LYME/OLD LYME — We have gathered together details of all the services and events planned for Holy Week in Lyme and Old Lyme. A full listing is given below. Please let us know any additions or corrections as soon as possible. Thank you!
Thursday, March 28, Maundy Thursday
South Lyme Union Chapel hosts a Lenten Soup Meal from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. All are welcome and the meal is free of charge. Soups will include chicken noodle, split pea, beef barley, fresh tomato and more. Mac ‘n’ cheese will be offered for youngsters and vegan options will also be included. Reservations suggested at 860-434-1200. The chapel is at 308 Mile Creek Rd. in Old Lyme.
Christ The King Church hosts the Mass of the Lord’s Supper at 7 p.m.
Saint Ann’s Episcopal Church hosts an Agape Meal at 6 p.m. The meal is simple, reflecting the middle eastern foods of the first century. The church will provide soup, olives and cheese. Each participant or family unit is asked to bring a loaf of bread to share in communal fellowship, and a non-perishable food for the Shoreline Soup Kitchens & Pantry.
The Agape meal will be followed by a Maundy Thursday Liturgy at 7 p.m. with Washing of the Feet, Holy Eucharist and Stripping of the Altar.
The First Congregational Church of Old Lyme hosts a traditional Maundy Thursday Worship Service of scripture, communion and sacred music followed by a reading of Dante’s “Inferno” at 7 p.m. For more information, visit this link.
Friday, March 29, Good Friday
Christ The King Church hosts the Solemn Liturgy of the Passion of our Lord at 3 p.m. and Stations of the Cross at 7 p.m. followed by Confessions.
The Meetinghouse at the First Congregational Church of Old Lyme will be open from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. for prayer and meditation.
Saint Ann’s Episcopal Church hosts a Good Friday Liturgy Service at 12 p.m. with solemn collects and readings. The Stations of the Cross will take place in the Memorial Garden at 3 p.m. or in the case of inclement weather, inside the church.
Saturday, March 30, Easter Saturday
Christ The King hosts Blessing of the Food at 12 noon and an Easter Vigil Mass at 8 p.m. with choir, organ, timpani, and bells.
Saint Ann’s Episcopal Church hosts a Holy Saturday service at 5 p.m. in the Memorial Garden.
Sunday, March 31, Easter Sunday
Clergy, members and friends of Saint Ann’s Episcopal Church, Christ the King Church and First Congregational Church of Old Lyme will host an Ecumenical Easter Sunrise Service at 6 a.m. All are welcome. Meet at Griswold Point, Old Lyme, rain or shine. Follow signs to the location. If you need directions, call the First Congregational Church at 860.434.8686.
Christ The King hosts a Mass of the Lord’s Resurrection at both 8 a.m. and 10:30 a.m. with choir and orchestra at the latter service. For more information, visit this link.
The First Congregational Church of Lyme hosts a Worship Service at 10 a.m. in person or via Zoom. After the service, there will be a coffee hour and then at 11:30 a.m., an Easter Egg Hunt.
The First Congregational Church of Old Lyme hosts Worship Services at 9 and 11 a.m. Childcare is available at the 9 a.m. service and Sunday School will not meet. For more information, visit this link .
Saint Ann’s Episcopal Church hosts Festival Eucharist Rite 2 with full choir and trumpet at 8:30 and 10:30 a.m.
Underage binge drinking is a reality in all communities and Lyme and Old Lyme are no different. Photo by Kelsey Chance on Unsplash.
LYME-OLD LYME — Did you know that roughly one third of of alcohol-related traffic fatalities happen during Prom/Graduation/Summer season? Approximately 1,000 young people under 21 will die from preventable tragedy in the coming months according to the National Highway and Safety Administration.
This season the Lyme-Old Lyme Prevention Coalition (LOLPC) is encouraging youth to make smart decisions around alcohol.
The average first use of alcohol in Lyme-Old Lyme (LOL) is at 14-years-old and rates of use rise rapidly during high school years.
Only 56 percent of LOL youth report having clear family rules about alcohol use.
The LOLPC urges parents not to let their child become a statistic. Talk to to your children about the risks of drinking alcohol — highlight the facts from the article below. It is never too early to start role-modeling healthy choices about alcohol. Discuss rules and strategies for discussing this special time of year.
You have more influence than you realize!
