennis courts and La Plage restaurant — is one of our town’s semi-hidden gems. Perfect for skating under a bright sun (or moon), it’s open nearly all the time to the public.
Click here for the full schedule, and more information.
The Westport Fire Department responded yesterday to a call about a garbage truck on Fairview Drive.
Firefighters found that the truck operator had already dumped trash from the truck, and extinguished the blaze with a fire extinguisher.
The cause of the fire was lithium-ion batteries for a vacuum cleaner. The garbage truck operator had heard an explosion and seen smoke from the truck’s rear.
Lithium-ion batteries are unlikely to catch fire if handled and disposed of properly. But faults inside the battery or from external damage can cause fires, with potentially severe consequences.
Lithium-ion batteries are found in cell phones, laptops, tablets, electric cars and scooters.
The Fire Department offers these tips:
Follow the manufacturer’s instructions for charging and storage.
Do not charge a device under your pillow, bed or couch.
Always use the manufacturer’s cord and power adapter made for the device.
Keep batteries/devices at room temperature. Do not place in direct sunlight.
Store batteries away from anything flammable.
If a battery overheats or you notice an odor, change in shape/color, leaking, or odd noises from a device, discontinue use immediately. If safe, move the device away from anything that can catch fire and call 911.
Do not put lithium-ion batteries in the trash.
Recycling is always the best option.
Take them to a battery recycling location or contact your community for disposal instructions.
Do not put discarded batteries in piles.
Westport residents may recycle these types of batteries at the transfer station. For more information, click here.
Lithium-ion battery, after garbage truck fire. (Photo courtesy of Westport Fire Department)
In the past year, the Westport Library has hosted the multi-genre Verso Fest, and 4 Sundays f blues.
Rock n’ soul rules on January 7 (7:30 p.m.). Christine Ohlman — the platinum blonde “Beehive Queen,” and longtime “Saturday Night Live” — joins Rebel Montez to the Trefz Forum for a Winter Dance Party.
She is no stranger to the Library. She collaborated with Mark Naftalin — the Westport resident and Rock & Roll Hall of Fame musician — on his “Blue Sunday” series last month.
Ohlman’s career includes appearances with Bonnie Raitt, Keb Mo, Smokey Robinsons, Graham Nash, Steve Miller, the B52s and Elvis Costello. She has sold out the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival’s David Bowie tribute and the WC Handy Festival in Muscle Shoals.
She has recorded with Al Green, Bruce Springsteen, the Blind Boys Of Alabama, George Harrison, Sting, Ian Hunter, Bonnie Bramlett, Ronnie Spector, Charlie Musselwhite, Irma Thomas and Chrissie Hynde, among others.
DJ B The T Jr. gets the gig started, with all-vinyl soul classics at 6:30.
Click here for tickets. Use “BLUES” for a $5 discount.
Mark Shanahan — chief curator of the Westport Country Playhouse’s popular script-in-hand reading series — wrote “A Sherlock Carol.”
Launched with a virtual world premier at the Playhouse in January 2021, the show is ending a 6-week season run at New World Stages Performing Arts Complex in New York.
The final three are today (Friday, December 30, 2 and 8 p.m.) and Sunday (January 1, 8 p.m.).
The show is also performing to full houses at London’s Marlybone Theatre. It runs there through January 7.
Shanahan says: “When a grown-up Tiny Tim asks Sherlock Holmes to investigate the peculiar death of Ebenezer Scrooge, the Great Detective must use his tools of deduction to get to the bottom of the crime. But it is a dark and treacherous Christmas Eve, and once again the holiday is haunted by the spirits of the past, present and future.“
The New York show ends with curtain speeches each night asking for donations to Paul Newman’s Hole in the Wall Gang Camp. Shanahan has written and directed fundraising galas for them for years, with Annie Keefe of the Westport Playhouse.
