Around Town

‘America’s Wake-Up Call’: Q&A with New Canaan’s Stephen Roach, Economist and Author

By |

When we heard that economist, scholar, author and New Canaan resident Stephen Roach was coming to New Canaan Library to talk about his widely discussed new book — “Unbalanced: The Codependency of America and China” — we immediately sought to put some questions to Roach himself: His history and involvement in our town, entry into the field of economics (where he is a prominent figure), and a bit about the book itself. We discovered that Roach is a fixture in the chicken line at New Canaan’s well-loved and recently held May Fair, and found him frank and engaging: “In a codependent relationship, the scorned partner usually ends up in serious trouble,” Roach says of the relationship between the two nations in his book. “Call it America’s wake-up call.” Our full exchange can be found below. A senior fellow at Yale University and former chairman of Morgan Stanly Asia, he’sspeaking at 8 a.m. next Wednesday, May 21 as part of the library’s “Distinguished Authors Series on Economics,” presented in partnership with the New Canaan Chamber of Commerce, Alliance of Business Professionals and Elm Street Books. Register here.

Around Town

New Canaan Nature Center, Town, Businesses and Organizations Mark Earth Day 2014 [VIDEOS]

By |

 

 

“Where have those flowers and butterflies all gone

That science may have staked the future on?”

—from Robert Frost’s “Pod of the Milkweed”

 

The migration of monarch butterflies through New Canaan—and everywhere else along the East Coast—is happening less frequently in recent years, to the point where some are calling the insects’ once widely anticipated journey between the Northeast/Canada and Mexico “endangered.”

The major reason, experts say, is a lack of milkweed, which monarch caterpillars feed on. “The butterflies can go to all kinds of flowers for nectar, but the caterpillars can only eat milkweed plants. They’re having a hard time with loss of bio-habitat, so we are encouraging people in town to plant these free milkweed seeds,” Susan Bergen, a volunteer for the New Canaan Garden Club, said Tuesday morning from a table inside New Canaan Library. There, she and Jen Rayher (nee Sillo, a 1994 New Canaan High School graduate), director of membership and volunteers at the New Canaan Nature Center, handed out the seeds (“Got Milkweed?” on the packet) to mark Earth Day here in town. It’s one of several initiatives and events planned by the Nature Center for the next week, which New Canaan’s highest elected official today declared “Environmental Awareness Week 2014Week” (see video below).