Town Crier Articles

Are you a Halloween enthusiast? Or, eagerly awaiting the outcome of this year’s local, state, and federal elections? Do you observe Veteran’s Day and, later in November, keep a traditional Thanksgiving family gathering time? Do you love the Advent-Christmas season or look forward to celebrating Hanukkah, or Kwanza, or some other holiday that usually falls in December? In November, December, and early January, will there be family birthdays, or an expected new birth, or anniversaries, or even a mid-year graduation? Will someone who has been away for a long time be coming home? Might you soon watch college or national league playoffs in some sport, especially if your favorite team is involved?

 

All of these special times may inspire New Town residents to decorate inside or outside New Town homes in ways that can help all of us catch the spirit of a season, and add visual interest to many a morning or afternoon walk! Our family always would take a pre-Christmas evening drive around my hometown to look at Christmas decorations. Perhaps you might do something like this in New Town, starting with Halloween.

 

After a holiday or other special time passes, however, there shortly comes a day when most decorations that have gone up probably should come down.

 

• October has been Halloween season; most homeowners decorating for Halloween will probably be glad to take down the witches, ghosts, and giant spiders within a couple of days after October 31. Carved pumpkins, rotten pumpkins, or uncarved ones that animals have feasted on, of course need to be trashed as soon as possible.

• General autumn decor, including intact natural pumpkins, is common at least through Thanksgiving  which is November 28 this year.

• According to New Town Rules, political signs allowed in people’s yards as early as 60 days before an election should be removed two days after Election Day.

• Our national flag (appropriate for Veterans Day) or another flag may be displayed any time provided it is bracket-mounted on the front of the house.

• Many New Towners may be starting to decorate for Christmas or Hanukkah by mid-November (or, at least think about it). New Town rules state that such holiday decor should be removed by January 7, or the day after Epiphany which is on a Monday this year. And, if you want to delay putting away decorations inside your house beyond that, it’s nobody’s business but yours.

 

• What about the host of family or friend events people may decorate for? The best approach may simply be to use common sense. When the balloons deflate, take them down. After the birthday party, don’t leave the Happy Birthday signs up for weeks. Don’t wait for the newborn to sleep through the night before the joyous announcement signs go away.

Finally, remember that decorating for any special occasion should be lots of fun, and “undecorating” might be as well. When the time comes to clear the detritus of a recent celebration, why not put out some snacks and make a party of it. After all, in New Town, isn’t purchasing for a party as easy as going for a walk!

Window bird strikes have been on the rise over the past few weeks with fall migration, but we hope it's also due to people's awareness that window-strike birds need medical attention!

 

Did you know? When birds collide with windows, if they don't die from the initial impact, they're often left concussed with internal bleeding, eye trauma, ruptured air sacs, broken bones, and more. While sometimes these birds can temporarily recover enough to fly away from a scary predator (you), they often succumb after hours or even days when their injuries go without treatment.

 

If a bird appears stunned (eyes closed, on the ground, allows handling), please contain that bird IMMEDIATELY in a box with a lid and give your nearest wildlife rehabilitator a call right away. Be sure to leave a message if they do not answer right away. While waiting to hear back from your local licensed professionals, keep these birds somewhere warm, dark, and quiet away from pets, children, and other loud noises. Do NOT attempt to release these birds, even if it sounds like they're moving around in the box or like they may have recovered on their own.

 

Better yet, make your windows bird-safe! Birds hit windows because they reflect the sky and trees on the OUTSIDE of the windows, not the inside. You must break up the reflection by placing stickers, decals, tape, or other mediums (glass paint, screening, etc.) on the outside of the windows, with no more than 2" between decals/designs so birds don't attempt to fly "between" them. Stopping birds from hitting windows is the best way to give these birds the best chance to survive, and prevent them from needing care.

 

According to the Heritage Humane Society if you have found wildlife in urgent need or rescue, please contact Wildlife Response at 757-543-7000 or Tidewater Wildlife Rescue at 757-255-8710.

This year’s Fall Festival was different.  First, it was the biggest crowd yet with an attendance of over 150 residents, ranging from seniors enjoying the mild weather, music and happy vibe to awed and grinning toddlers crawling through the colorful tunnels and gingerly stepping from box to box of the obstacle course.       

