Community News from Chester, Deep River and Essex
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.
The Essex Library presents Richard Strauss’ opera Salome, in a film version starring Teresa Stratas, Monday February 27th at 2 p.m. (Illustration by Aubrey Beardsley)
The show is free and open to all. The Essex Library is at 33 West Avenue. For more information, please call the Essex Library at 860-767-1560.
Boat tour vessel, the 65 foot "Project Oceanology"
Soon after departure the passengers on board began to spot even more eagles. Some were in pairs and others were single eagles drifting lazily in the sky above. Later in the tour, there would be a final triumphal sighting on Nott Island of a female bald eagle, peeking out of her nest, patiently waiting for her eggs to hatch into baby eaglets.
This afternoon was made for eagle watching, with an unclouded sky, and unseasonably warm temperatures. However, once the vessel got underway, and out into the middle of the river, it was pretty chilly, notwithstanding the warmth on the land.
Passage ways are safe for passengers
At the microphone the museum’s Naturalist and Educator Bill Yule was at first apologetic that there might be too few eagles to see during the tour. It had been such a warm winter, so perhaps the eagles might not have needed to fly south to find ice free, fishing waters. However, he had no need to apologize. There were plenty of bald eagles to be seen in the sky on this bright, bright day.
Bill Yule, master spotter of the eagles
Bill Yule is the “Eagle Watch Boat Tour,” Master of Ceremonies. At times he is assisted by Project Oceanology’s Chris Dodge and Allyce Irwin, but Yule handles most of the speaking chores himself.
Boat Tour Moderator Bill Yule at the mike
Similarly, if an eagle was spotted mid ships at the right side of the vessel, it would be “three o’clock,” and mid ships on the left side of the ship, it would be “nine o’clock.” It was a simple system, but throughout the voyage, it helped guide the on-board eagle watchers to find their visual prey.
Although a few of the passengers needed only the naked eye to enjoy the sight of the eagles, most of the passengers made use of long range cameras, or powerful binoculars, to see the birds. Binoculars, incidentally, were provided at no extra charge to passengers.
DDT and the survival of the eagles
At about midpoint of the boat tour, Yule became very serious. He said that not too many years ago, “the eagles were almost gone from the river.” The reason was that that back in the 1950’s and 1960’s, DDT was widely used as a pesticide, and this pesticide in turn made its way into the waters of the Connecticut River.
The DDT was then ingested by the fish in the river, the very fish that was the staple of the eagle’s diet. DDT’s effect on the eagles turned out to be severe. It made the shells of the eggs of the female eagles too brittle to sheath properly embryonic baby eaglets. Unable to reproduce live birds, the eagle population declined rapidly, even to the point where eagles were put on the nation’s endangered species list.
However, in 1972 DDT was banned, and as a result no longer was DDT in the diet of the fish that the eagles consumed in the river. Able to reproduce again, the eagle population increased along the river; the shells of the mothers now strong enough to hold baby eaglets until their normal birth.
Ultimately, it reached the point where Bill Yule could say the other day, “The eagles have now come back to the river in abundance.”
“It is truly an environmental success story,” he said with a tone of triumph in his voice.
Also a bit of sightseeing on the boat tour
Yule occasionally diverted his attention from eagle spotting to becoming a Connecticut River tour guide. “We are now passing Selden Island,” he said at one point. “It is the largest island in the State of Connecticut. There are four campsites on the island, and there is an old forge there as well.” He also told the stories of Joshua Rock, the Mount St. John School for Boys and the Gillette Castle.
While the eagle spotting by the passengers was still in full force, Yule mentioned a few eagle statistics. For one, they can fly as high as 12,000 feet in the sky. To reach these heights they take advantage of rising, warm air currents from the land. Also, according to Yule, eagles can fly at up to 50 miles an hour.
Continuing, Yule said that it is only after it reaches the age of four that an eagle’s tail turns white. Also, eagles are not particularly friendly to other birds, and they have been known to take fish out of the mouths of sea gulls.
In addition, eagles mate for life, although if one of the pair dies they quickly find a replacement. Also, a mother eagle sits on her eggs for 35 days before the eggs hatch, and while she is nesting, her mate brings fish for her to eat.
After they are born, the eagle mother will feed her young for several months, and ten weeks after birth the young eagles will learn to fly. However, eagles are not genetically born to know how to fish, Yule said. It is a skill that they must learn on their own during their first year of life.
Since many young eagles cannot learn to fend for themselves, as many as 50 percent die in their first year of their lives, according to Yule.
The egg-laying season for eagles in the Essex area, this year is from February 2 to 23, Yule said. By June all of the eagles will be gone from our part of the river, having left for cooler waters up north.
Eagle watchers were well pleased with the tour
Among the passengers on this “Eagle Watch Boat Tour,” not a single one said they were disappointed with the tour.
Lee Bradley of Newington said, “I thoroughly enjoyed it,” and “the narration was very, very good.” For her part Sandy Clark of Manchester found the trip, “very interesting,” and “it was very good at showing us everything.” Lorraine Trinks of East Hartford simply called the boat tour, “fabulous.”
Close up of a Bald Eagle watcher
As for departure times, the Friday boat tours cast off from the museum’s docks at 1:00 p.m., and the Saturday and Sunday boat tours depart on both days at 9:00 a.m., 11:00 a.m. and 1:00 p.m.
