Sean Kennedy has been appointed Assistant Principal at Mile Creek Elementary School in Old Lyme.
OLD LYME—Lyme-Old Lyme Schools have announced the hiring of Sean Kennedy to fill the newly-created, part-time Assistant Principal position at Mile Creek Elementary School. Kennedy will start in his new role on July 1.
Kennedy, a resident of Niantic, is currently serving as the Interim Athletic Director for Branford Public Schools where he is responsible for 37 different programs including the evaluation of 70 coaches. In Branford, he has also served as the elementary summer enrichment co-coordinator and the after-school enrichment coordinator. He has taught health and physical education at both the middle and elementary school levels, the latter of which was a position he held for the past six years.
Kennedy has a Sixth Year Certificate in Educational Leadership from Southern Connecticut State University, a M.S. in Teacher Leadership from Quinnipiac University, and earned his B.S. from Central Connecticut State University.
“We are pleased to have Mr. Kennedy join our team in this newly-created position,” said Ian Neviaser, Superintendent of Lyme-Old Lyme Schools. “His commitment to students, demonstrated leadership, and professionalism will be an asset at this growing school.”
The selection process began in February and yielded more than 40 applicants. A selection committee comprising more than 20 people conducted several rounds of interviews.
Pictured left to right at the check presentation from the Rockfall Foundation (RF) to the Town of Old Lyme (OL) are Sharon Lewis, RF Board Member, Marilyn Ozols, RF Board President, OL Open Space Chair, Greg Futoma, Tony Marino, Rockfall Foundation Executive Director, Martha Shoemaker, OL First Selectwoman, Jude Read, OL Selectwoman, and Jim Lampos, OL Selectman.
OLD LYME—On March 18, the Rockfall Foundation presented the Town of Old Lyme (OL) with a grant for $1,700 to support a “Coastal Forest and Marshland Conservation and Education” program on the town’s Horseneck Creek Landing. The program will be administered by the OL Open Space Commission.
Martha Shoemaker, OL First Selectwoman, and other town officials accepted a check from Rockfall Foundation representatives prior to the 3/18 OL Board of Selectman meeting.
The three-acre property offers excellent examples of coastal forest and salt marsh, both under serious threat. Horseneck Creek’s forest includes black, red and white oak, highbush blueberry, northern bayberry, black huckleberry, eastern red cedar, big-tooth aspen and big-leaf marsh elder, among other trees.
Saltmarsh habitats are described as “blue carbon” for their ability to capture significant amounts carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and to store it in grasses and soils, mitigating climate change.
Horseneck Creek Landing also offers wonderful opportunities to see osprey, egrets, cormorants, and great blue herons during the summer, and in colder months, brant and various ducks, including brightly colored hooded mergansers. Bald eagles may also be spotted, and the State of Connecticut reports that seaside sparrow and saltmarsh sharp-tailed sparrows, state-listed birds, may be in the area.
The grant program will complement the existing trail with a virtual guide. A botanist or biologist will collaborate to highlight featured flora. In addition, an interpretative weather and vandal-proof color sign will be produced and installed for visitor information.
Offsite conservation will include sponsorship of a local lecture on coastal forests and salt marshes to encourage their protection. A simple fact sheet will memorialize the message and be physically distributed and be posted for download.
A split-rail barrier fence has been constructed to preserve marshland. While the fence is not within the project scope, it will be part of the program’s friendly message explaining that simply walking on fragile flora can be damaging.
The Open Space Commission looks forward to partnering with Audubon to promote the property as a birding site. Visitors will be introduced to birding apps such as Merlin ID, and an eBird Hotspot has been created.
Greg Futoma, Open Space Commission Chair, added, “As the Harbor Management Commission works to establish a kayak/canoe launch on site, Open Space looks forward to working cooperatively with its fellow commission to make this beautiful property a treasure for residents and visitors.”
The Rockfall Foundation is one of Connecticut’s oldest non-profit organizations committed to promoting natural resource conservation, sustainable development and environmental education in the Lower Connecticut River Valley.
OLD LYME – On Friday, April 5, at 10:30 a.m., the public is invited to the Town of Old Lyme’s flag-raising ceremony kicking off National Donate Life Month at Old Lyme’s Memorial Town Hall. The Donate Life flag will fly at the town hall through April to raise awareness of the critical need for organ donors.
First Selectwoman Martha Shoemaker sees the National Donate Life Month as a great time to register as organ and tissue donors. “As a young adult, I indicated my wish to become a donor both on my driver’s license and by sharing my wishes with my family,” Shoemaker said. “If you wish to be considered for organ donation at the end of life, you simply add that to your driver’s license during renewal time with the Department of Motor Vehicles. It’s a very simple process,” she added.
