Listen: we’re going to have a nightmare on that Green this winter if something isn’t done.
Read his full column here:
nhregister.com
Showing posts with label Beach columns. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Beach columns. Show all posts
Monday, October 6, 2008
Monday, July 14, 2008
Beach on Mr. Leeney
Robert J. Leeney was a living link to the legacy of New Haven
This old Elm City won’t be quite the same without Robert J. Leeney living amongst us and writing about it all, reminding us of our storied past.
When I saw the headline Monday morning announcing his death, at age 92, I know I shared with many others in this community a stabbing sensation, a temporary loss of breath.
And I had a personal pang of regret, because for the past six months, I had tried to take my old editor out for lunch in his famous stomping ground, downtown New Haven.
When I met Bob Leeney in 1977, I was a cub reporter and he was the New Haven Register’s editor. I quickly realized he was fair, ethical and a calming presence in a business that has far too few such people.
He helped me learn, as a newcomer to this city, what a special place it is and has been through the past centuries.
In more recent times, after the Register moved from Orange Street to Sargent Drive and Leeney became editor emeritus, it was comforting to see him come in once a week to file his Saturday column. He was an important link to this newspaper’s history and to the community’s history.
His column focused on this. As a member of the New Haven Museum and Historical Society and the Friends of the Grove Street Cemetery, he treasured the city’s legacy and taught us to value it, too.
In his farewell column of April 21, 2007, Leeney characterized the museum and society as "an institution I consider a key to a vital, progressive and self-improving city, a place for preserving mutual memories, which are based on affection and which may help guide a community from the past to a productive future."
In that column, he noted he had become a Register reporter in 1940, when Franklin D. Roosevelt was president and John W. Murphy was mayor.
"Everybody shopped downtown for everything," he wrote, "and a wide web of trolley car tracks interlocked at the Green."
But 67 years later, he was penning his final regular Saturday column because, he told us in his lead, it’s important to listen to your doctor’s advice.
Four years before that, he had written a beautifully evocative column about his heart attack.
Because it was a mild attack, he was able to describe the experience minute by minute, from the first symptoms he felt in the kitchen of his Bethany home to the ambulance ride and the procedures at the hospital.
This is how he recounted being put on the hospital table: "I found myself like a wounded knight upon his narrow shield, arms and elbows propped outside as the cardiac crew moved in."
He concluded what he called "this adventure of the heart" by recalling his return home:
"I went to bed early. A full moon, moving west above our trees, thrust its long silver rays through the window and onto the pillow where for so many years my dear wife, Anne, had slumbered.
"I touched the pillow where the moonlight and the memory fused and whispered, ‘Much ado about nothing, old girl’ — and went to sleep."
Is it humanly possible to read those lines with dry eyes?
Occasionally I called his house to quote him for a news story or ask about a contact. After Katharine Hepburn died in June 2003, I knew he was the man to call because he had covered the Shubert Theater for decades and met its stars. Sure enough, he had a ready recollection of interviewing her.
"She talked to you directly, with the forthrightness one would expect," he said. "But she was easy to talk to."
Last February, when I again called upon him for input on a news story, I asked him how he was doing. Since he was forever an optimist, I was struck by his tone: "I’m housebound; I can’t drive anymore. I can’t say I’ll meet you downtown tomorrow at 2."
He was speaking hypothetically; we hadn’t been discussing a get-together. But after I hung up the phone, I decided I should follow-up and offer to drive him downtown for lunch. I realized we had never eaten a meal together. I also wanted to buy a copy of his book, "Habitations," a collection of his columns.
I made three attempts to see him. The first time he said he had to see his doctor; the second and third times he said he didn’t feel well enough to go out.
He concluded that final conversation by laughing at himself, saying, "I’m a sick old geezer!"
We agreed we would keep trying. But I wondered if I would ever see him again.
During an interview shortly before he announced he was ending his Saturday column, he modestly said of his career, "I just had an amazing run of luck."
And we were very lucky to have him here.
Randall Beach can be reached at rbeach@nhregister.com or 789-5766.
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
Beach on nuts (and bolts)
Hardware store owner calling it quits after 33 years in Elm City
AFTER 33 YEARS SPENT selling paint, nuts and bolts and mouse traps, as well as making thousands of keys, Len Mullally finally has had enough.
He’d been thinking about closing down his Bunnell Paint & Hardware for many months, but it was the heat, his age (74) and a conversation about a week ago that convinced him it was time.
"One of my customers told me he was looking for a rent, to open a cafe maybe," Mullally said. "He’s not really committed, but …"
Mullally and I agreed coffee shops do well in New Haven, far better than hardware stores.
After thinking about that exchange with his customer, Mullally contacted his landlord, Joseph Reagan, then posted a big sign in the front window of the store at Pearl and Orange streets: "Going out of business sale."
When I saw the sign last week, I felt sadness but not surprise. Everybody knows independent hardware stores are in trouble in this country, along with many other small businesses.
I read the other signs: "For sale: wood chipper, new cash register" and "Buy two, get one free, 20 percent off, except keys" and "Shoplifters: you are on camera!"
Mullally wasn’t overjoyed at the prospect of being interviewed and declined to pose for a photograph. But he gradually warmed up as I asked him about the history of the place and his own history.
The radio in his store was playing that old chestnut by Tommy James and the Shondells, "I Think We’re Alone Now," but it wasn’t true; there was one customer on the premises, buying duct tape, drop cloths, paint and sandpaper.
His name was Matt Higbee and he was upset about that sign in the window. "It’s very convenient for me. I’m fixing up an old house on Edwards Street. I’ll miss having a place around the corner."
He looked around. "I like old hardware stores, the sound of the door. I’ve always been able to find everything I needed here."
Mullally assured him he would be staying open at least through the summer as he weeds out his inventory. "Anybody want to buy 500 boxes of nuts and bolts?" Mullally asked us.
Higbee and I were silent. Mullally said, "You know what it is? Nobody’s got any money."
Mullally lit a cigarette as Higbee departed. We went back to sit in his small office, a space with a portable fan and dozens of wall photos of his kids, grandkids, Mullally bowling and a team shot of the Little League team he used to coach in Hamden. There was also this sign: "I’m the boss."
He told me the store got started on State Street, circa 1951. About a year later, George Bunnell and his wife moved to Orange Street. They brought with them their two full-time workers. One of them was Frankie Mongillo.
When Mullally bought the business in 1975, he kept Mongillo. He couldn’t afford to keep them both. Last year he realized he could no longer afford to keep Mongillo either.
"He was ready to go," Mullally said. "I don’t think he was offended. He’s 87 or 88."
And now it’s time for Mullally to follow Mongillo into retirement, although he admits his wife, Jean, might not like him being underfoot at their home in Hamden.
"For the last five years I’ve just been working for spending money, just to keep busy," he said. "It just got to be too much of a grind — and it’s hot."
Although Mullally had several other fans in use around the store as well as two air conditioners, he noted, "They don’t work like they used to. They’re telling me: ‘Get out!’"
Sure, he blames the ever-bigger suburban hardware stores for luring away customers, but he added, "I used to have a lot of industrial accounts and Yale. As they turn over, you lose contacts, you lose the business."
He has two sons and a daughter, but they’re not hankering to run a hardware store.
He lit another cigarette. Nobody had walked into the store during the 40 minutes we’d been talking. "I’ve been kidding myself for a while," he said. "If I felt good and strong, I’d keep working for peanuts. It’s not worth it anymore."
He regrets he won’t be able to bowl during his retirement. He had to give it up a couple of years ago when gout began to affect his hands.
When I asked him about his feelings for the store, he said, "I’ll miss it, yeah. Good people. One thing I’m really proud of: I turned this from a paint and wallpaper store to a paint and hardware store. The first week I turned away 50-100 people who wanted keys made."
We tried to think of any hardware stores left in New Haven. Hull’s Hardware survives, as does Whalley Hardware.
"It’s the same old story," Mullally said. "People don’t miss you till you’re not there."
Randall Beach can be reached at rbeach@nhregister.com or 789-5766.
Monday, June 23, 2008
Beach on Cohen on anger and the positives of pizza
My old buddy and office mate Gabriel Cohen came back to New Haven Tuesday to read from his new book about Buddhism and divorce and to talk about anger.
Cohen gazed at the two dozen people who had assembled in the basement of Labyrinth Books and remarked, "This is like a time machine for me."
He lived in this town from 1982 to 1988, writing for the New Haven Advocate and playing guitar for the popular band Valley of Kings. For a small part of that time, he and I worked together at the Advocate, which was then headquartered in a small building on Chapel Street. We shared the place with a herd of mice.
"It’s condos now," he said of our old office. "Everything looks different around here."
He noted with relief that the Anchor and Copper Kitchen restaurants have survived, along with Toad’s Place. He lamented the passing of the Yankee Doodle Coffee Shop.
But Cohen, who lives in Brooklyn, N.Y. and uses the first name Gabriel instead of Gabe, wasn’t there to reminisce about New Haven; he needed to promote his latest book, "Storms Can’t Hurt the Sky: A Buddhist Path Through Divorce."
Cohen said he would have stared in disbelief "if you’d told me five years ago that I’d write a book about Buddhism and divorce.
"Being divorced is an odd identity," he told us.
He opened the book at the first page and began to read: "At seven in the evening on June 25, 2005, my wife suddenly got up and walked out the door.
"She never came back.
"It was the worst thing that ever happened to me.
"It was also, oddly enough, one of the best."
Cohen’s memoir of that time is a search for meaning amid great heartbreak and, yes, anger.
But first in that introduction he recounts writing an article for the Advocate about a program founded by Dr. Bernie Siegel, author of "Love, Medicine and Miracles."
While Cohen was interviewing patients with cancer and other life-threatening illnesses in Siegel’s support group, some of them told Cohen they considered their diseases a gift. They had learned to focus on what was truly meaningful and important in their lives.
Cohen didn’t get it at the time. But he said when his marriage fell apart and he began to suffer, he started to understand.
"I don’t think of myself as a particularly angry person," he wrote in the first chapter, entitled "Punching Holes." But he said as his marriage deteriorated, "I got angry. Big time."
During their arguments about searching for a new apartment in New York, he found himself shouting at her, storming out of the room and slamming the door.
Shortly afterward, she walked out and didn’t come back.
"There’s a lot of anger that goes along with this experience of divorce," Cohen told us. "I was cursing my wife and her friends and her therapist. But it wasn’t doing me any good."
Cohen added, "If you are angry at your spouse or friend or kid or mother or father, the problem is not that person. The problem is your anger." And the result of your yelling, he noted, is almost always something negative.
How did he come to realize this? It came about by using Buddhism as a practical method for easing one’s suffering. And it started when, amidst his troubles with his wife, he spotted a small sign on a bulletin board: "How to Deal With Anger." It was for a talk about Buddhism.
Cohen was very skeptical, but it cost just $10 for two hours.
After he pursued this path, he said he learned to be more patient, more compassionate and less angry.
An example: one day while he was trying to write at his Brooklyn apartment, a guy parked a Lexus nearby. Minutes later, the car’s alarm sounded, and it kept on going. Cohen got so angry that he put a note on the windshield, laced with obscenities.
But when he returned to his desk, Cohen thought about the anger he had unleashed and how little good it had done. So he replaced the angry note with this one: "Excuse me, your car alarm needs to be fixed."
Cohen concluded his talk by saying, "Three years ago I couldn’t see anything good about my divorce. But now, here I am. I was able to transform a totally negative experience into something positive."
Wow. The kid went and got wisdom. He’s telling the rest of us how to deal with our anger, too.
After his reading, a few of us who had known Cohen in his New Haven days took him out for pizza. And although we had to wait 1½ hours at Sally’s, it was OK. We got into a zen state. We talked, told stories and turned a negative into a positive.
Randall Beach can be reached at rbeach@nhregister.com or 789-5766.
Cohen gazed at the two dozen people who had assembled in the basement of Labyrinth Books and remarked, "This is like a time machine for me."
He lived in this town from 1982 to 1988, writing for the New Haven Advocate and playing guitar for the popular band Valley of Kings. For a small part of that time, he and I worked together at the Advocate, which was then headquartered in a small building on Chapel Street. We shared the place with a herd of mice.
"It’s condos now," he said of our old office. "Everything looks different around here."
He noted with relief that the Anchor and Copper Kitchen restaurants have survived, along with Toad’s Place. He lamented the passing of the Yankee Doodle Coffee Shop.
But Cohen, who lives in Brooklyn, N.Y. and uses the first name Gabriel instead of Gabe, wasn’t there to reminisce about New Haven; he needed to promote his latest book, "Storms Can’t Hurt the Sky: A Buddhist Path Through Divorce."
