A Silver Lining

Well the best thing to be said about Chris Dodd's ignominious defeat in the Iowa caucus is that the state of Connecticut gets a Senator back. He'll have plenty of time after he's scurried back home with his tail between his legs and when the Senate reconvenes on Jan. 22 to unpack his belongings and move back into the job the people of Connecticut elected him to do.

Of course, you can't blame Dodd for being ambitious and wanting to run for the White House -- I suppose it's the dream of everyone who gets into politics. And I do give him credit for accepting reality and getting out (relatively) early. (Then again, if there's a lot of speculation that you couldn't even win in your home state, then maybe you shouldn't have run at all. . . .)

Over at Connecticut Local Politics, they do a great job of dissecting Dodd's demise, noting that it wasn't just one thing that doomed the campaign, but a confluence of factors, not the least of which was his lack of being able to distinguish himself from the pack.

Well, now that his fantasy has been dismissed and his ego deflated, there's a good chance that Dodd will now rededicate himself to the citizens of Connecticut, some of whom were put off by his relocating to Iowa as well as the entire run itself. Let's hope his loss now makes for our gain.

The Little Freeze

Before you ask, yes, it's cold enough for me.

Everyone complains about global warming, but I'm all for it! I hate shoveling snow, driving on icy roads and dealing with frozen pipes -- the sooner we can get the Connecticut climate like Florida, the better. As a matter of fact, after I'm done typing this, I'm going to the top of the palatial Connectiut Magazine Tower here in Trumbull, and not only am I making a bonfire out of all the styrofoam I can carry, but I have a case of my sister's AquaNet hairspray from the '80s that I'm going to run around releasing. Then I'm going to all the local farms to see what I can do about getting cows and pigs to produce more methane . . . .

Obviously, I'm kidding -- I'm not going to drive around to any farm on a day this cold!

And the good news is that despite how cold it is today, over the next few days, temperatures are expected to rise up through the 40s and possibly to 50 by Monday. Not exactly shorts and T-shirt weather, but I'll take it.

Still, I guess the winters of my youth may truly be a thing of the past -- instead of a sparkling white wonderland, we'll be looking at a rainy gray mushpile. No more sledding, snowmen and snowball fights, but mud pies, mudslinging and mud wrestling instead.

It's not the same, but you'll probably still have someone come up to you and ask, "Hey, muddy enough for you?"

The Hartfordland of Tomorrow

The architect's rendering is one of my favorite art forms. In it you can find more unalloyed hope, a rosier version of the future, a far more perfect world, than you might pick up in a whole month's worth of presidential debates. Take the drawing that accompanies today's release of the new plans for Front Street in Hartford. Here is the Hartford of tomorrow: clean, well-ordered, vaguely seductive and basically depopulated. The handsome buildings exude a sophisticated urban vibe, although their purpose is unclear, and their signage doesn't really say anything coherent. The streets are peaceful and extraordinarily uncrowded. A couple of cars, small and stylish, make their way unhurriedly. Citizens, sleek and gainfully employed (judging from the briefcases) stroll and chat. In this version of the near future even the dogs, unleashed, trot obediently alongside their masters. The trees are worth noting, too. They are lollipop-shaped and seem to grow very close to the buildings without ever quite touching them. These wonders of nature possess a diaphanous quality, a mysterious there-but-not-quite-there beauty that will also be a part of life in our reborn capital city. The only standard architect's feature missing in this particular rendering is a fountain in which a lone boy sails a toy boat. But surely that will not be denied to those who are brave enough to desire it. In Hartford. In the future. It's just around the next corner.

Car-nage!

(How's that for a New York Post-inspired title?)

So like touching a bruise, I'm here to recount my commute in last Friday's "monster" snow storm, commiserating with all the others around the state who were trapped in the mess. First, know that my normal ride from here at my palatial office high atop Connecticut Magazine Tower in Trumbull to my modest abode in Shelton is usually about 10 minutes, 12 when it rains.

Last Friday, it took 1 hour and 45 minutes.

And I consider myself among the lucky ones as there was no part during my trip where I crashed into anything or skidded into a ditch. But it was truly like end-of-the-world anarchy out there on the roads -- well, at least in the parking lot that doubled as the Route 8 corridor through Trumbull and Shelton -- as the first snow of the season, Friday night rush hour and holiday madness combined for a perfect storm of traffic.

Now as much as I hate snow, I do enjoy the first snowfall because that's when all the people out there who overpaid for big and shiny new SUVs usually wreck them in their maiden foray onto slippery roads, mainly because they don't understand the First Rule of All-Wheel Traction: "Having four-wheel drive doesn't mean having four-wheel STOP."

