Category Archives: News

Melissa Fournier Named Director at Lyme Public Library

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The new director of Lyme Library is Melissa Fournier.

LYME — The board of the Lyme Public Library has announced that Melissa Fournier has been named as its new Library Director.

According to a press release issued by the library, Fournier, who will take up her new position in early October, will lead the way in helping the library accomplish its goals of providing innovative programming, services, and collection development.

Fournier sees the Library Director’s role as impacting the entire community, commenting, “My goals would include expanding the reach of the library.”

She is no stranger to libraries, as she has managed several in the public, private, and corporate sectors for more than two decades. With extensive expertise in library restoration and renovation, Fourier enjoys creatively evolving library spaces to improve service to their patrons.

She holds a BFA in design from Pratt Institute in communications design and a MLS from Simmons College in library and archives management. She loves creating library programs that serve patrons from infants to seniors and has won a nationally-recognized award for such work.

Fournier explains, “I feel I can bring my skills to the Lyme Public Library to expand programming for children by working closely with the local elementary school by focusing the library’s programs to work hand-in-hand with helping children to build their understanding of the core curriculum skills they are learning at school.”

She also sees opportunities to create fun and informative programs for older children and adults.

Born and raised in Connecticut, Fournier both understands and loves the Lyme area. A devoted mother to
two adult children, she enjoys reading, drawing, painting, and lively conversations.

“Melissa has a lot to offer our library,” says Jack Sulger, chair of the Lyme Public Library Board of Directors, adding, “I’m certain she will do great things. We look forward to seeing the positive changes she has in store for us.”

The board encourages residents to come to the library and meet Fournier starting in early October.

The library is open Tuesdays and Thursdays from 10 am to 8 pm, Wednesdays and Fridays from 10 am to 5 pm, and Saturdays from 10 am to 4 pm The library is closed on Sundays and Mondays.

For more information, visit the Lyme Public Library website or call 860-434-2272.

A la Carte: Roasted Chicken Under Garlic Bread Offers Taste of Autumn, Hint of Winter Meals to Come

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Lee White

Oh, no, it’s chicken again, I thought, as I looked at the last column I wrote weeks before I left to see my daughter in California.

But during the many days I spent there, I thought about all she’d cooked for me—tacos on Thursdays and nachos on Friday (both made with a roasted chicken she’s bought at Costco.) 

I guess the acorn doesn’t fall from the tree. In addition to the splash pool at her town’s pool, dips in the Pacific Ocean with her friend, Elizabeth, who lives steps from the ocean in Long Beach, a movie with Darcy starring Matt Damon (Stillwater, don’t miss it!) and a cookout on Labor Day, her food was incredible, as always.

But on the flights home (and the long drive home from Bradley), I was thinking I’d like to get a roasting chicken. While I ask the post office to hold my mail when I travel, I ask my neighbor to keep my The Day newspapers. As I read the news the next morning, the advertising pages included Perdue roasting chickens for $0.99 a pound at Stop & Shop. I bought three and froze two.

I remembered a recipe by cookbook writer Melissa Clark for roast chicken under bread. I grabbed the last frozen half baguette I’d slathered with butter, oil and garlic from last winter. So, on the first day of 2021 football, the final US Open tennis final and a Connecticut Sun game I’d DVR’d the night before, I roasted one of those chickens under the garlic bread.

My yummy dinner included three sliced local heirloom tomatoes and savored the beginning of autumn and winter meals to come.

Roasted Chicken Under Garlic Bread
Yield: Serves 4, plus leftovers

8 ounces good white dry wine (never cooking wine, of course)
2 ounces (4 tablespoons) butter
1 good-sized roasting chicken (about 5 to 6 pounds), gizzards removed, chicken patted dry and salt and pepper tossed into the cavity
Garlic bread (recipe below)

In a small saucepan, over medium heat, allow butter and wine to reduce for 15 minutes.

Turn oven to 350 degrees. In a roasting pan, place garlic bread, cut-size up. Top with chicken. Place the chicken in the oven for about 20 minutes, then pour the wine/butter over the chicken. Roast the chicken until crispy (temperature should be 165 degrees Fahrenheit, at the thickest part of the thigh, without touching a bone).

The garlic bread should be crispy and soft at the same time. Serve within 10 minutes, with bread cut into croutons around the chicken. 

