Oh boy oh boy oh boy it’s my favorite month of the year!!! There’s a chill in the air, the leaves are changing color and clinging to branches before giving up the ghost for the season, and Halloween is fast approaching! I can’t wait to see what this year’s popular costumes will be. I’m still up in the air for myself. Barbie? (Kate McKinnon’s Weird Barbie?) Oppenheimer? Einstein? Ariel? Ted Lasso? Jigsaw? Wednesday Addams? I think I’m leaning toward Wednesday, but I still have time.

If you’re planning to head toward Main Street on October 31, here comes my annual reminder: “Halloween on Main Street” is not a formal event. It is not a Town-sponsored event. It is what has evolved over decades of friends, families, and residents from across town and well beyond heading toward the historic stretch of road that generally runs from its intersections with Currituck Road and Glover Avenue-Sugar Street. Hundreds — sometimes thousands — of costumed guests visit the homes along the road there. So here’s the thing: if you don’t live on Main Street but plan to head there, for yourself or your child(ren), please make a contribution to any of the candy collections that are ongoing ahead of that big day. The homeowners along Main Street are very welcoming and very generous. As with any time you are visiting someone’s home, it’s nice to offer a gift, right? This month, that gift could be a bag of candy dropped into bins at Caraluzzi’s Newtown Market or Trinity Episcopal Church.

Newtown Parks & Rec also does special collections each year; call them at 203-270-4340 to find out when and where candy can be dropped off. Candy donations are all distributed along Main Street in time for Halloween. This cat thanks you, and looks forward to seeing everyone all dressed up in a few weeks.

Trinity is also preparing for the return of The Great Pumpkin Challenge. I hear members of the Main Street parish will spent at least part of October 29 carving pumpkins for the annual presentation in front of their house of worship. That tells me the scaffolding will be returning, and hopefully plenty of additional carved pumpkins will be appearing around that same time. Maybe a carved cat or two will be part of this year’s display. I’ll share details as soon as I hear them myself.

If you find yourself challenged with personal papers that shouldn’t just go into recycling or the trash, the next paper shredding event hosted by the Sandy Hook Volunteer Fire & Rescue Company Ladies Auxiliary is Saturday morning. A secure mobile shredding truck will be ready to take those documents and shred them on-site, between 9 am and noon, behind the firehouse at 18-20 Riverside Road. Volunteers will be available to help unload boxes, and the cost is still $10 per standard paper or banker’s box. Larger boxes will be accepted for $5 increments. The auxiliary is also conducting a clothing drive through the end of the month, and will also be collecting donations for that event on Saturday. Clean, dry and odorless footwear, clothing, accessories (pocketbooks and other bags, hats, gloves, ties, scarves, bathrobes, and jewelry), linens, and even luggage, sports jerseys, and clean stuffed animals will all be accepted. If you can’t get to the firehouse Saturday morning, the clothing drive continues all month at the Helpsy donation center at 127 South Main Street. The donation center is open weekdays only however, between 9 am and 5 pm, which is why the ladies are including this special Saturday collection option.

Readers are invited to view the autumn changeover of the summer-to-winter flag on the Main Street flagpole this weekend. (NOTE: this event was postponed on October 4 to NEXT Saturday, October 14; all other details remain the same). Members of Newtown Lions Club and Newtown Hook & Ladder will be joined by Keeper of the Flag Chris Gardner on Saturday, October 7, at 8 am, to lower the 20- by 30-foot American flag and then raise a 16- by 20-foot flag. The smaller “winter” flag will remain in place until mid-May, when it is replaced by the larger “summer” flag. The public is invited to view the changeover, which includes firefighters handling the ropes on the landmark flagpole while men and women on the ground make sure both flags never touch the ground. If you’ve never had the opportunity to view this twice-yearly event, it really is majestic. To see just how large that summer flag is once it’s close to the ground, and the care that goes into making sure it — nor the winter flag — touches the ground is inspiring. The event will be done by 8:30.