In other words, just because you can go fast in the snow doesn't mean you should -- stopping still involves the laws of physics, and if you're going 45 miles an hour on a surface that provides minimal or no friction, all the gas-guzzling, road-clogging, heated-seating, GPS-navigating, quintuple side-curtain airbagging excesses isn't going to stop you before you wrap yourself in a guardrail. Fortunately for me, I learned that years ago when I spun my then-new Toyota 4x4 pickup into a simple curb on an abandoned road one icy January night and came away shaken, but without a scratch.

That being said, I was shocked at how poorly people were driving on Friday night, like it had never snowed in Connecticut before. Do people forget the basic concepts over the summer? Holy guacamole. While I was trying to cross an icy overpass, a car going in the opposite direction actually backed into my lane unannounced and in front of me, and then proceeded to back all the way across overpass -- staying in the wrong lane the whole time. At no point did she pull over or try and turn around. (Oh, and she had kids in the car, too!) People on Route 8 were speeding in the break-down lanes to try and beat the lines of slow-crawling traffic. Craziness.

Fortunately, I was able to get away from the general madness without incident. But to the rest of you out there who weren't as lucky, you have my sympathy. To those of you who seemed determined to make a tough situation impossible, you have my scorn.

Violated

As the horrid details continue to come out in the stunning discovery of a huge cache of child pornography in the former home of the late Dr. George E. Reardon, the word that keeps coming to mind -- after all the revulsion and anger -- is "violated."

Obviously the victims were violated in a way that makes us all sick to our core, but I also find myself thinking about many of the people indirectly involved -- other patients of Dr. Reardon who have to be replaying their every encounter with him, other patients at the hospital where the activities were going on, nurses and support personnel who may have unwittingly been involved in aiding these crimes . . . .

Not only are these people feeling violated by Dr. Reardon, but they must also be feeling a bit violated by the hospital administrators, the local police department and the department of health, all of whom seemingly turned a blind eye to the extent of the activities they may have had a suspicion were going on, if from nothing else but the number of complaints lodged against Dr. Reardon. ("If there's smoke . . .")

I'm fortunate in that I've never had to endure first-hand anything this horrible in my life, but even so, I feel a bit violated -- the doctor-patient relationship is one of the most sacred there is, and it's something that after an event like this, if at your next visit to your physician you're not thinking about it up front, it's at least somewhere in the back of your mind. Troubling.

I also feel for the unfortunate homeowner who stumbled upon this nightmare -- he must feel violated by his own home, holding a dark and nasty secret in its walls. I mean, can you imagine stumbling upon that? "Oh, time to renovate this old basement. Guess I'll start with this wall over here . . . let's pry back this board and .. . what the heck? Slides, movies? What is this stuff?" [picks up one slide, holds it to the light] "Oh. my. god."

Talk about a sucker punch to the gut. I feel bad for him then trying to make that phone call to the police to explain how he found 50,000 slides of child pornography in his house while trying to maintain his dignity -- the poor guy did nothing wrong other than take a hammer to a basement wall, but you know he probably had to defend his innocence and integrity a bit when the first investigators showed up.

It's amazing how the vile actions of one man could violate the lives of so many.

Riding the Rails

One of the things we enjoy here at Connecticut Magazine is finding a variety of viewpoints and voices that help convey the "Connecticut experience," as it were.

To that effect, one of my favorite local blogs to visit is Derailed, which details the ongoing activities of Bob McDonough, "The Conductor to the Stars." A sharp-eyed conductor who rides the rails of MetroNorth, he shares many of his entertaining encounters, having met many celebrities during his daily travels, from Brett Somers to Dominick Dunne to Gwen Stefani. He also recounts many of his unique rail-riding experiences, such as returning to New York on Sept. 13, 2001, often alternating between amusing and thoughtful. Off the rails, he shares other personal anecdotes, like the story of discovering his father's "shocking" role in the famous "Milgram Experiment" at Yale.

Personally, I knew Bobby back when he was "The Paint Salesman to the Customers," when we both worked at Sears in Orange during the 1980s. I was "Stockboy to the Warehouse," or something like that -- and I'm pretty sure we both had more hair back then. I hadn't heard from him in years, and was very pleasantly surprised to cross paths with him again (so to speak). It's fun to re-connect with someone like this -- ah, the glory of the internet!

Anyway, next time you're on the train, say hi. Maybe you'll end up on the blog yourself.

Rell Calls for "Round-the-Clock Medical Care" for Ex-Governor Meskill

The governor's latest call to action followed her order on Monday to put up Jersey barriers along a stretch of I-95 in Groton four days after a horrendous accident occurred there. Earlier in the year, the governor used the occasion of the brutal home-invasion murders in Cheshire to order that--starting now--violent criminals not be released on parole; she also ordered more money for the inspection and repair of Connecticut bridges following the tragic collapse of a bridge in Minnesota. The governor also issued a call for enhanced laptop security among government agencies following the disappearance of one belonging to a state employee, and she strongly urged an investigation of DOT practices after negligence was discovered in construction jobs along I-84 in Waterbury.