rags

Blessings Are Not Just for the Ones Who Kneel.....

2009-01-05T13:25:11Z

As I was sitting down to review and preview this week's municipal meetings in Norwich, I came across this and had to catch my breath as U2 has always been a personal favorite. They frustrate and invigorate me, often at the same time and just as often by design. Same can be said, sort of, about life as a thorn in The Rose of New England.

The first City Council meeting of this year happens tonight at 7:30 and it's a full agenda (and perhaps that's an understatement) featuring (I don't know what other word to use) a proposal to eliminate the zoning regulation that allows densely developed age-restricted housing complexes. You remember the fallout from the unintended consequences of this regulation, right? The state hearing no one from the City government attended and so the residents of Scotland and Hansen Roads found themselves facing 185 condominiums on 60 acres whose approval was later withheld by two city agencies, with the City Council then lobbying the same state committee to change its decision, all of which now has the developer threatening lawsuits.

There's also a LOT of economic development incentives on the agenda (a residue of the now-defunct Administrative, Planning and Economic Development Committee, APED) with sponsorship by, but hopefully not limited to, Alderman Robert Zarnetske and now-former Alderman (and State Representative) Christopher Coutu (told you, 'twin sons of different mothers' and you laughed) but are, in a much broader sense proposals and suggestions, developed, mid-wifed and moved along by Rose City Renaissance ("Bring Back the Bustle" indeed! Van McCoy would be so proud. What? Oh, Bustle. Sorry).

There's an informational session at seven (don't look for it on the city's website, Andy D and others, it's not there despite the promises that the informational sessions will be posted) to brief the aldermen on the projected costs and benefits of the incentives (there's NO record kept or made of these sessions so if you go, be sure to take and make your own notes as we have very selective memories around here. I still have my chaps for that pony ride for my birthday and we all know how that didn't work out...).

Later in the evening's agenda, as Resolution #3, not an economic development issue but, at least in my mind, one of the primary reasons for the existence of any government at any level, the City Council will have an opportunity to revisit an item from this past fall. Thanks to its sponsor, the Mayor, the aldermen can be part of an effort to more than make a difference, but to be the difference. (Let's hear it for second chances!)

Also Monday, but early (can you say 8 AM? I knew you could) is a meeting of the Executive Committee (doesn't seem to include anyone from Norwich at the moment) of the Southeastern Connecticut Council of Governments, SCCOG, in the Norwich Business Park at 5 Connecticut Avenue. I couldn't find the agenda for the meeting, but, in case there's a pop quiz, here are the minutes of their regular meeting of December 17th at the Norwich Inn and Spa. I think you'll find a large amount of quiet persuasion across a broad spectrum of issues when you read them. I look forward to reading minutes of their succeeding meetings to see how much success crowns their efforts. And on Friday, at 1 PM, at 5 Connecticut Avenue there will be a special meeting of SCCOG that will include Senator Christopher Dodd. I suspect that meeting will be in the local newspapers on Saturday, regardless of outcomes or desired outcomes.

And also on Monday, at 5:15 in Gales Ferry (1649 Route 12 to be exact), is a meeting of the Southeastern Connecticut Water Authority (SCWA). Their website seems to be a more modern version of haiku and for those who admire brevity, is quite an object of devotion. I'm being a tad snarky, because their web presence doesn't do justice to the importance of their mission and needs to.

Not a municipal meeting, but a lot of fun if you didn't get to see it in person, is Tuesday at 4 PM on Comcast Public Access, the Norwich Winter Festival Parade. It's not as cold watching it on television as it was in December--but the fun still comes through. Take it easy on the eggnog, though, okay?

Thursday night at seven, the Inlands Wetlands, Water Courses and Conservation Commission meets at 23 Union Street. Here's their minutes from December 2008, when they met elsewhere.

Actually, Thursday is the day this week for meetings to include at 5:15 PM (another quarter hour start time; how I love those!) of the Mohegan Park Improvement & Development Advisory in Room 210 of City Hall. Here's their November 2008 meeting minutes. But wait! There's more....

The Uncas Health District meets at 6 PM at 372 West Main Street. They have an extremely informative website, imho, and are another excellent example of neighbors working to improve all of our lives because they know we need the help.
Also Thursday are meetings of (both) the Eastern CT Regional Tourism District and its Executive Committee (which seems to be reluctant to abandon its old name, judging from the website), listed as happening at 9 AM at 32 Huntington Street as well a 9 AM Project LEARN Board of Directors meeting in Old Lyme. Unfortunately, for Curious George and me, his friend and enabler, the Norwich municipal website returns the same message on all three meetings which gives me a sad heart and should suggest to those who are members of these agencies that a bit more proactivity is an excellent idea.

"Neon heart day-glow eyes. A city lit by fireflies. They're advertising in the skies, For people like us. Oh, you look so beautiful tonight, In the city of blinding lights." Enjoy the view. See you at something.

Some Assembly Required

2009-01-04T13:27:41Z

Came across on one of the low-power TV stations the other day (what happens to them, I wonder, next month when we transition to digital television) a program that didn't exist thirty years ago in the American television landscape, the infomercial.

The same Federal government who decided a packet of ketchup in a kid's school lunch was actually a vegetable shifted the review function of the Federal Communications Commission, the FCC (the same people who brought us Janet Jackson's wardrobe malfunction and a half-million dollar fine for indecency but has NO problems with the Victoria's Secret TV specials) and allowed the creation of the long-form commercials we see on a daily basis, sometimes for hours at a time, on any number of broadcast and cable video outlets.

