Out for Art at Goldsmith's

It was great to see so many people come out for an event downtown. The event was sponsored by the Waterbury Region Arts & Culture Collaborative, which has Out for Art events regularly.

Here are some candid shots from tonight's Out for Art at Goldsmith's on Bank Street.

Unite for Representation

For everyone who feels like the city doesn't care about their neighborhood, now is your chance to be seen and heard!

Unity Rally and March Saturday, April 17, 2:30 at the WOW Center, followed by a meeting of the Charter Revision Committee at Walsh School.

Spring Gardening

Spring is finally here. Gorgeous weather this weekend. I dusted off my bicycle, pumped up the flat tires, and went for a great ride on the Cheshire/Hamden Greenway. I also browsed the garden section of Walmart and wound up with $30 or $40 worth of bulbs to plant. I got a few in the ground yesterday; the rest will go in next weekend.

Meanwhile, here's the latest result of things I planted two years ago. Front yard:

(If only I could get the grass to grow!)


Back yard:


When I planted the fern two years ago, it was small, just that large clump you see in the middle of the photograph. All the other little bits of fern are new, off-shoots of the original planting.


I was so excited by the success of that fern, I bought three packages of fern roots at Walmart. Some of them had already started growing in their plastic packing.




While I was planting the ferns, I was chirped at by my new "friend", a brave little chickadee. Look closely and you can see him in the tree overhead, just at the roof line in the photo below.




Now I can't, of course, tell for certain that it's always the same chickadee being brave, but he's always alone and I can't imagine that all chickadees are so brave. How brave is he? Towards the end of winter, there was one day when he was so excited to see me refilling the bird feeder that he swooped down and perched on it the instant I took my hand off it. I was standing one foot away.




Whenever I refill the bird feeder, I can hear him (or another chickadee) call out loudly, apparently alerting all the other birds to the refilled feeder. They converge within minutes.




This particular chickadee must nest within sight of the feeder. He spends more time in my yard than any other birds. I'm tempted to see if I can get him to trust me enough to eat out of my hand.




I have also discovered a critter who is not as welcome. There is a bee (I hope only one!) who keeps flying in and out of this hole in the mortar. I'm definitely going to have to do something about that.

We're Number One!

And it's not a good thing.

As reported by several newspapers and news stations, Connecticut's unemployment has hit 9.1 percent and Waterbury has the highest unemployment at 13.4 percent (the national unemployment rate is 9.7 percent).

While we don't have the highest unemployment rate in the nation, we're not all that far behind Detroit, which used to be at 15.3 percent and has dropped to 14.8 percent.

During campaign time last year, I was very unhappy when I heard Mayor Jarjura state that Waterbury is in excellent economic condition. At that point, our unemployment rate was the second worst in the state. Now it's the worst. If Jarjura ever does decide to run for Governor, how will he explain that Waterbury's unemployment rate has gone from bad to the worst while he's been Mayor?

Come to think of it, what about the assorted economic developers in Waterbury? What are their responses to the latest unemployment figures? Wait, let me guess--it's not their fault, it's very complicated, there are external factors that can't be controlled.

Waterbury's unemployment rate has been among the highest in the state for at least a decade. There are no excuses for it getting worse. Whatever our economic developers have been doing obviously doesn't work. It's past time to try something new.

Aldermen by District

As hopefully everyone knows, it's Charter Revision Time in Waterbury, which means that we have an opportunity to enact positive change in how our city is governed. The hottest topic being discussed is Aldermen by District. There are a lot of layers to the issue, most of which have to do with fundamental inequities in the representation of the varied and diverse community that is Waterbury. For example, there are no elected representatives from my neighborhood and most city officials seem to be completely oblivious to the issues my neighborhood faces.

I took the time to actually read the City Charter, and I noticed that while the description of Mayor includes a residency requirement, there was no such requirement listed in the description of Aldermen. I brought this up to the Charter Revision Committee. Part of their response (I'm still discussing the other part with Committee member Bryan Baker) was that our residency requirement for Mayor could or has been found unconstitutional by the courts (more details on this are forthcoming).