 

Second, there were mummies in Village Walk!  About a half hour after the event started, I was walking on the green with the crowd and suddenly saw two mummies swathed in white strips, making weird noises and walking towards me.  It was scary!  I heard people yelling:  “They’ve been turned into mummies!”  I was turning to run away in fear when suddenly I realized that I was in the midst of the Fall Festival’s new Mummy Wrap race.  This timed race involved two teams with the contestants creating a mummy by wrapping a volunteer in toilet paper.  The teams with the most convincing mummy won prizes.  It was great fun.

 

     

 

Less scary but equally fun were the three rounds of the Cake Walk, during which, as in musical chairs, participants marched to music around a circle of numbered fall decorated signs.  When the music stopped, cake walkers rushed to stand by a numbered sign.  Our emcee and musical director extraordinaire, Rick Byrnes, then picked a number from his hat, and the cake walker next to the number was out, but as a consolation prize won a cupcake.  The last surviving participant won a giant decorated cookie cake.  

     

New Town residents also played corn hole and croquet and painted pumpkins while enjoying popcorn and home-made frosted Halloween cookies and drinks.  Kids searched for pumpkins during the pumpkin egg hunt, played toss games, and participated in races.  NTRA Board member Ruth Burgess patiently taught little ones the best method for tossing balls into buckets and through holes, and they all came away with candy and prizes.   Other children built brick castles (ok, cardboard bricks), and competed to see which castle lasted the longest under a barrage of their competitors small bricks.  Also popular again this year was the game, Pie Face Showdown.  One little girl wearing a blue-decorated shirt, played at least six times, recruiting her dad for her last contest.  She howled with laughter each time she lost the game and was hit by the whipped cream. It was a fun afternoon for adults and children alike. There were so many great photos, that there is a new Photo Album on this website filled with memories of the event. 

     

The Activities Committee next is event is a Holiday Party on Friday, December 6, 6:30-9:00 at Legacy Hall. Look for more details in this month’s Town Crier as well as eblast reminders.

     

Please join me in thanking members of the Activities Committee, including Susan Schlimme, Mary Jo Mulligan-Kehoe,  Jon Thomas, Terri  Finn and Virginia Barch, for organizing and staffing the Fall Festival. They and 14 other volunteers, Judy and Rick Byrnes, Angela Lesnett, Kurt Schlimme, Brooke Schlimme, Reagan Schlimme, Merry Thomas, Nikki Thomas, Justin, Jennifer Morgan, Mark Reckham, Pei Han Shih and Ken Fones-Wolf, made the Fall Festival possible.   

     

We also thank the NTRA Board  for its support and our Board liaison, Ruth Burgess, who volunteers for many of our events and always cheers us on.  

      

 

 

 

Join your neighbors for an old-fashioned fun-filled, FREE event in the Village Walk neighborhood on the corner of Casey and Settlers Market Boulevard.  

 

Everyone is invited, adults and children, family and friends. Guests will enjoy popcorn, Halloween cookies and other goodies. As an added treat, there will be drawings for a large pumpkins and gift certificates donated by the New Town Commercial Association

 

Activities include cake walks, pumpkin painting, and games including corn hole, and shark toss, races, pie face showdown, a kid’s obstacle course, croquet, and cornhole and more. Get there early for a Halloween “egg” hunt at 2:15 across the street from the main venue. Watch out there may also be mummies!

 

Come to participate or just share the good time and the music.  Also, we really need volunteers. Please contact Liz Fones-Wolf at efwolf@wvu.edu if you can lend a hand.  

 

 

Over the last several years, New Town's summer lifeguards have been undergraduate students who come from all over the world, recruited and trained by Continental Pools, our pool management company.  We have had quite a few lifeguards from Jamaica, Turkey and China.  Our main lifeguard this year was Deanjilee Robinson, who lives just outside the city of Kingston, Jamica, and is starting her senior year at the University of Technology, majoring in finance. This was Deanjilee ‘s second year at our pool and I met her last year.  I learned that to earn as much as possible, she works extra shifts and had not seen anything of the U.S. aside from the airports in Miami and Richmond. I offered to take her and one or more friends to Washington D.C. for a day of sightseeing.  

       

One early Tuesday morning in mid-July, the day each week our pool is closed, Deanjilee, her best friend Beyance Turner, a Finance major, who she recruited to also work as a lifeguard with Continental, and I headed to Washington.  As we drove, Deanjilee and I chatted about the differences between living in Jamaica and the United States. Jamaica is the third largest island in the Caribbean about the size of Connecticut with a population of just 2.1 million. It is known to Americans for its reggae music and as a tropical tourist destination.  She was fascinated as I tried to describe the sheer size and geographic diversity of the U.S.  While impressed with the speed of banking  (opening a bank account in Williamsburg took half-an-hour instead of an all-day ordeal in Kingston), she was appalled by how much processed food Americans eat and surprised that trees in New Town did not bear fruit.  