How Binge Drinking Affects the Teen Brain
You have surely heard that misusing alcohol hurts your health. But how many years of drinking do you think it takes to visibly affect your brain? Ten years? Twenty?
It turns out that it doesn’t take that long at all—in fact, scientists can already see changes in the brains of teenagers who drink.
Blocking the Signals
In a research study, Professor Susan Tapert of the University of California at San Diego used an MRI imaging machine to scan the brains of teens who binge drink—defined as drinking four or five (or more) drinks in a couple of hours. Dr. Tapert found that the “white matter” in their brains—the part that transmits signals, like a TV cable or a computer USB cord—was abnormal compared with the white matter of teens who don’t binge drink.
Transmitting signals is a large part of what the brain does, so affecting the white matter in this way could also affect a person’s thinking, learning, and memory.
The really worrying part is that these teens didn’t have an alcohol use disorder, and they didn’t drink every day. All they did (to be considered “binge drinkers”) was drink at least four (for women) or five (for men) drinks in one sitting, at least one time during the previous three months.
How could it be possible for just a few sessions of heavy drinking to affect the white matter of the brain? Well, science has shown that alcohol can poison brain cells and alter the brain’s white matter in adults with an alcohol use disorder.
Dr. Tapert thinks that teenagers’ brains are even more susceptible this way. She says, “because the brain is still developing during adolescence, there has been concern that it may be more vulnerable to high doses of alcohol.”
Cause or Effect?
Many questions still remain, including how long it takes before these changes occur, and how much they affect the brain’s different functions. To figure this out, scientists would have to look at the binge drinkers’ brains before and after they started drinking. That way, they can tell if the differences might have already been there before the teens started drinking.
It’s possible that having abnormal white matter in the brain somehow increases the chance of being a binge drinker. In order to answer that question, Dr. Tapert says they need to do longer studies that follow teens’ brain growth over time.
The bottom line? If you’re a teen, drinking to the point of getting drunk could damage the white matter of your brain—even if you do it only once in a while.
“We are so excited by this news. This will provide significant relief to our communities in helping to defray the costs of the approved updates to our PK-8 schools.” (LOL Schools Superintendent Neviaser)
Lyme-Old Lyme Schools Superintendent Ian Neviaser
LYME/OLD LYME — On Wednesday, April 5, Governor Ned Lamont announced recipients of grants totaling $56 million under the the HVAC Indoor Air Quality Grants Program for Public Schools to improve air filtration and quality.
Lyme-Old Lyme Schools received a total of $12.009 million through the program with Lyme-Old Lyme Middle School being allocated $6.24 million, Lyme-Old Lyme Center School $2.719 million, and Lyme Consolidated School $3.051 million for HVAC upgrades.
Asked his reaction to receipt of the grants, Lyme-Old Lyme Schools Superintendent Ian Neviaser told LymeLine via email, “We are so excited by this news. This will provide significant relief to our communities in helping to defray the costs of the approved updates to our PK-8 schools. We look forward to beginning construction in the very near future.”
The funds can be used for replacing, upgrading or repairing boilers and other heating/ventilation components; replacing controls and technology systems for HVAC operations; installing or upgrading air conditioning or ventilation systems; or other work approved by the Department of Administrative Services.
The grants program, administered by the state Department of Administrative Services, was created as part of the budget adjustment bill passed by lawmakers and signed into law in the spring of 2022. The law further requires schools to inspect and evaluate HVAC systems every five years, requires these reports to be made public, and requires the reporting of any corrective action taken.
State Senator Martha Marx (D-New London) and State Senator Norm Needleman (D-Essex) also welcomed the announcement.
“Our students cannot thrive when they’re breathing in low-quality air,” said Sen. Marx, whose 20th District includes Old Lyme. “If you can’t take a deep breath of healthy air, you can’t learn to the best of your ability. Low air quality can have negative impacts on student health and well-being. Teachers and faculty cannot effectively help students learn without a clean, healthy environment either. This will benefit their health as well. I’m thankful the Lamont Administration is investing in the health and futures of our students.”
Sen. Norm Needleman, whose 33rd District includes Lyme, noted, “Last year, when elected officials approved legislation making adjustments to the state budget, we did so knowing that this funding would be included, and that it would directly benefit students around the state,.”
