Walk-a-thon 2010 tally $8,000-plus

CORNWALL — It was one of the first really cold days of the year, with even a light snowfall. But the eighth annual Cornwall Walk-a-thon raised a total of $8,019 nonetheless.

The entire school, joined by community members and assorted pets (including a llama, this year), walk and run for good causes.  Half of the money raised goes to class accounts, which will eventually help pay for the students’ eighth-grade trip. The other half goes to one or more charities chosen by the students.

Kindergarten through grade eight students put  $5,900 in their class coffers this year.

Some $2,950 went to the International Bird Rescue Research Center and to the Haitian Health Foundation. The latter has been steadily supported by Cornwall and the Cornwall school. Alumna and nurse Devon Root went for a mission project just days before the January earthquake.

An anonymous donor this year stepped in with a donation of $2,000. Half of that was used as bonuses. The kindergarten class earned an extra $250 for having the highest percentage of participants. All 10 of the school’s youngest children lined up their own sponsors and took part in the walk.

The seventh-grade class earned a $750 bonus for bringing in the most money. Those students, by the way, were in kindergarten when the very first walk-a-thon was held, and they have consistently been top money-raisers.

Latest News

Bunny Williams's 
‘Life in the Garden’
Rizzoli

In 1979, interior decorator Bunny Williams and her husband, antiques dealer John Rosselli, had a fateful meeting with a poorly cared for — in Williams’s words, “unspoiled” — 18th-century white clapboard home.

“I am not sure if I believe in destiny, but I do know that after years of looking for a house, my palms began to perspire when I turned onto a tree-lined driveway in a small New England village,” Williams wrote in her 2005 book, “An Affair with a House.” The Federal manor high on a hill, along with several later additions that included a converted carriage shed and an 1840-built barn, were constructed on what had been the homestead property of Falls Village’s Brewster family, descendants of Mayflower passenger William Brewster, an English Separatist and Protestant leader in Plymouth Colony.

Keep ReadingShow less
The Creators: Sitting down with Garet Wierdsma

Garet&Co dancers

Jennifer Almquist

On Saturday, March 9, the people of Norfolk, Connecticut, enjoyed a dance performance by northern Connecticut-based Garet&Co, in Battell Chapel, titled INTERIOR, consisting of four pieces: “Forgive Her, Hera,” “Something We Share,” “bodieshatewomen,” and “I kinda wish the apocalypse would just happen already.”

At the sold-out show in the round, the dancers, whose strength, grace and athleticism filled the hall with startling passion, wove their movements within the intimate space to the rhythms of contemporary music. Wierdsma choreographed each piece and curated the music. The track she created for “Something We Share” eerily contained vintage soundtracks from life guidance recordings for the perfect woman of the ‘50s. The effect, with three dancers in satin slips posing before imaginary mirrors, was feminist in its message and left the viewer full of vicarious angst.

Keep ReadingShow less
Kevin McEneaney, voice of The Millbrook Independent

Kevin McEneaney

Judith O’Hara Balfe

On meeting Kevin McEneaney, one is almost immediately aware of three things; he’s reserved, he’s highly intelligent and he has a good sense of humor.

McEneaney is the wit and wisdom behind The Millbrook Independent, a blog that evolved from the print version of that publication. It's a wealth of information about music venues in this part of Dutchess County interspersed with poetry, art reviews, articles on holidays and other items, and a smattering of science.

Keep ReadingShow less