If this is true, then it is all the more important that we succeed in getting Aldermen by District. If not, then we could end up with Aldermen who live in Middlebury, Woodbury, Cheshire or West Hartford.

Waterbury is a city of neighborhoods. It's not a very big city, but the neighborhoods are very different from one another, and there is a tendency to stay out of neighborhoods that aren't your own. The way an Alderman living in Bunker Hill views the needs of the city are going to be very different from the way an Alderman living in the WOW neighborhood views the city's needs.

We need better neighborhood representation. We need better politics.

Ready for Spring

I spent a couple hours today doing some pre-Spring Cleaning. My front yard has been looking miserable, full of dead leaves left from last autumn and litter that accumulates every day. I can usually keep up with the larger litter, but the tiny little wrappers for single pieces of candy, and the wrappers from cigars, and random scraps of plastic are a lot harder to keep up with--I wound up raking them into the compost pile along with all the leaves.

End result: the yard is clean and you can see the flowers getting ready to bloom. The daffodils in particular are just on the cusp of blooming.

The crocuses are doing especially well this year. I guess my yard agrees with them!

And here's the reason why I have to pick up litter in my yard every day. My neighbor is a corner store that never keeps their back yard clean. They've been cited for blight in the past, but it didn't do much good. The trash was back as soon as they passed re-inspection.

Next time I have a weekend off, I'll tackle the back yard. I need to wait at least another month to see how much of my garden is left in the back--the neighbor's dog jumped the fence this winter and chewed up several of my plants, destroying at least some of them completely. I suppose I should be grateful that's all he did--a neighbor down the street recently told me he's killed several cats. The dog is gone now, but his poop is still in my yard. Here's hoping that will be gone soon, too!

Charter Revisions

I had intended to speak at a meeting of the Charter Revision Committee, but that meeting was cancelled due to a double-booking at WAMS. I was unable to attend the next meeting due to a work commitment (but hopefully the rest of my neighbors made it and spoke out). In lieu of speaking my thoughts in public, I'll post them here. Not all of this is relevant to what the Commission is specifically looking at--there were a couple things that jumped out at me when I read the charter.

The Board of Aldermen should consist at least in part of official elected by district in order to better represent the city’s diverse population. Waterbury is a city of neighborhoods, and each neighborhood faces different challenges. Opponants of aldermen by district have claimed that this would limit the quality of our choices—this is a fundamentally flawed argument. First, if this argument had merit, then we should take it to the next “logical” step and allow residents of Middlebury, Cheshire, Naugatuck and Wolcott to run for office. Second, by stating that an aldermen by district election system would reduce the quality of our choices is flat out insulting. Does my choice of neighborhood make me a less qualified candidate?

I recently learned a lot about how politics in Waterbury does and does not work. While on the campaign trail last year, nearly everyone I spoke to in the North End and downtown on the Green felt that the city government didn’t care about them, that the city government has abandoned their streets, their sidewalks, their safety and their quality of life. There is a tremendous and terrible disparity between neighborhoods like mine and neighborhoods like Bunker Hill. The overall disparity is unhealthy.

I would also recommend that the charter include a description of Qualifications for the members of the Board of Aldermen, just as it does for the Mayor.

Section 11B-2, regarding snow removal, needs to be enforced. Anyone who has ever tried to get anywhere in Waterbury during the winter knows how important this is. If a sidewalk is unusuable because the property owner does not remove the snow, pedestrians are forced to walk in the street, putting themselves at risk of being hit by a car.

Sec. 11F-4 and 11F-5, regarding Sidewalk Construction Fund and Street Improvement Funds—this is something that is good to have, and it is something we need more of. I don’t know if this is suitable for the charter, but I think we need to be more proactive in acquiring these funds. A city is effectively a non-profit organization, and every successful non-profit has regular fund raising events. Rather than relying solely on tax money, why not encourage people to make donations to city improvement funds? Most of the city parks were made possible by the charitable donations of private citizens who have long since passed away. Why doesn’t the city actively cultivate new donors, just like colleges and museums do?

