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Haiku Contest Winners Reception, May 1st at 1 p.m. at the Rowayton Library
The Rowayton Library’s 6th Annual Haiku Contest winners will be invited to read their Haiku at the Rowayton Library’s poetry reception on May 1st at 1 p.m. The community is invited to this celebration to acknowledge the work of our local talent. Award-winning poet, Vinni Marie D’Ambrosio (our Haiku contest judge) will introduce the poets. Light refreshments will be served. Please RSVP at (203) 838-5038.
Morning Tug, Bell Island by Phil Nelson
Local artist/photographer Phil Nelson will be on site Saturday, April 30 from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Phil, who attended the University of Denver and the New York School of Visual Arts, has a background in graphic design, film production and computer technology. He creates beautiful photographic landscape studies that are equally suited for fine art display and commercial use and has an eye for unique environments that are both visually and emotionally pleasing. His images are expansive, but his attention to detail creates a quiet mood that draws the viewer in. Phil’s expert knowledge of color, composition and natural light combine to create stunning clarity. His work has appeared in numerous publications and advertisements, and his prints hang on the walls of many businesses and private collectors.
Come meet Phil and view a sampling of his artistic talents. Refreshments will be served courtesy of Diane Browne Catering. All are welcome to attend! For more information and/or a schedule of what else is planned for future Sotheby Saturdays, please contact William Pitt Sotheby’s International Realty at 203.838.2190 or email Gigi Melillo at gigim@wpsir.com.
Business & Bagels BusinessTalk @ the Rowayton Library
The quarterly library workshop, Business & Bagels will be exploring the subject of Effective Website Design and Search Engine Optimization.
Are you getting maximum return from your website?
The overall look of your website is the customer’s first impression of your business.
Learn about the key factors that affect your website’s functionality and search engine ranking at this Business & Bagels Workshop, Thursday, Morning April 28th at 7:30 a.m.
Amy DeLardi is the Founder and Creative Director of Infinite Web Designs, LLC. Amy leads a team of skilled professionals creating and designing search engine optimized websites. Recognized for her creative talent and extensive experience, she brings an innovative approach to the unique problem solving challenges of website development.
The Rowayton Library and Fairfield County SCORE are co-sponsoring this small business information series….BUSINESS & BAGELS. Please RSVP. SCORE, Counselors to America’s Small Business, is a resource partner with the U. S. Small Business Administration. Members are professional and business men and women who volunteer their time to provide business workshops and expert, free one-on-one counseling. For more information, please contact the Rowayton Library (203) 838-5038 or visit www.Rowayton.org
Your Rowayton Moment of Zen...
The Rowayton Library’s Sixth Annual Haiku Contest winners are invited to read their Haiku at the Rowayton Library’s poetry reception on May 1st at 1 p.m. The community is invited to join us in this celebration and to acknowledge our local talent. Award-winning poet, Vinni Marie D’Ambrosio (our Haiku contest judge) will introduce the poets. Light refreshments will be served. And the winning poets (and their Haiku) are…
(listed alphabetically by first name)
*
Dazzling water
reflected my reflection
I looked at myself
By Amari Weise
*
The snow sprinkled down
On the cement trying to
Stick and not go away
By Amari Weise
*
The sun was shining
so bright that I have to pull
the covers over
By Amari Weise
*
My feet are burning
In the hot summertime sand.
Run to the water!
By Annika Friedrichsen
*
Sun
The sun as Gold as
Yellow paper the sunset
As hot as a tub
By Chase
*
Black & Yellow
The whistle blows loud
Pittsburgh steelers come running
The black & yellow.
By Chase
*
Blue Birds
Flying through the air
With their long blue wings out wide
Happy as can be.
By Ellie Smith
*
I feel the summer
wind blowing against my face
as hot as coffee
By Emma K.
*
Trees
They flow with the wind
alone. they silently rock
as they watch as pass.
By Emmet Towey
*
Rain
Rain falls from the sky.
The rain is like shooting stars.
The rain plummets down.
By Grace O*Malley
*
help I’m in a cage
I’m the bird stuck in a cage
never to be free
By Hannah Christie
*
Sorrow weighs me down
The goodbye hangs in the air
tears slide down my face
by Hannah S.