This one wasn't for a sweeper, or a mini-blender or those rags made in Germany that a guy with a wire in his ear and a bad Brit accent hawks on-camera all the while telling us at home, 'we can't do this all day', but rather it was aimed at parents whose children, left to their own devices in school and at home, have gone off the rails. It's something called The Total Transformation and seems to have as many imitators, detractors and variants as it does adherents. A quick Google search turned up 6,020,000 mentions in less than a quarter of a second. It seems how-to kid-rearing is the aluminum siding boom of the Sixties all over again.

My wife and I have two children, now both adults though their father tends to see them too often as children, still. Patrick is twenty-six and Michelle is twenty-one. My wife, saddled with a lump of skin with a smile as a husband, overcame a relocation from Germany to Norwich, Connecticut when the children were both single-digit in age, to raise two pretty wonderful human beings. (I'm sure your children are marvelous as well; they're just NOT my kids-forgive my bias). She didn't spend a lot of time worrying about their abilities to self-actualize or creating meaningful structure in their development. She and I, much like our parents before us, relied a lot on 'does this make sense?' when doing for our kids.

I don't recall us going to the library to check out books (owner's manuals?) or joining parenting circles for helpful self-criticism ('what does Comrade Daddy think little Susie wanted?') and while I bought a copy of Dr. Benjamin Spock's Baby and Childcare (I always loved his assurance that 'you know more than you think you do'), my wife with a straight-face would ask me how I thought a Vulcan on a starship could help raise an Earth child. (Proving that marrying me wasn't the only time she demonstrated her sense of humor). Today, there are programs like The Teen Toolkit and countless others that seem to be all checklists and recipes. Unpack and add child, simmer and season to taste.

Compare those approaches and their 'how does that make you feel?' line of inquiry to the phrases our folks used--'because I said so', 'wait until your father gets home' or (my personal favorite) 'do NOT make me come back there!' and see where you are. I don't remember the walls of my bedroom, or of any of my classrooms, being painted in soothing tones--I don't even remember having my own bedroom and yet here we all are, practically done with the first decade of the 21st Century, still wandering in the desert. What was that Moses said about 'take two tablets and call Him in the morning'?

The infomercial with James Lehman teaches, he says, your child to 'listen louder' which is a concept that, I suspect, means many things to many people. I watched in the vain hope that the program would transition from innumerable parental couples with baffled befuddlement as facial expressions (I'm not sure if I saw anything other than white people on the screen chatting with 'James' (I adore the informality of infomercials) for all the time I watched and now that I think about that, I wonder why) and explain what this particular flavor of child-rearing was and did.

Instead, I kept being told if I ordered right now, I could have the program risk-free for thirty days (risk to whom?) and NOT pay for shipping and handling ('a $19.95 value'). Yeah, I, too, have heard the old saw about 'you have to pass a test to get a driver's license', when someone suggests that parenting is as much art as it is skill, and maybe that's right-I don't know. I do know that I wouldn't want to be a child again on a bet. We now have more metal detectors in our elementary and middle schools than we do in our airports. We have an epidemic of violence among our teenagers, of all races, that is killing more of them than all the years of hostilities in Iraq and Afghanistan, combined-and look out the window: no demonstations, no protests. Just grieving parents- they dance alone.

And all we can do is shrug and reach for the phone, clutching our credit cards, and hoping there's an operator standing by. It takes a village to raise a child we told one another a decade ago-and we forgot that it takes parents, two parents if the children are lucky, to do the heavy lifting. "I am a child, I'll last a while. You can't conceive of the pleasure in my smile. You hold my hand, rough up my hair. It's lots of fun to have you there."

Aretha Franklin Meets Franklin Square

2009-01-03T12:31:39Z

There was a very heartening small story (a news in brief-or boxers, your call) in Thursday's edition of The Day on a small-scale outreach this afternoon at the St Vincent de Paul Place soup kitchen on Main Street in Norwich. On the first Saturday of each month, Mayor Ben Lathrop will lead a team of city officials, family and friends to serve lunch at the St. Vincent de Paul Place soup kitchen. Today, the Mayor and members of his family along with Aldermen William Nash and Mark Bettencourt, the City Council Executive Assistant Evelyn Bessette and City Manager Alan Bergren, among others, will lift ladles and soupcons, starting at 11:30 a.m. through 1 p.m.

Mayor Lathrop cited a November New York Times story that chronicled a surge in demand at soup kitchens and food pantries and the need for volunteers to meet the need. The one I've shared is a similar story from the year previous. Actually the NY Times has been covering Hunger in America on a regular basis for more than ten years and doing more stories about it in Connecticut than any and/or all CT based newspapers combined. This is probably the story the Mayor is talking about. In return, The Day, on its editorial page last week, reported with relief, that the NY Times Corporation was finally selling its stock in the Boston Red Sox. Good to see one of our windows on the world has its head screwed on right in terms of reportorial responsibilities.

Times are tough and it's a marvelous way to begin the New Year with an act of selfless charity that reaches across socio-economic boundaries (with apologies to Bill Withers' "Lean on Me") on behalf of all of us in the Rose City to include those who type into the ether. And I applaud the Mayor who was quoted as saying, “We can, and will, help and do it with respect.”

And perhaps while he and the two aldermen have a moment in the course of what will prove, I'm sure, to be a very busy and respectful afternoon, the Mayor will listen to his council colleagues explain their decision at the 6 October 2008 City Council meeting (the Mayor was absent) on a request by the Southeastern Connecticut Council of Government’s Committee on Homelessness for emergency financial aid ($3000) to the New London Hospitality Center (a year-round shelter that serves the homeless) so the Center could continue to provide emergency shelter services. Maybe Monday evening's revisiting of the issue will be different, though in what respect remains to be seen. "While money doesn't talk, it swears/Obscenity, who really cares?."