To continue settling its latest refugee family, the Interfaith Partnership for Refugee Resettlement (IPRR) has launched a gofundme page to assist a family who has been in Connecticut one year and is embarking on a journey for greater financial independence. IPRR’s goal is to raise $7,000, which will assist them in securing their new apartment, utilities, car insurance, and other financial needs. As of Monday morning the campaign had surpassed $2,760. If you’d like to help, or learn more, visit gofund.me/0bcea371. IPRR has spent down its reserves this year in supporting the two refugee families it has already served.

Newtown Ecumenical Workcamp Servants (NEWS) will be heading to Biloxi, Miss., next year, when they spend a week working with Back Bay Mission. An information session about that trip was conducted last weekend, but if you’re still interested in learning about the annual workcamp trip, contact Noelle D’Agostino at 203-581-0497 or peacendj@gmail.com.

The 2023 Newtown Annual Health Fair is being planned for Saturday, October 28. The event is returning to Reed Intermediate School from 9 am until 12:30 pm that day. I should have additional details for you next week.

Actor, producer, director, author, and former-and-returned Connecticut resident Illeana Douglas is celebrating the release of her second book, Connecticut In The Movies: From Dream Houses to Dark Suburbia. Published on Tuesday, the new release explores some of the more than 200 films with ties to our home state. Douglas’s family moved from Massachusetts to Connecticut when she was 3, and she grew up in Old Saybrook. She eventually found her way to Los Angeles, where she built a very successful career in film and television, among other interests. It was there that she also began working on her new book before returning to the East Coast prior to the COVID-19 pandemic and buying a 19th Century house near her childhood home. Work on the house and the book has kept her very busy in recent years, with the latter including visits to multiple locations. Chapters of Connecticut In The Movies are divided by theme, from silent films and “Country Living Comedies” to “The Dream of Suburbia” and “Crime and Misdemeanors.” There’s even an entire chapter called “Creepy Connecticut.” I was amused to read a recent interview with Douglas, who said one of the places she visited while working on Connecticut In The Movies was an abandoned mansion in Old Saybook where scenes for 1971’s Let’s Scare Jessica to Death were filmed. Douglas recalled shaking while taking pictures for her book, and thinking the place was “definitely haunted.” If she thought that place was spooky, it would be interesting to get her feelings on Fairfield Hills. The campus hosted some filming for the 1996 crime-drama Sleepers less than a year after the former state hospital there fully closed. Unfortunately that film, along with Adam’s Rib and All Good Things — all mentioned in our “ABCs of Newtown” series and featuring Kevin Bacon, Katharine Hepburn, and Kirsten Dunst, respectively, and each filmed in part right here in Newtown — did not make the cut. The book sounds good, however, and I promise to invite Illeana to join me for a walk around the campus if the opportunity presents itself.

In this week’s Did You Know … did you know that National Newspaper Week has been celebrated for 83 years, and this newspaper has been around even longer? It’s true! National Newspaper Week 2023 opened last Sunday and concludes Saturday. The special week-long event has been observed since 1940, when Newspaper Association Managers first sponsored and supported the week-long promotion of the newspaper industry in this country and Canada. The Newtown Bee (founded as The Bee) has been delivering Newtown’s news and advertising since June 1877. The theme for 2023 has been In Print. Online. For You. #NewspapersYourWay. This newspaper has worked for and with the residents of Newtown and neighboring towns for over 146 years. If there is something you’d like to see us write about, let us know! New business in town that should be advertising? Tell them they should let more people know about their offerings by advertising with us. Need to start or renew a subscription? Call 203-426-3141 or send a note to editor@thebee.com to start any of those discussions.

As the late Charlotte Tillar Schexnayder, former publisher and editor of The Dumas (AR) Clarion once said: “A free press is the guardian of democracy. In whatever form, it must be preserved.”

Let’s continue preserving the history of Newtown through the pages and website of The Newtown Bee, shall we? I hope you’ll preserve a little bit of time again next week, when you come back to … read me again.