Snowy Sidewalks

During my holiday travels, I was talking to my brother, who grew up in Iowa, about what it's like trying to get anywhere in Waterbury during the winter. I was telling him that, while there's snow on the ground, you pretty much have to drive a car if you don't want to struggle with snow and ice. At best, only half the sidewalks are shoveled, which means that pedestrians have to choose between possibly spraining an ankle or slipping and falling on ice, or risk getting hit by a car while walking in the side of the road. I can't even imagine what it must be like for someone pushing a baby stroller. Anyone in a wheelchair is either stuck at home or stuck in the roadway.

My brother was shocked by this situation. He had trouble comprehending that there could be unshoveled sidewalks. It turns out that Iowa not only requires property owners to shovel their sidewalks, they also have a state law (Code of Iowa, Sec. 364.12 [2c]) which allows/requires each city to shovel any sidewalk that isn't cleared soon enough. The city then bills the property owner for the job.

This sounds absolutely wonderful to me. I'd love to see it happen here. There's something about having clear walkways that's so civilized.

Of course, since Waterbury has difficulty just getting the streets properly cleared, expecting the city to also take care of sidewalks, even if they do get reimbursed for it, is probably asking too much.

One Week

That's how long the Waterbury pound keeps dogs before putting them down. They take the dog in, have it inspected by a vet, and if it's disease-free, they place an ad in the paper (not under "Pets" however...) and a week later, if the dog hasn't been claimed or adopted, they kill it (humanely, of course, but it amounts to the same thing).

One week does not seem like anywhere near enough time. One month would be better. I don't know how many dogs the pound can hold, but they are currently advertising five dogs (including the poor puppy I found last week--I'm working hard at finding somewhere for him to go) for adoption/claim. Five dogs that are going to be put to sleep at Christmas if nobody rescues them.

The Republican-American runs a pet photo section once a week, printing photos that people send in of their cats and dogs. Wouldn't it be a better use of that section to run photos of the dogs on death row at the pound?

Mildly Disturbing

As I was walking along East Main Street this morning, carefully watching my footing, since half the sidewalks are still covered in snow and ice, I noticed a half-eaten chicken wing on the ground, being picked over by a pigeon. This seems not right somehow. Naturally, there are birds that eat other birds (hawks, for example), and all birds (I assume) eat bugs, but for some reason I just don't expect city pigeons to eat chicken.

The strangest pigeon story I've ever heard is from New York City, where there are (supposedly) pigeons that live, permanently, deep in the subway system and are evolving into blind albinos.

Snowy Day Adventure

Right after the snow started this morning, I noticed dog poop on my front porch. I was, naturally, annoyed that someone's dog would come up on my porch and do that. Several hours later, as I stepped outside to start shoveling snow, I noticed that the dog had peed as well. Very annoying. As I shoveled the poop off the porch, I suddenly noticed, out of the corner of my eye, something dark in the corner behind the recycling bin. I moved closer and discovered the most emaciated dog I've ever seen huddled up in a little ball. He didn't move anything other than his eye as I got closer. My first thought was that he had already frozen to death, but that little bit of eye movement let me know he was still alive. My second thought was to ask one of the kids playing in the snow if they knew whose dog he was, but then I saw his ribs and spine sticking out, and realized that if he belonged to someone, they weren't ever getting him back.

I rushed inside and grabbed a thick towel to keep him warm, and he was SO grateful for it, but still didn't get up. Then I rushed inside and filled a bowl up with cat food, which the dog quickly inhaled. I got more cat food, and this time he was able to stand up to eat.


Photo is blurry, but you can see how starved he is.

By this point, I was trying to figure out what to do with him. He wasn't displaying any aggression, and seemed disease-free. Not to mention that he kept giving me that heart-melting look of adoration.... The sensible thing, I knew, was to call the dog warden, but this sweet dog has already had a rough time. I called a friend who assured me that calling the dog warden was a good thing to do, so I made the call. No one answered, so I left a message.

(Side note: In the phone book, under Dog Warden in the blue pages, there's a second number to call if no one answers the first number. Well, it turns out the second number is for emergencies requiring the police! Oops! I felt very bad for bothering them, but the man who answered was very nice about it.)