Hey, Mister, Have You Ever Seen "Pictures of Lily"?

2009-01-02T13:22:35Z

Came across an interesting feature (where else?) on line "More than 100 Unforgettable Pin-Ups" that proving no one, to include the authors, actually reads anything any more, proceeded to be a ranking of the Top 50 memorable pin-ups. Perhaps Adult Attention Deficit Disorder is now so widespread, few noticed. (And because I did, I wonder, does that mean I Am Legend? What was the question, again? Perhaps not, sadly.)

The usual suspects were there--Shakira (whose appeal musically and otherwise has always eluded me), Tila Tequila (familiar with the beverage from a liberal college education-you want fries with that? Fogey that I am, no idea as to the person), Loni Anderson (the reason American males under the age of twenty-five watched W-K-R-P in the middle seventies; sorry, Dr. Johnny Fever), Lita Ford (who thought she, not Joan Jett, was the reason for The Runaways; as The Only Band That Matters sang, 'That's a Wrong 'em, Boyo'), Anna Kournikova (so much for athletic ability, eh?), and others about whom I either know absolutely nothing or far too much.

In and between are classics such as Rita Hayworth and Marilyn Monroe that, if nothing else, help underscore how often we men, for all of our visually stimulated prowess (I love psycho-babble) have become impoverished in the imagination department as the years have past. People who have legitimate concerns about posters (mostly of women as that's what I found) as objectifying (and thus dehumanizing) women would also note those of us who look or who read the magazines ''for the articles" and are very careful in how we remove the staples) have become lazier as the years have raced by.

The attractiveness of concealment, the coquetry of the flirtatious glance, the approximation of courtship are all bygones and past tenses here in the Brave New World. C'mon Joe, ya wanna give it a go? ' We all live happily ever after for the next forty-five minutes and sales of scotch tape sky-rocket.

Spare Parts and New Starts

2009-01-01T14:12:19Z

There's something about a blank sheet of paper, newly-fallen snow that no one has yet walked on, that 'new car' smell and the feel of a newborn's skin on your fingers. And all of those feelings add up today as we begin a(nother) New Year.

We had no way of knowing this time last year how the year would play out and perhaps it's just as well we didn't know what we didn't know. Same is true again, of course, and as always so I suspect all we can do is all we can do and luck and love will have to help.

In 2008 we may have all surprised ourselves by our choice for President (I wasn't surprised but was impatient. I kept wondering what took me so long) and national and state representatives. Here in Connecticut, the Land of Steady Habits, as is probably true for where you live, we're looking at budget deficits and belt-tightening and every other cliche we can come up with for a culture that has lived beyond its means.

Norwich, Connecticut, where I live is 350 years old and I'm not sure those of us from here, and those of us who live here, are quite done being here. Yet. And while the first 350 years are probably pretty important (our city historian, Dale Plummer just blanched as he read that line, I fear), it's what we do as the next 350 start that I hope we spend more than a minute contemplating and planning.

In 2009, I believe we should promise one another to live beyond our dreams. What would happen if the notion of 'that's the best I can do' became the baseline for my efforts, in my family, in my job, in my city? If each of us worked to bring out the best and to be the best? I'm not sure we'd succeed all the time, or even half the time--and we wouldn't have to. Succeeding just once at raising the standard of excellence would set a new benchmark for our tomorrow and for every day after that.

We spent a lot of 2008 here in Norwich waiting for Godot, or someone named condo (I'm not sure anymore if they're related) and since this was a variation of what we've always done, the only ones surprised we weren't farther along seemed to be ourselves. If we keep doing what we've always done, we'll always get what we've always gotten. So much for new beginnings, eh? Might I suggest, and this would work where you live, too, we have a little less meaning well and a little more doing well.

Hope is a wonderful thing and it's right up there with Faith and Charity (I never dated the triplets but I was told they were a lot of fun), but for getting things, done, I recommend a plan and hope is NOT a plan. Here in Norwich, we'll elect a Mayor and six alderpersons to our City Council. There's already some talk in the local papers as to who will run and who will not run (and why) and none of that matters to me at all.

In the marketplace of ideas, you must be present to win and right now, on this, the first day of the new year, one person who has announced he's running for Mayor has a blueprint for economic development. I urge you to read it, and look hard at it and look as hard at the proposals that everyone else who wishes to be the next Norwich Mayor puts on the table.

The Rose City has, for too long, been living on second chances and waiting for 'next time'. At some point, those second chances become last, and then lost, opportunities. As for next time. If not now, then when? If not us, then who? Me4Z4mayor. U2?

Looking Back and Forward

2008-12-31T14:11:04Z

I finally, eventually my wife noted, got to the point in the holiday festivities where I read the Christmas cards we received (and exchanged) with others. I'm very proud of myself--some years I've failed to do this entirely and my wife has spent until close to Presidents Day glaring at me (I always blame Washington and she always blames me so we're even).

Again this year, as a continuation of the 'Gee, You are an Obliviot' portion of the season, I not only sent no one any cards, I have no idea what the card looked like that my wife sent on our behalf to people who have long since figured out that they know at least one boorish moron, me. I am fortunate to be married to a person with a marvelous set of skills and talents as well as a nearly terminal case of love for feeling impaired cretins. And yes, many people I know do believe I could have stopped the previous sentence after the sixth word and been entirely correct.

It was fun to see one of my sister's two daughters--had their photo not been in Jill and Joe's card, I would have had no idea who they were and would have assumed they were friends, perhaps, of my daughter, Michelle. Upon further thought, I realized that I would have difficulties identifying Joe and not fare much better picking out Jill. Perhaps that could be a New Year's resolution: NOT needing a DNA match to know what my five siblings look like.

