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Innisfree Garden helps bless the ‘Sacred Earth’

Innisfree Garden helps bless the ‘Sacred Earth’
Donna Coane, who prefers to be called Ohstonha Ohskennonoton, led participants at the Blessing Our Sacred Earth ceremony at Innisfree Garden on Sunday, May 16, to four different stations in the garden, where prayers were offered and seeds were brought for the occasion.
Photo by Pam Freeman

MILLBROOK — The much anticipated ceremony, Blessing Our Sacred Earth, described as an interfaith celebration of God’s creation, was held at Innisfree Garden on Sunday, May 16. 

The annual event was co-sponsored by Grace Episcopal Church in Millbrook and Innisfree Garden. The celebration was canceled in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic but was able to be held this year as more people have been vaccinated and restrictions are lifting. 

The Rev. Matt Calkins of Grace Church was joined this year by The Rev. Masud Ibn Syedullah, TSSF, who offered insight on the Franciscan tradition of creation care. 

Donna Coane, who prefers to be called Ohstonha Ohskennonoton, offered an Iroquois Thanksgiving prayer. 

Tickets for  the event sold out early; 102 people were registered to attend.

— Judith O’Hara Balfe

Millerton News

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Millerton wine shop owner organizes charity wine tasting for local child

Millerton wine shop owner organizes charity wine tasting for local child

Millerton Wine & Spirits owner Chris Jeans has organized a charity wine tasting to benefit the family of Crew Slater, a Millerton native with congenital kidney disease. The wine tasting is set for Thursday, Oct. 29, from 6 to 8 p.m. at Pasture Kitchen on Route 44 just east of the Village of Millerton.

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MILLERTON — Two local business owners have joined forces to put on a charity wine tasting benefitting Millerton's Slater family.

Crew Slater, a 5-year-old Millerton native, needs a kidney transplant to survive congenital kidney disease. Millerton Wine & Spirits owner Chris Jeans and Pasture Kitchen founder Austin Cornell have organized a charity wine tasting at Pasture Kitchen on Route 44 next Thursday, Oct. 29, from 6 to 8 p.m.

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The Millerton News - October 22, 2026

The Millerton News - October 22, 2026

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Cornwall Historical Society celebrates Connecticut’s Black patriots

Cornwall Historical Society celebrates Connecticut’s Black patriots

On Saturday, Oct. 24, at the Cornwall Historical Society, author and genealogist John Mills will breathe new life into the stories of some of Connecticut’s more underappreciated patriots. The reason these heroes were forgotten? They were Black.

At a time when white colonists were fighting for their own liberty and political independence, many Black men who fought alongside them remained enslaved. Some risked their lives only to return to bondage. Though enslaved people were promised freedom from both sides of the Revolutionary War in exchange for their service, Great Britain, too, was still deeply dependent on slavery. For Black people in America, the war presented both extraordinary risks and uncertain paths to the freedom that white colonists were demanding for themselves.

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A sanctuary for second chances

A sanctuary for second chances

Stephanie Saetta runs Charlie Chicken Bones, a sanctuary in Salisbury.

Madi Long
You only get one or two of these soul connection dogs, so I do this in his honor.
— Stephanie Saetta

Stephanie Saetta has spent much of her life caring for others. A physician at White Plains Hospital, she has another calling at home in Salisbury — one that has four legs and a wagging tail. She runs Charlie Chicken Bone Sanctuary, a nonprofit dog rescue that brings dogs from overcrowded pounds and the streets of Texas to foster homes in northwestern Connecticut, where they can begin again.

The sanctuary is named for Charlie, the dog who taught her how special a bond between a person and rescue animal can be.

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Big ideas come to Lenox for inaugural field festival

Big ideas come to Lenox for inaugural field festival

Hunter Runnette, founder and board chair of field, has spent years fostering arts and cultural programming in the Berkshires.

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What do joy, gardening, artificial intelligence, the American experiment and the creative process have in common? Quite a lot, as it turns out, at least when some of the world’s most compelling thinkers get together to talk about them.

From Friday, Oct. 23, through Sunday, Oct. 25, Lenox, Massachusetts, will host the inaugural field festival, a three-day gathering of writers, artists, scholars and cultural figures at Shakespeare & Company. Billed as a festival of ideas, entertainment, learning and discovery, field brings together an impressive roster of voices to explore everything from the deeply personal to the profoundly political.

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The Pink House AM is serving up community

The Pink House AM is serving up community

Mare Rubin and Maggie Levine of the Pink House AM.

Madi Long

It all started with a yoga class. Mare Rubin was working on her second act after leaving the Upper West Side, where she’d raised a family and worked in corporate marketing. Newly empty nesters, she and her husband decided to move to the wilds of northwestern Connecticut, where they had spent 15 years as weekenders, to see what life in the woods had in store for them.

Rubin started teaching yoga classes at the Union in West Cornwall, a space designated by the town of Cornwall as a community hub with couches, Wi-Fi, occasional events and a growing yoga class schedule. She was adjusting well but missed one important thing about city life: a casual coffee shop.

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