Alicia Watkins

Column

2009-05-01T15:16:00.002-04:00

Thanks to readers who have emailed me or commented, asking why I've been slacking for the past six weeks or so.

("Hey, whatever happened to that column you write?")

After a change in publisher and editorship, the Herald and Bristol Press decided to go a different route in getting local content on the page -- more actual news, less opinion -- and my column was dropped.

I'm sad that no one got to read my 3/13 column (below), because it highlighted local comic book shops that I think everyone should go see, and the opinions of expert fans (rather than just me), but otherwise, I'm happy with my experience as a columnist, and I wish the papers well. I think I mentioned in one of my columns once that my first job was delivering the Herald in my neighborhood, a job I inherited from a family down the street, and that they'd passed through at least two of their children before it came to me. The papers are a part of our local and personal history, and I'm relieved they're still going to be around.

As for me, I'm still around, too.

If you'd like to write to me directly, please do. My email address is posted at the top of this blog, and also here: aliciad.watkins@yahoo.com. I always enjoy getting comments, and interviewing people and hearing their (your) stories was by far the best and most fun part of this job.

Or, if you see me on the street, feel free to say hi...or to cross to the other side of the road, depending on whether you liked the column or not.

But either way, thanks again for reading.

3/13/09:

2009-03-13T06:00:00.000-04:00

Last week I suggested you start reading comic books, and if I did my job right (or if you’ve been to see "Watchmen"), you may have wondered where to begin.

I’m not an expert, so in search of the perfect entry point to the world of comics, I asked some: Nick Thompson, owner of Flagship Comics & Games, Stephen Lazorick, owner of Fables Comics & Collectibles and George Fietkiewicz, owner of Omni Comics & Cards, Inc.

“What would you recommend to a new reader?” I asked them, and I was instantly barraged with questions. What age was this reader? What sort of things was the reader interested in? What was the reader’s level of interest in comic books?

I guessed: “Adult? No experience with comic books? Interested in…gardening?”

But it became clear that my asking about “the typical reader” of comic books was as nonsensical as asking about the typical shoe-wearer. There are thousands of comic books of all kinds, suited to all ages and interests, as our shop owners kindly informed me, and many of them are excellent.

Still, in pursuit of a simple answer, I persisted. “What’s your favorite comic book right now?” I asked.

They each gave a different answer. Fietkiewicz’s current favorite is the Green Lantern series written by Geoff Johns. Thompson likes "Titans" and "Teen Titans." Lazorick reads “Y: The Last Man,” which is not a superhero comic.

Each owner described his favorite comic to me in some detail – all sounded interesting, but each was unique.

If I couldn’t get a single, easy answer, I’d try for a set of guidelines, so I asked the age-old comic book question: “DC or Marvel?” But our shop owners refused to take sides.

Thompson says he used to be "big into ‘Iron Man’ and ‘X-men,’" which are part of the Marvel universe, but recently he’s "shifted into DC because the writing’s a little better." All three shop owners cited good comics from each publishing house. No easy answers there.

That’s probably just as well. Many of us don’t know DC from Marvel, anyway, and in general, our shop owners say individual writers rather than publishing houses have become the focus for comic book fans.

Some fans follow Alan Moore, author of "Watchmen," from project to project, for instance, and Steven King’s "Dark Tower" comic book adaptations have kept selling at Fables. But you have to like superheroes or Steven King novels to be into those comics.

And it can be tough to break into a superhero comic midstream, too – many of the more popular storylines, like Batman or X-men, go back decades. Sometimes a movie is a good starting place, Fietkiewicz said, and cited “V for Vendetta" and "Batman: The Killing Joke" (the inspiration for “Dark Knight”). Thompson mentioned "30 Days of Night," which was made into a movie a few years ago.

There are also jumping-on points within the series: Thompson pointed out that “Invincible Iron Man” started up about six months ago, for new “Iron Man” fans, and Fietkiewicz said “Batman: Battle for the Cowl,” which comes out next month, is a good starting place.

Everyone mentioned "Watchmen," which is a complete story in one book — so you don’t have to buy multiple paperbacks, or wait for the next one to come out, which can be frustrating, Lazorick said.

But not everyone likes men in capes or women in knee-high boots. For the non-superhero crowd, there are other genres — crime, horror, memoir, adventure, etc. — and for all ages.

Unfortunately, there’s no single answer for everyone.

But our three local shop owners are there to help find yours.

Comments on 12/5/08 and 12/19/08, and responses

2009-03-10T17:44:00.005-04:00

Average Joe wrote on Nov 14, 2008 7:11 AM:
"As someone who has always marched to the beat of a different drummer, I can sort of understand her point of view. Also there is something to be said about the lack of employer loyalty to employees, which has now existed for many decades. Add to that the fact that all too many in management have reached or exceeded the pinnacle of the "Peter Principal" ("In a Hierarchy Every Employee Tends to Rise to His Level of Incompetence.") and can make life miserable. As a sailor I know that it is sometimes good to be able to change direction with the changing winds to eventually get to where you want to go. My philosophy of "If you don't find your job easy (in spite of the hard work it may entail) and enjoyable, you shouldn't be doing it." still guides me. Yet unlike my resume which contains a long list of significant achievements, contributions to and awards from almost everything in which I've been involved (even at her age), I cannot help but suspect her resume would be "accomplishment lite". My impression from reading her column is that she is either suffering from chronic hippie beach bum syndrome....or is a high achiever in early onset of the Peter Principal. Then maybe she simply has failed to find her niche or is too young and naive to realize that at some point you have to buckle up and settle down if you want to start saving and planning for "retirement" rather then always relying on the generosity of patrons or ending up on the public dole. "

*****

Average Joe wrote on Dec 5, 2008 5:00 AM:
"This type of article reminds me of the "creative writing" class I took in high school (45 years ago) where we grasped at the most idiotic and outlandish topics in order to impress our teacher and get a good grade. What most would consider truly good creative writing (like that of the greatest, most revered authors this very same teacher raved about and to which level of writing she wished we could aspire in the "advanced reading" class) got a "C" or "D". Weird and way out (often infantile) trash got an "A". Guess it depended on what your definition of "creative" was...at the moment. (Where was Bill Clinton when we needed him the most?)

Perhaps articles like this one are what have contributed to the potential closing of the Press come the first of the year. I'm all for entertaining, even amusing columns, but this seems like a total waste of space. (Need we remind all you liberals that others are entitled to their opinions even if they disagree with yours? So please don't label me uninformed, unenlightened or anti anything.)

It does have redeeming social value though, since she openly reveals her true self as a radical left wing liberal by equating "Republicans", "enemies" and "town dumps" in the same category as negative factors. Perhaps if she got a real job where you actually had to work for a living and produce something of value or take responsibility as a business owner rather then be dependent on the generosity of patrons or public funding (note her past "employment" and claims to fame), she would not have time or inclination to write such whimsy! But then she does have the appearance and philosophy of a modern day hippie...with a zero "sleves" and a minus 10 "moms" factor plus a rating of a gazillion "cult miles" from the average Joe. "

*****

Objective Reader wrote on Dec 20, 2008 4:16 AM:
"Just can't seem to understand why these writings get to take up space in this publication. They are not informative, humorous, thought provoking, spiritual, debatable or entertaining. In the back of my mind it cannot help but be asked whose niece or daughter she is.

Is it me? I am told I have a great sense of humor, am willing to participate in a good debate on many subjects, inquisitive, appreciative of art and intellect, etc..... Nope, just can't wrap my mind around anything read in this column. I keep trying and then tell myself that I must just be getting too old to appreciate whatever the purpose of this space is intended to be. "

*****

Wow. Well, here's my admittedly unsolicited advice, Average Joe and Objective reader (I suspect you're the same person, though that may not be the case): Stop reading my columns.

Or maybe you already have, since it's taken me so long to get back to your comments.

Let me correct a few factual errors here, anyway, just in case people who continue to read have the same misconceptions, or in case you ever wander across my column blog archive by chance.

My column on scales meant to quantify emotions (sadness, dissatisfaction with geographic location, etc.) did not equate "Republicans" with "enemies."

It said, in fact, that "an active local hippie population [for hippies]" would be considered a benefit, while "an active local hippie population [for Republicans]" would be considered a drawback. Grammatically and intentionally, this meant that "hippies" might like to live near other "hippies," while Republicans probably wouldn't.

Of course, the whole thing was a joke.

Nobody's actually going around measuring their sadness in "kittens" -- though I have to say that these sorts of comments definitely increase my kitten count for the day significantly.

In fact, the column as a whole was meant to point out that these things can't be quantified, and our tendency to focus on math and science often leaves the more subtle art of self-description or expressing emotions out in the cold. (It did this satirically -- and while I don't know your age or type of sense of humor, I can say that a lot of people don't really enjoy or "get" satire. And that's fine.)

I'd say that quantifying "creativity" in the way your teacher did, Average Joe, falls in the same category of silly/ridiculous as the idea that we can quantify our emotions. It causes exactly the results that you point to -- with a teacher determining subjectively what s/he likes, or what s/he defines as "creative" and putting a quantity to it (an "A" or a "D").

The only possibly quantifiable elements in "creative writing" are spelling, grammar and word count. We can legitimately grade on these if we have standards to judge by. Luckily, we American English-speakers have dictionaries, grammar books and word processing programs (which count the number of words for us).

The rest is all opinion.

So let me point out, for the record, that my use of brackets ("[for Republicans]") causes my meaning to be clear -- not that I'm lambasting Republicans, but that I'm joking that Republicans probably won't like living near hippies -- and that my writing is impeccable in spelling, grammar and word count, insofar as I control it. (It gets edited after I submit it to the newspaper.)

I get an "A" for that.

You may fail me on content, and that's your right as a reader -- your opinion is just as vital and valuable as mine, as an American and citizen of the world.

As for my column contributing to the potential closing of The Bristol Press, well, it's nice to know that someone thinks a weekly 600-word column written by a local citizen can have that kind of impact. I hope it does, though I wouldn't wish that kind of responsibility on myself. I'd like to believe that individuals still have that kind of power over corporations, and that our opinions matter that much.

I am a hippie, after all, as revealed...wait, where was that "revealed"?

Still, I'm glad The Bristol Press didn't close. (Does the fact that it stayed open mean that people like my columns so much that they decided to keep it going? If I was to be responsible for its downfall, I'd like to be credited for its success...unless, as I do, you suspect that it actually had more to do with a new publisher appearing who realized the Press and The Herald could be financially viable papers with good coverage of local news and issues, than with the success or failure of my Friday columns.)

I'm sorry you weren't entertained by my column, and I'm certainly not going to label you anti-anything -- though you seem to be anti-your-old-creative-writing-teacher.

And I'm not going to delve into what very little I know of your personal work history (you imply you're a business owner?) to insult you personally. I won't attempt to divine whether your accomplishments are "lite" or not based on your three or four comments on my columns.

I don't know you that well, Average Joe, and if I did, I probably would find some value in what you've accomplished in your life even if the way you went about it was different than the way I would have. I probably still wouldn't accuse you of not having a "real job," or put the word employment in scare quotes, to imply you hadn't worked for your wages.

As you do to me.

I would remind you, as I reminded Cindy from Fairfield in the summer, that 600 words a week is not sufficient information to apply to the question of who someone is. You're welcome to question the premises of my columns, or even the broader question of why I get to write them. Unless I apply for a job with you, however, don't expect that you've gotten a complete resume from me, or that you can gauge even my political beliefs by what I write each week.

I gently remind you that you can't. Not correctly, anyway.

I'm also not sure what it was that made you label my appearance (a low blow, there, Joe) as a "modern day hippie's." Was it the tasteful, single necklace purchased at a downtown Plainville jeweller? Was it the part of the sweater bought at the Kohl's you can see in the fade-out headshot of me? Was it the haircut, which I got at a Supercuts in Southington?

Was it the glasses? I got those in China, true. (Though China doesn't have many hippies, modern-day or otherwise.) But I got the red ones because I'd had red glasses as a fifth-grader in New Britain, and those came from an eyeglass store downtown.

I'm not sure what passes for hippie-wear these days. Maybe it's the freckles or the blue eyes.

Maybe it's just my apparent age.

*****

To Objective Reader, I can only reply that though I consider the answer firmly embedded in the "none of your business" category, I will respond to the question that plagued the back of your mind (and your comment) in December: I'm the daughter of a disabled veteran.

She doesn't work for the paper. None of my relatives do.

In fact, I'm the only one in my family who has ever worked for the newspaper: I delivered it door-to-door in middle school.

Thanks for your comments, O.R. and A.J. -- though I hope you've freed yourselves from the obligation of reading my column, and so will probably likely not comment again. I wish you the best.

Comment on 12/26/08, and response

2009-03-10T16:38:00.002-04:00

Average Joe wrote on Dec 26, 2008 7:25 AM:
"Praise for "hard work" vs "smartness" produces better results in children. WOW! At last something of substance and applicable to daily life. No fanciful rambling (well, at least not totally). Alicia, you’re finally catching on. Just one question: What does this do to the philosophy of "Working smarter not harder." and is this technique as effective on adults but only if properly applied?"

*****

Ha! Well, Average, you're welcome. I'm glad I wrote something helpful to you, and I'm sorry it's taken me so long to check over the Bristol Press comments and reply.

I'm not sure what it is I'm meant to be "catching on" to, as I write an opinion column rather than straight news or a how-to, and opinions (especially ones we disagree with) may often be viewed as "fanciful rambling," but I'm glad you think I've done it. Or did it, that one time.

The saying "work smarter not harder" actually has nothing to do with being called "smart" versus "a hard worker" -- it's about working efficiently, and thinking through the process required to accomplish what you'd like before starting the work, rather than just beginning a task without planning.

This is a skill like any, and it can be encouraged in the same way any other skill would be: "Wow, A.J., I like the way you thought about your comment before you posted it. You spent half the time you might have normally spent on it and the result was just as good, because you put the work in in advance and made sure to plan out what you were going to say."

For instance. (I don't actually know if you planned your comment in advance, though it sounds like you'd been thinking about it -- or at least thinking about my column as "fanciful rambling" -- for awhile.)

Thinking strategically is a skill, in short, and that's what people mean when they say "work smarter."

Adults also benefit from having their efforts praised rather than their "smartness," yes. Effective management technique should include this rather than empty gold-starred "you're so smart!" -- though I would suspect that more often, bosses err on the side of not praising at all, rather than praising the wrong way.

Hope you've found some other columns since December that had substance and applied to your daily life, A.J. -- mine or anyone's -- and thanks for commenting.

Comments on 1/23/09, and responses

2009-03-10T16:16:00.002-04:00

willy lump lump wrote on Jan 25, 2009 7:55 AM:
" It would help if we taught today's kids some good old US history, so they would know how this contry has evolved. I have a young friend, a coollege student who didn't know anything about Pearl Harbor. She thought it was a battle in WW2. Didn't know we weren't at war when it happened. Can you imagine what she knew of the French and Indian War, the Revolution, war of 1812 and on and on? "

*****

I'd agree that history is important, though I'd add that we should be teaching world history just as much as American.

For one thing, America is a young country created in a larger global context. How can we understand our own revolution if we don't have the context of medieval and Renaissance times in Europe?

And how can we understand the times we're living in now without the histories of rising non-European powers? Americans seem to know very little about non-Western countries, and at least from an economic perspective, it's important that we learn.

Thanks, willy.

*****

Eugene wrote on Jan 28, 2009 11:49 AM:
" The only thing we need to teach our Children are the 3 r's.Spanish should not be it should a up to the country sending them here to speak English at their exspense. History should be home schooled which is also available in any library. One just hsa to watch the Jay Leno show and his Jaywalking skit to see what a waste this subject and others produce.6 assistants are the really needed? "

*****

Eugene, I'm afraid your policies on education are lacking, well, an educated perspective.

I've written about bilingual education before, so I won't get into that here. But suffice it to say that teaching kids other languages prepares them for an increasingly global workforce and also allows them to use their brains in new ways that will allow them to learn new languages more quickly, encourage parallel thinking and make them more versatile and better critical thinkers overall.

Also, countries don't send people to America, in general. People choose to come here on their own.

If as Americans we'd like to make sure we don't benefit from any of their experiences or allow recent immigrants to contribute to our society with any of their skills, then we should definitely do as you say and make sure they're responsible for learning English in advance, at their expense.

Alas, many of them will still thwart us, learn English despite our lack of encouragement or help, and become great contributors to American society. That's the cross we bear as a nation that attracts some of the best minds in the world. We're just going to have to learn to put up with it.

I've never heard of anyone suggesting we stop teaching history. This seems an excessively extreme view to me.

I'm curious, in fact, what "reading" (one of the "R's") would be worth in that case -- what would you like kids to learn to read, if not history, or, presumably, literature, which can also be found in any library? There would have to be some content for them to practice on, right?

What would you suggest they read?

Comment on 2/13/09, and response

2009-03-10T15:47:00.003-04:00

Sally wrote on Feb 20, 2009 1:17 PM:
"I would expect this sentiment from a man. There certainly must be a reason.... And really, red roses and a romantic fancy dinner...a tired routine? You confuse routine with tradition. Do you also resent birthday cakes, corned beef and green beer on March 17, pumpkins at Halloween and on and on? Sorry that you feel so left out."

*****

I'm actually laughing out loud at this comment -- thanks, Sally, though I don't think you intended it to be funny.

I'm amused that expecting this sentiment from a man appears to be a criticism. Are men supposed to be less evolved than women in the way they approach Valentine's Day?

I agree that the stereotype is that men don't know romance. But I haven't found a lot of evidence for this being the case, at least not in my experience, and not compared to the women I know.

The red roses and romantic dinner being called "a tired routine" was partly a joke -- which I thought would become clear when I mentioned the marriage proposal as part of that "tired routine" (as though a marriage proposal would be a yearly occurrence). But I do think that a lot of the V-Day routines we've come to expect are, well, expected. And for my money, I'd rather have something more personal and thoughtful than that.

I don't really like cake, whether it's my birthday or not; I like corned beef, but don't drink, so green beer is out; I do like pumpkins, but not so much to carve as to boil and eat.

I'd prefer something else on those occasions, related to me rather than blind adherence to tradition. That's pretty much my point in the Valentine's Day column, as it was my point in the anti-Mother's-Day column I wrote last year -- not that we shouldn't have traditions, or that we shouldn't celebrate these things, like moms, or romantic love, but that we should be thoughtful about them.

I don't feel left out, though, Sally, and I don't resent Valentine's Day for any of the reasons you're probably supposing. (You seem to imply, along with the idea that I don't have the "womanly virtues" of caring about tradition or romance, that I may be bitter or lonely in being "left out." I'm actually neither one...and yet I hold my opinions, anyway.)

And I don't have anything against the traditions people love: I'm glad you enjoy red roses and dinners out, and I hope you had a great Valentine's Day that included both.

That's why I said in my column, "if, like me" -- you and I are just different, and we can both exist and do things our own ways, happily. Without being "men" and without resentment.

For my part, I had a pretty great time with my horror movie marathon.

Thanks for commenting, Sally.

Comment on 2/27/09 and response

2009-03-10T15:24:00.002-04:00

Chewenlai wrote on Mar 4, 2009 4:04 AM:

"You look like you could use all the help A Dong could provide. I used a ruler once, but that didn't make me wish I was the King of England for the rest of me life. If you are so enamored of peanut-walnut milk, feed your cow some Jiff, poke its teats with a sack of walnuts and enjoy the ensooooing results. Of course it would fall short of the high standards of the Chinese people, but in America we have a lot to learn."

*****

I'm posting this comment here not so much because I have a response, but because I found it amusing.

I can use all the help A Dong provides. I like that store; I go there pretty frequently, and I'm always pleased with the things I find there. I've never claimed to be a chef, in any culture, and making jiaozi (dumpling) wrappers, for instance, would be impossible for me -- thank goodness I don't have to.

I've tried to make my own hot pot mix and not done very well at that, either.

I think your recipe for peanut-walnut milk probably leaves a lot to be desired (like scientific support), but I like the use of "ensooooing." And I'm going to keep my eye out for it, as usual, at A Dong.

I'm not sure what the King of England or "high standards" have to do with my column, which was much too short to deal with any of the controversy over trade with China, FDA standards and their implementation in foreign countries, American-Chinese political relations of any kind, or even dumplings.

I only wish I could have included something about that last one. The other topics aren't suited to a weekly 600-word column written by a citizen.

I don't claim to be a chef, a ruler, a standard-maker or a political expert of any kind. I'm a writer. I write about what I know...like Ramen noodles.

Comment on 2/27/09, and response

2009-03-10T15:12:00.004-04:00

Alex wrote on Mar 5, 2009 12:12 AM:

"I hate to nitpick, but yes there was in fact a "General Tso" and the reason most Chinese people would not have heard of them is because not everyone is a historian.

Zuǒ Zōngtáng, aka General Tso, was a General during the time of the Taiping Rebellion. Along with Zeng Guofan, General Tso was able to put a halt to the rebellion by dethroning Hong Tianguifu, the leader of the rebel forces.

The real let down of this story is that Zuǒ Zōngtáng, the man who was largely responsible for ending a rebellion that cost 20 million lives, is remember through a chicken dish.

For more info on Zuǒ Zōngtáng (General Tso) check out Encyclopedia Britanica, lots of great stuff. "

*****

Yes, true! There was a real, historical General Tso.

My column didn't say there wasn't one -- it was meant to say exactly what you point out, in part, which is that not everyone is a historian. And while Americans might think General Tso is so famous that he needs no introduction, the Chinese people I talked to who did know about the general said that to Chinese, he's not that well known. They called him "a small figure" in history and said they were surprised that Americans knew anything about him.

