Tablescapes that captivate

Jesse-Sierra Ross preps a festive table setting at Hotchkiss Library of Sharon Nov. 10. Her book, "Seasons Around the Table," and blog inspires recipes and decorations for every season.
Matthew Kreta
Jesse-Sierra Ross preps a festive table setting at Hotchkiss Library of Sharon Nov. 10. Her book, "Seasons Around the Table," and blog inspires recipes and decorations for every season.
The Hotchkiss Library welcomed popular hosting and entertainment blogger Jessie-Sierra Ross for a talk on planning a fall table and meal Nov. 10. Ross has appeared on television multiple times and has recently written a book called “Seasons Around the Table,”which contains recipes, menu planning tips and decorative advice for seasons year round.
Ross began her talk with some of her background as a self-started blogger, home entertainer and chef after a career in professional ballet. As a mother of young children, Ross made it clear from the start that all of her ideas and aesthetic expression took this into account, but it will be different for everyone. Ross emphasized that when decorating your table and planning your meals, things that you enjoy and your own story should come through.
Matthew Kreta
Using an example table for the assembled crowd, Ross encouraged everyone to begin their prep by taking stock of what they have around the house and in their yard. Flowers, bits of grain and fruit may be items already on your property ready for use. Several examples on the table were older household items and cheaper thrift shop purchases on a budget. “Too many people feel that entertaining must be over the top,” Ross said. An example that she used was how all of the plates on the table were not part of a set, but maintained a similar sense of color, texture and feel.
When it comes to the many decorations on your table, Ross is a proponent of the rule of threes. “We are hardwired for odd numbers,” Ross said. Sets of three or five for things like candles or ornaments keep things from being too symmetrical, and create an interesting visual for the eyes to follow. This lack of exact symmetry opens up negative space on the table for guest’s eyes to rest and not be visually overwhelmed. Colors on the table should compliment each other, or directly contrast. Ross encouraged onlookers while adding rose heads to her fruit center piece by saying she is self taught, and that if a ballet dancer could manage to learn all this, so could anyone else.
Provided
When it comes to the menu, Ross recommended making sure everything remains in line with the story that you set at your table while picking one or two superstar dishes. Whatever comes in between, be it appetizers or drinks, should not take too much of your time or be too extravagant. With time especially, Ross was adamant that hosts should try to avoid dishes that require you to slave away while your friends and family miss your company. Entertaining should not leave you on the sidelines the whole night. Ross took many questions during her lecture, and continued as guests enjoyed some refreshments and examined the table up close.
Ross’s blog, with information on her book, recipes, entertaining and television appearances can be found at straighttothehipsbaby.com.
LAKEVILLE — Father Joseph G. M. Kurnath, retired priest of the Archdiocese of Hartford, passed away peacefully, at the age of 71, on Sunday, June 29, 2025.
Father Joe was born on May 21, 1954, in Waterbury, Connecticut. He attended kindergarten through high school in Bristol.
After graduating in 1972, he moved to Hartford, and after working many temporary jobs, in 1977, he began employment as an office assistant at the law firm of Robinson and Cole. He remained there until 1984 when he began studies at Saint Mary Seminary & University in Baltimore, Maryland.
He was ordained a deacon in 1989 in Baltimore and a priest in 1991 at the Cathedral of Saint Joseph in Hartford.
He has served as seminarian, deacon and priest at Saint Stanicslaus in Meriden, Saint Luke in Hartford, Saint Rose in East Hartford, Saint Mary in Newington, Saint Anthony in Bristol, Saint Mary Hospital in Waterbury, and at over 10 parishes in the archdiocese, and finally as pastor of Saint Mary’s Church in Lakeville for 13 years, retiring in 2019.
Father Joe was always proud of his Slovak roots and enjoyed celebrating the Christmas Eve “Vilija” or vigil supper.
In addition to earning a B.A., S.T.B. and M.A. from Saint Mary’s Seminary, he also received a M.A. in scripture from the Hartford Seminary.
Preaching and doing pastor work were his favorite parts of ministry. Father Joe loved people, working with the youth and seeing each person at church, gathering together in imperfection in closeness with God as the Perfect Mystery.
Services will be held July 15, 2025, at 4 p.m. at St. Mary’s Church in Lakeville.
He is survived by all his members of the Church in which he considered his family.
You are never alone – God is right beside you.
The Kenny Funeral Home has care of arrangements.
Two uprooted locust trees still lie in the yard in front of Animal Farm Foundation’s original kennels where they fell on a fence during a storm on Thursday, June 19.
AMENIA — Fallen trees, uprooted and splintered during a thunderstorm, injured a man, destroyed fences and damaged a dog kennel at the Animal Farm Foundation facilities in Bangall.
Isaias Nunez was cleaning along a road on the property with Marco Ortiz, another employee of the dog shelter, when the storm rolled in on the afternoon of Thursday, June 19.
“We saw the storm getting stronger,” Ortiz said. “We started talking, ‘we should check for trees.’ That’s when I looked outside the Kubota and I just started screaming ‘run!’”
A branch from a tree just above their utility vehicle had split. The two men ran from the vehicle, but the falling branch caught Nunez and struck his back.
The fallen branch caused some soreness and bruising, Nunez said, but no broken bones. After a short hospital visit, doctors sent Nunez home to rest and heal. He has since returned to work, helping to repair the broken fences and clean up the storm damage that still lingers.
Uprooted locust trees mangled fences, damaged roofs and knocked down power lines all over the 400 acre farm that houses the Animal Farm Foundation’s shelter.Nathan Miller
The powerful storm uprooted and knocked down branches of dozens of black locust trees on the Animal Farm Foundation’s property and on neighboring properties along Pugsley Hill Road and Shaefer Road. Nikki Juchem, Director of Operations and Public Policy for the shelter, was in a meeting with Executive Director Bernice Clifford and founder Jane Berkey when a tree outside the main office building was struck by lightning and fell on the farm’s donkey enclosure.
