I’m sporting a bright red collar today in support of National Wear Red Day, and I hope that if you are reading this that you are decked out in some red apparel, too. February 1, National Wear Red Day, is to raise awareness about heart disease in women. Heart disease is still the #1 killer of women in America, and the sad thing is that heart disease is often preventable. Visit goredforwomen.org/donate to donate. You’ll find a link for an easy Go Red heart checkup there, too. All you need for the assessment are your cholesterol numbers, your fasting blood glucose numbers, and your blood pressure numbers. Answer a few more easy questions and you get a rough idea about what to discuss with your health care professional the next time you are at the office. And by making a donation, you will support research and education about women and heart disease. (You may have noticed by now that today’s masthead for The Newtown Bee is red, too.) Go Red!

As a fellow feline, I’m appalled about news from 18 Poverty Hollow Road, where The Kitty has joined the household this past winter. Apparently, The Kitty is willing to indulge in some very canine-type behavior, reducing herself to actually fetching for her owners. I can understand chasing a fast spinning object around and around until you fall over, or chasing a rubber ball across the floor. But chasing a piece of paper tossed by your owner and then returning it to them? Unheard of cat manners. I may have to text message the little rascal and set her straight. She is still young.

Here’s a neat round-about way of having a photo find its way home: Newtown Historical Society recently received a gift from Harwinton Historical Society. Harwinton sent over a photograph that belonged to Matthew Stanley, who taught at Newtown High School during the 1940s. The photo shows the faculty of the high school — all 13 staff members — and was taken in the fall of 1944. Mr Stanley eventually retired to the family home in Harwinton, and after his death the family photos were donated to the historical society there. Harwinton’s curator, Beverly Mosher, felt that the photo more properly belonged in Newtown’s collections and arranged to give it to the society’s Historical Images Archive. The archive scanned, duplicated, and sent a copy back to the folks in Harwinton while Newtown retained the original.

Also of note from the historical society this week is word that back issues of The Rooster’s Crow, the Historical Society’s newsletter, are now available at Booth Library. The newsletter is full of news about the society, of course, but also includes a new essay each month by Town Historian Dan Cruson. (It was these essays, in fact, that that formed the basis for Dan’s tercentennial book, A Mosaic of Newtown History.) The essays are a popular and important feature of the newsletters, and Booth Library’s reference department decided to make sure they weren’t lost. The library acquired a complete run of the old newsletters and had them bound. The librarians also indexed those back issues, so if you want to look up something specific that has been written about in the newsletter, you can now find it and make a copy from the original. To use the bound volumes, just ask one of the reference librarians on the library’s third floor, and they will get it from the locked case. So now you can read the current essay, which concerns the temporary disappearance of one S. Curtis Hawley in January 1905, or any of the earlier equally interesting articles our town historian has produced.

Laura Lerman tells me that the Alexandria Room was hopping this past weekend. Friends and family joined Jim and Jeannie Walker for a Rock and Roll party at the Alexandria Room at Town Hall to celebrate Jeannie’s 60th birthday Saturday night. Jeans, starched white shirts, Keds, and even fraternity pins were on display as the guests dined and danced to music from the fifties and the sixties. Jeannie’s daughters, Christy and Laura, came in from Massachusetts with their husbands and children. The terrific surprise of the evening was son Kevin and his wife, Nicola, flying in from California to surprise Jeannie on her special night. Rock on, Jeannie!

There’s a new takeout breakfast spot in town, and commuters who travel down Route 25 especially are going to want to take note. Newtown Chocolatier owner Jack Elias is serving up all-butter croissants and Danish filled with homemade fillings, hot-out-of-the-oven scones, and plump, tasty bagels imported from Amy’s in Waterbury, from 7 am to 5 pm, Tuesday through Saturday, and on Sunday from 7 am to 2 pm. Jack tells me he is brewing a fabulous coffee from Oren’s in New York City to go with the pastries, too, for just $2 a cup, and plans to have plenty of other goodies in the case for a delicious start to the day. The Newtown Chocolatier is at 71 South Main Street in Ricky’s Shopping Plaza, as if food lovers don’t already know.

Randi Rote got a sweet surprise in the mail last week. Randi, a kindergarten teacher at Wesley Learning Center, has such a good rapport with her old students that they continue to keeping touch with her even after they have moved on to higher grades. One of those students remembered that her former teacher has a liking for Blow-Pops and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, and sent her not only a note to say “Hi!” but a couple dozen pieces of her favorite candies, as well. How adorable is that?

Adorable enough that I hope next week you will… Read me again.