None of the Chinese I talked to had ever eaten "General Tso's chicken," though that doesn't mean it doesn't exist in China. It only means that none of the people who I asked in the provinces in which I taught (Sichuan and Ningxia) had heard of or eaten it. But ask an American who's been to a Chinese restaurant, and most of them will say they've tried it, or at least heard of it.

My point was that American Chinese food isn't the same as what people are eating in China. I didn't have space to go into Chinese history, so I'm glad you added your comment.

Thanks, Alex.

3/6/09: Graphic novels really are good literature

2009-03-06T06:00:00.001-05:00

If you’re like me, you’re reading this column either in line at the local cineplex while waiting for your prepurchased ticket to be torn before you’re allowed to find the best possible theater seat from which to view the “Watchmen” movie released today, or while being distracted by mental review of its triumphs and flaws after having seen it last night at a midnight screening, or both.

That’s right. Sometimes I read over my own columns, occasionally while waiting in long lines.

But if you’re thinking about whether that makes me narcissistic or obsessive, or both, you’re missing the point, which is that I can’t wait to see this movie.

If it’s half as fascinating and intricate as the graphic novel it’s based on, it will be well worth watching.

For the “true believers” in comic books, I should admit that I’m a Janey-come-lately to the whole scene: I started reading comic books in anthology form around this time last year, with the first volume of “Cerebus,” a 300-issue independent comic created by Canadian Dave Sim.

While having read the entire “Cerebus” series should earn me some nerd cred, I don’t have the background in Silver Age comics that true lifelong fans have. Before last year, Comic Book Guy from “The Simpsons” was my only real contact with comic book fans — and he’s a cartoon. But since then, I’ve come to appreciate what comic books can do.

Traditionally, comic books haven’t gotten much respect, and neither have the people who love them.

The knee-jerk impulse to dismiss comic books “because they have pictures” might come partly from residual guilt over preferring film strips to lectures, or field trips to, well, anything, in school, combined with the axiom “reading is good for you.” But there’s no evidence that children or adults learn best from line after line of text. In fact, there’s plenty of evidence to the contrary.

We can stop feeling guilty for liking to look at pictures, in other words.

And beyond learning styles, graphic novels are able to tell stories that neither books nor movies can tell — because description of the level of visual detail included in even a single panel of comic is impossibly dense in an ordinary novel, while moving pictures go so quickly as to make serious frame-by-frame study impractical.

Alan Moore, writer of “Watchmen,” is largely credited as the guy who figured out how to tell a story that could only be told in comic form. It was considered the unfilmable comic book.

Now, of course, it’s been filmed.

But that kind of genre bending is just what comic books these days are thriving on.

Beyond the summer box office successes of “The Dark Knight” and “Iron Man,” which were based on comic book series, memoir comics such as Marjane Satrapi’s “Persepolis” have garnered critical acclaim and new fans — new fans who dig back into the oeuvre of artists who preceded their favorites and discover an entire alternate history of literature.

And it is literature. That wasn’t a typo or poor word choice.

The characterization of memoir comics isn’t in question; these are actual people, who choose to tell their stories with pictures included, and to some extent, this still-emerging subgenre has legitimated what most people see as a world of superheroes.

But fictional comics — even superhero ones, though those aren’t nearly the breadth of comic art — don’t need legitimizing, any more than text-only fiction does. George Eliot’s “Middlemarch” is one of my all-time favorite novels, but it has nothing on “Watchmen” in cast of characters, plotting or execution.

So if you’re not in line for “Watchmen” right now, I recommend it.

Better yet, read the book.

2/27/09:

2009-02-27T06:00:00.000-05:00

If you’ve ever ordered General Tso’s Chicken and found yourself wondering if people in China were eating it, too, here’s your answer: No.

Chinese people were confused when my teammate asked for General Tso’s Chicken, and finally, desperately, if anyone had ever even heard of a General Tso.

In fact, most of the food you get at Chinese restaurants outside of Chinatowns in larger cities have been Americanized to the point of becoming almost a different cuisine.

Of course, the foods you get in Chinatowns in larger cities may also be different cuisines: China recognizes five major regional cuisines, including Cantonese, Hunan and Sichuan (Szechuan), which seem the most popularly available here.

But just because a restaurant calls itself "Szechuan" doesn’t mean it’s serving the same thing Sichuan people eat. If you’re interested in getting the most authentic experience possible, ask where the chef came from and request dishes from that region; some dishes, such as Chongching chicken or Yangzhou fried rice, are associated with a single city, and probably won’t show up on the menu — but they may be available if your chef is from Chongching or Yangzhou.

I’ve had excellent noodles at Peking Kitchen in Beacon, N.Y. off I-84, and more locally, Szechuan Tokyo in West Hartford has good authentic Sichuan food.

But in general, I’ve found that if you want authentic Chinese food, your best bet is to make it yourself.

There’s help. A Dong supermarket, down the street from Szechuan Tokyo in West Hartford, has most of what you’d need to pull off a good Chinese meal, including otherwise hard-to-find vegetables like rape or lotus, hot pot mixes and disposable chopsticks. You’ll know you’re in the right place when you step in, turn left and are greeted by Peking ducks and most of a pig hanging from hooks near the bakery counter.

Now here’s what you can make, authentically, with what you find there.

Well, here are the easiest things, anyway.

Hot pot: Buy a mix and squeeze it out into a pot or wok of boiling water set in the middle of the table where you and your guests will eat.

It will be spicy, and a good mix will look gross going into the pot. But your only prep will be cutting various vegetables — Chinese cabbage, rape, turnip, snap peas — and meats — beef, fish balls, Chinese dumplings — into small enough pieces to cook quickly and eat in a single bite.

Guests can toss in whatever looks good to them and fish it out (preferably with a slotted spoon) when it’s done.

Ramen noodles: No kidding. Though saying Ramen noodles are authentic is as shocking as going to Rome and being served SpaghettiO’s, it’s true. Chinese people eat "kuai mian," or "fast noodles," when they can’t get home-cooked or a sit-down meal — if you’re riding a train, where boiling water is readily available from a spout on each car, or if you’re a poor college student, Ramen noodles are likely a staple of your diet in China.

I think Ramen noodles are best eaten dry and crunchy, whatever continent you’re on, but I’ve never met anyone who ate fast noodles this way who wasn’t from New Britain.

White rice, cooked in a rice cooker: Brown rice is not authentic Chinese; neither is "wild rice."

Rice cookers are incredibly easy to use, quick and do a perfect job every time.

Drinks: You can pick up an aloe vera drink or chrysanthemum tea at A Dong, or you can just drink your water boiling hot. I have yet to find one of my favorite drinks, peanut-walnut milk, in America.

But when I do, I’ll let you know.

2/20/09: Making a culinary dash through the political menu

2009-02-20T06:00:00.001-05:00

In late 2007, before the GOP presidential nominee had been chosen, I ordered Mitt Romney at Mr. Bartley’s Gourmet Burgers in Cambridge, MA. It was a Swiss cheese burger with onions and came with a pile of onion rings that spilled off the plate and couldn’t be finished even with the help of my six table-mates.

If Al Franken had been on the menu then, I may have ordered him — though more in support of his sense of humor than of the concept of a veggie burger with pineapple on it.

Wishing I had another Mitt Romney to feast on this week, I began to wonder: What if our Connecticut politicians had sandwiches named after them?

A President Obama burger would be pretty easy — a regular, all-American burger delivered by electric car over an improved highway system, probably with a side salad. The burger might come with a note indicating that its creation had been partly subsidized by federal intervention and had helped to maintain almost 4 million jobs.

If you asked if you could substitute fries for the salad, or add mushrooms or pepper jack cheese to the Obama burger, the waitress might be required to reply "yes, you can." But she would almost certainly charge you for the extras.

A Sen. Christopher Dodd burger wouldn’t likely be a beef burger at all; thanks to his emphasis on our coastline conservation and defense, his sandwich would be grilled tuna. Paying in cash would lead to a relatively uneventful meal, but if you used your credit card, you’d be treated to a free copy of Dodd’s credit card protections strengthening bill and offered the chance to sign it along with your receipt, becoming a co-sponsor.

It wouldn’t matter what the menu description of a Sen. Joseph Lieberman burger was. Whatever it appeared to be when you ordered it, the waiter would bring something entirely different to the table and insist that you eat it anyway.

A John Rowland would be a pulled pork sandwich with steak fries, but halfway through the meal, your server would remove your plate and replace it with a small garden salad — no bacon bits allowed.

A Gov. M. Jodi Rell, on the other hand, would be a box of instant store-brand macaroni and cheese, mixed up in a large bowl and served family-style, possibly with a side of canned peas.

"Like many families in Connecticut," your server would announce, "we have to cut back on extras." Then he would hand you each a spoon and ask that you bus your own table when you’re finished.

A Rep. Chris Murphy burger would be served by Murphy himself, and though you’d have to call in the order to his Washington, D.C. office, you could ask for anything you wanted on it.

If Murphy’s office didn’t have what you were looking for, at least he would explain how he’d fought for your right to a coleslaw side dish and would continue that fight until coleslaw was made available to the people of the fifth district.

A Rep. John Larson burger would be typical beef, but when you paid, you’d receive a notice that Congress would soon be looking into the question of how burgers got to be so expensive. (The burger would be taxed twice to cover the cost of investigating.)

As for state senators and representatives, city and town council members, I’m betting that if you contacted your local representives, they’d meet you in your favorite local restaurant to shoot the breeze and hear your concerns — and you could ask them yourself what kind of sandwiches they’d be.

2/13/09: Romance isn't dead, but it can be a horror

2009-02-13T06:00:00.002-05:00

Well, it’s that time of year again.

That’s right: Friday the 13th.

Right before Valentine’s Day.

If, like me, you’ve never cottoned to a day meant for surprise romantic gestures that comes like clockwork every year, here are some ways to ward off Valentine’s Day.

Let me know if you join me in any of them.

Ignore it: This is the most elegant and non-hypocritical solution. And if you can pull off a straight-faced "no, I’ve never heard of Valentine’s Day," all the better.

Wear orange: A nice "Orange Crush" t-shirt or some tangerine pants make a nice clashy statement against all the reds and pinks of Valentine’s Day.

Get creative with candy hearts: There’s always the classic fall-back "scrape off the pre-written message and write your own in red ink" method of dealing with "say yes" and "U R Tops" type candy heart messages.

A few of the more recent candy heart messages, especially the ones intended to reflect connection in modern life, satirize themselves, though. "Email me" and "fax me," no matter how ubiquitous those modes of communication have become, will never be romantic. ("Text me" may have a chance.)

My college friends and I laughed at the candy conversation hearts we encountered a few years ago, some of which said, inexplicably, "Book Club."

In honor of a candy that clearly had a sense of humor, if unwittingly, we decided to celebrate Valentine’s Day with an ice cream cake portraying a "Book Club" heart in icing.

The ice cream was mint chocolate chip, making the cake taste significantly better than the actual Necco-waferlike conversation hearts.

Get creative with Valentine’s Day cards: Instead of those little rectangular perforated "Bee Mine" cards, or the more formal folded versions with Hallmark poetry on them, switch it up. Try sending blank cards with handwritten messages in them.

If your friends or loved ones have a sense of humor, you might consider non-V-Day-related messages, such as "you didn’t finish washing the dishes last night." Or if you insist on pre-written cards, consider the "sympathy on the death of your pet" collection.

Horror movie marathon: This is how I’m going to spend my Valentine’s Day.

And no cheating - this is not an excuse to clutch your beloved closer than usual in terror.

In fact, the more bizarre the movie, the more esoteric the reference, the better. If you snagged any dollar DVDs from a pharmacy or department store around Halloween, you probably have a few that will do: "The House on Haunted Hill," "Atom Age Zombies" or "The Brain That Wouldn’t Die" are winners.

I recommend "Ringu," the original Japanese version of "The Ring." Despite our Chinese school’s Japanese karate instructor psyching himself up before watching it (for the second time) by rocking back and forth and repeating "it’s okay; I know karate," it’s not what most Americans would call actually scary.

The first three Alien movies, while not technically horror, are also acceptable.

Go international: China has a "lover’s day," too, in which boys get the girl they like flowers, and girls get boys books.

It adds some spice to the otherwise tired routine of red roses, fancy dinner out and marriage proposal that plays itself out every year, to have a slightly "ethnic" twist on romance.

And it’s nice to have a prescribed gift item - and the guarantee that the guy you’re into will have no more excuses for not reading the Twilight quadrilogy.

2/6/09: Together online, yes, but also on your own

2009-02-06T06:00:00.000-05:00

Galvanized by my own surprise at the number of interesting, funny and decent people I met on Craigslist after posting a personal ad a few weeks ago, I decided to dig a bit deeper.

At first, I was worried I was missing something, some obvious, glaring pitfall in meeting people online. Everybody I wrote to seemed so nice. There had to be something wrong with these guys, right?

But meeting “on the Internet” has largely lost the stigma it had a decade ago, when “the Internet” seemed like code for “a back alley” or “because I couldn’t find anyone in real life.”

My experience has been almost entirely positive, as has the experience of my new friends, I’m happy to say — particularly since the people I’ve been corresponding with say they’ve never replied to a Craigslist ad before, making me their only “Craigslist friend.”

One friend, Edward, elaborated on his online socializing: As an autistic early teen, Edward lived mostly online, where he “had half a dozen instant messaging windows open at the same time, held chat room meetings, had power; could tell someone twice my age what needed to be done; could ban someone who got out of line.”

Edward has “met” people from all around the world online, and he describes his experiences as positive, right in sync with my own.

But not everyone shares this experience.

It’s partly a numbers game: It’s no coincidence that I’m a woman getting all these responses. Since more men than women seem to read “the personals,” men who post also seem to get fewer responses.

Mike Z of Berlin, for instance, who decided to post a new personal ad every day for 30 days, quit after 14 posts when almost all he’d gotten was spam ads.

He’d started out hopeful in his initial post Jan. 2 — “hello?” — straightforwardly stating that he was “looking for a girlfriend,” admitting that he’d been single for awhile.

A few women had responded, Mike said, but no one had stuck around: “It seems that you can be having a good conversation and then it just ends, me figuring maybe tomorrow they’ll write back or something, but nothing ever comes of it.”

By Jan. 8, Day 7, Mike was tired of getting nothing but spam, and the ad he posted showed it.

Starting with a primal-scream type “aaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh,” Mike demanded to know what was wrong with him and his ads that caused him to be so snubbed by Connecticut Craigslist women.

He asked women to respond with suggestions, if not interest, on what he could change to improve his ads.

Women did respond.

One woman, Mike says, wrote him “about a page and a half,” advising him to get “better pictures,” and not to “come off as so desperate” or say he was lonely.

There is something to this. In the DIY ethos of Craigslist, there aren’t many pointers along the way for how to craft a personal ad that displays your best qualities, no guidelines or auto-formatting like at larger, dating-specific Web sites.

At the same time, it’s exactly that do-it-yourself mentality that eventually caused women to respond to Mike — with advice rather than the offer of a coffee meet-up, sure, but in an effort to connect, nonetheless.

Mike was still disappointed enough to stop posting his ads, the last of which is on the Hartford Craigslist site as “another post lucky 13” on Jan. 21.

That’s tough, and I wish Mike luck — and hope.

Because, as my experience has shown, there are good people out there — here in Connecticut — and online.

My main disappointment remains that I can’t meet them all.

1/30/09: Getting real personal in mostly virtual way

2009-01-30T06:00:00.000-05:00

Recently, I realized I needed more local friends.

I could pontificate here on the fragmentation of modern society, the industrialization of things that used to be personal and the disaffection caused by modern communication methods and media that may have gotten me to this point, but I won’t.

This isn’t a story about how I needed to find friends because globalization is a lonely making force.This is actually a story about how I found them.

Two weeks into the new year, I posted an ad on Craigslist, a Web site community familiar to most who consider themselves geeks, nerds or hipsters.

I’m using the word “community” here deliberately; Craigslist isn’t only a dating site like Match.com or eHarmony. It isn’t a career site like Monster or Idealist.org. And it doesn’t only offer free things to people willing to pick them up like a regional Freecycle listserve group. Craigslist is a do-it-yourself version of all of these things in one.

And it’s free, and is organized by geographic location, which was what I was looking for.

I was a Craigslist novice when I first looked up the personals section on the Hartford network, but I knew enough to realize that the “strictly platonic” category of personal ad was more for hook-ups than friendship-building. So I posted my ad in the section I thought would get me the most responses: “women seeking men.”

I introduced myself to central Connecticut as a nerd looking for people to hang out with, sat back and waited to see what I’d get back.

I was almost immediately overwhelmed with responses: In the first three days of my ad being posted, I got e-mails from no fewer than 50 different e-mail addresses.

True, some of these were spam ads for other “dating sites,” and some were from men looking for the sorts of relationships I wasn’t interested in — but the majority were from real people looking, as I had been, for a sense of connection.

I was touched, personally, by the positive responses I’d gotten. But beyond that, I was shocked by how many people out there — how many of us — are searching hopefully for others to have fun with, relate to and share their ideas and passions.

I got e-mails from people who liked the same music I liked, filled with “they’re great, aren’t they?” types of comments. I instant-messaged about the comic books I’ve read and the independent coffee shops I like to hang out at. I learned a bit more about towns I’d grown up near but never investigated.

I found a local whose hometown in China is an hour away from my adopted hometown, and a fellow nerd who took me to task for never having seen “Dr. Who.”

I was charmed by the people I wrote to, and even more charmed by the ones I met. Who knew central Connecticut was so full of engaging people?

I decided to do a little more digging and see how deep this vein went.

It wasn’t all sunshine and springtime: One responder said I was the first person he’d replied to on Craigslist who was real — the rest had all been spam ads.

And Mike Z. of Berlin has had plenty of trouble finding the connection he’s looking for.

Mike has been posting a new ad on the Hartford Craigslist most days since Jan. 2. He says he’ll continue posting for 30 days, or until he starts corresponding with someone interesting — and real.

Next week, Mike’s story.

1/23/09: It's time to add hope to our history

2009-01-23T06:00:00.000-05:00

This week has been unprecedented. The news has been full of analysis of the inauguration, from how much money was spent on it (an unprecedented amount), how many celebratory balls the Obamas went to (an unprecedented number), how many people gathered in D.C. to participate (unprecedented crowds of them) and how great it is that America has finally elected a leader who is a person of color.

I like talking about things in this way, and I hope we keep it up.

I like it because before the newness of this inauguration, news cycles were full of accounts of an impending economic depression — “the second Great Depression,” I’d heard it called — and how the bailout would still be affecting us generations from now.

Before Obama even became president-elect, too, he was being compared to President Kennedy, and an Obama White House was being touted as a “return to Camelot.” Some of my friends, citing the fresh-faced young family’s similarities to the Kennedys, expressed concern for Obama’s safety, in the kind of hushed tones reserved for talking about things you’re afraid to say aloud in case it would somehow cause them to happen.

There’s a certain kind of adrenaline created by all that talk, especially when it links us now to memories of past traumas still shocking and dire enough to warrant moments of silent reflection.

But that kind of agitation is nothing compared with the adrenaline of moving forward, and that’s what I want to focus on. In fact, what I want most to say here is that we all should.

Our times are unprecedented. We can learn a lot from the past, and I hope we do: Saving money and learning to live within our means, as modest as they may be in this economy, are lessons we can glean from the 1930s. I, for one, have learned to cook turnips and make my own marmalade.

As loath as I am to suggest that anything “good” could come from the national trauma of the assassination of our president in 1963, I hope even the most extreme protestors learned that proper, democratic dissent can’t be handled by a gun or any violent solution. It can only be productively expressed in words and through legal, peaceful means.

But we’re not living in the Great Depression. We’re not living in the Cold War. Our lives now are so significantly different that we couldn’t have predicted what we’d be doing or caring about now even 20 years ago. Even 10 years ago, most of us would not have guessed we’d be where we are today.

We’re living in a country with people willing to participate in more than 12,000 service projects in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and President Barack Obama’s call to service, for one thing.

I have to admit that I have a soft spot for service projects; I spent two years in Washington, D.C., as a full-time Americorps volunteer, and loved it enough to be seriously tempted by the possibility of visiting for this week’s inauguration. My time in D.C., and as a volunteer, taught me that a lot can get done with a bit of optimism and elbow grease.

I’m not saying that I think that “the power of positive thinking” will magically save us from the need to right our economic situation any more than I think the King Day of Service will eliminate the need for social programs.

But these days require out-of-the-history-book thinking. Hope needs to be taken into account when we’re talking about the future.I think we’ll find our accounts are better off than we thought.

1/16/09: Goodbye Forest City, it's duet from now on

2009-01-16T06:00:00.000-05:00

Well, I think you’ve almost certainly heard the news by now — if not in the paper you’re reading, then probably on TV. But in case you’re like me and only read my column and the comics, and only watch TV shows in commercial-free DVD form, here it is: The Herald and The Bristol Press have been bought.

In all the talk of buying and selling and the action-movielike last-minute appearance of publisher and newsman Mike Schroeder to save the day, though, in all the excitement and celebration, no one’s taken time to acknowledge that this is also a parting of ways. The Middletown Press, once called "the Marsha Brady" of our triplet papers, will be going it alone.

In case you’re wondering who’s ever called it that, it was me, just now.

You’ve probably noticed that I have a bit of a crush on Middletown. In a past column, I cited the city as a good example of downtown revitalization — an example New Britain and Bristol are justified in trying to emulate.

Alas, Middletown, it’s not to be: This is our last column together. I’ll be writing for The Bristol Press and The Herald, alone, from now on.

We’ve had some good times. I brought my friends to Javapalooza as a nice Starbucks alternative when they came to visit last year; the lamb Rogan Josh at Tandoor is excellent; and I love the way the Victorian houses on Broad Street have been made into businesses. I can even forgive you for towing my out-of-town friend’s car during the parking ban last week.