Cohen said he would have stared in disbelief "if you’d told me five years ago that I’d write a book about Buddhism and divorce.
"Being divorced is an odd identity," he told us.
He opened the book at the first page and began to read: "At seven in the evening on June 25, 2005, my wife suddenly got up and walked out the door.
"She never came back.
"It was the worst thing that ever happened to me.
"It was also, oddly enough, one of the best."
Cohen’s memoir of that time is a search for meaning amid great heartbreak and, yes, anger.
But first in that introduction he recounts writing an article for the Advocate about a program founded by Dr. Bernie Siegel, author of "Love, Medicine and Miracles."
While Cohen was interviewing patients with cancer and other life-threatening illnesses in Siegel’s support group, some of them told Cohen they considered their diseases a gift. They had learned to focus on what was truly meaningful and important in their lives.
Cohen didn’t get it at the time. But he said when his marriage fell apart and he began to suffer, he started to understand.
"I don’t think of myself as a particularly angry person," he wrote in the first chapter, entitled "Punching Holes." But he said as his marriage deteriorated, "I got angry. Big time."
During their arguments about searching for a new apartment in New York, he found himself shouting at her, storming out of the room and slamming the door.
Shortly afterward, she walked out and didn’t come back.
"There’s a lot of anger that goes along with this experience of divorce," Cohen told us. "I was cursing my wife and her friends and her therapist. But it wasn’t doing me any good."
Cohen added, "If you are angry at your spouse or friend or kid or mother or father, the problem is not that person. The problem is your anger." And the result of your yelling, he noted, is almost always something negative.
How did he come to realize this? It came about by using Buddhism as a practical method for easing one’s suffering. And it started when, amidst his troubles with his wife, he spotted a small sign on a bulletin board: "How to Deal With Anger." It was for a talk about Buddhism.
Cohen was very skeptical, but it cost just $10 for two hours.
After he pursued this path, he said he learned to be more patient, more compassionate and less angry.
An example: one day while he was trying to write at his Brooklyn apartment, a guy parked a Lexus nearby. Minutes later, the car’s alarm sounded, and it kept on going. Cohen got so angry that he put a note on the windshield, laced with obscenities.
But when he returned to his desk, Cohen thought about the anger he had unleashed and how little good it had done. So he replaced the angry note with this one: "Excuse me, your car alarm needs to be fixed."
Cohen concluded his talk by saying, "Three years ago I couldn’t see anything good about my divorce. But now, here I am. I was able to transform a totally negative experience into something positive."
Wow. The kid went and got wisdom. He’s telling the rest of us how to deal with our anger, too.
After his reading, a few of us who had known Cohen in his New Haven days took him out for pizza. And although we had to wait 1½ hours at Sally’s, it was OK. We got into a zen state. We talked, told stories and turned a negative into a positive.
Randall Beach can be reached at rbeach@nhregister.com or 789-5766.
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Beach on Twain House
Things are tough all over, prices for everything are going through the roof, but that doesn’t mean they have to close down the Mark Twain House.
Do they?
A couple of weeks ago it seemed the end was near for this Hartford landmark, one of my favorite places on earth.
When I picked up The New York Times June 3 and read this shrine "may be forced to close because it is running out of money," I nearly choked on my Cheerios.
Yes, and the headline read: "Rumors of demise not so greatly exaggerated." That, as all Twainiacs know, refers to Twain once being quoted: "Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated."
Fortunately, the Times report turned out to be exaggerated, since its publication spurred contributions from corporations and anxious individuals.
But when I saw that headline, I knew it was time to get back up there and see what the heck was going on.
The last time I was in that whimsical rambling house, I had the great fortune of spending a few precious minutes sitting on the veranda with another great American humorist I admire as much as Twain: Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
Vonnegut was in town to address a large audience on the evils of war and the idiocy of George W. Bush. This was in May 2003, and the Iraq War was in its infancy.
The second wonderful thing that happened that spring day was getting a chance to accompany Vonnegut for a tour of Twain’s house, especially the fabulous billiards room on the third floor.
There, friends, is where it all happened. Twain spent many fine hours up in that room between 1874 and 1891, entertaining his gentleman friends, smoking cigars with them, drinking with them, playing billiards and, when the place cleared out, sitting down in the corner to write novels.
What did he write in that corner? Oh, merely "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer," "The Prince and the Pauper," "Life on the Mississippi," "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court" and "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn."
Vonnegut had a grand old time exploring the house, which he called "sacred." When he reached the billiards room, he was as awestruck as any tourist. He also bounced back from a Twain House official’s refusal to let him shoot a game of billiards.
"I like that room, I tell you!" Vonnegut said as he departed.
He’s gone now, having joined Twain in humorists’ heaven. Maybe the two of them are looking down at the house, appalled by its financial state.
I spent a lot of time in that room last Wednesday, staring at the notes scattered on the floor and writing table, a careful arrangement evoking Twain’s work habits.
Augusta Girard, a Twain House representative, told me as we stood there, "He liked to be away from distractions. He originally tried writing downstairs (where his daughters, Clara, Jean and Susy, were home-schooled), but he found it too noisy."
And his wife, Olivia, hated cigar smoke. Twain tried to pacify her: "I’ll only smoke one cigar at a time."
During my reverie in that room, a group of school kids came in. Clearly, they had read Twain and were impressed by the setting.
"That’s why it would be a terrible shame to close," Girard said. "So many students come through here." (I wondered why my daughters, who are in the New Haven public schools, have never had a field trip there.)
Later I did a quick walk through a massive nearby building that opened in 2003: The Education and Visitor Center, part of the Twain complex.
It’s got fancy auditoriums and galleries. But it’s a big reason why the house now finds itself in trouble.
The center’s construction cost totaled $19 million, twice what had been projected. The Twain organization, which has reduced its staff from 49 to 17 because the budget is about $200,000 in the red, still owes nearly $5 million on the loan for that construction.
With energy costs soaring, the annual utility bill for the giant center is now $300,000, three times what it was a couple of years ago.
"It was needed," said Jeffrey Nichols, executive director of the Mark Twain House & Museum when I asked him about the center. "But certainly it was too expensive. Maybe it was a little too grand."
Nichols said that since the Times story ran, donations have saved the house from imminent closure. "But it’s still a serious situation. It’ll take years to get where we want to be."
He noted 68,000 people visited the house last year and Twain remains a beloved writer.
If you want to help stave off the unthinkable, go to www.marktwainhouse.org.
Randall Beach can be reached at rbeach@nhregister.com or 789-5766.
Do they?
A couple of weeks ago it seemed the end was near for this Hartford landmark, one of my favorite places on earth.
When I picked up The New York Times June 3 and read this shrine "may be forced to close because it is running out of money," I nearly choked on my Cheerios.
Yes, and the headline read: "Rumors of demise not so greatly exaggerated." That, as all Twainiacs know, refers to Twain once being quoted: "Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated."
Fortunately, the Times report turned out to be exaggerated, since its publication spurred contributions from corporations and anxious individuals.
But when I saw that headline, I knew it was time to get back up there and see what the heck was going on.
The last time I was in that whimsical rambling house, I had the great fortune of spending a few precious minutes sitting on the veranda with another great American humorist I admire as much as Twain: Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
Vonnegut was in town to address a large audience on the evils of war and the idiocy of George W. Bush. This was in May 2003, and the Iraq War was in its infancy.
The second wonderful thing that happened that spring day was getting a chance to accompany Vonnegut for a tour of Twain’s house, especially the fabulous billiards room on the third floor.
There, friends, is where it all happened. Twain spent many fine hours up in that room between 1874 and 1891, entertaining his gentleman friends, smoking cigars with them, drinking with them, playing billiards and, when the place cleared out, sitting down in the corner to write novels.
What did he write in that corner? Oh, merely "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer," "The Prince and the Pauper," "Life on the Mississippi," "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court" and "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn."
Vonnegut had a grand old time exploring the house, which he called "sacred." When he reached the billiards room, he was as awestruck as any tourist. He also bounced back from a Twain House official’s refusal to let him shoot a game of billiards.
"I like that room, I tell you!" Vonnegut said as he departed.
He’s gone now, having joined Twain in humorists’ heaven. Maybe the two of them are looking down at the house, appalled by its financial state.
I spent a lot of time in that room last Wednesday, staring at the notes scattered on the floor and writing table, a careful arrangement evoking Twain’s work habits.
Augusta Girard, a Twain House representative, told me as we stood there, "He liked to be away from distractions. He originally tried writing downstairs (where his daughters, Clara, Jean and Susy, were home-schooled), but he found it too noisy."
And his wife, Olivia, hated cigar smoke. Twain tried to pacify her: "I’ll only smoke one cigar at a time."
During my reverie in that room, a group of school kids came in. Clearly, they had read Twain and were impressed by the setting.
"That’s why it would be a terrible shame to close," Girard said. "So many students come through here." (I wondered why my daughters, who are in the New Haven public schools, have never had a field trip there.)
Later I did a quick walk through a massive nearby building that opened in 2003: The Education and Visitor Center, part of the Twain complex.
It’s got fancy auditoriums and galleries. But it’s a big reason why the house now finds itself in trouble.
The center’s construction cost totaled $19 million, twice what had been projected. The Twain organization, which has reduced its staff from 49 to 17 because the budget is about $200,000 in the red, still owes nearly $5 million on the loan for that construction.
With energy costs soaring, the annual utility bill for the giant center is now $300,000, three times what it was a couple of years ago.
"It was needed," said Jeffrey Nichols, executive director of the Mark Twain House & Museum when I asked him about the center. "But certainly it was too expensive. Maybe it was a little too grand."
Nichols said that since the Times story ran, donations have saved the house from imminent closure. "But it’s still a serious situation. It’ll take years to get where we want to be."
He noted 68,000 people visited the house last year and Twain remains a beloved writer.
If you want to help stave off the unthinkable, go to www.marktwainhouse.org.
Randall Beach can be reached at rbeach@nhregister.com or 789-5766.
Beach on gas
Just in case you’ve forgotten, here’s 6 tips to save gas
Thoughts that floated in and around my brain Thursday while I was doing my favorite thing: filling up my gas tank, this time for $4.35 per gallon (the cheapest stuff offered) at the Mobil station on Sargent Drive.
Why do they keep insisting I punch in my ZIP code before ripping me off?
Why do they always ask me if I want a car wash? Do they think I want to pay them even more?
Will I break 50 bucks here? Maybe not; when I arrived, I already had a quarter of a tank in my trusty rusty 1991 Toyota Camry wagon.
Why are drivers still driving like maniacs, when anybody with half a brain knows by now that if you slow down, you save gas?
Watching the awful toll keep rising on the pump, I recalled a recent news story by CNNMoney.com. The lead: "With all the worry over fuel prices, you’d think drivers would do whatever they can not to waste gas. But look around..."
Yeah, look around at the cars racing past you. When I drove to Hartford Wednesday, I tried averaging 60 mph and was swarmed over by speedsters. When will they ever learn?
The CNN story listed "six ways you’re wasting gas." I print them here, in case anybody wants to think about slowing down and saving gas/money.
1. Racing away from green lights: When the light turns green, you don’t have to take off as quickly as possible. The more you press down on your gas pedal, the more gas you’re pumping into the engine.
2. Racing up to red lights: When you see a red light up ahead, lay off the gas sooner.
3. Confusing the highway with a speedway: The faster you go, the more air your vehicle has to push out of the way. According to tests by Consumer Reports, driving at 75 mph instead of 65 mph increases fuel use by 3-5 miles per gallon, depending on the vehicle.
4. Bumper-buzzing: Oh, can’t you relate to this one? Haven’t you often endured that irritating experience of having some jerk on your back? Bumper-buzzing is the term CNNMoney.com used for tailgating. As the story noted, it’s unsafe as well as a waste of gas. The tailgater, forced to brake repeatedly in response to the car directly ahead of him, has to keep accelerating over and over to get back up to speed to resume tailgating.
5. Driving standing still: Idling burns about a half-mile worth of gas every minute. If you’re waiting for someone to run in and out of a convenience store, turn off the engine.
6. Short hops: For very short trips, do something revolutionary: Walk!
If you don’t want to walk, you could ride a bike.
In case you haven’t noticed, bicycles are all over New Haven, and more of them join the traffic daily. The reason is obvious; those tolling gas pumps. The folks at Devil’s Gear, who now have two bike shops in New Haven, say the list of customers wanting tune-ups or repairs keeps growing.
Devil’s Gear helped organize today’s Bike to Work Friday. Maybe you saw some of them this morning outside New Haven City Hall, sharing breakfast and chatting about commuting routes.
I confess, I drove to work today as usual. My wife, who rides her bike from our East Rock home to her downtown office, is always telling me that I should be doing the same.
