Mother Nature gave us a serious jolt on Saturday, October 29, one that we will long remember. Roads were quickly clogged with wet snow, making motorists concerned over the early absence of plow trucks. All night long trees cracked under the weight of the show, leaving a shower of branches and trees covering the landscape in the morning. And mixed in with all the clutter were wires †some electric, some cable, and some phone lines †leaving Connecticut and other parts of the East without power. In Newtown, more than 90 percent of the community lost electrical service.

Across the street from the offices of The Bee Publishing Company, wires of every kind were tangled in broken branches and fallen trees, leaving our business office and our printing facility without power. Each day following we looked for the power company to get us back in business, but that did not happen until 4 pm on Wednesday, November 2. Even then we could not receive emails.

A call went out to all employees, “We have power,” and within the hour our staff was composing ads, editing last-minute articles and preparing the pages for the press. Our pressroom crew worked well into the night and the November 4 issue of Antiques and The Arts Weekly left Newtown on Thursday, heading for Wallingford, Conn., for mail distribution. The web edition was up on Thursday, available to everyone, in order to promote the weekend of auctions and antiques shows.

While all of the auctions and shows were listed on our website most of the week, the printed edition missed its Tuesday deadline for the first time since 1976.

We apologize for the delay and inconvenience it may have caused both our readers and advertisers, but we have done our best to get our subscribers and advertisers a paper. Lots of extra work, dedication and heart went into this issue. Please enjoy.

⁒. Scudder Smith, Publisher/Editor