We had a card from former neighbors who now live near New London, Wisconsin (how amazing is that I wonder) whose two children were much smaller when they lived here almost a decade ago and whose younger of the two, their son, now stands, at fourteen, head and shoulders over his older sister, his mother and his Dad. Welcome to the club, David. I, too, spend a lot of time looking up when my son comes to visit.

We had a nice note from a former boss and his family who has gone on to much bigger and better things, than knowing me, and whose wife, I suspect, runs his household the way my wife manages ours. He has a better personality than I do (we have a coffee table with a better personality than I have) so it's more a 'team effort' than in our house and I suspect he never responds to someone thanking him for a Christmas card, as I have annually, by saying 'you're welcome. Who are you?'

I used to get angry at Christmas, not at the Savior (I'm crazy; not stupid) and smelled hypocrisy in every greeting card and fruitcake and holiday cookie--after all, I reasoned (or thought I did) many of these came from people who, the rest of the year would cross the street rather than say hello to me as we passed. But as I've rusted (not mellowed) I've started to see a kind gesture of remembrance as just that and have stopped answering with a (rude) gesture of my own.

It's not that life is too short, though I found out this year in my own extended family, that is certainly the case--but because life is too important to not enjoy ALL of it, the hopes and the hype, the dreams and the dread. All of those make our lives singular and remarkable within our families, our places of work, our neighborhoods, our cities and towns, and these United States (with my apologies to Our Town). The trials and travails of 2009 will be here in a matter of hours, and in some spots on this orb, that year has already begun, so forgive me if I encourage you to linger for a moment in the Here and Now, not to look at where we were this time last year and where we are today, but to simply celebrate today and tonight for what it is and we are. After all, it's the same procedure as every year, James. Hurrah! Wir leben noch.

Art for Art's Sake

2008-12-30T14:39:28Z

I worked for many years in broadcast radio with a colleague with whom I shared the same first name. When he went on vacation, I used to pull his board shift and sit in for him (much to the consternation of many of his listeners, based on the notes he'd get upon his return). We took to calling one another 'the other bill' or TOB for short, when referring to one another on the air.

The Other Bill, as I called him, was a great fan of adult-contemporary music, at a time when Mike Joseph was honing the "Hot Hits" format to a formula to build the perfect beast. I was always a bit more umm, less hit-driven (I'm not sure what the statute of limitations on some offenses is and I'm loath to find out by mentioning something that hasn't yet lapsed) and far more intrigued by folks pushing the envelope.

That I often heard people refer to what I did on the air as "diving for dopers" was, to my mind, their problem and certainly not mine. Prejudice is a terrible thing. That I was the only person, to my knowledge, on the staff whose fan mail was regularly swept by the drug dogs was not lost on me. And as a public service I used to suggest on more than an infrequent basis that enthused listeners who were tempted to share more than suggestions for radio playlists NOT mail those envelopes to the station (not that this idea made me any friends with the mail clerk).

TOB and I often had to pull newstank duty, which sounds a LOT more armed forces and the shores of Tripoli than it really is. Basically, for whatever, the news department would find itself short-handed and the dj would have to pull together four and a half minutes of news copy to read live at the top of the hour. TOB was a true newsie and was excellent at reading news. I, perhaps because of my more introspective nature (as reflected in my choice of music, such as The Allman's Mountain Jam or Pink Floyd's Ummagumma) tended to dwell on one story.

If you wanted to know what was going on around the world, the other Bill was your guy. If you wanted to know everything about the role of grain supports in the price of bread sold in the commissary, stick with me. I never let technicalities like 'only' four and half minutes stop me--or even confine my devotion to a story to one newscast. As I tended to work the 2200-0600 air shift, it was pretty much me, the guys and gals in the air control towers across Europe, the kids on the Fulda Gap (both sides as I discovered) and the grunts at Graffenwoehr and Baumholder. News is whatever passes the 'who cares test?' (actually, the test's real name involves the word 'gives' and a contraction of 'fire truck' that eliminates the first two vowels and the second through fifth consonants).

All of that was long ago and far away and I thought of it when the newsie TOB sent me an item that the NY Times didn't seem to contain, Erotic Gallery Owner Won't Fight Charge. Talk about crazy from the heat. I think I'm most taken at the violation of the law which seems, as I remember the account, to have something to do with the display of umm, personal parts, in an establishment selling liquor. It would seem to me that the Gallery owner in the story has suffered for his art--for a moment, I feared it was about to be our turn.

Any Road will get you there

2008-12-29T15:43:14Z

Normally on Mondays, I like to preview the week's meetings in Norwich. As this one, week #52, winds down, there are NO municipal meetings slated by any of the advisories, boards, committees. commissions or City Council. If you're looking to close a road in Mohegan Park this week, you'll just have to do it yourself (but do it quietly; we almost have a noise ordinance).

I'm not going to waste your eyes telling you what a turbulent year this one has been. If you're still above ground as you read this, you already know that and you know it from far more authoritative and knowledgeable sources than from a pinhead like me.

I had a successful year, professionally (= I didn't get 'right sized'. In this employment environment, especially in light of what I do for a living, that's a major achievement). Personally, I practically monopolized my wife's free time with two emergency room visits and one actual hospital admission. Towards the end of the year, I started on my own version of HBO's Entourage, but in this one my posse all wear white coats and have initials after their names. I have become a science project, not quite as interesting as a Plaster of Paris (hilton? "That's hot!" not) volcano and closer to one of the dice that God throws while playing with the universe (explains that black dot on my forehead.) My children, who are adults whom I still see as being nine and four years old, respectively (damn glasses!), are happy, which, as they explained in Dad School, is the crust of the biscuit and the point of the exercise.

