Last week, I accused central Connecticut of parochialism. I suggested that the town-by-town loyalties characterizing our region are no longer appropriate in a global society. I mentioned bus-riding chickens.
This week, the big reveal: Why did I insult us all and naysay everything we seem to care about?
The short answer is that I did it for our own good.
The longer answer is that things are about to change, and we need to prepare ourselves to take advantage of those changes. The only way to do that is to begin thinking outside our borders, asking ourselves what we have to offer to people who are new to Connecticut, or who are considering relocating — particularly young people.
We have been losing the battle to keep Connecticut residents in the state for awhile now. Connecticut’s population of young adults 20 to 35 years old declined significantly between 1990 and 2000. The median age in Connecticut, 37, is higher than the national median age by two years.
This may not sound like much, but it reflects the fact that the state’s 3 percent growth in that time is only half the national average, landing us at 47th on the list of fastest-growing states. In other words, we’re the third slowest.
Clearly, we’re doing something wrong.
I’m not an economist, and I’m not a sociologist, but I can say from personal experience that the trouble with Connecticut is that it’s boring.
As high schoolers, my friends and I spent most of our hang-out time driving back and forth between malls. As a college student on break, I found myself staying in most nights and watching PBS or checking movies out of the library.
You may be thinking, "Well, you sound like a boring person, Alicia. Why should Connecticut be blamed for that?"
True. No state can be blamed for my lack of imagination.
But what if being in Connecticut made it easier for me to engage my imagination, instead of harder? What if, instead of imagining some place I might like to hang out with my friends — centrally located, with shops that interested me, coffeehouses and restaurants that served food I liked, that I could get to easily and cheaply by walking or taking a bus — this place actually existed?
From what I can tell, it does. It’s called Middletown.
Middletown’s Main Street seems to be doing well by any casual observer’s standards. With Wesleyan and Middlesex Community College in town, Main Street can count on an influx of college students looking for entertainment — restaurants, a movie theater, shopping and coffeehouses run the length of the street. It’s no wonder New Britain’s downtown development plan uses Middletown’s as a model.
But trying to recreate Middletown’s apparent success isn’t as easy as following its lead in the types of retail or restaurants they offer. After all, New Britain has Central Connecticut State University, and Bristol is between Briarwood College and Tunxis Community College, but this hasn’t meant automatic success for downtown Bristol or New Britain retailers. Something else is missing.
And when it comes to figuring out where to live and work, even the entertainment, dining and employment options of Main Street seem anemic in comparison with New York City or Boston. But that’s fine. We’re not New York or Boston. We never will be.
We will always be exactly what we are, which is located right between New York and Boston.
This is our advantage over every other state, and central Connecticut’s advantage over other counties. This is what we have to offer newcomers and college students who consider staying. All of our planning and development should focus on this advantage.
More on that next week.
Friday, July 25, 2008
Friday, July 18, 2008
7/18/08: It's time Nutmeggers became global citizens
Los Angeles Times columnist Gregory Rodriguez recently noted in an editorial that the global-citizen mentality of intellectual elites has meant less investment in local communities. "We should remember the beauty and strength of parochialism," he said, and be sure to invest ourselves locally.
"Well," I thought to myself after reading his column. "He should come to Connecticut and see parochialism in action."
Connecticut is the most parochial place I’ve lived — and that includes a small city in China where farmers carried chickens onto the public buses. (Chickens rode free.)
I’m not comparing our state to Dujiangyan to say Connecticut is a backwater or a hick state. Parochialism isn’t about chickens. It’s a worldview.
Dujiangyan, in Sichuan province — if you’ve read any coverage of the recent earthquake, you’ve seen the photos of my Chinese hometown in rubble — is surrounded by farms. But provincial leaders won’t let Sichuan be the "hillbilly province" of China forever, and I’d bet the physical devastation of the earthquake will be cleared up by the end of next year.
China, even agrarian Sichuan, is ambitious. It’s going places.
