By David Fortier 

Come Sunday morning, the weather will have cooled considerably, the rains will have ended—in time for Halloween, leaves will have come down but not all of them, and we will be two days away from the municipal elections. It’s an off-year and, by most accounts, that means without the presidential and house and senate candidates on the ballot, some people will stay home. For my part, I hope this year more people will turn out, and of course, by this, I mean beginning this year more and more people will turn out for all our elections every year. The more people, the better. Polls are open 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Nov. 2. Here’s a link to the voter registration lookup page. Click here. 

At TBE we will have done our best to get our readers information on the candidates, along with a few other stories, one of which was trashed on Facebook, the one I wrote, which made me smile. Not even worthy of Journalism 101, the commenter wrote. Bottom line: more people are reading us, getting information that they would not have without us, and we are all raising the bar for what we can expect when it comes to local journalism. As we grow, from a volunteer operation to a going concern, our readers will be getting more and more information about issues, subjects and topics that are important to them and the life of our community. And we will all be better for it. 

And, of course, all this transpires in regular time, ordinary time, so to speak, with the end of October bringing Halloween. On Friday night, as Mary and I headed down Goodwin St. to the annual NAACP Freedom Dinner at Doubletree, we listened to the kids gathered over at St. Joseph Church for festivities—and passed a group of three kids, swinging pails for their candy haul heading over to join the party. (Later on Sunday, Mary and I will have spent some time with the grandbabies and their parents. Grandbabies will be Oscar the Grouch and a chicken, respectively. Parents will be Elmo and the Cookie Monster and eggs, respectively. You can match them with their offspring.) 

At the Freedom Dinner, we heard Jay Williams deliver a powerful message, and as part of the evening, clapped along at local educator Latania Farrell and NAACP chapter president Eric Clemons come together to perform a wonderful duet, to Marvin Gaye’s “What’ Going On.” Regarding the latter, when the theater opens up at Memorial Boulevard, I would pay to hear them sing together again. Regarding the former, Williams, the current executive director of the Hartford Foundation for Giving who had been part of the Obama administration, took on a number of issues, from the foundation’s efforts to partner with organizations throughout the state to meet people where they are and get them to deal with everything from hunger to juvenile justice, to critical race theory and its scapegoating.  

Also, at the dinner, the organization honored local businessman and five times chapter president, who stepped down recently, Lexie Mangum. For 40 years, he has run his barbershop, which served as a gathering place, a therapist’s office and a center of advice to any number of people, young and old, and a succession of city officials. 

And that is just one night in Bristol.  

For your homework this week, the only thing that matters—get out and vote! (That is if you haven’t taken advantage of mail in voting and got yourself an absentee ballot.)  Remember, this is a municipal election year, and it includes aside from the mayor and city council, the Board of Ed, city treasurer and board of assessment appeals. Also, on the ballot are charter revision issues. Click here for a copy of the ballot to review prior to the election.

Fun stuff: Bristol’s Brianna Parker, the national Boys and Girls Club Youth of the Year, showed up at the Saturday night World Series game in Atlanta, where she crossed the field and placed the game ball on the mound. The organization flew her down there, she said it was pretty cool down there, and donned a blue Boys and Girls Club jacket for her appearance. 

And I have mentioned this once before but Bristol native Mike Reiss has a new podcast, or relatively new one, in which he discusses his world-wide travels with his wife, and if he doesn’t make you laugh, I don’t know what will. Click here. 

Have a good week! 

“Come Sunday morning” is intended to be a weekly review, a recounting of the past week and an anticipation of week to come. Among its features will be reviews of old and new books, sharing of favorite podcasts, some family news, Bristol events and happenings and issues surrounding education, work and community journalism. He can be reached at dfortier@bristoledition.org.