NCHS Senior Interns Continue in Town Hall Positions After Graduation

Before starting his New Canaan High School Senior Internship in the Department of Public Works, Kevin O’Brien Brunner said he never thought about how the town ran. “I just assumed that things happened,” Brunner said on a sunny afternoon last week. “Being able to actually work here, I not only get to see what’s behind the curtain—how it actually runs—but I also get to meet the real people with real lives who are making it run,” he said. The NCHS Senior Internship Program has grown in its nine years that nearly all seniors participate in it. What’s more rare is for those college-bound teens to work the summer after graduating NCHS at their internship sites.

‘I Wish I Had A Wonderful Excuse’: Parking Ticket Appeals

These are excerpts from recent appeal letters that motorists filed with the New Canaan Parking Bureau after receiving tickets. ***

“Dear Stacy, Thank you for taking the time to go over the procedures for disputing a parking ticket with me. You were very helpful and I appreciate it. Here’s my testimony: On Monday morning, I parked on Forest Street (left side) just after the handicapped parking spot. When I pulled into the spot, I looked up to check the sign to see if it was a 2 hour or 90 minute spot (as I was going to a hair appointment at Salon 5 East). I was very close to the sign and just saw the green and white ‘2 hour parking’ sign through the top edge of my windshield. My bigger concern was that I had left enough room behind me for the handicapped parking spot.

‘Create Something You Truly Believe In’: NCHS Grad Founds Spirits Company

While visiting his father last year, James Mauk was struck with inspiration for a business of his own. Son of the man who founded popular New Canaan restaurant Tequila Mockingbird, Mauk noticed a sign behind the kitchen sink at his dad’s Pound Ridge, N.Y. home that said ‘The Golden Rule’—a reference to the age-old maxim that you should do unto others as you would have others do unto you. 

Mauk, who graduated from New Canaan High School in 2006—playing lacrosse for the Rams all four years—and then Colorado College, had been feeling disillusioned with the food and beverage industry after working in it for several years in Colorado and California. On seeing the sign, Mauk recalled, he began to wonder what it would mean “if all industries approached business in this way—you did something that you really believed in and thought was the right way to do something.”

From that idea, Mauk’s new venture, Golden Rule Spirits, was born. That was 18 months ago. Since then, Mauk and his business partner—cousin and New Canaan native Hunter Sprole—developed their first product, a canned margarita cocktail based on a recipe developed by his father, Paul Mauk, for Tequila Mockingbird. 

“I didn’t understand why there weren’t options for true cocktails in a can,” Mauk said.