But it’s time for me to "love the one I’m with" now: New Britain’s Staropolska’s pierogies and the giant satellite dishes of Bristol’s ESPN.

Now’s a pretty good time to love New Britain and Bristol, actually. Despite our ailing economy (and snowy, cold winters), urban central Connecticut holds onto the "almost sacred relationship to work" that made author Stewart O’Nan set his novel "Last Night at the Lobster" in New Britain. And despite the advantages of Middletown’s Main Street collection of diversions, ferreting out hole-in-the-wall places (like the Hole-in-the-Wall Theater) for entertaining ourselves often becomes another form of entertainment — especially when many of us are already strapped for cash to spend once we get to wherever we’re going.

It’s getting easier to love other places from New Britain and Bristol as well. With the still-years-away busway between New Britain and Hartford at least in serious planning phases, and the construction of the Route 72 expansion into Bristol begun, we’re heading toward the integration of our communities that I expressed hope for this summer.

If U.S. Rep. Chris Murphy has his way, we’ll have increased commuter rail service between Hartford and Springfield, and while the rail spur between Berlin and Waterbury has always been more a dream than an impending reality, once everything else is in place, that connection would link the Amtrak Vermonter and the Metro-North train into New York City. We’d be right in the middle of the action.

As much as we’re about to be at a literal crossroad, newspapers in general, and our papers especially, are at a virtual one. We’re not stopping the presses, but plans for the Herald and Bristol Press will focus just as much on getting our local news online as getting it into print.

And that’s where you can still find me, Middletown.

We’ll always have the Web.

1/9/08:

2009-01-09T06:00:00.000-05:00

When I was in high school, my younger brother got a pet dragon.

Now he plays in a rock band with his friends when he’s home on vacation, usually between midnight and 3 a.m.

I would never have thought of doing these things, myself — but then, he never went on a River Raid or destroyed Asteroids.

By now you probably know I’m talking about video games.

But I’m not just talking about video games. I’m talking about the way "kids these days" think and act, and how it’s been influenced by video games and new television genres.

I’m talking about it because despite my own relative youth, the way my brother — about 10 years younger than me — thinks is significantly different than the way I do. And I think it’s in large part thanks to his history with video games.

When I was 9, we had an Atari. By the time my brother was 9, we had a Sega and Super Nintendo, and as he grew older, he went through a Sony PlayStation, a Nintendo 64, an Xbox and several computers’ worth of computer games.

Was I deprived, or was I mercifully spared a virtual childhood?

I think that partly depends on how well the skills we learn in video games translate into real-world know-how.

On a practical level, for instance, thanks to his Halo experience, my brother may know how to outstrategize alien invaders.

That may not sound very practical, but while I probably learned some level of hand-eye coordination from my Atari adventures, my brother learned entire ways of thinking. Increasingly, the skills games require are the ones demanded by a global, information-driven economy: strategic thinking, virtual problem-solving and even (groan) some game theory.

Perhaps most importantly, he learned how to learn-by-video-game.

It’s not likely that his career path will veer into "professional video gamer," nor that all careers in the future will have video-game components. But we’re living in the society predicted by both naysayers and advocates of the Internet’s ubiquity. Our lives are just as much virtual as they are actual these days, and lines between real and not-real are smudging.

The blurring of boundaries heralded by the influx of "reality TV" shows 10 years ago has become much more sophisticated. We still have "Survivor," but we also have "Lost," which is a scripted show (less "real" than "Survivor" in that sense) with interactive elements such as "The Lost Experience" alternate-reality game that people play online (more "real" than "Survivor").

Even in sitcoms, which used to be about setting up elaborate one-line gags no matter how unrealistic the premise, we’ve moved on from "Friends" to "The Office," which subtracts the laugh track for awkward moments and the quotidian victories of paper company employees in Scranton, Pa. – also more like real life, unless you spend all your days being witty in Central Perk.

And "Lost" and "The Office" took their venture into "reality" one step further, running ads for products that exist only within the series. The uninitiated wouldn’t even know these weren’t real.

If interacting with the real world requires dealing with this much virtual input, maybe we should all be playing video games.

James Paul Gee, the author of "What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy," says that "we can learn a lot from those young people who play [video] games, if only we take them and their games seriously."

I agree. We all need to learn how to interpret, interact and think in a virtual world. Relying on old standards would be like training as a blacksmith after the Industrial Revolution: useful and quaint, but not quite relevant.

1/2/09:Traditionally, China isn't about the future

2009-01-02T00:01:00.001-05:00

My second year in China, my brother called to chat. The conversation worked its way around to the "what time is it there?" point that most trans-time-zone conversations get to, and I said "it’s exactly the same time it is in Connecticut, but tomorrow morning."

"So you’re in the future?" he asked.

"Compared to you, yes. Twelve hours in the future."

"What’s tomorrow like? Oh, oh, wait — what are the newspaper headlines for tomorrow?"

I explained that it didn’t work like that. Just because it’s tomorrow in China doesn’t mean calling there gives us a psychic reading on the future. And that’s fitting. Fortune cookies notwithstanding, China is a country more about tradition than predicting the future.

He was disappointed but understanding.

In particular, relying on China for predictions on the new year won’t help, since Chinese New Year comes after ours. This year, Spring Festival, or Chunjie, falls on Jan. 26.

My first Chunjie in China was a bit startling, though I’d gotten used to some of the differences between Western and Chinese holidays during the fall. If I’d had Chinese ancestors, for instance, I might have participated in the burning of "ghost money," or fake paper currency, to ensure they weren’t living the afterlife in poverty during Ghost Festival.

My school had a Ghost Festival celebration culminating in "the sailing of the paper boats": We released folded paper boats, each carrying a single candle, onto an outdoor pool, and watched them burn and eventually sink.

An eerie reverie fell over the students as the boats floated away — eerie particularly if you’d tried to teach a class of squirmy, talkative fourth graders just a few hours earlier. (My students were barely recognizable when they weren’t wiggling out of their chairs or shouting "a hamburger!" in answer to a question.) — and it seemed we were all caught up in the past and our memories.

Chunjie, the biggest, oldest, loudest and most future-oriented Chinese holiday, doesn’t involve sailing paper boats, but it does involve paper, in the form of red scrolls inviting luck and fortune hung around doorways.

Chunjie also involves fire, which I was completely unprepared for.

Walking back from town around Chunjie, I came across pair after pair of children giggling conspiratorially — and almost all of them grasping some form of explosive.

This was alarming at first. If the kids, some of whom seemed barely old enough to toddle a safe firecrackering distance from their homes, hadn’t been so intimidatingly intent on setting them off, I might have demanded to know where their mothers were and marched them all home.

If I had, I probably would have encountered a bunch of moms wondering how the foreigner got in rather than what their kids were doing with sparklers and Roman candles. They all knew what their kids were up to; in China, everyone gets in on Chunjie firecrackers. They’re meant to ward off evil spirits, and kids are taught how to use them, mostly safely, practically from infancy. They symbolize Chinese connections to the past — to ancestors and past life events — while ushering in the future.

I learned this after a traditional dinner banquet and special variety-TV-show viewing at the headmaster’s house, when he invited me to join his family outside. He brought a giant wheel of firecrackers, the equivalent of a few thousand cap-gun caps, and lit the end. We all stood back as it spun and sparked, the lit end traveling inward on a spiral heading for the center.

Watching the spark travel toward its end was just as good as "watching the ball drop" for putting the old year to rest; and it was the closest I’ve ever gotten, or expect to get, to being able to predict the future.

Comment on 12/26/08, and response

2008-12-26T16:53:00.001-05:00

Hi Alicia -- This is Ken from The Herald Sports department.

I was reading your column and have the following comment. I hope you don't think I'm being critical but if I don't tell you, maybe nobody would.

"You're a trooper," I believe, should be, "You're a trouper."

Merriam-Webster says:
: Trouper -- a person who deals with and persists through difficulty or hardship without complaint. You're a real trouper to wait so long.

I used the phrase recently, thought about it, checked it out and I was glad I did.

*****

Good point! And one I should've made in my column. I'll post your comment on my blog archive of my columns, if you don't mind.

I actually copied the phrase directly from the "101 Ways" poster I was looking at, but I should've checked, as you did, on the spelling. For a poster I was critiquing, trusting the spelling to be right was obviously trusting too much!

Alicia.

12/26/08: Wondering what to say? Praise the effort.

2008-12-26T06:00:00.001-05:00

You may think me a bah-humbugger after my past two or three columns warning you off of things you shouldn’t say, when here we are in the middle of the jolliest time of year — the holidays.

You’d be partly right. Instead of eggnog, for instance, I’ve been drinking diet fruit punch. Not much holiday spirit in that.

But I don’t intend to leave you holding your tongue into the new year: Here, finally, is the column that tells you what to say instead of just what to avoid saying. This one’s all about praise.

Way to go! You made it — and so did I! High fives all around. And that haircut looks great on you, by the way. Most people couldn’t pull it off, but on you, it works. Not that it’s strange or anything, just, um — so how about this weather we’re having, eh?

While I think my firsthand experience qualifies me as an expert on things you shouldn’t say, I thought we’d all be better off if I did a little research on how to praise properly.

I consulted one of those posters of "101 Ways to Praise A Child," hoping a quick fix would do the trick.

From "bingo" to "you’re a winner," though, I saw praise that would work only in particular situations: "you learned it right" wouldn’t be very helpful, for instance, in encouraging a kid struggling with math to persevere past the two-plus-two-equals-five stage. And I have a hard time imagining myself saying "hot dog!" unless I’m actually handing one to someone.

I memorized a few and experimented with them anyway. In general, my attempts to praise led to confusion, neck-straining (as friends looked around for the promised hot dogs: "Where are they? I’m getting hungry") and eventual disappointment ("Well, now I wish I had one") rather than increased self esteem.

Maybe a new vocabulary wasn’t enough; I needed a new theory.

And — hot dog! — I found one.

An (actual) experiment in praise performed by psychologist Carol Dweck and her team at Columbia University found that acknowledging effort, rather than innate talent, works. In the experiment, two groups of fifth-graders were given an easy test. One group of kids was told they had done well because they were smart; the other group was told they had done well because they worked hard.

When they were all given the opportunity to take a harder test, or stick to the same level of difficulty, the majority of the "smart" kids chose to remain at the same level. Ninety percent of the "hardworking" kids chose the harder test — and then worked harder.

Not only did the "hardworking" group have a more positive attitude toward the tests and their own efforts, but when retested, they improved their original scores by about 30 percent. The "smart" kids did worse by about 20 percent.

I went back to the 101 Ways poster to see how many of the phrases I’d learned fell into the "you’re smart!" category. There were a few that would have to be axed, in addition to "you figured it out," "you’re catching on," and "A+ job," which are based on results rather than effort.

There were also a lot of generalities, such as "neat," "super work," or "wow," which aren’t as effective as specifics.

Here’s what to remember about praise, then: the more focused on specific efforts, the more effective.

So in the spirit of the season, thanks for taking the time to look over this column, reader. You’re a real trooper.

How was it — good? Let me know; your praise could help me write an even better column next week.

12/19/08: A bit of sound advice, and why not to give it

2008-12-19T06:00:00.001-05:00

As promised, here are some phrases to avoid when giving advice. Remember this list when your relatives are in town.

"Calm down."

As a joke: You can say this to someone who is sitting quietly, reading a book or otherwise not bothering you in any way. This is especially effective used on someone who is never excitable, such as an entomologist.

For real: Either the person you’re saying this to is actually upset about something, in which case your saying "calm down" will almost certainly fail to have the desired effect, or they don’t perceive themselves as being worked up and you’ve succeeded in pointing out their embarrassing volume level.

Perhaps instead, you could say "You’re being loud and embarrassing me, which is just as important as the fact that I stole your credit cards. Have a little self-respect!"

"Stop worrying."

As a joke: Repeat this phrase at increasing volume, again when the person you’re speaking to does not appear to be worrying at all. Escalation is key.

For real: Telling a worrier to stop worrying will have the opposite of the intended effect, since you’ve now shown them you are not willing to share the necessary work of preventing disaster through worrying it away. Now they’ll have to do your part of the worrying, too.
The only way to unclench worrywarts is to beat them at their own game. For every new anxiety they mention, respond, eyes wide with concern, "I know — we’re probably all going to die! Probably from this!"

If they object, up the ante until they give up: Santa won’t come this year; zombie robots will doom us all to a life of telemarketing; "owls will deafen us with their incessant hooting"; etc.

"Chill out."

Var. "calm down" — see previous entry.

"Don’t do anything stupid."

As a joke: This phrase functions best in response to someone’s announcement that they’re about to do something completely reasonable and necessary, such as wash the dishes.

For real: The person you’re advising has probably already decided to do something stupid by the time you utter this phrase. Your advice only indicates your disapproval at that point, making it less likely you’ll get a front-row seat for the ensuing disaster.

It’s also possible that the advisee is still on the fence; in this case, the phrase only distances you from the person you’re trying to convince. Like worriers, people about to act stupidly usually don’t recognize that what they’re going to do is stupid. Even if they do, most people don’t like to be reminded of their own capacity for stupidity, despite its humanitywide prevalence.

Instead of telling the advisee not to be stupid, then, bring their focus around to possible actions or ideas that may be smart: "let’s mop the kitchen floor," "how about getting some ice cream" or "why don’t you adopt that pet tortoise you’ve always wanted, instead" may get the advisee in a better frame of mind.

"Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do."

As a joke: This works best if you are a person of extremes — either extremely straight-laced or a daredevil.

For real: This phrase has one advantage over other typical advice phrases, which is that it reveals the true raison d’etre of advice-giving: to get the advisee to act exactly as you feel you would act in a given situation.

Anyone reaching the point of seriously uttering this phrase should stop speaking immediately and seek help.

After you’ve received your share of advice, you should be able to return to the previous conversation, knowing better.

12/12/08: Some practical advice about what not to say

2008-12-12T08:00:00.001-05:00

The holidays can be stressful — that’s so obvious, it’s become a cliche. So I’m not going to write about that.

Rather than pontificate on how to de-stress and “just let go” when the urge to Martha-Stewartize your home hits you right before that family get-together, I’m going to give you some practical advice on making conversation with your guests once they’ve arrived.

I started last week by helping you streamline the process of complaining, introducing some scales to help you express your unhappiness more efficiently. Without lengthy stories of how busy you’ve been this holiday season (see frazzlement scale) as filler, you may find yourself with more talking time.

You can talk about almost anything you want in that time: the weather, a local sports team, the upcoming presidential election (2012).

But whatever your topic, there are some phrases you should avoid using, except as a joke. I’ll explain for each how you might use them humorously, and why and how to avoid them under other circumstances.

“No offense, but ...”

As a joke: You can use this phrase when you are sure the listeners agree with you, if you follow with something obviously offensive. This is funny when it is directed at a famous figure everyone finds annoying, such as Scott “Carrot Top” Thompson; otherwise, it is cruel.

For real: You will never fail to offend if you begin your remarks with this phrase. Upon hearing it, listeners will immediately begin being offended.Instead of feigning respect for the person to whom you are speaking, then, you might try some refreshing honesty: “I was just thinking something rotten about you and wanted to let you know” or “I feel an obligation to the world at large to tell you to take a bath/discipline your child/get off my property.”Alternatively, you could bite your tongue and say nothing.

“You’re not ugly.”

As a joke: Never use this as a joke.

For real: This reassurance is especially useless when it is unsolicited. If someone is sitting there, minding her own business, and you look over and say, “You’re not ugly,” you’re implying you had been thinking she was. (And anyway, who asked you?)

It is also useless to say this to someone fishing for a compliment. In fact, there are really only two ways to deal with someone complaining “I’m ugly/fat/too obsessed with reality TV:” The first is to go over and say, if you can say it honestly, “Not to me. To me, you’re beautiful/exactly the right size/a ‘TV enthusiast.’”

The second, which is the one I usually choose, is to sit back and say “Well, I’ve always thought so.”

“Really?”

As a joke: You can say this to point out that whatever has just been said is obvious. Take care to select the proper “sarcastic voice,” or people will think you’re legitimately offended. Maybe you should practice first.

For real: The trouble with this word is that it implies a lack of belief in what has just been said.

At some point all of us, however diligently we struggle to avoid it, will be surprised by some statement and blurt out “really?” in response. It’s best to try to cover up the slight of the word by immediately following it with what we really meant, i.e., “I’m surprised!” or “That’s crazy!” or “What do you mean a telephone pole has fallen on my car?”

Next week, I’ll help you out on giving unsolicited advice. (Try not to give any advice until then.)

12/5/08: When measurement fails, invent your own scale

2008-12-05T06:00:00.003-05:00

Do you ever resent people asking how you are, then ignoring your answer? Find yourself recounting your sadness over a favorite houseplant’s death at length to an unsympathetic listener? Wish there was a more efficient way to express your true feelings?

This is the column for you, my friend. Use this system of measurements to streamline those conversations and express your unhappiness more efficiently!

Emotion: sadness

Units of measure: kittens

How it works: Levels of sadness can be expressed in units of kittens — that is, the number of kittens it would take to bring one back up to *LOL* levels of happiness.

A nine-kitten day, then, would be significantly worse than a three-kitten day. A typically happy day may warrant a zero- to one-kitten level.

Example:
Your bike was stolen: four kittens
Your car was stolen: six kittens
Your house was stolen: nine kittens

Limits: Kittens should never be counted in fractions, as the gruesomeness of the image would defeat this scale’s purpose. (Half or three-quarters of a kitten would make no one *LOL* happy.)

It is impossible to rate any day a negative-kittens day.

This scale may be less useful to those who do not like kittens or do not think they are cute.

Emotion: geographic dissatisfaction

Units of measure: absolute cultural miles

How it works: Levels of geographic dissatisfaction — that is, un/happiness with one’s geographic location based on proximity to positive factors (friends, active local "hippie" population [for hippies], ice cream parlors) or negative factors (enemies, active local "hippie" population [for Republicans], town dumps) — can be measured in absolute cultural miles (cult. mi.) from Trenton, N.J., which is the absolutely most dissatisfying place on the planet.

The geographically dissatisfied should compare their level of dissatisfaction with how they would feel if they were living in the exact geographic center of Trenton.

The more satisfied they are with the positive factors, the farther from the geographic center of Trenton they will rate that factor — the less satisfied, the closer.

Example:
All friends within walking distance: 11,500 cult. mi.
Museum within walking distance: 7,500 cult. mi.
Town dump, gelatin factory and several enemies within walking distance: three cult. mi.

Limits: Cultural miles can range from zero (the exact geographic center of Trenton) to 12,430 (the exact opposite side of the planet from Trenton).

Emotion: frazzlement due to over-busyness

Units of measure: selves

How it works: Frazzlement (anxiety) levels can be measured in the number of selves that would be required to allow you to take a Caribbean vacation without guilt.

Selves should be measured with the original-you calibrated at zero. Thus, if you are currently taking a guilt-free Caribbean vacation, your frazzlement level is at zero selves.

A typical day would require at least one self to free you for a Caribbean vacation.

Example:
You have to pick up a single jar of peanut butter from the store: one self
You have to give a dinner party for four to seven friends: four selves
You have to fill out insurance forms, pick up a child from day care, take out the trash and clean the bathroom: six selves (with three for the forms)

Limits: Particularly guilt-ridden people will find this scale useless, as they are likely incapable of taking a Caribbean vacation without guilt.

Elaborations: High numbers of selves may be translated into units of moms. One mom is worth five selves.

Requests for further emotion scales may be made via comments or e-mail.

11/28/08: Shopping for a solution? Try Goodwill toward all.

2008-11-28T17:36:00.003-05:00

Imagine you woke up this morning and instead of the early-bird sales and requisite bleary-eyed fights over the toy of the year (remember Tickle Me Elmo?) of Black Friday, there was nothing to buy.

Or let’s say there was nothing new to buy.

What would you get your friends and family for the holidays?

The artsy among us would have it easiest, I imagine: They could paint a bunch of paintings, take a bunch of photos, write a few songs or short stories and dedicate them to multiple people from different friend groups.

The crafty could knit socks, make marmalades and scrapbook their favorite memories with such-and-such a family member or high-school buddy.

The rest of us would probably panic, until we remembered what would become the source of our salvation — that is, the Salvation Army. Consignment shops and Goodwill stores would suddenly be packed by people fighting over a Class Struggle board game, a minigrill that looks like a baseball, a mug with a recipe for onion soup printed on it. The really lucky might be able to pull an old fruitcake out of a closet or attic and re-gift it — to the really unlucky.

We’d probably search our wardrobes and basements for things we don’t need that someone else might, refashioning everything useless into “a planter.”

The effect of this kind of creating and shopping on the holidays would be that everyone would get completely unique gifts (except for the multiple dedicatees for those songs and short stories, and everyone who got a planter). Many of them would be more practical than what we’d have gotten otherwise. Some would be less, I suppose, but at least the product of panicked, last-minute closet foraging is likely to be funnier, more personal and more bizarre than what’s left at the mall on Christmas Eve.

We’d probably learn a lot. Going to Goodwill would prove to America once and for all that we have no need for the manufacture of new souvenir coffee mugs, ever. Your reluctance to give up those leg warmers and the hair crimper you haven’t used since 1988 might remind you of how fun those warmed-leg, crimped-hair times really were. In the end, we’d probably figure out that we didn’t need as much stuff as we’d thought to have a good holiday.

I can hear you more critical readers scoffing: “That’s kind of a clichéd line, Alicia. In fact, this whole idea is nothing but a slight variation on ‘The Grinch Who Stole Christmas.’

“And anyway, these aren’t the times to be thinking about shopping less, not with the economy tilting toward recession.”

