How 'bout we smash a few antiques for the sake of progress

(I stand corrected, below)


Pardon me for being pissy, but I'm one of those "cranky" preservationists who insisted that the house at 9 Liberty Street be saved. And it was, as it was moved early Sunday morning to a new site on Rapallo Avenue.

Thank god for Izzi Greenberg, of NEAT (North End Action Team) who originally was skeptical of the house move, but now recognizes the beauty of the building, and the integrity it will bring to the North End as housing is transformed there.

Unfortunately, the house move gave Sloan Brewster, of the Middletown Press, the opportunity to get the story wrong again, mostly by quoting people on only one side of the story (every story has two sides, Sloan).

Let me make some things clear about me, and about most preservationists:

- Every old building is not sacred, and not worth saving.
- Old buildings, are not more important than the lives and well-being of residents.
- Progress is not bad.
- All new development is not bad.

As for this particular story, here are some facts that are lacerated in the Middletown Press tale:
- That Peter Harding "donated" the house. Technically, yes, but the town "deeded" the house to Peter Harding with the condition that it would be moved. I can't recall clearly, but I believe the town took the house through eminent domain, and "deeded" it, at no or nominal cost, to the developer. His "cost" for the property was to help pay to move it.
- Mayor Giuliano says we can't make up for mistakes made in the 60's and 70's when a wave of redevelopment left parking lots where beautiful historic buildings once stood. No, Mayor, but we can avoid making the same mistakes again. I grew up in a once beautiful town called New Britain, you don't have to tell me about the ravages of redevelopment.
- "Some people have said it is not a remarkable example of an historic house..." Some? Who? Just plain old lazy journalism not to have that answer.
- "...others protested and so Harding offered it to the cause." Others? Again, who? Oh, me. That's right, I protested, and so did many other residents with names. Who might have known those names? The mayor, the town planner, the developer, the NEAT representatives. More lazy journalism Sloan.
- The house had lost its "historic relevance." Well, it was on the National Historic Register of Historic Structures, is that relevant enough? May I remind you that the Mark Twain House was a rooming house before it was rescued by pesky preservationists. (I stand corrected. The Mark Twain House was an upscale apartment building before it was renovated as a monument to one of America's great writers. Thanks to Susan Forbes Hansen for setting me straight) In 1915, the Old State House in Hartford was abandoned. In 1921, a group of pesky preservationists started a restoration drive. In 1961, it was declared a National Historic Landmark. Sure, 9 Liberty was no Old State House, but it was, and is, significant to Middletown's history. Ironically, as a result of the move, it lost its place on the National Register. There are buildings all over town that don't look like much because they're covered with ramshackle additions, asbestos and aluminum siding, and cheap porches, but that's not an excuse to knock them down.
- The story quotes the mayor and "others" (who?), who claim that it would be more economically sound to have demolished the old building, and built anew. I don't think that was ever proven to anyone's satisfaction, and several meetings were held to discuss the issues. Maybe the mayor knows something we don't. Maybe he and the "others" are simply wrong. But you wouldn't be able to determine that unless you asked someone on the other side of the issue....Sloan?

As many of the people quoted in the article agree, this is a needed, and positive step forward toward revitalization in Middletown's North End. There are unasked questions about the revitalization. Has the redevelopment East of Main, simply relocated the poverty and some of the attendant problems into other North End neighborhoods West of Main? Is the grand experiment of mixed-income housing at Wharfside Commons working? Is another surface parking lot, adjacent to the sidewalk on Main Street, a good thing? And is a driveway, across that sidewalk, leading to a busy grocery store, safe?

One final note. I've been in several banks, lawyers offices, stores, and restaurants on Main Street where I see a familiar photograph. It's of the beautiful old town hall. Demolished to make way for a surface parking lot. We should use that old photo as a reminder to keep the wrecking ball at bay until we're sure we want to sacrifice our past for the sake of our future.

Fool me 47 times, shame on me

Pardon me, but could we get a new fourth estate, this one doesn't seem to be working.

In my brief training, and experience in a newsroom (as a stringer for the late, lamented Hartford Times), I was urged to be skeptical, to question every assertion, to get three sources, and to understand that there are two sides to every story.

Wouldn't you think that the Pentagon which gave us a staged statue toppling, a staged "mission accomplished" speech, a staged "heroine" in Jessica Lynch, a staged fallen hero with Pat Tilman, and years of "progress" in Iraq, would be looked upon with skepticism by the press.

And yet they seem to have been fooled again by the latest Pentagon spectacle - an Iranian motorboat "attack."

Meeting on military base postponed

Because of the "giant" snowstorm, the meeting on the location of the proposed military reserve training base has been postponed.

Dear Citizens:

Due to the impending winter storm the Armed Forces Reserve Center
informational session scheduled for 5 PM Mon day January 14 has been
cancelled.

