While I don’t have any particular plan to take a break, it seem clear that blogging is on some sort of hiatus for me. I’ve been very busy and, when I have free time, I’m choosing to do other things.

Beyond that, I’ve also realized that I’m not sure what I want to have as the purpose for this blog anymore. Over the last 5-6 years of its existence it’s morphed a few times. It used to be fairly light-hearted with a number of voices and styles contributing to the blog. Over the last two years or so, it’s turned into a mostly single-author blog with a far more, let’s call it intense focus on politics.

So, a few things are in play. First, I just haven’t had the time to read much any more. Little things like eating lunch at the cafeteria with co-workers rather than at my desk make a huge difference in how much news I consume. Beyond that, I’m also fairly dispirited by the state of politics both at the local and national level. I have a decent amount of optimism in the President, but watching the debate around the issues I see the same stuff from the Republican side of the aisle that we have for the past 15 years. Gov. Jindal brazenly repeating well-debunked lies in a nationally televised response. Republicans complaining about high taxes when they’ve been the lowest they’ve been in 50 years or so. Locally, I see the same thing. Lots of arguing, very little in the way of listening.

I’m not sure how to fix it, but I’m certainly not helping by repeatedly pointing at it and getting annoyed. So, I’ve cut back writing about that stuff, just passing on articles with significant information or analysis. Those are few and far between so, combined with the time issue, this blog is more or less silent.

Those of you with keys to post, feel free to post whatever (even or especially if you disagree with me). If anyone wants to be added to the roster or writers, feel free to drop me a note. Won’t guarantee anything, but am open to adding more voices.

I’m sure I’ll be back soon enough, once I find time or figure out if I need to change the blog up a bit.

(PS. One intentional plan, though, is to disengage from local issues on twitter. I’ve been a bit of a jackass about stuff lately, mostly out of weariness of the local budget nonsense that’s happening locally and at the state level. Again, if I’m not helping, I’m hurting. Need to step back for a bit. Oh, and sorry to everyone for being a jackass. Mean that quite sincerely.)

I’ve been following the discussion in Hartford on switching to district representation with some interest. The idea is simple enough, that rather than having at large representation on the council, perhaps they should be elected based on their local voting district. The reason for considering the change is that the town council in Hartford is currently made of up people living in the western part of the city. There are entire regions, usually with different socioeconomic demographics, that have very little representation on the council.

I don’t have any data on this (census information or other demographic information), but I trust the folks on the council know their neighborhoods. For West Hartford, the town GIS site has our census districts, so it should be possible to correlate the tracts with demo data collected by the census bureau in 2000. I’ll see if I have some time to dig through that.

Anyway, I’m just explaining the map that follows. I took the addresses of the current town council members in West Hartford, plotted them on the map and drew an approximation of our town borders as well. You can see that only 2 members live south of Farmington and only one lives south of Park.

Whenever we talk about development in town and debate Blue Back, one thing that comes up pretty regularly is why no attention is paid to the Elmwood area (by S. Quaker and New Britain Ave for the non-WH folks) by the town. I’d suggest that if you look at the map, you may have at least an inkling of why that might be. This isn’t to say they’re ignoring it on purpose, but that it’s not really part of their neighborhood. It’s easier to forget about when you’re not there that often. Heck, I go months without going down there, though that will likely change now that I have a friend living in the new condos down there.

View Larger Map

Maybe some geographic representation might be worthwhile in West Hartford, as well?

When my Twitter feed for today posts in a little bit, you’ll see some random tweets about Hartford/West Hartford bashing. I figure I should probably explain myself a bit, because Twitter makes everything short of funny seem curt to me.

My general issue is simple: There’s too much negativity in local politics. It is, quite frankly, worse than the national debate because the “theys” being created are literally neighbors. Disagreements seems to inevitably reduce themselves to demonization.