I wasn't born here in Norwich, I just live here now, and so I already look forward to 2009 in the hopes that the brave start I was looking for this time last year, I will find this year, politically, economically and philosophically. Norwich celebrates its 350th anniversary of its founding and it looks like the celebrations may be a little light on some of the frills and thrills so many had hoped for. We have one another and the resolve to work harder and smarter and I think that's a big part of what we need, not just in the New Year but for for everyday and not just in Norwich, but across the country.

A lot of the challenges we face in 2009 we've been staring at for quite some time: energy independence, aging infrastructure, failing educational systems, an absence of affordable universal health care, the tenor and tone of our debates on those issues and a hundred others--this needs to be the year we stop looking away. If not now, when? If not us, who? Now is the time. We are the people.

The White Rabbit versus the Forces of Evil

2008-12-28T15:07:14Z

It was a front page story (albeit below the fold and (thankfully) without a picture) in one of my local newspapers, US Offers Viagra to win over Afghan Warlords, and probably in about the same place in your newspaper (somewhere Peter Zenger weeps, I know). And it just goes to show that decades after DuPont abandoned their slogan, "better living through chemistry", it is still so often the case.

As someone who uses Rogaine, this will sound untrue and/or unkind: I figure a man gets just so many sunrises and sunsets, allegorically speaking, and while I know men who use Viagra and whose partners claim they are the better for it, I just don't see it (or didn't, until reading this story). Let's face it, the guys I know who use it, don't know anything about the Taliban, much less where any of them are. And, says this story, the CIA gives some tribal leader up there in the Khyber Butt Crack region of Carjackistan a couple of blue pills and, BINGO! (not yet, JM, but soon), we're rounding up bad guys.

The article quotes a CIA case officer that 'other inducements' (= bribes) have down sides, such as guns that could end up in the wrong hands and money which might lead to conspicuous consumption, so Viagra is a win/win. I suppose the Taliban could see who's on the take by conducting a lap to lap search. If the tribal elder appears to have more than the proverbial camel's nose under the tent, so to speak, he might be a Pfizer Friend. (And who writes a priapsis warning like "in the rare event of an erection lasting more than 4 hours, seek immediate medical help to avoid long-term injury"? Guys don't ask for directions when they get lost driving. In this case, calling the Guinness people, maybe. Medical personnel? I think not. Far more likely "a old bois d' arc fence post You could hang a pipe rail gait from " while playing Choctaw Bingo. Happy now, JM?)

So as discomfiting as I find this kind of story (and maybe it only hurts when they walk, how would I know) I need only recall the admonition of Sister Grace (Slick) a banshee prophetess of the San Francisco Revelation all those decades ago, 'remember what the dormouse said! Feed your head.'

Herd of Cattle or a Swarm of Bees

2008-12-19T18:49:57Z

joined twitter the other day-actually, I'm not sure 'joined' is the correct verb; maybe 'signed up for', or 'linked into' is better although I think some time ago I did join something called Linkin. Maybe. I have no idea what these things do or are (or which is which and why). I got fifty-six plus years into this rodeo without them. so maybe I could, or should, have continued in that direction.

This is who we are. A sentient, self-aware species yearning to be individuals, right along with everyone else surrounding us. Each of us, heck with that!, ALL of us, all six billion or so on this planet, want to be able to rush to the shore or scream at the sky 'hey! look at me!'

If there is a God, how does He (or She; how ironic would that be to learn God the Father is actually God the Mother? And stuff like picking on your brother, taking the last cookie, not making your bed is REALLY the importnat stuff while faith and food works are as may be? What a hoot.) possibly keep track of us all?

I know that I need only look to the lilies of the field who neither toil nor weave and I realize that not one swallow falls to earth without His knowledge but am I the only one who has days like those of the fisherman who prays, 'Lord, Your ocean is so large and my boat is so small'?

I spend more time on line in conversation or interaction with real people, though at least in theory, the ones on line are as real as those in the flesh and in the here and now. My children are very much at home in this Brave New World, barely rememberingthe quaint old days of dial up and now part of the migratory electrons that are so many virtual meeting places. Each of us can stand alone-but it's easier to stand alone when you are together.

Maybe that's part of what separates us from the beasts (and all this time I thought it was these nifty thumbs), our knowledge of our finite future. The realization that tomorrow will dawn for some, though not all, of us and that there will be a day when the last person who knows of our existence, themselves, passes from this earth and we cease to be part of the communal context and conscience and become forgotten. And someone, someplace scrolls over whatever has replaced what we now call this community of connectivity and marvels at the primitive beauty of that which we've left behind.

Clothes Call

2008-12-18T17:06:23Z

Standing in line getting coffee at the in-store Dunkin Donuts in the Norwich Stop and Shop, four people in front of me, on Sunday, at least two of them dressed as if coming from church. That always guilts me out as a FARC, fallen away roman catholic, so I compensate by imagining one of them having a berry smoothie and a breakfast sandwich to chase Holy Communion. Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned....America runs on Penance.

Anyway. All the time in line and it took me a minute or so to pick up on this, but there are two people, a couple--early twenties getting S&S doughnuts from over at the bakery. They may be talking to one another--I can't tell from the distance I'm at. I can tell the diving for doughnuts portion of the program is taking forever....I'm talking (without actually putting a watch to it) maybe a minute a decision per doughnut.