Except that the point of capitalism is not to keep people gleefully spending themselves into debt; buying stuff isn’t actually patriotic. If the economy is going downhill, it’s because of our excessive and indiscriminate spending, not because we save too much. Some products, the bad ones, deserve to go unbought — even on Black Friday.

We can leave them in the stores and wait for the good ones. In the meantime, while inventors get to their inventing, we won’t mind our shelves being more sparely stocked if what we put on them is all useful or genuinely loved. We can swap and craft our way through the holidays.

In fact, we might not even feel the pinch of recession if we think about how we can use what we’ve already got instead of following fads.

Think about it: How many kids out there still play with their Tickle Me Elmos?

Couldn’t you just see him making a great planter?

11/21/08: "Take responsibility" is not an effective answer

2008-11-21T16:21:00.002-05:00

I’m against abortion.

But then, I don’t know anyone who considers herself “for” abortion. To my knowledge, I’ve never met a woman who was happy about having one. I suspect these women are fictional, like Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny — only, you know, evil.

So why do people who call themselves “pro-life” seem to believe in them? It’s never made sense to me that pro-life advocates appear to believe both that women seeking abortions are wicked and that they should be required to raise children.

The assumption from the right often seems to be that women who have ended up pregnant are so because they’ve made bad decisions.

OK, sure. That may sometimes be true. But even if it were true in every case, the prevailing attitude that these women should be made to “take responsibility” for their mistakes is foolish.

Now, I’m for taking responsibility. I consider myself a responsible person — almost boringly so — and wherever possible, I like to see other people holding up their ends, too.

The trouble is that this responsibility often falls exclusively on women, consumes entire lives and careers and requires more than a dutiful attitude to be executed properly — it requires love. And yet we expect women to buckle down, grit their teeth and do it anyway. Lovingly.

And alone.

This doesn’t seem very pro-lifelike to me. And it doesn’t seem very effective.

Neither does arguing that women who decide to have their children in less-than-ideal circumstances — into single-parent households, into families whose budgets are already strained beyond breaking, into abusive situations — will be suddenly swept up by “the joy of parenting” and able to overcome any obstacle. “When you hold the baby, you’ll feel great” is not an argument that puts food on the table. It doesn’t solve real problems.

If we want fewer abortions, we need to admit it’s a difficult question. There are no easy answers.

Then we need to look to ourselves to “take responsibility,” not to women in desperate or unfair circumstances.

I’m not saying women can abdicate responsibility. And I’m not talking politics here. I’m talking about us pro-lifers acting like the kind of people we say we want to be: actually pro-life.

Here’s a thought: We can have legalized abortion and still live in a country that performs none. Legalized abortion is not the problem. The need for it is. Let’s stop focusing on political solutions and work on relational ones.

Pro-lifers need to stop advocating for abstinence-only education. It’s obvious abstinence is the only foolproof method of pregnancy prevention; it’s also obvious that abstinence-only education doesn’t work. Teens in abstinence-only areas contract just as many sexually transmitted diseases and get pregnant just as often, and more often in many cases, than kids getting taught sex ed.

We also need to think hard about the other options we list for women considering abortion and ensure they’re real options, not just things we say to make ourselves feel better.We have to remember, for instance, that we care about these children when we fund food stamps and health coverage — more than we care about our taxes going up.

And while adoption is an option, the number of couples looking for children cannot possibly rival the number of children aborted every year. I say this seriously: If you’re really pro-life, next time you meet a woman thinking about abortion, consider offering to adopt her child yourself.

At the very least, thinking about it will help you see what she’s going through. At best, “when you hold the baby, you’ll feel great.”

11/14/08: Nowhere to settle down in modern marketplace

2008-11-14T06:00:00.000-05:00

I spent four years after college teaching English — first to students in China, then to GED students in Washington, D.C.

I did not have the certification that would have allowed me to teach in an American public school. It may have been this fact that caused friends and relatives to ask me, on my visits to family in Connecticut, when I would be getting "a real job."

It was more likely the fact that I was a volunteer those four years, supported in China by sponsorship from those friends and relatives and in D.C. by a voluntary service and Americorps, that prompted questions of when I would settle down.

Settling down means, in part, making money. It also means sticking to one place and buckling down when "the going gets rough." Settling down means choosing one course of action — or inaction — and committing to it. Settling down is practical.

But nothing is more practical than doing what you really, really want to do. And settling down too often becomes settling.

Settling for less than what you know you’re capable of leads to misery.

Misery is not practical — it’s stupid. It’s a waste of time and effort to work at something that makes you money but makes you miserable. It’s always been a waste, but is even more of one now, when building a career means cultivating skills and abilities that can be taken with you when you change jobs.

And you will change jobs. It’s no longer a question of whether you will ever again need an updated resume, but how often you’ll need it: every year? Every six months? Some people make careers of working for temp agencies. The old paradigm of the industrial corporation earning worker loyalty by offering security is obsolete. Gone with it are the assumed advantages of "settling down."

This isn’t necessarily bad. There were advantages to a workplace that offered job security, but there are at least as many advantages to the emerging market for creative and flexible individuals — those who can multitask, who are willing to learn and can apply a variety of past experiences to a new challenge.

There are comparatively fewer advantages in the new marketplace, of course, for those still interested primarily in settling down.

We need to change our paradigms to accommodate this change. In his book "Work: Making a Living and Making a Life," Joshua Halberstam points out that "in our economy, jobs are activities, not positions; only the temporary contract is permanent." The "temporary contract" offers payment for services rendered, encourages project-driven work rather than stable position-related functions and essentially eliminates the division between "management" and "employee." In this environment, your loyalty is to yourself and developing your potential.

There’s no reason to "put in time" in the proverbial mailroom, hoping to be promoted on the basis of your long service. Recent graduates or workers dissatisfied with their job’s responsibilities or position need to become entrepreneurs, seeking out a need for skills they have or would like to develop — especially for work in a field they would enjoy.

While many fields are increasingly specialized, there’s no reason to stick to one career path, either. Most skills are transferable. Even hobbies can become careers.

I waited, as my years in China passed, and then as my time in D.C. went by, to feel ready to "settle down." I expected the desire to commit to one place or vocation to magically descend on me.
So far, it hasn’t — but considering the range of fascinating opportunities out there, I’m glad.

11/7/08: Obama did more than win; he inspired

2008-11-08T16:40:00.002-05:00

Dear President-elect Obama,

I’m just writing to thank you for running. I know the opposition has been tough, starting with an overloaded Democratic primary. You’ve been on the road for 20 months, and that’s just the beginning of the fight you’re in for now.

I’ve never seen people so angry as some have been over your campaign, and for such strange and diverse reasons: You’re "a Muslim," you’re secretly "a terrorist," you’re "going to raise taxes," you’re "inexperienced." You’re black.

But I’ve also never felt the sense of hope and agency your campaign has created in your supporters. I’ve never met up with a group of civic-minded people who volunteer and cheer and invest themselves in the question of government the way people in my online Town Hall group do. This is something new.

To me, the best part is the sense that government isn’t some monolithic structure created to keep us from succeeding, or put on us by politicians whose ways are so strange they’re like aliens — actual aliens, not immigrants. We make up the government, and we can change it if we want to.

I suspect we’ll need that sense of agency in the next four or eight years, because I think it will be a hard road for you. People who supported and voted for McCain will be hard to win over, especially if they believe the suggestions that you’re going to destroy us all. You’ll need the supporters you gained during this campaign to continue working on behalf of your ideals.

And it’s your ideals that we love: the focus on green energy as the way to energy independence, with the recognition that this will create jobs, even if those aren’t oil or coal jobs anymore; the support for service workers with Americorps or the Peace Corps, in helping to fund their tuition and for the community members they’ll help with their service; your concern for the well-being of soldiers, from voting for the G.I. Bill to getting them out of Iraq and into the fight against al-Qaida, where they should have been in the first place.

I love hearing you talk about education. I love it when you talk about the middle class — even though I’m not yet a member of it. I love that a record number of young voters registered to vote for you. This is what I’m talking about.

Even if you turned out to be a Scientologist, a crazy tax-raiser and a robot, the damage is done. We’ve woken up to our responsibilities as Americans, out of the stupor of seven years of being told to shop more to defeat terrorism, out of the disbelief we were struck with when we learned there were no weapons of mass destruction, that we’d been asked to bail out the institutions that seemed to have stolen our 401Ks or that plenty of children were "left behind" while teachers drowned in paperwork.

(Or the most surreal moment of the past eight years for me — being told Vice President Cheney had shot his friend in the face. Satire died that day; with reality like this, who needed sarcasm?)

You’ve made me understand that it’s as much up to me as it is you. And I’m ready. I’m not going to sit back and wait for you to get things done. I’m not going to be slinging mud, and I won’t always pay attention to what you’re doing. I’ve got my own civic work to do.

I’ll update you periodically, as I’m sure you’ll let us know how it’s going in the White House.

Best wishes, President Obama.

10/31/08: Give us the message, spare us these words

2008-10-31T06:00:00.001-04:00

In the past few months, we’ve been subjected to a lot of campaigning, much of which has become unhelpfully negative, especially recently.

I’m not interested in limiting free speech or becoming the “word police,” but from my perspective, there are some words that have lost real meaning during all this campaigning and mudslinging, and I propose a moratorium.

Here are words I think we should suspend.

Terrorist: We should stop using this word on each other. It’s just common sense that if Barack Obama wanted to destroy America the way al-Qaida operatives destroyed the World Trade Center, he would have been found out by now. We’ve had him in our sights for almost two years, and the best we’ve come up with linking him to terrorism — and domestic, not foreign terrorism, at that — is a tenuous connection to Bill Ayers, who, whatever his past, is now an honored educator.

Either Obama doesn’t have Islamist terrorist connections, or we are extremely poor detectives. If it’s the latter, we may have bigger problems on our hands than we’ve supposed.

Maverick: Besides the objection of the actual Maverick family in Texas, the word “maverick” isn’t really appropriate to describe the policies of a politician or, especially, a team of politicians. And if it is, it shouldn’t be.

We’re not electing Best Cowboy; we’re trying to elect a president, who will have to work within the system the Founding Fathers set up. Saying we’d like to go back to the original plan laid out in the Constitution isn’t “maverick”-like. It’s conservative by definition.

Defense: We should stop using this to describe anything related to the Bush Doctrine — that is, the idea pre-emptive strikes against sovereign nations are a good idea.

This is not defense.

Objections to that statement usually fall into the “best defense is a good offense” category.

OK, maybe. But we call that “a good offense.”

I also propose we stop referring to the “Star Wars” national missile defense system as “defense” until some of those missiles start actually hitting their targets.

Alien: Of course we can continue to use this word to describe E.T., but there’s no reason to continue to use it to describe immigrants. The repercussions for the global economy after America’s recent financial crises should make it clear we’re living in an interconnected world.

No human is from outer space, in other words.

Most people who object to the word worry that “alien” makes immigrants sound scary. I’m less worried that the fright factor of this word will rub off on immigrants, though, than that it will wear off through overuse, making it useless for “War of the Worlds” type movies, books and other media.

Imagine Will Smith in “Independence Day” coming toward the audience, fiery explosions in the background, for instance, to confront your hardworking neighbor or grandparent or a factory worker educated and skilled enough to perform open-heart surgery on you if you were in his country.

Not very thrilling, I’d say.

All the Joes: The opposite of “alien,” the Joes are supposed to make us feel connected to the down-home lifestyle and values they apparently represent. We’ve been introduced to all kinds of Joes: Joe the plumber, Joe Six-pack, Joe Cool, cup of joe. Maybe they do represent “real America,” but I’ve had enough of them.

Note, however, that Joe the plumber has inspired a “new” national habit of designating people by their work titles; this is Chinglish creeping into common use. I approve of that in general.

I just wish all of us regular Joes would get a rest.

10/24/08: We, and the laundry, can wait for a leader

2008-10-24T06:00:00.001-04:00

This election season, my dishes have been piling up. My television has also been sitting dark, its about-to-be-useless antenna perched on top at an angle that makes it look forlorn; the laundry hamper, on the other hand, gets larger and less lonely by the day.

I’ve been ignoring them for the better part of a month in an attempt to learn as much as possible about our presidential candidates.

I’ve watched all three debates, of course, and spent every free night at virtual Town Hall chatting about polls and looking at graphs and Web sites.

I paused for a moment this afternoon to talk to my grandma, who declared herself — unprovoked by me — more interested in this campaign than any she could remember. She said, with an enthusiasm I found familiar, and a bit of incredulity, that she couldn’t even be sure who she was going to vote for.

I should probably look into renting a dishwasher.

It’s not much longer that I’ll be ignoring chores for election research, though, and my grandma will have to decide who her candidate will be in less than two weeks.

Whoever wins then will have a tough job, but it will be his. We’ll keep up our enthusiasm for the issues that most affect or impress us, but we’ll all go back to washing dishes and clothes and probably to watching sitcoms and prime-time dramas rather than debates, and Barack Obama and John McCain will get on with the jobs we’ve elected them to, one as president and the other as senator.

That’s pretty much how it should be, I figure.

We choose who will have the specific responsibilities of commanding the military, approving laws and signing presidential fitness awards; we don’t do these things ourselves.

I sat in a room with U.S. Rep. Chris Murphy from the 5th District two weeks ago, after he’d ridden a local bus to show support for the updates needed to accommodate riders with disabilities. He talked about sitting in front of the Stop & Shop on West Main Street in New Britain to speak with voters about the bailout when that vote was first brought before the House last month, and the responses he got, in person and in calls to his offices.

I had almost asked him at the beginning of the meeting whether he’d gotten my letter two years ago agreeing with his stance on Iraq. I would have meant it as a joke, knowing he was too busy to open and read all of his own mail.

By the end of the meeting, I would not have been surprised if he had read and remembered it.

"Oh, you’re that Alicia," he might have said, and I would have felt my face go "aw, shucks" red.

So here’s my take on a Connecticut constitutional convention: We elect our leaders to lead. And if our federal representative is accessible to us, so are our state representatives — even more so. When we don’t like what they’re doing, we write, call or protest to show it.

We don’t need a convention or a ballot initiative allowing us to vote on every issue. We can apply our enthusiasm to electing the right people into office, and once we’ve voted them in, we can tell our representatives, town council to president of the United States, what we think, and how we’d like them to vote, anytime.

The rest of the time, we’re free to attend to our own responsibilities.

Like doing the dishes.

10/17/08: What the Internet is best at: sharing ideas

2008-10-17T12:00:00.000-04:00

I’ve been spending a lot of time at Town Hall lately, talking politics.

Not in your town, though. I mean the national, virtual “Town Hall” for Vote Obama, an independent effort inspired by Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, hosted on the networking Web site Facebook.

Almost every night at 8 for the last few weeks, I’ve gone to the “Vote Obama” application on Facebook and met up with others invested in the outcome of the presidential election, many of whom come every night and some of whom are now, I’d like to think, friends.

I know I wrote last month about Internet weddings; I was against them. I still am. But this kind of thing — getting together to discuss topics of the day with people you’d never have met otherwise, from across the country — is exactly what the Internet is best at, and is, or should be, the raison d’etre of sites such as Facebook.

More than that, I believe it offers a new paradigm for future presidential elections — one that unites instead of dividing along party lines, or through fear.

Setting aside partisan politics, TV ads, the debates and even “the issues,” the Obama campaign has used technology in unprecedented ways to put out the campaign message, widen its donor base and create “grassroots” support — if a word such as “grassroots” can be used to describe a technologically based movement.

Moderated by volunteers, the Town Hall application has three panels open on your screen when you enter: One shows the names of those in the room with you, one is for text-chatting where you can type in your opinions or respond to someone else’s and the middle one contains a place for video of speakers who wait in line to speak to the room. Those who have webcams can be seen; those with only microphones settle for being heard.

It’s not only Obama supporters being heard, either. Several nights the Town Hall has seen debate from both sides of the aisle and from undecided independents.

“We’re nonpartisan. We want people from all sides to come in,” says Bill Sarris, a moderator — and he enforces civility and compliments everyone who comes for being “great Americans,” regardless of their party affiliation.

That’s what I’m saying.

So is participant Victoria Pagan, a classics professor at University of Florida. “Perhaps most importantly,” she says, “for me the Town Hall has made me want to understand the Republican/conservative point of view. Thanks to Town Hall I want to respect the other party and its ideals. I’m reminded every night that we are many, many, many: one out of many — e pluribus unum. Town Hall puts the pluribus back in unum.”

Here Obama’s campaign has inspired something that transcends the campaign itself.

As a young voter, I love that I can meet with other voters who care: listen to what Jamaar has to say, cheer when Jackie gets her microphone working again, endorse them as presidential and vice-presidential candidates for 2020. (I’ve been promised a position as secretary of state.)

For some, Vote Obama Town Hall is the only place they can go to talk about their political beliefs; they live in areas that oppose their choice of candidate or their stances on the issues. One Town Hall participant left a department store one afternoon to find a woman in the parking lot scraping the Obama bumper sticker from the participant’s car.

It’s nice to know that when something like that happens, there’s somewhere to turn.

And whoever wins in November, that will be part of Obama’s legacy.

Comment from RichyTea, and response

2008-10-11T19:10:00.004-04:00

Take your Prozac!!

I think you forgot to take your medication before writing this article. Your insecurity and paranoia are quite evident by your 'interpretation' of the secret code. I do believe you should get out more often and breathe some fresh air.

RichyTea, Philadelphia, PA

*****

Well, if it weren't so much fun to respond to comments, I'd let this one, from the Herald Web site post of my column on Sarah Palin's evangelical code, speak for itself.

But honestly, I love getting these kinds of comments, especially when they only serve to prove my original points -- which, in this case, was that people would underestimate or dismiss the degree to which Sarah Palin's faith is likely to affect her governing.

Here RichyTea has offered a priceless example of exactly that.

And he's thrown in personal insults to boot, in lieu of facts to support the point I assume he has (perhaps that Sarah Palin isn't anyone to be afraid of, or that we can trust her to govern the country if she ended up being called on to do that).

As for my interpretation of the evangelical code, which I do admit (per your quotation marks) is an interpretation, I can only assume you are unfamiliar with evangelical subculture, RichyTea, or else that you are intimately familiar with it and do not consider it dangerous.

Also, as a brief aside, Prozac would usually be off-label for paranoia or insecurity. If you really believe I was making stuff up when I wrote about Christianese and how it functions in politics, you should've recommended something stronger, like lithium. Furthermore, if you believed I had a mental disorder, your suggestion to go out and get more fresh air would have been pretty laughable; mental disability is not cured by more walks in the park.

I feel silly parsing words so carefully here, RichyTea, but you've given me so little of substance to work with, I had to debunk the mental illness angle.

But I'm not schizophrenic, paranoid, or even insecure. As I believe I mentioned in my column, I'm an evangelical. And I'm worried and afraid, for what I think are valid reasons.

What do we know about Sarah Palin? We've had her in the public spotlight less than two months, not even long enough to let her hairstyle pass out of the news cycle into the "been done" bin.

What I've seen of her has been disappointing -- for me as a woman wishing to see a qualified, competent female leader able to articulate, say, a valid foreign policy (my deal-breaker issue, by the way) or to at least exhibit knowledge of the world around her -- and scary -- the videos of Palin speaking at church about God's will being done for an Alaskan pipeline to be built, or of her pastor praying against witchcraft with a certainty I find familiar and potentially dangerous.

The fact that I, hardly on the religious fringe of my denomination, kind of see her point with praying for what she wants done, or against bad influences, scares me. There are a lot of evangelicals out there nodding their heads at Sarah Palin thinking "she's a true believer, someone we can trust" right now. And they're likely to trust her blindly because of this, whatever her policy decisions; look at current President Bush's base of support despite what have now become wildly unpopular policies in the economy and in Iraq. I've heard more people than I'd care to remember protest that despite appearances, he must be making the right decisions, "because he's a man of God."

The fact that the media in general doesn't understand this scares me even more. I run into increasing numbers of Democrats just scratching their heads over Republican, particularly religious right, values, and unable to engage in a real discussion across the divide. My concern is that we're unable to listen to and understand each other, and may soon be unable to understand where decisions are coming from thanks to that.

It may be paranoid to believe that this kind of communication gap could end up leading to a political leader making religiously based decisions without accountability to the non-religious -- I hope it is -- but history proves that extreme conviction often precedes the impulse to make everyone else conform to those convictions, whether religious or otherwise. (The Salem witch trials and the Crusades come to mind; so does the 9/11 attack.)

Which is what I find ironic about your comment, RichyTea: It suggests that you know what it's all about, and that someone who disagrees (with whatever your interpretations are of Palin, her comments and convictions, or Scripture) is paranoid and insecure, and that you know just what would solve that problem.

I wish you'd mentioned your background in the comment. I would've liked to discuss the particulars of how our different backgrounds have informed our interpretations of the candidates and how and why they speak the way they do. That would have been an interesting discussion; it might have led to some actual dialogue on how we speak to each other and why.

As it is, I'm still glad to have gotten a comment -- even one as tailor-made to feed my "paranoia" as yours.

10/10/08: Palin speaks in code, and may govern by it

2008-10-10T16:36:00.001-04:00

I never deliberately set out to turn my column into "my thoughts on taboo dinner party topics," but the recent vice presidential debate brings me reluctantly back to thoughts I expressed months ago on the place of religion in politics — namely, that interrogating politicians on their religious views helps no one, least of all the church.

But then there was Gov. Sarah Palin last week behind the debate podium, speaking Evangelical.

At the Christian college I attended, we referred to the jargon of our faith as "Christianese," often derisively. We considered it a problem that if we spoke of "the indwelling of the Holy Spirit" or used a shorthand reference to Scripture, non-Christians couldn’t understand us.