Here it Comes!

Once again, picking up litter in my yard led me to discover the first flowers of the year--two little snowdrops basking in the sun.

Scovill Bulletins

A dedicated and persevering former employee of Waterbury Farrel (second-generation Farrel worker) has taken the tremendous trouble to scan decades' worth of Scovill Bulletins and Scovill Standards for everyone to access on his website, www.scovillbulletin.com.

The files are large, so the downloads take a little time. Depending on how your computer and browser are configured (I'm using Firefox on Mac), you might be able to option-click on the links to download the pdf files instead of waiting for them to load first.

This is one of the best things about the internet--making rare documents freely accessible to the world.

Tax Time

Hopefully you are not like me and you therefore remembered to pay the second installment of your car tax bill which was due last month (or, even better, paid it all in one lump sum last summer).

If you are like me and forgot, you can pay online at http://www.waterburyct.org/content/458/646/4965.aspx

A Much Better Quote

The following appeared in today's Republican-American newspaper and was written by the Rev. Dr. Jim Bradley, rector of St. John’s Episcopal Church on the Green in Waterbury and president of the board of the Greater Waterbury Interfaith Ministry. I don't normally take entire articles from the paper, but I couldn't find a way to link to it.

American journalist and social critic H.L. Mencken once observed: “For every problem there is a solution that is simple, neat and wrong.”

I thought of Mencken’s humor and wisdom when I read the Jan. 10 Sunday Republican’s front-page article, “Services sapping downtown.” A “solution” for “the problem” of downtown Waterbury would be to send its social service agencies “somewhere else.”

That would be simple, neat and most certainly wrong.

Many folks like me see the problem facing downtown Waterbury as one of hunger, poor education, mental illness, joblessness and poverty, not who is on the Green.

Those multiple problems have no neat or easy answers because they are systemic, not geographical. The servic es that exist for people caught in our culture’s lack of a true safety net exist downtown because that is where the people live.

Concerning neat and easy solutions, I suggest those who need housing be housed in Southbury; those who are hungry be fed in Cheshire; those who have mental health problems be treat ed in Wolcott. Troubled youth would fit into Woodbury, and those with sub stance abuse should go to Middlebury.

Get that taken care of and — poof — the problem is solved.

I live in Cheshire and cannot vote in Waterbury. However, I spend much of my time downtown at St. John’s Episcopal Church and around the Green, and I find the inner city to be a pleasant, fascinating and safe place. I know many of the people who are considered “the problem” in the Sunday article. They are kind, gentle and generous in the same proportion as the people I live around in Cheshire.

The only difference is my neighbors where I sleep are more privileged than my daytime neighbors in downtown Waterbury.

I was at a meeting a few years ago, surrounded by people like me who were fretting about “the problem.” A serious suggestion was made to move the bus stops off the Green. I was as­tonished. I sometimes ride the bus from home to the Green or back and find the people on the bus with me to be hard-working, good-humored, genuine folks. I make a point every few days to go out on the Green when all the buses roll in and day-laborers, par ents with children, senior citizens, school kids, hard-working folks with two minimum-wage jobs and folks coming to find services for their needs empty out. It is a vital and remarkable time.

The Green is flooded with life and diversity and truly dear people. I couldn’t imagine relocating the bus stops to some place that would incon venience and make life harder for the people who live and move and have their being in the midst of this city I have come to love.

“Whose city is it?” I asked at that meeting and then demanded to know where everyone in the room slept. All of us lived in one of the suburbs or pristine parts of Waterbury whose property owners would reject out of hand the proposal to place social-service agencies or emergency housing or soup kitchens or mental health/incarceration half-way houses for recovering substance abusers in their neighborhood.

The city belongs to the people who sleep here. Many folks, like me, are concerned and sympathetic visitors.

