Heidi and I had dinner with friends Amy & Kyle tonight at Firebox in Hartford. Firebox is located at 539 Broad St in a very cool building with lots of exposed brick and intriguing decor. The food at Firebox focuses on using locally grown ingredients whenever possible. The food is contemporary American cuisine. The menu includes a prix fixe selection that features CT grown ingredients. It’s the hook for Firebox.

I loved the building. The bar area is beautiful, with cool wrap-around booths and lots of exposed wood and bricks. I almost wish the dining room was in the bar area because the decor there is much simpler.

As for the menu, there’s not much for vegetarians. Just a few salads, a risotto dish, and a chef’s vegetarian special (the only entree that’s vegetarian). Beyond that, it’s a pretty typical menu for a higher end dining experience: a reasonable number of choices, an interesting cocktail list, and what is supposed to be a good wine list. We didn’t order any wine, so I can’t really comment on that.

Overall, I liked our meal and the experience there. There was one snafu with our orders, where Amy, who also ordered the vegetarian entree, got it prepared the way I needed (without mushrooms) rather than as described on the menu. Beyond that, the service was unremarkable but timely. I really liked the food I ordered, even devouring the broccoli (and I hate broccoli normally). The portions were enough to sate our hunger, but the consensus seems to be that they were a bit smaller than ideal (Kyle’s salmon was the only exception, I think).

We did have a shock at the end of the meal when we got the final bill. With no wine or drinks at all, the bill was well north of $100 for the four of us. In that light, the meal didn’t measure up. It was good, don’t get me wrong, but not that good. Because of the price and limited choices, I don’t know if I’d go back there. It’s certainly good food, but I like the food at Bricco better if I’m going to be spending that kind of money.

(PS. it’s been really hard to not type Firefox instead of Firebox this whole time)

West Hartford folks, there’s a budget referendum today. You can read the cases for voting yes or no as presented by WH FIRST and by the WHTA, respectively, over at WHForums.

As I seem to do every year, now, I’m voting yes for two reasons. First, I have issues with the way the WHTA presents their case. Too often, it has involved pure dishonesty, and that makes it difficult to evaluate their claims (not that they present much evidence) without extensive fact checking. I have more trust in the town council at this point.

Second, and much more significant, is that I think the idea of budgets being cut in response to referenda to be a flawed idea. These conversations should be happening over the year, and should be handled through elections. I would also love to see specific cuts people would make that are actually possible. If enough folks really care about this, there should be primary challengers to the council Democrats, as well as folks running as Republicans. We never see that, though, so it’s hard for me to take this seriously.

I actually forgot to vote this AM, so I’ll see you at the polls this evening.

WHForums and Talk of West Hartford have pulled some interesting data together about our local test score debate. You can get my take and links to the earlier posts here at FM. The two new posts I’d like to highlight are these:

• Free/Reduced Lunch Eligibility and Hartford County Test Scores - WH Forums
• CMT Scores and Per Pupil Spending - Greater Hartford Area - Talk of West Hartford

Both are interesting posts and worth considering.

I suspect they also say a lot about how each of those writers approaches the school budget debate (as this post will say about mine, shortly). Basically, ToWH focuses on outlays, per pupil expenditure vs. results as measured by the tests. WH Forums takes a different tack, starting with the question of “what makes our town different than Avon, Simsbury, and Farmington” and proposing a theory.

To me, both are valid starting points. In fact, the only concern I have is using this test score as a proxy for “results”… but since it’s easy to turn into a number and easy to correlate that to other numbers, there we go.

So, I’ve done a couple of things that I hope help the debate out a bit. First, I’ve put the numbers from ToWH’s post and the 2000 census data on median household income by town into a spreadsheet. I’ve put that spreadsheet online at Google Docs so everyone can look at it, re-sort it, and download it. I’ve invited both ToWH and WH Forums’ writers in as collaborators, as well. If you want to add data to the spreadsheet, feel free to drop me a line at codesujal -at- gmail and I’ll invite you in. I took the census numbers from the Dept. of Economic and Community Development’s site and I’ve added that spreadsheet to Google Docs as well.

Second, the per pupil numbers are interesting to say the least. Hartford City Public Schools spend by and far the most dollars per pupil. The next thing I’m going to do when I have a moment is dig through the budget breakdowns to see how they allocate money vs. West Hartford. Here are the relevant links:

• Hartford Public Schools 06-07 budget — (here’s the executive summary, which contains most of the info I was looking for
• West Hartford Public Schools 08-09 budget

The executive summary for the WHPS system doesn’t contain the same level of detail as the Hartford one, so I’ll have to cull that from the Section C Breakdowns (PDF link). It looks a little daunting and I need to get back to work on my real job. So, that will come later.