And I always tell her my job sometimes requires that I get to an unexpected destination rather quickly and that it wouldn’t be prudent to arrive in a sweatball state.
Yeah, yeah, Excuses, excuses.
My final bill at that pump Friday: $50.45. D’oh!
‰‰‰
This just in: Susan Dillman reports she has published a cookbook to raise money for her friend Amy O’Neill, 50, of Hamden, who was born with a progressive skin disease, epidermolysis bullosa.
O’Neill has endured more than 150 operations, but many of her medical expenses are not covered by insurance. Dillman and others volunteer their time to raise money for her. Their latest effort, the book "Amy’s Kitchen," will be selling for $15 as of Saturday at Hamden stores, including the Whitneyville Food Center, Books & Co., Nicolino’s, the French Door and Dava.
For more information, visit www.amyoneill.org.
Randall Beach can be reached at rbeach@nhregister.com or 789-5766.
Thoughts that floated in and around my brain Thursday while I was doing my favorite thing: filling up my gas tank, this time for $4.35 per gallon (the cheapest stuff offered) at the Mobil station on Sargent Drive.
Why do they keep insisting I punch in my ZIP code before ripping me off?
Why do they always ask me if I want a car wash? Do they think I want to pay them even more?
Will I break 50 bucks here? Maybe not; when I arrived, I already had a quarter of a tank in my trusty rusty 1991 Toyota Camry wagon.
Why are drivers still driving like maniacs, when anybody with half a brain knows by now that if you slow down, you save gas?
Watching the awful toll keep rising on the pump, I recalled a recent news story by CNNMoney.com. The lead: "With all the worry over fuel prices, you’d think drivers would do whatever they can not to waste gas. But look around..."
Yeah, look around at the cars racing past you. When I drove to Hartford Wednesday, I tried averaging 60 mph and was swarmed over by speedsters. When will they ever learn?
The CNN story listed "six ways you’re wasting gas." I print them here, in case anybody wants to think about slowing down and saving gas/money.
1. Racing away from green lights: When the light turns green, you don’t have to take off as quickly as possible. The more you press down on your gas pedal, the more gas you’re pumping into the engine.
2. Racing up to red lights: When you see a red light up ahead, lay off the gas sooner.
3. Confusing the highway with a speedway: The faster you go, the more air your vehicle has to push out of the way. According to tests by Consumer Reports, driving at 75 mph instead of 65 mph increases fuel use by 3-5 miles per gallon, depending on the vehicle.
4. Bumper-buzzing: Oh, can’t you relate to this one? Haven’t you often endured that irritating experience of having some jerk on your back? Bumper-buzzing is the term CNNMoney.com used for tailgating. As the story noted, it’s unsafe as well as a waste of gas. The tailgater, forced to brake repeatedly in response to the car directly ahead of him, has to keep accelerating over and over to get back up to speed to resume tailgating.
5. Driving standing still: Idling burns about a half-mile worth of gas every minute. If you’re waiting for someone to run in and out of a convenience store, turn off the engine.
6. Short hops: For very short trips, do something revolutionary: Walk!
If you don’t want to walk, you could ride a bike.
In case you haven’t noticed, bicycles are all over New Haven, and more of them join the traffic daily. The reason is obvious; those tolling gas pumps. The folks at Devil’s Gear, who now have two bike shops in New Haven, say the list of customers wanting tune-ups or repairs keeps growing.
Devil’s Gear helped organize today’s Bike to Work Friday. Maybe you saw some of them this morning outside New Haven City Hall, sharing breakfast and chatting about commuting routes.
I confess, I drove to work today as usual. My wife, who rides her bike from our East Rock home to her downtown office, is always telling me that I should be doing the same.
And I always tell her my job sometimes requires that I get to an unexpected destination rather quickly and that it wouldn’t be prudent to arrive in a sweatball state.
Yeah, yeah, Excuses, excuses.
My final bill at that pump Friday: $50.45. D’oh!
‰‰‰
This just in: Susan Dillman reports she has published a cookbook to raise money for her friend Amy O’Neill, 50, of Hamden, who was born with a progressive skin disease, epidermolysis bullosa.
O’Neill has endured more than 150 operations, but many of her medical expenses are not covered by insurance. Dillman and others volunteer their time to raise money for her. Their latest effort, the book "Amy’s Kitchen," will be selling for $15 as of Saturday at Hamden stores, including the Whitneyville Food Center, Books & Co., Nicolino’s, the French Door and Dava.
For more information, visit www.amyoneill.org.
Randall Beach can be reached at rbeach@nhregister.com or 789-5766.
Monday, May 12, 2008
Random acts of violence link a tale of two city neighborhoods
It isn’t often that people from “both sides of the tracks” or in this case, both sides of the hill, sit down together to air their concerns, hopes and fears.
But it happened Monday night. The setting was a crowded cafeteria at Celentano School, which sits on the edge of Prospect Hill, the dividing line between New Haven’s wealthy East Rock neighborhood and the much-less-wealthy Newhallville.
The meeting was called because six days earlier on Loomis Place, a block of affluent residents, a 55-year-old woman named Julia O’Sullivan was attacked in a kitchen by three young males.
They beat her over the head and broke her hands with a baseball bat, then tied her up and ransacked the house. After they fled in her car, she managed to free herself and call police.
Shortly afterward, Yale University police officers, working with city police, located her car on Dixwell Avenue and arrested a suspect nearby. A few days later, city police arrested a second youth; a third is still being sought.
I live three blocks from that house on Loomis Place. I was as stunned as my neighbors to think of such a vicious crime taking place so close to us.
The term “home invasion” is now part of our lexicon. The phrase took hold last summer when two men got into the Petit home in Cheshire and killed two girls and their mother. This led to reinforced house locks and new alarm systems.
Here we go again. Nobody died this time, but the seeming randomness of this latest invasion and the brutality of the attack, took many of us back to images of Cheshire.
How can we feel safe in our homes? What can we do to protect ourselves? These were the two questions that dominated the meeting in that cafeteria.
Acting Police Chief Stephanie Redding faced 100 anxious, angry residents. She handled the situation with aplomb, delivering reality checks.
“We are not going to police our way out of this,” she said. “We have arrested and arrested and arrested. Things are changing. I can’t cover the whole city for every call that comes in. The phone is ringing all day.”
Redding told us the city is caught in a brutal double whammy: Younger criminals and the re-entry onto our streets of older guys who have just been released from prison.
“We are seeing younger kids who are violent,” she noted. “There are a lot more guns.”
She added, “There can’t be enough police to be surrogate parents. The police can’t do it alone.”
Redding acknowledged the police force is now down to 397 although the city is budgeted for 496, in part because Mayor John DeStefano Jr. last year asked the Board of Aldermen to increase the total from an allowed-for total of about 440. She said there is ongoing recruiting and new officers coming in from the training academy.
When residents complained about the low number of police officers, Redding told them solving the crime problem “goes beyond having lots of police.”
And she said she must put the cops where the major crime level requires their presence. “We deploy based on human needs, not property.”
Although there was plenty of fear in the cafeteria from the East Rock folks, she said, “This area has been lucky. It’s a lower-crime area. What happened on Loomis Place is not the norm.”
When a Loomis Place resident told Redding she regularly sees and hears teenagers hanging out across the street at the Foote School at night, it sounded worrisome. But when the people from “the other side” rose and started describing their problems, the East Rockers started to realize what it’s like to live in a high-crime area.
“I live on Newhall Street,” a woman said. Noting the ongoing shootings near her home, she added, “I don’t know whether to get in the bed or on the floor at night.”
“They’re driving up like they’re going to Dairy Queen,” she said of the drug dealers.
“Step over onto the other side of the hill,” she invited the East Rockers. “You’ve got everyday stuff looking at your face.”
She said if she complains to the drug dealers, they tell her, “What are you saying? What do you mean we can’t be on the corner? Who are you?”
The woman added, “I’m not going to call the police anymore because I don’t want to live in fear.”
As the meeting broke up, Alderwoman Alfreda Edwards urged all residents to communicate. “We all have to do it together. Find a way to connect the streets.”
Randall Beach can be reached at rbeach@nhregister.com or 789-5766.
But it happened Monday night. The setting was a crowded cafeteria at Celentano School, which sits on the edge of Prospect Hill, the dividing line between New Haven’s wealthy East Rock neighborhood and the much-less-wealthy Newhallville.
The meeting was called because six days earlier on Loomis Place, a block of affluent residents, a 55-year-old woman named Julia O’Sullivan was attacked in a kitchen by three young males.
They beat her over the head and broke her hands with a baseball bat, then tied her up and ransacked the house. After they fled in her car, she managed to free herself and call police.
Shortly afterward, Yale University police officers, working with city police, located her car on Dixwell Avenue and arrested a suspect nearby. A few days later, city police arrested a second youth; a third is still being sought.
I live three blocks from that house on Loomis Place. I was as stunned as my neighbors to think of such a vicious crime taking place so close to us.
The term “home invasion” is now part of our lexicon. The phrase took hold last summer when two men got into the Petit home in Cheshire and killed two girls and their mother. This led to reinforced house locks and new alarm systems.
Here we go again. Nobody died this time, but the seeming randomness of this latest invasion and the brutality of the attack, took many of us back to images of Cheshire.
How can we feel safe in our homes? What can we do to protect ourselves? These were the two questions that dominated the meeting in that cafeteria.
Acting Police Chief Stephanie Redding faced 100 anxious, angry residents. She handled the situation with aplomb, delivering reality checks.
“We are not going to police our way out of this,” she said. “We have arrested and arrested and arrested. Things are changing. I can’t cover the whole city for every call that comes in. The phone is ringing all day.”
Redding told us the city is caught in a brutal double whammy: Younger criminals and the re-entry onto our streets of older guys who have just been released from prison.
“We are seeing younger kids who are violent,” she noted. “There are a lot more guns.”
She added, “There can’t be enough police to be surrogate parents. The police can’t do it alone.”
Redding acknowledged the police force is now down to 397 although the city is budgeted for 496, in part because Mayor John DeStefano Jr. last year asked the Board of Aldermen to increase the total from an allowed-for total of about 440. She said there is ongoing recruiting and new officers coming in from the training academy.
When residents complained about the low number of police officers, Redding told them solving the crime problem “goes beyond having lots of police.”
And she said she must put the cops where the major crime level requires their presence. “We deploy based on human needs, not property.”
Although there was plenty of fear in the cafeteria from the East Rock folks, she said, “This area has been lucky. It’s a lower-crime area. What happened on Loomis Place is not the norm.”
When a Loomis Place resident told Redding she regularly sees and hears teenagers hanging out across the street at the Foote School at night, it sounded worrisome. But when the people from “the other side” rose and started describing their problems, the East Rockers started to realize what it’s like to live in a high-crime area.
“I live on Newhall Street,” a woman said. Noting the ongoing shootings near her home, she added, “I don’t know whether to get in the bed or on the floor at night.”
“They’re driving up like they’re going to Dairy Queen,” she said of the drug dealers.
“Step over onto the other side of the hill,” she invited the East Rockers. “You’ve got everyday stuff looking at your face.”
She said if she complains to the drug dealers, they tell her, “What are you saying? What do you mean we can’t be on the corner? Who are you?”
The woman added, “I’m not going to call the police anymore because I don’t want to live in fear.”
As the meeting broke up, Alderwoman Alfreda Edwards urged all residents to communicate. “We all have to do it together. Find a way to connect the streets.”
Randall Beach can be reached at rbeach@nhregister.com or 789-5766.
Monday, May 5, 2008
Slow down, New Haven
Patience is a virtue that may just save a life — and gas costs, too
This is about patience. That word, that quality is increasingly old-fashioned and against the grain in our accelerating, hurry-up culture. But that’s deadly.
“Be patient; impatience is the enemy.” That’s what I say to myself repeatedly as I drive around these fast-paced New Haven streets, suburbs, highways and beyond.
I say this phrase in an effort to remind myself to slow down, take it easy, you’ll get there in good time.
We should all be trying to do this.
Why? Take a look around; you’ll see why.
On a recent Saturday morning I was driving down South Frontage Road, approaching Yale-New Haven Hospital, with my elder daughter in the passenger seat. She is 16, soon to start driving.
As we got close to the hospital, I saw a roadblock up ahead and a police officer diverting traffic. “That looks bad,” I said.
The following day, when I came into my office for the Sunday shift, I learned how bad it was. Here was our headline: “Yale med student ‘critical’ after being hit.”
The story reported Mila Noelle Rainof, just 27, a fourth-year Yale medical student who was on the verge of beginning her residency at a hospital in California, had suffered serious head trauma after being struck by a car on South Frontage Road.