The inner city belongs to those who live or come here for the services that make their lives livable, hopeful and meaningful in ways many of us cannot comprehend.

The title of the article, so prominently placed to appeal to our darker angels, should have been services serving downtown because that’s what the myriad of agencies do with integrity, commitment and for the better good of the society that somehow has failed those who need those social services.

And until people like me and the board of the Mattatuck Museum and the former members of the Waterbury Club are willing to rehab some apartments or move downtown and sleep here so we truly can integrate the privileged with those who are not, then our call is clear.

We must address the systemic needs of the residents of the inner city politically and economically, and with our work and contributions. We must eschew easy, simple solutions and involve ourselves with profound commitment to the complex, confusing and difficult problems that are, after all, our problems as well as the problems of those we would rather have disappear and make the center of our city happy and bright.

Worst Quote in a Long Time

I've heard/read some things that shock me, but this one by Cathy Smith, president of the Mattatuck Museum's board of trustees and wife of Webster Bank's Jim Smith, really made my jaw drop:

“The last thing we need is an other social service agency, and their needy populations, that don’t really give anything back to the city,” Smith said. “They just take. I mean, come on, have you ever tried to cross the Green?”

(from an article on the front page of today's Rep-Am concerning the possible sale of the Waterbury Club building on Holmes Avenue to the Families & Children’s Aid Inc. of Danbury).


Way to slam everyone who has ever encountered hard times and needed a social service agency's help to keep their families healthy and stable until they got back on their feet!

Waterbury's unemployment rate has been hovering around 11% for a very long time. It's not that people don't want to work, it's that there simply aren't enough jobs.

And yes, I have crossed the Green, many times. I have spoken with hundreds of people on the Green. Every single one of them has something interesting to say. Maybe Mrs. Smith should try listening.

Schools and Prosperity

Over the years, I've been involved in numerous discussions about how to improve Waterbury, how to make the town more prosperous and a desirable place to live. At the moment, I am visiting family in Manhattan Beach, California (Los Angeles). When they bought their house here 20-some years ago, it was a very small, single-story home without basement, attic or garage. Every other house in town was the same, and they were all very affordable.

Since then, the town has grown considerably. The majority of those small houses have been rebuilt as large two-story houses with attics, basements and garages. The desirability of the town has soared and the housing prices have gone up accordingly, with only three dozen homes (including condos) currently listed on Yahoo's real estate site for less than one million dollars (and 162 properties listed between $1 million and $7 million). Granted, some of that inflation is due to the overall real estate bubble of recent years, but it is indicative of how much the town has changed.

I was thinking about the transformation I've witnessed over the decades and wondered what caused it (and, of course, how we might implement something similar in Waterbury). One important contributing factor was the quality of the schools. The real estate market became increasingly competitive because there were so many parents trying to get their kids into the schools. If you visit www.greatschools.org, you'll see that the highest-ranking Manhattan Beach public schools are rated 10 out of 10 points, whereas the Waterbury public schools range between 1 and 5 (very low scores), with Rotella getting the only 6 and Kaynor Tech the only 7. (On a side note, this answers some questions I've heard from people wondering why Kaynor Tech is so popular and why so many of its students are college-bound, rather than going straight into the work force).

The newly-rebuilt Kaynor Tech high school,
Waterbury's highest-rated school

This is by no means a comprehensive or even scientific analysis, but I think this is definitely something that does make a difference in a town's prosperity, not only because having the best schools will make Waterbury more desirable, but because better schools will give Waterbury's students better educations, and we will all benefit from that.

Alan Stein, a professor at UConn-Waterbury, wrote an excellent letter to the editor that appeared in yesterday's Rep-Am newspaper. The focus of his letter was an argument in favor of electing aldermen by district (which I strongly support), but he also wrote a very good observation about the Board of Education:

Some may question whether it's even appropriate for a Board of Education to be an elected body.

The political nature of that board is probably partly responsible for the recent attempt of some of its members to force school principals to ignore the Constitution.

