The Bee’s staffers consoled themselves on Wednesday by bingeing on snack food as they moped through Dottie Evans’ last day on the job. The idea was to show our appreciation with offerings of food to Dottie for her limitless good humor, keen intelligence, elegant modesty, and unmatched ability to craft perfect sentences. But with our spirits flagging, we all kept returning to the sagging snack table to treat our blues with sugar, so there wasn’t much left for the honoree at the end of the day.

Dottie, who provided this cat with some of the best inside information ever to appear in this column, has fans all over town, including the guys down at Andrea’s Bakery, who sent along a mountain of cookies topped with a black cat in honor of her many contributions to this column.

The mountain was quickly reduced to crumbs. We all wish Dottie well in her retirement. And I, for one, hope she’s still willing to throw some “Mountain notes” my way from time to time.

With 28 community groups and lots of fun activities lined up for Saturday’s Duck Race, Lions member Gordon Williams is keeping his fingers crossed for sunny weather, despite reports to the contrary. But Newtowners have lined the streets for the Labor Day Parade in a downpour; a little shower here and there surely won’t hold back the crowds and that’s why tents were invented, right? I’ll just curl up under the nearest table and tuck my tail around me if need be.

If you ran across Friends of the Library member Joyce Goldin earlier this week and she seemed a bit dazed, not to worry. Joyce just returned Tuesday from a trip to Asia with her husband that included stops in Hong Kong, Shanghai, Beijing, Kobe, and Tokyo. One of the highlights of the trip was being atop the Great Wall of China, she said.

Shane and George Miller, the owners of the historic Budd House at 50 Main Street, hosted a tag sale for the benefit of Newtown’s 2006 Relay For Life last weekend. Shane was at an afternoon tea event hosted by The Garden Club of Newtown last Sunday and she was thrilled with how the tag sale went. “We did very well,” she reported. “My Relay team, called The Survivors, were very helpful. They brought in a lot for the sale, and they were there to help all day. Most of all, we had fun.” And while this cat couldn’t get an exact number out of Shane, I did hear that she and her friends raised more than a few hundred dollars for Relay For Life.

Members of the Newtown Historical Society will be glad to note that Ben Franklin’s tree (Franklinia alatamaha) that was planted two years ago in front of the Matthew Curtiss House at 44 Main Street is once again putting out a healthy crop of new leaves. Lexington Gardens owner Tom Johnson donated the tree to the society for two good reasons. One, because it is an offshoot of the original trees collected in the mountains of Georgia in 1765 by John Bartram, who was a good friend of Old Ben’s. Two, because Tom likes the way Franklinias look when they bloom in the fall. “You can’t always tell whether a Franklinia will take hold where it’s planted. In about five years, we should know for sure,” Tom said.

Well, it’s Memorial Day weekend already. Want some chicken parm and pea soup to go with those stars and stripes? There’s a handsome new flagpole in town, standing outside the entrance to the Pizza Palace on Church Hill Road opposite Commerce Road. Owned by brothers John and James “Jimmy” Antonopoulos whose family came to the United States from Greece in 1974, the family- friendly restaurant has become a local favorite. An American flag was hung across the roof after 9/11, but a recent reroofing job precipitated the change.

Also, be sure to take some time out of your day off on Monday to celebrate the true spirit of Memorial Day by attending the ceremonies at the VFW Post on May 29 at 11 am. And be sure to take some time out of a week from today to…

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