Connecticut, by contrast, has not gone anywhere in awhile.
This is as literally true as it can be in some cases. Route 72, now between New Britain and Plainville, was originally planned to extend to Route 8 in Thomaston, passing through Bristol and surrounding communities.
After completing an environmental impact study that found no fault with the proposed route through Bristol, town officials were ready to follow through. But the plan was stymied by residents who in 1999 continued to object (as residents had objected in the ’60s and ’70s to all previous plans) that the new controlled-access highway extension would generate more traffic and create noise — ignoring that it would also generate more economic opportunity and an increased likelihood of Hartford commuters choosing to live and invest in Bristol.
The plans are now, after more than 50 years, finally resolved. Bristol will get a Route 72 extension next year. It’s just amazing that it’s taken this long.
I didn’t know much about Bristol’s plans or controversies before researching Route 72, despite living in New Britain and Plainville, the town next door, most of my life.
Almost anywhere else, that would be strange. Anywhere but central Connecticut, the insularity and isolation of town-by-town identities would be a cause for head-scratching.
It makes some sense that we would be so bounded by our town lines. Cities and towns in central Connecticut represent a shockingly diverse set of subcultures, ethnicities and histories.
But this diversity, which should be our greatest regional asset, is neutralized by parochialism.
Investment only in our immediate, local communities — extending to stereotyping others towns (i.e., Farmington is rich, New Britain poor) — robs us of the ability to cooperate as a region, to learn from each other and combine our strengths. It makes us seem cliquish to outsiders, who will be less likely to want to invest in our area.
The days of to-the-town-line culture are over.
The days of interdependency and cooperative effort, spurred on by the Internet that allows us access to people and ideas across the world, are just beginning. We need to learn the "beauty and strength" of being global citizens.
I’m for local investment. I like knowing where I am without resorting to maps and street names. I like shopping at local stores. I like having a "New Britain accent."
I liked riding the bus with chickens.
But I was riding that bus in China.
"Well," I thought to myself after reading his column. "He should come to Connecticut and see parochialism in action."
Connecticut is the most parochial place I’ve lived — and that includes a small city in China where farmers carried chickens onto the public buses. (Chickens rode free.)
I’m not comparing our state to Dujiangyan to say Connecticut is a backwater or a hick state. Parochialism isn’t about chickens. It’s a worldview.
Dujiangyan, in Sichuan province — if you’ve read any coverage of the recent earthquake, you’ve seen the photos of my Chinese hometown in rubble — is surrounded by farms. But provincial leaders won’t let Sichuan be the "hillbilly province" of China forever, and I’d bet the physical devastation of the earthquake will be cleared up by the end of next year.
China, even agrarian Sichuan, is ambitious. It’s going places.
Connecticut, by contrast, has not gone anywhere in awhile.
This is as literally true as it can be in some cases. Route 72, now between New Britain and Plainville, was originally planned to extend to Route 8 in Thomaston, passing through Bristol and surrounding communities.
After completing an environmental impact study that found no fault with the proposed route through Bristol, town officials were ready to follow through. But the plan was stymied by residents who in 1999 continued to object (as residents had objected in the ’60s and ’70s to all previous plans) that the new controlled-access highway extension would generate more traffic and create noise — ignoring that it would also generate more economic opportunity and an increased likelihood of Hartford commuters choosing to live and invest in Bristol.
The plans are now, after more than 50 years, finally resolved. Bristol will get a Route 72 extension next year. It’s just amazing that it’s taken this long.
I didn’t know much about Bristol’s plans or controversies before researching Route 72, despite living in New Britain and Plainville, the town next door, most of my life.
Almost anywhere else, that would be strange. Anywhere but central Connecticut, the insularity and isolation of town-by-town identities would be a cause for head-scratching.
It makes some sense that we would be so bounded by our town lines. Cities and towns in central Connecticut represent a shockingly diverse set of subcultures, ethnicities and histories.
But this diversity, which should be our greatest regional asset, is neutralized by parochialism.