The thousand yard stare through the glass doors before one of the two opens them and then almost another minute, not conferring, mind you, before picking a doughnut up. All this in the time it took for the four customers ahead of me to get coffeed and sandwiched--and still these two are diving for doughnuts.

He had on one of those Hollister sort of hockey shirts, at least that's what they look like to me-stick of a guy with unwashed hair and sleep in his eyes. She hadn't been awake much longer and had done that woman's trick with hair when they yet haven't washed it, she had it up with a hair tie. She had no makeup and she didn't really need any but she looked very young without it but he looked like he might still be in high school by comparison.

She wore a grey sweat shirt with NFA Wrestling in red lettering that made me smile. My two children went to NFA, Norwich Free Academy. Pat played soccer and Michelle was in the band and orchestra. I don't remember either of them ever speaking about women on the wrestling team. So the doughnut diva was wearing someone else' s wrestling shirt, and judging by the size of the guns, or lack thereof, on the Hollister dude, it wasn't his shirt.

He kept glancing around and I recognized his look. I took to calling it the "Walk the Line" look, because I think that's what Johnny Cash had in mind when he wrote the song. And I knew it because I've had the look myself for 31 plus years. You find a someone who chooses to be with you (that's why the shirt doesn't matter my Hollister friend; the original wearer is gone) and you remain vigilant because it's so difficult to believe this person will stay. For what it's worth, it's how you live everyday and come to appreciate that someone more and more.

Not Knowing Jack (London or Lord)

2008-12-17T09:43:43Z

Have you noticed how often our United States is less than the fifty we actually have? I caught a TV spot last night for somebody's restaurant (obviously not Alice's) boasting about always using 'fresh, never frozen' beef, or meat or employees (I was distracted, cut me a break!). While the announcer is talking and we're seeing cascading lettuce, tomatoes and onions or something that could be an onion, there's little, tiny words, barely visible on the screen, about how that statement only applies to the '48 contiguous' states', which is grown-up-speak for 'on your bikes, Alaska and Hawaii.'

Contiguous ranks right up there with disambiguation, which sounds like a made up word (okay, actually all words are made up, of course, but I meant by a prankster or someone learning English by correspondence course during a postal strike) which, has nothing to do with either Alaska or Hawaii, but seems like showing off by using a lot of letters for possibly nefarious purposes.

There's a different commercial for another restaurant chain where the pitch is 'buy this plate of now dead, cooked fish for only this much money, it's yummy' and the little words pop up in the corner of the screen to tell me the price is higher in Alaska and Hawaii (and in Puerto Rico; perhaps because of their continuing disambiguation?) though I would hope the fish are both as dead and as yummy as elsewhere.

'When you don't know where you're going, any road will get you there', to quote Christopher Columbus' mother (just one more thing- she looked nothing like Peter Falk), though I was somewhat surprised to learn he'd gotten lost just getting to the piers. Learn something new every day. I can't help but feel sorry for Alaska and Hawaii--the last two states to get their silk jackets and be allowed into the union and we still string them along.

Sure, we say to Alaska, you can be the biggest state (Texas doesn't mind, much) but we're gonna put this hunk of Canada between you and the State of Washington. As for Hawaii, it's like the kid always picked last for baseball (he's not very good, but he lets us use his bat), 'okay you're gonna play deep center field. Keep going back....no, more than that...a little more...just a bit more.' Until he disappears. If he's lucky, we remember to call him in when the game is over and he wonders what happened to his at-bats.

It just needs to stop. How can we have a family of nations when we cannot even unite the states? How would the rest of us feel if Hawaii and Alaska just blew us off. You fly into Juneau and the TSA guard asks for your passport. And you cry out 'but Alaska is a state! I don't need a passport to go from one state to the next!' And the TSA guard gets a tight little smile when he says, 'isn't that nice? Help yourself to one of those frozen meat hamburgers and take a seat, foreigner.'
Or you hit the Big Island to soak up the rays and your hotel clerk says, 'so you're from Norwich, Connecticut, are you? Your English is quite good-I can barely hear the accent! No, little man, I don't think you'll be enjoying Tiny Bubbles anytime soon. She has a headache from trying to read the small print on her TV.'

And we're left to watch Dan-O struggling to To Build a Fire and wonder what went wrong.

It's a Wonderful Li(f)e

2008-12-16T09:42:15Z

Probably not just me. It feels a little harder to 'get into the spirit' (of either generosity or mindless consumerism, depending on whether you're a half-full or full-of-it kind of guy) this Christmas season. I'm reaching the point, maybe you too, where there's less and less of the daily newspaper I read--skip the front page and the national section and the finances and the international pages and the political analysis and....wow, what's left? The professional Armadillo Full-Contact Wrestling League standings, Hi and Lois in the comic section and the personal ads over in the classifieds (not that ANY of us know anyone who actually reads those, or would admit to reading them). I don't even watch the TV news anymore (Is it true Jay Leno was named the host for Meet the Press?)

Go on line and look at news headlines this time a year ago and we were no happier than now, with, in retrospect, less reason. So while the 'how did we get here?' seems to be a sticking point, I'm more concerned that it's keeping us from getting to the heart of the matter and moving onwards and upwards.

Everyone has competing theories for our economic state so let me offer mine, based on ZERO knowledge and less expertise (I'm being honest (to myself) which is more than we might be able to say about others), you can shake your head in disbelief and dismay and then we can proceed to the "we gotta get outa this place" portion of the proceedings.

Businesses, I submit, used to be formed for the purposes of making something and were a creation to benefit all of those involved in that endeavor. Instead of 'we are together to make/do/be something' the mission statements now are 'we are in business to make X% return on our investors' money'. The visionary who brought us together and got us to the mountain has been replaced by a guy who knows how to count. All of a sudden we're out in the tall grass and can no longer see the path. And no one knows how we got there or how to get back.