“It’s really a miracle that everyone was unscathed, as well as the animals,” Juchem said.
In addition to Nunez’s injuries and the damaged donkey enclosure, fallen trees destroyed the fencing that secured the Animal Farm Foundation’s original kennel yard, fencing for a horse paddock, and poked a hole through the roof and into the ceiling of one of the facility’s dog play rooms.
And more was at risk than just the employees, volunteers, dogs, and other animals already sheltered at the farm. The shelter was expecting about 15 more dogs to arrive shortly after the storm.
“We were fixing up the horse barn to be dog kennels,” Juchem said. “Luckily we had all the extra space, because we would have been in a real pickle.”
All the dogs that were being kept in the original kennel building had to be moved to the newly renovated kennels so the noisy repairs wouldn’t bother them, Juchem said. Fosters stepped up to house dogs that couldn’t fit while necessary repairs were being completed, too.
A log stuck on a fence post outside the shelter’s kennel building.Nathan Miller
“Lots of damage but we had a lot of support from the community,” Juchem said. “We had contractors come out immediately to start cutting down trees and helping us out with the cleanup, so we’re doing OK now.”
The cleanup and repair process is ongoing, but Juchem said the total cost is still unclear.
Animal Farm Foundation is a nonprofit dog shelter with a focus on “pit bulls,” Juchem said. “Breed is not behavior,” she said, emphasizing the organization’s guiding philosophy. More information on volunteering, donating to the shelter, or adopting a dog is available online at www.animalfarmfoundation.org
The Animal Farm Foundation will be collaborating with the North East Community Center Farmers Market to bring adoptable dogs to the market every Saturday during the month of August.
Uncommon books at the intersection of art and literature.
Siglio Press is a small, independent publishing house based in Egremont, Massachusetts, known for producing “uncommon books at the intersection of art and literature.” Founded and run by editor and publisher Lisa Pearson, Siglio has, since 2008, designed books that challenge conventions of both form and content.
A visit to Pearson’s airy studio suggests uncommon work, to be sure. Each of four very large tables were covered with what looked to be thousands of miniature squares of inkjet-printed, kaleidoscopically colored pieces of paper. Another table was covered with dozens of book/illustration-size, abstracted images of deer, made up of colored dots. For the enchanted and the mystified, Pearson kindly explained that these pieces were to be collaged together as artworks by the artist Richard Kraft (a frequent contributor to the Siglio Press and Pearson’s husband). The works would be accompanied by writings by two poets, Elizabeth Zuba and Monica Torre, in an as-yet-to-be-named book, inspired by a found copy of a worn French children’s book from the 1930s called “Robin de Bois” (Robin Hood).
Pearson first encountered the world of alternative publications — magazines filled with experimental writing, artworks in the form of a book, and samizdat literature — as a young writer living in Berlin just before The Wall came down in 1989. Later, in New York City, she spent a great deal of time with artists “who were always making and assembling, whose continuous art-making made the thin membrane between art and life even more porous,” she explained.
Pearson traces the idea of publishing to a 2001 exhibition of artist-poet Joe Brainard. That show led to “The Nancy Book,” Siglio’s debut title in 2008, and she’s never looked back. The book contains over fifty full-page reproductions of Brainard’s dazzlingly accomplished and witty drawings of the cartoon strip character, Nancy. It includes essays and contributions by Robert Creeley, Ann Lauterbach, Frank O’Hara, Ron Padgett, and other poets of great renown, all thrilled to celebrate and remember Brainard (sometimes called “a poet’s artist”) who died of AIDS in 1994. Pearson said, ‘My first project with Brainard was such a good experience, I kept going. “
Since then, Pearson, the sole proprietor of Siglio, has designed, edited, and published over 40 books and other printed editions. Her books are characterized by unexpected juxtapositions of texts and images and collage-like assemblages, as well as for carefully designed and gorgeously printed volumes. Her list includes many “rediscoveries” of unpublished manuscripts and little-known publications. At the same time, she has commissioned new work from an impressive array of artists and writers such as Christian Marclay, Sophie Calle and Cecilia Vicinua among others.
Uncommon books at the intersection of art and literature.Richard Kraft
Though most Siglio books feature work by artists and writers from the 1960s to today, one standout— “Tantra Song” (2011) — showcases vibrant 17th-century Indian tantric paintings collected by poet-ethnographer Franck André Jammes, their modernist feel echoing Hilma af Klint or Brice Marden. Siglio also frequently draws on the spirit of the Fluxus movement, reissuing works by figures like John Cage and Ray Johnson with editions that honor their playful, ephemeral, and poetic origins.
Siglio also excels at photo-narratives rooted in highly specific, often eccentric concepts. “Memory” (2020), by avant-garde writer Bernadette Mayer, reproduces her journal and daily rolls of 35mm film from a month in the Berkshires in 1971, capturing the texture of each day. “Call and Response” (2022), created during COVID lockdown by composer and visual artist Christian Marclay, pairs his photographs of London’s quieted streets with musical scores composed in reply by his friend Bruce Beresford—each image in dialogue with sound.
Siglio books are sold through it’s website (sigliopress.com), as well as museum or specialty bookshops. (The Lenox Bookstore represents a number of Siglio books; the newly opened Lakeville Books & Stationery has copies of “Tantra Song.”) In all cases, Pearson strives to make “two or three degrees of connection” with each book buyer, including a “special gift” — often a piece of printed ephemera — with each purchase.