When I called Yale-New Haven Hospital, I was told she was still in “critical” condition in the Intensive Care Unit. A few hours later, she died.
According to police, she was crossing the street when she was hit. A Yale School of Medicine official said Rainof’s view of the intersection of South Frontage Road and York Street apparently had been obstructed by a truck leaving a hospital loading dock.
The official said oncoming traffic apparently had the green light when Rainof tried to cross the street. Two cars were able to avoid her, but the driver of a third car, accelerating to get into the left lane and onto the highway, hit her.
All of the drivers stopped and tried to help her. Nobody has been charged in connection with the accident.
But based on the information released so far, I think impatience very likely played a part in this tragedy. Perhaps she was impatient to cross and didn’t wait for the “Walk” sign. Perhaps the drivers were impatient to get through that intersection and onto the highway and didn’t slow down when they saw that truck backing up.
Whenever I am behind the wheel and coming up on a confusing and potentially dangerous situation (such as a truck backing up at an intersection), I slow down. I ask myself, “Wait a minute; what is happening here?”
I’m not saying I’m a better driver than the next guy. But I haven’t had a motor vehicle accident in the past 15 years, so I must be doing something right.
A friend of mine once said, “Driving is the most dangerous thing we do.” It was so simple and so smart that I’ve never forgotten it.
Take a look around. You will see motorists routinely speeding through red lights (I saw it done Thursday on Sargent Drive), taking right turns on red lights when signs say not to do it, barely slowing down for “stop” signs and not giving space to bicyclists nor yielding to pedestrians in crosswalks.
Why? They are not patient. They think their lives are just too important to be made to wait.
When I teach my daughter to drive, the most important thing I will stress is patience.
And I thank all of you who have had the patience to read this.
P.S. Driving more slowly on the highway saves you gas!
‰ ‰ ‰
A follow-up on last week’s column about the media fixation on Barack Obama’s bad bowling: Obama has since then explained that his 37 can be attributed in part to the fact he finished just seven of the usual 10 frames. And he said two of those seven frames were bowled by a 10-year-old, another by a 3-year-old. Maybe now the world will realize Obama is a good enough bowler to be president.
Randall Beach can be reached at rbeach@nhregister.com or 789-5766.
This is about patience. That word, that quality is increasingly old-fashioned and against the grain in our accelerating, hurry-up culture. But that’s deadly.
“Be patient; impatience is the enemy.” That’s what I say to myself repeatedly as I drive around these fast-paced New Haven streets, suburbs, highways and beyond.
I say this phrase in an effort to remind myself to slow down, take it easy, you’ll get there in good time.
We should all be trying to do this.
Why? Take a look around; you’ll see why.
On a recent Saturday morning I was driving down South Frontage Road, approaching Yale-New Haven Hospital, with my elder daughter in the passenger seat. She is 16, soon to start driving.
As we got close to the hospital, I saw a roadblock up ahead and a police officer diverting traffic. “That looks bad,” I said.
The following day, when I came into my office for the Sunday shift, I learned how bad it was. Here was our headline: “Yale med student ‘critical’ after being hit.”
The story reported Mila Noelle Rainof, just 27, a fourth-year Yale medical student who was on the verge of beginning her residency at a hospital in California, had suffered serious head trauma after being struck by a car on South Frontage Road.
When I called Yale-New Haven Hospital, I was told she was still in “critical” condition in the Intensive Care Unit. A few hours later, she died.
According to police, she was crossing the street when she was hit. A Yale School of Medicine official said Rainof’s view of the intersection of South Frontage Road and York Street apparently had been obstructed by a truck leaving a hospital loading dock.
The official said oncoming traffic apparently had the green light when Rainof tried to cross the street. Two cars were able to avoid her, but the driver of a third car, accelerating to get into the left lane and onto the highway, hit her.
All of the drivers stopped and tried to help her. Nobody has been charged in connection with the accident.
But based on the information released so far, I think impatience very likely played a part in this tragedy. Perhaps she was impatient to cross and didn’t wait for the “Walk” sign. Perhaps the drivers were impatient to get through that intersection and onto the highway and didn’t slow down when they saw that truck backing up.
Whenever I am behind the wheel and coming up on a confusing and potentially dangerous situation (such as a truck backing up at an intersection), I slow down. I ask myself, “Wait a minute; what is happening here?”
I’m not saying I’m a better driver than the next guy. But I haven’t had a motor vehicle accident in the past 15 years, so I must be doing something right.
A friend of mine once said, “Driving is the most dangerous thing we do.” It was so simple and so smart that I’ve never forgotten it.
Take a look around. You will see motorists routinely speeding through red lights (I saw it done Thursday on Sargent Drive), taking right turns on red lights when signs say not to do it, barely slowing down for “stop” signs and not giving space to bicyclists nor yielding to pedestrians in crosswalks.
Why? They are not patient. They think their lives are just too important to be made to wait.
When I teach my daughter to drive, the most important thing I will stress is patience.
And I thank all of you who have had the patience to read this.
P.S. Driving more slowly on the highway saves you gas!
‰ ‰ ‰
A follow-up on last week’s column about the media fixation on Barack Obama’s bad bowling: Obama has since then explained that his 37 can be attributed in part to the fact he finished just seven of the usual 10 frames. And he said two of those seven frames were bowled by a 10-year-old, another by a 3-year-old. Maybe now the world will realize Obama is a good enough bowler to be president.
Randall Beach can be reached at rbeach@nhregister.com or 789-5766.
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Beach on Pope
Pope Benedict XVI’s U.S. visit stirs memories of 1979 road trip
All of this hubbub over the visit of Pope Benedict XVI to America takes me back to a memorable Monday in October 1979 when I was blessed by another pope.
It now seems odd that I would choose to take the train to Boston on a day off to see Pope John Paul II. I am not a Catholic; I am an agnostic.
Nor was I assigned by the New Haven Register or any other publication to report on the event.
I think it came down to this: It was a happening, and I love Boston so much that I would use any excuse to go there. I also like riding in trains.
I wish I could dredge more details about that day. I do vividly remember the rain; everybody on Boston Common was drenched. The souvenir button I bought of the pope’s smiling face still has its original water stains.
According to the Boston Globe, more than 400,000 people jammed the Common for the city’s first and only papal visit. All of us standing there in the pouring rain were part of a gigantic communal Mass.
The area was chock-full of vendors. In addition to the papal button, I purchased a T-shirt that said: “I was blessed by the pope in Boston.”
I capped off the day by taking in a show by the punk band the Plasmatics. They were notorious for the ranting antics of their lead singer, Wendy O. Williams, and for stunts such as chain-sawing guitars, sledgehammering TV sets and blowing up cars, all on stage.
I can’t say I remember much about that show either, which was at the Oxford Ale House on Whitney Avenue. I think its space is now occupied by Gourmet Heaven.
Regardless of my memory lapses, I think I’m on solid ground stating I am the only person to see the pope and the Plasmatics on the same day.
‰ ‰ ‰
My column last week about another field trip or pilgrimage, to Dealey Plaza in Dallas, elicited several phone calls from conspiracy buffs. They insisted I am dead wrong in changing my long-held view and thinking Lee Harvey Oswald might have been the lone gunman in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
In addition, Frank DePino of Hamden e-mailed me to say he believes it’s more than coincidence that dozens of witnesses to the event were “bought off and killed.” (Gerald Posner in his book “Case Closed” did address these “mysterious” deaths and laid them to rest, less mysteriously.)
Jeff Gordon of Orange, a site planner, said the fact that the motorcade was re-routed to go closer to the Texas School Book Depository, where Oswald had his perch, makes him think there might have been a conspiracy.
I told Gordon I need far more than that to believe in a conspiracy.
John Seiffer of Milford wrote to recall his time living in Dallas and a group tour he took with a professor who had been a reporter on the scene Nov. 22, 1963.
As he led the group to sites such as the jail ramp where Jack Ruby shot Oswald, the professor said that through the years, many conspiracy buffs had shown him their “evidence.” But he continued to believe Oswald acted alone.
‰ ‰ ‰
Our besieged planet received a wonderful pre-Earth Day present last week from the New York Department of State when it rejected the proposed Broadwater floating liquefied natural gas plant on Long Island Sound.
Let’s hope the Broadwater executives give up the idea and don’t file an appeal. The people of Connecticut and New York don’t want this thing.
According to a Yahoo! survey, more than half of Americans have no idea that April 22 is Earth Day. Also, 44 percent don’t plan to do anything to acknowledge the day.
But Ikea, which has an outlet in New Haven, noted in a press release that 92 percent of its customers have stopped using plastic bags — because Ikea now charges 5 cents per bag. (Ikea will eliminate all plastic bags starting in October.) Clearly, this is the way to get Americans to curb their plastics addiction: Make ’em pay for it. Other stores should do the same.
Another follow-up: New Haven’s Daniel Smith, who has made many trips to Iraq to photograph the war’s impact on its people, reports he has been offered a media job in Baghdad and will move there soon.
More details to follow.
Randall Beach can be reached at rbeach@nhregister.com or 789-5766.
All of this hubbub over the visit of Pope Benedict XVI to America takes me back to a memorable Monday in October 1979 when I was blessed by another pope.
It now seems odd that I would choose to take the train to Boston on a day off to see Pope John Paul II. I am not a Catholic; I am an agnostic.
Nor was I assigned by the New Haven Register or any other publication to report on the event.
I think it came down to this: It was a happening, and I love Boston so much that I would use any excuse to go there. I also like riding in trains.
I wish I could dredge more details about that day. I do vividly remember the rain; everybody on Boston Common was drenched. The souvenir button I bought of the pope’s smiling face still has its original water stains.
According to the Boston Globe, more than 400,000 people jammed the Common for the city’s first and only papal visit. All of us standing there in the pouring rain were part of a gigantic communal Mass.
The area was chock-full of vendors. In addition to the papal button, I purchased a T-shirt that said: “I was blessed by the pope in Boston.”
I capped off the day by taking in a show by the punk band the Plasmatics. They were notorious for the ranting antics of their lead singer, Wendy O. Williams, and for stunts such as chain-sawing guitars, sledgehammering TV sets and blowing up cars, all on stage.
I can’t say I remember much about that show either, which was at the Oxford Ale House on Whitney Avenue. I think its space is now occupied by Gourmet Heaven.
Regardless of my memory lapses, I think I’m on solid ground stating I am the only person to see the pope and the Plasmatics on the same day.
‰ ‰ ‰
My column last week about another field trip or pilgrimage, to Dealey Plaza in Dallas, elicited several phone calls from conspiracy buffs. They insisted I am dead wrong in changing my long-held view and thinking Lee Harvey Oswald might have been the lone gunman in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
In addition, Frank DePino of Hamden e-mailed me to say he believes it’s more than coincidence that dozens of witnesses to the event were “bought off and killed.” (Gerald Posner in his book “Case Closed” did address these “mysterious” deaths and laid them to rest, less mysteriously.)
Jeff Gordon of Orange, a site planner, said the fact that the motorcade was re-routed to go closer to the Texas School Book Depository, where Oswald had his perch, makes him think there might have been a conspiracy.
I told Gordon I need far more than that to believe in a conspiracy.
John Seiffer of Milford wrote to recall his time living in Dallas and a group tour he took with a professor who had been a reporter on the scene Nov. 22, 1963.
As he led the group to sites such as the jail ramp where Jack Ruby shot Oswald, the professor said that through the years, many conspiracy buffs had shown him their “evidence.” But he continued to believe Oswald acted alone.
‰ ‰ ‰
Our besieged planet received a wonderful pre-Earth Day present last week from the New York Department of State when it rejected the proposed Broadwater floating liquefied natural gas plant on Long Island Sound.
Let’s hope the Broadwater executives give up the idea and don’t file an appeal. The people of Connecticut and New York don’t want this thing.
According to a Yahoo! survey, more than half of Americans have no idea that April 22 is Earth Day. Also, 44 percent don’t plan to do anything to acknowledge the day.
But Ikea, which has an outlet in New Haven, noted in a press release that 92 percent of its customers have stopped using plastic bags — because Ikea now charges 5 cents per bag. (Ikea will eliminate all plastic bags starting in October.) Clearly, this is the way to get Americans to curb their plastics addiction: Make ’em pay for it. Other stores should do the same.
Another follow-up: New Haven’s Daniel Smith, who has made many trips to Iraq to photograph the war’s impact on its people, reports he has been offered a media job in Baghdad and will move there soon.
More details to follow.
Randall Beach can be reached at rbeach@nhregister.com or 789-5766.
Monday, March 31, 2008
How a death row inmate was guilty until proven innocent
The following is a column by Randall Beach
The first thing I asked Kerry Max Cook was whether he is bitter that he spent 22 years in prison for a murder he did not commit.