I think that our Board of Education is fundamentally flawed, and I think that Prof. Stein is probably correct in assigning part of the blame to its political nature. Given the less than wonderful ratings of our schools (not just from the Great Schools website), the sole focus of the Board of Education should be searching for ways to make the schools better and implementing those improvements. Instead the Board seems to spend its time squabbling and grandstanding over Christmas parties vs. Winter Celebrations, the Duggan School construction project, and problems with the management of the school buses.

Our schools are some of the lowest-rated in the country. Let's make them the highest-rated.

Pop!

I stopped by the Mattatuck Museum last Sunday for a little holiday shopping and was amazed by the popsicle-stick castle in the Munger Room (next to the front lobby).





I had seen a photo of it in an email from the museum, and I had been mildly impressed that it was made from 396,000 popsicle sticks setting a new world record, but as with so many things, seeing it in real life was way better.





It is absolutely worth visiting, especially if you have young children--they will be amazed to see what can be done with popsicle sticks.



The castle was built by Stephen Guman and brought to the museum by a tractor trailer truck in several pieces, then assembled by Guman in the museum. It will be on view until January 22, and there will be a special event with Guman this Sunday, December 27.

See the castle, meet Stephen Guman, and build popsicle structures yourself at Discovery Club.  Art teacher Audrey Grice will be on hand to show you how!  Children's admission is $4 for museum members and $7 for non-members.  Adults accompanying children are addmitted for free.

Where and When
Munger Room

Mattatuck Museum Arts & History Center

Sunday, December 27, 2009    2:00 - 4:00 pm

Religion 101

I'm probably going to get some flak for this one, but I think it's time for me to dive into it.

There's been a lot of controversy and anger over the "news" that Walsh Elementary School principal Erik Brown has supposedly banned Christmas (he hasn't). According to the Republican-American, he has received hate mail from people all over the country. This raises my first point: if you are upset by the idea of Christmas being banned in a public school, the correct Christian response is not one of hatred. Sending threatening or hate-filled letters or calling to swear at Principal Brown is the exact opposite of the spirit of Christmas.

Second point: Principal Brown has not banned Christmas. He has instead assessed the demographics of his school and determined that overloading the kids with Santa Claus and other trappings of Christmas would be a problem for many of them. For example, many of the children at Walsh come from Jehovah's Witnesses families who are deeply offended by the commercialization of the Holy Day. Let's also not forget that not everyone in Waterbury is a Christian--we have, for example, many Jews and Muslims who might not appreciate having their children indoctrinated in another religion. Principal Brown's course of action, to have a winter celebration that is inclusive of more than one holiday tradition and to discourage the teachers from placing too much emphasis on a single interpretation of one religion's traditions, is a very good way to show respect towards the religious sensibilities of all the children in his school.

John Theriault has been up in arms over the issue, apparently thinking that Brown is somehow being unfair to the children at Walsh school because the other schools all have Christmas parties. I can only assume that he is forgetting about the children whose parents do not allow them to attend Christmas parties, and is oblivious to the fact that Brown is simply showing respect towards those children and their families.

I guess I am blogging about this topic because I am shocked at the level of public outcry over it. In every instance, it seems that people with no children at Walsh are reacting as if they personally have been prevented from enjoying their own Christmas celebrations and have forgotten just how much religious diversity there is in the world, in the United States, in Connecticut and in Waterbury. I guess I am also struck by how some of the people who are angry at Principal Brown are behaving far more like the Grinch than he is.

Come to think of it, let's take the metaphor of the Grinch one step further. The point to The Grinch was that the trappings of Christmas, the gifts, the trees, the roast beast, are completely unnecessary. Christmas exists in our hearts and is celebrated in the way we treat one another. Everything else is superfluous.

Water

Is it just my house, or has anyone else noticed a strong chemical smell in the tap water lately? It seems strongest in the hot water, and it is the sort of smell that makes me afraid to use the water.