I had been planning on doing some snow shoveling and then maybe going for a walk. But before I called the dog warden, I decided to let the dog come inside. He wanted to come in, and I figured I could toss him right back outside if he misbehaved. (Letting him inside was very nerve-wracking for me, because one of my cats was killed by a dog a few years ago.) When I opened the door and let him in, he made a beeline for the cat food in the kitchen, and completely ignored the cats as they bolted for safe hiding spots. The dog also ignored my gray cat Max, who hovered nearby, growling and mewing.


A less-than-happy cat...


I was going to set up a bed for the dog down in the basement, but he refused to go down the steps. He also refused to go back outside. He wants to stay close to me, so he's currently sleeping on the towel next to the couch. Max is fascinated by him. The other cats probably won't come out of hiding for days. I have no idea when the dog warden will call me back, and, considering that we're well into getting the 6-10 inches of snow predicted for today, I have no idea how long it will be before they can come for the dog. I'm hoping to get the dog to go outside after his nap; he's not exactly house-broken (he's already pooped in the living room). If I have to keep him overnight, he'll have to go in the basement, even if I have to carry him there (which won't be fun, considering that how filthy he is).


A very unhappy cat, trying to figure out where the dog is hiding.

The Other Buses

After Waterbury was hit by the sudden snowfall at rush hour last Friday, the big news in the paper was the stranding of small children on school buses. I don't know what would have been a better way to handle the problem (shouldn't the bus drivers be trained and equipped with supplies for emergencies strandings?), although I have to agree that it was much better to have the buses pull over than crash.

What I haven't seen covered much in the news is the story of the public trans buses. I heard one person say he waited two hours in the cold for a bus after work before finally giving up and walking a mile or two to get home. Granted, that doesn't make for as wrenching a story as crying toddlers, but I think it bothers me more. The kids on the buses were, presumably, kept warm. The people using CT Transit were stuck out in the cold, and those riders typically include the elderly and small children. At least some of the downtown bus stops have a sort of shelter, but there are few things quite as miserable as standing out in the cold waiting for a bus.

I suppose there's a certain amount of effort to find someone to blame for the transportation mess during the storm, but even after the storm started, most of the weathermen were still saying that it would be an insignificant dusting at worst. For tomorrow's storm, they're going the opposite direction, predicting roughly half a foot of snow. I don't think anyone will be too surprised if all we get is an insignificant dusting.

Missing the Bachata

At 6 this evening, I was outside shoveling snow from my sidewalk and driveway. During the summer and fall, if I were outside my house at 6 on a Friday, I'd be enjoying the great bachata music being blasted at the corner bodega. Tonight, in the cold and snow, there were hardly any sounds at all. It was so silent, I could hear the crunching footsteps of a man walking up the middle of the street. I do really enjoy the quiet of new snow, but I definitely miss the music. I wonder how much the city's Dominican population has grown in recent years. It seemed like I was hearing Zacarias Ferreira's songs everywhere in Waterbury. It was great.

I stepped back outside a little after 8 tonight. The snow stopped falling before 6pm, and amounted to about an inch of lightweight powder, but the streets are like ice from snow getting packed down tight by cars. A neighbor driving slowly down the street said there was at least one really bad accident on Oak Street. There's no sign of city plows putting down sand--but, of course, even after the snow had started, the weather reports were still claiming that it probably wouldn't do anything.

There's One in Every Neighborhood

A few days ago, I was sitting on my couch with my back to the window, when I suddenly felt like someone was staring at me. I turned around and saw a brown tabby cat peeping through the window. As soon as she saw me looking at her, she started meowing loudly and insistently at me.



I've seen her around, wandering through my yard, sleeping on the soft top of my car, but this was the first time she had shown any interest in me. Not knowing whether or not she's a stray, and knowing that extremely cold weather had started, I decided I might as well offer her some food. She devoured the handful of dry food I gave her, then returned to the window and started yelling for more. Since I am very much a sucker, I gave her some more. She ate most of that food, then returned to the window to yell again. This time I decided to let her come inside, and I checked her over to see what kind of condition she was in. No sign of fleas, wounds, or starvation. Considering how at ease she was with me, I think it's safe to assume she's not a stray.