The annual National Donate Life Month honors those who have given the gift of life through organ and tissue donation, either as a living donor or at the end of life. For those whose lives have been saved or healed as a recipient of a transplant, National Donate Life Month provides a chance to share their stories and encourage more people to register as donors and learn about living donor opportunities.
In 2017, Old Lyme witnessed town residents Rob Wallace and Ryan Lee create a lifelong bond through Lee’s donation of a section of his liver to Wallace. Wallace was in dire need of a liver transplant due to liver cancer, and Lee stepped forward to donate once learning about Rob’s journey.
Gathered together in this file photo are Rob Wallace (third from right) and his wife Lori (second from left) and their three children.
“This June 28th, I will be celebrating my seventh-year cancer-free,” Rob Wallace noted, continuing, “It saved my life! Having a ‘liver giver’ is God’s gift. I feel amazing. I was blessed!”
Living donations are possible for livers, which slowly regrow to nearly their full original volume about a year after a partial liver donation, and for kidneys, since donors can live well with just one of their two kidneys.
Wallace’s liver donor Lee commented, “Helping a neighbor in need as a living donor is one of the most rewarding things, I’ve ever been a part of – I wish I could do it again!” Since then, Wallace and Lee have both been active in promoting living donations and in spreading the word for others who are now searching for a donor to save their life.
According to the National Institutes of Health, while 95 percent of Americans are in favor of being a donor, only 58 percent of the U.S. adult population are registered organ and tissue donors. However, the number of people in need of transplants continues to outpace the number of organs donated.
According to OrganDonor.gov, as of September 2023, about 108,000 people in the US wait for a matching organ transplant and a second chance at life. On average, 17 people die each day because a matching organ is not donated in time. Shoemaker says registering your decision to become a donor is the most effective way to save lives through donation and is a sign of support to those who continue to wait.
Donate Life Connecticut Executive Director Lindsay Vigue is a living donor of a kidney. She said, “I have been able to see how donation impacts not only the life and health of a singular person, but their family and community. There are too many people waiting on the transplant list. In this life, if we are able to help another with the gift of life, while we are here or after we are gone, that is one of the most powerful legacies we can leave.”
In addition to organ donation, tissue donations help over one million individuals each year. Heart valve, bone and skin donations give recipients a new chance at a healthy life; the recovery of tendons and ligaments can help heal a severe sports injury, while cornea donations give the gift of sight.
For more information about becoming a potential organ or tissue donor, and/or learning how to indicate your wishes via the Department of Motor Vehicles, visit DonateLifeCT.org.
Rev. David W. Good, Minister Emeritus of the First Congregational Church of Old Lyme, who passed away on April 2, 2024. File photo.
LYME/OLD LYME— The Rev. Steven Jungkeit, Senior Minister at the First Congregational Church of Old Lyme (FCCOL), has today announced the passing yesterday morning of the Rev. David W. Good from complications with leukemia.
Rev. Good was Minister Emeritus of the First Congregational Church and had served as its Senior Minister for 37 years from 1975 to 2012.
In his email sharing the sad news with church members, Rev. Jungkeit says, “The breadth of his [Rev. Good’s] ministry is astonishing, both for its prescience and for its imaginative sweep. Prescient in that David anticipated many of the justice issues that we are still contending with today. Imaginative in that he used the symbols of the Christian tradition to connect with those of other peoples and cultures, demonstrating that as human beings, we all belong to the same common family.”
He continues, ” David’s ministry at FCCOL, but really, his entire life, was dedicated to countering that indifference.”
Rev. Jungkeit then gives numerous examples of the extraordinary outreach work that Rev. Good initiated, saying, “In 1985, David led the first visit to Green Grass, South Dakota, initiating a partnership with the Lakota people of the Cheyenne River Reservation that continues to exist some 40 years later.”
He continues, ” A few years after that, prompted by the struggle against apartheid in South Africa, David journeyed to that country in order to foster another set of relationships with those in the Township of Soweto, and with the Methodist Churches of Southern Africa. Later still, he forged a bond with the Koinonia community outside of Americus, Georgia, an anti-racist experiment in communal living that helped to birth Habitat for Humanity.”
Citing what he describes as “One of David’s greatest contributions” Rev. Jungkeit describes how, “… in the days and months following the 9/11 attacks [Rev. Good] [a]lmost immediately, … reached out to the Muslim community, doing whatever he could to counter the fear and paranoia generated by that event, while also helping everyone within his orbit to both appreciate and celebrate the vast wisdom of the Islamic tradition.”
Rev. Jungkeit notes, “Soon, that outreach led to the formation of the Tree of Life ministry, dedicated to the pursuit of human rights in Palestine and in Israel. For more than twenty years, groups of travelers from FCCOL, the Berlin Mosque, and many other places of origin, have journeyed together to the Middle East to learn about the profound human rights challenges facing Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, in East Jerusalem, the Golan Heights, and in Israel proper, while also learning from many Israeli voices of conscience who are seeking to build just and humane alternatives in that region.”