Back in the day, when money was something and there was no cell phones, video on demand or even (shudder) Home Shopping Network, I was in the US Air Force with someone with a wry sense of humor who had a sign on her desk that said 'I am now starving on the salary I once dreamed of making.' Today, we would have outsourced her and her sign. We already outsourced our sense of humor.

Look at the house in which you live or where any of us lives. How much physical improvement did you make in it in the last five (ten? fifteen) years? (I don't know enough about things to know what the 'typical' municipal assessment and re-evaluation cycle is.) Your house is appraised and assessed at more this time than the last time, even if you did nothing. That's vapor (please don't be angry, I don't mean it personally). But then, you go to the bank with that vapor number and get a new line of equity. Now we've transcended vapor and are into voodoo (again, my apologies if you're a follower of voodoo, I use that term in a non-religious way).

All of this works as long as each of us keeps moving-- like lemmings? Okay, sure. Lovely animal, beautiful plumage said someone, once, somewhere, perhaps. That movement for the last three to ten (or more) years (depends on who is telling the story and how much supply side cider they've had to drink) has been circling the drain, didn't matter until--YIPES!--suddenly it did.

As I noted at the top, that's how I see us getting here. Bottom Line: Not everyone is gonna get their money back from the Building and Loan, George Bailey. Ask Mr. Potter. It's a Wonderful Li(f)e. When will we decide to stop using the past to keep us from the future? Does today work for you? There may not be a tomorrow, that's why I'm asking.

Addition by Subtraction (Norwich Municipal Meetings)

2008-12-15T11:23:57Z

With ten days until Christmas, unless you're an automaker from Detroit, the municipal calendar thins out for the holidays as more meetings are rescheduled because of time constraints, and (I suspect) some of the agendas of meetings that are scheduled are slenderized if not tenderized-more on that in a moment.

This afternoon at four, the Design Review Board meets at 23 Union Street (that's next door to City Hall) but the City's website has no agenda (not required by public law) or minutes of previous meetings (very much required by public law). When I point this stuff out, I'm not punking anyone at City Hall-but obliquely (well, not so much now, of course) those on these citizen committees that they have a responsibility and requirement to report in a timely manner. And NOT doing so lets everyone down.

This evening at six thirty is an informational session by the Norwich Semiseptecentennial Committee before the City Council meeting. I attended one of these on this event some months ago and came away disquieted by how little money had been raised and how much still needed to be done (and how few of those questions came from the City Council). Based on everything I've read in the meantime, I see no reason to not be as concerned as I was at that time.

I applaud those who've volunteered their time and talents and wish them well, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't have a Plan B, Plan C and as many more letters in the alphabet as needed. This was a big, challenging project when economic times were good a year ago (though a year ago we didn't think times were so good, funny how that worked out) and now seven months away where are we?

Actually, that's a question, in a much larger sense, I have for the City Council, who meets at seven PM in City Hall. I was troubled, to say the least, when I reviewed their meeting agenda and saw NO mention of a report by the committee of five attorneys created at their 18 August Council meeting, (page 16) to review the Charter of the City of Norwich. This despite, per that same August ordinance creating the committee: "the Council requests that said report be submitted to it by the first (my emphasis) council meeting of December 2008."

It's already two weeks overdue, gentlemen of the City Council. Will Charter Review and Revision (such a hot topic in the Council elections last November) join ethics review, the implementation of city-based business contracting preferences, and noise ordinances as issues you started to work on and then, well, lost interest in or did you just lose your way?

I'd suggest you pull your socks up and buckle down this coming year (and that way those of us in the cheap seats won't have as many potshot opportunities). The budget formulation will, no doubt, be brutal, but there are so many other issues of import that you haven't affected in any meaningful way. I'm not angry--though it probably reads that way. I am disappointed.

Tuesday at 7 PM is a public hearing in Council chambers by the Commission on the City Plan, and this should be an interesting evening though hopefully not just for the commissioners.

There are, in reviewing the agenda, what seem to be three topics: a proposed 90-unit active-adult community development between Hunters Road and Merchants Avenue. The Ponemah Villa development is to be built in a heavily settled area with municipal utilities and includes units in size from single- to four-bedrooms, a community center, parking, and recreational trails through the heavily wooded property. This project has already been approved by the wetlands commission.

The actual first agenda item, a somewhat controversial (there's an understatement!) - and similar - project on Scotland Road was rejected by the Inland Wetlands, Watercourses and Conservation Commission, and could be withdrawn--but that will have to be done once the hearing is called to order. Right now it's on the agenda.

There's also an application for a sober house on Bentley Avenue. There have been a lot of headlines on this house in recent months; actually on the way it opened and the methods used by those who own it to operate it. Our 21st Century Well-Meaning has created a not-so-cottage industry generating billions of dollars supposedly 'caring for those in need' who never seem to get better and whose numbers never diminish. I'm not sure when we're helping them or helping ourselves.

The owners of the property at Bentley had a similar operation, opened in much the same surreptitious manner not that far from where I live. And when found out, after their lawyers did some sabre rattling of briefs and writs, they closed up and defaulted on the loan they used to buy the house. And those whom they were supposedly helping were left to own devices. Possibly same shirt, different day over on Bentley.

There are other, important, meetings slated for this week--and I'd encourage you to seek them out at the City's fine website, though you may need to do some calling around (the site lists a Board of Education meeting for Tuesday in Room 210 of City Hall that may not be happening).

