Botelle Students Perform ‘Charlotte’s Web’

By Lauren Valentino The curtain rose for Botelle School’s performance of “Charlotte’s Web” on Thursday, April 6 and the audience—young, old and in-between—was entertained by this long-time favorite story of an unlikely friendship between a young pig and a wise spider. Directed by Bruce Connelly and Elizabeth Allyn as part of the Norfolk After School […]

The Nuts, Bolts and Tools to Start Your Own Business

The Entrepreneurial Center of Northwest Connecticut offers training and support By Colleen Gundlach With increasing technology and internet access, more and more people are leaving traditional jobs to pursue the dream of owning their own businesses. Going solo into a new business can be a difficult, time-consuming and expensive endeavor, but a new program at […]

The Murky Origin of Norfolk Street Names

  By Lindsey Pizzica Rotolo For one of the largest towns in the state (geographically), there are relatively few roads in Norfolk, and the ingenuity in their naming is generally at a minimum. Many street names denote their ultimate destination—Bald Mountain, Goshen East, Litchfield, Meekertown, North Colebrook, South Sandisfield, State Line and Winchester, for example, […]

Where Wise Men Also Fish

A bookstore in the Berkshires   By Wiley Wood The Bookstore has been in the same brick building in Lenox, Mass., for five decades and is something of a pilgrimage site. Still, why travel to a bookstore when just about any book you can think of is available online? As I push open the bookstore’s […]

The Stained Glass Windows of Norfolk

A Tale of Two Masters By Babs Perkins When stained glass is mentioned in conversation, for many, the first name that springs to mind is Tiffany: Louis Comfort Tiffany, son of jeweler and Tiffany & Co. founder Charles Lewis Tiffany. When stained glass windows and Norfolk are referenced, the windows in Battell Chapel, the library […]

Thorncrest Farm Magically Turns Milk into Chocolates

By Chris Sinclair When rare ability is married with a singular passion, the results can transcend the exceptional and wander into the realm of magic. Such a marriage is on vivid display at Thorncrest Farm, in Goshen, where Clint and Kim Thorn, along with their crew and beloved “girls,” make some of the finest chocolates […]

Piping in the Curlers

  To celebrate the last day of this year’s afterschool curling program, bagpiper Daniel Ward led the students across the ice. This is the second year of the Botelle program, which the school hopes to offer every year. Dave Beers, Jon Barbagallo and Bill Brodnitzki share the instruction duties. With young students learning the sport, […]

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 […]