College students face many challenges: peer pressure, difficult coursework, and for most, the responsibilities of living on their own for the first time. College students often struggle with the academic, extracurricular, and social expectations that come with the newfound freedom. Young adu…
You might think that moving back to the Northeast after living 25+ years in South Florida would have one advantage to offset the winter snow, but that one advantage was vaporized a couple years ago with the onslaught of Hurricane Sandy. Who would have expected that the deadliest and most des…
The bill of the American avocet curves up. The bill of a whimbrel turns down.
The ferocity and size of Hurricane Dorian, and devastation to the Bahamas, should leave no doubt in people’s minds that storms are getting more severe. They also are more frequent.
For decades, going back at least to the state Supreme Court’s decision in the school financing case of Horton v. Meskill in 1977, the big thinkers in Connecticut’s public life and the virtue signalers in the General Assembly have complained that municipal property taxes are too high. As a re…
I have been waiting until I lose 25 pounds before I post a new “selfie” on Facebook. I’m doing daily exercises, a combined hour-and-a-half of fast walking in two venues, eating veggie burgers and, Lord help me, kale salads. Nevertheless, it’s painfully slow, albeit measurable, progress. Then…
Black-legged ticks we know — the disease-spreaders, the bearers of bad bacteria when they fasten on for a blood meal.
The issue: Numerous measles outbreaks this year, including in nearby New York, generated alarm about the sometimes deadly disease that by the year 2000 seemed eradicated. But as parents sought exemptions to state laws requiring immunization before children can attend school, measles resurfaced.
Nearly every day, it seems, brings another example of Attorney General William Tong reaching far beyond Connecticut’s borders to take action on something national in scope. This has earned him a reputation early in his term as someone for whom — as was once said of a former longtime holder o…
One company I have been boycotting very successfully over the years is Hobby Lobby. My memory isn’t what it used to be, but I know they were involved in some kind of Supreme Court case that I would have been on the other side of, so I never go to Hobby Lobby.
Granted, summer is ending. But the goldenrod — brighter, more yellow than the sun — is letting loose across the countryside. Before the world gets all brown and gray, we get this blaze, amid the deepening shadows, to hold us over until spring.
“A rose by any other name,” the poet says would smell as sweet. However, we should never forget that naming is essential. No one appreciates this more than journalists and philosophers who are in the business of correctly naming people, things and ideas.
According to Wikipedia: “‘Carry That Weight’ is a Beatles song that was released on Abbey Road and part of the long, climactic medley that closes the album. It features vocals from all four Beatles (a rarity in their songs). The middle bridge, featuring brass instruments, electric guitar and…
Why can’t we have not-nice things?
Our vehicles talk back to us all the time, and newer models are particularly garrulous. Ding-ding-ding: You forgot to fasten your seat belt. Ding: You’re swerving, even slightly, out of your lane. Ding: Your emergency brake is on. Ding: Your trunk is not latched tightly.
Name an environmental problem and somewhere, wildlife suffers.
I see things differently than most people. Literally. I have a vision condition called strabismus which causes each eye to operate independently of the other. It causes havoc with parallel parking but otherwise I have no way of knowing how “normal” vision processes what it sees.
Congress can overturn the abuses of Big Pharma and its “pay or die,” subsidized business model for its drugs.
How disappointing that the leadership of the Republican minority in the U.S. House of Representatives has dismissed peremptorily Connecticut Rep. John B. Larson’s legislation to keep Social Security solvent for a century while improving benefits. Though the bill seems likely to pass the Hous…
Mass shootings are a part of American life. They occur with numbing regularity, and can happen at nearly any venue imaginable. The past few years have seen mass shootings at churches, shopping malls, outdoor concerts, restaurants and schools.
I don’t know who gave me this fanciful Asian-motif address book, but I have had it forever, it seems. Someone must have given it to me (my Aunt Mary?) Looks like something she would have gifted at Christmas or a late teen’s birthday, and most of the listings are after I left home in Connecticut.
Thank you for Tour success
Government is good at two things: waging stupid wars and distributing money. This should be examined closely in light of the clamor from Democrats for “Medicare for all.”
State environmental groups claimed some victories in the 2019 legislative session, though they weren’t as broad as advocates might have hoped. Connecticut has made progress on its many environmental challenges over the years, even as new dangers — or at least dangers that were not previously…
Sirius rises late in the dark, liquid sky
At my request, my brother brought over his newest toy to take aerial photos of our property. Commonly called a drone, this amazing little device is actually a diminutive quadcopter outfitted with a swiveling HD camera. The drone arrived early on a Sunday morning. It came on its own motorcycl…
“War,” the Prussian general Carl von Clausewitz wrote, “is politics by other means.” So is journalism. Quinnipiac University journalism professor Ben Bogardus laments this in an essay published the other day by the Connecticut Mirror, “Stop the Newsroom-to-Government Revolving Door.”
