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.
Friends often ask me why I spend so much time reading print versions of newspapers. I respond with the usual general reasons about learning what is happening, worsening or improving, in the world. I also point out that I send people helpful clippings.
Year after year most Connecticut high school seniors are graduated and given diplomas without ever mastering high school math and English, and year after year most of those who are admitted to a community college or a regional state university have to take remedial high school courses. The p…
Gov. Ned Lamont’s slippage in the polls is not surprising. Former Gov. Dan Malloy, now gainfully employed reforming education in Maine, casts a long shadow, and Lamont’s policy prescriptions — including his budget, approved by the Democrat-dominated General Assembly — do not differ much from…
A plan for a third casino in Connecticut that would have made sense for all parties was on the table and apparently had support at the highest levels. Then it all fell apart. It’s as apt a stand-in for state politics in 2019 as is likely to be found.
At one point during my peripatetic career, I worked at a big city hospital. Their primary mission, of course, was saving lives.
Plutocrats like to control the range of permissible public dialogue. Plutocrats also like to shape what society values. If you want to see where a country’s priorities lie, look at how it allocates its money. While teachers and nurses earn comparatively little for performing critical jobs, c…
Everybody, including Gov. Ned Lamont, assumes that state government’s latest contract with the State Employee Bargaining Agent Coalition, the infamous work of former Gov. Dannel P. Malloy and the General Assembly’s Democratic majority, prevents any changes in state government’s labor expense…
Each summer, when the town of Litchfield hosted Open House Day, I joined in training a small group of St. Michael’s-Litchfield members to offer tours since we are a “point of interest” on the official tours of the stately Colonials on North and South Street. Although the current church build…
The issue: Outbreaks of the highly contagious measles in nearby New York have raised concerns that Connecticut’s children, seniors and those with compromised immune systems could be put at risk to contract the disease that could lead to death.
Paying a surprise visit to the House Democratic caucus with news reporters in tow at the state Capitol last week, Gov. Ned Lamont made some observers uneasy by promising to raise campaign money for caucus members who will cast a difficult vote on the highway tolls he has proposed.
Donald J. Trump’s presidential ambition has simmered for decades. He was and is a regular TV watcher and saw the changing political landscape. One by one, previous presidents diminished the integrity of the presidency and violated the rule of law, paving the way for Trump’s candidacy.
In what should be centers of safety and security, a worldwide increase in violence has shown that houses of worship can also be targets of hate.
On a recent foggy morning, en route to my morning walk in the park, I almost collided with a flash of chartreuse on two wheels, when the flash abruptly took a sharp left in front of my Subaru. My car had won a top award for its safety features, and I put most of them to the test as I swerved…
Freedom of religion is freedom of belief and expression. It is not the freedom to do anything one pleases, though lately claims of religious freedom are being used to rationalize more craziness in Connecticut — the resurgence of dangerous diseases arising from the failure to vaccinate school…
Conservatives favor consumer choice. Consumer information is vital to make that choice meaningful. Corporatists, masquerading as conservatives, do not care about informed consumer choice. Donald Trump is a corporatist, as are the vast majority of Republicans in his Cabinet and in Congress. C…
In theory, replacing the nine-month school schedule with one that alternates shorter instruction periods with shorter breaks across all four seasons makes sense for all the reasons supporters give, beginning with a bump in student achievement.
