St. Michael’s Gives Thanks

St. Michael’s Lutheran Church on 5 Oenoke Ridge will host a Community Thanksgiving Service on Tuesday, November 26 at 7:30 p.m. in conjunction with the Community Baptist Church and the United Methodist Church of New Canaan. The service will include hymn singing, readings, and prayer, and will feature special music by the combined choir under the direction of St. Michael’s Music Director Dr. Alla Borzova. Food offerings and monetary donations collected at this service will be given to support the Community Food Pantry of New Canaan.

‘We Can Do It’: ABC Alumnus Leads Stirring MLK Day Service in New Canaan

Reading the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “The Other America” speech put Jason Michael Land in mind of something that his grandmother used to say. A 2003 New Canaan High School graduate and ABC student here in town who has since gone on to Yale Divinity School, Land on Monday morning recalled that she would say “God made us all in his image—not some of us black and inferior, not some of us white and superior.”

“Believe it or not, I learned this lesson here, in New Canaan, the ‘Next Station To Heaven’ ” Land told more than 200 people gathered inside United Methodist Church on South Avenue for an annual service in remembrance of King. “Now I would be lying if I said that it was easy, because it definitely was not. However, I did find that I am no better nor worse than anyone else. I did learn that I have a mother and brothers and sisters who look nothing like me, but who will support and defend me to the very end.

Letter: Great Thanksgiving at the Food Pantry

Dear Editor,

On behalf of the New Canaan Food Pantry, we would like to thank the United Methodist Church for the generous grant they have given us. This grant, in conjunction with ACME Markets in New Canaan, has made it possible for The Food Pantry to provide our clients with a bountiful Thanksgiving dinner. Our families will have all the items needed to celebrate with a traditional feast —cheese and crackers, stuffing, potatoes, cranberries, carrots, olives, vegetables, butter and pies. Baskin Robbins has also generously donated ice cream for each family. Gazy Farms, members of the New Canaan Farmer’s Market, has provided the fresh vegetables and produce for a special celebration.

Did You Hear … ?

New Canaan’s annual ceremony honoring and remembering those lost in the Sept, 11, 2001 terrorist attacks will return to the front steps of Town Hall this Friday, Sept. 11 at 9:55 a.m. Attendees are welcome to join town officials for refreshments following the ceremony, at the New Canaan Firehouse across Main Street, Fire Marshal Fred Baker tells us. ***

Congratulations to 2002 NCHS grad Katherine Pembrook Avgerinos, looking beautiful in these photos on occasion of her July 5 marriage to Ivan Jose Docampo Esmoris in Glyfada, Greece. Here are excerpts from the wedding notice, supplied by her mom:

The Rev. Harold E. Masback, III, former senior minister of the Congregational Church of New Canaan, officiated at the service.        

The bride is the daughter of Michael and Linda Avgerinos, formerly of New Canaan and now residing in Norwalk. The bridegroom is the son of Hilario and Maria Jesus Docampo of Carballo, Spain, in the northeast region of Galicia.

Moms, Teachers, Friends, Scientists: New Canaan Women Launch ‘Rad Lab’ Preschool Program

After one of New Canaan’s many snowstorms last winter, next-door neighbors and fast friends Courtney Flynn and Jennifer Moore—teachers by training and profession—plowed a path between their homes, then scooped pots of snow and hauled them inside and up to Moore’s bathtub for their combined children (five altogether, each four years old or younger) to play with in a unique way. The pair armed the kids with spray bottles of food coloring and “they just went nuts,” Moore recalled on a recent morning from a corner room downstairs at the United Methodist Church, a box of baby wipes surrounded by rubber bands, marbles and dowels on the table in front of her, graduated cylinders and beakers on a shelf against the wall. “Coloring the snow and mixing the colors and seeing what happens when they mixed the colors or how they could get the color to go away or to melt the snow,” Moore continued. “They were playing, and that’s all about states of matter—solid, liquid, gas—the snow was melting and then the color was changing. So they [the kids] liked that, and then we just started doing little things outside.”

Those little things—hands-on and offering new ways to experience and understand the everyday—ranged from the basics (dropping rocks to test gravity) to more sophisticated (planting seeds, digging for worms).