The testimony last Wednesday by former Special Counsel Robert Mueller in front of a pair of congressional committees may not have changed anyone’s opinion on the Trump-Russia investigation. In a highly polarized era, it’s hard to imagine what could dramatically alter the prevailing view of a…
In celluloid imaginings, hot summer nights are sultry… steamy… dangerous.
Article on visit to Havana
While on a recent errand run, I ran into an unexpected traffic jam on a nearby road. A long line of vehicles parked directly behind one another were pulled to the side of the road and dozens of folks were milling about. There seemed something unusual about the grouping. A number of them were…
Even at this late date, four years after he launched his presidential campaign in a spasm of xenophobia, there’s a desire on the part of many Americans to believe that racism from the president of the United States is something other than it appears to be. Surely he must have been misunderst…
Unhappy as it may be to admit it amid his worsening demagoguery and hatefulness, President Trump has a better position than his Democratic critics do about including a citizenship question in the national census. While everyone’s motives are bad here, people often do the right thing for the …
Gov. Ned Lamont says voting for highway tolls to raise money for renovating Connecticut’s transportation system would require state legislators “to show a little courage.” True, but not true enough.
When I moved back to Connecticut, after several decades living in south Florida, I wanted to immerse myself in New England, which is pretty much the polar opposite of the tropics. I appreciated that everything was within a couple hours’ drive through beautiful scenery, coastlines, hills and …
Thousands lined the Canyon of Heroes in Manhattan Wednesday to cheer for this country’s newest sports heroes — the USA Women’s Soccer team, which was fresh from winning the World Cup Sunday, the second consecutive title and a record fourth.
Perched on a grass stalk, the bobolink was as welcome as a summer rose — white, black and yellow, his song announcing himself to the world. As Emily Dickinson, a keen observer of meadow birds, said “he compliments existence.”
Twice I lived on a lake — one was small, manmade and surrounded by a gated community and the other was vast and natural. Since much of Florida has a karst terrain with sinkholes, underground caverns and an active interchange between surface water and ground water, it’s hard to avoid proximit…
Roll out those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer
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In my business we “warehouse” obits, so that when someone departs for another and, we are sure, a better world, we are ready with the details, minutiae and landmarks of a person’s life.
I meant to have an adventure to honor Anthony Bourdain but got sidetracked by an unexpected escapade.
Donald J. Trump’s 2020 election strategy is to connect his potential Democratic opponents with “socialism.” Trump plans to use this attack on the Democrats even if Sen. Bernie Sanders, who proudly calls himself a “democratic socialist,” doesn’t become the presidential nominee (Sanders has be…
Gov. Ned Lamont promised and claims he delivered an honest and balanced state budget. While the budget easily could have been worse amid the leftward stampede of the Democratic majority in the General Assembly, honest and balanced it isn’t.
Connecticut’s landscape lacks drama — there’s no Sierra Nevadas, no Grand Tetons, no salmon-churned Columbia River.
On a beautiful, breezy day last week, I spoke to a roomful of Congressional summer interns working in the House of Representatives. The subject was “Corporate Power, Congress and You.” (“You” referred to the interns as the citizenry).
This week finally provided an answer to one of the mysteries of the Lamont administration. The recently elected governor seems intent on bringing tolls back to Connecticut highways, but it hasn’t been clear on what, other than maintenance, he wants to spend the proposed new windfall.
My church presents an annual concert series called the “First Sundays at Four.” Last year it offered a variety of performances including piano, organ, percussion, sacred music, chanted night prayers and, just for something completely different, South American folk rhythms. The first concert …
Wonderful as it is now to be able to take the train from Springfield to Hartford to New Haven and back as many as 16 times a day on the Hartford Line, Gov. Ned Lamont and other state officials should have been far more realistic as they celebrated the railroad’s first year of operation.
Insurance company name: please provide as much information as you can. “When are you coming to take me home?” Name of Client’s contact . “I don’t know her name, but it’s my wife.” List any major illness or injury within the past year. “I don’t know how I fell; I was trying to fix the roof th…
For a state desperate to shed a reputation that it’s not business-friendly, the news that United Technologies Corp. would no longer make its headquarters in Connecticut could not have come at a worse time.
With appearances around the state, newspaper essays criticizing the Lamont administration, and some candor about the deficiencies of his campaign last year, retired business executive Bob Stefanowski seems to be preparing for another run for governor.