Click here for “Sherlock Carol” tickets, and more information. (Hat tip: Dave Matlow)
Laurie Sorensen was walking back from the Longshore golf course at sunset. She snapped today’s “Westport … Naturally” photo at Gray’s Creek.
“May we continue to enjoy such serene scenes in 2023!” she says. “Happy New Year to all ‘06880’ readers, and to the beautiful wildlife that graces our environment.”
And finally … Ian Tyson died yesterday, at his ranch in Alberta. He was 89.
Half of the folk duo Ian & Sylvia, he was “a revered figure in his home country, celebrated both for his music and his commitment to the culture of Canada’s ranch country,” the New York Times said.
“Before Canadian musicians like Neil Young, Gordon Lightfoot, Joni Mitchell or Leonard Cohen, there was Ian Tyson.”
His song “Four Strong Winds” was voted the most essential Canadian piece of music by listeners of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in 2005. He also wrote “Someday Soon,” a classic Judy Collins tune.
(If “06880” reminds you to skate at the PAL rink, saves you from a lithium-ion battery disaster, or helps in any other way, please consider a donation. Just click here — and thank you!)
Scott Smith often puts his finger on parts of Westport we too often overlook, or ignore. Today, he writes:
There are many scenic perks to living in the 4-season clime of Westport: the bright blooms of spring, the lush green growth of summer, the colorful hues of autumn. Winter has its charms, too, especially when the landscape is covered by a graceful cloak of snow.
But what I like best about the cold bare of winter is how it brings into sharp relief one of the defining hallmarks of New England: its stone walls.
What beauty! What mystery! Most evocative, of course, are the weathered old walls you come across deep in the woods, etched with lichen and moss. Ghostly traces of another age.
This, and the accompanying photos, were taken at the Newman Poses Preserve in Westport, and in Weston. (All photos/Scott Smith)
Connecticut’s oldest rock walls date from the early 1600s. Many of these legacy walls, especially those around colonial towns and old estates, are made with flat rock, hewn from the area’s abundant quarries.
Most of the old fieldstone walls you see in woodlots were raised in the latter part of the 1700s and early 1800s, after settlers moved upland from the rich coastal flood plains and river valleys to finish clearing the region’s primeval forests for timber, charcoal and homesteads.
At first this new farmland was very productive; the soil was deep and fertile, with few rocks. The surprising reason: After the ice age glaciers retreated some 15,000 years ago — they were a mile high over Westport — a thick layer of plant detritus built up over the centuries to cover much of the tumbled glacial debris the ice sheet left behind.
Seasons of plowing and grazing hastened erosion of the topsoil and uncovered these long-buried rocks. The newly unprotected soil would also freeze more deeply in the winter, and frost heaves moved stones steadily upward—several inches per decade. Stone is a better conductor of heat and cold than the surrounding soil, so the soil under the rock freezes faster than elsewhere. Since water expands about 10 percent when frozen, and the path of least resistance for a rock in soil is up, after many cycles of freeze and thaw, each spring stones rise through the saturated soil to the surface.
(The transformation of the region’s farmland and forest floor was abetted by the arrival of the earthworm, an invasive brought to these shores in the baggage and ballast of European settlers. To the Old World earthworm, this truly was the promised land, and in they rushed, colonizing new ground at 30 feet a year. Amazingly, before then there were no soil-dwelling worms in New England, having been routed far south by the glaciers. Some soil scientists lament how dramatically they’ve munched through the leaf litter and displaced native creepy crawlers, both above and below ground — but that’s another story.)
It’s estimated that there are some 240,000 miles of rock walls in New England, longer than the U.S. coastline. Some stone walls, particularly the thicker, double-width variety, delineated roadways and property boundaries. But many rock walls, especially the “tossed,” single-width kind, simply mark how far it was practical for farmers working with a team of oxen and a wooden sledge to move heavy stones to the edge of a field.