Investment only in our immediate, local communities — extending to stereotyping others towns (i.e., Farmington is rich, New Britain poor) — robs us of the ability to cooperate as a region, to learn from each other and combine our strengths. It makes us seem cliquish to outsiders, who will be less likely to want to invest in our area.
The days of to-the-town-line culture are over.
The days of interdependency and cooperative effort, spurred on by the Internet that allows us access to people and ideas across the world, are just beginning. We need to learn the "beauty and strength" of being global citizens.
I’m for local investment. I like knowing where I am without resorting to maps and street names. I like shopping at local stores. I like having a "New Britain accent."
I liked riding the bus with chickens.
But I was riding that bus in China.
Friday, July 11, 2008
7/11/08: Newshounds: It's time to embrace the Internet
Le Monde, the French newspaper of record, went on strike April 14, and did not publish a Tuesday edition, in response to planned staff cuts.
The New York Times cut its staff by more than 100 earlier this year.
The Los Angeles Times just cut 150 editorial staff.
The Hartford Courant cut 50 newsroom positions.
The Boston Globe is making cuts, and the Boston Herald has said it plans to eliminate 130 to 160 jobs this summer. The industry as a whole lost 1,000 jobs in a week.
Most newspapers can’t resist publishing editorials on their own cutbacks. The Hartford Advocate published an editorial by Alan Bisbort when it made cuts from its staff in April. The New York Times published word of its own layoffs. The World Association of Newspapers wrote about nationwide cuts in a series of blog entries. [For example.]
The whole industry is navel-gazing at this point.
Small wonder, considering how little guarantee there is that reporters and editors will be able to keep their bellies full over the next few, likely severe, rounds of cutbacks.
But it’s the wrong approach. The right one is to get back to work.
I say good riddance to Le Monde if its reporters have such a deep sense of entitlement that they assume they are invulnerable. Stopping the presses, after all, only works if people actually miss the paper when you do.
It’s not the same as the New York City transit strike. People needed to get to work. People needed to cross the Brooklyn Bridge.
It’s not like the Writers Guild of America strike that left us Christmas-episode-less and almost finale-less. We’re addicted to television. We need our fix of "House" or "The Office" or "Lost."
How long will people continue to need print newspapers, though? And how many are addicted to newspaper-format information?
It’s not newspapers’ fault that the format may be becoming obsolete, and it’s not out of line for seasoned reporters, editors, publishers and readers to be upset with the still-nebulous changes appearing to be forced on the industry. A thousand jobs lost in one week is nothing to sneeze at.
But it doesn’t seem like anything to strike at, either.
Imagine if oil-industry workers on the verge of losing their jobs to a new technology — solar power, let’s say — responded by going on strike. People would pay attention, true; they would complain; then they would speed up the transition to nonfossil-fuel power. A strike would have the opposite of the intended effect.
Those workers would be better off building on the expertise they already had, learning the ins and outs of the new technology and marketing themselves as advocates for change.
Newspapers, and more particularly the human elements making up newspapers — the reporters and editors and people who "do" newspapers — need to do the same thing.
The industry isn’t dying; it’s in transition. The change won’t happen overnight, and it will require some major adjustments, but out of the ashes of print-version papers should come something innovative and incisive, cutting to the quick of what people want from their information.
There’s so much to be done online — the lack of organization is staggering — and who would be better equipped to do that work than people who have been presenting us with information since "Common Sense" hit the presses?
Even if reporting and editing became freelance endeavors, we’d still need them. We still need gatekeepers, and we’ll need them exponentially more as our dependence on the Internet increases exponentially.
So let’s get going. Leave the husk of the old ways behind, Le Monde, and be a part of forming the new ones.
The New York Times cut its staff by more than 100 earlier this year.
The Los Angeles Times just cut 150 editorial staff.
The Hartford Courant cut 50 newsroom positions.
The Boston Globe is making cuts, and the Boston Herald has said it plans to eliminate 130 to 160 jobs this summer. The industry as a whole lost 1,000 jobs in a week.
