The Sister Cities Essex Haiti will be holding a celebration of support of Hospital Albert Schweitzer and our community projects in Deschapelles on Friday, March 2, between 5:30 and 8:00 at the Left Bank Gallery, Main Street, Essex.

To learn more about it, please click here Have a Heart for Haiti Fundraiser.  You may purchase tickets at the door or on-line by clicking here.

The Essex Garden Club and the Essex Land Trust are pleased to invite the general public to attend a program on Saving Central Park. Lane Addonizio, an Associate Vice President for Planning at the Central Park Conservancy, will discuss the various scientific and technological practices to maintain and restore Central Park, a man-made landscape. Some topics to be touched on are the Soil, Water and Ecology Lab’s role in maintaining the Park’s water bodies for its wildlife (mainly birds and fish) and its soil for the plantings and trees. Many technological innovations will be illustrated and discussed that have helped to restore the Park’s seemingly natural landscape, focusing on such high-tech sites such as the Great Lawn and the Lake and our three woodlands

The first public space of its kind, Central Park was conceived as a reprieve from the city for the benefit of all New Yorkers. The massive undertaking represented by its construction produced an idealized rurallandscape replete with meadows, lakes, and woodlands, all carefully orchestrated to transport urban dwellers from the reality of their daily lives. Frederick Law Olmsted suggested that the Park would be for working people—many of whom were destined to live their entire lives on the island of Manhattan—what a trip to the White Mountains or the Adirondacks was to those of greater means. It would provide what Olmsted referred to as the “sense of enlarged freedom” that comes from contact with nature. But the Park is not a naturally-occurring landscape. It is a man-made construct: a product of 19th century ingenuity designed to replicate the experience of nature at the heart of a great metropolis. As such, it has been subjected throughout its history not only to the pressures of encroachment and development that motivate efforts to conserve natural landscapes, but to the forces of deterioration, impacts of intense use, and periodic cycles of resource deprivation and management neglect.

Today, after thirty years of restoration and stewardship by the Central Park Conservancy, the Park is experiencing the longest period of sustained management in its 150-year history. The story of its creation, checkered past, and remarkable recovery supports the important idea that, as stewards, we can partner with nature’s improvisational energy to shape the character and nurture the intrinsic value of ever-evolving places that hold meaning for us.

Lane Addonizio oversees research and analysis for park wide and project planning, and collaborates with the Vice President for Planning, Design & Construction on the development and management of the program of the Park’s ongoing restoration and reconstruction. Ms. Addonizio is the author of the Report on the Public Use of Central Park, the most comprehensive study of the Park’s use in its more than 150-year history, which was published by the Conservancy in 2011.

The event is free and takes place at Essex Town Hall on Monday, March 5 at 2 p.m. Refreshments served. Parking behind Town Hall, 29 West Avenue, Essex.

Essex Corinthian Yacht Club will be holding a Spring Commissioning Seminar with Captain Mark Bancroft from Wild Oats Marine Services, on Saturday March 3, from 10 a.m. to 12 noon.

Captain Mark Bancroft has been sailing for over thirty-five years and been involved in the marine industry for over twenty years. After completing a successful career in the United States Navy as a Chief Petty Officer he retired in 1989. He started Bottoms Up Boat Service providing a wide variety of services including mooring placement & inspection, bottom cleaning and hull damage inspections. Mark has been the delivery captain for over 100 boats to various ports from Boston to Norfolk. His experience includes installation and repair of equipment/electronics, spring commissioning and winterization of yachts.

In 1999, after two years of cruising the Inter-coastal Waterway from Connecticut to the West Coast of Florida, including the Bahamas, he joined the staff of Hellier Yacht Sales in the Service Department to coordinate spring commissioning and provide for all warranty work. After another cruise to the Florida Keys and west coast, Mark joined Yachting Services of Mystic as the Fleet Captain for the charter fleet, providing all facets of the charter industry from check-out/check-in, training and maintenance.

Mark started Wildoats Marine Service, LLC in April 2007 to serve the desires of the boating public in need of marine related services at a reasonable cost.

Please register for this no cost seminar.  Contact the ECYC office at 860-767-3239 or email  ecyc@essexcyc.org

The Sagrada Familia Cathedral of Barcelona by Antoni Gaudi is one of the works that will be covered in a talk by Dr. Chuck Benson on Friday February 24th at 7 PM at Essex Town Hall, part of the Essex Library’s Centerbrook Architects Lecture Series.

Spanish Catalan architect and figurehead of Catalan Modernism Antoni Gaudí will be the topic of a lecture by architect and professor Dr. Chuck Benson, part of the Essex Library’s Centerbrook Architects Lecture series, on Friday, February 24 at 7 p.m., at Essex Town Hall.

Gaudi’s passions – architecture, nature, religion, and love for his native Catalonia  — are woven through his astonishingly detailed, unique, and organic designs. Seven of his works have been declared World Heritage Sites by UNESCO.

Dr. Benson has been teaching Art and Architectural History for more than twenty-five years at various universities and colleges across the United States. His lecture credits include the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, MOMA, the Whitney Museum, the Getty in Los Angeles, the Art Institute in Chicago, and the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston.  He studied the history of art and architecture at Yale as an undergraduate, and holds advanced degrees from Columbia University. Our Essex Library audiences have enjoyed his lectures on Edward Lutyens and Gian Loernzo Bernini.

The talk is free and open to all. Please call the Essex Library at 860-767-1560 to register or for more information. The Essex Town Hall is at 29 West Avenue in Essex.