He added, “I’m very encouraged that it will aid students in Lyme and Old Lyme. I’m grateful to Governor Lamont for investing in our community.”
“We owe it to ourselves and to those who come after us to … meet the challenges of our own time. If we do not, we will have voted for decay“
On March 27, the Old Lyme Zoning Commission voted 3-2 in favor of the Halls Road Overlay District (HROD) proposal, with two alternate members casting the negative votes. Because the Planning Commission had previously given the proposal a “negative referral,” a vote of 4-1 was required for passage, and the measure failed.
The problems the HROD was designed to address still exist. We believe the proposal is a viable response to those challenges, and that its rejection was a set-back for Old Lyme.
The new overlay district would have created an alternative to the commercial-only C30-S zoning along Halls Road, while leaving that older zoning intact. The HROD was aimed at promoting the creation of a walkable, bike-able, mixed-use shopping street along Halls Road—a new town center for Old Lyme that took as its model Lyme Street in its centuries-long role as a living, mixed-use town center.
The HROD is a significant piece of zoning regulation. It takes some effort to understand how it works, and to comprehend the implications of its detailed requirements. Those of us who worked on it spent years talking with local residents, business owners, property owners, town officials, regional regulators, developers, and land use lawyers to create the document we presented to Planning and to Zoning. After hundreds of hours, we understood it well.
Planning took a few hours to consider it, and flatly refused to allow HRIC the opportunity to answer any of their questions. The Zoning Commission held two public hearings totaling a few hours, then held its final vote after two more hours of deliberation in which no new fact or evidence of any kind was allowed to be introduced, even by Commission members. From the comments in each body’s final deliberations, it is clear that several of the participants had only the vaguest understanding (and sometimes a total misunderstanding) of the document. This was not a reasonable way to arrive at a good decision on a measure of this importance to Old Lyme’s future.
HROD was an attempt to meet the changes now shaping our economy, and to secure our town’s main business district in that new environment. Failing to pass HROD does not make those changes go away. It just leaves us relying on 1950s approaches to 2030s conditions.
Without HROD, there will be no one to bid against those who see Halls Road as a truck stop. There have been three proposals for gas stations/convenience stores in the last couple of years, and no proposals to build anything else.
Without HROD, there will be no mixed-use, walkable town center where people can live, work, shop, and enjoy the sort of human contact the Internet can never provide.
Without HROD, smaller-scale housing—if it comes at all—will be spread over the few remaining open acres, dotted here and there, and we will lose the opportunity to create a vibrant, living, mixed-use neighborhood in the heart of our town.
Without HROD, our main shopping district will lose the support that a mixed-use neighborhood provides for retail—the pedestrian traffic and walk-in trade that makes such neighborhoods the one bright spot in retail investment.
Times are changing, as they always do. In the middle of the last century Old Lyme made radical zoning changes to meet the future they saw then. We owe it to ourselves and to those who come after us to do likewise and meet the challenges of our own time. If we do not, we will have voted for decay.
The Connecticut (CT) General Assembly passed the adoption of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Food Code into law in 2018; and it finally went into full effect on the 17th of February.
The law requires some changes for both the food service establishments (FSEs) operating in the state, and for the inspection and permitting processes conducted by the local health departments charged with regulation. For Lyme and Old Lyme, this latter is, of course, Ledge Light Health District (LLHD) along with seven other communities in Southeast CT.
In this essay, I review some of the key changes that occurred with the full enactment of this Food Code.
The U. S. FDA publishes the Food Code as a model to assist local health departments develop or update their own food safety rules; and thus ensure that local rules have a sound scientific basis, reflect best practices, and are consistent with national food regulatory policy.
The FDA Food Code was first issued in 1993, and updated and re-issued every two years until 2001; but then moving to a four-year interval.
Implementation did not alter the major components of CT’s food safety rules and best practices, since CT’s regulations were generally consistent with the FDA’s. The rules still stress hand-washing along with proper cleaning and sanitizing of food preparation surfaces and equipment.
However, there are changes in temperature standards for food preparation and storage, the classification of food service establishments, and the methods for scoring and documenting inspections.
The former CT Code required that cold foods be held at 45 degrees F. or lower, and hot foods held at 140 degrees F. or higher. The FDA Code requires 41 degrees F. or lower and 135 degrees F. or higher, respectively.