     

We dropped the car off at my son’s house in Alexandria and took the Metro to the Capitol South Station.  The Metro was a new experience for Deanjilee and Beyance since there are no trains or subways in Jamaica. Our first stop was the Capitol steps, where looking towards the Washington Monument, we took in the majestic view of the National Mall ringed by world-class museums of history, art, technology and the natural sciences. We then headed to the National Gallery of Art, starting with the East Building and its modern art collection. Both young women had visited the small National Gallery of Jamaica, which features two floors of Caribbean art, but were stunned by the magnitude of Smithsonian’s art collections.  Having read about and seen pictures of Picasso’s painting, they particularly enjoyed the impressionist galleries but also took delight in the works of Jackson Pollock and other modernists. We went through both tower galleries and at the rooftop terrace with its huge blue rooster, the young women took in an expansive view of Washington D.C. In the underground moving walkway  between the East and West Buildings, we experienced the “Multiverse,”  an amazing visual light display.  

       

We dashed through the National Gallery’s West Building, which holds master works from the 13th to 19th centuries and Deanjilee and Beyance were amazed by all the religious imagery.  Catching all of our eyes was a grisly 15th century painting on leather of David and Goliath by Andrea del Castagno of Florence. The painting was once attached to a battle shield. We then headed to the Smithsonian’s Natural History Museum, where they wanted to see the Hope Diamond and dinosaurs and also enjoyed an exhibit on human evolution. The White House was next on their agenda, and we marched a mile through the high heat and humidity to get a view.  

 

On the way back to the Metro to cool off, we stopped at the first floor America on the Move transportation exhibit at the Smithsonian’s Museum of American History.  The interactive and immersive experiences were their favorite experience of the trip. Most moving for Deanjilee and Beyance was sitting in a recreation of a 1927 segregated North Carolina train station and the experience of riding in a 1950s Chicago Transit Authority "I" train car, complete with sound and moving images. We arrived back in Williamsburg around 9:00 after an enjoyable if exhausting day, with Deanjilee and Beyance having learned more about the United States and me having learned more about Jamaica.

 

 

 

 

In case you missed it, on Saturday, September 21st, New Town residents held a community-wide garage sale. The goal of the community garage sale was to encourage participation from any and all residents, inspire community engagement amongst our residents (as well as with our broader Williamsburg community) and finally, if you were lucky, to lighten your load or pick up that treasure you just couldn’t pass up. While residential (seller) participation was on the lighter side, the traffic and interest along our New Town streets appeared steady and varied from both within and beyond New Town.

 

This inaugural community garage sale was a great start in what will hopefully become a more regular occurrence. The NTRA Board of Directors enthusiastically supported our ideas and graciously let us move out planning and advertising on a very compressed timeline in order to deconflict from other community events as well as take advantage of the warmer weather before fall arrives.

 

We hope the community enjoyed this event.  We learned several lessons to improve future events:

As a reminder, individual garage sales are not allowed under the NTRA rules. NTRA rules, Section II, Para 43, states: “Yard/garage sales are not permitted within the Properties, except that the Association may sponsor a community yard/garage sale at the discretion of the Board of Directors.” 

 

So this was your chance for 2024.  We hope you were able to participate in the community garage sale in a way that met your needs this time, and we look forward to future opportunities.

 

 

Two major events will take to our residential streets in October!

 

On Saturday, October 5, our streets and trails will be awash in pink as we welcome the Run for the Hills, hosted by Here for the Girls (H4TG.)  H4TG is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization dedicated to improving the lives of young women affected by breast cancer. You can learn more about them at hereforthegirls.org .

 

This event consists of both a race and a health and wellness expo in Sullivan Square. The race offers a 1 mile fun run, a 5K run (a Colonial Road Runners Grand Prix Event), a 5K competitive walk and a virtual run.  New Town residents and businesses can use special promo code NT2024RUN for a discounted registration fee! Register at hereforthegirls.org/run .

 

The health and wellness expo in Sullivan Square is free and open to the public—all are welcome, and this is a stroller-friendly, dog-friendly venue! There will be nutrition and health demonstrations, fitness classes and activities, educational information, health screenings and wellness checks, kids’ activities and much more.

