Volume 8, Number 48
Your Town, Your News
www.northhavencitizen.com
Friday, November 29, 2013
Yale student tours local leaf composting sites By Charles Kreutzkamp The North Haven Citizen
| (Submitted by Tim O’Brien)
‘Hunger Games’ artist reflects on success By Charles Kreutzkamp The North Haven Citizen
B a c k i n 19 79, Ti m O’Brien was just another high school freshman at North Haven. Now you can see his work on the shelves of book stores across America. O’Brien said his interest in art started early in life. “I had a love for my art classes at all the schools I attended, starting at Montowese with Anne Capeta to North Haven High School with Diana Blythe and Peggy Chapman.” Blythe, who O’Brien has remained in contact with and considers a personal friend, pushed O’Brien “to recognize that [his] talent should not be wasted,” O’Brien said, “I listened to her, obviously.” O’Brien is most well known today as the artist who designed the covers of The Hunger Games novels, which have surged in popularity as the films have been
released. O’Brien said that he did the covers for all of the series, and that his wife was the Art Director on the project. If you want to see some of O’Brien’s work, it is currently on display at the Lyme Academy College of Fine Arts. The public can see 75 of O’Brien’s artworks, at no charge, during his career retrospective, which runs until Jan.11, 2014. In addition to creating covers for The Hunger Games, O’Brien has designed covers for Time and National Geographic. He was invited by the U.S. Postal Service to create the 2006 stamps of Judy Garland and Hattie McDaniel. “It is hard work,” O’Brien said, “but always a thrill.” O’Brien, who described himself as “a proud Irish lad,” also serves “on the board of the Irish American See Hunger / Page 10
Yale Sophomore Lauren Ashbrook stands in front of a massive pile of leaves, which represents only three days of the peak collection season. | (Charles Kreutzkamp / The North Haven Citizen)
compost to landscapers and contractors, 1,000 CY is reserved for residents. Maturo showed Ashbrook and Larson the entire composting process from start to finish. First, leaves are collected by Public Works employees who use a wide variety of heavy machinery including backhoes and enormous vacuums that pulverize collected leaves into “almost a powder,” Larson said. Next, the collected leaves are then taken to a site to be composted. Last year, the site
was on top of the old landfill. This year, the much larger new site makes the process “much easier,” according to Public Works employee Wayne Tyrrell. At the current site, trucks dump leaves into mammoth dunes that are pressed together by backhoes. On seeing a pile of leaves as large as a small house, Ashbrook and Larson joked about leaping into the pile from the top of the nearby storage shed. See Leaves / Page 17 51713R
NHHS alum and artist Tim O’Brien in an art studio.
As of today, Nov 29, the Town of North Haven has finished its curbside bulk leaf collection. Most residents take advantage of the easy leaf removal, but few have ever seen what happens to the leaves afterwards. On Nov. 15, Yale University sophomore Lauren Ashbrook joined Eric Larson, manager of Yale’s Marsh Botanical Garden, and Public Works representative Mike Maturo to find out. Maturo hosted a tour of several sites used by the North Haven Department of Public Works for its leaf composting program, now in its second year. Ashbrook, who is majoring in ecology and evolutionary biology, is doing a school project for a course in biological anthropology. The project must focus on a free resource, like the compost now being offered at no cost to North Haven homeowners for residential use. Director of Public Works Lynn Sadosky explained, “Prior to 2009 composting the leaves cost the Town approximately $135,000 annually. This compost price was successfully reduced to…$71,500 in 2011. However, when the Town realized it could conduct this effort in house... it commenced with its own program, filed for permits on the landfill site and started our efforts in 2012 – and very successfully, I might add.” In addition to saving money, the project also offers a new service for North Havenites: although the town auctions 5,000 cubic yards of
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