LIFE

New England Puppy Rescue recently debuted a 3,000 square-foot Rescue Facility & Adoption Center in the Canton Green Plaza.

With a major expansion and improvement project in the books, the International Skating Center of Connecticut has plenty to celebrate but a new and upgraded facility only tells part of the story.

Despite the inherent risks, there’s nothing as magical as an open-air concert on a perfect summer or fall evening. In what is likely the ideal setting, The Simsbury Meadows Performing Arts Center (SMPAC) shows will be enhanced this year by ongoing facility upgrades, national acts like the Indigo Girls and Jason Blaine, and the return of community staples like the Hartford Symphony Orchestra’s Talcott Mountain Music Festival.

With moments that ranged from a soul-stirring “Call Him Up” by the Gertrude Banks Gospel Choir to a reflective version of U2’s MLK from Combined Ensembles, Simsbury High School’s Choral Collage was pure musical bliss.

But while wine, yoga, good food and a little self-care isn’t foreign to the Mountain Mommas, this group has spent the last 30 years taking annual trips that involve rugged outdoor adventures such as backpacking, canoeing and cycling – while also developing unbreakable bonds.

The annual Community Celebration, held at First Church of Christ, Simsbury for many years, is particularly poignant for local residents as King came to the town is the summers of 1944 and 1947 with his fellow Morehouse College students to work in tobacco fields.

Riding from Portland, ME to Portland, OR is certainly on the bucket list for many cyclists. Dan and Karen Mastella of Farmington began seriously contemplating such a journey more than a year ago.

In early October, “Ms. Pam,” officially left her post as library services assistant in the children’s department at Simsbury Public Library. It was 1985 during a visit to library in Simsbury with her infant son Michael, to whom she had been reading since he was in the womb, that Pam started on a new journey. At the time, the facility still operated at what is now the Simsbury Free Library.