Creating a Comprehensive Support Net
By Wiley Wood The village green in Norfolk, shaded by trees, its grass well tended, is a gracious space. Yet recent economic data puts the town’s poverty level at nearly 10 percent. Responding to this, a group of town leaders gathered at Battell Chapel recently, forming a loose coalition known as Norfolk NET, to […]
Multiage Classrooms Are Coming to Botelle School
By Lindsey Pizzica Rotolo If public school teachers are often wary of innovation after recent waves of federally mandated programs, that is not the case at Botelle School. Kindergarten teacher Deb Tallon and first-grade teacher Bea Tirrell have enthusiastically embraced plans for the first multiage classrooms in the fall. Tallon and Tirrell will be splitting […]
A Third-Generation North Canaan Dairy Adopts Cutting-Edge Technology
Freund’s Farm is first in state to install robotic milking machines By Colleen Gundlach Driving through East Canaan, one can’t help noticing the bank of 500 solar panels alongside Route 44. These are impressive, but only a tip of the iceberg of the advanced technology actually at work at Freund’s Farm and the three […]
After Devastating Fire, Lone Oak Campsites Begins Reconstruction
East Canaan’s Brown family has invincible optimism By Colleen Gundlach “In the midst of winter, I found there was within me an invincible summer.” So said French philosopher Albert Camus, but it could also have been said about the Brown family of East Canaan. Less than a month after a fire completely destroyed their […]
Freshman Lawmaker Brian Ohler Heads to the State Capitol
Republican state representative to focus on state and local issues By Ruth Melville On cold sunny morning in February, Brian Ohler, state representative for the 64th District, sat down at the Berkshire Country Store to talk with Norfolk Now about his first weeks in office. Ohler describes his first month as “a whirlwind experience.” […]
Thrift Shop in Winsted Gives $3,000 to Norfolk Ambulance
Director asks for donations of clothing and household items By Wiley Wood The thrift store is behind a modest shop front on a side street in Winsted. The contents are the familiar assortment of men’s and women’s clothing on racks, children’s toys, hardback books, slightly battered sports equipment and delicate knickknacks. On a weekday […]
School Board Proposes Flat Budget as Costs Rise and State Aid Dwindles
Town ponders an increase in property taxes By Wiley Wood If the town accepts the budget passed by the Board of Education on Feb. 8, it will be the fifth year in a row that the Botelle School has been flat-funded or seen an actual decrease in its funding. The Board of Finance, which […]
A New England Pastor, a Dutch Classicist and a Roman Stoic in One Book
Treasures From the Rare Book Room By Lucy Mookerjee Plenty of Norfolkians know a rare bird when they see one. But many birders would be hard-pressed to identify the markings of a “rare” book. What makes a rare book rare? It depends—age, scarcity, market value. Whether you’ve spotted it or not, the Norfolk Library […]
View from the Green
Enduring Village Landmark in Limbo By Michael Kelly Civic enrichment in Norfolk Town is humming right along: what with the library’s compelling new terra cotta roof, the impressive restoration of Alfredo Taylor’s railroad railing and lamps, the reassuring church bells ringing again on the Village Green, the ambitious reimagining of City Meadow, the budding […]
Norfolk Represented in Women’s March on Washington
Residents travel to D.C believing nation’s moral values threatened By Lindsey Pizzica Rotolo At least 20 Norfolkians travelled to Washington, D.C.—by car, bus, train and plane—on January 21 for the Women’s March. Two separate, large groups of Norfolk women were never able to meet up at the march but shared a very similar experience. The first […]