President Bush has been cited as speaking, occasionally, in a sort of evangelical code or Christianese. He’s said Christ is his favorite philosopher and considered himself "called" to the governorship of Texas. In 2002, he quoted from the gospel of John in reference to America’s prosecution of war.

The reference may have slipped past non-Christians and some media, but Evangelicals caught it.
Palin, like Bush, doesn’t seem to be worried that her words won’t be understood by the uninitiated.

I worry, though.

Palin’s "folksy charm" makes her seem unaffected and unscripted. (Darn right.) But when she said in the debate that President Reagan called the country "a city on a hill," she was almost certainly being disingenuous. Palin knows it wasn’t Reagan who first used that phrase; it was Jesus.

Evangelicals know, too.

Religiously rooted references in speeches are buzzwords for Evangelicals. Any politician able to apply Christianese appropriately can be trusted to run the country as God would want it run — or close enough. Palin is a native speaker.

When she refers to never allowing "a second Holocaust," for instance, something she’s done both in interviews and in the vice presidential debate, she is not referring to special intelligence she’s gotten from the CIA warning of a threat to Israel: She’s almost certainly basing her attitude and unwillingness to "second-guess Israel" on a literal interpretation of a Bible passage in which God says that those who bless Israel will be blessed, and those who curse Israel will be cursed.

Basing foreign policy on interpretation of an Old Testament prophet’s statement may seem far-fetched, but from a vice presidential candidate who asserted that finishing the Alaskan pipeline was God’s will, the possibility needs to be taken seriously.

Christianese usually passes by unnoticed by the nonreligious and the media. When conservative religious ideas come into public notice, it can be jarring: think of Jerry Falwell’s statements after Hurricane Katrina when he blamed that natural disaster on God’s wrath, or Pat Robertson’s call to have the president of Venezuela assassinated. At the time it seemed that less conservative or religious thinkers and commentators dismissed these kinds of opinions as being held by only a few basically crazy people.

They’re not. Every Evangelical did not agree with Falwell’s "God’s wrath" theory or Robertson’s assassination suggestion, but exit polls from the past two presidential elections put white Evangelicals at between 14 percent and 23 percent of the population, and 78 percent of them voted for Bush in 2004.

Sarah Palin is talking to them, and in their own language.

10/3/08: You've had the lesson; here's the exam.

2008-10-03T08:00:00.000-04:00

As promised, here is your Chinglish quiz. Best wishes.

1. Which is correct Chinglish?
A. I very miss you.
B. I miss you very much.
C. You are very missed.

2. What famous play does this translated (into Chinglish) monologue come from?

"What is lighting in over there window? It is east and Juliet is sunny. The sun is going up to killing moon. Moon very jealous because of less beautiful. Don't care the moon because of jealous."

3. What is the intended meaning of this sentence: "Oh, I am so confusing!"
A. I am confusing you.
B. You are confusing me.

Real-life Chinglish: "Actually, I've sort of expecting your email for a long time. If no news is good news, got news could be best news. While in China, so many so-called translation service company, but I am not sure whether they could do a good job. When you see some of their translations, you have your blood come out of your nose! Cause you are totally freak out by its confusion and illogic."

4. What is the meaning of this Chinglish translation of a famous Mao Zedong proverb? "Good good hard to study."
A. It's good to study hard.
B. It's difficult to study, but a good idea nonetheless.
C. It's important to be a well-rounded student in order to find success.

5. Which of the following is a Chinglish translation of a famous Chinese proverb?
A. A farmer picks every grain of rice.
B. Once a teacher, a parent forever.
C. Meat is your friend.
D. All of the above.

6. What famous speech has this passage been translated (into Chinglish) from?

"Our father on this country bring 87 years the new country of liberty and for the equality. Now we are fight with each other and see if we are survival with the new country and new idea."

7. What can the word "famous" be applied to in China?
A. Anything even remotely public
B. Anything that most Chinese have heard of
C. Anything that most foreigners would consider going to see on a tour of the country

8. How often should the word "very" be added to a Chinglish sentence?
A. Once in a while, to preserve its impact
B. Once a minute or so in conversation; once a page in writing
C. As much as humanly possible

Real-life Chinglish: "How are you those days? Now its time for me to write my paper and guess who is my superviser? My topic is some thing deal with learning style which is interested and there are bunch of infermation for seaching."

9. Your Chinglish-speaking friend has just told you about a tragic event. You should respond by saying:
A. Oh! What a pity!
B. That's unfortunate.
C. Wow, I'm really sorry to hear that.

10. Which of the following numbers is lucky?
A. 4
B. 8
C. 17

Extra credit: Respond to the following letter in Chinglish.

Dear lover,
I really miss the time spending with you. I am so-so many times. Yesterday, I go to the store and thinking of buy airplane ticket for seeing you. Please write again, I hope.
Yours truly,
Flower.

Answers:
1. A
2. "Romeo and Juliet"
3. B
4. C
5. D
6. The Gettysburg Address
7. A
8. C
9. A
10. B

9/26/08: Chinglish lets you be your inner Batman

2008-09-26T08:00:00.001-04:00

Since Chinglish is the language of the future, or at least the near future, here’s a primer for your convenience. Study up. Next week there will be a quiz.

In terms of grammar, Chinese lacks article words such as “the,” “a,” or “an,” and Chinglish speakers will often leave them out.

Mandarin also has no tense. If something happens in the future, an indicator is put into the sentence — “tomorrow” or “next year” — but not attached to the verb, a la “will” in “I will go to the store.”

For English speakers learning Chinese, the other side of Chinglish, grammatical articles like “le” or “de” add mystery and suspense to Chinese grammar. No American I know has ever totally mastered the use of “le,” and no Chinese I’ve asked has been able to explain it.

There are a few archaic phrases likely to be revived by a surge in Chinglish use. “Oh, what a pity!” often greeted a revelation that something lamentable had happened to me on the way to class, or that I wouldn’t be able to join my students for volleyball or badminton afterward.
“Best wishes” in Chinglish transcends the coworker’s-birthday-card cordiality it usually has here, and becomes an expression of genuine interest in a friend’s wellbeing.

If you ask a Chinese how they’re feeling, they will likely answer “so-so” in lieu of “fine.”

Tone is often the only difference between words in Chinese, leading to interesting associations between words we don’t recognize as similar, particularly with numbers.

Just as the word for eight, “ba,” is similar to “fortune,” “fa,” the word “si” can mean both “four” and “death or dies.” Four is considered an unlucky number.

There are also some numbers, my students told me, that correlate to Chinese phrases. If you’re ever texted the number 150, for instance, the messenger is trying to send you “best wishes.” 520 means “I love you.” (“Wu er ling” is similar to “wo ai ni.”)

My students also added a few given names to the canon. Chinese names aren’t abstracted from meanings the way European or American names often are; they’re also characteristics or other nouns, like our “Faith” or “Dawn.”

My students often tried to translate the literal meanings of their names, leading to English names like Agent, Purple or Tornado.

“My name means ‘a strong wind,’” explained my student Tornado. “It means I am forceful and strong.”

His cousin, Batman, didn’t attempt to explain his name, but another fictional character did.
“[Han] Solo is a very brave man,” he said.

Each of my classes at the university level also included a girl named “Apple,” in reference to having a rounded face.

These may sound strange at first, but after awhile, I suspect we’ll get used to people calling themselves whatever they want.

“Batman!” I found myself saying in class one day. “Sit down and pay attention! Tornado, please help him find his place in the reading.”

Chinese also use descriptive titles with their names. Instead of “Miss Watkins,” my Chinese name to my students would translate to “Teacher Watkins.” Bus or taxi drivers are “Driver Zhang,” principals are “Principal Li,” and so on. Calling a person by their title shows respect rather than objectification in Chinese culture.

If you appear to be older, or much-respected, don’t be surprised to hear yourself referred to as “Grandma” or “Grandpa” — also a sign of respect for Chinese.

Taking leave of someone may elicit a “happy every day,” a common Chinglish phrase on par with “best wishes.”

So a happy every day to you.

9/19/08: Chinglish has delicious prospects as a language

2008-09-19T08:00:00.001-04:00

I was heading to the A Dong Asian supermarket in West Hartford the other day and paused on my way in, in the airlocklike vestibule that separates the American outside from the pan-Asian inside of the store, and noticed how many fliers were posted on the community bulletin board advertising Chinese classes.

Most of the classes are for kids and tend to cater to parents who fall into one of two categories: those who want their children to learn the language of their ancestors, and those who want their children to learn the language of the future.

I’m betting that whichever category applies, those classes are filled. More Americans are interested in Mandarin than ever before.

When I was in China, I learned two dialects of Chinese — Sichuanhua, which is considered a “hillbilly” dialect, similar to an American having a West Virginian accent, and putonghua, or common Mandarin.

But I think it’s more likely that the next language of commerce and culture is not Mandarin. I think it will be Chinglish.

Chinglish isn’t a recognized dialect or even a real pidgin language, like Creole, but it has potential. Combining the grammatical structures of Mandarin and English leads to some unique phrasing, and the widespread use of outdated textbooks in at least the places I taught in China meant that my students often resurrected words I’d thought were relegated to vocabulary exercises and Victorian novels.

“Lovely” stands in for “cute,” for instance; “dear” for “expensive,” as in England; and “trousers” for “pants” or “shorts.”

“Delicious” and “spicy” are used much more often by Chinese people than native English speakers. Every dish in China is declared “delicious” — none are just “good.”

These are fairly innocuous differences. But there were times the language didn’t translate quite so well.

Like during the end-of-term party my ninth-grade class was having. I’d told my students they could listen to music during the party if it was English music.

Steven, one of the most “lively” — another popular Chinglish word — of my students had brought a CD of Chinese music containing a few unintelligible lines of English.

“Steven,” I said, “This is not English music.”

“Yes, English!” Steven protested. “‘Superlovers,’ Miss Watkins. I’ll show you — one night of love!”

I looked up, startled, to confirm that Steven was not propositioning me. He was desperately pointing to the three lines of English in the liner notes to the CD, which included “superlovers” and “one night of love.” I tried to keep a straight face, and I let him keep the music on.

It may sound at this point like I was being a bad teacher, letting my 14-year-old students listen to a song with questionable content in class. But in China, “lover” is akin to an endearment like “sweetheart,” based on a direct translation from “ai ren,” or “love person.”

Many of the vocabulary faux pas of my students were due to the ubiquitous electronic Chinese-English dictionaries they carried everywhere. My first class rule was always “no electronic dictionaries,” but students rarely paid attention.

Using the dictionaries distorted language the way an online translation program does. Despite this, my students didn’t believe I could tell when they were using them.

“I just wish you a lucky and perspective new year,” wrote one of my students last year.

“I think you are using your electronic dictionary,” I wrote back. “But thank you. And same-same to you.”

9/12/08: No one fits in infinite space of cyber chapel

2008-09-12T08:00:00.000-04:00

I have this friend — let’s call her Balicia — who has tried Internet dating. After several possible matches, some of whom she knew only via e-mail and some of whom she met in person, she gave up.

It’s one thing to put your best foot forward on an in-person date. It’s another to have hours and hours to pore over every pixel in your profile photo or every word of your self-description. What are the chances that those moments that tell us we’re compatible with a potential partner — the slips of decorum that show the real person underneath, impossible to completely eliminate in face-to-face encounters — will show through in such a well-vetted venue?

What are the chances the deal-breakers will?

My friend found the whole process exhausting and not worth her time and, when her subscription to her dating Web site expired, she let it lapse.

I’m no Luddite, but I believe what most traditionalists do about courtship and marriage, and about the Internet and social fragmentation. I’m a fan of face-to-face interactions.

I’m in a dwindling group, there, though.

Henry Jenkins, professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and author of several books, including “Fans, Bloggers and Gamers: Exploring Participatory Culture,” defends online interactions as just as valid as in-person ones.

In one essay, he recounts his son’s experience with a girlfriend he met and maintained a relationship with online — a relationship that ended after a trip to meet the girl and her family, thanks, Jenkins implies, to her parents’ restrictions and ambivalent attitude toward her online boyfriend.

Jenkins claims that his son’s and the girlfriend’s emotions were no less real because they were usually expressed electronically, and I’m inclined to agree. Especially with teens who grew up with the Internet, typing could be just as significant as talking in forming relationships.

But Jenkins took his son to meet the girl, anyway. There are some things online exchanges just can’t provide.

The next step for serious daters, for instance — Internet weddings.

Internet weddings do exist, I was shocked to learn. The Chatalot Wedding Chapels, for instance, come in several varieties, including “gothic,” “enchanted,” “international” and “Las Vegas.”
Potential brides and grooms can select a chapel chatroom, password-protected, and e-mail invitations to their guest list.

The cyber wedding is bring-your-own-clergy, and assuming a pastor, priest or justice of the peace agrees to officiate, this seems to indicate a scheduled start time just as with a traditional wedding. How the revelry expresses itself — party guests popping champagne corks in the privacy of their bedrooms, perhaps? — is as much a mystery as whether the newlyweds need to be in the same room, or even the same state, when the vows take place.

Having a wedding online is bad enough, I thought, but my jaw actually dropped open when I saw the second feature of the basic package: a “reserved honeymoon suite with private password for one week.”

I know it’s rude to ask — I didn’t get a response when I wrote to Chatalot.com to ask last week — but what exactly would one do in a private honeymoon chatroom?

Probably not anything that couldn’t be done better in person.

Is this the way we recognize love and commitment in the digital age — as atomized individuals, separated from the sights and smells of the friends and cakes we intend to celebrate with?

The point may be moot, though: Cyber weddings are not legally binding.

Yet.

9/5/08: Pequots provide more than same old history

2008-09-05T08:00:00.000-04:00

Interactive museums are great, and we in central Connecticut have access to some great ones. I’ve written about Old Sturbridge Village and Mystic Seaport, each of which tell stories familiar to most Americans who sat through two or three years of mandatory American history.

If you want to hear the story of the less-heard voices of the historically disenfranchised in Connecticut, there’s another place to go: the Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center.

If you’re expecting something with the power of the Holocaust museum, you’ll likely be disappointed. The Mashantucket Pequot Museum does include accounts of diseases, economic and environmental changes and war brought on by contact with English settlers, but it incorporates these into its displays on the daily lives of Pequots rather than making the difficulties the focus of the museum.

The resulting experience is less traumatic, and maybe less memorable, but this is to its credit. What could have been a nightmare account of atrocities committed against the Pequot becomes an effective retelling of familiar stories from another perspective, one in which the Pequot are people with full lives, an economy and system of governance, a spiritual path and a place in colonial history, rather than victims.

"It’s all covered," said David Holahan, museum spokesman. "The exhibits give information on diseases and the impact of Europeans, but they also show eastern tribes’ cultures, spiritual and sociopolitical lives."

The museum is no less able to succeed in its aims — to educate visitors on the lives of eastern native peoples — for its balance and quotidian focus.

The museum doesn’t have the staffing of Old Sturbridge Village, where people walk around in character as colonial villagers, but it does a good job of making up for it. Throughout the museum are Pequot figures performing daily tasks and rituals, being healed or hefting spears, defending their village against attack or fishing. You’re not allowed to touch them, of course, but the figures are so lifelike that I found myself staring at one of the men serving as lookout in a canoe in the main atrium for about two minutes, waiting for him to breathe.

The largest display is of a Pequot village, where visitors can walk around with an audio tour guide and learn more about whichever scenes most interest them. The tour often goes beyond describing the scenes portrayed, too, offering to tell you more about agriculture in the village, or more about the spiritual practices of the Pequot or more about learning to hunt, "then and now."

Often the "more information" is a surprisingly impromptu interview of a modern Mashantucket Pequot tribal member. One mother tells of her son’s first hunting expedition with an older Native American — they didn’t catch anything — and another tribal member talks about the efforts of one man to get federal recognition for the tribe in the 1970s and 1980s. All the "ums" and "ahs" are included, making listening to the tribal members on the audio tour seem as good as a conversation.

The museum contains more traditional displays of textiles and artworks, as well, and several films that flesh out the information provided by wall displays or readings. But it’s the interactive details that help the museum to reach beyond the dry accounts of a history book — one that may or may not have included detailed accounts of Pequot life, anyway — and create actual experiences for visitors.

8/29/08: When we can touch, history touches back

2008-08-29T08:00:00.001-04:00

Last week, I wrote that history should be handled differently than, say, modern paintings, in the way we display and expect to encounter it in museums.

I also mistakenly claimed that "all the walls" of the New Britain Museum of American Art are white -- in fact, many of the walls of the first floor's galleries of historic paintings are toned in browns, greens and yellows, and a few of the rooms have Oriental rugs of the kind that would have been found in the homes of the 18th- and 19th-century gentlemen who would have originally displayed the paintings.

This is a good step toward contextualizing art, helping viewers to put it in its place historically, and I'm sorry I missed it in last week's column.

But a museum such as the Museum of American Art, dedicated to showing art, is a different type of archive than what I want to write about this week: interactive museums.

Most of you who grew up in Connecticut will remember elementary-school trips to Mystic Seaport and Old Sturbridge Village. The thrill of going on field trips may have overwhelmed their educational content -- remember when riding a bus for hours at a time was fun? -- but I'm betting you have at least one vivid memory of the seaport or the colonial village.

It may have been the ships in dock at Mystic or the "strange" colonial clothes worn by staff at Sturbridge. My most vivid memory of these field trips is of playing with a wooden hoop and stick in a colonial games area of Old Sturbridge Village.

I don't think it's a mistake that this is what I remember.

Kids, especially, enjoy the chance to interact with things -- to move them, kick them, talk to them, run around them. It's part of how kids learn.

More than that, though, things that can be experienced directly -- a painting can be looked at, for instance, but it can't be fired up the way a colonial stove might be, or crouched in like a cramped sailor's bunk -- teaches us differently than indirect or mediated experience.

According to Alison Landsberg, author of "Prosthetic Memory," people can easily form vivid, lasting memories by participating in the kind of direct experience offered by Old Sturbridge Village, Mystic Seaport or, in Landsberg's example, the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C.

Landsberg explains that in places, displays or museums that encourage prosthetic memory, "people are invited to take on memories of a past through which they did not live." In the case of Old Sturbridge Village or Mystic Seaport, this means being able to pretend that you're a colonist of a 16th- or 17th-century American. At Mystic Seaport, you can tour a 19th-century coastal town and historic vessels and think about a life at sea.

These are valuable experiences, ones that help us understand a few of the hardships -- that sailor's cramped bunk again -- and triumphs -- finally getting the hoop to roll down the lane -- of some of the Americans who came before us.

But what may be the most vital and valuable use of interactive materials and museums is helping us tell and understand the stories of the disenfranchised. Mystic Seaport does this when it hosts the Amistad; the Holocaust museum does this with every visitor.

Remembering the survivors of injustice and oppression throughout history is not an exercise in self-pity or self-flagellation. It's necessary for preventing that kind of injustice or oppression from happening again.

Remember that next time you're at the seaport or among the colonially clothed -- and be glad.

Apology

2008-08-22T17:26:00.002-04:00

My sincere apologies to readers and to the New Britain Museum of American Art, which is a beautiful museum in a city that needs beauty: I should have written "like all the walls surrounding the gallery" in which Sam McKinniss's paintings are hung, rather than "all the walls in the New Britain Museum of American Art."

To clarify further -- and I hope that my series of columns will continue to do so over the next two weeks -- I believe strongly in the service that museums provide to a community, to art and to history. I like going to art museums, and I particularly like going to NBMAA, which I remember visiting as a child. The transformations NBMAA has undergone since then are astounding, and even as the museum was a cozy, warm environment for its artworks twenty years ago, it's become a world-class showcase with a friendly and professional staff, a terrace cafe overlooking the park and a penchant for attracting (and displaying) the work of new and exciting (and local) artists.

If this sounds like an advertisement, that's because I mean it to be one. Next week I'll focus on ways of displaying history that more interactive museums are able to use -- but that doesn't detract from the necessity, utility and beauty of a museum like NBMAA. Far from it.

Correction

2008-08-22T17:21:00.002-04:00

Alicia,

I read your article in The Herald with great interest. You mention in the fourth paragraph that the New Now Gallery walls are white, "like the walls of all the rooms at the Museum of American Art."

In fact, the six first floor galleries devoted to the historic, pre-1925, part of the collection are displayed in galleries where color is a major component of the display. The colors, which range from bright yellow to more somber greens and browns, are intended to present an historic context in which to view the painting and sculptures on view. Similarly, oriental carpets are in several galleries as they would have been placed in eighteenth and nineteenth century houses. Our Museum strives to create an ambience which is harmonious with the masterpieces we are fortunate enough to house in New Britain.

It is for this reason that museums are such wonderful places to visit. Please come and look at our most attractive, exciting museum again.

Sincerely,
Douglas Hyland
Director

8/22/08: No connection with the past in museums

2008-08-22T08:00:00.001-04:00

I’m going to get kind of artsy on you this week, but don’t worry. The punch line of my column is simple: Museums are weird places.

I say this not after watching "Night at the Museum" or seeing one of those Dada exhibits or considering Magritte’s claim that a picture of a pipe isn’t a pipe, but after attending a show opening for a brilliant young local artist, Sam McKinniss, at the New Britain Museum of American Art.

McKinniss’ paintings, all portraits, are individually impressive, but what most struck me as I left the gallery was their cumulative effect. McKinniss had said in his artist’s statement that he’d intended the subjects of these portraits to be missing the viewer’s gaze, to give the audience a sense of having lost a chance at connection. And that’s exactly how I felt.

The walls of the room in which the paintings are hung — like the walls of many of the rooms at the Museum of American Art — are white, drawing attention to the art rather than the architecture. We think of this as blank, as being without context. We think of white walls as space waiting to be filled and, as viewers, our eyes are drawn to the spots of color, shape or texture in paintings, sculptures or other media.