These walls were usually no more than thigh-high—about as high as a strong back can lift or lever a large rock in place. Most were never built to function as stand-alone fences, say, to secure livestock. Indeed, Robert M. Thorson, author of Stone by Stone — the definitive history of the region’s stone walls — suggests it’s more apt to think of them as “linear landfills.”
A few years back the Florence Griswold Museum mounted an exhibition of Impressionist paintings, Art and the New England Farm. In the eye of a 19th century painter, stone walls evoked the ethic of a hardscrabble agrarian lifestyle, one that was already giving way to the hubbub of city life. In an exhibition monograph, John E. Noyes notes that back in the day, many people regarded stone walls “as a scourge and eyesore that disfigured the land and marred the beauty of the landscape.”
I favor the Impressionistic view of stone walls, though as a suburban gardener who toils on a yard that was once an onion field, I can relate to mixed feelings about what old-timers call the region’s most enduring harvest: the Connecticut potato, the catch-all term for the rounded rocks that emerge from the dirt each spring.
Over the years, I’ve found that if there’s a patch of my lawn that’s bare or thinly grassed, chances are that just under the surface is a rock preventing the roots from reaching down into the subsoil. As the heat of summer dries the soil, it also bakes the rocks just under the turf, which in turn cook the roots above them.
Most of the rocks, spud-sized, pluck up through the lawn without a fuss, often leaving their indentation intact, which I then fill with a dollop of compost. The rocks get added to my humble stone wall and the earthworms get a treat of fresh organic material. As soil scientist Dr. M. Jill Clapperton said, “When you are standing on the ground, you are really standing on the rooftop of another world.”
(“06880” — and all of New England — is our home. Please click here to support our work. Thank you!)
I asked him how many Unsung Heroes he had nominated. Remember the old ’60s saying? “If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.”
Turns out, he used an alias.
That makes him even more of a jerk. Coming on the heels of my discovery of a couple of other aliases — some plausible-sounding like “Will Leach,” others clearly fake — I feel like a jerk, too.
I trust “06880” readers. I do not require verification to post comments. I only ask that people use full, real names.
I spend a ton of time on all aspects of “06880.” Monitoring comments for civility and accuracy is one of them. Monitoring them for honesty should not be part of the deal.
I’ve asked before: Please be nice. Please don’t abuse the Comments section. If you have something to say, have the guts to say it publicly, under your real name.
That shouldn’t be too much to ask. Obviously though it is, because I just did.
“06880” welcomes your comments. Please have the courtesy — and guts — to use your real name.
The New York Times’ “Morning” newsletter just published their most memorable photos of the year.
The very first one was taken by 1991 Staples High School graduate — and Pulitzer Prize/MacArthur “genius grant” award winner — Lynsey Addario.
(Photo/Lynsey Addario for the New York Times)
The caption says:
“Millions of people fled Ukraine in the early weeks of Russia’s invasion, seeking refuge in other countries. Desperate families shoved their way onto a train leaving the capital, Kyiv, in early March.”
Click here for more of the Times’ top images. (Hat tip: Susan Leone)
Meanwhile, the Times’ other photo feature — the more extended “Year in Pictures” — includes more than half a dozen images from Addario and Tyler Hicks, her colleague who is also a Pulitzer winner and Staples grad (Class of 1988).
The first in the chronological list is from January 19. It’s a shot by Hicks of a Ukrainian soldier at a frontline position. “The world watched nervously as Western countries warned that Russia was preparing to attack Ukraine at any moment,” the caption says.
(Photo/Tyler Hicks for the New York Times)
There was also this harrowing photo of a dead Russian soldier near Kharkiv, as Ukrainian troops defender their land in the first days of the invasion.
(Photo/Tyler Hicks for The New York Times)
“The Year in Pictures” includes this explanatory quote from Hicks:
There was no way to know if you would run into Russian soldiers. I decided to get out of the car and walk to make sure we weren’t going to drive up to any surprises. There was snow on the ground and I wasn’t sure what I was going to find, but I eventually came upon several Russian soldiers who had been killed. I took the photos as quickly as I could because the area where I was working was exposed, and then I got back to cover.