We shall give Bill Yule the final word on the Eagle Watch Boat Tour. As he puts it, “It is better than any other method to get up close and personal with our national symbol, the Bald Eagle.”
Bill Yule enjoying the ride home
What are the principles of writing a good news story, and taking good news photographs? How close should a reporter get to his news sources, and how to handle conflicts and uncooperative news sources?
Eleanor Roosevelt with newsman Jerome Wilson; part of a talk Mr. Wilson will give at the Essex Library on Thursday, March 1st at 7 PM, on “Reporting the News, Then and Now”.
In his remarks Wilson will highlight some of his favorite news stories in towns along Connecticut River shoreline, as well as when he was on air at CBS. Wilson will illustrate his talk with photographs from his recent news stories, and of past and present newsmakers, including Eleanor Roosevelt, Robert Kennedy, Lowell Weicker and Nelson Rockefeller, Congressman Joe Courtney, Essex First Selectmen Norman Needleman and Deep River First Selectman Dick Smith.
The program is free and open to all. To register or for more information, please call the Essex Library at 860-767-1560. The Essex Library is at 33 West Avenue.
The Essex Winter Series will present a concert by the Boston Chamber Music Society on February 19 at 3 p.m. at Valley regional High School.
Hailed by Boston Globe as “… vivid, compelling and first rate,” the Boston Chamber Music Society, BCMS, is New England’s preeminent chamber music society, providing audiences with exceptional, impassioned performances of music from the Baroque era to the present day. Founded in 1982, BCMS is an ensemble of superb musicians who come together in different combinations to perform chamber music, expanding the artistic possibilities and allowing individual expression without one personality dominating. The effect is one of the miracles of music — sheer aesthetic beauty. For this concert, our “miracle” showcases violinist Harumi Rhodes, violist Marcus Thompson, cellist Ronald Thomas and pianist Mihae Lee – our artistic director – performing a Mozart duo, a Shostakovich trio and a Brahms quartet.
All concerts are held on Sundays at 3:00 p.m. at Valley Regional High School located at 256 Kelsey Hill Road, Deep River, CT.
Individual ticket prices for each concert are $30 for Adults; $25 for Senior Citizens; $12 for Children/Students. Subscriptions for all concerts are also available at a cost of $110 for Adults and $90 for Senior Citizens.
For more information, please visit www.essexwinterseries.com or call 860-391-5578.
REGION 4— The Region 4 Board of Education is prepared to approve a proposed $17,568,403 education budget for 2012-2013, with an increasing number of students at the two secondary schools raising the Essex share of the total budget.
The $17,568,403 total budget is reduced by $241,279 in anticipated revenue to a net budget of $17,327,124 to be assessed the taxpayers of Chester, Deep River, and Essex. The net budget, which is up by $217,292, or 1.27 percent from the current net expenditure, is split among the three towns based on the average daily membership of students from each town attending John Winthrop Middle School and Valley Regional High School.
The ADM that was established last October is good news for Chester and Deep River, and a hit for Essex, the largest of the three district towns. Chester, with 264 students at the two schools, seven fewer than the previous year, has a 27.13 percent, or $4,700,849 share of the net budget. The Chester share is down by $21,465 from the town’s current assessment for Region 4.
Deep River, with 275 students, 11 fewer than the previous year, has a 28.26 percent, or $4,896,645 share of the net budget. The Deep River share is down by $85,738 from the town’s current assessment for Region 4.
Essex had 434 students at the two secondary in October, an increase of nine students from the previous year. Essex has a 44.61 percent, or $7,729,630, share of the net budget. The Essex share is up by 4.38 percent from the previous year, requiring an additional $324,495 from town taxpayers.
Superintendent of Schools Ruth Levy said the Region 4 Board of Education concluded a series of three budget review workshops on Feb. 7, making some changes and reductions to a spending plan she presented in early January. She said the board may make some final revisions before it approved a budget plan for 2012-2013 at a Feb. 29 meeting. The budget adopted on Feb. 29 will be presented to residents of the three towns at the annual budget hearing on April 2. The annual three-town referendum on the Region 4 budget is set for May 8.
Levy said the proposed Region 4 budget is “bare bones,” with no new positions or program initiatives beyond a new teaching assistant for the two schools and a new part-time custodian position.
The Region 4 school boards, including the local boards that supervise the elementary schools in each town, have also approved a proposed $6,269,930 supervision district budget for 2012-2013. The supervision district budget funds programs and services that are shared by all five Region 4 schools, including school transportation.
The proposed budget represents a 4.1 percent increase over the current appropriation for supervision district services.
The proposed supervision district budget includes $45,419 for a new half-time special education teacher to be shared by district schools, and $42,408 for a new unified telephone system for the district schools and central office. Levy said the purchase of the new system would quickly save money on telephone expenses for each building.
After approval by the Region 4, Chester, Deep River, and Essex school boards, the supervision district budget is split among the three towns based on student ADM, and then included in the separate budget plans for Region 4 and the three elementary schools.
Levy said the plan to implement all-day kindergarten at the three elementary schools would be included in the proposed budgets for each elementary school that are now being prepared by the local school boards. Levy said drops in enrollment for the elementary schools would allow the district to implement all-day kindergarten at minimal additional cost.
After approval by the local school boards, the proposed elementary school budgets are subject to review by the finance boards for each town. The elementary school budgets are included as part of the town budgets that are presented to voters for approval at the annual budget meetings in May.
