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| Arlington Woods Danbury CT |
New book to benefit museum
The Danbury Museum & Historical Society Authority has announced the release of "Danbury's Third Century: From Urban Status to Tricentennial."
Proceeds from sales of the book, written by Herbert Janick, emeritus professor at Western Connecticut State University, and William Devlin, a graduate of WCSU and author of "We Crowned Them All: An Illustrated History of Danbury," will benefit the museum.
It is $20 in hardcover, $14 in paperback. The museum is at 43 Main St.
Responders offered retreat
A free two-day retreat for veterans and emergency responders who suffer from the pain and stress of traumatic experiences will be offered Jan. 15 and 16 at the Community of the Cross Chapel, 7 Madison Ave.
The sessions will run from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. and will include free meals. Through talks, prayer and spiritual healing, the retreat is intended to bring Christ's healing grace into the physical, emotional, psychological and spiritual pain of trauma.
The retreat will be led by the Rev. Nigel Mumford, who has offered similar programs and retreats for combat veterans at Christ the King Spiritual Life Center in Greenwich, N.Y., and for emergency responders in various parts of the country.
Staff from the Christian Counseling Center of Greater Danbury will facilitate the program. For information and to register, call the center at 203-775-3282.
Children can learn flight basics
Children in grades three to five can learn how airplanes stay in the sky on Jan. 15 from 4:30 to 5:30 p.m. at Danbury Library, 170 Main St.
Attendees will learn a little of the physics of flight and then do some hands-on experiments making hoop gliders.
Registration is required for the cooperative engineering class. Call 203-797-4528.
Kids invited to discuss books
Students in grades four to six are invited to the Danbury Junior Library Nutmeg Bookdiscussions, to enjoy refreshments and discuss some of the books nominated for the 2014 Connecticut Nutmeg Children's Book Award.
On Jan. 13 from 5:45 to 6:45 p.m., the featured book will be "The Fingertips of Duncan Dorfman," by Meg Wolitzer.
On Feb. 10, "The Candymakers," by Wendy Mass, will be the topic.
Participants are asked to read as many of the nominated stories as they can and vote for their favorite in April.
Registration ends Jan. 12 at 10 p.m.; call 203-797-4528. The first 20 Danbury residents to sign up will receive a free copy of the book to keep when they promise to attend the discussion.
The books will be available one month in advance, courtesy of the Friends of the Danbury Library.
Students can study in Spain
Western Connecticut State University will present information about summer study abroad opportunities in Spain on Jan. 21 and 22 at 12:15 p.m. in Warner Hall on the university's midtown campus, off White Street.
The session is fre.
The program allows students to earn six credits in four weeks while being completely immersed in Spanish language and culture. Classes fulfill general education and language requirements.
For more information, email bakhtiarg@wcsu.edu or visit www.wcsu.edu/spain/.
Birth
KELLEY -- twin sons, Griffin Peter and Liam Patrick, were born to Brian M. and Shay Green Kelley of Bethel, Oct. 29, 2013, in Danbury Hospital.
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| Colin with Four Seasons Limousine in Danbury CT |
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| Rosebeth Holliday with Fazzone and Harrison in Sherman CT |
New women's prison to be built in Danbury
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After an outcry arose over a plan to move more than 1,300 prisoners from the only women's federal lockup in the Northeast, the U.S. Bureau of Prisons now plans to return 400 women to the Federal Correctional Institution in Danbury.
But their return will have to wait about 18 months while the existing facility is transformed to hold nearly 1,000 men, and a new prison for women is built. The work is expected to cost from $8 million to $10 million.
U.S. Sens. Richard Blumenthal and Chris Murphy, in a conference call with reporters late Monday afternoon, said they have been assured that minimum- and low-security women prisoners from the Northeast will be housed in the prison and a satellite camp. About 200 low-security inmates will stay in the camp near the men's facility and another 200 in a new minimum-security building on Pembroke Road next to the main prison.
Until then, the women will be sent to whatever facilities have room, including 100 regional prisoners who will be housed in a Brooklyn, N.Y., facility.
A new detention facility in Alabama may take a majority of the women and keep those who are not from the Northeast for the remainder of their sentences.
"Every woman from the Northeast will have a bed," Blumenthal said, adding non-U.S. citizens may be housed there if room is available.
"Being sentenced to federal prison is punishment enough," Murphy said. "These women shouldn't be punished again by being removed from their families. These women clearly did something wrong. But their kids didn't. Their families didn't."
In July, the Bureau of Prisons announced the plans to turn the facility into a low-security men's prison to ease overcrowding in the federal prison system. The proposed change led to an outcry over the bureau's plans to move many of the inmates to a new facility in Aliceville, Ala., and put more than 1,000 miles between inmates from the Northeast and their families.
Last month, 12 chief judges from federal court districts in the Northeast wrote to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder urging him to reconsider the plan, citing the emotional impact of separating mothers and their children. The judges said 59 percent of the women housed in FCI Danbury have children under 21.
"That's wonderful news," said Beatrice Codianni, who completed a 15-year sentence in 2008 on a racketeering charge at the prison and its satellite camp. "It's very difficult to be separated from your family for a mistake you made, but to further penalize a woman by sending her 1,000 miles away, it is very, very heartbreaking."
Piper Kerman, author of "Orange is the New Black," a memoir about her experiences during her 13-month stint at FCI Danbury, which Netflix turned into a hit television series, asked if the fraction of prison beds could accommodate those Northeast women already in the system, as well as those who will enter in the future.
"Unless the BOP knows that suddenly we're going to start incarcerating far, far fewer women -- which would be great -- you know, that's a huge drop in the ability of the Bureau of Prisons to appropriately house women who come from the Northeast," she said.
Barbara Fair, a New Haven community activist, had been outspoken against the proposed change.
"I'm just pleased we had a lot of support on this," Fair said Monday. "We just want families to be close to their homes. I'm just happy that they're reconsidering the impact on children and families members. That's all it was about for us."
Codianni her proximity to her family in New Haven was beneficial during her incarceration in Danbury, which began when one of her sons was 16.
"He dropped out of school, but then I talked to him and convinced him to get back in school," she said.
The other communication options -- letters and phone calls -- hardly measured up to the experience of face-to-face reunions.
"Just to be able to sit there ... just physically seeing family, you actually feel close to them," she said.
Codianni, a one-time gang leader who is managing editor of Reentry Central, a website dedicated to news of inmates re-entering society, pointed to the susceptibility of young teens to fall in with gangs when they lose their connection to their mothers.
"That's why most kids join because it gives them a sense of family but it's not, and you're either going to go to prison or you're going to get killed," she said.
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