His answer surprised me.
“I’m not bitter at all,” he said. “I consider myself the luckiest man alive.”
He sounded like the New York Yankees’ Lou Gehrig proclaiming himself “the luckiest man on the face of the earth” after he was diagnosed with a terminal disease.
But Cook explained: “I have a 7-year-old son (Kerry Justice Cook). When he says, ‘Daddy, I love you,’ it wipes away my memories of death row.”
We were sitting in the cafe of R.J. Julia Booksellers in Madison, which is about as far away as you can get from being on death row in Texas. Cook was in town last Tuesday night to talk about his experience and promote his book, “Chasing Justice: My Story of Freeing Myself After Two Decades on Death Row for a Crime I Didn’t Commit.”
He noted, “If I’d allowed my anger and bitterness to consume me, I’d have traded one prison for another. What enabled me to be free is the ability to forgive those who wronged me.”
But he was scarred by what he endured, emotionally and physically. He said he was raped repeatedly in prison; his tormentors carved the word “pussy” on his buttocks.
Cook has moved beyond all this. He showed me page 263 of his book, the passage that begins, “It was all or nothing: If I was going to spend my days serving God instead of man and my case, then I had to clean out my closet first.”
In that long paragraph he forgave the police, the prosecutors and the rest of “the cast of players who had conspired to falsely convict me and to kill me.”
Cook’s troubles began in 1977, shortly after University of Texas secretary Linda Jo Edwards, 21, was beaten, stabbed and sexually mutilated in her apartment.
Cook was victimized by testimony from a witness, who was later discredited. One year later, he was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death.
That sentence was reversed by an appeals court, leading to a 1992 retrial resulting in a hung jury. But he was convicted again in 1994, got the death sentence again, then had that conviction overturned, too, when a Texas appeals court ruled prosecutors hid evidence. An aborted fourth trial ended in 1999 when Cook agreed to a no-contest plea.
Cook says his case might never have been heard by the appeals courts if it weren’t for efforts by Centurion Ministries (a prisoners’ advocate group) and a reporter for the Dallas Morning News. He might have been executed.
Alluding to who lives or dies on death row, Cook said, “It’s like a lottery.” He said four innocent people were executed while he was there.
But what really cleared Cook was the arrival of DNA testing. A test of the panties Edwards was wearing at the time she was killed showed semen deposits left by another man, who was originally on a list of suspects.
When I asked Cook where the murderer is today, he said, “He’s in Houston, Texas. That’s all I know.”
I remarked it must be upsetting to think about that guy walking around a free man, but Cook just said, “There were a few years when it used to bother me.”
Twice while in prison he tried to kill himself. He became profoundly depressed when his brother was murdered. But he said, “I was brought back from near-death. I came to understand my brother was gone. I didn’t want him to be known as the brother of a murderer. It became about fighting for the family name.”
He said it came down to this: “I could’ve been executed, except I never gave up.”
We left the cafe and he walked into a room of about 70 people, many of them advocates for prisoners’ rights and legal reform.
“I wrote this book not to complain,” he told them, “but to be part of how to fix the justice system.”
He noted, “Prosecutors say you’re guilty and people believe them. You say you’re innocent and no one believes you. It’s Wal-Mart justice for the poor and Saks Fifth Avenue for the rich.”
Recalling those four people executed whom he believed were innocent, Cook said, “Somebody’s got to do something about the death penalty and how it affects poor people.” (He advocates life in prison without parole instead of capital punishment.)
Asked how he had survived, he replied, “My innocence carried me through. I channeled my anger, I self-educated myself.”
“I believed in the goodness of human beings,” he added. “Sooner or later, somebody was going to care. Sooner or later, I would come face-to-face with humanity — and I did.”
Randall Beach can be reached at rbeach@nhregister.com or 789-5766.
The first thing I asked Kerry Max Cook was whether he is bitter that he spent 22 years in prison for a murder he did not commit.
His answer surprised me.
“I’m not bitter at all,” he said. “I consider myself the luckiest man alive.”
He sounded like the New York Yankees’ Lou Gehrig proclaiming himself “the luckiest man on the face of the earth” after he was diagnosed with a terminal disease.
But Cook explained: “I have a 7-year-old son (Kerry Justice Cook). When he says, ‘Daddy, I love you,’ it wipes away my memories of death row.”
We were sitting in the cafe of R.J. Julia Booksellers in Madison, which is about as far away as you can get from being on death row in Texas. Cook was in town last Tuesday night to talk about his experience and promote his book, “Chasing Justice: My Story of Freeing Myself After Two Decades on Death Row for a Crime I Didn’t Commit.”
He noted, “If I’d allowed my anger and bitterness to consume me, I’d have traded one prison for another. What enabled me to be free is the ability to forgive those who wronged me.”
But he was scarred by what he endured, emotionally and physically. He said he was raped repeatedly in prison; his tormentors carved the word “pussy” on his buttocks.
Cook has moved beyond all this. He showed me page 263 of his book, the passage that begins, “It was all or nothing: If I was going to spend my days serving God instead of man and my case, then I had to clean out my closet first.”
In that long paragraph he forgave the police, the prosecutors and the rest of “the cast of players who had conspired to falsely convict me and to kill me.”
Cook’s troubles began in 1977, shortly after University of Texas secretary Linda Jo Edwards, 21, was beaten, stabbed and sexually mutilated in her apartment.
Cook was victimized by testimony from a witness, who was later discredited. One year later, he was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death.
That sentence was reversed by an appeals court, leading to a 1992 retrial resulting in a hung jury. But he was convicted again in 1994, got the death sentence again, then had that conviction overturned, too, when a Texas appeals court ruled prosecutors hid evidence. An aborted fourth trial ended in 1999 when Cook agreed to a no-contest plea.
Cook says his case might never have been heard by the appeals courts if it weren’t for efforts by Centurion Ministries (a prisoners’ advocate group) and a reporter for the Dallas Morning News. He might have been executed.
Alluding to who lives or dies on death row, Cook said, “It’s like a lottery.” He said four innocent people were executed while he was there.
But what really cleared Cook was the arrival of DNA testing. A test of the panties Edwards was wearing at the time she was killed showed semen deposits left by another man, who was originally on a list of suspects.
When I asked Cook where the murderer is today, he said, “He’s in Houston, Texas. That’s all I know.”
I remarked it must be upsetting to think about that guy walking around a free man, but Cook just said, “There were a few years when it used to bother me.”
Twice while in prison he tried to kill himself. He became profoundly depressed when his brother was murdered. But he said, “I was brought back from near-death. I came to understand my brother was gone. I didn’t want him to be known as the brother of a murderer. It became about fighting for the family name.”
He said it came down to this: “I could’ve been executed, except I never gave up.”
We left the cafe and he walked into a room of about 70 people, many of them advocates for prisoners’ rights and legal reform.
“I wrote this book not to complain,” he told them, “but to be part of how to fix the justice system.”
He noted, “Prosecutors say you’re guilty and people believe them. You say you’re innocent and no one believes you. It’s Wal-Mart justice for the poor and Saks Fifth Avenue for the rich.”
Recalling those four people executed whom he believed were innocent, Cook said, “Somebody’s got to do something about the death penalty and how it affects poor people.” (He advocates life in prison without parole instead of capital punishment.)
Asked how he had survived, he replied, “My innocence carried me through. I channeled my anger, I self-educated myself.”
“I believed in the goodness of human beings,” he added. “Sooner or later, somebody was going to care. Sooner or later, I would come face-to-face with humanity — and I did.”
Randall Beach can be reached at rbeach@nhregister.com or 789-5766.
Friday, March 21, 2008
Warnings dismissed, lessons unheeded and the war goes on and on
The following is a column by Randall Beach
WE ARE FIVE YEARS into this awful war and there is no end in sight.
“We’re running in place,” John Kelley, a major in the U.S. Army Reserve, told me Thursday. “And Iraqis and Americans are paying with their lives and their economies and family stability.”
I think back to my last conversation with Kelley, a New Haven-based attorney, in June 2005. He told me then the Bush administration needed to announce a timetable for troop withdrawal.
Kelley’s words at that time: “We should say to the Iraqis: ‘If you want to be a democracy, we’ll help you, but only to a point.’ Otherwise, they might keep letting us do the fighting for them.”
Three years later, we can easily see Kelley was right. But that’s not surprising, given he has two history degrees and has extensively studied the Middle East. He knows a lot more about that region than the guy steering our ship, who jokes he coasted through Yale Univercity with a “C” average. Also on board this ship of fools is our “independent” U.S. Sen. Joseph Lieberman.
Kelley was opposed to the U.S. going into Iraq from the beginning because he knew about the ethnic and religious divisions in that country. “Any time you get rid of a dictator in an area with those tensions, you’re opening a Pandora’s box. And that’s what happened. I’m amazed they (Bush and his staff) couldn’t see it.”
Kelley recognized how horrible Saddam Hussein was. After all, Kelley served in Baghdad for six months as Army liaison to the Iraqi Special Tribunal, created to prosecute Iraqis accused of crimes against humanity.
But he noted, “We didn’t have a plan (for waging this war) and we still don’t have a plan. This has to be solved politically, not militarily.”
Kelley added, “The military has done a good job; but how many more deployments will these soldiers have to go through? Reservists and National Guardsmen as well as soldiers on active duty are being ripped from their jobs and families.”
If they make it back home alive, he noted, many are traumatized. “Americans need to address this. These people come home profoundly changed.”
He saw some of them two years ago when he was stationed at the Pentagon for a six-month tour as officer in charge of the Central Criminal Court of Iraq. The severely wounded veterans were transported from their hospital beds to tour the Pentagon.
Kelley ticked off the toll of the dead: almost 4,000 Americans, countless Iraqis. More than 30,000 wounded American soldiers.
Yes, and at what financial cost? “Over half a trillion dollars spent already,” he said. “We were told going into this that it would cost us no more than $60 billion to $80 billion.”
And how does losing that half a trillion bucks, with much more to be lost, affect our economy? “It’s unfortunate, but the connection isn’t being made,” Kelley said.
Americans are so distracted and worried about paying their bills that they aren’t thinking so much about the war anymore. But Kelley said, “These enormous economic problems are arguably tied to the war.”
No, there is no end in sight to this war. Over the past week, I have been leafing through my bulging “Iraq War” folder, seeing clippings of the soldiers I’ve interviewed and their families, the obituaries for other Connecticut soldiers, the anti war protests I’ve covered, the columns written (my column headline from March 12, 2003: “There’s still time before a new roll call of the dead begins.”)
One of the oldest clippings is dated Feb. 19, 2003, the day after I covered a massive protest in New York. More than 100,000 people came together there, as did many others elsewhere, to say to Bush: Don’t do this!
One of the people I met on the train that day, the Rev. Edward Dobihal of Hamden, told me that day, “To begin a war will not solve anything. It will cause more problems, increase terrorism and tie up our military for years.”
It’s too bad the people calling the shots in the White House couldn’t see this.
Randall Beach can be reached at rbeach@nhregister.com or 789-5766.
Tuesday, March 4, 2008
Stanley Greenberg has seen the future and its name is Obama
The following is a column by Randall Beach
Pollster and political strategist Stanley Greenberg has spent much of his career working for Bill Clinton, but he was all but writing Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign obituary Thursday night during a little dinner party in New Haven.
Greenberg’s informal talk session was the hot ticket among the 26 celebrity dinners held to benefit Leadership, Education and Athletics in Partnership. Only 16 of us were able to get into the host home of Kel and Will Ginsberg, adjoining East Rock Park.
We were treated to a periscope peek into the country’s future as Greenberg sat in the living room after dinner and told us what to expect.
For starters, Tuesday’s big Democratic primary contests in Ohio and Texas will all but put Barack Obama over the top, Greenberg said with complete assurance.
Even before dinner, Greenberg had told me Ohio is a toss-up but Obama will win Texas and then “It’ll be over.” The only question at that point, he said, will be whether Clinton decides to withdraw from the race.
“If Obama gets more delegates (than Clinton) in Texas, he will have the most delegates and voters at the end of the whole process,” he told our group.
What about the super delegates, those now-well-known party officials who can vote however they want? “They will go with the candidate who has the most votes (Obama) and they won’t wait six weeks ’till the Pennsylvania primary.”
Greenberg wasn’t upset as he told us all this, despite his years logged with Bill Clinton. His wife, U.S. Rep. Rosa L. DeLauro, D-3, of New Haven, endorsed Obama shortly before the “Super Tuesday” primaries Feb. 5 and was at his side during the big Hartford pep rally the day before it.