The blankness works perfectly for shows such as McKinniss’, designed by the artist in advance for a museum gallery. McKinniss knew when he began his work that these paintings would be hung in a room such as the one in which they now hang and was able to plan the number and type of paintings he completed accordingly, to create a certain effect.

But what about other museum displays, of three-dimensional or historical artifacts?

Looking at an emperor’s dish from ancient China or a portrait of an English nobleman on these blank walls is a different sort of experience.

When the emperor used his dishes, he probably didn’t consider them works of art; they were dishes, necessary and practical as well as beautiful. Imagine if someone asked to put your Tupperware on display. You’d probably look at them strangely and ask if they needed to sit down.

When the nobleman commissioned his portrait, he didn’t imagine it hanging in a room with other noblemen’s pictures. He imagined it hanging in his home, among his other possessions, proving what a powerful and influential society man he was. It was art, yes, but it had another purpose and context as well.

We take those things out of their context when we put them in museums. This is probably why museums are boring.

Don’t get me wrong: I’ve been to plenty of museums over the years, most of the time willingly. Living in Washington, D.C. and Oxford, England, practically forces you to participate in cultural activities such as trips to the museum. I’ve seen and appreciated all kinds of art and historical displays.

But it’s hard to imagine, in a typical museum, what life was like for Chinese emperors or English noblemen — and isn’t that part of the point of putting these things on display? That we let our minds wander back into history, to learn the lessons of the past to connect and apply them to today?

The New Britain Museum of American Art is excellent at what it does, and I like looking at modern art in a modern context. But history requires a different touch — an actual one.

More on that next week.

8/15/08: Tech has us sprinting to new kind of sports

2008-08-15T00:06:00.003-04:00

I’ve been reading predictions lately, mostly by Ray Kurzweil, award-winning futurist, inventor and author.

Kurzweil has made amazingly accurate predictions about the past two decades, making his current theories all the more disturbing. Most recently, he published a book titled The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology. Coined by Vernor Vinge, the term "singularity" refers to a time when we will be able to reverse-engineer our brains using new technology, making us more or less immortal.

I’m hoping Kurzweil is wrong, and I could write a month’s worth of columns explaining why.
But Kurzweil’s thoughts on the future, and their implications for the way we think about our bodies, death and technology, sent my thoughts spinning in an unexpected direction: toward sports.

Other than medicine, professional sports is the one private-sector area in which I would expect the physical advantages of Kurzweil’s nanotechnology to hold intrinsic appeal. Pro athletes, or amateur athletes such as those we’re seeing in the Olympics these weeks, would have the most to gain from stamina- or power-enhancing augmentations of human biology.

We’ve seen some willingness to do whatever it takes to win with steroid-use scandals cropping up in professional athletics and past Olympics.

But we’ve also seen an outcry against steroids, which are dangerous, but which more relevantly violate the spirit (and law) of sporting events.

On the other hand, athletic gear enhanced by nanotechnology has been praised for everything from making golf balls fly straighter to shaving seconds off swimming records at Olympic trials. Some speculate that nanotechnology will allow gear to be designed for individual athletes, enhancing performances from the outside in.

Is the line between allowable and prohibited at the skin, then? Outerwear and specialized equipment are OK, but ingesting performance-enhancing drugs or technology is not?

We’ll have to wait and see on that one, I guess. Most professional sports have boards to regulate the rules of the game and actions of the athletes. They’ll have to navigate the ethics of each technology as it comes up.

What interests me more than how existing sports are relating to new technology is how our concept of sports has changed, thanks to technology, and what we can expect should the singularity come to pass.

Television, for instance, has already had a major effect on sports. Where before we would have had to be physically present to watch a sporting event, we can now cheer on our teams from a distance. This has had far-reaching consequences — just consider the inexplicable ubiquity of Dallas Cowboys fans. With a VCR or TiVo, we can record those performances and review them for errors or highlights at our leisure.

Thanks to national broadcasts, nontraditional sports can gather crowds large enough to popularize them. The X Games, Professional Bull Riders rodeos and NASCAR can be broadcast on noncable channels and pick up fans from across the country.

ESPN and its many subsidiary channels give us access to sports 24/7. This must have some effect on how we think about sports and ourselves as fans.

But perhaps most significantly, television has allowed for the next evolution of sports, it seems — the evolution predicted by Kurzweil’s emphasis on reverse-engineering the brain rather than the body as a whole: video games.

The evolution of computer technology, which has us sitting at desks straining our eyes rather than testing our physical limits, points to a continuation of the emphasis of mind over matter, and begs the question: If Kurzweil’s right, will there even be sports in the future?

8/8/08: Seeing the Olympics as the Chinese do

2008-08-08T08:00:00.002-04:00

The Olympics begin today in Beijing, the luckiest of days in China: The word for the number eight in Chinese, "ba," sounds like the word for fortune, "fa," and so has good connotations.

Neat, right?

For those of us who can’t attend the games in person, here’s some more trivia to swap with friends during commercials, and a taste of what you’re missing.

Any phrase book can tell you what you would need to know to get around in Beijing, but here are a few extra phrases you can shout or mutter from your couch.

Jia you (jayee yo): "Go, go, go!" The literal translation is "add oil." You can chant this at any athlete you’d like to win. As with all sports cheers, the louder, the better.

Mei you ban fa (may yo bahn fah): "There’s nothing that could’ve been done," or literally, "there’s no solution." You may say this about an athlete who’s just lost or to a friend asking for more snacks after you’ve run out. Mei you ban fa is a particularly strong phrase in Chinese; my preferred translation is "the universe is against us in this."

You may wonder what carb-loading athletes are eating before their events. While China has plenty of rice, and northern China specializes in noodles and dumplings, there are more familiar options for foreigners with some time to roam the city.

You can get pizza in China, but don’t be surprised if topping options include tuna and corn. (It’s better than it sounds.)

Cake, especially birthday cake, has become popular in China, but not for eating — the elaborate frosting sculptures atop spongy, dry angelfood makes these pastries perfect for food fights rather than consumption.

If you order a "hamburger," be prepared to accept anything put between two slices of bread. My Chinese college students patiently explained to me at a KFC in Yinchuan that a chicken sandwich could also be referred to as a "hamburger," despite my protests.

Athletes shouldn’t expect the food in China to be the same as the version of "Chinese food" we get here, but the intrepid sort of diner will find unfamiliar vegetables such as garlic shoots or rape (canola) delicious stir-fryed.

The extremely intrepid may find themselves ordering delicacies such as duck tongue or jellyfish ... once.

A good rule of thumb for spectators and athletes looking to get good, authentic, cheap Chinese food — without getting sick — is to seek out a hole-in-the-wall restaurant packed to the front door with Beijingers. Any restaurant not boasting a healthy crowd of locals should be avoided.

Visitors should also be careful when paying the bill. I asked for what I thought was a receipt in Qingdao once and ended up winning five yuan in the Chinese lottery.

If you find yourself wondering in the midst of an American athlete spotlight what Chinese coverage of the Olympics is like, the answer is "completely different."

During the last summer Olympics, I watched half of the coverage on U.S. soil and the other half in China. While American coverage focuses on "familiar" events at which we excel, coverage in Beijing focuses on what Chinese are good at — including weight-lifting, volleyball (particularly against Japan) and pingpong.

When you’re looking at medal count tallies, remember this. Chinese golds will likely be in sports we never see, and in which we hardly compete.

So go ahead and root for China, too.

Comment from Cindy in Fairfield, and response

2008-08-07T15:02:00.006-04:00

This comment was posted on the newbritainherald.com Web site, which now supports comments.

Always Negative

Second column in a row that you are focussing on what the area DOESN'T have! The last thing in the world that the New Britain/ Plainville region needs is more negative publicity. How about trying to find some bright spots? PS Why in the world did you move to Plainville in the first place?

Cindy, Fairfield CT

------

First of all, thanks for commenting. I really love getting feedback -- that may sound facetious, but it's not.

Secondly, it's the third column in a row in which I'm focusing on what the area doesn't have.

The first column (in what I was thinking of as a series) was about regional parochialism; the second was about how that has worked out in terms of people leaving the state, or not moving to Connecticut, between the last censuses (1990 and 2000); the third, which was the week on which you commented, was about the need for public transit that allows CT residents -- and MA and NY residents -- to get to Boston or New York City easily, and my suggestion for the formation of a citizens' group or panel that could advocate for that.

I don't see my columns as particularly negative, though. In fact, I view them as positive suggestions for the future. I touted Middletown's downtown, for instance, as a good example for New Britain and Bristol.

It's clear, as you imply with the comment that "the last thing the New Britain/Plainville area needs is more negative publicity," that central CT could use some sprucing up in terms of outsiders' views of our area. Plans to rebuild the downtowns of New Britain and Bristol show that city governments are also aware of the need for an overhaul.

The state economy may or may not be entering or in a recession, but it's clear that New Britain has never recovered from the recession of the 80s. Bristol Chamber of Commerce president John Leone spoke in an interview of Bristol's last downtown renovation in the 50s and the need for an updated look and feel for that district now. I applaud both city governments for attending to the needs of their communities, particularly in terms of attracting new businesses to our area.

My intention in this column series was to point out that while we do this, we also need to improve access to the downtowns soon-to-be-improved. This needs to be part of the process, or our improvements will be meaningless.

The communities surrounding these downtown districts are currently supporting the businesses available to them, and no more; we need investment from those currently outside the area, whether they're tourists passing through or young families looking to settle down, to sustain the development we're planning.

To attract new people to the area, we also need to jetisson the "keep it in the family" mentality I've experienced in much of central Connecticut, some of which I read into your comment -- though perhaps you didn't intend it to read that way, Cindy. (We know New Britain is in need of improvements, but we don't want bad publicity to get out to others.)

This brings me to the third part of my response: my view of myself as a columnist. (How meta!)

I write about stuff I have opinions on. It's as simple as that.

I'm a big fan of debate, and I would love to see a letter to the editor printed on behalf of the central Connecticut area or any other topic I've written on, especially if it contradicts my stated views. As I said, I really love comments; it makes my day to see that someone's paid enough attention to what I've written to write back.

I can see that my views frustrated you, presumably leading to your questioning why I live in Plainville. It may seem to you that I've said something so negative about central Connecticut that it's unbelievable that I would choose to live here -- or that you would choose to live here, if you held the same view.

But please don't think that what I write in my column -- 600 words or less, once a week -- is the entirety of my opinion, or that my personal life (my decision to live in Plainville, in this case) can be discerned through what I've written. We're all much more complex than that...even columnists.

Please feel free to comment again, here or on the Herald, Bristol Press or Middletown Press Web sites. I would love to hear from you again.

8/1/08: Ticket out of Connecticut can be way to save it

2008-08-01T08:00:00.001-04:00

Confession: I don’t plan on living in Connecticut forever.

But I might stay if I felt I could get to Boston or New York with no hassle, and without having to drive.

Forbes magazine calls Boston and New York the second- and fourth-best cities for young professionals, respectively. Both draw international attention for their residents’ accomplishments in science, education and the arts.

It’s easy to see why someone, particularly someone my age, would want to live in cities such as Boston or New York. But increasing opportunities to telecommute also mean that young professionals willing to work from home can live almost anywhere. In theory, we could settle down here, equidistant from two major metropolitan areas, and have the best of both worlds: the small-town, know-your-neighbor sensibilities of much of central Connecticut and the hubbub and high life of the city.

So make it easy for us, Connecticut.

Start with buses.

Farmington has Greyhound bus pickup and ticketing in a Park and Ride lot. Hartford, of course, has a regular bus terminal right off the highway. And New Britain has Jimmy’s Smoke Shop.

Jimmy’s is half Smoke Shop, half bus station, with a walk-through connecting the two. The Greyhound waiting room has a few seats, a ticket counter that doubles as a cashier’s station for the Smoke Shop side and a window that looks out onto the bus depot — a curve in the curb just large enough to let a bus pull in and out without getting in the way of local traffic.

There’s only room for one bus at a time in front of Jimmy’s, and no room for unmetered parking for people who drive into New Britain to catch the bus.

It’s hardly the glittering gateway to the city I might prefer — but worse is that it’s not even practical.

Jimmy’s is an independently contracted agency for Greyhound rather than a Greyhound-run bus terminal, and so falls under the jurisdiction of the Smoke Shop owner and city rather than the bus company.

The bad news is that this means Greyhound won’t do any development work for the bus stop.
The good news is that we can. The city of New Britain, for instance, could designate free parking for bus riders — and there’s no better time to begin thinking about and planning for this than now, with the New Britain-Hartford busway in development.

On a regional level, the busway, the extension of Route 72 into Bristol, the current Metro-North plans to extend commuter rail from New Haven through Hartford to Springfield and plans to increase rail passenger service along Route 7, Norwalk to Danbury, will all contribute to the creation of a workable public transit system, especially if they are able to work together.

Ken Shooshan-Stoller, deputy director of the Central Connecticut Regional Planning Agency, which handles central Connecticut transportation planning and concerns, says many of these major projects should help with connecting central Connecticut residents to New York and Boston, eventually. "We’re looking for ways to improve transportation by transit within the region, and if we improve it, those should help improve those interstate options, too," Shooshan-Stoller says.

But the agency only has jurisdiction over a portion of central Connecticut.

So here’s my big idea, the punchline to the past three weeks of columns: Let’s designate a special committee or board or form a citizen’s group advocating for a comprehensive, efficient system of public transit reaching from Faneuil Hall to Times Square — with a stop in our neighborhood.

Let me know what you think.

7/25/08: If only Connecticut had someplace to go

2008-07-25T08:00:00.001-04:00

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.

7/18/08: It's time Nutmeggers became global citizens

2008-07-18T08:00:00.002-04:00

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.

7/11/08: Newshounds: It's time to embrace the Internet

2008-07-11T08:00:00.000-04:00

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.

7/4/08: To those flag wavers, wearers, even eaters

2008-07-04T08:00:00.001-04:00

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.

6/27/08: If there's a chance of bias, let's root it out

2008-06-27T08:00:00.005-04:00

Prison reform is a tough nut to crack, and frankly, I’m surprised I even brought it up.

I wouldn’t have, in fact, if it hadn’t been for one of my GED students in Washington, D.C.

He came into my office every evening after class to make a phone call. I got to know him as a polite, unassuming gentleman, soft-spoken and genuine.

I was mildly surprised, then, when I found he had spent time in prison. I was surprised because he was such an upstanding student and parent; my surprise was mild because he was undereducated, male and black. Statistically speaking, he was a member of the key inmate demographic.

In the early 1990s, black men between 25 and 29 were more likely to be in prison than in college.

Those convicted of violent felonies in 2000 served an average of 63 months in jail. Those convicted of drug felonies served an average of 75, a year longer.

Again, African-Americans are far more likely to serve time in prison for drug-related convictions than white Americans.

It’s an old refrain, the claim that our system is systemically racist, but it’s been getting more press time in Connecticut lately.

Superior Court Judge Stanley T. Fuger Jr. ruled in March that a challenge brought by seven Connecticut death-row inmates — a challenge claiming the state’s application of the death penalty is racially and geographically biased — should be allowed.

He ruled this even though the Supreme Court ruled in 1987 that systemwide bias was not an acceptable defense against the death penalty.

In his comments on his decision, Fuger cited the "extraordinarily high" stakes for the prisoners who brought the challenge, saying the charge would "merit the closest of scrutiny." He pointed out "that the Connecticut Constitution affords defendants greater legal rights than the U.S. Constitution, and as a result, they have the right to present the kind of systemwide bias evidence that the 1987 ruling barred."

This is a good start. Whether or not you agree states should wield the power of life and death, scrutinizing our practices in terms of whom we’re willing to put to death can’t hurt. If there’s even a chance of bias, we need to root it out.

Let’s go a step further and do the same thing with life-in-prison sentencing, I say.

In all other cases, where we expect those we convict to re-enter society after serving their sentences, we need to focus on reform.

Those who claim prison time is not playtime — that prisoners should be denied access to self-improvement programs such as GED classes, library access or even health care — should consider the effect on society of the "you’re in timeout" mentality.

If we truly expect former inmates to return from prison reformed and ready to make positive contributions in their neighborhoods, we need to equip them to succeed.

Many prisoners are just looking for a chance, and we owe it to ourselves to give it to them.

I was frustrated watching my student, a hard worker with on-the-job experience, get turned down for jobs — probably because of his felony conviction — for which he was eminently qualified.

Thanks to his dedication to family, community and values, and to some help from staff at our school — the sort of minor personal attention that would benefit all former inmates if it could be applied federally — he found a job.

And three weeks ago, after years of steady work toward his goal, he graduated.

I’m proud to be his compatriot.

You should be, too.

Comment from David A., and response

2008-06-23T17:31:00.004-04:00

Dear Alicia,

I want to commend you on the article you wrote "When it comes to justice, it's personal." I also don't believe in the three strikes becoming a law.

I am a convicted felon, and my crimes were due to my addiction to pain medication. The crimes were possession of narcotics and larceny(a bad check). Already having a felony for possession when I issued a bad check, I was willing to pay restitution and any court costs. When I went to court the sentence was one year suspended sentence and pay back restitution, one year probation and not to enter the grocery store where the check was used. I would have gone to jail for life because it was my third offence.

I had a good work history, twenty years service with the state of Connecticut and seven years at a food processing plant. Now I can't find employment because of my past record.

I wish that Connecticut was like a few other states,where you don't have to put down in your application that you have a felony. There are a lot of people like myself that have been in recovery and have changed our lives around and have corrected the destruction due to our active addiction. The laws of this state act as a stumbling block for those of us that have made a bad choice, and corrected that choice and have become productive members of society. We do need another chance to prove ourselves.

David A.

*****

David,

I'm so glad you commented here. I've been watching the three-strikes law strike out for the past few months here in Connecticut and groaning every time it comes around again.

Maybe if I were a baseball fan, I would "get" what people are talking about when they say they're for this law -- but I doubt it.

You're not the only one who would have been bizarrely convicted under the three-strikes felony law: according to attorney Michael Fryar at Lawisfun.com,

"[The three-strikes law] has had some odd results in California – Gary Ewing shoplifted golf clubs (Strike 1. Burglary, Strike 2. Robbery with a Knife), Leandro Andrade stole video tapes (Strike 1. Home Burglary, Strike 2. Home Burglary), Jerry Williams stole a slice of pepperoni pizza from some children (four previous non-violent felonies)."

So men have been sentenced under the three-strikes law in California for stealing videos and pizza. That doesn't sound like a strong recommendation to me.*

I wrote this column, and the one that will appear this Friday (6/27) in part because it seemed obvious to me that three-strikes laws are arbitrary (why three? Why not two or four or seven or ten?) and lazy (since it allows us to sentence each other to life in prison by the numbers, without using our heads) and against what we should focus on as a society that's supposed to be free.

But it was a letter to the editor published in one of the Herald-Press papers (I think The Herald, but I'll have to check on that) on April 18, written by a state representative and saying that after a certain point, enough is enough -- that some people are "simply evil" -- that made me actually sit down and write about three strikes.

I'm thinking about the adult students I taught in D.C., many of whom have multiple felonies on their records, and all of whom were trying to get their lives back on track -- to get an education, provide for their families and set good examples for their children. Some of them had been addicted to drugs, and some were raised in neighborhoods that encouraged criminal activity. None of them were "simply evil."

(And again, even if there were people who could be labeled as "simply evil" and cast off, there's no reason to believe that they suddenly reached the point of no return when they committed that third felony.)

I would like to see legislation dealing with the sorts of difficulties that you're describing in finding a job, post-conviction, though I'm not sure what form that would take. Most of my experience has been with people who had limited skills or education before their convictions, so most of their efforts were focused on getting the diploma or apprenticeship or certification that would help them break into a trade. For people like you, who already have skills and a strong work history, I'm not sure what the next step could be.

Ultimately, though, I'm not sure that legislation will help us. You can't write laws that force people to care. It seems to me that the best you can do is pass laws that don't discourage caring. And elect leaders who do care.

If you haven't already, David -- and anyone else who might be interested one way or another in the three-strikes laws, and the recently passed laws that step up sentencing for violent offenders (as an alternative to a traditional three-strikes law) -- I encourage you to write to your state representative or to Governor Rell about your experience, too.

I'm hoping that next time they propose three-strikes laws, or anything similar, they'll remember your letter and think again.

Thanks for sharing your experience here; please comment anytime. (And I wish you luck, and a job that suits you, soon.)

Alicia.

*Anyone looking for more information on how California's three-strikes laws have gone awry may want to start here. If a 35-page essay doesn't seem like a particularly accessible starting point, read the abstract on page 2. (You'll need Adobe Acrobat Reader to see this .pdf file.)

6/20/08: When it comes to justice, it's personal

2008-06-20T08:00:00.000-04:00

Three-strikes laws are out, as far as I’m concerned.

Forget that a three-strikes law would not have prevented the heinous home invasions perpetrated in central Connecticut over the past year. Forget that they would not have prevented reportedly depressed, 76-year-old Leon Malicki’s alleged attack on his wife.

Consider instead the unreasonableness of basing social policy — especially criminal law, which immediately and permanently affects the lives of perpetrators, victims and their families — on the arbitrary rules of baseball.

Legally speaking, there’s no reason for three to be the magic number, according to attorney Michael Fryar, owner of Lawisfun.com.

So why should the commission of three crimes not warranting life in prison add up to more than the sum of their parts?

I tend to agree that repeat offenders continue to offend thanks to some innate impulse to do so, whether personally or socially instigated. But assigning a number to the times they may offend before being written off as "simply evil" is dismissive of mitigating factors and ultimately demeans us and our justice system.

Our justice system is a personal one.

We are not an authoritarian society, allowing elite judges to decide whether one of our members is innocent or guilty when he or she appears to have erred; we convene juries and decide among ourselves.

