From the gifted journalist, Buzz Bissinger, in his new book about his son, “Father’s Day.” Reviewed in the NYT today.
All writers silently soak up despair for our own advantage; like dogs rolling in the guts of dead animals, the stink of others makes us giddy. We deny it but we lie in denying it.
Does the Cheshire Democrat have the campaign legs to make a run for her party’s nomination in the the 5th District?
Right now, the odds look very, very long for the former state representative and town council member who has been running hard in the 41 towns that make up the district.
Chris Donovan, the House Speaker, is the hands-down favorite of the Democratic wing of the Democratic party. He won a resounding victory at the Democrats’ nominating convention for the 5th District in Waterbury Monday night. Donovan — with legions of traditional, liberal Democrats in his corner – will be almost imposssible to knock off in the Aug. 14 party primary. He showed impressive muscle among Democratic delegates from the district’s larger cities, including Meriden and New Britain.
Which is why the big question is Esty and whether she can muster enough center and independent-minded Democrats to challenge Donovan. She must show she’s the one who can hold on to a Congressional seat that may be more independent and Republican than it is Democratic.
Donovan smothered Esty and Democrat Dan Roberti Monday evening, raking in 216 of the available 336 delegate votes. Esty collected 66, about 19 percent. Dan Roberti won 54, giving him 16 percent. It takes 15 percent to force a primary.
“I have demonstrated the ability to win independents,” Esty told me during a break from working the crowd Monday evening, reminding me that more than 4 in 10 voters in the 5th District are unaffiliated. “I know I can reach independent voters.”
Esty’s chances also hang on Dan Roberti, the first-time candidate from Kent, who also vows to stay in the race, despite his poor showing Monday evening. Roberti is well-financed and energetic, but not as strong a campaigner as Esty. If he remains the race, Esty probably goes nowhere.
Meanwhile, Democrats have another questions they must ask themselves. If Chris Murphy cruises to the nomination for U.S. Senate, does the party want to reject a moderate female such as Esty in the 5th? The Democrats — including Donovan Monday night — have made much of the “Republican war on women.” If so, why not nominate a Democratic woman in the 5th district?
Esty has no shortage of wealthy backers. She has led all candidates in fundraising. She has about $800,000 in cash on hand as the candidates head into three months of campaigning before the August primary.
Donovan looks more than solid, for now. The campaign, however, has barely begun.
Esty and her staff watch the convention from the back of the room
Here’s the new ad. It grows on you.
Should West Hartford’s football fields have lights? A new group thinks so:
West Hartford High Schools Unite For Lights A group of West Hartford high school students, parents, teachers and community leaders have joined together in support of bringing lights to the turf athletic fields at Conard and Hall public high schools.
Check out their petition and the Lights for Hall and Conard FB page.
So this is the new I-Love-Connecticut brand. We can’t do better than this? I’m going to try and come around, but doesn’t it confirm all those dusty old reasons for not bothering with Connecticut? Old place, old ideas, nothing new? I get the “still revolutionary” irony here… but somehow I was expecting more from the Mad Men hired to rebrand Connecticut.
Alyssa Norwood has a pretty good excuse to drive her car to work.
His name is Eliot, and he’s talking a mile-a-minute about his handsome frog rain hat and show-and-tell plans as we walk from Norwood’s home near the Hartford line in West Hartford to his preschool a few blocks away.
Even with the morning rush of getting Eliot to preschool, Norwood makes time to ride her bike to work, rain or shine.
Norwood is part of an unexpected – and very, very small – development: she’s among the relative handful of folks who have figured out another way to get to work besides jumping in the car. For a working mom with a three-year-old in preschool and a toddler at home, she’s proof that it doesn’t always have to be like it’s always been.
Overwhelmingly, however, Hartford area residents remain gridlocked in their cars.
The numbers have nudged only slightly since 2000, when 82.5percent of area commuters drove alone to work, to 2010, when the average figure was about 81.5 percent, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. No wonder I-84 and I-91 seem worse than ever.
But since this is “CT Rides Week” — when the state Department of Transportation wants you to try, if only for a day, a different way of getting to work – and Friday is national Bike-to-Work-Day, (Google bikewalkct or CT Rides for more information) let’s take a moment to salute the commuting 
pioneers like the Alyssa Norwoods out there.
Because ever so slowly some of us really are looking beyond the cars that clog the roads, pollute the air and raise our blood pressure.
Read the rest of the column.
It’s a grim world out there. The latest in the presidential ad campaign:
The governor, jumping the gun on a state tourism convention later this week, will announce the state’s new tourism campaign today with a morning press conference at the Old State House in downtown Hartford. This will be our first glimpse of a $22 million marketing and “rebranding” campaign announced earlier this year.
There’s still time though to enter your Connecticut tale in the state’s “What’s Your Connectcut Story” contest. So far, the 100 mile Connecticut River canoe trip is the big leader among folks who have entered their stories.
Check out all the Connecticut stories here.
Nicholas and Virginia Payne, living a comfortable life in the Litchfield Hills, never thought much about gun and drug violence.
It was on TV or in the papers, not something that would come crashing into their country life.
The Paynes raised an outgoing and optimistic daughter, Rebecca, who left New Milford for Northeastern University in Boston in 2004, full of ambition and dreams of becoming an athletic trainer.
Four years ago the phone rang on an unforgettable Tuesday in May, changing their lives forever.
The National Assessment of Educational Progress, which compares science achievement among students across the states, tells us more of what we already know. Connecticut, with lots of high achieving students, isn’t making any progress closing the gap between surban and city and white and nonwhite students.
For example, students in cities had an average score of 137, while suburban and rural students scored an average of 161. Connecticut’s average score.
The new scores for 8th grade science show that Connecticut is now slipping behind other states. Education Commissioner Stefan Prior, in a statement today, said:
In addition to slipping in relation to other states, Connecticut continues to struggle to confront performance gaps, this time in science, between students who are economically disadvantaged and their peers.
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