The Army has pledged to reschedule the meeting in the next
several days in its entirety at the earliest convenience

The City will post this cancellation to Channel 19 Public Access.

Thank You,
Geen Thazhampallath
Mayor's Aide

I wonder what Keith Olbermann will have to say about this

I don't understand how it serves the purposes of democracy to exclude a legitimate candidate from a public debate. Now MSNBC had "disinvited" Dennis Kucinich from a presidential candidate's debate. What are they afraid of hearing, or having us hear? Somehow, networks ought not be able to do this. Oh for the days of the fairness doctrine.

Of course, MSNBC seems to be taking its cue from the Democratic Party itself, which is keeping Kucinich off the ballot in Texas because he won't sign a party pledge.

Maybe their all afraid his demand for a New Hampshire recount will uncover something untoward.

As always, dangerously delusional

He relies on his generals, unless they disagree with him. He defers to his advisors, unless they diverge in their observation of reality. He trusts the intelligence, until it reports something different than his gut.

But anything his jesus whispers to him, he believes.

And the Vietnam metaphor just keeps getting scarier.

And he's trying to sell Iran's "evil" nature as if it were a used car that had been through a flood.

Once again, he's described an "evildoing" nation in words that could frame his own administration:

"Iran is today the world's leading state sponsor of terror. It sends hundreds of millions of dollars to extremists around the world while its own people face repression and economic hardship at home."

With just a few word changes it could read.

"The US is today the world's leading state sponsor of death and destruction. It sends hundreds of millions of dollars to extremists around the world while its own people face repression and economic hardship at home."

House speeds down Main St

One might imagine that the speed limit for a house is zero mph. In that case, the old 9 Liberty hit top speeds for a house as crews began to move it at 2 a.m. this morning for a journey of a few hundred yards that took four hours.

9 Liberty no longer

The old Methodist church, formerly at 9 Liberty St in Middletown is ready to roll tonight onto a new foundation on Rapallo Avenue.

Sewer reporting flush with bad puns

The writing and reporting is at an already the dregs, but the staff of the Middletown Press seems to be squatting to new lows. In reporting on the possibility that Middletown will become part of the Mattabassett Sewer District, reporters seem to be competing for the dubious honor of whom can make the worst sewage and shit puns.

In his story, Rick Guiness, excretes a lead that would be laughable, if it were funny: As some might deem proper, issues concerning the regional sewer district remained stagnant Wednesday.

Guiness continues his peristaltic witticisms by calling a complaint, "murky," noting that issues were "stalled," and that "a major movement on Mattabassett" was a step backward.

In a related piece, Sloan Brewster dumps a redundantly sophomoric lead on the reader: Middletown officials are pumped about getting city sewage pumped through the Mattabassett District regional sewage treatment plant.

Brewster reports that board chairman William Candelori want to "push the process," and quotes Middletown mayor Giuliano who talks about "dumping into the river" and who also says, about a joint town effort, that "the other three load's get abbreviated."

Memo to reporters: just because you're writing about shit, the writing needn't be shitty.

Good bathroom reading, still, and when you're done, you can put the Middletown Press behind you.

Upset by the upset

While the mainstream press continues to ignore or pooh-pooh the idea that the Diebold voting machines may have delivered an inaccurate vote count in New Hampshire, Dennis Kucinich has filed a complaint with the NH secretary of state, asking for a recount.

Of course, conservative bloggers are already beginning to dismiss Kucinich as part of the "lunatic fringe." A lunatic fringe which would like a reasonable explanation other than, "Hillary cried."

Thanks to Michael Gill for the tip.

How do we sleep while our bags are burning?

Now if only we could have an environmental minister who would tackle huge problems with simple, practical, efficient solutions. And if only we had more rock and rollers who took their message more seriously.

Peter Garrett, former lead singer for Midnight Oil, and now Environmental Minister in Australia, is aiming to rid that continent of plastic bags.



Garrett and band playing a protest in front of Exxon headquarters in Manhattan after the Exxon Valdez debacle.

And so do we

Ned Lamont listens skeptically to political advice offered by the author of this blog.

Lamont endorses Obama.

While the Clintons "met" with Lamont during his run for office, they never could be bothered to cross the state line and actually campaign for him (that would mean Hillary would have to support the other party, the non-incumbent party).

So, from a philosophical, or political standpoint, I'm not surprised that he's supporting Obama.

As you can see from the photo, I worked on some of the Lamont commercials during the campaign. As a producer from a Connecticut film company, I called every campaign to see if they were hiring Connecticut companies to produces spots. Indeed, many were hiring local freelancers at day rates, but every candidate from Jodi Rell, to Chris Murphy was hiring ad agencies, consultants, and film producers from out of state. The Lamont campaign (after a great deal of haranguing, I will admit) hired us to help.