Recognizing recent world events, Rev. Jungkeit states, “The importance of that work becomes more evident with each passing day. It is a legacy that will continue to grow, as we find new ways to support the work of that Tree, “whose branches shall be for the healing of the nations.”
Commenting that, “David’s global outreach scarcely touches all the ways that he gave of himself to individuals within the FCCOL community, and to Old Lyme and the Connecticut Shoreline more broadly,” Rev Jungkeit explains, “Week after week, he delivered learned, impassioned, and inspiring sermons. He accompanied many people through their final days, and helped family members to come to terms with their own losses. He steered committees and task forces. Through his leadership, the Fellowship Hall and Sunday School wing was added to FCCOL. We have a Food Pantry housed at FCCOL because of David’s vision, and in his later years, he organized PARJE (Public Art for Racial Justice and Equality).”
Rev. Jungkeit concludes, “I came to FCCOL because I was inspired by the tracks David had set down throughout his ministry. It was, and is, an honor to follow in those footsteps.” He ends his email by describing Rev. Good simply as, “… this remarkable man.”
A date for the Memorial Service is still being arranged and will be announced shortly.
We send our deepest sympathies to Rev. Good’s wife Corinne and his extended family. He truly was a remarkable man.
When I first watched the coming-of-age teen comedy Superbad in 2008, I was immediately won over to Emma Stone as Jules, the object of Jonah Hill’s affection. As the years passed and she released hit after hit (Zomebieland, Easy A, and The Amazing Spider-Man), I knew she would have a successful career as the new “it” comedy girl ranking alongside comediennes such as Gilda Radner, Carol Burnett, and Julia Louis-Dreyfus. I also have had a crush on her ever since.
However, I did not anticipate her taking home, not one, but TWO Academy Awards for Best Leading Actress within the next 15 years.
I expected the Oscar for Best Actress to go to Lily Gladstone for her unforgettable performance in Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon. But when the honor went to Stone, I knew that I would need to screen Poor Things. I just had to see what it was that Stone had over Gladstone.
I was able to find Poor Things available for streaming via my Hulu subscription. While I have often lamented the almost immediate availability to stream recent releases alongside the theatrical release, I must concede I was grateful to have watched this film from the comfort of my own home, where I had the option to turn on subtitles (which can totally change the movie-watching experience) and even rewind to rewatch something I did not immediately understand.
Poor Things takes a surreal fantasy approach to science-fiction. Set in Europe during the Victorian era, many liberties have been taken to provide certain technologies to the characters that were not historically available.
When the eccentric, mutilated surgeon Godwin Baxter (played by Willem Dafoe) discovers the body of a pregnant woman who attempted suicide by jumping from a bridge, he takes an unorthodox approach of transplanting the brain of the unborn baby into the head of the mother, resulting in a Frankenstein-like creation: Bella Baxter, who must experience life for the first time as an infant in a grown woman’s body (especially sexuality) acquiring wisdom as she journeys throughout Europe.
Like Barbie, another 2023 film dealing with self-discovery, Bella has come into a strange new world and must face the realities of life and the suffering that is inherent to our existence. However, Bella’s challenging of social mores and taboos is far more graphic and provocative than that which Barbie’s family-friendly audience can handle. The surreal narrative is reinforced by the choice of cinematography, which often includes a fish-eye lens along with bright and vibrant colors that contrast with each other.
But I must commend the overall arc of the narrative. I have learned over the years that storytelling is much more challenging than previously assumed, particularly when it comes to the resolution. It is quite common for us to finish a movie questioning the relevance of one or more characters, or even the direction the story went.
When this movie ended, whatever reservations I initially had about its surreal nature were cast aside in euphoric satisfaction. All details were suddenly relevant and necessary to lead us towards this ending.
I must warn all readers of the surreal and sometimes disturbing themes on display, as is usually the case with Yorgos Lanthimos and his filmography. Again, it is the R-rated version of Barbie.
While Greta Gerwig and Margot Robbie masterfully tackled existential feminist issues, it was done at a family-friendly level. Poor Things spares no sensitivity and squeamishness. If one wants to learn the truths of life, one must be prepared to face life on all levels, including its ugliness.
About the Author: Though no longer a resident of Lyme, Kevin knows he can never sever his roots to the tree of his identity. When not attending to his job in Boston, he is committed to ensuring a better grasp of current (and past) releases of cinema to his home community as he strives to leave his own mark in the same field that has always been his guide to understanding life. If you enjoy his published reviews here on LymeLine.com, follow him on his website at ‘The City of Cinema‘ and read more of his unique insights into entertainment.