She wanted back outside very quickly (I guess she didn't like my living room... or maybe she didn't like the way my cat followed her around), and returned to sitting in the window like she owned it. After a while, she started yelling at me again. This time she was satisfied with a quick scratch on the head. I decided to call her Vivian.

Vivian was back in the window yelling at me the next day. This time I did not feed her. I don't think she needs me to feed her. I used to have a big gray cat named Gus who spent his days looking for suckers. One of my neighbors told me that there was a big gray cat she was feeding. She said he showed up at her door one day, meowing sociably at her, so she let him inside. It didn't take long to verify that this was my cat, who was very well fed by me, chatting her up for food.

Vivian returned the third morning, although I slept late and left the curtains drawn. When I pulled open the curtains, I was relieved to see that she wasn't in the window. Then I saw her, bathing herself in the sun at the top of my porch steps, looking for all the world as if she owned the place.

Popsicle Politician

Congressman Chris Murphy was camped out at Stop & Shop (near Wal-Mart) today, one of the coldest days we've had this season. I felt frozen just walking from my car to the store; I can't imagine how bad it must be standing around all afternoon.

He had a steady stream of elderly men talking to him. When I was at the Customer Service counter inside, one of the women working there started describing the frustrating phone call she'd just taken. She spent five minutes trying to give directions to someone coming from Wolcott to meet Murphy. The woman working at the store said she had never even heard of Chris Murphy before today, and still wasn't sure who he is.

Holiday Windows

Last year I took photos of some of the downtown store windows decorated for the holidays, but, for whatever reason, I never posted them to my blog. Over the next couple of weeks, window decorations will be going up. Here are some of the highlights from last year:

Art Thefts

One of the big news items for Waterbury this week was the arrest of Waterbury resident Diane Catalani, who, as it turns out, suffers from a mental illness which led her to steal art and artifacts from museums and other organizations. I was relieved to learn that she had the Goodyear bible that had been stolen from the Naugatuck Historical Society--when that theft occurred, I had assumed it would never be seen again.

Returning all the stolen items could get a little tricky. Museums routinely mark collection items with at least an identifying number, but if all you have is the number, the police will have no way of knowing which institution it came from. Some of the items may have been stolen from schools or churches which don't place identification marks on their collections, which will make things complicated.

The photo which ran in the newspaper, showing the artworks in police custody, made me cringe. The paintings were safer in Catalani's house. While I'm sure the police are treating the art as well as they know how, the photo showed the paintings leaning up against one another on the floor, without anything cushioning them from each other. I have years of training in how to properly handle artworks, which makes it painful to think of art being mishandled.

Voting Day

I cast my vote earlier this afternoon, although "casting" doesn't really describe the experience very well, thanks to the new system. I suppose I could say I filled in my vote. I've never really liked bubble sheets, but this wasn't too bad. Using the black felt pen was a little daunting--if I somehow made a mistake, I'd have to start all over with a new sheet. Maybe I should have tried that, to see what happens with the "bad" sheet.

The most memorable part was feeding the sheet to the machine, which sucks it in with a fair amount of power. I think I might have jumped back a little in surprise. Since this is the final act of voting, maybe the phrase should be that I fed my vote to the machine.

Willow Street Improvements

I've always liked the apartment building on the corner of Willow and Ridgewood Streets, but for the past however many years it's been boarded up and falling apart. I thought for sure it would get torn down, since it seemed to be in such bad shape. When I drove by it a couple weeks ago, I was delighted to see that it's being fixed up.

Bad Ad

I was a little startled (just in time for Halloween!) by a full-page ad in today's Republican-American. It featured a poor-quality photograph of Jarjura surrounded by an assortment of Rep-Am headlines, some of which read along the lines of "Mayor is criticized", while others pertain to issues like condo projects and WDC (I suppose there's no point mentioning that the mayor doesn't run WDC--it has a board of directors that includes one of the Independent party's Aldermen). The ad implies that Jarjura is yet another corrupt Waterbury politician, which really isn't fair. I can't say that I agree with everything he's done (but since does anyone agree with everything?), but Jarjura is nothing at all like Waterbury's infamous corrupt politicians. I suppose mudslinging and casting aspersions are a standard practice in politics, but I still don't have any respect for it. I prefer to be given reasons to vote for candidates, not reason to fearfully vote against them. That just leaves me not wanting to vote at all.