Yes, it's hectic at the holiday season but for those among us who have volunteered to serve on the countless advisories, boards, commissions and committees that make wherever we live a better place for all of us, we owe each and every volunteer a 'thank you' for their efforts on our behalf, not just because it's Christmas time, but all the year through.

All this and Cracker Jack, too

2008-12-14T13:46:40Z

Times are tough all over, even in professional sports. Maybe not for the New York Yankees, based on the headlines earlier this week on C. C. Sabathia and A. J. Burnett (are they gonna hire anyone with actual first names this season, or we're just doing shorthand? And all those years ago, G. Gordon Liddy and H. Ross Perot were ahead of their time--who knew?). Is this the year we get to see the Kansas City Royals infield collecting cans and bottles by the side of the road to redeem for the deposit so they can pay Kyle Farnsworth? Strange Days Indeed (most peculiar, Mama).

Strange days as well here in the Rose City which has our very own Double A Eastern League baseball team, the Connecticut Defenders who are an affiliate of the San Francisco Giants (though, to my knowledge, neither GM wears flowers in his hair--which would be a stretch for Charlie D). They started out as a New York Yankees affiliate, transferred from Albany, New York in the middle of the last decade. We built a ten million dollar plus stadium in our then-Industrial Park to house them when they were called the Norwich Navigators (and Tater still wowed the crowd last Sunday at the Norwich Winterfest Parade) and for the first couple of years, fans flocked to the new attraction and then, as now, it was a great place to watch young baseball players chase their dreams, hone their skills, and have some fun for very little money.

If you've bought tickets for anyone's Major League team in the last decade, you know, before even getting to the ballpark and paying for the parking, you're out hundreds for four tickets, a soda, a bag of chips and a hot dog per person (and who does only one of each of those for nine innings?), so we've been lucky to have had great, reasonably-priced entertainment for close to a decade and a half. Attendance started to flag some years back in what is probably already the smallest market in the Eastern League (the Defenders play teams from Harrisburg, New Britain, and Trenton, as three examples, where not only is the host city considerably more than our 37,000 souls, but the surrounding areas put them over a quarter to a half million in population).

Jerry Seinfeld noted years ago, in light of the money involved in professional sports, we the fans are basically rooting for clothes. The Red Sox fans who loved Johnny Damon half a decade ago hate him now, now that he wears the most despised pinstripes in baseball. And so it goes. We have childlike and childish enthusiasms for our teams, but we lose sight that they are businesses and that means they have to make money. Same is true for minor league teams.

The Defenders had a lot of ink this past week for 'overdue' rent and other payments owed to the city of Norwich, to the tune of 310,000. It shouldn't have been as pseudo-newsworthy as it appeared in the newspapers. The Norwich Baseball Stadium Authority, NBSA, citizen volunteers appointed by the City Council to manage and monitor the relationship of Senator Thomas Dodd Stadium and its tenant, the CT Defenders, meets once a month with representatives of the team to review where all of them are and where they need to be going. The minutes of those meetings (and December is and was still 2008 for what it's worth) are shared with the elected and appointed leadership of the city.

The indoor batting cages and pitching mounds in the adjunct practice facility (I'm told it's beautiful, I've never seen it from the inside), the large screen video display and scoreboard, the the new playing surface, warning track and outfield fences and the to-be-completed-before-opening-day renovations to the concourse bathrooms, all funded by tax dollars (municipal and state) are all the result of those meetings and the collaboration between the volunteers and the Defenders' staff. And all of us who've ever been to the stadium are the beneficiaries and should be grateful for all of their work.

That said, $310,000 is a LOT of money. And it's good to read that the team will catch up by opening day, which is 16 April against the Trenton Thunder (with the proceeds of the game going to the Girard Family in Voluntown, CT), but how did they fall this far behind without the City's leadership NOT knowing. The NBSA, when you read their minutes, have done their job--but never had a means of enforcing rent collections. It was good to read comments by the City's Comptroller and City Manager on the resolution of the situation, this time, because, Gentlemen, that's your job.

I was a little non-plussed to read in the papers a note that the team will pay the back rent as well as interest on it, even though there's nothing in their lease agreement about having to do so. That's probably true, except I have to believe everyone involved in the lease operated from a belief that all portions of the lease would be binding on all parties and that both the city and the team would be as good as their word (judging from readers' comments in one of the papers, I wasn't alone in my reaction to the remark.)

Something I forgot I knew about, turned up in both papers on Saturday, the portion of the parking fee the Defenders donate to the Mayor's Food Pantry. One had the dollar figure at thirteen thousand and the other ten--three grand is three grand as my mother the accountant might say, so I'm curious as to which number is real, but even more curious as to where this number is in the Norwich City Budget (248 pages of fun, from cover to cover) as I can't find it.

Maybe because it's NOT a fixed, but variable, revenue stream it's just harder for me to identify-but that's not my bigger, or sole, question: where is this money, who gets it and for what? Somewhere is an accounting trail-it needs to be more visible-and the Defenders should be thanked and the Mayor applauded for creating and maintaining the fund, especially in these aforementioned tight times.

If I were to be $310,000 in arrears on my rent or mortgage, where might I be sitting right now while typing this? Orange crate under the Eighth Street Bridge (is that a Wi-Fi zone? How will I upload this to the site?) or seeking out a warm bed someplace? We all have obligations, to ourselves and to one another--that's sort of why we banded together as communities which, in turn, evolved into larger political-economic units.

I'd like to think we created government to better harness and channel the time and talents of some for the benefit of all-to do for one another as a group that which we couldn't do as individuals. Being honest and honorable with one another makes us better people and a better city and we improve one person at a time, one day at a time.