Around Town

‘Yoga To Support Our VFW’ Starts Sunday

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John McLane simply hoped to be ignored when he returned from Vietnam in 1969. A U.S. Army captain during the Vietnam War, McLane remembers hearing about “the way guys were being treated” on returning to the United States as veterans. That poor treatment started to change about 30 or 35 years ago, McLane—a member of New Canaan’s local Veterans of Foreign Wars Howard M. Bossa and Peter C. Langenus Post 653—recalled Thursday. “And now it seems like people are really appreciative, maybe because the news media has changed or maybe because of all the movies and TV shows about guys at war,” he told NewCanaanite.com. “It’s true thanks, true concerns and it means a lot.”

Starting Sunday and leading up to Veterans Day on Friday, when the town’s ceremony will be held just after 10:45 a.m. at God’s Acre, the New Canaan community will have a unique opportunity to support its local veterans at VFW Post 653. 

“Yoga To Support Our VFW” will launch at 3:30 p.m. Sunday with a community class at St.

Around Town

‘Make Sure That People Remember Them’: New Canaanites Launch ‘Yogis Support Our VFW Day’

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New Canaan’s John McLane, a U.S. Army captain in Vietnam, joined a local VFW post soon after getting out of the military in 1969. But it was many years before McLane started attending VFW meetings or involving himself in other events of the organization. “Because I didn’t want to really think about it,” he said Wednesday morning. Then in 2012, he became active in the New Canaan-based Howard M. Bossa and Peter C. Langenus Post 653 of the Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States. 

He took up yoga that same year, and within a few years befriended fellow yogi and New Canaanite Margaret Roscoe. Daughter of a Civil War buff who spent family car trips visiting battle sites and feels strongly about the military and veterans, Roscoe was already an active volunteer for the VFW, which hands out poppies on two weekends each spring to honor the nation’s war dead.

Around Town

‘We Feel Blessed’: Through 10 Years, Gospel Garden at St. Mark’s Emerges as Vehicle for Shared Abundance

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Before the Rev. Peter Walsh could process parishioner Brian Hollstein’s pitch to build a garden behind St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, the crews were in the lot and the land was being cleared. It had been less than a day since Hollstein proposed his plan. Walsh liked the idea, so rather than think too much about the logistics, he surrendered and held on for the ride. On a recent afternoon, a thoughtful Walsh observed that the garden “yields so much more than just vegetables.”

“The garden has been fruitful in terms of community by being a place where people who wanted to be part of a good thing could collaborate and execute on that desire,” he said.