Around Town

Rotary Club of New Canaan Announces 2015 Grant Opportunities

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The Rotary Club of New Canaan is accepting applications from New Canaan and area nonprofit organizations for grants to fund special projects, capital improvements, new initiatives, as well as, in some cases, operating funds. Applicants are requested to provide the following information:

Name of the nonprofit
Contact name with email address and phone number. A brief history of the applying organization, its mission, and major accomplishments within the last year
The specific dollar amount requested and a description of the purpose for which funding is sought
State if grant funds will cover the whole project or a portion of it
A demographic description of the population who will benefit
Please indicate how your program participants will benefit from this funding
A statement as to whether or not there are service project opportunities for Rotarians
Evidence of the organization’s 501c(3) status

The deadline for applications is April 10, 2015. Please send grant applications to:

Ms. Amy Wilkinson, Allocations Chair

Grant Distributions 2015
Rotary Club of New Canaan
PO Box 62
New Canaan, CT 06840

Please also submit your application electronically to the following email address: allocations@newcanaanrotary.org. If you have any questions regarding this process, please contact Amy via this email address.

News

Smoke, CO Detector and Batteries Giveaway Saturday at New Canaan Fire Department

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Fire officials are urging New Canaan residents turning back their clocks this weekend to swap out the batteries in their smoke and carbon monoxide detectors at the same time. Free batteries (three per household) will be made available at the Fire Department’s Main Street headquarters from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturday, according to Fire Marshal Fred Baker. The giveaway, part of a nationwide “Change Your Clocks—Change Your Batteries” campaign (daylight savings ends at 2 a.m. Sunday), is the result of a generous donation from the department as well as the Rotary Club of New Canaan, he said. “Additionally, Kidde Corporation has donated smoke detectors and CO detectors, which are available to residents who need them—also free of charge,” he said (again, a limit of three per household). The detectors often prevent tragedies involving loss of life and property, Baker said—earlier this month, residents at a home that experienced a basement fire were alerted to it by an alarm.

Business

Five Years On: New Canaan Chamber’s Tucker Murphy Shepherds Community, Commerce with ‘Positive High Energy’

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Here’s a word that lifelong New Canaanite Beth Jones—a 1974 New Canaan High School graduate who serves on the Board of Selectmen and belongs to the Kiwanis Club of New Canaan and League of Women Voters—used Friday to describe the positive changes brought to our community by the Chamber of Commerce these past five years: “Unbelievable.”

Splintered at the time Tucker Murphy took over as executive director, with a business-led group that called itself the “New Canaan Village Association” breaking off to create the now-annual Holiday Stroll and push for more activity, the chamber today is credited not only with mending the rift and boosting the visibility of local businesses through new events, but also with creating something that’s difficult to describe—a kind of inclusiveness, feeling of shared mission and connection among not just businesses but also nonprofit groups, community organizations, individuals and the town itself. Thursday marked exactly five years since Murphy took over as executive director at the chamber—bringing in marketing associate Laura Soper Budd along the way. Asked to describe what they’ve seen happen in that time, business and town leaders credit Murphy’s enthusiasm, vitality, creativity and sense of community in forging an enviably active, mutually supportive membership. “She’s just a fabulous spokesperson for the businesses, the community, the town itself,” Jones said. “She just loves New Canaan.”

Asked about the change herself, Murphy said one touchstone for what’s happening is the fact that one new business here, Mrs. Green’s, contacted the chamber itself (and joined) entirely on its own.

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.