The photo above was taken from a green screen shoot for the renowned, "Lieberman slams his car into a wall" spot. Later that day, we filmed the spot which included an endorsement from Chris Dodd.

Liam's' loop

Liam Finn is a talented musician and songwriter from New Zealand. His father is Neil Finn, of Crowded House and Split Enz fame.

Liam's already had a hit record in the great Southland, and his album, I'll Be Lightning, is due out shortly on Yep Roc. He'll be doing a short tour of the U.S. in February and March (the nearest to here will be a gig in Brooklyn).

He's obviously multi-talented, as he proves in this clip, where he, very literally, plays with himself at the close of a live version of Lead Balloon:



This is his hit in New Zealand and Australia, Second Chance:



And this, a wonderfully clever, "seamless" video for Come to the Chapel:

New from the Frankly I'm Disgusted Mint

Many thanks to Susan Forbes Hansen for the reference.

Snowball pizza returns

Many in the neighborhood mourned the loss of Giuseppe's Pizza on Church Street, just East of the Wesleyan campus. All the pizza was good, especially the famous snowball, essentially a spinach pizza with dollops of ricotta cheese, reminiscent of snowballs. The restaurant was always filled with students, faculty and neighbors, and in the summer, when the deck was open, it was difficult to find a table to dine al fresco.

Unfortunately, the interim owners abandoned the time-tested menu of Giuseppe's, and their new menu never caught on.

The restaurant has just been re-opened as Cafe-ology, owned by Jerry Windsor and his fiance, Christine Bishop, who will be managing the restaurant.

The good news: the Snowball is back, and it's being prepared by a chef who was a longtime employee of the old Giuseppe's. By all reports, the pizza is as good as the original, and in this soft-opening week, Windsor reports the Snowballs have been flying -- out the door.

The restaurant is also open for coffee and pastry in the morning, and except for a TV that was blaring a very bad, very old movie (Maxwell Smart in The Nude Bomb), it seems like a comfortable place to stop and have a coffee and a nosh with friends.

Wesleyan band on their way somewhere

MGMT. Critically acclaimed. Hugely popular. Touring with unknown bands of even greater acclaim (Of Montreal). New album (Oracular Spectacular) on a major label. New single of the week (Time to Pretend) free download on iTunes. And this week, on Letterman.

The black capes? Worn with irony, I suspect. Something to laugh aboutt in 2o years.



I stole this idea from Wesleying.

More people thinking about the proposed military base in Maromas

History on wheels

Early Sunday morning, the historic old church and home at 9 Liberty will be moved down a short stretch of Main Street to a new lot on Rapallo Avenue (if I'm not mistaken, the site of the original Buttonwood Tree). The wheels are under the historic building (which loses its official historic designation on the National Register once it's moved), and the former gas station on the site is now nothing but a pile of rubble.

Crocodile tears vs. compromised code

The topics of Hillary Clinton's "upset" victory in New Hampshire, and the polls which predicted it wrong, were the focus of much discussion on the 24 hour news cycle blabfest talks shows. From my perspective, the arguments fell into three categories, in which specious reasoning resonated.

1. The polls, right or wrong. The press, and the punditry in particular, jumped all over the "inaccurate polls." If we assume that the polls simply got it wrong, then we have to acknowledge that all the polling companies got it wrong at the same time, and in the same way. Each of the companies predicted correct outcomes for candidates, with the exception of the number of votes Hillary Clinton would receive. If there was aberrant, unpredictable behavior in New Hampshire voting, then none of the polling firms recognized it. In some ways, a true aberration would likely escape the attention of all polling firms in the same way. That has sent the journalists scurrying for explanations as to what the aberrant voting behavior was, who those voters were, and what motivated them. Questions likely never to be answered. However, very few journalists have even raised the issue that maybe the pre-election polls, and notoriously accurate exit polls, may have been correct. Even after voting malfeasance has been demonstrated in the last Presidential election in Ohio, where the last occurence of "incorrect exit polls" became news, even after a recent major article in the New York Times Magazine cast doubt on the accuracy of electronic voting machines, even after it's been proven that Diebold machines (the machines used in New Hampshire) are easily hacked, even as new questions surface about LHS Associates, the company which programs New Hampshire (and all Connecticut) electronic voting machines, even after Republican election workers in New Hampshire have been indicted for phone jamming, journalists are loathe to consider even the possibility of voting machine error or fraud.

2. The mysterious reasons for Hillary Clinton's last-minute surge. Everyone including Hillary was surprised at her victory in New Hampshire. Why? Because polls predicted she would run a distant second. So the punditry has been tied in knots trying to figure out what happened. Here are the theories I've heard.