We give the benefit of the doubt. Our fellow citizens are considered innocent until they’re proven guilty.

As a people, we are interested and invested in seeing justice done, and done properly — only look at the proliferation of "Law and Order"-type television shows as proof.

Why, then, are we driven to add legislation to make sure our system is working properly, rather than driven to a renewed insistence on our responsibilities as a population?

And why is the sort of law we want to add the increasingly impersonal sort, the kind that reduces people — offenders, perhaps, but also citizens — to being judged by formula rather than by a jury of their peers?

Judgment by the numbers is lazy. It allows us to abdicate the responsibility that is ours as American citizens. It allows us to forget, in our understandable frustration at criminal activity, that we are passing judgment on other Americans — other human beings — and that we are obligated to respect them and ourselves by applying ourselves diligently to the question of this particular (alleged) crime at this particular time.

But for those who like the clean, clear-cut efficiency of numbers, here are a few:

America is the only developed nation to incarcerate one in every hundred citizens.

As of June 2006, black men were 6.5 times more likely to be incarcerated than white men.

Of the convicted citizens in state prisons in 2006, almost 20 percent were there on drug charges.
Many of these are not dealers, but addicts.

Black Americans, again, are much more likely to be imprisoned (33 percent of convicted white drug defendants were sentenced to prison versus 51 percent of convicted black defendants), though a federal Household Survey indicates that most illicit drug users are white.

Felons lose the right to vote. They often have difficulty finding jobs when they return from prison thanks to little or incomplete education and applications requiring reporting of felony convictions.

These are the people who would be most affected by three-strikes laws.

Perhaps instead of mindlessly assigning them lifelong prison sentences, we should consider the kind of systemic reform we really need.

More about that next week.

My response

2008-06-17T12:58:00.006-04:00

I am delighted to have been referenced in Alderman Salvio’s letter to the editor, posted below, and to have a chance to respond.

Alderman Salvio and I have exchanged emails on a past column of mine; I found the exchange engaging, and Alderman Salvio himself to be friendly and pleasant, in person. In addition, I’ve watched Alderman Salvio in action at the council meetings I’ve been to, and read several of his letters to the editor over the past several months.

Here's my reply to this one.

I readily admit, as I admitted in my column, that I am a resident of Plainville and not New Britain – thus, I'm not a New Britain voter or taxpayer and have no claim on a particular alderman’s attentions. This makes it all the more fascinating to me that New Britain aldermen and women have been willing to address each of my questions promptly and thoroughly. (I mention this near the end of my column, making no distinction between parties, and I make no distinction here.)

The implied question of my fitness-to-judge – buried in the statement that I go to “the occasional council meeting,” which is true – is a relevant one, or would have been if I had been making a point particular to the meetings of May 30 or June 5, neither of which I attended. (I did attend the full council meeting of May 28, following which I wrote last week's column.)

As it is, I think Alderman Salvio’s letter to the editor coincides rather well with my characterization of the Republican aldermen as firebrand minority voices. His oppositional tone, not out of place in politics or in a politically motivated letter to the editor, fits my experience of the three or four council meetings I’ve been to, confirming that my experience was no fluke.

Alderman Salvio’s response also makes clear the depth of the divisions between the two Republican aldermen and mayor, and the Democratic aldermen (and alderwomen). His letter agrees tacitly with my suggestion that the Republican aldermen are a put-upon minority voice, rising above the fray to speak truth to power.

He does not, however, complicate his argument by citing the fact that I wrote this in my column.

This makes sense to me, as Alderman Salvio’s main point does not appear to have been to respond to me or my column, but to inform voters – in an entertaining, albeit incendiary way – of how several particular meetings and votes went over the course of the last two months. Including my complete message would have distorted his purpose.

But here is a reiteration of my complete message, anyway, clarified in response to Alderman Salvio’s letter.

I actually have a rather multifaceted view of New Britain’s Common Council. I never claimed perfection for one side or the other. (I wouldn't claim perfection for superheroes: Even Superman is not without a certain dark side -- imagine his x-ray vision or super strength used for evil purposes!)

I did not claim that Democrats do not disparage their Republican colleagues; I claimed that when they did so, it was in polite, politic ways. “Polite” and “politic,” of course, are relative and open to interpretation, and a person – especially, perhaps, a politician – can say impolite things in a civil tone. It has been my experience of New Britain Common Council’s Democrats in general, even in the case of Majority Leader Michael Trueworthy’s accusations of mismanagement in the full council meeting I attended a few weeks ago, that they tend to speak civilly to one another and to Republicans. On the other extreme, although I did not attend the meeting in question, there were references in the full council meeting to Alderman Salvio having told Alderman Sherwood, a Democrat, to “rot in hell” the previous week – a rude thing to say by any standard.

But this is what makes the meetings entertaining. The extremity of the views and how obviously council members care about their positions make this not only good politics, but also captivating to watch.

As captivating, I would say (and have said), as an action movie.

Superheroes are, of course, caricatures. My characterizations of both the Democrats on the council and the Republicans were also exaggerated. I do not believe that Democrats should come to council meetings dressed in Spandex and capes, or use their laser vision to cow their foes – or even that they’re always right in their positions or evaluations, or preternaturally polite. Similarly, I don’t believe that Republicans are the God-chosen Davids designated to fell Goliath-like Democrats. I took pains in my column to positively portray both sides of the aisle because my point was not to make a political endorsement.

My point, of course, was that more people should go to more Common Council meetings.

Too many people see local politics as irrelevant, when local politics are the most relevant. As a friend recently pointed out to me, “that’s where your vote counts most.” Decisions affecting our cities and our lives get made at these meetings. That has to concern us.

I'm sure Alderman Salvio would agree with me there.

Reader Response: Letter to the Editor

2008-06-17T12:00:00.001-04:00

To The Editor:

For the evening of May 30 at 8 p.m. (after the parade) New Britain Common Council Democrats called for a special meeting of council subcommittees to discuss the mayor’s proposed budget for fiscal year 2008/2009.

The council had 60 days from April 11 to discuss changes in the mayor’s budget. In that 60-day period, the council had made no suggestions for changes in the budget nor were any suggested on May 30.

Two Democrats and the two council Republicans (Lou Salvio and Mark Bernacki) did not attend the hastily arranged meeting. The meeting was recorded electronically.

The next week, both Republicans listened to the recording of the meeting. Anyone can request to listen to a recording of the May 30 meeting. No budget changes were discussed.

Instead, council Democrats used the meeting to hurl accusations of mismanagement or lack of management at the mayor and his entire administration. They even decided to insult the CPOA taxpayer watchdog organization.

Despite these facts, on Friday, Herald columnist Alicia Watkins of Plainville, who attends an occasional council meeting, refers to council Democrats as "… action-movie heroes." She also reports about the Dems, that at council meetings, "They speak in turn and use polite, political turns of phrase, … showing respect for even their political foes." If that wasn’t such a sad statement, it might be laughable.

As required by charter, a special meeting of the council was called for June 5 for the council to take final action on the budget. After the subcommittee reports and to correct an unexpected shortfall in revenue, Republican Aldermen Salvio and Bernacki recommended amendments to the budget that would have brought it into balance. Democrats voted unanimously against the amendments. The two Republicans voted in favor. Since the amendment failed, the two Republicans had no choice other than to vote no on the final vote. Voting yes would be tantamount to the two Rs voting for an unbalanced budget.

Result? After 60 days of inaction the Common Council — with the two Republican exceptions — succeeded in abdicating its responsibilities to the taxpayers. The "polite and heroic" council Democrats succeeded only in insulting the city’s entire work force and the residents and taxpayers of New Britain.

Lou Salvio, Alderman

New Britain

Note on reader responses

2008-06-16T21:59:00.005-04:00

I created this blog as a format for responding to readers of the central Connecticut newspapers -- printed and online editions -- who read my columns.

Here are my policies for responding to responses, subject to your feedback:

Published/written reader responses (i.e., "letter to the editor"):
These will be posted in full on my blog, and I will respond publicly.
Responses to my responses can also be posted -- discussions are welcome!

Blogged reader responses:
Let me know if you've written a blog post in response to any of my columns. I'll link to it and respond here.

Comments:
I will respond here to comments for which a response would be appropriate.

Emails:
If you'd like to respond at length, or privately, my email address is provided at the top of the blog (and here -- aliciad.watkins@yahoo.com).
Let me know if you'd rather your emails remain private, and I will not post them or respond to them in public.
Let me know if you'd like your email to be public, and I will post it in full, here.
If you have no preference, I'll use my discretion -- posting emails I think may generate interesting conversation, especially.

6/13/08: Better than action flick and available at city hall

2008-06-13T08:00:00.003-04:00

This summer’s blockbusters are just around the corner. Maybe, like me, you just saw "Iron Man," and are waiting for "The Dark Knight" to come out. You may be reading this waiting in line for "Indiana Jones" tickets.

I’m not the biggest fan of action movies, but I have seen "Gone in 60 Seconds" and a few of the "Fast and the Furious" movies. I’ve made it through "Braveheart" and more than a few movies based on comic book series.

I’m telling you this as proof of my credentials — so you’ll believe me when I say local politics are like an action movie, but better.

Take, for example, a meeting of the New Britain Common Council. I’ve attended a few of them. In addition to learning a lot and feeling the gratifying glow of knowing I’ve done my civic duty (though I live in Plainville, and so this is a false glow), I’ve found them incredibly entertaining.

I say "incredibly" because I’m anticipating some disbelief. I don’t blame you if you’re rolling your eyes or muttering "Yeah, right" as you read.

Budget meetings? Commissions? Complaints about potholes or blighted properties?

More exciting than an action movie?

But it’s true.

On New Britain’s council, there are 13 Democratic aldermen and two Republican aldermen. A Republican mayor leads the meetings. Party lines clearly divide the council as they discuss and render many of their decisions, making type-casting them into action hero and villain roles pretty easy.

The Democrats would be the traditional action-movie heroes. They’re diverse in age and ethnicity, yet they work together for a common goal. They speak in turn and use polite, political turns of phrase to get their points across, showing respect for even their political foes. The majority leader’s last name is — there’s no making this up — Trueworthy.

It’s easy to see the Democrats as the band of heroic friends, like the X-men or Robin Hood and his Merry Men — and women. Add a car chase and a few explosions, and it would be classic summer blockbuster material.

If you’re rooting for the other guys, the two Republican aldermen and the mayor could be a put-upon minority voice rising above a tyrannical common consensus to save the day.

Outcries against Democratic plots would become filibuster scenes in which the Republicans shame Dems into conceding their points. It’s more a "Stand and Deliver" type drama than a traditional action movie, but rousing all the same.

And it’s ours.

We don’t need to sit in cold, dark and sticky movie theaters to see this. We don’t need to buy whatever overpriced, fatty foods they decide to offer us. We don’t need to sit quietly, staring straight ahead.

Local politics are interactive.

We voted for (or against) the people sitting on our councils. We are affected by their decisions. And we can speak to them as a group at a public meeting, or we can call them individually at their offices.

My experience with contacting the aldermen on New Britain’s council — Democrat and Republican — has been unreservedly positive, and their concern for the voters of their districts, impressive.

Half the fun of this action-movielike plot is that we get to be a part of it. If we don’t like the way things are turning out, we can change them.

You can’t get that from "Gladiator" or "The Incredible Hulk."

6/6/08: The ethics of recruiting the poor to be soldiers

2008-06-06T08:00:00.002-04:00

Last week, I left you hanging. I brought up the No Child Left Behind education laws, mentioned the clause requiring federally funded schools to hand over student information to military recruiters and told you we have a responsibility to be concerned by the clause.

Now I’ll explain why.

In general terms, NCLB, passed in President Bush’s first term, determines which school districts are eligible for federal funding, including Title 1 funds, which are earmarked for schools with a high percentage of students of color and students from low-income families.

Specifically, the recruitment clause, section 9528 of the act, says "each local educational agency receiving assistance under this Act shall provide [to military recruiters] access to secondary school students’ names, addresses and telephone listings."

In other words, any school receiving funding through NCLB has to give local recruiters this information, presumably to make recruitment easier.

It seems easy enough to say "No, thanks" when a recruiter comes calling, as I did, though it took a few rejections before they struck my name from the list. But consider that only schools getting federal funding — which means urban schools serving lower-income residents — are required to report student information.

This means high school students in New Britain, Bristol and Hartford can expect phone calls from local military recruiters, probably before they graduate, but students from Avon, Simsbury and other high schools not requiring federal funding will not have their information passed on and may avoid recruitment calls. All this adds up to recruiters being encouraged to focus on signing teens from lower-income neighborhoods.

It may be true that kids from a low-income background have fewer career choices after graduation and view the military as a decent option. Some students may prefer a more active vocation to college. Some may want the assumed job security of a military career. It’s possible that in a free-market economy, a preponderance of lower-income people would naturally end up in the military.

This still wouldn’t answer the ethical question raised by encouraging low-income people to join the military. Even if "the market" had been the determining factor in how recruiters select their candidates, targeting low-income citizens is suspect. We’d likely prefer not to think of ourselves as hiring mercenaries, though that’s what low-income student recruitment boils down to.

But whatever your opinion of recruitment in the context of free-market economics, No Child Left Behind is not the result of a free market. It’s federal legislation.

Take what you will from the conflict of interest inherent in a federal government offering public education money contingent on students’ availability for military recruitment.

The bottom line is that such a conflict does exist, and it’s our job as citizens to think through what it means and work out how to respond.

We need to do it now.

The likelihood a simple "No, thanks" will suffice becomes questionable when we consider contractual "stop loss" policy — which allows the military to extend soldiers’ enlistment indefinitely in time of war — recruitment quotas and the added pressure to enlist new recruits brought on by the war in Iraq.

For now, there is an opt-out clause attached to NCLB’s Section 9528. School administrators are required to tell parents of the recruitment clause and of their option to have their child’s information kept private. A written request asking that information not be given out without parental consent must be honored.

For opt-out information, contact your local school district.

5/30/08: Let's invest ourselves in our community

2008-05-30T07:00:00.000-04:00

Some readers may have felt I was calling them misers in last week’s column. For that, I apologize.

Unless you are one.

By miser, I mean someone who hoards resources without paying attention to what is lost in the hoarding. The items left unbought that would have improved quality of life or saved time are insignificant compared with what a miserly mind-set does to the miser and everyone else.

The miser’s focus is myopic and self-centered. As Charles Dickens pointed out in "A Christmas Carol," a miser cannot see "the true meaning of Christmas" — or of a life lived in community, to speak more to the point.

Think about the most generous person you know. A miser is the opposite of that.

But my column was less to castigate those focused on scarcity and self-interest than to point out that scarcity is best dealt with, and self-interest best served, when we remember we work together as a community.

Individually, we save for retirement by putting money into 401(k)s or IRAs, mutual funds or by playing the market. We pay into these accounts because we expect to reap the benefits later.

This kind of investment can provide a certain level of financial security, but it can’t lower the crime rates, ensure there are jobs available for American workers or make it safe for anyone to walk the streets at night.

Think of investment in schools as another kind of retirement fund.

If we want to live in the kind of society we can be proud of, we need to take responsibility for building it.

But if that perspective doesn’t help, consider this one.

If we want to be able to complain about children being noisy and sticky and whiny in public — if you want to be able to say "Get off my lawn!" from your porch without a twinge of guilt in your golden years — we need to give them every chance to succeed where it matters. Even the most curmudgeonly among us would admit that if we don’t teach children properly, we can’t expect them to act properly.

After all, "children are our future."

So let’s put our money where our platitudes are.

But not just money — they need our attention, too. Kids need tutors, mentors and opportunities to go new places and see things they wouldn’t otherwise see. Some of this need is filled by parents and some by teachers, but some can only be attended to by an entire community.

Political decisions, for instance, are the purview of the town, state or nation making them. We seem to invest collectively in decisions that affect our individual wallets, such as local board of education budget proposals, but less so in larger-issue legislation.

It’s hardly our fault. In the past few years, more legislation on education has been passed than most senators would know what to do with, let alone members of the public. And the sometimes-sinister implications of federal legislation are often difficult to ferret out even if we did have the time to read each sentence.

So among the pages and pages of legalese, here’s one thing that should concern us, from one bill passed several years ago — the so-called "No Child Left Behind" act: Federally funded schools, such as New Britain High, are required to submit the names and personal information of all students to military recruiters.

Next week, I’ll tell you why this should concern us.

5/23/08: Spend all we have for an educated society

2008-05-23T15:00:00.000-04:00

Town councils throughout central Connecticut are hard at work, proposing and taking votes on municipal budgets. Many towns have rejected proposed budgets at least once, and most residents, given the opportunity, have cited the cost in taxes as “too high,” suggesting that councils cut programs and services rather than passing the budgets. A large portion of municipal budgets goes to public education.

Boards of education and public schools in general have been targeted in much of the criticism leveled against budget proposals. Letters to the editor, calls to Sound Off and word on the street show that some people feel too much is being made of education spending.

I agree.

But where they want to cut immediate personal expenses, I want to increase them — increasing, in turn, our common investment in our schools and students and our ability to look to the future with hope rather than fear.

Cutting education budgets now will widen the income gap between the haves and have-nots a generation from now. It will encourage Americans’ ignorance of world affairs in a time when none of us can afford ignorance. We will become stupider.

We shouldn’t “budget” education. There’s no maximum amount of energy or effort we should spend in educating our students, and there’s no maximum amount of money we should spend.

There is a point after which more money won’t help students to learn better or teachers to teach better, but up until this point, I say we should spend all we have in the pursuit of creating an educated society. Everything else follows from this.

I’ve heard complaints from taxpayers who insist that if they don’t have children, they shouldn’t have to pay for public schools.

This argument sounds reasonable. It might actually be reasonable — if each taxpaying family lived in a self-contained biosphere.

In a world in which we interact with each other on a daily basis, however, and especially in a country as diverse in ethnic and social background, household income and opinion as America, we have to invest in each other in order to secure our personal futures. We can’t go it alone. It’s not only ill-advised, self-aggrandizing and miserly: It’s impossible.

It’s impossible for us to live together domestically — in our homes and America — without depending on one another, and it’s become just as impossible to isolate ourselves from the rest of the world, as well. We need education to be competitive in a global market — but more than that, as educated citizens, we are more prepared to encounter those from other cultures with a priority on understanding, communication and cooperation rather than on one-upmanship, fear or automatic aggression.

Left without the benefits of truly great public schools, students from lower-income areas don’t just disappear. They operate within our society just as the privileged do. If we want to cultivate a society we can be proud of, we need to attend to these members as well.

There are ways to invest in public education without breaking into our personal piggy banks. Teach for America, a nonprofit organization that places high-achieving college graduates in underserved communities across the nation, has recently been shown to have a greater positive impact than expected, considering that Teach for America teachers are novices and usually only spend two years in their assigned locations. The organization’s success is admirable.

But Teach for America teachers are volunteers, and though we can rely on them to teach our children well, they can’t bear the responsibility of an entire country. They can supplement our efforts, but they can’t replace them.

5/16/08: Needed: Whimsical, less dutiful, holidays

2008-05-16T15:00:00.000-04:00

I am anti-Mother’s Day.

Mother’s Day isn’t the only holiday I’m against. Father’s Day and Valentine’s Day are just as useless.

Normally what would follow this announcement is a polemic on how mothers, fathers and lovers should always be valued and honored; they shouldn’t need special days for us to show them we care. Every day should be Mother’s Day and Father’s Day and Valentine’s Day.

I actually think Mother’s Day should be abolished — and here’s why.

We should, of course, be mindful of each other, and several civic holidays remind us of those we might not normally think about: Veterans Day and Presidents Day, for instance, are set aside for the sake of those in the armed services or history to whom we owe a national debt. Obviously, mothers, fathers and significant others contribute to society, too, but the situation is different. We don’t need reminders to focus on them. They are around us, or else conspicuously absent, on a daily basis.

Their holidays’ celebrations reflect this. We don’t play taps, salute the flag or even take off work for Mother’s, Father’s or Valentine’s Day. We buy things instead. Moms get flowers or dinner out. Dads get neckties. Sweethearts get candy and to see each other dressed to the nines. We purchase, plan and prepare these gifts outside of work and outside of our roles as citizens — as we should. Personal relationships deserve personal recognition, not national attention.

Imagine a nationally choreographed celebration of Mother’s Day. The president might give a speech to a stadium full of people, probably mostly moms. The most-honored mothers, chosen for their fortitude and motherly acumen, may flank the president and select members of the Senate. The echo would reverberate through the stadium, making the speaker’s words difficult to hear, but the crowd would stand and cheer at every instance of the word “mother,” anyway.

Imagine how inappropriate it would be, in other words, to celebrate our moms the way we celebrate a political event or a civic remembrance of national heroes.

We honor each other in personal ways, daily. We kiss, hug, comfort, listen. We accommodate each other, make concessions, compromise. We trade our fantastic dreams of who we would or could be for the more mundane realities of dealing with other people — in families, at work, in the elevator or in line at the grocery store. We dutifully offer gifts to each other on appropriate occasions.

There’s nothing wrong with doing one’s duty. But Mother’s, Father’s and Valentine’s days, being expected and therefore obligatory, have become dutiful remembrances of dutiful people, a la Veteran’s Day or Memorial Day.

I propose we head in the opposite direction.

We need more whimsical holidays. I understand that whimsy is impossible to legislate — I don’t have any delusions of creating national policy — but I propose that we jettison Mother’s, Father’s and Valentine’s Days for a sense of wonder and glee. We could give the new holiday a name, if that would help. I might call mine Surprise Day.

On Surprise Day, which will fall on whatever day it seems most needed, I plan on devoting myself to generous and genuine giving, of all of those intangible indicators of affection that elude Hallmark no matter how “sincere” the card or odoriferous the candle. These are the things I wish to be mindful of — and apply to whomever needs them.