*
Leaves fall off the trees
I love to jump in the leaves
Crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch
By Isabella Barlilucci
*
The windy air crashed
Me. the raindrops filled the world
I was freezing cold.
By Jose Barragan
*
The waves hit the shore
as I walk along the beach
and my footprints fade.
By Julia Curtin
*
Flipflops on the shore
get taken away by the waves
and sail far away.
By Julia Curtin
*
I splash in the waves
and they shimmer, shine, and dance
then slowly vanish
By Julia Curtin
*
Drip, drip is rain’s song
Across the window, alone
A raindrop is crying
By Julia Ely
*
THE BEACH
near the blue ocean
wind blows the ball on the sand
All hot summer long.
By Justin Lebron
*
Slow
The turtle walks on
He doesn’t know he is slow
But does slow matter?
By Kaileigh Doyle
*
Lightning
Smashing here and there
you can see it in the sky
It is everywhere
By Liv Mulligan
*
Long Island Sound
Where salty oceans
Meld with fresh rivers flows the
Gem, Long Island Sound
By Lynn Massey
*
Birds
Flying up above
Whistling a happy tune
Eating slimy worms
By Natalia Fortuna
*
Colorful leaves fall
Brown leaf bags dotting the yard
There is still more work.
By Olivia Barlilucci
*
The Sea
The beautiful sea
Beneath the sea is wonder
Which I will never know
By Oona Nash
*
Spring
The grass starts to bloom
as the warm comfyness of
spring asks them to.
By Robbie Whitney
*
Willow Tree
The willow Tree sags
Brushing ground with long tendrils
Swaying with the breeze
By Schuyler Luthy
*
Fish
Gills shine like the sun
Submerged in the deep water
Day and night it swims
By Schuyler Luthy
*
Snowflakes flowing down.
Nice soft wind on the low snow.
Owl is peeking
By Sophia Greco
*
The crocuses pop
Up through the hard snowy ground
They never give up
By Wyatt Machette
*
Great Decisions Discussion Group at the Rowayton Library
The Rowayton Library continues the Great Decisions Discussion Group on Wednesday evening, April 27th at 7 p.m. The topic will be “Responding to the Financial Crisis.”
Developed by the Foreign Policy Association, the Great Decisions Discussion Program is the oldest and largest grass-roots world affairs education program of its kind in the country. The Great Decisions Discussion Program is FPA’s public education initiative to create more informed and engaged citizens by bringing people together to discuss U.S. foreign policy and global affairs issues.
Future session topics include: Germany Ascendant, Sanctions and Nonproliferation, The Caucasus, and Global Governance. Materials are provided to participants and are available at the Rowayton Library. This program is free and open to the public. The sessions are led by Erik Rambusch, IFS Coordinator and Adjunct Professor at Norwalk Community College. Further discussion dates are 5/18, 5/25, 6/8, and 6/15. For more information and program materials, please contact the Library (203) 838-5038 or visit the Library at www.Rowayton.org.
ScrabbleTime is for everyone (the original Connecticut board game) at the Rowayton Library on the last Monday afternoon of every month. This month, ScrabbleTime will be on April 25th from 3:30-5 p.m. Join your neighbors for a good game of Scrabble. There will be 6 tables set up. All materials will be provided. There will also be two tables set up for Scrabble Junior for our younger players. Players will be seated on a first-come/first-serve basis. Players of all ages are welcome.
ScrabbleTime for Everyone
Did you know… ABOUT SCRABBLE (www.scrabble.com)
History
The story of SCRABBLE is a classic example of American innovation and perseverance.
Who invented SCRABBLE?
During the Great Depression, an out-of-work architect named Alfred Mosher decided to invent a board game. He did some market research and concluded that games fall into three categories: number games, such as dice and bingo; move games, such as chess and checkers; and word games, such as anagrams. Butts wanted to create a game that combined the vocabulary skills of crossword puzzles and anagrams, with the additional element of chance. The game was originally named Lexico, but Butts eventually decided to call the game “Criss-Cross Words.”
How did he do it?