Finally, looking through all of these numbers, I’d like to summarize how I’m seeing the conversation evolve. We’ve got two conversations, really, that are going on together. First is the bottom-line expenditures by the school district and the size of the budget overall. There are many people understandably upset about the overall growth in the budget. This conversation is, to me, focused on purely fiscal issues — comparative pay of school administrators and teachers vs. other towns, audits looking for waste in school expenditures, etc. The second conversation is about whether the WHPS budget is delivering appropriately for the town. This conversation is about test scores, programs, and student outcomes.

The two conversations could be happening without the other. One could be perfectly satisfied with the school performance but feel like it should be or could be cheaper. One could also be perfectly fine with the tax rate, but care about test scores and our relative performance to other districts, to dropout rates, to college attendance rates, etc.

Because of the budget debate, though, I think both are happening together, and are being used as ammunition by each side of both. It’s also pretty clear to me that the conversation one focuses on indicates an underlying stance on the budget issue. Speaking for myself, I’m focused on the test results because the tax issue is tied to why I live in West Hartford: I want good schools. I really want the best schools, and will be willing to pay a premium even if I don’t take advantage of the system (no kids yet). So, I want to know if my willingness is being taken advantage of or not, and whether we can do better as a town. I think if the tax burden were making it hard for me to afford living in town, or if I were on a fixed income, I would be more focused on the bottom line growth in the budget. So, I think it’s important that we acknowledge that difference if we’re going to come to some sort of consensus on a budget.

Enough meta-debate for now.

Let me get back to the test scores again. If we use the test scores as a proxy, we’re not in the top 5 as a district (and that’s just in our county). Like WH Forums, I wonder if this is a big deal or not. Certainly, I’d like for us to be much higher, but I don’t know whether the goal of being top 5 or number 1 makes sense for our town. Again, it matters whether the scores are a good proxy for educational results.

My take, which I think is pretty clear, is that the test scores cover two subject areas and that’s hardly the full measure of a student’s academic success or the quality of the education they’re receiving. For example, the WHPS executive summary highlights other, unmeasured differences. WHPS starts foreign language study in 3rd grade (kindergarten in some cases). They offer a gifted and talented program, which was important in my own education and an alternative high school program. Read the summary for others. These things don’t show up directly in test scores, even though they make for a broader education. These things are important to me. Therefore, I’m not sure the test scores serve as a good enough proxy for results.

This is worth having a wider conversation about in town, because we’re often speaking past each other when discussing the budget. Are we all going after the same goal? Do we agree on what makes a good public education system?

PS. local bloggers — if you don’t mind, could we all start using Google Docs or something like it when pulling together these type of spreadsheets? It can import Excel files if you’re more comfortable in the tools, and lets everyone play with the numbers rather than just look at a static file. I’d appreciate it.

I primarily want to point at two posts on local West Hartford blogs that are examining the local Connecticut Mastery Test (CMT) and Connecticut Academic Performance Test (CAPT) scores. These are the state mandated testing that students in CT have to take. Both of these tests feed into No Child Left Behind requirements for the state.

The first post is at WH Forums: A Closer Look at West Hartford’s 2008 CMT Results: The Problem with DRG. The second post is at Talk of West Hartford: Talk of West Hartford.

Most of you (at least the local folks) know that I tend to (strongly) disagree with the folks behind Talk of West Hartford. They are anti-school spending, anti-union, and anti-teacher. So, it won’t be a surprise that I have some issues with the way the Talk of West Hartford blog frames their response. While the WH Forums post takes some time to pull numbers and actually lay out the data (without drawing strong conclusions), the Talk post says bold, unsubstantiated things like:

Personally, Talk Of West Hartford doesn’t think economic situation should have any bearing on kids in our schools. If the schools are good schools (like West Hartford’s are supposed to be) anyone from any walk of life should have the equal opportunity to learn within the district and excel, and especially in West Hartford where so many intervention programs are available and at their fingertips. Especially in West Hartford where our teachers and PTO’s are supposedly top notch. Poor kids in West Hartford schools should be doing just as well as more affluent kids. They are, after all, in the same school district which offers amazing resources to everyone regardless of demographics.

