You’d never know the Labor Day Book Sale is only one month away, as volunteers are working hard and others are coming forward to help. But more volunteers are always needed, especially for evening work, according to book sale director Joanne Zang.

Lest we forget, it was Joanne who 28 years ago first set up a few card tables outside the Cyrenius Booth Library and got the whole thing started. I dragged her away from her garden Wednesday afternoon to ask how this year’s sale was going. “It looks like it’ll be bigger than ever. And the most exciting categories so far –– not including the perennial favorites, Children’s Books and Rare Books –– are going to be Antiques, Travel, Cooking, Woodworking, Bridge, and Art books. They’re better than usual,” Joanne said.

She added that they don’t know what they would do without the help of Eric Neidhardt and his pickup truck. “He repairs doors, fixes things, lifts things, transports things.” Joanne’s lips were sealed regarding the yearly Book Sale T-Shirt Secret. Everyone wants to know what the color and slogan will be this year. “You’ll have to wait for opening day to find out,” she teased.

Ed Osterman says the Rotary is once again inviting young business people –– ages 25 to 40 –– to apply for the Rotary’s free four-week “World Peace Through Understanding” cultural exchange trips, this time to India or South Korea. The trips will take place early next year. For information and applications, call Ed at 426-0430.

Newtown Bee employees held a group tag sale last weekend in the parking lot at 5 Church Hill Road. Participants had spent the previous weeks cleaning out their homes, hoping to get rid of extra books, Tupperware, glassware, appliances, etc, while making a few dollars at the same time. Seven or eight employees, plus a few friends and family members, joined the effort last Saturday morning. The sale went well, and any unsold items were donated to Newtown Congregational Church, which is organizing its own flea market on August 30.

Also joining the group sale event was Judd Baggett, publisher Scudder Smith’s youngest grandson, who set up a baked goods table during the tag sale. At the end of Saturday’s sale, the tag sale participants had sold some of their belongings or donated them to the church. The average take per person seemed to run between $20 and $35. When Judd Baggett checked his cash box he found nearly $50 in there. Next year the Bee crew will all be selling baked goods.

Ian Dane returned to work Monday morning, after having taken the previous week off to celebrate his honeymoon with new wife Stella. On July 19, Ian and Stella were married… twice. It turns out that the location of their wedding ceremony, Bish Bash Falls in Taconic State Park, was actually over the state line in Massachusetts but the justice of the peace who performed the ceremony was licensed in New York. So when the wedding party was returning from the ceremony to the lot where they had all parked –– in New York –– everyone paused midhike, just over the state line again, so that Ian and Stella could do their vows officially.

The sign on the bank next to Brooks Pharmacy on Queen Street has changed yet again. This time the First Union sign came down and up went a sign that said Wachovia (that’s wa-KO-vee-ah, as in “If you don’t get up off the sidewalk I’m going to Wachovia).

Stan Rajczewski wants garden buffs to know that the garden at his home at 21 Bennetts Bridge Road is at its peak right now and looks “really spectacular” –– as good as he has ever seen it, including when it was featured in The Bee a few years ago. Stan, who is a retired teacher, invites everyone to stop on weekdays and see it up close. (Stan has a big golden retriever named Ike who barks a lot but Stan assures me that he is gentle and won’t bite.) Stan wishes that other gardeners also would open their gardens to visitors, perhaps by issuing invitations through The Bee.

The new Kevin’s Community Center at Canaan House on the Fairfield Hills campus has a clock on the waiting room wall that sneezes — yes, really, it sneezes twice a day, according to Health Director Donna McCarthy. Apparently, for a while, no one really knew where the sneezes were coming from — in fact, when a sneeze was initially heard recently, Maureen Schaedler of the Health District and Heather Noga, an epidemiologist with the state Department of Health, both said “Bless you” to each other, followed by the comment, “I didn’t sneeze, did you?” Eventually they unraveled the mystery. The clock, of course, advertises an allergy medication.

With that I bid you all Gesundheit! and invite you to…

Read me again.