Marty's Corner

I read in today's paper that Marty's Corner store in Naugatuck is closing, hopefully to be reopened eventually by new owners.

When I was a kid, we lived in Naugatuck for a couple years, and Marty's Corner was one of my favorite hang-outs. This would be 1984 and '85. I can't remember how I found the store, but I was drawn there by the video games. I put endless quarters into the Ms. Pac-Man machine and spent the rest of my allowance on candy and comic books.

Photo by Paul Singley, Republican-American

I always felt slightly intimidated when I entered the store--I remember dark wood, a long counter with stools, old men pausing in conversation to glare sternly at me, and shelves stocked with cigars. I had to muster the courage to walk past the formidable front of the store to get to the two (or three?) video game machines in the back. It was a little strange, I suppose--the store had entertainment for kids, but they didn't really encourage kids to hang out there.

I remember Marty's Corner with fondness. When we moved to Watertown, I was never able to find as good a place to hang out. Which I guess is what kids, even pre-teens and teens, need.

Support the Schools

Stop & Shop, which has three stores in Waterbury and a fourth just over the line in Watertown, has a great program that makes it easy for you to help provide a little financial support to Waterbury schools. The A+ Bonus Bucks program donates money to the 3 schools of your choice (among those that are registered); the amount of the donation is connected to a point system based on how much money you spend at Stop & Shop.

In order to join the program, simply go to the website, register your Stop & Shop card (type in the numbers from the bar code), and select the schools. Simple as pi!

More Low Numbers

When you look at the voter turn-out numbers (just sent to me by Bryan Baker), and add that to the notion that we need the police to keep the campaigners under control on election day (see comment #8 by S. on the previous post), I'd say we have a very serious problem. The numbers are as follows: in 2001 50.3% of the voters went to the polls, and the following elections had turnouts of 39% ('03), 40% ('05), 32% ('07), and 24% ('09). If that trend continues, eventually no one will vote in Waterbury's local elections except for the politicians.

It seems like everyone in Waterbury is eager to complain about the problems, so why are so few people voting? I don't think it's because they're satisfied with the way things are--otherwise, wouldn't they have voted in order to ensure the status quo?

There are two basic reasons I've heard from registered voters who don't bother to vote in the local elections:

1. There's no point bothering, they're all the same and they don't care about me;

2. I have no idea who all those candidates are or what an alderman does, so I wouldn't have any idea who to vote for.

This situation needs to change. The responsibility for that change lies with all of us.

Election Day

I stopped by the WOW center this evening to vote in the local election. Early results should be available in less than two hours, thanks to modern technology.

I was a little surprised to see a police cruiser parked across the street from the entrance to the polls. I checked with some friends, and it sounds like there was a strong police presence at all of the polls all day long (which explains why, when I called in a noise complaint earlier in the day, I was informed that it would be a while before they could get around to dispatching anyone).

One person I spoke to said he felt very intimidated by the police presence, especially when the cruiser outside the WOW center followed his car home and then looped back around to return to the center. He was furious when he told me this story. In the interests of fairness, I tended to believe that it was an unfortunate coincidence but did a little research and learned that a strong police presence at the voting places can be a very bad idea.

Here's an excerpt from an ACLU of Virginia news release dated October 21, 2004:

Civil liberties group says many voters won’t show if police are present

The ACLU of Virginia today asked the Chesterfield County registrar to withdraw a plan to post armed, uniformed police officers at the County’s 62 polling places on Election Day. The ACLU says that the police presence--a reminder of when armed government officials were used to prevent minorities from voting--will intimidate many potential voters, causing them to avoid the polls.

An article on the website of the American University Radio by Jessica Forres dated November 5, 2008 had this to say on the topic:

A Latino advocacy group says some Hispanic voters in Virginia's Prince William County may have been intimidated by the heavy police presence at one polling site.

It seems like it's a very delicate balance. If police have received a credible threat that would place voters in danger when they vote, then of course there should be a strong presence. But if voters feel intimidated, then that's a problem that needs to be fixed.