Giavanna Dentice and Olivia McMurray fluttered by The Bee’s booth at the Newtown Arts Festival, Saturday, September 19, held on the Fairfield Hills campus.  As you can see the girls were appropriately dressed. I just hope they haven’t started a new wardrobe requirement for Bee workers...

Erin Nikitchyuk shared a photo with us, of her daughter, Tallie Nikitchyuk, a sophomore at NHS. Tallie may have caught your eye at the Newtown Arts Festival this past weekend, as she drifted about the grounds in a very unique gown. The gown was the creation of A New Beginnings Aveda Lifestyle Salon in Bethel, and Tallie, “The Bride of the Environment,” was the business’s Living Arts Installment for the festival. The skirt of the bridal gown was made up of empty hair color boxes supported by hula-hoops, Erin tells me. The bodice was constructed from folded instruction inserts, and the bouquet was made from paper manufactured for Aveda through their microfinance program in Nepal. Recycled customer tickets were used to make the flowers on the dress. Following through on the recycled theme, Tallie’s hair ornaments were “bedazzled shampoo caps,” says Erin. Now that is one special dress.

Backtracking a little to the other Newtown extravaganza, earlier this month, I heard from Newtown resident Rich Friedlaender. It turns out that Rich was marching in the Newtown Labor Day Parade — with one of the parade’s new entries, the Westchester Brassmen Drum & Bugle Corps, and the only Newtowner marching with that organization. Rich marched in the color guard, and is the percussion tech for the band. He credits former NHS band director, Joe Grasso, for giving him the tools for leadership and to teach music. “I played through the Newtown Band program under Joe Grasso from 1988 to 1991,” Rich says. Wanting to learn more and play more, Rich joined “The Striders,” run by Bob Reiner at the time. He also got into competitive Drum and Bugle Corps at college, and when he came back to town, marched with the Connecticut Alumni. Rich spent some time in North Carolina and Alabama, after that, but upon returning to Newtown, got involved with the Westchester Brassmen. “I hope we are invited back next year,” Rich says, “as I have been marching in the parade since my days at NHS.”

I understand there is a giant tag sale happening this weekend in the Community Room at Nunnawauk Meadows. On Saturday and Sunday, September 26 and 27, you’ll find all kinds of treasures there: jewelry, linens, china, plants, games, household items, and more. I’ll be browsing about in hopes of finding some catnip toys or a good scratching post. If you work up an appetite shopping, stop by the bake sale and get a snack. Nunnawauk Meadows is located at 3 Nunnawauk Road, off Mile Hill Road South.

He is “Mister Everything” at the Newtown Congregational Church, I hear, active in the Men’s Club there, and for several years has been a bell ringer with the Salvation Army. But what has gotten Steve Bennett nominated for a Good Egg Award is his dedication to making the trails at Orchard Hill passable. Two Saturdays ago, “He spent three plus hours, bent over moving a weed whacker, clearing the trails,” I’m told. The results are “amazing. Whatever Steve is asked to do, he does excellently,” says his fan. I agree, 100 percent. Steve, you are a Good Egg!

Hopefully, Steve won’t mind sharing the Good Egg Award. Someone in town thinks there is another deserving candidate — Terry Sagedy, the event chair for the Newtown Arts Festival. Terry is a Good Egg, it seems, “for all he has done for the Arts Festival, in fact for creating it!”

Pip Gamble, a junior at NHS, had the honor of participating in a special 9/11 ceremony this year. As a student at Monroe Dance Academy, Pip, and one other Masuk High student, Joey Socci, was selected to take part in the Table of Silence dance project in New York City. Dance instructor, Kelsey Maiolo, was also selected. (Monroe Dance Studio founder, Judy Abbatiello is a friend of Table of Silence organizer, Jacqulyn Buglisi.) The Table of Silence Project is a choreographed, public prayer for peace and in memory of the tragedies of 9/11. This was the fifth year the dance has been performed. Pip and Joey joined just over 100 other professional dancers, many from the Buglisi Company or Julliard School students, two Fridays ago, for the performance, outdoors at Lincoln Center.

The silent dance began at 8:15 am, ending at 8:46 am, corresponding with the moment when American Airlines Flight 11 crashed into the North Tower, 14 years ago. It was an amazing experience for Pip, said her dad, Jonathan Gamble, and an exhausting two weeks prior to the event. Evening rehearsals were in New York, so Pip would leave school, catch a train, dance till 10 pm, take the train back, and get up the next day for school at 6:30 am. “but the end result was worth it,” Jonathan says. “It was a very moving performance.” Jonathan and wife, Jo, share this photo of Pip — she’s the dancer on the right — as the meditative dance procession passed along Columbus Avenue.  And P.S. Happy birthday to Pip, who celebrates her special day this week.

Caryl Stratton of Woodbury is setting us straight on a misprint in the September 11 Way We Were column, depicting the girls’ basketball team of 1912. “I loved seeing the photo of my grandmother and aunt Sarah in the Way We Were. The names are not quite in the right order. From left are Jessie Beers (Wilson), and middle Sarah Beers (Mitchell),” Caryl says. She goes on to add, “The September 13, 1940, auto accident with the milk truck near Lovell’s Garage scattering milk cans and milk was the inspiration for pouring milk from our cows on our own lawn at Red Barn Dairy (corner of The Boulevard and Church Hill Road.) My Uncle Herbert “Hub” Beers said the grass was the greenest he had ever seen on the lawn at Lovell’s Garage after the spill.” Thank you, Caryl, for bringing history back into focus!

I’ll be tiptoeing over lawns (and licking my paws, just in case there’s milk on them), and keeping my ear to the ground in search of news for next week’s column. Be sure to…Read me again.