Most newspapers can’t resist publishing editorials on their own cutbacks. The Hartford Advocate published an editorial by Alan Bisbort when it made cuts from its staff in April. The New York Times published word of its own layoffs. The World Association of Newspapers wrote about nationwide cuts in a series of blog entries. [For example.]
The whole industry is navel-gazing at this point.
Small wonder, considering how little guarantee there is that reporters and editors will be able to keep their bellies full over the next few, likely severe, rounds of cutbacks.
But it’s the wrong approach. The right one is to get back to work.
I say good riddance to Le Monde if its reporters have such a deep sense of entitlement that they assume they are invulnerable. Stopping the presses, after all, only works if people actually miss the paper when you do.
It’s not the same as the New York City transit strike. People needed to get to work. People needed to cross the Brooklyn Bridge.
It’s not like the Writers Guild of America strike that left us Christmas-episode-less and almost finale-less. We’re addicted to television. We need our fix of "House" or "The Office" or "Lost."
How long will people continue to need print newspapers, though? And how many are addicted to newspaper-format information?
It’s not newspapers’ fault that the format may be becoming obsolete, and it’s not out of line for seasoned reporters, editors, publishers and readers to be upset with the still-nebulous changes appearing to be forced on the industry. A thousand jobs lost in one week is nothing to sneeze at.
But it doesn’t seem like anything to strike at, either.
Imagine if oil-industry workers on the verge of losing their jobs to a new technology — solar power, let’s say — responded by going on strike. People would pay attention, true; they would complain; then they would speed up the transition to nonfossil-fuel power. A strike would have the opposite of the intended effect.
Those workers would be better off building on the expertise they already had, learning the ins and outs of the new technology and marketing themselves as advocates for change.
Newspapers, and more particularly the human elements making up newspapers — the reporters and editors and people who "do" newspapers — need to do the same thing.
The industry isn’t dying; it’s in transition. The change won’t happen overnight, and it will require some major adjustments, but out of the ashes of print-version papers should come something innovative and incisive, cutting to the quick of what people want from their information.
There’s so much to be done online — the lack of organization is staggering — and who would be better equipped to do that work than people who have been presenting us with information since "Common Sense" hit the presses?
Even if reporting and editing became freelance endeavors, we’d still need them. We still need gatekeepers, and we’ll need them exponentially more as our dependence on the Internet increases exponentially.
So let’s get going. Leave the husk of the old ways behind, Le Monde, and be a part of forming the new ones.
Friday, July 4, 2008
7/4/08: To those flag wavers, wearers, even eaters
The first year I lived in China, my Canadian co-worker announced that he wanted a T-shirt with the Chinese flag on it as a souvenir. He asked the rest of us, American and French, to let him know if we saw one. He asked this in September, but at the end of the school year, no one had found what he was looking for.
We asked Chinese colleagues why we couldn’t find any Chinese flag paraphernalia — no buttons, bags, accessories or clothing — for sale in the markets or malls. Most stared at us blankly in response.
One teacher looked confused, but answered. "We don’t do that," she said.
It may change when the Olympics, and Western demand for the usual souvenirs, come to Beijing, but the Chinese don’t sell their flag. And they certainly don’t wear it.
Americans do. With the Fourth of July comes an explosion of flag-related clothing, car magnets, buttons — lapel pins — and other items meant to show support for America. Small flags are passed out at parades and waved vigorously. Department stores set out little bouquets of flags at checkout counters as national-holiday impulse buys.
Doesn’t this strike anyone else as strange?
Of course, the point of the American flag, of America, is that it’s for everybody. It should be widely available, as ubiquitous as our civil rights; I can understand this stance.
What confuses me is that the people who wave these flags, often discarding them hours later, and who buy flag merchandise, are mysteriously often the same people who insist that "respect for the flag" is a fundamental American value.