If all of that weren't bad enough, it actually took me some effort to figure out who ran the ad. In relatively small print, at the bottom of the page, the ad encourages me to vote for Odle. There is one positive statement, in which Odle (I assume--it's not clear who is making the statement) promises that his economic development plan will benefit only the people of Waterbury, not his administration (which doesn't really make sense, but okay).

Overlooked?

The election is one week away, and until today I had not received any campaign mailings. This is not particularly a complaint, but it does seem strange. The last few years, I had an onslaught of mailings showing up at my home. Is it my address? How do the campaign people select mailing addresses--do they mail to every address in the Registrar of Voters database?

The mail I received today was from Mayor Jarjura (addressed to Current Resident). If his campaign office has my address, don't the others have it as well? Don't they want my vote? (Insert sarcastic whining here.)

I suppose it has to do with voter turnout for each neighborhood. Which is why I'm in favor of Aldermen by district. If you have a neighborhood with low voter turnout, the current system doesn't give our politicians any reason to care about that neighborhood. And as soon as a neighborhood feels like the city doesn't care about them, the more likely it is to fall apart. Which makes voter turnout go down even further.

Dawn Raids

I was woken up today at 5am by the sound of extremely loud gunshots. I think there was a total of 5 shots over a minute or so. In between I could just barely hear "this is the police" coming from a megaphone. Judging by how difficult it was to hear the police officer, I would say that this was happening many blocks away, but the gun shots sounded like they were right outside my house (they weren't).

I've been checking the news periodically throughout the day to see if anyone was reporting on what happened. The full details still aren't available, but the short version is that the Waterbury police department arrested more than 70 people throughout the city for felony gun and drug charges. I guess at least one idiot decided to resist arrest.

In between shots this morning, I started wishing we had tighter gun control laws. I know there are a million people who would be eager to tell me why it's good that guns are so easily available, but when you hear someone shooting up your neighborhood, you start wishing for a total ban. On the other hand, I absolutely appreciate the work that the Waterbury PD puts into minimizing illegal gun activity in the city. Unlike other Connecticut cities (New Haven, Hartford), Waterbury is not plagued by random shootings. It seems like there's a major raid every year or so, and it seems to help.

Deadly Intersection

Yesterday there was a second fatality for the year at the intersection of Walnut and Wood Streets. I'm kind of surprised there aren't more. It's a terrible intersection to navigate. If you're traveling eastbound (more or less) on Wood Street, there is an abandoned apartment building on your left that completely blocks your view of any cars traveling south on Walnut, and there are usually cars parked to the right which block your view of vehicles coming up the hill. So, typically, you're faced with two choices: either edge slowly out into the middle of the street until you can see the cars that are about to hit you; or just floor it and hope for the best.

The nearby intersection of Walnut, North Walnut and East Farm is almost as bad. There the visibility is okay, but there is absolutely no way to tell who has the right of way.

Making these intersections all-way stops would be a huge safety improvement, maybe even enough to prevent further deaths.

I wouldn't mind seeing the empty apartment building torn down to widen the intersection. Maybe they could put in some parking spaces for the restaurants. And while I'm dreaming, maybe they could also build a playground in the empty lot on the east side of Walnut. There aren't any parks in walking distance, so the kids in this neighborhood have no where to play except the street and other peoples' yards (which is how a boy on Wood Street wound up getting attacked by a dog recently).

Housing Sex Offenders

The big news this week has been about a serial rapist who has completed his jail sentence and is moving into his sister's home in Southbury. Judging by the coverage in the paper, you might think this is the first time a convicted rapist has ever moved back into a community.

A quick check with the state registry shows 5 convicted sex offenders already live in Southbury. A quick check with reality suggests that there might very well be a rapist who has never been caught living in Southbury, or could be soon. Knowing the whereabouts of convicted sex offenders seems to create a false sense of security when there aren't any convicts in the neighborhood. People seem to forget that there is a greater danger posed by the unidentified sex offenders, whom everyone trusts.

