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Renovations are coming along well at The Porch at Christie’s — the new breakfast/lunch/dinner-to-go (plus brunch, coffee, smoothies, baked goods and ice cream) spot that will build) upon a Cross Highway tradition dating back to 1926.
Owners Andrea and Bill Pecoriello — “proud Westporters since 1994” — already own Sweet P Bakery in Norwalk, providing job training and employment for adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities.
Sweet P will supply most of the baked treats for The Porch. Graduates of its programs will bake there, with 2 amazing pastry chefs. Additional Sweet P staff will work in front-of-house operations.
As the sign below notes, The Porch will open this spring — offering “local food, community and purpose.” Follow online, or on Facebook and Instagram (theporchatchristies; @sweetpbakeryct). For more information, email info@theporchatchristies.com.

(Photo/Wendy Cusick)
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Carrie Kerner and her husband moved to Westport in September.
She owns a PR firm (CG Social Inc.) and is a social media influencer (@CarrieGeorgette). Her husband Brian is an anesthesiologist at Yale Hospital.
They are foodies, and conscious of what they feed their 1-year-old daughter Chloe — mostly homemade, organic, healthy meals.
Yesterday morning, “CBS This Morning” featured the family in a story on a government report that baby foods are tainted with dangerous levels of arsenic, lead, cadmium and mercury.
It’s not something she’s thought about before. Now she will. Click here for the full, frightening story.
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There’s a new COVID vaccination site, not far away.
Harry Evans reports it opened this week at 110 High Ridge Road in Stamford (the Lord & Taylor parking lot). He called Wednesday to schedule an appointment, and I got one for the next day.
He was in and out yesterday in 20 minutes — including the 15-minute waiting time after the shot itself.
“Everything was easy and very efficiently run, and extremely easy to reach from Exit 35 on the Merritt,” he reports.
“When the word gets out it may be mobbed. But right now it is the only drive-through facility in Fairfield County.” Harry called Connecticut’s COVID assistance hotline: 877-918-2224.
Though Connecticut is one of the leading states in the nation in terms of percentages of vaccines administered, it is still available only to people over 75, healthcare personnel, medical first responders, and residents of long-term care facilities. The next phase will include people 65 to 74.
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In 2005, Deborah Dohme got a parking ticket in New Canaan.
Six years ago she moved from Westport to Tucson.
Yesterday she got a letter, demanding $30. It was the first notice she’d gotten as a scofflaw.
“Is New Canaan that desperate for money, that they hired a debt collector for $30 after 16 years?!” she wonders.
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Overheard at the library, by Michael Catarevas: “Excuse me, but there is no sitting allowed in the library.”
“That sums up the pandemic perfectly,” he says.

The Westport Library Forum, way back a year ago.
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Today’s New York Times includes a story on Samuel Fisher — aka Brad Holiday — the 2007 Weston High School graduate/misogynistic dating coach arrested last month for his involvement in the January 6 insurrection at the US Captiol.
Investigators found a shotgun, machetes and more than 1,000 rounds of ammunition in his Chevy Tahoe
Despite plenty of information about Fisher/Holiday’s social media posts celebrating his role on the storming of the building — along with other videos “denigrating women (and guides on) how to defeat Communists, expose what he claimed were government pedophilia cabals, and properly wield a Glock.”
However, the Times story does not mention Weston. It says simply that he “grew up in New Jersey.” Click here for the full story.

Samuel Fisher in Washington on January 6.
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And finally … happy 77th birthday to the multi-talented Al Kooper.
He wrote hits like Gary Lewis & the Playboys’ “This Diamond Ring” …
… played organ on Bob Dylan’s groundbreaking “Like a Rolling Stone” …
… was the Blues Project’s keyboardist …
… and discovered, produced and performed with Lynyrd Skynyrd.