- Clinton cried on camera. Assumption: voters finally discovered Clinton's "human side."
- Clinton talked for two days about the economy. Assumption: it's the economy stupid.
- Bill Clinton scolded Barack Obama. Assumption: Voters realized Obama is not such a nice fellow.
- New Hampshire voters decided to prove the press wrong. Assumption: People from the land of "live free or die" were not about to allow the press to anoint Obama as the presumed candidate.

All of these explanations can be lumped into the "grasping at straws" category from a press drowning in its own humiliation at getting it wrong (Karl Rove thinks they're right). Still, there's one more unlikely explanation, as implausible as these, but actually better able to be proven than any of the above: someone messed with the voting machines.

Yet this explanation - voter machine fraud - was either not even considered, or scoffed at by pundits, including our hero Keith Olbermann (his shrugging dismissal of this alternative explanation is at the end of this segment):



3. Horoscope or journalism. There's a longstanding question as to whether polls should be treated as "news." They certainly aren't fact, but projections, and even the polling firms will tell you that. Newspapers, new shows, and particularly pundits treat polls as if they are gospel truth. In doing so, some think that news reporters actually shape the news by affecting the outcome of elections. Newspapers might as well print, as fact, the horoscope on the front page - or the weather predictions for a month in the future - as they do campaign polls.

These same news outlets have been quick to jump on the polls as being "wrong," but I haven't found a headline yet that reads: We Were Wrong. Much easier to place blame on someone else.

It's what The Hartford Courant did this morning in an editorial scolding the pundits and pollsters. This from a newspaper who as late as Tuesday morning January 8, featured a front page headline that read: Clinton on Shaky Ground As Obama Surges Ahead, as if it were fact, and not a reflection of polling (a projection, a prediction, a guess).

The press have been wrong so often in the last eight years that they should be ashamed to point a finger elsewhere. As Tom Brokaw suggested to Chris Matthews, journalism needs to ignore polls and concentrate on other campaign matters, like a candidate's record, campaign tactics, claims and counterclaims. Seems like there's a better role for journalists to play than to ride on the campaign bus, listening to the same stump speech six or eight times a day, and getting chummy with a candidate (except of course in the case of Hillary Clinton).

Concerts of the Week

Brilliant Disguise: A Tribute to Bruce Springstreen
Thursday Jan 1o, 7pm
Iron Horse Music Hall, Northampton MA

With, Thane Thomsen (The Figments) and Steve Sanderson (Drunk Stuntmen) and Matthew Loiacono (of Kamikaze Hearts) and Rusty Belle and Kevin O'Rourke of Lofine and Chris Pureka and Philip Price and Henning Ohlenbusch and Mark Mulcahy and Frank Manzi Band and Dave Houghton (Fancy Trash) and Matthew Hebert and Jeffrey Foucault and Dennis Crommett and Jose Ayerve (of Spouse) and Jim Armenti (Lonesome Brothers) and Erik Alan (The Amity Front). This sounds like all sorts of fun.



Lori McKenna Band and Mark Erelli
Saturday Jan 12, 7 & 10 pm
Iron Horse Music Hall, Northampton MA

Lori struggled on the singer-songwriter circuit for years until she was taken under the wing of country star Faith Hill, and was then featured on Oprah. Erelli is her friend and plays in her touring band. He's got a new, and anticipated album, on the horizon.



Brooks Williams and Gail Wade
Saturday Jan 12, 8 pm
Buttonwood Tree, Middletown CT

Brooks is an amazing guitarist, and gifted songwriter, and Gale Wade found her muse a few years back, and has taken to the local stages with a beautiful vengance. The Buttonwood Tree is so intimate, it's like having the musicians in your living room without having to clean up after.



Amy Gallatin and Stillwaters
Saturday Jan 12, 7:30 pm
Connecticut Audobon Center, Glastonbury, CT

With two new albums in the racks (one with Roger Williams and one with Stillwaters), Gallatin has lots of new (and in fact some really old) material to try out on audiences.

Dr. Hugh to you

I bumped into Dr. Hugh Blumenfeld at St. Francis Hospital today, and got to see him in his physician get-up. (BTW, I also bumped into my radio colleague, Dr. Steve Dieterich).

As you can see, the genius musician, is now a genius physician.

I asked Hugh about Richard Meyer, whom I blogged about last week. The sad news is that Meyer is now living in a nursing home somewhere in New York City, the victim of advanced Parkinson's disease. And like most folk musicians, he had no medical insurance. Hugh indicated that what little residuals are now accrued by Fast Folk Musical Magazine, are all sent to Meyer.

On the topic of Meyer's song, The January Cold, which I invoked on this blog last week, Hugh clued me into a historical gaffe in the song. We can write it off as poetic license, but apparently, when Warren Harding was inaugurated, the actual inauguration ceremony and speech was not in January, but in March, and that just doesn't scan.