Around Town

Volunteers Needed for Annual New Canaan Spring Cleanup

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Town officials are calling for volunteers to raise their hands and organize for a longtime New Canaan tradition that sees community members clear trash each Spring from our roadways, parks, downtown/village center, school grounds and elsewhere. The 2014 “Clean Your Mile” campaign is scheduled for April 26 and 27. On that weekend, organizers and sponsors will mobilize to provide gloves, garbage bags and dumpsters (more details on that below). “Clean Your Mile is a New Canaan Spring tradition that is over 40 years old, most likely originating out of some of the first Earth Day activities,” Kathleen Holland, director of Inland Wetlands and Watercourses, told NewCanaanite.com in an email. “Volunteers are recruited from service clubs, schools, church groups and members of the community. We look forward to improving the Town and at the same time helping the environment.”

To help ensure participants get to school grounds, parks, streets, parking areas and other public places, organizers are asking people who will lend a couple of hours to sign up with Kristi Ready at the New Canaan Department of Public Works: Kristine.Ready@NewCanaanCT.gov and 203-594-3090.

Faces of New Canaan

George Baker: John Adams in New Canaan [VIDEO]

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[Editor’s Note: Town resident and re-enactor George Baker will appear as John Adams at New Canaan Library at 6:30 p.m. on March 25 to present “My Wife, Abigail Adams, the First Modern American Woman.” The videos interspersed throughout this article—shot Friday, March 14—offer a glimpse of Baker’s special talent, as he channels Adams in question-and-answer format, placing the second president in 18th (and early 19th) Century New Canaan and discussing our town, library, commuting and the upcoming show.]

 

Though he was just two or three years old that day, New Canaan resident George Baker still recalls his very first encounter with a performing artist. The memory is this: Baker and his father were walking through an open, outdoor area in New York City—something similar to Hyde Park in London—when the pair came upon a man surrounded by a crowd, singing. via YouTube

“Everyone was listening and he was so good,” Baker recalled Friday afternoon from a table at Connecticut Muffin on Main Street, his favorite cup of coffee in town steaming in front of him (regular roast with plenty of milk). “People were singing along and I said, ‘Wow, that’s what I want to do.’ ”

It was a prophetic moment for the young boy, whose wish would materialize in ways that, in retrospect, surprise and delight Baker himself. A lawyer out of Columbia University who practices employment law and litigation (with wide experience in condominium law), Baker has developed a highly tailor-able, professional one-man show re-enacting John Adams. In just over five years, it’s taken him from stages at Mystic Seaport to the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library and Museum in Abilene, Kan.

News

New Canaan Fire Officials: Swap Out Smoke Detector Batteries This Weekend

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Fire officials are urging New Canaan residents to make changing their smoke detectors’ batteries part of the same ritual as setting clocks ahead one hour this weekend for Daylight Savings Time. The New Canaan Fire Department, Local 3224,  and Rotary Club of New Canaan are supporting the national “Change Your Clocks—Change Your Batteries” campaign. Together with private residents, they’re giving away batteries from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturday, March 8 at Fire Headquarters on Main Street (limit three batteries per household). Daylight Savings Time takes hold at 2 a.m. Sunday, March 9. Fire Marshal Fred Baker told NewCanaanite.com that one major advantage to changing out smoke detector batteries before they get low is to avoid the annoying chirp that indicates a low battery.