Sunday, May 13, 2012
An entertaining lady's home journal holds key to style and flair.
Sheila McCaffery can overwhelm you with her meticulous notes for a dinner party. She wants you to throw one on the same scale that she does but this is a gal who doesn’t believe in doing things by halves. In a time when cookbooks, culinary magazines and TV food shows can be more intimidating than inspiring, Sheila shows you how to become a successful hostess. An accomplished cook who learned by doing, she excels in the ideas department. An important tool to achieve the level of success that she has had is through the keeping of a journal. A chronicle of dinner parties that span four decades, her journals are virtual textbooks for home entertaining. Sheila recently came to the Greenwich Garden Center to present a slide show of her dinner …
Friends and neighbors of Mr. Sendak remember the author and his quirky sense of humor.
“But the wild things cried, 'Oh please don’t go - we’ll eat you up - we love you so!' And Max said, 'No!' The wild things roared their terrible roars and gnashed their terrible teeth and rolled their terrible eyes and showed their terrible claws but Max stepped into his private boat and waved goodbye.” Ridgefield’s Maurice Sendak was a man whose poetry and drawings inspired millions and touched childhoods worldwide, but whose small-town life was marked with deep personal friendships and a love for his community. Mr. Sendak, the children’s author who wrote and illustrated “Where The Wild Things Are,” among many other influential, genre-breaking works, had a way of writing stories that played with the fears and trials of growing up, …
Tuesday, May 8, 2012
The celebrated children's author was best known for his book "Where The Wild Things Are."
Ridgefield's famed children's book author and illustrator Maurice Sendak died Tuesday. Sendak, best known for his book "Where The Wild Things Are," was "widely considered the most important children’s book artist of the 20th century," the New York Times reports. The Times reports that Mr. Sendak died of complications from a recent stroke, according to his longtime editor, Michael di Capua. "Where The Wild Things Are" was published in 1963, and the story of a little boy named Max who sails into his dreams to have a "wild rumpus" with imaginative, sometimes nightmarish monsters. The Times described his work: "In book after book, Mr. Sendak upended the staid, centuries-old tradition of American children’s literature, in which young heroes and…
Sunday, April 29, 2012
Plenty, but it's also unintentionally humorous and so badly written it hurts (and not in a good way).
In keeping with the number theme in the title, here's what you need to know before buying 50 Shades of Grey. If fine writing is like bittersweet truffles, this book is like a wad of Gummi Bears stuck to your back teeth. To use another food metaphor — and I'm not sure this author knows what a metaphor is — it's the literary equivalent of eating Sugar Smacks for dinner. Author E.L. James gives us the first-person perspective of a naive 21-year-old college graduate who is also — wait for it — a virgin who has never really been kissed. She is thrown into the presence of a young and extremely handsome billionaire who is powerfully attracted to her but has a dark secret life that involves riding crops, rope and something he calls "The Red Room…
Saturday, April 28, 2012
The radio newsman and author will be singing copies of his new book "Season of ’42: Joe D, Teddy Ballgame, and Baseball’s Fight to Survive a Turbulent First Year of War," at the Whittemore Memorial Library in Naugatuck May 16.
Baseball’s hold on the nation’s sporting masses was severely tested during the early months of World War II. With news of Axis victories in Europe, Africa and Asia dominating the headlines, and rationing becoming part of America's daily life, major league baseball – by comparison – seemed inconsequential. Jack Cavanaugh, a veteran sportswriter, radio newsman and author, has tackled the national pastime and its effect on the war effort in his new book, Season of ’42: Joe D, Teddy Ballgame, and Baseball’s Fight to Survive a Turbulent First Year of War (Skyhorse Publishing). The Wilton-based author will be discussing and signing copies of his new book at the Whittemore Memorial Library in Naugatuck on Wednesday, May 16, starting at 6:30 p.m…
Thursday, April 19, 2012
Whether you're captivated by the story of the Titanic or not, you can't avoid the avalanche of film and television offerings commemorating the 100th anniversary of the ship's sinking.