The state's attorney general pushed to have the rapist instead placed in a halfway house, but wouldn't those neighbors also have equal cause for concern?

Naturally, nobody wants a serial rapist living next door, but at least with this guy the neighbors know not to trust him. Some of them might be in danger of going too far. This is the sort of situation that could turn into a lynching. At the very least, his family will probably be harassed. I think this has been the plot of several stories--the fear of evil incites people to commit evil.

Better Graffiti

A while back, I posted a few images of graffiti in Waterbury. This afternoon, I went for a walk and found some better examples. The graffiti most people are going to see in Waterbury is extremely minimal, presumably because the artists only have a couple of seconds in which to get them done. The best ones are in remote areas.

This might be my favorite, just for the sense of humor. I couldn't get close enough to get a good view of the larger work, but it looks like it's probably one of Pezo's. It's on the side of an old clock factory on Maple Street, viewable (sort of) from North Elm Street.



This one is up high, on the side of the old Benrus factory building (now Bender Plumbing) on Cherry Street:



Some older and newer tags on the side of a building that's right up against the Mad River, viewable from the riverside walk at the Brass Mill mall:



The most complex Waterbury graffiti I've found so far is viewable at the end of Mill Street. There's no easy way to get to the actual wall it's on, unless you're willing to walk under the highway.


This is the other side of the underpass. It's way too creepy a place for me to go into on my own, so I stuck with looking at it from above.


This is a little bit further down the wall:



There's a ton of tags on Cherry Avenue, but most of them are pretty lightweight.










I'd like to meet Pezo. He's got a great creative streak.

Downtown Draw

The Third Annual Downtown Draw was held on the Green today. Below is a sampling of some of the chalk drawings.

Sidewalks & Jaywalking

A couple of weeks ago, I decided to walk from Grand Street to Barnes & Noble. It's a short walk, and there are (I thought) plenty of good sidewalks and crossing lights all the way there. As you can see from the photo below, the sidewalk abruptly and randomly ends just past St. Mary's. There's no crosswalk where the sidewalk ends. So I jaywalked across to the sidewalk on the other side.



The rest of the walk to the mall was on a good sidewalk, except for the disturbing way the guard rail doesn't protect pedestrians from out-of-control cars. Instead, the guard rail pretty much guarantees that the pedestrian will be crushed between the car and the rail.


I hit a new problem when I reached the mall entrance. There is no walkway to the stores, and the railing is positioned so close to the curb that you have to walk in the roadway, which is barely wide enough for cars.


The really sad thing is that this is one of the better areas for pedestrians in Waterbury.

Thoughts on The War

Because so much of my professional life has been focused on history, many people assume that I must enjoy watching documentaries. Certainly there are plenty of people with similar careers who do enjoy them, but for me, I think it's a case of knowing too much. The magic disappears as soon as you know how the trick is done.

I'm currently watching the Ken Burns documentary, but only because I want to see what his team did with all the material they collected and all the many interviews they conducted. Near the beginning of tonight's episode, while the narrator described racism problems in Mobile, Alabama, they briefly showed a photo supplied to them by the Mattatuck Museum. The photo was taken in 1899 at Ansonia Brass & Copper. But the documentary doesn't explain the images we see. The viewer is left to assume that the images relate directly to the topic they are hearing about. In this case, I think most viewers would assume that the image was of a Mobile factory during the 1940s. And, just past the start of the second hour, they showed a photo of Waterbury's Fulton Market from the 1950s to illustrate something happening in Luverne, Minnesota. It's maddening for me.

I understand why documentary-makers do this. It's a visual medium, and they need to keep viewers supplied with constantly changing images, and with images that appear to illustrate the point being made. It works fine so long as you don't know when they "cheat". I stopped watching documentaries years ago, when I was watching one about Catherine the Great. There was a sequence of images of painted portraits of women, and the documentary presented the images as if they were all of Catherine. I knew that they weren't, and it pretty much ruined the show for me.

Despite all of that, I am enjoying The War, particularly the segments about the home front in all four towns. I think what I'm enjoying the most are the personal stories. At the Mattatuck Museum luncheon with Ken Burns on September 10, Ethel Goldberg (sister of Ray Leopold) spoke eloquently about how each and every person has a "glory" story to tell, and that we should take the time to recognize this about one another.

