Christian Allyn is proud to call North Canaan home. He sits on the board of selectmen and owns a local business that eradicates invasive plants in the Northwest Corner of Connecticut. He’s a member of the Friends of Beckley Furnace, which works to preserve and research the historic industrial monument. He wants his town and its residents to thrive.
It was a leap of faith. That’s how Jeff Mousseau describes the decision he and partner Paul Ricciardi made to sell their Hudson, N.Y., home and purchase the Ancram Opera House, where they now live upstairs and run a nonprofit theater company below.
Main Street in America: it is a place and a state of mind. But what happens when it’s neither? Tiny Windsor, Mass., a windblown Berkshire hilltown of just under 900 people, has no such center of community life. When the post office closed in 2010, the town lost its one unlikely gathering spot and site of neighborly exchange.