Perhaps more important are the changes in classification of FSEs. The class affects the frequency of required inspection and the qualifications required for on-site supervisory staff. I review the classification system under the newly enacted definitions in the following. Note that this is at a high level and the examples listed for each class are only for illustration and not all-inclusive.
Class 1 establishments provide hot or cold beverages and/or commercially prepackaged foods that are not “TCS” (i.e., foods that do not “require time and temperature control for safety”); and limited preparation or heating of commercially packaged precooked foods. This includes coffee and donut shops, and convenience stores. (inspected annually.)
Class 2 establishments are “cook and serve” operations that offer a limited menu of “TCS” food prepared or cooked and served almost immediately. This includes fast food shops like McDonalds and Burger King. (inspected twice/year.)
Class 3 establishments are “cook and serve” operations that offer an extensive menu of “TCS food requiring complex preparation, including, but not limited to, handling of raw ingredients. This includes full-service restaurants, diners, delicatessens, and supermarket food services serving pizza and sushi. (inspected three times/ year.)
Class 4 establishments serve a population that is highly susceptible to food-borne illnesses, and includes daycare centers, convalescent and nursing homes, and hospitals. (inspected four times/ year.)
All Class 2, 3, and 4 establishments are required to have a Person In Charge (PIC), who has qualified as a Certified Food Protection Manager (CFPM) through a CT Department of Public Health (DPH)-approved testing organization and is fully onsite during peak hours of operation. The PIC can appoint an alternate, who does not need to pass an exam, but is only onsite during off peak hours when limited/no food preparation is occurring.
New inspection forms are used and no longer yield a numerical score that is posted in the establishment; but rather, a simple pass or fail. Any cited violations are categorized as “Priority”, “Priority Foundation”, and “Core”; and align with the risk of that violation as it relates to foodborne illness, and the time allowed for corrective action
Further, other changes include date-labeling of foods and notification of allergens on menus, both of which were not previously well-enforced. Product date marking will be required to ensure all refrigerated food is consumed within seven days.
My sources include:
Food Protection Program-related documents on both the CT DPH and LLHD websites.
Communications to affected food service establishments regarding the FDA Food Code from LLHD and several other CT Health Departments/Districts.
Abundant Q&A with Ms. Katie Baldwin, RS (i.e., a registered sanitarian), the Supervisor of Regulated Facilities, and the local subject matter expert regarding the Food Code at LLHD.
The U.S. “FDA Releases 2017 Food Code” dated 02/09/2018.
The U.S. FDA “Benefits Associated with Complete Adoption and Implementation of the FDA Food Code” dated 06/11/2020
Author’s Comments: After the CT General Assembly passed the adoption of the FDA Food Code into law in 2018, LLHD began implementation of some of the new requirements with the FSEs in their catchment area — well in advance of the eventual Feb. 17 effective date. These included:
Requirement to employ Food Protection Managers in Class 2, 3, and 4 FSEs.
Consequently, there was no difficult transition in February; as they were already operating under the new regulations.
Finally, there are executive level staff changes at LLHD in the offing this summer.
LLHD Health Director, Stephen Mansfield announced last July that he will retire in 2023; his final day on the job will be July 6, 2023. He has been with the organization for 25 years, the last eight as Director.
His replacement, Ms. Jennifer Muggeo, recently marked 18 years of service with LLHD. Mr. Mansfield expanded her role several months ago from overseeingfinancial operations to the Deputy Director position.
I have been on LLHD’s Board of Directors for the past several years and am comfortable saying that he leaves a very strong organization, which very visibly demonstrated its worth to SE CT during the recent pandemic.
I observed an organization with sound financials, which focused on staff development and opportunity; and held the respect of CT’s broader public health community. I had interactions with a few members of the more clinical staff, and felt their clear and prideful commitment to both the organization and the public’s health.
About the author: Tom Gotowka is a resident of Old Lyme, whose entire adult career has been in healthcare. He will sit on the Navy side at the Army/Navy football game. He always sit on the crimson side at any Harvard/Yale contest. He enjoys reading historic speeches and considers himself a scholar of the period from FDR through JFK. A child of AM Radio, he probably knows the lyrics of every rock and roll or folk song published since 1960. He hopes these experiences give readers a sense of what he believes “qualify” him to write this column.