I'm also impressed by the very different perspective of the battles. World War II, unlike the current war in Iraq, was presented very carefully to the general public. There was a tremendous amount of censorship and propaganda on the part of the US government, which I think led to a sort of mythic remembrance. WWII has frequently been referred to in this country as a "good" war, and the people involved have been labeled "the greatest generation" (which seems very unfair to every other generation!). So far, this documentary has proven that there is no such thing as a good war.

In 1948, the company newsletter for the Princeton Knitting Mill (located in Watertown) ran a selection of employee responses to a question about the anticipated impact of television. One employee believed that television could bring about world peace. His response seems hopelessly naive, but I think he wasn't entirely wrong. Maybe I am hopelessly naive and overly optimistic, but I don't see how anyone could watch something like The War, which emphasizes the miseries and atrocities of all wars, and still think that starting a war is a good idea.

Shakesperience in Earnest

Shakesperience Productions is performing Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest at their new home on Bank Street (in the former M.A. Green building). Last night's show was great -- and sold out. There are three more shows next weekend, Friday & Saturday at 7:30pm and Sunday at 2pm.

Brass City Brew Fest 2007

The Second Annual brew fest was held in library park yesterday. The weather cleared up just in time for it to be a sunny afternoon. Today's paper reported that there were 1200 people in attendance. Which explains why I had trouble finding my friend after she wandered off!


There was a classic car show on Grand Street before the beer fest. The cars included one used in the upcoming Indiana Jones movie (I think it is the turquoise car in the middle).


There were a few people who arrived just as the gates opened, drank & ate quickly, then left, presumably for another function.


Early crowds milling about:



Lots of younger beer drinkers. Rumor is that Boru's sold 90 tickets. There were a lot of people at the brew fest wearing Boru's t-shirts.



I overheard a couple of non-drinkers express a wish for coffee. The only non-beer beverages were water and soda.



The ever-popular kettle corn stand near the entrance. There was also food from The Hills and Crossroads Cantina--things like hot dogs, buffalo wings and chili.



Saranac's inflatable bear surveying the scene. It was later duct-taped to someone's back.









By 4pm, a lot of the brewers had run out of beer, but there was enough left to keep everyone going another hour and then some. Crossroads Cantina did a pretty good dinner business afterwards, since a lot of people were parked next to them.

Burns Day

Ken Burns came to town on Monday. Below are my assorted camera phone pics of the day.

At 12:30 there was a luncheon at the Mattatuck Museum. It was very corporate...




At 3pm, the Mattatuck hosted a celebration to honor WWII veterans. It was a lot more fun than the luncheon.





Next are images of people enjoying the WWII exhibit at the Mattatuck.










At 5pm, there was a rally on the Green, with assorted speeches, music and ceremonies. There had been a lot of back-and-forth during the afternoon about whether or not to move the rally indoors, but the rain held off (but boy was it humid!).









At 6pm, a large group paraded from the Green to the Palace Theater. Just as the parade was starting, one of the police on motorcycles yelled at some kids on bicycles to get out of the way. The cop was really kind of harsh, especially considering that the kids weren't anywhere near the people walking down the middle of the road.













The show at the Palace started at 7pm. I did a mad scramble to get a pair of tickets, and wound up buying upper orchestra seats at discount from someone who didn't need them after all. Burns and Lynn Novick (I think The War really is more her project than his) presented 70 minutes of clips, mostly of Waterbury-related stories, from the documentary.

For many weeks this summer, most of the news about the documentary focused on the inclusion of a couple of swear words that might inspire the FCC to fine any PBS station airing those episodes. I think I read that some PBS stations will blank out the swear words. After watching sections of the documentary that include film footage of the atrocities committed during the war, I can't imagine how anyone could possibly care about the inclusion of foul language. There are no words that come at all close to being as offensive as some of the things that happened.

The War premiers on PBS Sunday, September 23, at 8pm. Burns pointed out that this is coincidentally 17 years to the moment that The Civil War first aired. It sounded like CPTV will be airing the episodes nearly nonstop, so there's no need to worry about missing one. I think watching all of them might be difficult. I think it's going to be very emotionally wrenching.