Bring your pets of any shape or size to one (or more!) of the blessings being held throughout Old Lyme on Sunday. This photo shows the Rev. Dr. Anita Louise Schell, Rector of Saint Ann’s, blessing a fluffy pup.
OLD LYME—Several area churches will offer blessings for creatures great and small to commemorate the Feast of St. Francis of Assisi on Sunday.
The South Lyme Union Chapel on 308 Mile Creek Road invites all pets – including mammals, reptiles, birds and fish – to its third annual blessing in the historic setting from noon to 1:30 p.m. Pets must be leashed, in a container, or held. Refreshments will be available free of charge.
Saint Ann’s Episcopal Parish at 82 Shore Road will hold its traditional Blessing of the Animals outside the church at 1 p.m. All animals should be leashed or caged.
Christ the King Church, at 1 McCurdy Road, will also host an animal blessing at 1 p.m. in the church parking lot.
St. Francis was born in the 12th century and is the patron saint of ecology and animals.
OLD LYME–On Thursday, Aug. 7, from 1 to 6 p.m., the American Red Cross will hold a community blood drive at the First Congregational Church of Old Lyme.
The American Red Cross reminds readers that blood supplies are critical because every two seconds in the U.S., someone needs blood. While all blood types are needed, donors with type O blood are most urgently needed.
Type O negative blood is often reached for in emergencies when there is insufficient time to match a patient’s blood type.
Type O positive is the most common blood type, so it is important to keep type O blood and all blood types on hand at hospitals for people facing both chronic illness and sudden, life-threatening conditions.
OLD LYME –Photographer Beth Green’s Impressions of Connecticut exhibit will run at Saint Ann’s Episcopal Church through Labor Day.
The exhibit, located in the church’s Griswold Room, is open Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. and on Sundays from 8 a.m. to noon.
The church in a press release said the show focuses on scenes of shoreline Connecticut and the Connecticut River Valley, from a bend in the Lieutenant River, to a red barn in snow, to sunlight on the Long Island Sound.
It also includes several of her iconic sports photographs from the 1970s, when Green became known as the first female photographer allowed in a professional sports locker room.
A printed guide to the show includes a QR code for each photograph leading to audio narration by Green. All the photographs are available for sale.
Green’s career includes work as a photographer for international wire services and then as a photo editor for Newsweek magazine. After a decade with the magazine, she switched to architectural and corporate photography with a continued focus on using her photography skills to tell stories from a female perspective.
Green describes herself as a “a very traditional photographer” from the world of film and large format photography.
“With the advent of digital photography, the use of digital manipulations in my work is minimal,” she said. “I believe in the play of light on the subject to create my images. I crop entirely in my camera and turn my camera on the world around me as it exists. Light is my paintbrush and is the tool for my artistic license. My main interest is the image as it is in the world at that moment. There is nothing new in the world, it is how you arrange it in your viewfinder and capture the image forever at that moment.”
Green has served as a guest professor at Rutgers University and Fordham University, and has taught for the New York Institute of Photography.
A portion of the proceeds will be donated to the church.
OLD LYME—Saint Ann’s Episcopal Church welcomes Steve MacAusland for a talk titled, “Down the River and Through the Years with the James Bay Cree” at 9:30 a.m. on Sunday, May 4.
MacAusland will discuss how his canoe trip as a young man up the Eastmain River in Canada’s James Bay region led him to live with a Cree family for two winters and to work on a conservation project that protected one of the great natural resources of the area.
A video that MacAusland produced with WGBH Boston about this project will be shown.
All are welcome to the church at 82 Shore Road (Rte. 156).
