I hope Hannah Cruz knows how proud of her Newtown is. Hannah didn’t pick up the Tony Award for Best Performance by an Actress in a Featured Role in a Musical during the awards ceremony last Sunday night — but we did get to see her in the fabulous opening number, sharing time with P!nk and Lea Michele! Truly, I and many others also believe this is not the last we will be hearing from Hannah. More nominations and awards are in her future. Your dreams are coming true, Hannah. I hope you and your BFF’s prediction sheets were close last weekend, and you stay obsessed with Broadway forever.

Congratulations this week to Friends of Newtown Seniors (FONS), whose paper shredding event last Saturday was so overwhelmingly successful, volunteers needed to start turning people away more than an hour before the event ended. Vehicles were lined up in the parking lot behind Edmond Town Hall well before the 9 o’clock opening, and the shredding truck worked steadily for the next three hours.

I know at least one person couldn’t stay in line at the beginning of the event, but when she went back to try to catch the tail end of the fundraiser, she was told she and many others could not have their papers shredded. The event was so busy, the shredding truck itself was running out of space! Those who were in line by 11 were reportedly allowed to stay in line, but anyone who arrived later was turned away because the volunteers and the company with the on-site shredding truck could not handle the additional material. Well done FONS and Newtown Savings Bank; the latter was the sponsor of the fundraiser.

I heard from one more person this week with new details about the Way We Were photo of May 29, and this time it was one of the ladies in the photo who reached out. Rebecca Smith — who now lives well out of town but clearly still keeps in touch via her former hometown newspaper — told me she and the others in that photo were receiving a proclamation from First Selectman Jack Rosenthal in honor of National Junior Women’s Club Week.

By this time next week our local high school senior Nighthawks will have graduated, and the other three NHS classes will be on break. The lower schools will also be on summer break, as will more of the schools around the region. Bruce the Spruce has been gearing up for summer for about a week now, as evidenced by this photo. Bruce the Summer Vacation Spruce is packed and ready to hit the beach, go fishing, and even visit California and maybe stop in to see our West Coast counterparts at The Sacramento Bee. Life is good for Bruce, clearly. I just hope he remembers to drop a postcard from the road.

They say squirrels have great memories. That explains why they’re able to rely on their little brains to remember where they’ve buried or hidden stockpiles of nuts and then easily return to them days and even weeks later for nourishment during the winter. If you felt like you opened last week’s paper and had returned to same challenge offered a week earlier, your brain was not playing a trick on you. A glitch in our Production department meant the May 29 crossword was used for a second time last week. I’d say Thank You to the eagle-eyed readers who were the first to point that out, but if I mix those metaphors I start thinking about eagles swooping down to make a quick snack of a squirrel, so I’ll just say Thank You readers.

Kevin Corey may be the most patriotic person in town right now. Kevin has been showing his America 250 pride for weeks, if not months. Last Friday afternoon I caught up with him at the community center, where he made a donation on behalf of Newtown Lions to the local Salvation Army chapter (see page A-10 in this week's paper or check under Features after June 16, when the related story will be published online). Kevin was up to six thematic rubber bracelets on his right wrist. He also had a few very handsome cowbells decorated with the America 250 theme, which Jacqueline Watson and Alexa Griffin happily used as photo props to announce the approaching Christmas in July bell ringing campaign.

Kevin had just been to Newtown Senior Center, where he shared a display of miniature flags with varying designs, also celebrating the approaching Semiquincentennial. This past Monday afternoon he then surprised us with a visit to 5 Church Hill Road. Kevin arrived wearing a very stylish America 250 necktie and bearing another display of those miniature flags, two of the America 250 cowbells, and a very handsome Semiquincentennial duck. We are very thankful for the goodies, which this office had been sorely missing until now.

Sunday is Flag Day. A note this week from American Flags Express not only reminded us of the approaching holiday, it encouraged us to remember why 13 alternating red and white stripes still matter. Flag Day began on June 14, 1777, when the Second Continental Congress passed the Flag Resolution. As the folks at Flags Express noted, “In the middle of a revolution — with the outcome of the war still far from certain — the young nation paused to declare what its banner would be: thirteen alternating red and white stripes, with thirteen white stars on a field of blue, ‘representing a new constellation.’

“The founders weren’t just designing a flag,” the note continued. “They were imagining a country that didn’t yet fully exist — a new light among the nations. As the United States grew, so did the flag, gaining a star for every new state while the original thirteen stripes remained a lasting tribute to the courage of those who started it all. Today, fifty stars shine for fifty states, still united under one banner.” While Flag Day is a national holiday, it is not a federal holiday. President Woodrow Wilson issued a proclamation officially establishing June 14 as Flag Day in 1916, and President Harry S. Truman signed an Act of Congress designating the date as National Flag Day in 1949, but the post office still delivers mail and banks remain open. “That’s part of its quiet charm,” the folks at Flags Express say, and I agree with them. Flag Day is a day we observe “not because we have to, but because we want to.”

Happy Semiquincentennial Flag Day, my friends. If nothing else, please reflect upon the colors of our country’s banner on Sunday: red for courage and sacrifice, white for hope and purity of purpose, and blue for vigilance and justice. Thank you to those at Flags Express — based in Butler, Wisc., just 33 miles from the schoolhouse where 19-year-old schoolteacher Bernard J. Cigrand began his lifelong crusade to celebrate and educate others about his country’s flag, sparking what many believe to be the celebration of Flag Day — for sharing all of this with us.

I’m going to go find a window, make faces at some squirrels, and see if they remember me from last week. I’ll also be looking toward Main Street and the amazing landmark we have in the middle of the road there, currently flying the majestic 20- by 30-foot summer flag. I hope you’ll take time to think about our country’s flag this weekend, and then remember to come back next week, when it will be time to … read me again.