When an anniversary as meaningful as a centennial comes around, you've got to expect a little fanfare and the inevitable TV special or two. But the 100-year anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic has brought new meaning to the term "commemoration." There's been hundreds of ceremonies in towns throughout the Eastern Seaboard, if not the country. There's been numerous Titanic-themed exhibits opening, including one in our backyard designed by Dr. Robert Ballard at the Mystic Aquarium. But most conspicuously, the past few weeks have seen a flood of tributes, commemorations and investigations on cable television channels up and down the dial. And, of course, the re-release of the James Cameron blockbuster "Titanic" in 3-D, which grossed more…
Wednesday, April 18, 2012
The iconic producer and TV host suffered a heart attack, ABC News reports.
Famed TV host, producer Dick Clark died today at the age of 82, ABC reports. The longtime host of “Dick Clark’s Rockin’ New Year’s Eve’ reportedly died of a heart attack. He had suffered a stroke in 2004 but “returned to the airwaves” for the last several years, according to ABC News. Clark became a household name after the afternoon dance show he hosted in the 50s became the popular “American Bandstand,” and from there Clark started the successful Dick Clark Productions company in Hollywood, according to ABC.
Richard D. Rabbett, a co-founder of the nonprofit SS United States Conservancy and a former board member of the Providence-based Steamship Historical Society of America, is one of a select few setting sail for the Titanic's final resting place to memorial
"The present contains nothing more than the past, and what is found in the effect was already in the cause." — French philosopher Henri Bergson (1859‐1941) This month, the world will commemorate the 100th anniversary of the sinking of RMS Titanic, the largest and most luxurious ocean liner in the world at the time of her loss from striking an iceberg in the North Atlantic on April 14, 1912. I will be among a very lucky few who will be out in the North Atlantic Ocean on April 14‐15 over the actual site of the Titanic wreck, 100 years later, to commemorate the many people who so tragically lost their lives in the disaster. Like so many others, I first learned of the Titanic tragedy as a child in grade school. As a teenager, my interest…
Tuesday, April 17, 2012
The famous explorer unveiled a multimillion-dollar, state-of-the-art interactive exhibit at the Mystic Aquarium Wednesday that brings visitors up close to the search for and discovery of the RMS Titanic.
It was just past 11 o’clock in the morning Wednesday, and Dr. Robert Ballard — renowned international explorer and the discoverer of the most famous shipwreck in history — bounced from the bowels of his latest project at the Mystic Aquarium like he was on springs, flashing a wide grin and thrusting his hand at yet another in a long line of media members waiting to talk to him about the RMS Titanic. “Where’s Joe?” he chided the reporter when she told him which publication she was representing. “Joe’s on vacation!” replied the female reporter, who matched his enthusiasm. “Oh, so he’s letting you do this story? You’re Joe today!” Ballard had reason to be upbeat. He, along with aquarium and Sea Research Foundation officials, unveiled “…
Sunday, April 15, 2012
William T. Sloper of New Britain found a seat on the first lifeboat launched after the Titanic began sinking but was falsely accused of impersonating a woman to get the seat. He spent the rest of his life defending his reputation.
Anyone who knows anything about the Titanic disaster believes that there was a certain protocol for those who boarded the scarce lifeboats onboard the ill-fated ship — or was there? Actually, the “women or children only” rule was in effect only on the port side of the ship; “women or children first” was the rule on the starboard side. Furthermore, a 14-year-old girl in first class was considered a child; a 14-year-old girl in third class was considered an adult. These variations in protocol are important in understanding the sad case of William Thompson Sloper, a 28-year old stockbroker from New Britain who survived the sinking. Check out the some of the items that sank with the Titanic Son of Andrew Jackson Sloper, a New Britain …
stacyb
12:51 pm on Friday, May 18, 2012
How do you know whether or not the same person contributes to charity. People choose to live and celebrate life however they may and can contribute too. I wouldnt judge what one decides to do and enjoy when it is not harming others. more ›