But it’s not "respectful" to wear a picture of the flag. We’re not showing our respect when we put flag decals on our cars or spin flag-colored pinwheels.
We’re showing enthusiasm. We’re associating ourselves with the nation. We’re declaring ourselves "American."
We’re showing that we choose to participate in American society — that we are members, for better or worse.
And that’s fine.
In fact, that enthusiasm, the decision to participate, is worthy of our respect — more so than a flag, which represents a lot but is, ultimately, just a piece of cloth.
The flag is a symbol. We salute it, we pledge allegiance to it and at baseball games most of us take our hats off to it. But the flag is not our right to bear arms or to speak freely. The flag is not our right to vote.
The flag is not our right to buy and sell flag merchandise.
We who live in the 50 states are allowed to consider the image of the flag our own. Unless you live in the District of Columbia, you’re allowed to buy and sell flag souvenirs. You’re allowed to discuss the flag. You’re allowed to put it on your porch in a flag holder or to stick it to your car bumper. You’re even allowed to burn it in protest.
Democracy is the reason we’re allowed to put the stars and stripes on whatever we want — from Independence Day cakes to boxer shorts and handkerchiefs.
The Chinese would never think of eating their flag, even a frosting version of it. The Chinese flag is a symbol of the state, of government, and Chinese people generally leave it to the government to deal with their flag.
The American flag is a symbol of us, the people. As with most things in our government, it’s ours to interpret and appropriate.
Celebrate that however you wish — T-shirts and cupcakes included.
We asked Chinese colleagues why we couldn’t find any Chinese flag paraphernalia — no buttons, bags, accessories or clothing — for sale in the markets or malls. Most stared at us blankly in response.
One teacher looked confused, but answered. "We don’t do that," she said.
It may change when the Olympics, and Western demand for the usual souvenirs, come to Beijing, but the Chinese don’t sell their flag. And they certainly don’t wear it.
Americans do. With the Fourth of July comes an explosion of flag-related clothing, car magnets, buttons — lapel pins — and other items meant to show support for America. Small flags are passed out at parades and waved vigorously. Department stores set out little bouquets of flags at checkout counters as national-holiday impulse buys.
Doesn’t this strike anyone else as strange?
Of course, the point of the American flag, of America, is that it’s for everybody. It should be widely available, as ubiquitous as our civil rights; I can understand this stance.
What confuses me is that the people who wave these flags, often discarding them hours later, and who buy flag merchandise, are mysteriously often the same people who insist that "respect for the flag" is a fundamental American value.
But it’s not "respectful" to wear a picture of the flag. We’re not showing our respect when we put flag decals on our cars or spin flag-colored pinwheels.
We’re showing enthusiasm. We’re associating ourselves with the nation. We’re declaring ourselves "American."
We’re showing that we choose to participate in American society — that we are members, for better or worse.
And that’s fine.
In fact, that enthusiasm, the decision to participate, is worthy of our respect — more so than a flag, which represents a lot but is, ultimately, just a piece of cloth.
The flag is a symbol. We salute it, we pledge allegiance to it and at baseball games most of us take our hats off to it. But the flag is not our right to bear arms or to speak freely. The flag is not our right to vote.
The flag is not our right to buy and sell flag merchandise.
We who live in the 50 states are allowed to consider the image of the flag our own. Unless you live in the District of Columbia, you’re allowed to buy and sell flag souvenirs. You’re allowed to discuss the flag. You’re allowed to put it on your porch in a flag holder or to stick it to your car bumper. You’re even allowed to burn it in protest.
Democracy is the reason we’re allowed to put the stars and stripes on whatever we want — from Independence Day cakes to boxer shorts and handkerchiefs.
The Chinese would never think of eating their flag, even a frosting version of it. The Chinese flag is a symbol of the state, of government, and Chinese people generally leave it to the government to deal with their flag.
The American flag is a symbol of us, the people. As with most things in our government, it’s ours to interpret and appropriate.
Celebrate that however you wish — T-shirts and cupcakes included.
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