Butts studied the front page of The New York Times to calculate how often each of the 26 letters of the English language was used. He discovered that vowels appear far more often than consonants, with E being the most frequently used vowel. After figuring out frequency of use, Butts assigned different point values to each letter and decided how many of each letter would be included in the game. The letter S posed a problem. While it’s frequently used, Butts decided to include only four S’s in the game, hoping to limit the use of plurals. After all, he didn’t want the game to be too easy! Butts got it just right. His basic cryptographic analysis of our language and his original tile distribution have remained valid for almost three generations and for billions of games played. The boards for the first Criss-Cross Words game were hand drawn with his architectural drafting equipment, reproduced by blueprinting and pasted on folding checkerboards. The tiles were similarly hand-lettered, then glued to quarter-inch balsa and cut to match the squares on the board.
Then what?
Butts’ first attempts to sell his game to established game manufacturers were failures, but he didn’t give up. He and his partner, game-loving entrepreneur James Brunot, refined the rules and design of the game, and renamed it SCRABBLE. The name, which means “to grope frantically,” was trademarked in 1948. The first SCRABBLE “factory” was an abandoned schoolhouse in Dodgington, Connecticut, where Brunot and friends turned out 12 games an hour. The letters were stamped on wooden tiles one at a time. Later, boards, boxes and tiles were made elsewhere and sent to the factory for assembly and shipping. The first four years were a struggle. In 1949, the Brunot’s made 2,400 sets and lost $450. As so often happens in the game business, SCRABBLE plugged along, gaining slow but steady popularity among a comparative handful of consumers. Then in the early 1950s, as legend has it, the president of Macy’s discovered the game on vacation, and ordered some for his store. Within a year, everyone “had to have one,” and SCRABBLE sets were being rationed to stores around the country. In 1952, the Brunots realized they could no longer make the games fast enough to meet the growing interest. They licensed Selchow and Righter Company, a well-known game manufacturer founded in 1867, to market and distribute the games in the United States and Canada. Even Selchow and Righter had to step up production to meet the overwhelming demand for the SCRABBLE game. As stories about it appeared in national newspapers, magazines and on television, it seemed that everybody had to have a set immediately. In 1972, Selchow and Righter purchased the trademark SCRABBLE from Brunot, thereby giving them the exclusive rights to all SCRABBLE Brand products and entertainment services in the United States and Canada.
For more information, please call the Library at (203) 838-5038 or visit us on the web at www.Rowayton.org.
Great Decisions Discussion Group at the Rowayton Library
The Rowayton Library continues the Great Decisions Discussion Group on Wednesday evening, April 20th at 7 p.m. The topic will be “The Horn of Africa.”
Developed by the Foreign Policy Association, the Great Decisions Discussion Program is the oldest and largest grass-roots world affairs education program of its kind in the country. The Great Decisions Discussion Program is FPA’s public education initiative to create more informed and engaged citizens by bringing people together to discuss U.S. foreign policy and global affairs issues.
The session topics include: Responding to the Financial Crisis, Germany Ascendant, Sanctions and Nonproliferation, The Caucasus, and Global Governance.
Materials are provided to participants and are available at the Rowayton Library. This program is free and open to the public. The sessions are led by Erik Rambusch, IFS Coordinator and Adjunct Professor at Norwalk Community College. Further discussion dates are 4/27, 5/18, 5/25, 6/8, and 6/15. For more information and program materials, please contact the Library (203) 838-5038.
illustrated by Gale Valerie Parsons
There will be a memorial service for Gale Parsons at the Rowayton Arts Center (second floor), Sunday, May 15th at 1:00 p.m. If anyone has photos of Gale and of her artwork for a slide show or artwork we can borrow for display, please call the Rowayton Arts Center at 203-866-2744.
GALE VALERIE PARSONS, age 71, passed away March 3, 2011. She was a graduate of Cottey College and the Kendall School of Design. Gale lived in Norwalk for 26 years. Gale was a gifted and accomplished artist. She was the Gallery Director of the Rowayton Arts Center for 13 years. She exhibited her artwork in many shows, including a one-person show at the Connecticut Audubon Society and shared shows at the Portside Gallery of the Rowayton Arts Center and the New Canaan Library. One of her most memorable works was illustrating the book “Fighting Cancer with Knowledge and Hope” by Dr. Richard Frank.
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