Lots to see, hear at machinery show

KENT — Steam trains, tractors and engines were out in force at the Connecticut Antique Machinery Association (CAMA) in Kent on Saturday, April 30. It was a sunny spring day, perfect weather for excited families and antique machinery enthusiasts to mingle and share stories, and take rides on some of the working machines. Saturday was CAMA’s 27th annual Spring Power-up, the first day of the year when association members start their machines after their winter dormancy. “The Spring Power-up gives us a chance to introduce the public to what CAMA is all about,” said organization President John Pawloski, who spent the day chatting with visitors at the mining museum on the property. “It’s a lot of fun for us. The volunteers have been spending weeks cleaning and getting ready for visitation season.”The Power-up is a minor fundraiser for the organization, as it is smaller than the main event of the year: the annual Fall Festival.“This year’s Power-up is bigger than I’ve ever seen,” Pawloski commented.Center of interest was a recently completed sawmill, powered by an antique steam-powered tractor that drives a belt that runs the saw. CAMA is also celebrating the official purchase of the Hawaii Number 5 steam locomotive. The train has been on loan to CAMA for the past 10 years, but the association finally purchased it when its owner decided to sell it in December 2010.There were new displays in CAMA’s mining museum. New display cases are filled with minerals found in Connecticut, many of which were either owned or mined by Pawloski.Directly across from the mining museum is the blacksmith shop, where demonstrations went on all day, and the industrial hall, which houses the largest collection of operational steam engines in Connecticut. “This is the technology thatmade America great,” Pawloski said, with pride.

Latest News

South Kent School’s unofficial March reunion

Elmarko Jackson was named a 2023 McDonald’s All American in his senior year at South Kent School. He helped lead the Cardinals to a New England Prep School Athletic Conference (NEPSAC) AAA title victory and was recruited to play at the University of Kansas. This March he will play point guard for the Jayhawks when they enter the tournament as a No. 4 seed against (13) Samford University.

Riley Klein

SOUTH KENT — March Madness will feature seven former South Kent Cardinals who now play on Division 1 NCAA teams.

The top-tier high school basketball program will be well represented with graduates from each of the past three years heading to “The Big Dance.”

Keep ReadingShow less
Hotchkiss grads dancing with Yale

Nick Townsend helped Yale win the Ivy League.

Screenshot from ESPN+ Broadcast

LAKEVILLE — Yale University advanced to the NCAA men’s basketball tournament after a buzzer-beater win over Brown University in the Ivy League championship game Sunday, March 17.

On Yale’s roster this year are two graduates of The Hotchkiss School: Nick Townsend, class of ‘22, and Jack Molloy, class of ‘21. Townsend wears No. 42 and Molloy wears No. 33.

Keep ReadingShow less
Handbells of St. Andrew’s to ring out Easter morning

Anne Everett and Bonnie Rosborough wait their turn to sound notes as bell ringers practicing to take part in the Easter morning service at St. Andrew’s Church.

Kathryn Boughton

KENT—There will be a joyful noise in St. Andrew’s Church Easter morning when a set of handbells donated to the church some 40 years ago are used for the first time by a choir currently rehearsing with music director Susan Guse.

Guse said that the church got the valuable three-octave set when Harlem Valley Psychiatric Center closed in the late 1980s and the bells were donated to the church. “The center used the bells for music therapy for younger patients. Our priest then was chaplain there and when the center closed, he brought the bells here,” she explained.

Keep ReadingShow less
Picasso’s American debut was a financial flop
Picasso’s American debut was a financial flop
Penguin Random House

‘Picasso’s War” by Foreign Affairs senior editor Hugh Eakin, who has written about the art world for publications like The New York Review of Books, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker and The New York Times, is not about Pablo Picasso’s time in Nazi-occupied Paris and being harassed by the Gestapo, nor about his 1937 oil painting “Guernica,” in response to the aerial bombing of civilians in the Basque town during the Spanish Civil War.

Instead, the Penguin Random House book’s subtitle makes a clearer statement of intent: “How Modern Art Came To America.” This war was not between military forces but a cultural war combating America’s distaste for the emerging modernism that had flourished in Europe in the early decades of the 20th century.

Keep ReadingShow less