Around Town

Did You Hear … ?

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Seven women with direct connections to New Canaan—see the gallery above—will share their leadership experiences and encourage women and girls to pursue their goals in “Being Queen: Thoughts from the Throne,” a panel discussion hosted by NC Women Mean Business that will be held from 6:30 to 8 p.m. at New Canaan Library. Read here for more information to this free, open event. ***

A New Canaan woman spotted a bobcat on her Canoe Hill Road property on Saturday morning—the sixth such sighting in one month of the reclusive feline. “I happened to be in the kitchen and turned and looked out the window and saw a bobcat on the front lawn,” Carol Miller said of her sighting at about 4:35 p.m. Saturday. “It meandered across the driveway and headed into the woods, and not a minute later there were six prancing deer that followed it.

Around Town

Did You Hear … ?

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New Canaan Fire Department and NCPD Animal Control officials at 10:51 a.m. Saturday responded to a report of a dog who’d wandered into a storm drain in the area of Country Club and Lambert Roads. They arrived to discover that a young Newfoundland had crawled back out, to reunite with its owner. ***

The Building Department on April 20 received an application from the 136 Main St. to do some $50,000 of interior renovations at the former Barolo space, slated to open this spring as Spiga Café, an Italian restaurant. Work in the 4,100-square-foot space includes installation of a new bar and equipment, pizza oven and lighting.

Around Town

Did You Hear … ?

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We’re wishing a speedy recovery for New Canaan First Selectman Rob Mallozzi, who is laid up at home this week—booked already as a vacation week—after spraining his ankle and breaking a lower leg bone (fibula) during a freak accident last weekend. Up in Newport, R.I. with New Canaanites Nick Williams, a second selectman, and Paul Foley, a police commissioner, for the 12-meter sailing races, Mallozzi—who had gone uninjured in eight years as a volunteer firefighter here in town—took a misstep between a sailboat and launch and rolled his ankle. As per Coastal Orthopaedics in Norwalk, the first selectman said he’s got to keep the leg elevated for a full week to prevent swelling and quicken the recovery process, and hopes to be back at work next Tuesday. “Everyone has reached out to me, my wife and family and friends have been wonderful, and as upset as I am, that part of this has made it a little easier,” Mallozzi said on Wednesday. The first selectman was to have taken a real vacation this week, including an Eagles concert, but had to forego it while he recovers at home.

Around Town

Town Players of New Canaan’s Sheri Bickley Dean Reflects on Her Involvement with Historic Local Group

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The NewCanaanite.com Summer Internship Program is sponsored by Baskin-Robbins, Connecticut Sandwich Co., Joe’s Pizza and Mackenzie’s. Sheri Bickley Dean, co-president of the Town Players of New Canaan (with Cheryl Petrone), had her first experience with the venerable troupe through her father, Tony Bickley, one of its very early members. Ms. Dean, a theatre major at Rollins College in Florida, had been part of a Summer Stock theatre that allowed her to get an equity card (the starting point for many professional actors) one year before graduating college. However, after marrying at an early age and having twins, she decided that motherhood took precedence over starting an acting career in New York. “I had to make the decision, ‘Do I really want to try and do the New York beat or not?’ and I said no because I really wanted to be a mom,” Ms. Dean recalled this week from the business office at the Powerhouse Theatre.

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.