This paragraph might actually be true. It also could be completely false. And nothing in the paragraph or any subsequent paragraph sheds any light on whether it’s remotely true. (it’s remarkable how long the post is without actually supporting any of the conclusions they draw).

This goes beyond the blog post itself. The quality of the debate in this town over the budget and the school budget itself has been similarly full of garbage assertions, mostly by the anti-tax folks but by both sides. As someone who likes looking at the data, this debate by assertion is tiring and useless.

In the debate over demographics and their influence on education, I believe Talk of West Hartford is glossing over a lot of important details. Parental participation rates would seem to correlate with single parenthood, income, and job flexibility. For example, white collar, higher paying jobs might allow a parent to come to school during the day for a parent/teacher conference. Wealthier students tend to work less, and less as a necessity.

So, more detail is necessary to see if this stuff is true. I would suspect, based on other studies I’ve read and talking to teachers in my wife’s circle of friends (she’s a teacher, too), that income levels tend to correlate well with other factors in a student’s educational success. In other words, having “programs” isn’t the same as knowing whether those programs are appropriate for the student population. PTO organizations, for example, aren’t going to help if an entire group of parents can’t make it. Russian classes won’t help a student who is working a lot of hours and is prioritizing that over homework.

Of course, I don’t know if these things are an issue or whether the studies and anecdotes I’ve mentioned apply to West Hartford because I haven’t seen any data about this. And, judging from the Talk of West Hartford folks, I’m not alone.

More data, less assertions, please.

I realize there are far more important things to worry about in the world, but as I read local blogs about West Hartford news, I keep running into people who refer to our town council members with phrases like “our Democrat mayor” or “the Democrat majority.”

Democrat is a noun. Democratic is an adjective. Beyond that, “Democratic Party” is a proper noun and the official name of the party. So, it’s “our Democratic mayor” and “the Democratic majority” in American English.

If this were a slip or a typo, I’d ignore it and certainly wouldn’t bring it up but I’m seeing it enough that it’s clearly a tactic from Republicans more interested in making cheap partisan shots than showing basic respect for neighbors and fellow citizens who happen to disagree with them politically.

Let’s all grow up, please?

Amy keeps posting this so I have to pass it on now… Still makes me laugh.

As for Heidi and I, we’ve got our weekend plans. Tomorrow night at 8PM at Real Art Ways, Raiders of the Lost Ark: The Adapatation. We’ll probably swing by Celebrate West Hartford in the afternoon. Hope to see you there!

For the local folks, Real Art Ways is showing 3 screenings of Raiders of the Lost Ark: The Adaptation along with a Q&A with two of the filmmakers. Here’s the email I just received from RAW:

Dear Sujal,

Like precious artifacts, whips, do-it-yourself culture, and irrepressible
creativity in children? I sure do. That’s why I’m particularly excited
about an event we have coming up at Real Art Ways. On Friday, Saturday and
Sunday (June 13-15), we are screening Raiders of the Lost Ark: The
Adaptation and hosting its directors.

After seeing Raiders of the Lost Ark in 1981, three 12 year old friends,
Chris Strompolos, Eric Zala and Jayson Lamb, began filming their own
shot-by-shot adaptation in the backyards of their Mississippi homes.? Seven
years later their film was in the can.

Chris and Eric will be at Real Art Ways for each of the three screenings
(Friday and Saturday at 8PM, Sunday at 2PM), as well as for a special
lecture (Saturday at 2PM) about the process of making the film. Each
screening is followed by a Q&A. Chris and Eric give a great
presentation-it’s witty and heartfelt, funny and unforgettable.

More information is available on the film’s website:
www.theraider.net/films/raiders_adaptation/

And here’s a review from Pete Vonder Haar at Film Threat:
http://www.filmthreat.com/index.php?section=reviews&Id=10959

For more information or to reserve your tickets, please call us at
860-232-1006 x222.

Best,

Meghan Maguire Dahn
Development Associate

Imagine the love and effort that went into this. Shot for shot remake before they could rent a video copy, before iMovie and inexpensive editing software, and made by teenagers. You should read the second link above. I’m going to see if Heidi is interested. If she is, we’ll be there. More info about the event is on the RAW web site.

Heidi and I went to see Tennessee Williams’s The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore, featuring Olympia Dukakis in the lead role. I have to admit I was looking forward to seeing an Academy Award winner in person, and she didn’t disappoint. Unfortunately, I can’t say the same for the play itself. The writing was uneven, surprisingly so for a play Tennessee Williams himself rewrote and one where the Hartford Stage’s Dramaturg said has been massaged since.