When I asked Greenberg about the delicate psycho-dynamics of his spouse’s going over to the other side, he smiled and acknowledged, “All my friends are in the Clinton camp.” But he said he had not had any recent private conversations with either of the Clintons.
Greenberg now spends much of his time working for Democracy Corps, which he co-founded with Bill Clinton’s pal James Carville. It provides opinion research and strategic advice to progressive organizations.
Early in his talk, Greenberg stated flatly, “Hillary will not win (the nomination). The country, especially Democrats, is going to vote for change. She never became part of that. She was experience, not change.”
The people in the room weren’t upset by his prediction either, except for one hold out. When Greenberg asked for the Clinton supporters to raise their hands, only one person did so.
As for the general election, the likely match up between the Republicans’ John McCain and Obama, Greenberg said the winner “will likely be Obama. The country has moved dramatically toward the Democrats.”
But he added, “Voters have to feel Obama can be commander-in-chief. There will have to be a reassurance.”
Greenberg also sees the Democrats picking up about another 30 seats in Congress, the same number they gained in 2006. “So we will see continued change.”
Noting the electorate’s disappointment with President Bush, Greenberg said, “I think the conservative coalition has already been shattered in this election.”
He said the public is responding to Obama’s leadership style and the idea of bringing everybody together around the table after years of polarization.
“People are desperate for authenticity,” he told us. “This helps Obama. People think he’s real.”
The upsurge in young voters is part of this, he added. He said pundits were stunned when the younger voters in the Iowa caucuses outnumbered the older ones, helping Obama begin his surge. “This will carry over to the general election,” he said of the youth vote.
Greenberg said the war in Iraq will remain a dominant political issue, especially because people realize its cost (up to $150 billion a year) is hurting the economy.
He warned, “The country is going to be broke” because big bucks will continue to be spent in Iraq for the foreseeable future.
“Most people are struggling, and they’ll continue to struggle, even if Obama is elected,” he told us.
But no matter what happens, Greenberg said rather gleefully, “This is the most exciting election of my lifetime. The level of interest is astonishing. It will be a transforming election. It will change our politics and hopefully our policies. We won’t be the same.”
There was a mood of quiet expectation, maybe even of hope, in that living room.
Randall Beach can be reached at rbeach@nhregister.com or 789-5766.
Pollster and political strategist Stanley Greenberg has spent much of his career working for Bill Clinton, but he was all but writing Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign obituary Thursday night during a little dinner party in New Haven.
Greenberg’s informal talk session was the hot ticket among the 26 celebrity dinners held to benefit Leadership, Education and Athletics in Partnership. Only 16 of us were able to get into the host home of Kel and Will Ginsberg, adjoining East Rock Park.
We were treated to a periscope peek into the country’s future as Greenberg sat in the living room after dinner and told us what to expect.
For starters, Tuesday’s big Democratic primary contests in Ohio and Texas will all but put Barack Obama over the top, Greenberg said with complete assurance.
Even before dinner, Greenberg had told me Ohio is a toss-up but Obama will win Texas and then “It’ll be over.” The only question at that point, he said, will be whether Clinton decides to withdraw from the race.
“If Obama gets more delegates (than Clinton) in Texas, he will have the most delegates and voters at the end of the whole process,” he told our group.
What about the super delegates, those now-well-known party officials who can vote however they want? “They will go with the candidate who has the most votes (Obama) and they won’t wait six weeks ’till the Pennsylvania primary.”
Greenberg wasn’t upset as he told us all this, despite his years logged with Bill Clinton. His wife, U.S. Rep. Rosa L. DeLauro, D-3, of New Haven, endorsed Obama shortly before the “Super Tuesday” primaries Feb. 5 and was at his side during the big Hartford pep rally the day before it.
When I asked Greenberg about the delicate psycho-dynamics of his spouse’s going over to the other side, he smiled and acknowledged, “All my friends are in the Clinton camp.” But he said he had not had any recent private conversations with either of the Clintons.
Greenberg now spends much of his time working for Democracy Corps, which he co-founded with Bill Clinton’s pal James Carville. It provides opinion research and strategic advice to progressive organizations.
Early in his talk, Greenberg stated flatly, “Hillary will not win (the nomination). The country, especially Democrats, is going to vote for change. She never became part of that. She was experience, not change.”
The people in the room weren’t upset by his prediction either, except for one hold out. When Greenberg asked for the Clinton supporters to raise their hands, only one person did so.
As for the general election, the likely match up between the Republicans’ John McCain and Obama, Greenberg said the winner “will likely be Obama. The country has moved dramatically toward the Democrats.”
But he added, “Voters have to feel Obama can be commander-in-chief. There will have to be a reassurance.”
Greenberg also sees the Democrats picking up about another 30 seats in Congress, the same number they gained in 2006. “So we will see continued change.”
Noting the electorate’s disappointment with President Bush, Greenberg said, “I think the conservative coalition has already been shattered in this election.”
He said the public is responding to Obama’s leadership style and the idea of bringing everybody together around the table after years of polarization.
“People are desperate for authenticity,” he told us. “This helps Obama. People think he’s real.”
The upsurge in young voters is part of this, he added. He said pundits were stunned when the younger voters in the Iowa caucuses outnumbered the older ones, helping Obama begin his surge. “This will carry over to the general election,” he said of the youth vote.
Greenberg said the war in Iraq will remain a dominant political issue, especially because people realize its cost (up to $150 billion a year) is hurting the economy.
He warned, “The country is going to be broke” because big bucks will continue to be spent in Iraq for the foreseeable future.
“Most people are struggling, and they’ll continue to struggle, even if Obama is elected,” he told us.
But no matter what happens, Greenberg said rather gleefully, “This is the most exciting election of my lifetime. The level of interest is astonishing. It will be a transforming election. It will change our politics and hopefully our policies. We won’t be the same.”
There was a mood of quiet expectation, maybe even of hope, in that living room.
Randall Beach can be reached at rbeach@nhregister.com or 789-5766.
Monday, March 3, 2008
A river runs through it
The following is a column by Randall Beach
Life on the riverbank: improving a neighborhood, one good deed at a time
Chris Ozyck vividly remembers the first time he drove across the Ferry Street Bridge and got a look at Fair Haven, a historic neighborhood on the banks of the Quinnipiac River.
“I said to myself, ‘Oh my God! I love this!’” Ozyck recalled.
That was nearly 20 years ago. Today Ozyck, 41, is living in a big house overlooking that river with his wife and two kids. He has done more than his fair share of helping revitalize his neighborhood and enliven life in the Elm City.
Some locals know him as “the Polar Plunge guy,” the man who first organized those New Year’s Day mass leaps into the surf at Lighthouse Point Park to benefit the city’s parks projects.
Others recognize Ozyck as the one who brings students from the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, as well as kids, into poor neighborhoods to establish gardens in his role as green space manager for Yale’s Urban Resources Initiative.
The more well-off know him as the owner of Alfresco, a landscape design business with an environmental focus.
And then there are the litterbugs, druggies, loiterers and prostitutes who used to do their dirty deeds near his house and have learned to stay away or clear out when they see him coming outside to ask, “Are you OK? Can I help you?”
For the past nine years, he, his wife, Rosemary, and their kids, Rosemary Grace and Adeline, have lived in the green, red and yellow house on Quinnipiac Avenue. It was built in 1893 by an oyster baron and it features a large wraparound porch, all the better to look out on the river.
He showed me around his back yard, which features a monkey puzzle tree, a hearty orange tree, a frog fountain and a swing set.
As a city resident myself, I mentioned to Ozyck that when I’m talking with people from the suburbs and I tell them I live with my family in New Haven, they invariably say, “Really? Right in the city?”
Ozyck laughed and nodded. “We always say we live in an historic district, which eases their apprehension.”
Their daughters, who are 6 and 8, attend Nathan Hale School, part of the city’s public school system. Sometimes they garden with him in Newhallville. “I want my kids to be urbane, to have broad knowledge about things.”
Ozyck loves the diversity of Fair Haven; walking around, sampling it, meeting different people. “I think people live here because they want some sort of interaction. In the suburbs you don’t get that. Those casual interfaces lead to what I call ‘ladders of opportunity.’ I think that’s so important.”
Ozyck grew up on Lake Candlewood in New Fairfield, learning to appreciate waterfront communities. He said when he “recruited” his wife from Newport, she was dubious about spending her life in New Haven. “But now we’re connected here,” he noted. “We’ve made a lot of good friends in the neighborhood, fought a lot of battles.”
For instance, there is that Ferry Street Bridge. When it was closed in November 2002, traffic more than doubled on Quinnipiac Avenue.
Ozyck and his neighbors got mad, started to talk and began to organize. Working with state legislators and city officials, they helped the city get enough money for the $18.29 million reconstruction of that bridge. Ozyck expects it to open this fall, a few months ahead of schedule.
“All this stuff for me is like civics,” he said. “Going to meetings, speaking up, talking to people, developing relationships, understanding the issues.”
He also picks up the trash along Quinnipiac Avenue, and he’s not the only one. Ozyck has found this discourages the bad guys from hanging around.
When he moved into the neighborhood, there was a lot of that activity outside his house. But he got into the habit of confronting them nonviolently. “I have a big presence,” he noted. “I wrestled in high school.”
He also told the bad characters he had a video camera monitoring the block. It was a lie, but it helped chase them away.
As for the Polar Plunge for Parks, he got it started nine years ago Jan. 1 when he drove to Lighthouse Park with his family and, while they watched from the car, jumped in. The following year, he invited some friends to join him. This year, about 500 people were on hand for expanded activities such as horse-drawn carriage rides. The beneficiary is the Elm City Parks Conservancy; he is that group’s former president.
As Ozyck escorted me outside, he had this parting comment: “I think we’re over the gloomy period in New Haven. There’s a lot more hope. People want to invest here.”
Randall Beach can be reached at rbeach@nhregister.com or 789-5766.
Life on the riverbank: improving a neighborhood, one good deed at a time
Chris Ozyck vividly remembers the first time he drove across the Ferry Street Bridge and got a look at Fair Haven, a historic neighborhood on the banks of the Quinnipiac River.
“I said to myself, ‘Oh my God! I love this!’” Ozyck recalled.
That was nearly 20 years ago. Today Ozyck, 41, is living in a big house overlooking that river with his wife and two kids. He has done more than his fair share of helping revitalize his neighborhood and enliven life in the Elm City.
Some locals know him as “the Polar Plunge guy,” the man who first organized those New Year’s Day mass leaps into the surf at Lighthouse Point Park to benefit the city’s parks projects.
Others recognize Ozyck as the one who brings students from the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, as well as kids, into poor neighborhoods to establish gardens in his role as green space manager for Yale’s Urban Resources Initiative.
The more well-off know him as the owner of Alfresco, a landscape design business with an environmental focus.
And then there are the litterbugs, druggies, loiterers and prostitutes who used to do their dirty deeds near his house and have learned to stay away or clear out when they see him coming outside to ask, “Are you OK? Can I help you?”
For the past nine years, he, his wife, Rosemary, and their kids, Rosemary Grace and Adeline, have lived in the green, red and yellow house on Quinnipiac Avenue. It was built in 1893 by an oyster baron and it features a large wraparound porch, all the better to look out on the river.
He showed me around his back yard, which features a monkey puzzle tree, a hearty orange tree, a frog fountain and a swing set.
As a city resident myself, I mentioned to Ozyck that when I’m talking with people from the suburbs and I tell them I live with my family in New Haven, they invariably say, “Really? Right in the city?”
Ozyck laughed and nodded. “We always say we live in an historic district, which eases their apprehension.”
Their daughters, who are 6 and 8, attend Nathan Hale School, part of the city’s public school system. Sometimes they garden with him in Newhallville. “I want my kids to be urbane, to have broad knowledge about things.”
Ozyck loves the diversity of Fair Haven; walking around, sampling it, meeting different people. “I think people live here because they want some sort of interaction. In the suburbs you don’t get that. Those casual interfaces lead to what I call ‘ladders of opportunity.’ I think that’s so important.”
Ozyck grew up on Lake Candlewood in New Fairfield, learning to appreciate waterfront communities. He said when he “recruited” his wife from Newport, she was dubious about spending her life in New Haven. “But now we’re connected here,” he noted. “We’ve made a lot of good friends in the neighborhood, fought a lot of battles.”
For instance, there is that Ferry Street Bridge. When it was closed in November 2002, traffic more than doubled on Quinnipiac Avenue.
Ozyck and his neighbors got mad, started to talk and began to organize. Working with state legislators and city officials, they helped the city get enough money for the $18.29 million reconstruction of that bridge. Ozyck expects it to open this fall, a few months ahead of schedule.
“All this stuff for me is like civics,” he said. “Going to meetings, speaking up, talking to people, developing relationships, understanding the issues.”
