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Millbrook races to support ailing resident

Millbrook races to support ailing resident
Violet Mackey, 14, with her mom, Danielle, and her brother, Brooks, 12, after running the 5-K Walk and Run for Barri. Here, they are after signing a card for Barri. 
Photo by Judith O’Hara Balfe

MABBETTSVILLE — Angels of Light was known for more than 15 years as a local nonprofit charity group that gifted a worry-free holiday season to area families with children who had been diagnosed with life-threatening illnesses. Angels of Light would shop for holiday gifts, wrap them and then present them to the families so they could enjoy worry-free, stress-free holidays.

The Millbrook organization has provided these Christmas and Hanukkah blessings to more than 1,000 families during the past number of years. This past May, Angels of Light announced it would be broadening its mission to help families with other basic needs throughout the year. 

One recipient of its good works is local resident Barri Donellen, known by family and friends as a giving and generous person, beloved by many. Donellen has been diagnosed with Stage IV Esophageal Cancer. 

Angel of Lights Director Lori Decker organized a 5-K walk and run, along with a shorter race for children, that was held on Sunday, July 10, at the Town of Washington Park in Mabbettsville. The event was sponsored by Forza Fitness on Franklin Avenue in Millbrook; more than 70 people signed up to participate. 

“I’m so appreciative of the community and Lori for putting this all together. It’s just me and my mom, and it’s been so difficult,” said Daron McShane, Donellen’s daughter.

— 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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