Garlic Bread

Yield: A large baguette will feed at least 6 people; if using it under the bread, open the loaf and place under the chicken, cut side open; otherwise, freeze it in foil. 

1 large baguette, sliced through horizontally

In a small food processor (or processed with a small mixer), add 8 tablespoons (4 ounces) unsalted softened butter, 4 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil, 6 to 8 garlic cloves — minced, and chopped parsley. Add salt and pepper, to taste. Slather each half of the loaf with the garlic mixture and put the slices together if not using immediately.

About the author: Lee White has been writing about restaurants and cooking since 1976 and has been extensively published in the Worcester (Mass.) Magazine, The Day, Norwich Bulletin, and Hartford Courant. She currently writes Nibbles and a cooking column called A La Carte for LymeLine.com and the Shore Publishing and the Times newspapers, both of which are owned by The Day. She was a resident of Old Lyme for many years but now lives in Groton, Conn. Contact Lee at leeawhite@aol.com.

Halls Road Improvement Committee Seeks Letters of Support for Project to Use in Village District Rezoning Application

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The view looking up Halls Road today. The HRIC Master Plan Report offers a vision for its future.

OLD LYME — The Halls Road Improvement Committee (HRIC) is asking local residents and interested parties, who support the Halls Road Master Plan Report compiled by the BSC Group, to indicate their support by submitting a letter to Town Hall.

Edie Twining, HRIC Chair, explains that the committee is hoping that a substantial show of support will be generated in this way. She says, “This will then be used for both the HRIC rezoning application to create a Halls Road Village District as well as in upcoming HRIC grant applications.”

A sample letter is printed below, which can be printed, signed, and mailed to Town Hall at the address shown. Supporters are naturally welcome to compose their own letters and mail them to the same address.

Twining notes, “The HRIC has also met with many local organizations and businesses to walk through the Master Plan findings and answer questions one-on-one. Committee members have enjoyed great support from everyone they have met with.”

She adds, “The committee is ready and willing to continue this presentation process for any groups looking for more information.”

Editor’s Note: Here is the sample letter:

Support for Halls Road Master Plan

Halls Road is our town’s main retail/commercial center. Going forward, it should be developed with the aim of making it look, feel, and function as a pedestrian-friendly town center. It should have safe and attractive pedestrian and bicycle connections with the historic town center and ‘Arts District’ on Lyme Street. Halls Road in the future should more nearly resemble the small-town, mixed-use neighborhood that Lyme Street was before 1960.

The limited build-able land along Halls Road should be developed in such a way as to serve the particular needs of Old Lyme. Under the current commercial-only zoning, Halls Road’s location along I-95 means new investment is almost entirely limited to either chain stores (viewing Old Lyme as no more than Exit 70), or truck stops serving highway traffic. This is not what we want for Old Lyme’s future.

The current housing stock in Old Lyme is overwhelmingly (over 92%) of one kind: a single-family home on its own lot. Halls Road is an appropriate location in which to add other, smaller-scale types of market-rate housing, such as an apartment above a shop, or a condominium in a town house. These options are particularly attractive to the younger and older cohorts of current (or prospective) Old Lyme residents.

Allowing this kind of mixed-use development along Halls Road has other important advantages for the town. First: a living neighborhood with foot traffic is far better for retail trade, and helps retail businesses resist the growing competition of online commerce. A mixed-use neighborhood along Halls Road improves the chances that Old Lyme will continue to have the convenience of in-person retail shops in 2050. Second, because these housing types are currently scarce in Old Lyme, pent-up demand makes such developments highly attractive to investors. We believe developers would be willing to build some new retail and office space if it were a part of a larger mixed-use (residential and commercial) area. New investment along Halls Road will also increase the town’s tax base and revenues.

The Halls Road Master Plan Report, prepared by BSC, is a road map to these changes.

It proposes the Town design and build (with aid from available grants) a safe and attractive pedestrian and cyclist route from Lyme Street to the heart of the Halls Road district, and to make other significant improvements for the safety of walkers and bikers in the area along Halls Road.

It also proposes the creation of a Halls Road Village District that would allow mixed use to achieve the goals mentioned above. It would also allow the town to establish Design Guidelines to help ensure the “look and feel” of new development along Halls Road is more in keeping with that of historic Lyme Street.

I/We support the Town’s initiative in creating the Master Plan, and look forward to a Halls Road that will become a new, mixed-use, pedestrian-friendly Town Center for Old Lyme in the Mid-21st Century.

