The best news of the week is that the Sandy Hook Organic Farmers’ Market opens in exactly one month!

Market organizer Mary Fellows of The Little Green Barn on Washington Avenue said last week she is looking forward to a July 6 opening –– on Tuesday, of course. “We’ve got two new farmers, and there’s a lady bringing a very unusual kind of red celery,” Mary said. “Also, they’ve bulldozed the big dirt pile so the exhibit area will be larger.”

Last summer, the Sandy Hook farmers’ market got the word out about time and place with giant vegetable-shaped signs seen around town. This year, Ms Fellows says to watch out for a barn on wheels built by her father. We wonder if his name is MacDonald?

Barbara Mangold, DVM, associate veterinarian with Newtown Animal Clinic at 98 South Main Street, has just returned from two weeks in the ocean off the tip of South Africa where she was part of an international team tagging great white sharks. Dr Mangold became involved in shark rescue several years ago while working at the Bronx Zoo in cooperation with the Society for Wildlife Conservation. Under the guidance of the Marine Coastal Management Resources Agency of the South African government, the crews tag the sharks and track them by satellite in order to document their range with the goal of eventually protecting them in their natural environment.

This trip was slightly different from others Dr Mangold has taken, however, because the team had to obtain blood samples from the live sharks. “We did manage to do that while the sharks were temporarily suspended in slings alongside the ship. We had to keep moving and make sure there was always water flowing through their gills.” We presume that water was also flowing past those many rows of needle-sharp teeth. Dr Mangold’s job was not only to draw the blood with a five-inch needle, but also to monitor the sharks during the procedure, making sure they suffered no stress. Now that’s large animal veterinary medicine of an entirely different kind.

Susan Leniart arrived in the office Tuesday morning after a weeklong vacation with some news: It turns out Alice, the kitten Sue had picked out for her apartment just before she left on vacation, is a boy. He’s been renamed Alice Cooper Cat.

First Selectman Herb Rosenthal found out last week it’s never a good thing to be even two minutes late to a meeting. Last Thursday the Board of Selectmen had scheduled a meeting for 8 am at Edmond Town Hall regarding a vote on a $500,000 appropriation for a proposed water line extension to Middle Gate School.

At a little after 8 am, as Mr Rosenthal entered the downstairs of town hall on the way to the old courtroom where the meeting was to be held, he heard voices. Upon entering, he found the meeting already underway with Board of Selectmen members Joe Bojnowski and Bill Brimmer. Luckily, Mr Rosenthal said, he arrived in time to vote.

“Bojnowski seized power,” Mr Rosenthal quipped Thursday after the meeting. “We had a coup this morning, and Brimmer supported him in it.” Mr Bojnowski is designated town agent to take over for Mr Rosenthal when he is ill or out of town — probably not for when he’s just running late.

While at a public meeting this week, I saw that tall thin man who was wearing a business suit, who must have been Police Chief Michael Kehoe’s identical twin brother. It looked an awful lot like the police chief, but it obviously was not, because the man was not wearing a neatly trimmed mustache, as the chief has worn for well over a decade. I was surprised to learn, though, that it was not the chief’s twin, but in fact was the chief himself, minus the mustache. Not only is the chief’s weight down slightly, now that he’s shaved off his mustache he also looks several years younger.

The Great Sandy Hook Duck Race sponsored by the Newtown Lions Club was last Saturday. Of the hundreds of ducks that plunged into the Pootatuck from the bridge in Sandy Hook Center, the duck swimming for Ken Godfrey somehow avoided all the snags, eddies, and calm water to make over the finish line first to the cheers and jeers of scores of people who lined the banks of the river to root for the rubber duckies. Ken’s daring duck won a Cub Cadet Tractor for him — not bad for an afternoon swim in the Pootatuck.

This weekend, things should settle down a bit in Sandy Hook Center as history buffs take over from the duck racers. Town Historian Dan Cruson will be leading a historical tour of Sandy Hook Center at 1 pm on Sunday. If you want to take the tour, you can meet up with Dan by the former Red Brick Store. Dan says he will be discussing architecture and the history of the commercial buildings and homes, and people who lived there. It costs nothing so don’t miss it.

Oh, and don’t miss me next week. I’ll be here with the latest on Sandy Hook and all the other hot spots in Newtown, so be sure to…

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