That’s mine. Now your turn: Here’s your chance to think outside the gift box. Let me know what you come up with.

5/9/08: 'Supporting our troops' is more than a slogan

2008-05-09T15:00:00.000-04:00

I do not have a “support our troops” sticker or magnet on my car. I never have, and I never will.
I have a lot of reasons for this, including the fact that I have never supported the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan. I realize that supporting the war and supporting the soldiers we send into it are two separate things but to this I say that putting a magnet on my car and actually actively supporting the soldiers are also two separate things.

Thus my main reason for not having a sticker — we need to stop saying we support the troops and actually do it.

We’ve had a lot of talk about supporting the troops, most of which is limited to sincerely thanking them for their sacrifice.

The word “sacrifice” implies that something has been freely given, offered on our behalf by strong and self-sustained individuals and, for the most part, the word accurately describes what soldiers in the Iraq, Afghanistan and other past wars have done. They have sacrificed.

But the word has become a euphemism for what our soldiers have really done.

It covers over the reality of the physical and emotional wounds they’ve sustained in battle.

It covers over the reality of wounds they have caused in the name of our country and how knowing they caused those wounds affects their lives after the war. Solemnly thanking them and their families, then sending them back to their homes has come to stand in for providing the support that they — that anyone, having made these kinds of sacrifices — need after being at war.

Thanking soldiers for their sacrifice has become a way for us to shirk our responsibilities to them.

It should not be “their sacrifice.” It needs to be “our sacrifice.” We sent them. In doing so, we have made ourselves responsible for them. And we have failed them.

We sent the “surge” of troops that was to win us the war in Iraq while we reduced funding for veterans and planned to collapse Bethesda Naval Hospital and Walter Reed National Army Medical Center into one facility. We seem unconcerned with providing for even the physical rehabilitation of wounded soldiers — this in a war with relatively low mortality, but more terrible injuries than ever.

Dr. Atul Gawande, in his book “Better,” writes about the dramatic drop in mortality rates in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, which had gone down to 10 percent — from the 24 percent mortality of Korea, Vietnam, and the Gulf War — thanks to doctors’ focus on perfecting existing in-the-field triage and surgical techniques. On-site surgeons traveling with the troops have been able to save more wounded soldiers by getting to them more quickly and immediately sending them on to better-equipped facilities once the most severe wounds have been controlled.

More people surviving war is a good outcome and one we should be happy with. Certainly those whose family members have gone to war and returned, in whatever condition, are grateful to have their loved ones back.

But as Dr. Gawande points out, the quality of life for the soldiers now returning to the States, some with injuries that would have been “unsurvivable in previous wars,” is still “an open question.”

“We have never faced having to rehabilitate people with such extensive wounds. We are only beginning to learn what to do to make a life worth living possible for them,” Dr. Gawande says.

It’s our job, as people who “support our troops,” to find out what can be done — and do it.

5/2/08: Bring logic, not faith, to political valuations

2008-05-02T15:00:00.000-04:00

Two weeks ago, I wrote a column on how political forums were not capable of revealing the true beliefs — particularly religious beliefs — or motivations of political candidates.

This week, I’d like to discuss why that’s fine with me.

The concern with candidates’ motivations, besides encouraging a reductive approach to religion, leads voters who feel they “really know” a candidate to value loyalty over critical judgment, and to trust rather than question.

We’ve seen the effects of this unquestioning trust during President Bush’s time in office. Evangelicals, especially, have associated Bush with evangelical Christianity. They have labeled him “a man of God,” citing his relatively frequent statements of, or allusions to, faith. From the beginning, the president has peppered his speeches with references to Christian traditional hymns and theology, purposefully linking himself and the Judeo-Christian God in the minds of Christians.

Associating oneself with the divine is a large claim, and one to which Bush may have no right. But my concern is less with the president’s intentions, or his own theoretical belief in himself as a man of God, than with the public’s reactions to the claim.

The main problem with associating a certain political candidate — or president — with God is not theological; it’s political. America is a democratic republic, where people are free to make choices about what to say, whether to own a gun, how or whom to worship. Citizens are not only free to make these choices: They’re required to.

But evangelical Christianity, like many religious traditions, puts an emphasis on submitting to the will of God, even when life, or God, doesn’t seem to make sense. The mystery of the divine expands to encompass the good and bad circumstances of life. We may credit God when we get a raise at work, or when the Red Sox win the World Series, or when we find a $20 bill on the street. We may question the will or goodness of God when we are stricken with illness, or the Patriots lose the Super Bowl, or when we misplace our keys. The work of the believer is to make sense of these events in a way that sustains faith in the essential goodness of God and to submit to the divine will.

The work of the American citizen, on the other hand, is to critically evaluate the actions and policies of political representatives and to demand change when those actions and policies don’t reflect the will of the people. We submit to laws, but we also influence them through the people we elect to legislate and execute them. There is no place in American democracy for the idea that any politician has a “divine right” to power. They answer to us.

The claim that any politician has a divine mandate confuses this issue, encouraging religious believers to abdicate their responsibility to think critically about the value or effects of the choices being made. Being a “man of God” allowed Bush to escape blame for many of the destructive environmental, economic and foreign-diplomatic policies his administration has enacted. He has not been held accountable to us in part because some assumed he was being held accountable to God.

Bush’s incorporation of religion into his speeches and public image has been more or less dismissed by the irreligious as simply another political gaff on his part. This is just as dangerous as ceding our duty to “divine right” thinking.

It’s our responsibility — and no one else’s — to hold our politicians accountable for their decisions.

4/25/08: Consider volunteering -- for your own sake

2008-04-25T15:00:00.000-04:00

We Americans are wasting our time. While most of us plop down in front of the TV after work, according to an article run recently in this paper, watching television only rates "middling" on the enjoyment scale. Those who eschew television in favor of reading "War and Peace" or other self-improvement schemes probably aren't rating those pursuits much higher. We're using our leisure time badly. We're not having as much fun as we could or should be having.

So let's do something about it.

Try volunteering.

There are a lot of reasons to volunteer for a cause you believe in, but most of them rely on an appeal to the unselfish, altruistic side of us that cares about duty and fellow-feeling and abstract concepts of generosity.

My argument for volunteering is purely selfish: Do it because you'll like it.

Volunteering clears the way for caring about what we really, actually care about. We may be at our jobs for purely practical reasons -- the salary or benefits, for instance -- but volunteering eliminates these obstacles to our enjoyment.

I call getting paid "an obstacle" with good reason: For decades, research into educational psychology has shown that when we're motivated by external rewards for something that should be intrinsically rewarding, we take less pleasure in it. University students asked to solve puzzles or write newspaper headlines, activities they found rewarding for their own sakes, were less likely to continue those activities after the experiment if they had been paid to do them. The reward interfered with their enjoyment of the activities, which became "required" instead of "fun."

This contradicts the impulse to throw money at problems -- problems such as teachers leaving beleaguered school districts. According to Public Agenda, a nonpartisan opinion research group, raising salaries -- a solution frequently offered as a panacea for teacher loss -- would not be most effective for retaining teachers. Instead, teachers who left cited "unreasonable standards and accountability" as their main reason for leaving.

Among the general population, a Families and Work Institute survey showed people rank "salary/wage" as 16th out of 20 reasons listed for taking a job.

We just don't care that much about money. In fact, money sometimes gets in the way of what we do care about.

But if you're looking for more mercenary reasons to sacrifice your leisure time to voluntary service, consider the following.

On a practical level, volunteering is an "in," in terms of networking. Getting to know the staff of any given agency will put your foot in the door, should you ever decide to make nonprofit work into a full-time career. In a time of limited employment options, that's nothing to sneeze at.

And while applying for a job requires a cover letter and resume highlighting accomplishments relevant to the position you hope to fill, volunteering for an organization you might be interested in working for usually takes no more than an inquiring phone call. Often, no previous experience is required. Almost any organization will train "on the job," giving you knowledge, skills and abilities that carry over into your professional or personal life.

Finally, the warm-and-fuzzy feeling of "giving something back" has become a cliche, but it's become one for a reason. I taught as a full-time volunteer for two years at an adult education school in Washington, D.C., though an Americorps-associated voluntary service program, and i can tell you -- there's nothing quite like watching one of your students walk up to the front of a crowded, happy room to accept a hard-won diploma.

It certainly can't be topped by a rerun of "Friends."

4/18/08: Candidates' true faith can't be seen in forum

2008-04-18T15:00:00.000-04:00

U.S. Sens. Clinton and Obama appeared at a "Compassion Forum" held at my alma mater, Messiah College, on Sunday. My connection with the school made me read the transcripts with interest -- and trepidation.

Messiah College does a good job, in my experience, helping students explore the complexities of how religious faith interacts with the secular world. Political campaigns, in my experience, do not.

Sunday's transcripts, unfortunately, tended to read more like a political campaign's attempt to deal with religion than like those of a theology class.

There were hot-topic questions: Each senator was asked about life beginning at conception, ad Obama was asked his view on evolution. These issues can serve as deal breakers for evangelicals who might otherwise wish to support a Democrat; along with gay marriage, they make up a three-issue litmus test for evangelical voters.

To end each senator's answer period, one of the hosts asked whether the candidates believed a discussion on personal religious convictions was appropriate for a political campaign.

The senators agreed the discussion was as relevant as a discussion of any other part of their personal lives. They both pointed to God as a source of guidance, as well, bringing up the question of how their beliefs would interact with potential decision-making as president.

I cringed.

The trouble with this, in my mind, is not that religion has no place in politics. I agree with both candidates -- that insofar as candidates' personal lives are relevant to their ability to govern, we should know all we can about them -- and I believe how people conduct their personal lives is a factor in judging character.

My problem with the forum is that it cannot do what it claims to do.

True faith can't be quantified or litmus-tested. It can't be spun. And it can only rarely be articulated.

This doesn't fit well with political campaigns, which tend to rely on simplification, spin and "staying on message" to prove one contender is better than the other. Instead of engaging in real, personal discussion on real, personal issues, candidates stay on guard, worried "the other guy" will go for the jugular at the first sign of vulnerability.

We can't really see who our candidates are, because they can't afford to show us.

In practical matters, this hardly makes a difference.

The public spotlight pointed at candidates during their run, and at the president after inauguration, provides -- or should provide -- a level of accountability in seeing that practical promises made are kept.

Either troops are withdrawn from Iraq or they aren't. The national deficit decreases, or it doesn't. We have universal health care, or lower taxes or stricter environmental regulations, or we don't. These are quantifiable results.

But turn that spotlight on matters of the heart, on the beliefs and motivations of a candidate, and we begin to see less clearly. If even our closest friends and relatives, if even aspects of ourselves, are a mystery to us, how could we expect to really know a presidential candidate?

Our criteria become reductive and simplified, turning what is and should be complex into a discrete, answerable series of questions. The answers to these questions do no more to tell us who a candidate really is or what she or he believes than the answers to what color socks she wears or what his first pet's name was -- and they may tell us less.

4/11/08: Bilingual education leads to higher scores

2008-04-11T15:00:00.000-04:00

When I was 10, my best friend was a Vietnamese immigrant named Van. She had been in America less than a year and transferred to my class at Northend Elementary in New Britain from Cromwell in the middle of the year. I was assigned to tutor her, and we became fast friends.

Our friendship grew despite the limitations of Van's English, which was broken and accented, and my Vietnamese, which was nonexistent. As she became more fluent, I became less so, altering my grammar and accent to match hers so she could understand me more easily. I probably looked pretty strange to outsiders, a little white girl running around speaking like a recent Asian immigrant.

But great friendships always look strange to outsiders, and this was a great friendship.

Over the next few years, I watched and listened as Van's English improved, and as she told me about her "special" classes in English as a Second Language, for which she was removed from regular middle school classes once a day. Her teacher, like most ESL teachers in America, had not been specifically trained to teach ESL and made do with innate creativity and what resources he could find. He must have worked with learners from several language groups; now having been an ESL teacher myself, I imagine he was hard-pressed to come up with lessons that dealt with the specific difficulties encountered by Polish speakers learning English while also attending to Lao or Spanish or Arabic speakers' needs.

Van worked hard, but even as a middle-schooler, I felt there must be a better way.

There is.

It's called bilingual education.

If Van and I had been offered bilingual education in, for example, Vietnamese and English, not only would she more quickly have learned English -- and content-based subjects such as science or math -- but I would also have been able to learn her language.

Vietnamese may not have the cultural cache of French of the economic clout of Chinese, and I'm not arguing that central Connecticut needs an English-Vietnamese bilingual magnet school. But learning any language in addition to our mother tongues expands our minds and helps us to think through problems from multiple perspectives.

And learning through bilingual education is the most effective way.

If scientific research will impress, consider that according to a major study released by the U.S. Department of Education in 1991, "the more schools developed children's native-language skills, the higher they scored academically over the long term in English." In Dade County, Fla., research completed in 2000 showed students enrolled in bilingual education scored higher in literacy than those in English immersion programs.

Common sense bears this out. Imagine being taken to a non-English-speaking country and put into a classroom with peers, then being expected to follow instructions, learn new material and make friends. Even with all your adult knowledge at your disposal, this task would be nearly impossible, and you would likely feel alienated and alone.

Now imagine that half your fellow students spoke your language, that the other half were learning it and that many of your classes would be held in your mother tongue. Learning would become cooperative and fun.

Teaching kids in their first language leads them to greater success in the long term; so does having them learn a second language. If bilingual education offers us the opportunity to do both effectively, why wouldn't we take advantage of that?

I was lucky. Even without bilingual education, I learned to love language and respect other cultures through my friend.

For the new generation, let's not rely on luck.

4/4/08: Olympics in China call for new approach

2008-04-04T15:00:00.000-04:00

In the summer of 2001, when Beijing was chosen to host this year's Summer Olympics, I was teaching at an English camp in the south of China.

When the announcement came through, my American teammates and I were startled out of our beds by what sounded like several million people cheering. Our students, middle and high school age, could hardly sit still through their English lessons the next day.

China is excited about the Olympics -- not just for the substantial economic opportunity the games represent, and not just as a way to gain "face" internationally, but because the Chinese people are proud of their country and eager to share it with the world.

Americans seem to be viewing the Beijing Olympics differently. Since the announcement, news coverage of the upcoming event has been filled with warnings of disappointment to come -- the world's top long-distance runner may not compete due to Beijing's notorious pollution -- and protests, which have made strange bedfellows of the Falun Gong, Christians, Steven Spielberg, President Bush and several Nobel Peace laureates, all railing against China's various human rights violations.

More recently, protests in Tibet have taken center stage, despite the efforts of the Dalai Lama and the Chinese government to limit the violence done by and to Chinese and Tibetans.

As Americans, we take principled stands against China's attitudes toward an independent Tibet, Taiwan, the Sudanese government, national democracy and its religious or political dissidents. We remember the Tiananmen Square protests. We make plans to further the cause of democracy, viewing the Olympics as a chance to make Red China into a free-speaking, free-market capitalist society.

We will convert them with American dollars, with international ill-will, by putting the thumbscrews to Chinese leaders, we seem to be saying. China's government will buckle under pressure.

The problem with our plans is that they are old ones. We have discussed human rights and trade agreements with Chinese premiers in each decade since President Nixon visited in 1972. The economic diplomacy supposed to bring democracy to China has done what it can: We have traded with China, allowed the country to import its inexpensively made goods, even arranged to shore up the American dollar by selling I-bonds to the Chinese government.

Our economies are inextricably linked; our political systems remain divergent. The combination of protest and money has brought us this far but will take us no further.

The Olympics call for new approach: listening. In August, thousands of foreigners will descend on the capital of the People's Republic at the same moment, for the same peaceful purpose. Thousands of Chinese who have never left their homeland will meet people from around the world, be exposed to new points of view and express their opinions -- on their lives, their work, their government -- to new friends. But this will only happen if we come as friends, willing to learn instead of lecture.

The people of China are eager to meet us, and in a country where so much is based on "guanxi" -- personal relationships -- simply acting decently should be our next step. The Chinese people themselves will create the change in their country. It will be the impression we make that determines whether they would want to be anything like us.

Protesters claim that the stakes are too high to let this opportunity for real change pass us by. As an American who lived among the open and generous people of China, I tend to agree.

3/28/08: The value in forming a more perfect union

2008-03-28T15:00:00.000-04:00

Recently, Michael Fryar, a lawyer formerly employed by the Connecticut Bar Association in New Britain, was fired, allegedly for beginning talks on unionizing the association.

Kevin Murphy, a representative of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Council 4, speaking on Fryar's behalf, claimed the firing was "clearly a case of anti-unionism."

My first response to this was -- no reference to Vice President Cheney intended -- "So?"

I can't remember the last time I heard about or from a union in central Connecticut, let alone about something any particular union had done for its workers. It seemed Fryar's reasons for wanting to form a union -- to have regularly scheduled performance evaluations -- was one only a lawyer would make.

Of course, the idea that an employee has been fired for trying to start a union is, itself, evidence a union is needed, since the purpose of unions is to prevent arbitrary and unilateral action by management -- action such as firing someone for talking about a union.

But once the union was formed, what is the likelihood it would do any actual good?

What do unions actually do, anyway?

My generation of 20somethings has a solid case for ignorance. Most of the picketing I've seen or heard of has been done by citizens protesting war, cruelty to animals or other ethical concerns -- such as the language used by an off-camera, off-work ESPN commentator -- rather than union workers on strike.

Until the Writer's Guild of America strike that put many of our favorite TV shows on hiatus sans heartwarming Christmas episodes, I had gone the better part of three decades not thinking about unions.

Even then, I grumbled along with millions of other Americans at not being able to watch my shows, rather than sympathizing with the demands of the writer, who seemed greedy of dishonest.

I'm not alone in my disdain for unions. According to a poll conducted by the Connecticut Business Industry Association, which represents more than 10,000 Connecticut businesses, 31 percent of respondents felt union leaders were "not trustworthy." An additional 20 percent were "not familiar" enough with the issue to respond. In fact, union leaders were considered more untrustworthy than political leaders, trial attorneys, the business community and employers. Connecticut seems to agree that unions are not the way to go.

But this is not good news. While the current presidential administration shifts funding from formerly federal social welfare programs to "faith-based initiatives" and encourages tax breaks for the wealthy, low-income Americans find themselves becoming poorer and balancing precariously above an increasingly frayed safety net.

If the government will not stand up for the rights of the working poor, many of whom are in manufacturing or retail jobs, someone else must; this is why unions exist.

Unlike entertainment industry strikes, which are high-profile, most union negotiations don't concern the rest of us directly; we can go on with our lives not knowing whether a local welder's union has dental insurance or whether postal workers get more or fewer paid vacation days than we do.

But the standard set for industry, especially the reinforcement of statutory rights -- laws set by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, workers compensation or unemployment or disability benefits, for example -- keep us safe, whether we know it or not. They keep us safe from unfair treatment or hazards on the job, as workers and they guarantee that as consumers, what we buy will not make us complicit to injustice.

That's worth paying attention to.

3/21/08: "Frivolous" fabulous if it replaces apathy

2008-03-21T15:00:00.000-04:00

A few years ago, filmmaker Michael Moore pulled a political stunt on his television show, "The Awful Truth": He ran a ficus tree for Congress. Or he tried.

Officials were skeptical, irritated and finally enraged by Moore's continued insistence that his plant, over the 25-or-older age requirement for representatives and born -- or grown -- in the United States, should be allowed to run, if the petition he passed around gathered enough signatures.

Bumper stickers and signs were produced by campaigners, and Moore took the ficus plant in question all over the district, speaking on its behalf and imploring people to "Vote Ficus." The campaign ran itself as though it were serious, and Moore never broke stride in his drive for votes.

But of course a ficus could never win a seat in the House. That wasn't the point. A vote for a ficus plant was a vote for something else, something new.

Americans, especially young people, seem apathetic when it comes to traditional ways to be involved in civic life and politics. When they do get involved -- as in the ficus-plant campaign, supported mainly by young voters -- their brand of participation is usually seen as annoying or frivolous.

Students protesting at Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C., last year, over the appointment of a university president they considered unfamiliar with deaf culture -- Gallaudet being the primary school for deaf students across the country -- were accused by pundits and citizens of not living in "the real world," where people have to put up with circumstances they don't like. The rage expressed by some people at these students, who participated in sit-ins that shut down the campus for weeks, was incredible.

And badly placed. Gallaudet students, the majority of whom are deaf, could hardly be accused of living in a dream world; the challenges they faced every day in a hearing world were likely more significant than a hearing person could understand. The anger against the protesters said more about those hurling insults than about the students.

Many Americans are disillusioned with "the system" -- of governmental politics-as-usual, corporate white-collared, cubicled life, of our societal focus on individualism and material wealth. The frustrated usually fall into two categories: those who feel that our responsibility is to buckle down, accept reality and do our duty, and those who protest against what they feel are grievous errors but cannot offer reasonable solutions or alternatives.

But a third category is emerging: People who want to change the system by creative thinking, by reinterpreting the boundaries and rules that frustrate them, who refuse to be disillusioned.

The young people supporting "Ficus for Congress" did not sit at home ignoring the issues or concerns of their district, despite their unhappiness with its representative candidates. The students at Gallaudet did not resign themselves to complaining to friends in the cafeteria and accepting the decisions of the powers that be. They expressed their opinions, made their issues known and their voices were heard. This is democracy.

Recently, the people of Brattleboro, Vt., passed a resolution indicting President Bush and Vice President Cheney for violating the Constitution. The resolution will have no effect, as the town has no legal authority to arrest the president or vice president should they ever visit Brattleboro, and the citizens of Brattleboro have been accused of wasting taxpayers' money -- that is, their own money -- of being puppets in a left-wing conspiracy, of not living in "the real world."

I say good for them.