The trigger for this conversation was Helder’s complaint about the Blue Back Square (BBS) development in town. Complaints about BBS are a semi-annoying subject to me because it comes up again and again in WH itself, as it gets brought up ad nauseum by folks who opposed the project. Now, I’ll admit to being in a grumpy mood before this started because of other things going on. I also realize he meant this as a joke. Also, this isn’t about Helder himself. I think he gets most of what I’m about to say. I don’t want to just let it go, though, because these sentiments come up pretty regularly in town discussions (read the comments for any Courant article that talks about Hartford, for example)

With those disclaimers out of the way, what really got me, though, was the idea BBS was elitist, actively designed to keep low income and working class families out of the center. The conversation flowed from there, but this was where I got my hackles raised.

This is worthy of a longer conversation, and probably one in person, so I’m going to keep these short. Would love to talk about this further. Consider this my conversation starter, basically what I was trying to get across via Twitter:

• I generally agree with folks concerned about the health of Hartford, of urban flight in general, and the prevailing wage/class issues that created the suburbs in the first place. Even though I live in West Hartford, believe it or not.
• I’m not really sure that it’s “wrong” in any sense to have spaces that cater to people with higher incomes. (the involvement of public funds makes this more complicated, certainly)
• West Hartford center, for better or for worse, catered to the same crowd before and after BBS’s arrival, at least since I’ve been living here (2003). The longer term shift (say, from 20 years ago) is, to me, part of the greater urban flight story and not endemic to West Hartford itself. Further, BBS itself is, at worst, a symptom of changes that have already happened in town, not the cause (or even an early sign) of the change itself.
• Debates about the health of the region, especially as we discuss greater regionalism and projects that have multi-town impacts, like new rail projects, would be more constructive if people on both sides would get past the us/them mentality. We’re neighbors. It’s natural to prioritize our own neighborhoods and towns, so the goal is to find mutually beneficial policies. (it would be helpful to express policies in those terms, too.)
• The name calling and using nearby towns as an epithet or pejorative is counterproductive, let alone being pointless.
• Finally, West Hartford isn’t uniformly wealthy or white, so the implications of drawing class/race divisions between Hartford and West Hartford ignores the living situation of thousands of WH residents.

That’s all I was trying to get across. I know I haven’t been in the area for decades or whatever, but I think that’s actually not a bad thing. Fresh perspective and all that jazz. Really, my bottom line is this: I’d love to see people talk about what we can do rather than attacking potential allies.

One last thought that seems related here: The trends in Hartford and in the interaction between the suburbs and the city don’t seem all that unique to me. Where do we have the conversation to talk about solutions to this problem? Where are they already happening? We don’t need to figure this out all over again by ourselves…

And Helder, we should get together at some point and grab a drink and you can fill me in on the history from your perspective. Would love to hear it.

Heidi has a review of Bombay Olive. Bombay Olive is one of the newest Indian Restaurants in West Hartford. I pretty much agree with her entire review, so go give it a read.

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.

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.

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.

I am really looking forward to seeing Cloverfield. Anyone that wants to meet up on Friday night to see this, ping me via email. Thinking about rounding up the Fanzter folks and doing a night out. Come along!

Update: yes, I’m willingly marketing a movie. JJ Abrams! Lost! Come on, how can I not?!

Update 2: Also, check these out as well.

This post at CTLP basically captures my thoughts on the optical scan machines. For those of you outside CT, this was the first election where we went from the old lever machines to the new optical scan machines. As the CTLP post points out, I also hated the fact that the poll worker could see my ballot, and I hate that it takes longer to vote. This election was one where I was voting party line anyway, and the old lever system that would’ve been one switch and done. Here I had to fill in the bubbles for each and every candidate. No big deal, but does make it more tedious.

The privacy thing bugged me more. If a ballot ever needs both sides, turning it over won’t be enough to hide your votes. The bold, black circles make it easy to read from a distance so there really isn’t any privacy. I think the principle of the issue bothers me more than any actual concern about my poll workers. I’ve seen them every year since I started living in West Hartford, and they’re uniformly helpful and knowledgeable.

Don’t forget to go vote. I got my sticker.