There’s also this iconic shot by Addario, immediately after Russian mortar fire killed a family trying to flee Irpin, near Kyiv. The photo drew worldwide attention to the horrors of Russia’s invasion:
(Photo/Lynsey Addario for the New York Times)
Addario explains:
I was photographing along a civilian evacuation route and was in the actual attack. The shell landed between us. The woman and her two children and the church volunteer were killed. I was just lucky the blast went the other direction and not toward me.
Click here and scroll down, for many more photos by Hicks and Addario (and others). (Hat tip: Evan Stein)
Speaking of Ukraine: It’s now a few days after Christmas. But the good feelings from Westport’s holiday gift to our sister city of Lyman, Ukraine still linger.
Click below for a brief video — just posted to YouTube’s “Sister Cities Westport Lyman Marigny” channel:
The total amount raised now by our town (and friends and relatives of Westporters) is $209,300. We are closing in on our goal of $250,000.
Tax-deductible donations can be made to Lyman through Ukraine Aid International. Pleaseclick here. Click the “I want to support” box; then select “Support for the City of Lyman.” Scroll down on that page for other tax-deductible donation options (mail, wire transfer and Venmo). You can also donate directly, via Stripe (click here).
Westport Police report no custodial arrests between December 21 and 28. With the cold weather, traffic was light too. These were the only citations issued:
Traveling unreasonably fast: 2
Following too closely: 2
Speeding: 1
Evading responsibility: 1
Traveling too fast for conditions: 1
Failure to drive in proper lane: 1
Operating a motor vehicle under suspension: 1
Failure to carry certificate of registration/insurance: 1
Failure to obey control signal: 1
Violation of any traffic commission regulation: 1.
The end of the year is the perfect time for Westport Town Farm to announce programs for the new year.
“Parent and Me” returns, from January through March. Classes include outdoor time for feeding animals, followed by age-appropriate crafts, games or stories inside the Farmhouse.
Families transitioning out of “Parent and Me” enjoy “Toddler Sprouts” (ages 3-5, Tuesdays at 1:30 p.m.).
A new program — “Tiny Farmers Playdate” — begins in January (Wednesdays, 9 a.m.). Taking place in the Farmhouse, it’s geared toward ages of 0 -18 months.
A new “Rugged Bear Wilderness Club” runs after school. Youngsters ages 11-14 will develop outdoors skills like fire-making, orienteering, using basic hand tools, simple first aid, pitching a tent and being challenged in nature. The club begins February 9.
Spots are also available in the “Fantastic Farmhands” elementary school program.
WTF also runs an MLK Jr. Vacation Day Camp on January 16.
Click here for more information, or email education.wakemantownfarm.org.
The Appalachian Mountain Club’s Westport Fairfield County Group will “Skate Through New Zealand.”
That’s the topic of their January 10 meeting (Saugatuck Congregational Church; appetizers, wine, dinner at 6:15 p.m.; presentation 7:30 p.m.; members $10, non-members $15).
Speaker Geoffrey Saunders has been skateboarding since he was 10. He lived in New Zealand for a year as an exchange student, and has returned 4 times. He skateboarded 400 miles through North Island, raising funds for Wildlife in Crisis, and will discuss his many adventures.
Reservations not required, but please RSVP: easasso7@icloud.com.
Westport’s sister city relationship with Lyman, Ukraine began with a question.
After “06880” posted a story about our other sister city, Marigny, France, and their desire to work with us to rebuild a town ravaged by Russian occupation — just as Westport had done in Normandy after World War II — a small group of residents began meeting on Zoom.
We wanted to help a town where we could make a concrete, immediate difference — one that had been overlooked by other aid organizations.
