Congratulations Alexander Rominino, who won last week’s Sandy Hook School-Wide Spelling Bee and is now heading to the 2026 Connecticut Spelling Bee! Eleven students competed in this year’s event at the Dickinson Drive elementary school. Alexander’s next step will be to head to University of St Joseph in West Hartford, where the annual competition — part of the Scripps National Spelling Bee events — takes place next month. Best wishes!

The folks at Newtown Congregational Church had a surprising end to Souper Bowl Sunday last weekend. And no, that isn’t a typo. For at least a decade, the West Street church has done a fundraiser each Super Bowl Sunday, inviting members to cook up a batch of their favorite soup, stew, chili, etc. The soup is then sold following worship service that morning, raising funds for a local organization. To add to the fundraising efforts, members are also invited to “vote” for the team they hope will win the day’s big game a few hours later. I think NCC members have often been spot on with their predictions/hopes … until this year. NCC members on Sunday overwhelmingly voted — at $1/vote — to support the New England Patriots, 88-22. As everyone knows by now, the Seahawks took home the Vince Lombardi Trophy following Sunday night’s game.

Always one to have multiple projects underway, Gordon Williams — who helped organize Sunday’s fundraiser at the church — visited our office the very next afternoon, when he picked up a gift certificate for one of the prizes of this year’s Lions Club Great Pootatuck Duck Race. That’s right, a one-year subscription or renewal to The Newtown Bee is now confirmed for the collection of prizes for this year’s big event.

Never let it be said that Bruce the Spruce is not thrifty. After temporarily donning a new Groundhog Day outfit last week, our favorite three-foot-tall artificial pine tree in residence in our Production department is sporting a familiar outfit for the remainder of the month: it’s the same outfit he wore last February in honor of Canned Goods Month.

It’s frightening how many people continue to seek food assistance. We just had a press release from Real Food CT last week about that Newtown-based nonprofit’s work to expand food access across the state. Last year alone, Real Food CT donated more than 158,000 pounds of fresh, locally grown produce to food pantries and food access organizations across the state. That’s more than three times the amount RFCT donated in 2024, which was itself a record. That’s approximately 50 tons of food. You know the large bronze statue of that handsome lion outside the MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas? That weighs approximately 100,000 pounds. RFCT’s donations last year weighed more than that! RFCT is just one group helping others (32 recipient organizations, in fact). Imagine how much additional food was needed last year, and continues to be needed this year, as prices on what feels like everything continue to increase.

If you’d like to help Bruce and his One-Man (One Tree?) Crusade, we continue to host a donation box in our lobby to collect items for FAITH Food Pantry. Items left there regularly make their way to the Church Hill Road pantry. Donation bins are available elsewhere in town, and of course there’s the pantry itself, regularly open Tuesday mornings and late Thursday afternoons. Trinity Episcopal Church has The Little Pantry, a freestanding pantry in its parking lot, open to anyone, and Newtown Congregational Church has Hospitality Hall, which offers nonperishable items and — occasionally — fresh fruits and vegetables. If you need a hand, it’s there. If you’d like to help, there are options.

If you’re planning to attend this weekend’s special Waterbury Symphony Orchestra Quartet candlelight concert — or even if you’ll be in the area of Edmond Town Hall early Saturday evening — Lynne Farah will be conducting a special donations collection for House of Harrison Blessing Bags. Founded by Lynne in January 2024 under the Newtown Parent Connection umbrella and then relaunched as its own entity last autumn, House of Harrison has a mission to provide supplies to individuals experiencing homelessness, transitioning from treatment, or facing hard times by providing daily essentials that offers comfort, confidence, and hope for a new beginning. Donations requested for next Saturday evening include packs of underwear, socks, hats, gloves, and packs of personal care and/or bathroom essentials for the bags they fill and hand out to the homeless. The drive is being done in conjunction with WSO, which carries strong ties to the communities it serves. Saturday’s concert begins at 7, and doors will open at 6 pm at 45 Main Street, so again, if you’re in the area…

Go Flagpole Photographers! On Tuesday, February 17, the competitive spirit of Flagpole Photographers Camera Club members will take center stage when the Newtown group hosts New Haven Camera Club for the annual interclub competition. After weeks of reviewing and voting on hundreds of images, members of each club have selected their strongest entries across 25 categories. Now it’s time for a guest judge to evaluate paired images side by side and determine a winner in each category. The club that earns the most category wins will claim the 2026 title. This free event is open to the public and will take place both online (flagpolephotographers.com) and in person at Newtown Senior Center beginning at 7 pm.

Well this is interesting. In Way We Were two weeks ago we ran a photo of three Scouts standing with five men, and asked readers if they recognized anyone in the photo. At the beginning of last week I heard from Nancy McCarthy and Maureen Crick Owen, who both said the boy in the middle of this photo is Jimmy Titus, and his father Art is standing behind him.

Late last week, however, I received a call from Newtown High School Class of 1973 graduate Mary Ann Federko, who is convinced the boy in the middle of the photo is Gerald Costellano, who also graduated from NHS in 1973. Mary Ann also said the boy on the left is George Shaw, who graduated in 1972, and George’s father Kenneth is the man in glasses second from the left. She also said the boy on the right is Garry Goodrich, and his father is standing behind him.

I’m running the photo once again this week, in this space, to see if someone else can tell me who we’re looking at in this photo. Any thoughts? Contact Managing Editor Shannon Hicks at 203-426-3141 or shannon@thebee.com if you know who these people are.

Meanwhile, it’s no mystery what Dori Marx will be up to this spring. The Newtown resident is celebrating the publication of The Quest of the Puzzled Penguins, the seventh book in her Wonder World Kids chapter book series, and will be visiting some of our local elementary schools to continue sharing stories of the Cook family — world famous veterinarians, their daughter Lilly, and twin siblings Fynn and Celia — who have now found themselves in Patagonia, where a colony of confused penguins needs their help. Dori said she’s looking forward to meeting local students and talking with them about writing, illustrating, and caring for the environment. Released just a few weeks ago, the new book is not only available to purchase at Barnes & Noble and Amazon, Dori proudly mentioned the entire series is also available to borrow from C.H. Booth Library.

It’s also no mystery that I’m about out of space for this week’s column. I’m already thinking of things to share with you, so I hope you’ll think about coming back to this space next week, when it will be time to … read me again.