He also picks up the trash along Quinnipiac Avenue, and he’s not the only one. Ozyck has found this discourages the bad guys from hanging around.
When he moved into the neighborhood, there was a lot of that activity outside his house. But he got into the habit of confronting them nonviolently. “I have a big presence,” he noted. “I wrestled in high school.”
He also told the bad characters he had a video camera monitoring the block. It was a lie, but it helped chase them away.
As for the Polar Plunge for Parks, he got it started nine years ago Jan. 1 when he drove to Lighthouse Park with his family and, while they watched from the car, jumped in. The following year, he invited some friends to join him. This year, about 500 people were on hand for expanded activities such as horse-drawn carriage rides. The beneficiary is the Elm City Parks Conservancy; he is that group’s former president.
As Ozyck escorted me outside, he had this parting comment: “I think we’re over the gloomy period in New Haven. There’s a lot more hope. People want to invest here.”
Randall Beach can be reached at rbeach@nhregister.com or 789-5766.
Friday, February 29, 2008
Diners and old friends
This is a column by Randall Beach
It’s lucky for us that these city fixtures just keep on keeping on
We turn today to old friends and old diners. Against all odds, they persevere.
Last Thursday, I continued my tradition of stopping in to visit my buddy, Manson Whitlock, on his birthday. This was his 91st.
But I didn’t go to his home to see him. I knew that if I went to 272 York St. and walked up the long flight of stairs to the second floor, I would come upon him there in his shop, tinkering with typewriters.
Sure enough, there he sat at his desk by the window, working on a Royal. Whitlock’s Typewriter Shop was open for business.
He greeted me warmly as he always does, although he knows a visit from me invariably leads to some lines of ink in the newspaper. As a modest man, he finds this embarrassing.
So what if he’s probably the oldest typewriter repairman in the world? In his view, he’s just doing what he has always done.
“It gives me something to do,” he said. “It keeps me off the streets. There’s no business at all.”
But shortly afterward there arrived a young woman, carrying an Underwood. Whitlock looked at it with keen interest.
“They were the Model T Ford of their time,” he said. “It looks like it needs a little tender loving care. We’ll have to rejuvenate this fellow. I think it can be done.”
“How long will it take?” she asked.
“I’m slow,” he told her. “It may take more than a couple of days. I have to look inside it first.”
After the woman departed, I thought about how unusual it is for a young person to want a typewriter repaired. Whitlock told me one reason he keeps coming to work is because “It’s nice to see old friends. And I can help them out. Nobody else will bother to do it anymore.”
When I asked him how the drive in from Bethany is going, he answered, “Oh, fine. Driving has always been a hobby of mine. I used to race sports cars.”
“When the Department of Motor Vehicles calls me in for a test, they can set up an obstacle course,” he said. “I’ll show them how to do it!”
Whitlock has been plying the typewriter trade since 1930. His only concession to changing times or age is to close up for the day after working through the morning.
Every time I visit him, I am amazed and heartened.
‰‰‰
I also stopped in to see Helmi Elsayed “Mo” Ali, owner of the New Star Diner on Lombard Street. What I really came to see was the remnants of his Forbes Diner, now sitting on blocks in two big sections on his property behind the New Star.
The New Haven Register reported three weeks ago that the Forbes, a fixture at the corner of Forbes Avenue and Stiles Street, had closed and was slated for demolition. But as the story noted, Ali decided he could not bear to have the stainless steel classic destroyed, so he arranged to have it towed to his lot.
Ali left Forbes Avenue because Dunkin’ Donuts made him an offer he couldn’t refuse. He sold the property to them.
But as we sat at the counter of the New Star, Ali told me, “The diner is a foundation for America. Junk food, fast food, rush, rush — they eat junk.”
Ali is still looking for a new home for the Forbes so he can re-open it. “It’s in very good shape,” he said. “That’s why I won’t let it go.”
Nonetheless, it’s sad to drive by that old corner and not see the Forbes, and it’s also sad and weird to see it up on blocks in Fair Haven.
‰‰‰
In another down-but-not-out diner story, we have the ongoing saga of the Yankee Doodle Coffee Shop, which closed suddenly Jan. 29 amid a rent dispute. Supporters of “Doodle” owner Rick Beckwith continue to work on a business plan for an undisclosed new location under consideration.
“We’re taking the re-opening very seriously, to make sure we have all the ducks in a row,” said Phillip McKee III, a Yale alumnus.
It’d be fabulous to have a new Yankee Doodle up and running in time for the Yale reunion weekends in June but McKee said he can’t make any predictions.
Randall Beach can be reached at rbeach@nhregister.com or 789-5766.
It’s lucky for us that these city fixtures just keep on keeping on
We turn today to old friends and old diners. Against all odds, they persevere.
Last Thursday, I continued my tradition of stopping in to visit my buddy, Manson Whitlock, on his birthday. This was his 91st.
But I didn’t go to his home to see him. I knew that if I went to 272 York St. and walked up the long flight of stairs to the second floor, I would come upon him there in his shop, tinkering with typewriters.
Sure enough, there he sat at his desk by the window, working on a Royal. Whitlock’s Typewriter Shop was open for business.
He greeted me warmly as he always does, although he knows a visit from me invariably leads to some lines of ink in the newspaper. As a modest man, he finds this embarrassing.
So what if he’s probably the oldest typewriter repairman in the world? In his view, he’s just doing what he has always done.
“It gives me something to do,” he said. “It keeps me off the streets. There’s no business at all.”
But shortly afterward there arrived a young woman, carrying an Underwood. Whitlock looked at it with keen interest.
“They were the Model T Ford of their time,” he said. “It looks like it needs a little tender loving care. We’ll have to rejuvenate this fellow. I think it can be done.”
“How long will it take?” she asked.
“I’m slow,” he told her. “It may take more than a couple of days. I have to look inside it first.”
After the woman departed, I thought about how unusual it is for a young person to want a typewriter repaired. Whitlock told me one reason he keeps coming to work is because “It’s nice to see old friends. And I can help them out. Nobody else will bother to do it anymore.”
When I asked him how the drive in from Bethany is going, he answered, “Oh, fine. Driving has always been a hobby of mine. I used to race sports cars.”
“When the Department of Motor Vehicles calls me in for a test, they can set up an obstacle course,” he said. “I’ll show them how to do it!”
Whitlock has been plying the typewriter trade since 1930. His only concession to changing times or age is to close up for the day after working through the morning.
Every time I visit him, I am amazed and heartened.
‰‰‰
I also stopped in to see Helmi Elsayed “Mo” Ali, owner of the New Star Diner on Lombard Street. What I really came to see was the remnants of his Forbes Diner, now sitting on blocks in two big sections on his property behind the New Star.
The New Haven Register reported three weeks ago that the Forbes, a fixture at the corner of Forbes Avenue and Stiles Street, had closed and was slated for demolition. But as the story noted, Ali decided he could not bear to have the stainless steel classic destroyed, so he arranged to have it towed to his lot.
Ali left Forbes Avenue because Dunkin’ Donuts made him an offer he couldn’t refuse. He sold the property to them.
But as we sat at the counter of the New Star, Ali told me, “The diner is a foundation for America. Junk food, fast food, rush, rush — they eat junk.”
Ali is still looking for a new home for the Forbes so he can re-open it. “It’s in very good shape,” he said. “That’s why I won’t let it go.”
Nonetheless, it’s sad to drive by that old corner and not see the Forbes, and it’s also sad and weird to see it up on blocks in Fair Haven.
‰‰‰
In another down-but-not-out diner story, we have the ongoing saga of the Yankee Doodle Coffee Shop, which closed suddenly Jan. 29 amid a rent dispute. Supporters of “Doodle” owner Rick Beckwith continue to work on a business plan for an undisclosed new location under consideration.
“We’re taking the re-opening very seriously, to make sure we have all the ducks in a row,” said Phillip McKee III, a Yale alumnus.
It’d be fabulous to have a new Yankee Doodle up and running in time for the Yale reunion weekends in June but McKee said he can’t make any predictions.
Randall Beach can be reached at rbeach@nhregister.com or 789-5766.
Friday, February 22, 2008
Ted Turner comes to town
The following is a column by Randall Beach
Billionaire, activist Ted Turner pitches plan for nuclear disarmament
Ted Turner thinks it’s time for us to smarten up and get to work abolishing nuclear weapons.
Turner, 69, but feisty as ever, was in New Haven Thursday as the main speaker for a two-day event by the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization called “Nuclear Weapons — The Greatest Peril to Civilization: A Conference to Imagine Our World Without Them.”
Although it’s a deadly serious topic, Turner, shown at right in the photo by Peter Hvizdak, put on a show, sprinkling his message with jokes and salty language.
There were about 75 people gathered in an upstairs room of Woolsey Hall, including Yale students, faculty and some earnest anti-nuke activists and scholars from around the world. But he got them laughing too.
Everybody knows something about Turner, including that he used to be married to Jane Fonda, but some people don’t realize what an activist he is. After launching CNN in 1980, then buying baseball’s Atlanta Braves and basketball’s Atlanta Hawks, he moved on to more idealistic pursuits, such as organizing the Nuclear Threat Initiative.
When Turner stepped up to the podium, he showed off his loud, multi-colored tie emblazoned with the flags of many countries. He said he was wearing it to show he’s an “internationalist” who believes the U.N. can help get us out of the mess the world is in.
Turner refused to use notes as he talked because, “I wanted to speak from the heart.”
He didn’t waste any time on platitudes. “For us to sit there with 10,000 nuclear weapons and tell others they can’t have any, especially when we let Israel have them — That’s bull----!”
“They’re no good for anything,” he said of nuclear arms, “except to threaten your neighbors. They don’t do what we say anyway.”
He added, “They don’t make us any safer. We’re getting beat in Iraq, with all the weapons we have. What are we going to do? Drop a (nuclear) bomb on Baghdad?”
Turner said things aren’t going any better for us in Afghanistan. “We’re spending $500 billion (for the two wars) and we’re being defeated, or tied, by a group of Taliban.”
He noted humanity faces two other major challenges: global warming and population growth. He said if Al Gore had been elected president, “global warming would be a receding problem. We’ve got to start making the right choice.”
Turner said he never endorses political candidates during campaigns. But he praised Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama because “he has said he’s for zero nuclear weapons.”
Although he’s thankful there haven’t been any nuclear exchanges yet, Turner said the only solution to this proliferation is “complete abolition of all nuclear weapons: an agreement by all countries not to make or deploy any weapons of mass destruction.”
Turner said if a few rogue states refuse to go along with this, “There’s a way to handle them, peacefully. You boycott them. ‘Nothing comes into or out of your country. We won’t trade with you.’”
When questioned about specifics of his idea, Turner stressed he doesn’t favor unilateral disarmament by the U.S. He advocates a 5- to10-year plan, brokered by the U.N., in which all countries with nuclear weapons would agree to gradually reduce their stockpiles.
If we don’t start to move on this, Turner warned, “We’re gonna be toast. And our planet is gonna be toast, too. If we don’t get rid of these weapons, they’ll get rid of us.”
He asked: “What kind of sense does it make to destroy millions of people, our children? How many of you like your museums? We’re gonna blow up all our museums! It’d be a real shame to lose Yale and its museums.”
Turner kept saying nuclear disarmament won’t be easy. But if we can pull it off, he said, life would be fun.
“Never before in history have human beings done the right thing on a consistent basis. I’ll be 70 this fall; I want to live long enough to see this done. I want to see my grandchildren have this.”
Turner called for a show of hands. “How many people here have grandchildren? How many love ’em? How many don’t care if they get blown to kingdom come? Come on!”
He said it’s very simple: “If we’re smart, we’re fine. If we’re stupid, we lose.”
Randall Beach can be reached at rbeach@nhregister.com or 789-5766.
Monday, February 18, 2008
Yesterday once more
The following is a column by Register columnist Randall Beach
A SMALL GROUP of New Haveners tossed a valentine Thursday to two local heroes, Karen and Richard Carpenter.
The idea of a Valentine’s Day hometown remembrance for the Carpenters came from Bill Hosley, executive director of the New Haven Museum and Historical Society.
But Hosley, now 52, was a “Deadhead” when he was a teenager, favoring the Grateful Dead over the soft-pop tunes of the Carpenters.
“I was at Woodstock,” Hosley told me in the lobby of his museum a few minutes before the Carpenters tribute. “And I loved The Who.”
“But,” he added with an ironic, mischievous smile, “when nobody was watching, I’d put on the Carpenters because I thought they were brilliant.”
Now Hosley is out of the closet about being a big fan of theirs. He happily pointed out a displayed document from Mayor John DeStefano Jr. proclaiming Feb. 14 “The Carpenters’ Day” in New Haven.