The whole story is focused on an exploration of the main character, Flora Goforth. She’s a dying, wealthy woman, working on her memoirs. Her life story is full of friends and lovers and husbands but through it all, we discover that she’s actually quite alone. We learn this, though, through too many scenes that take a loooong, time to get advance the story.

I got the sense, watching it, that the ending was what Williams was writing around, that it was the core of the idea. I just don’t think he figured out how to get there.

Via a friend via AW, I discovered Girl Talk today. You must listen to this album. Funny, clever, and good music. Go get it. For the local peeps, he’s playing at Toad’s Place in New Haven in 2 weeks.

What makes his stuff cool is that it’s entirely composed of short samples of a bunch of different songs blended together into a new composition. Some of the combinations are just surprising and trying to identify songs is part of the fun. On top of that, hearing an 80s track overlaid with a hip hop track from 2007 or a remake of an old song next to the original just is a cool experience. This guy is talented.

Update: By “this album” I mean Night Ripper. Oops.

Heidi and I were able to see Lydia Diamond’s stage adaptation of Toni Morrison’s novel, The Bluest Eye, at the Hartford Stage tonight. If you’re in the area, I recommend taking a night out to see the show. It’s in preview right now and officially opens next Friday.

The Bluest Eye is Toni Morrison’s first novel, published in 1970. Here’s a brief synopsis from Wikipedia:

The Bluest Eye is a 1970 novel by American author and Nobel Prize recipient Toni Morrison. Morrison’s first novel, which was written while Morrison taught at Howard University and was raising her two sons on her own, the story is about a year in the life of a young black girl in Lorain, Ohio named Pecola. It takes place against the backdrop of America’s Midwest as well as the Great Depression. The Bluest Eye is told from five perspectives: Pecola’s, her mother’s, her father’s, her friend Claudia’s, and Soaphead Church’s. Because of the controversial nature of the book, which deals with racism and child molestation, there have been numerous attempts to ban it from schools and libraries.

…

The narrator advises the reader not to look at the “why” of the story but at the “how.” The novel, with child sex, irresponsible adults, and corrupt society seeks to show the misery of black people living in a white society.

…

In the afterword, Morrison explains that she is attempting to humanize all the characters that attack Pecola or cause her to be the way she is; that it is not a matter where one person can be pointed out as being the cause of all this pain.

Ideas of beauty, particularly those that relate to racial characteristics, are a major theme in this book. The title refers to Pecola’s wish that her eyes would turn blue. Claudia is given a white baby doll to play with and is constantly told how lovely it is. … Most chapters’ titles are extracts from a Dick and Jane reading book, presenting a happy white family. This family is contrasted with Pecola’s existence.

Not having read the book, I can’t comment on the similarities between the two stories, but the play keeps the multiple narrators and presents some emotionally tough material. The story is powerful and hard to let go. Pecola’s desire for blue eyes and Claudia’s hatred of her little, white dolls were things I could relate to, not because I want blue eyes, but because these are metaphors for the reminders of one’s race. I’ve been pulled out of line at the border because I wasn’t white, and I’ve been followed by police around Amsterdam because I had a camera and brown skin. I could be the same person, but if I were white, I wouldn’t have to deal with any of that. So, Pecola’s peculiar desire makes sense to me.

The play does a good job of touching on all of these issues in a matter of fact way. Sometimes, you laugh at a joke before realizing that the humor masked a painful truth.

I was confused at some points during the play, and I think it came from the shifting perspective and the fact that several actors played multiple characters. Beyond that, some of the acting was a bit rough (stumbled lines), but forgivable because this is just the third night of the show. Those are really minor issues, and overall the production was excellent.

Being who I am, I have to point out that the set was one of the more interesting ones I’ve ever seen. The set itself becomes a metaphor for how the “how” becomes more and more obvious, and how Pecola is more and more exposed to the world around her. This is the first show I’ve seen where the set involves a fair amount of water. Pecola plays in a puddle on stage at one point and rain makes up a key metaphor at one point of the story.

This was also my first time at Hartford Stage which looks to be a great space. Really enjoyed watching the play in that theater. It looks like a fun place to stage a production.

The Bluest Eye is strongly recommended by both Heidi and I. She may comment more on the story at her blog, since she’s read the original book and teaches Morrison.