 

New Town residents are invited to show their support for this event! You can request a Cheer Package, which will consist of a ribbon or other decoration to place in front of your home, a route map, a list of designated cheer spots where residents can gather to cheer on the runners, health info and more. If you would like a Cheer Package, please email your name and street address to sommer3553@gmail.com by September 15.

 

We will be doing additional decorating along the race route! If you would like to volunteer to help “pink up” our streets and trails, please email sommer3553@gmail.com by September 15, and I will add you to the volunteer list.

 

On Saturday, October 26, we embrace purple, as we welcome the Walk to End Alzheimer’s, hosted by the Alzheimer’s Association. This is the world’s largest fundraiser for Alzheimer’s care, support and research.

 

This annual event begins and ends at the Gazebo on Main Street. The walk offers a 1 mile route and a 3 mile route. You can view details of the route here. If you would like to form a Walk team, you can register at the Walk's local website. Many of the neighborhoods in the area have Walk teams, and it would be great to see New Town represented!

 

The Walk could also use your help as a volunteer on the day of the event! Please sign up at https://signup.com/go/FKdadZT , where you will find a list of volunteer opportunities, times needed, and number of volunteers needed for each opportunity. 

 

NTRA residents are invited to show their support for this event! If you would like a yard sign or a purple ribbon to place in front of your home, please email your name and street address to sommer3553@gmail.com by September 30. The quantities of signs and ribbons are TBD, so you may get one or the other, or both!

 

We will be doing additional decorating along the Walk route! If you would like to volunteer to help “purple up” our streets, please email sommer3553@gmail.com by September 30, and I will add you to the volunteer list.

 

For many of us in New Town, our porch may be a sunny place for potted plants, a dry place for Amazon deliveries, or a comfortable space to sit and relax.  Porches have been around for many years, but they started to really take off in the 19th century in America as a means of extending the inside of a house to the outside.  Porches contributed to the sense of community, as neighbors gathered together in the evenings, especially in the summer months to escape the indoor heat.

 

Not every residence in New Town is fortunate to have a porch large enough for socializing, but there is a role every resident can play in building a sense of community nevertheless.  On the second Saturday of each month, porches throughout New Town become the focal point for food donations.  Non-perishable food items are left on porches (by 9 AM) for volunteers to collect and deliver to local food pantries.  It’s a simple process that has a profound impact on addressing hunger in our greater Williamsburg community.

 

New Town is participating in these monthly food drives through PORCH Communities, a grass roots organization focusing on hunger relief.  The organization coordinates over 2,000 volunteers representing 550 communities, across 10 states.  In the two months since New Town joined PORCH, volunteers in green shirts have collected 1,243 pounds of food from New Town porches. This just proves that neighborhoods such as ours don’t need large, wrap-around covered porches to create a sense of community.

 

When you see the green PORCH signs go up each month, please remember the role porches have played in bringing people together in building community and help us put our porches to good use in bringing New Town together to fight hunger.

 

Mark your calendars, the next PORCH food drives will be September 14, October 12, November 9 and December 14.

In the days before our last pool party of the summer, we had an amazing week of weather with temperatures in the seventies, a welcome relief from the beastly August heat.  Saturday, August 24, it was a bit warmer, low eighties and sunny, but the pool water after that unseasonably cool weather, was definitely chilly.  Normally the pool is a popular spot on July and August Saturday mornings. Young families, with antsy kids ready to get some energy out, arrive at the pool for the early 10:00 opening.  But this Saturday, at 12:00pm when the pool party was scheduled to begin, Activities Committee members, who had tables piled with pizza, watermelon, and dessert and had created plans for water games, looked around anxiously at the virtually empty pool site.  Only one small group of four residents huddled under an umbrella. 

 

 

But, before the Committee could start thinking about plans for all that excess food, residents began streaming through the gates, with over 60 attending.  This pool party featured eating and visiting more than swimming, although some brave souls took to the water, but not enough for the planned pool games.  Still kids enjoyed playing with beach balls bought for the games, other folks played cornhole, and residents Nathaniel David and Susan Byrne won $25 gift certificates, courtesy of the New Town Commercial Association.  Others, like a new Shirley Park family with a three-year old daughter, learned more about our community and met some neighbors.  

 

The pool closes after Labor Day, but please join the Activities Committee at its next major event, the Fall Fest on Saturday, October 5 (rain date Sunday, Oct. 6) at 2:00 at Village Walk.

 

Check out more fun photos of our 2024 pool parties at our latest photo album:  2024 Pool Party Fun.