Name____________________________________________________________________

Signed_________________________________________________      Date_____________
Organization_______________________________________________________________
 
Please return by mail to: HRIC chair Edie Twining c/o Memorial Town Hall, 52 Lyme St. Old Lyme CT 06371

Reading Uncertainly? ‘Seven Brief Lessons on Physics’ by Carlo Rovelli

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Is it really possible to describe the mysteries of physics in 81 pages?

Richard Feynman tried it in the 140 pages of Six Easy Pieces, published in 1994, but some afterwards described it as “Six Difficult Pieces.” Carlo Rovelli, the Italian theoretical physicist, has raised the ante. His work is a jewel of both brevity and clarity, especially to my curious mind that barely made it through Physics I at college.

The seven lessons begin with Einstein and the Theory of Relativity. Much has been written and expressed about this work, but Rovelli’s 11 pages are a precise summary. And he reminds us that, like Einstein, we “… don’t get anywhere by not ‘wasting’ time.”

That reminds me of the 1957 lesson offered by Robert Paul Smith’s famous Where Did You Go? Out. What Did You Do? Nothing:” exploration and curiosity are essential to progress.

Rovelli then discusses quantum mechanics and the questions of Bohr, Planck, and Heisenberg, all summarized by the phrase “And to the very last, doubt.” And uncertainty.

From the “microcosm of elementary particles” he then moves to the cosmos, the “macrocosmic structure of the universe.” Our Sun is an, “… infinitesimal speck in a vast cloud of one hundred billion stars – our Galaxy” and our Galaxy is, “… itself a speck of dust in a huge cloud of galaxies.”

Back then to the smallest particles, including the unseen but acknowledged varieties of quarks and the confirmation of the Higgs boson.

Then Rovelli moves to the “swarming cloud of probability: quantum gravity. He acknowledges that we know more now than we did 50 years ago, “so we should be quite satisfied. But we are not.” Forever the curious species, our “ … science becomes even more beautiful – incandescent in the forge of nascent ideas, of intuitions, of attempts. Of roads taken and then abandoned, of enthusiasms. In the effort to imagine what has not yet been imagined.”

The seventh lesson concerns Black Holes. We live, we think, in a world of “sheer chance,” in which “probability is the heart of physics … I may not know something with certainty, but I can assign a lesser or greater degree of probability to something.”

And Black Swans, too? How many “dimensions” really exist?

Dr. Rovelli wraps up this engaging and challenging set of lessons with – what else? – more questions. “What are we?” and should not we be aware, “… that we can always be wrong, and therefore ready at any moment to change direction if a new track appears?”

“To be free doesn’t mean that our behavior is not determined by the laws of nature. It means that it is determined by the laws of nature acting in our brains.”

“We live in “inextricable complexity,” and this means, “… we are a species that is naturally moved by curiosity … ”

Rovelli’s brief synopsis of what we think we know about the physical world and universe challenges us to renew our study and our search.

That conclusion reinforces the haiku I wrote for myself many years ago (with apologies to Robert Frost):

Pause for a moment:
Doubt, then curiosity,
Try another path.

Editor’s Note:  ‘Seven Brief Lessons on Physics’ by Carlo Rovelli was published by Riverhead Books, New York in 2016.

Dadonna Wins Old Lyme Country Club WGA’s 9-Hole Championship, Kurlansky of Lyme is Runner-Up

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Old Lyme WGA’s 18- Hole Champion (right) stands with the trophy and her caddy Carol Gordon.

OLD LYME — The Old Lyme Country Club Women’s Golf Association (WGA) held its 18- and 9-hole Club Championship play-offs, Aug. 26. 

The 18-hole finalists were Hollis Barry of Essex and Kacey Constable of Old Saybrook. 

The 9-hole finalists were Carolyn Daddona of Westbrook and Patty Kurlansky of Lyme. 

Old Lyme WGA’s 9- Hole Champion Carolyn Daddona (right) stands with her trophy and caddy Cathy Burnett.

Following tradition, the WGA members followed the players around the course in a caravan of golf carts.  Despite the 90+ degree heat, the women all played exceptionally well. 

The 18-hole Club Champion was Kacey Constable and the 9-hole Club Champion was Carolyn Daddona. 

A champagne toast to the victors was held on the Clubhouse deck at the end of the tournament.