We were fortunate that a fellow Westporter has direct knowledge of Ukraine. Last spring, Brain Mayer left his New York tech job to collect and deliver supplies to that war-torn nation. He and is brother Marshall co-founded Ukraine Aid International.
Our group — Tom Kretsch, Polly Newman, Steve Taranko, Mark Yurkiw, and Clyde, Katya and Kathleen Wauchope — asked Brian for ideas.
He suggested Lyman (pronounced Lee-MON). An important railway juncture in the Donbas region, Lyman was occupied by Russian troops from May 24 through October 1. When the forces fled, they left behind unfathomable destruction.
Map courtesy of Washington Post
But no one was helping.
A week before Christmas — after a haunting Zoom call with our group, Brian and Marshall, 1st Selectwoman Jen Tooker, Brian’s on-the-ground partners Liz Olegov and Richard von Groeling, Lyman Mayor Alexander Victoravich Zuravlov, and a high-ranking security officer — we announced our goal: $250,000 in contributions.
The money will buy essential supplies like plywood and other housing material, generators, medication, Starlinks and tractors.
A truck to remove 8 months’ of debris and trash is on the way. On Christmas Day, Brian delivered 400 fresh meals to elderly and infirm Lyman residents, and 491 gifts — one for every child still there.
Now, the world is finally starting to notice Lyman.
Monday’s New York Times included a photo by Pulitzer Prize-winner Tyler Hicks — coincidentally, a Westport native and 1988 Staples High School graduate — showing Ukrainian soldiers leaving Lyman for the front lines.
(Photo by Tyler Hicks for the New York Times)
And yesterday, Lyman was featured prominently in the Washington Post.
The piece — headlined “‘Nothing Left to Destroy’: Russia is Fighting For Land Already in Ruins” — was filed from Lyman.
The piece described the desperation and despair of villagers, from their lives in squalid basement shelters to their sorrow for lost vegetable gardens.
Lubov Gazhla, 62, wears a headlamp as she sits on the bed in the tiny room she is living in underground in Lyman. (Photo/Heidi Levine for the Washington Post)
A particularly poignant paragraph described this scene:
One shell directly struck the kindly 70-year-old amateur beekeeper across the street, nicknamed Mikhalych, as he went to feed the stray dogs in the neighborhood. His body lay in the street, giving off a stench that his neighbors could do nothing about for five days because of the bombardment.
Another section read:
Zoya Konstantinovna, 67, cried into a cloth as she described how missile fire tore into her former home, before showing reporters the sealed sack of water that she uses daily as her shower even now, more than three months after Ukrainian forces retook the city.
Zoya Konstantinovna, 67, sits by a wood-burning stove with a neighbor in the basement of their Lyman apartment building. (Photo/Heidi Levine for the Washington Post)
Roughly two dozen of the hundreds of people who once lived in her apartment complex now spend most of their days in the below-ground bunker, with the shelling still too present a danger to sleep elsewhere.
This week, the mainstream media discovered Lyman.
Reporters may move on soon, as often happens, to another story in another devastated area of the country, or world.
But Westport will continue to remember — and help — Lyman.
After all: It’s our sister city.
(Click here for the full Washington Post story. Hat tips: John Hartwell and Bill Kutik)
Tamara Klimashenko, 61, and her husband Anatoly Klimashenko, 62, visit their damaged home in Lyman. (Photo/Heidi Levine for the Washington Post)
Westport has raised just over $200,000 of our $250,000 goal. Tax-deductible donations can be made to Lyman through Ukraine Aid International. Pleaseclick here. Click the “I want to support” box; then select “Support for the City of Lyman.” Scroll down on that page for other tax-deductible donation options (mail, wire transfer and Venmo). You can also donate directly, via Stripe (click here).
I have never owned a dog. I have only had cats as pets.
But I really feel for dog owners who walk their dogs several times a day, even when it is 9 degrees outside.
