David K. Leff, Essayist, Poet, Lecturer

Bridging Time at Town Meeting

Neighbors gathering last week for Canton, Connecticut’s annual town meeting transformed an ordinary event into a Norman Rockwell moment.  It could have been just more discussion of how to fix or replace  and pay for yet another deteriorating element of highway infrastructure, in this case an old bridge.  But it became an expression of deep affection for the community as seen through the silvery metal trusses of a one lane span over the Farmington River.

Finding the Friendly Tap

Walk into a tavern as a stranger, and you walk out having new friends.  Next time you stop in, you’re a regular.  From the six-stool Sharon Valley Tavern in a small Victorian building erected by an iron company in Sharon, to the Dutch Tavern in a centuries-old storefront on a narrow New London street, you’ll find welcoming good cheer and conversation.

Since prohibition ended about eighty years ago, Connecticut taverns have been singular institutions licensed to sell only beer and cider, and in recent years, wine.  Many watering holes call themselves “taverns,” but only those without hard liquor are the real deal.  Decades ago the state had hundreds, but economic and social pressures for full liquor service have left only a handful.

Living Large in a Cemetery

An extraordinary living thing, not the dead, immediately grabbed the attention of my wife Mary and me on a recent visit to New London, Connecticut’s “Ye Townes Antientest Burial Place.”  A giant weeping European beech tree over four stories tall, tied for the largest of its species in the state, dominates the cemetery’s southwest corner, its dense pendant branches lending an appropriate note of sadness to the entire space.  But the grand tree is only one factor making this graveyard among the most intriguing small pieces of open ground we’ve ever encountered.