The Year Halloween Was Scared Away

No one expected a hobgoblin frightful enough to scare away Halloween itself. But on Monday morning the town’s electronic infrastructure took on the look of a serpent-headed Medusa, a tangle of flora and wires, snapping and hissing at normality. Like so many businesses in Newtown, The Bee’s offices on Church Hill Road sat cold and inert — an unnerving sight for those of us accustomed to the hum of its daily enterprise and technology. With so many of Newtown’s homes and businesses quite literally powerless, and with lingering hazards of snow, ice, and wires along the waysides, Halloween, like Labor Day, retreated down the calendar.

Because of the severity of the damage done to the region’s power grid over the weekend, The Newtown Bee reported to the community this week under unprecedented adverse conditions. We delivered the news through the agency of cellphones, laptops, tenuous wi-fi hotspots, and a small but extremely serviceable camper towed to a live electrical connection behind the Sandy Hook firehouse. We did what we could with the meager resources we had, which is what everyone else we met this week was doing. It was difficult. It was frustrating. It will be a week we shall recount when we are asked someday about our most gratifying and memorable experiences as community journalists. The story will be about a town and its people making do the year Halloween was scared away.