I could never have done that. Not to mention getting up at the crack of dawn to take their dog for a walk.
When a dog’s gotta go… (Photo/Bobbi Essagof)
Cats are fairly easy to take care of. The biggest chore is cleaning the litter box and filling it with new litter. Buying the litter and carrying it up porch steps and into the apartment is about as difficult as it gets.
Even so, I no longer have a cat. Beau died in 2021. I knew long before that that I would never get another cat once he died.
So I really admire people who have dogs and walk them in all kinds of weather: scorching hot, rain, snow, frigid temperatures.
I’ve seen those dog owners at Winslow Park too. They’re hardy, loving — and a very sociable bunch too. Congratulations: You’re our Unsung Heroes of the Week!
(Do you know an Unsung Hero? Email 06880blog@gmail.com. And be a hero yourself: Please click here to contribute to your hyper-local blog. Thank you!)
They come. Our trash goes. They come again, a few days later. Occasionally we write a check, to keep them coming.
Lyman — our new sister city in Ukraine — has not seen a trash truck in months.
Soon — with the help of Westport — they will.
When the Russians fled this fall, after several months of occupation, they stole all of the town’s trash trucks.
Debris from their missile attacks is piled everywhere. So is the garbage that accumulates as citizens live their daily lives.
Without trucks, there is no way to remove any of it.
For the past several days, Westport has been raising funds for Lyman (pronounced Lee-MON). We just passed $200,000, heading toward our $250,000 goal.
The other day, Brian Mayer — the Westporter who co-founded Ukraine Aid International — learned of a truck in Gdansk, Poland. It will cost about 5,000 euros to transport it to Lyman. Volunteers are already lined up to move it.
When it arrives in Lyman, residents will be ecstatic. Volunteers there are ready to start removing many tons of trash — and avoid an environmental catastrophe.
Brian is working too with construction wholesalers in Ukraine. They’re getting ready to move material from Kharkiv to Lyman, where more volunteers are eager to begin shoring up apartment buildings that are close to collapse.
Westport’s support for our sister city has been immediate. But the need is ongoing.
To help, click here for a credit card “Donate” button. Click “I want to support”; then select “Support for the City of Lyman.” You can also scroll down on that page for other donation options (mail, wire transfer and Venmo.) Or you can donate directly, via Stripe (click here).
One more cosmic connection between Westport and our sister city:
Yesterday’s New York Times included more harrowing photos from Ukraine, by 1988 Staples High School graduate/Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist Tylerl Hicks.
Among them: an image showing Ukrainian troops crammed into an armored vehicle, plowing through mud in dusty skies on their way to the front lines.
It can, however, be repurposed to serve food to people in need.
For the second straight week, Sustainable Westport is partnering with Food Rescue CT and the Westport Farmers’ Market to collect black plastic takeout containers.
Washed, clean, black plastic takeout food containers (with lids!) can be brought to tomorrow’s Farmers’ Market at Gilbertie’s Herbs & Garden Center (7 Sylvan Lane; Thursday, December 29, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.).
The containers will be used by Fridgeport Outdoor Food Pantry to repackage large trays of donated prepared foods into smaller portions for distribution to Bridgeporters facing food insecurity.
Westport resident Ria Nova (right) donated black plastic containers to Sustainable Westport co-director Johanna Martell at last week’s Westport Farmers’ Market.
Strong enough to topple this tree, on the border between Winslow Park and the Westport Country Playhouse parking lot.
(Photo/Mark Mathias)
Just be thankful it didn’t fall in the other direction.
And that we didn’t get whacked like Buffalo did.
On the other hand, there’s this: Perhaps the trunk can be delivered to Long Lots Preserve.
As noted in yesterday’s Roundup, decomposing tree trunks promote the growth of bug populations. They in turn supply local and migrating bird populations with an important source of food, especially in the spring when they feed their young.
For more details on the Preserve and its need for dead tree trunks, email longlotspreserve@gmail.com.
Westporter Paul Podolsky has published a new thriller: “Master, Minion.”
Fellow Westporter Mike Hayes — former commander of Seal Team Two and author of “Never Enough” — calls it “a gripping portrayal of the people and machinery behind financial warfare. Paul is a true storyteller who knows Russia and China firsthand. He takes the readers on a thrilling journey only an insider can provide.”
The book draws in part on his expertise in Russia. He recently wrote about that, for the Wall Street Journal.
Click here for more information on Podolsky’s new book.
As part of Westport’s fundraising for Lyman — our new sister city in Ukraine — “06880” auctioned off a painting of Marigny-le-Louzon, France.
It was donated by our friends in Marigny, Westport’s other sister city. The relationship extends more than 75 years. We helped the Normandy town rebuild after World War II. Now, together, we are helping another ravaged place, this one in Ukraine.
Wendy Van Wie won the painting, with a bid of $1,500. But there’s more to this story than just a Westport resident helping an important relief effort.
Wendy and her husband Mark Yurkiw live on Cross Highway. Their home — the Meeker homestead — stood on the route taken by British soldiers in 1777, as they headed to Danbury to burn an arsenal. (A musket ball lodged in the door provided evidence of the event.)
The home on Cross Highway. (Photo/Amy Dolego)
Wendy and Mark bought the foreclosed property in 2003. After 2 centuries, the barn and 1728 saltbox house — already half a century old when the British marched past — had fallen into disrepair.
The couple rehabilitated their home, barn and cottage. Their attention to detail earned them a 2017 Historic District Commission preservation award.
interior of the barn, after renovation.
Today it’s known as the Schilthuis-Meeker house. Sally Schilthuis was influential in preventing construction of Merritt Parkway Exit 43 in the area, resulting in the current “No Man’s Land” between Exits 42 and 44.
Schilthuis died in 1975. Her obituary noted that her barn served as a meeting place for Westporters planning aid for post-war Marigny.
Cross Highway barn. (Photo/Amy Dolego)
The barn still serves an important relief role. Mark — whose heritage is Ukrainian — has worked tirelessly since the Russian invasion began to provide help for his homeland.
His current project –besides playing a key role with Lyman — is collecting generators, chain saws, sleeping bags, phone power banks, kerosene heaters, rechargeable batteries, blankets, pillows, warm winter clothing and more. It’s sent overseas, when space becomes available in shipping containers.
The gear — all donated by generous Westporters — is stored in that very same barn. (You can still help. Call Mark: 646-873-0050.)
Donations for Ukraine outside Mark Yurkiw and Wendy Van Wie’s barn — with the country’s familiar blue and yellow symbol of resistance.
As part of Wendy and Mark’s historic preservation work, they received a perpetual easement. Their barn is protected from any future demolition.
That’s where Wendy’s new painting will hang. It will keep the story of the Westport/Marigny connection — and the 2 towns’ new relationship with Lyman — alive.
“Long after Mark and I are gone, this will remind and inspire future generations,” Wendy says.
“The painting, and its back story, will become a permanent part of the permanent barn.”
This Marigny scene by Roger Potier will soon hang in Wendy Van Wie’s Cross Highway barn.
Tax-deductible donations can still be made to Westport’s sister city, Lyman, through Ukraine Aid International. Pleaseclick here. Click the “I want to support” box; then select “Support for the City of Lyman.” Scroll down on that page for other tax-deductible donation options (mail, wire transfer and Venmo). You can also donate directly, via Stripe (click here).
Click here to help support “06880” via credit card or PayPal. Any amount is welcome, appreciated — and tax-deductible! Reader contributions keep this blog going. (Alternate methods: Please send a check to “06880”: PO Box 744, Westport, CT 06881. Or use Venmo: @blog06880. Or Zelle: dwoog@optonline.net. Thanks!)
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