Hosley put a great deal of work into researching the duo for his historical presentation Thursday night. He used YouTube to enable a sold-out audience of about 50 people to see fascinating Carpenters music videos, performances and interviews from the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s. He also pulled up photos from the siblings’ childhood in the Annex section of New Haven.
“Their ideas, ideals, talent and passions were shaped by the conservative, substantially Italian, outer-rim suburban neighborhood,” Hosley said.
Richard was born in 1946 and Karen in 1950. They lived with their parents, Agnes and Harold Carpenter, at 55 Hall St. until 1963, when the family moved to California because Agnes wanted her son to pursue a career in show business.
During their New Haven period, the Carpenter kids attended Nathan Hale School, then Richard went on to Wilbur Cross High School. At Cross, Hosley noted, Richard started his first band. Among other venues, they performed at Patty’s Pizzeria on Boston Post Road in 1962.
While Richard studiously concentrated on his music and usually kept to himself, Hosley said Karen was “a gregarious tomboy who loved baseball, delivered the New Haven Register and played ‘army’ with a neighborhood gang at Fort Nathan Hale Park.”
In California in 1964, Karen took up the drums. Within a year she had joined her big brother in a jazz trio.
Hosley showed us the earliest clipping of the Carpenters performing: playing “Dancing in the Street” on a TV show in 1967. Karen sang and played drums; her drum solo was so impressive that the museum audience burst into applause.
The Carpenters hit it big in 1970 with “Close to You,” then followed it with another smash, “We’ve Only Just Begun.” They sold more than 100 million records.
But Hosley said the demands of doing 550 shows in three years “guaranteed burnout.” Besides, neither of them relished being pop stars.
Hosley added, “The public gaze apparently terrified this attractive but self-conscious young woman who, like Britney Spears, was unequipped to deal with the pressure.”
For nine years she battled anorexia. Hosley showed a photo of her in 1977. She weighed 83 pounds.
“She died at her parents’ home 25 years ago last week,” Hosley noted. The cause of death was heart failure induced by the effects of anorexia.
Hosley called it “a disgrace” that the Carpenters are not in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He said rock music critics have long derided the duo for being “squares,” overlooking their musical inventiveness.
“Richard Carpenter keeps a low profile and is protective of their legacy,” Hosley told us. He said they have communicated but Richard is clearly tired of the “bittersweet” questions.
Hosley still hopes Carpenter will visit his old home. “New Haven will welcome him with warmth, enthusiasm and respect.”
We were then treated to a performance of Carpenters hits by New Haven cabaret singer Anne Tofflemire and pianist Andrew Rubenoff. The mood was warm, wistful and evocative as the duo played “Yesterday Once More,” the very sad “Rainy Days and Mondays” and of course “Close to You” and “We’ve Only Just Begun.”
Sitting in the back of the room and smiling was Richard Cavallaro, who taught both Carpenters at Nathan Hale School.
“You knew even then he was going to be somebody,” Cavallaro recalled. “He was a different boy, happy with his music. She was out there with everybody.”
Cavallaro said he kept in contact with them after they moved. “She was in New Haven the month before she died. She didn’t want to see me; she was sick.”
Speaking of Richard Carpenter, Cavallaro said, “I wish he would come back.”
Randall Beach can be reached at rbeach@nhregister.com or 789-5766.
Friday, February 15, 2008
Choate, Rove stifled free speech when they sifted out press coverage
The following is by Register columnist Randall Beach
MEMO TO EDUCATORS: If you’re going to invite Karl Rove to your campus, you might want to think first about how your students, your students’ parents and representatives of newspapers in your area might react.
Then you might want to come up with an advance game plan for how to handle it all.
Rove, former deputy chief of staff and senior adviser for President George W. Bush, remains a divisive figure. When Choate Rosemary Hall Headmaster Edward Shanahan decided to invite Rove to the Wallingford preparatory school to deliver the graduation address, he should have known what would happen.
Well, it was a brouhaha. Some Choate students vowed to walk out of the ceremony; others planned to wave protest signs or turn their chairs around. The student newspaper urged school officials to reconsider, saying it would be preferable to bring Rove to campus at another date when students could have a chance to exchange views with him.
After meeting with students and finding out that, gee whiz, a majority of them opposed having Rove as graduation speaker either because they didn’t like his political policies (such as advising Bush to invade Iraq) or were worried he would be a major distraction on the students’ special day, Shanahan relented.
Rove instead was invited to speak this past Monday and then take questions.
That made good sense. Although I strongly disagree with his views, I also strongly believe Rove had a right to be heard. The students, in turn, had a right to challenge him in a relaxed forum.
But what about the media? I, for one, was hoping to cover the event as a columnist, alongside our North Bureau Chief Luther Turmelle.
But then last week came the word from Mary Verselli, the school’s director of communications: No media allowed.
School officials said they were worried that reporters would be distracting, and that students needed to be “protected” from such an invasion.
Of course, there were simple ways to provide for limited media coverage and still “protect” the students. When seeking access to a private setting, most reporters will abide by restrictions such as agreeing to silently observe and not ask questions. I did this when former Secretary of State Colin Powell spoke to younger students in Greenwich three years ago.
But Choate Rosemary Hall officials kept saying: no dice, no media.
And so I didn’t go to Wallingford Monday. I wasn’t going to freeze my hindquarters off while waiting around outside police barricades, trying to catch a glimpse of Rove.
But Turmelle did go, because Rove coming to Wallingford was still a story. We also assigned a staff photographer to the event. The Record-Journal, which covers Meriden and Wallingford, sent a reporter, too, as did the Associated Press and the Hartford Courant.
Imagine the other reporters’ surprise when one of them, the scribe from the Courant, was escorted inside, as well as a Courant photographer. All the other Connecticut journalists were left out.
The “no media” rule also did not apply to Fox News, whose crew was given full access to Rove all day at the school. Rove, of course, has close ties to that conservative TV network and he wanted them there.
Verselli told Turmelle the decision to let the Courant inside was made at the last minute with Rove’s approval. Verselli said the Courant’s reporter was already working on another story “that we liked.”
When I spoke with Verselli over the phone Wednesday, she said, “We very graciously allowed one print reporter to cover it. Originally, the Rove contract had said ‘no media’ but we asked him, ‘How about allowing one person in?’ He agreed and we decided the Courant was the best representative for a statewide newspaper.”
When I pointed out that giving the slot to the AP reporter would have made more sense because the story could have been more widely distributed and picked up by virtually all newspapers, she said, “I have no problem with the way we did it.”
And when I said the school officials’ decision looked like favoritism, she replied, “I don’t care.”
Verselli didn’t get why I was even calling her, why I was making such a big deal about all this.
There’s nothing riding on it but the First Amendment, free speech, a free press, the public’s right to know and what students learn from their educators as they deal with such issues.
Randall Beach can be reached at rbeach@nhregister.com or 789-5766.
Saturday, February 9, 2008
New documentary tells story of Grove Street Cemetery
The following is a column by Register columnist Randall Beach
When Karyl K. Evans was asked to make a film about the Grove Street Cemetery, she said her mission became to “demystify” the historic site, which remains misunderstood as a resting ground reserved for the rich and famous.
But she had to tell the story of this sprawling 18-acre landmark in just 28 minutes because that’s the time limit preferred by public TV stations and school teachers with limited class periods.
“It was a challenge to get in everything that would interest people,” said Evans, a North Haven resident who has won five Emmy Awards for her films.
“People think you can only be buried there if you’re a Yalie or a WASP,” Evans noted. “But there are no restrictions. It’s a place where everybody can belong.”
Even when this New Haven City Burial Ground (its original name) was laid out in 1796, some lots were set aside for the poor and “people of color.” The first person buried there, in 1797, was not a man, but a woman: Martha Townsend.
If you watch Evans’ DVD, “Grove Street Cemetery: City of the Dead, City of the Living,” you’ll learn the city’s original burial ground was the New Haven Green. But it became too crowded and then a health concern in 1794 when yellow fever erupted. To buy the DVD, for $15, call (203) 230-9858.
Civic leader James Hillhouse, who would one day be buried at the new cemetery, was the driving force in establishing the first cemetery in America designed with family plots.
Today there are more than 14,000 people buried there, and room still for at least 1,000 more plots. They aren’t cheap; they cost $6,500. Each plot holds one casket or four urns, according to James Niederman, who chairs the board of the Friends of the Grove Street Cemetery.
The cemetery, which is the same size as the New Haven Green, is open to the public every day from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. (Public tours resume in May). You enter on Grove Street, walking through the massive Egyptian Revival gate designed by Henry Austin. The unforgettable inscription atop the gate states: “The Dead Shall Be Raised.”
The gate and the high stone wall surrounding the cemetery were built in 1845, Niederman said, “to prevent vandalism and keep out stray animals.”
At virtually any time when you pass under the gate, you will come upon William Cameron Jr., sitting in his office in a small brick building, originally a chapel. Cameron and his wife, Joan, are the cemetery superintendents, assisted by their son, William Cameron III.
Cameron Jr. told me that during his three decades there, he has usually logged 10 hours a day, seven days a week. “I’ve missed eight days in all those years. I like it here.”
He added, “The main thing we like about it is helping people. Some of them are so grief-stricken, so lost. It gives me great pleasure to help them.”
But they see many other people who are just strolling around the grounds, enjoying themselves or escaping city life.
“We get a lot of office people during lunchtime,” he said.
I asked him if Yale students sit there and study. “Not like they used to. They do come in and walk around. A lot of them are on their cell phones. They should put their phones in their pockets and look around at the beautiful trees, shrubs and stones. They don’t notice them.”
Cameron said he bought a plot there in 1977, when the cost was just $300. “I wanted to feel like I belong,” he said.
He used to dig the graves; now his son does it. Often, unlike in the old days, a backhoe is used.
“Years ago, we chopped through the frost, all by hand,” he said.
I decided to take a stroll. Choosing Magnolia Avenue — most of the “streets” are named for trees — I came upon the grave of Kingman Brewster Jr., Yale’s president from 1963-77. (There are 16 Yale presidents at this cemetery, including A. Bartlett Giamatti.) Brewster’s grave contains this inscription: “The presumption of innocence is not just a legal concept. It rests on that generosity of spirit which assumes the best, not the worst, of the stranger.”
Some of the headstones are so old and faded as to be unreadable. But I spotted this message on the grave of William N. Parker, a Yale professor of economics: “Of gratifying, yet heart-wrenching sorrow. That bit of dream I hate, yet feel its kiss! I tell the folks, ‘It’s I as well as you I miss.’ But not so much, since I know what’s tomorrow.”
And I saw this written on another stone: “Sacred to the memory of William Pilkington who fell asleep in Jesus on June 1, 1886, in the 43rd year of his age. The memory of the just is blessed.”
If you keep walking, you will find them: Eli Whitney, Noah Webster, Roger Sherman, Walter Camp (“the father of American football”), New Haven Mayor Richard C. Lee and a memorial stone for Glenn Miller, the bandleader whose plane went down and was never found.
Randall Beach can be reached at rbeach@nhregister.com or 789-5766.
When Karyl K. Evans was asked to make a film about the Grove Street Cemetery, she said her mission became to “demystify” the historic site, which remains misunderstood as a resting ground reserved for the rich and famous.
But she had to tell the story of this sprawling 18-acre landmark in just 28 minutes because that’s the time limit preferred by public TV stations and school teachers with limited class periods.
“It was a challenge to get in everything that would interest people,” said Evans, a North Haven resident who has won five Emmy Awards for her films.
“People think you can only be buried there if you’re a Yalie or a WASP,” Evans noted. “But there are no restrictions. It’s a place where everybody can belong.”
Even when this New Haven City Burial Ground (its original name) was laid out in 1796, some lots were set aside for the poor and “people of color.” The first person buried there, in 1797, was not a man, but a woman: Martha Townsend.
If you watch Evans’ DVD, “Grove Street Cemetery: City of the Dead, City of the Living,” you’ll learn the city’s original burial ground was the New Haven Green. But it became too crowded and then a health concern in 1794 when yellow fever erupted. To buy the DVD, for $15, call (203) 230-9858.
Civic leader James Hillhouse, who would one day be buried at the new cemetery, was the driving force in establishing the first cemetery in America designed with family plots.
Today there are more than 14,000 people buried there, and room still for at least 1,000 more plots. They aren’t cheap; they cost $6,500. Each plot holds one casket or four urns, according to James Niederman, who chairs the board of the Friends of the Grove Street Cemetery.
The cemetery, which is the same size as the New Haven Green, is open to the public every day from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. (Public tours resume in May). You enter on Grove Street, walking through the massive Egyptian Revival gate designed by Henry Austin. The unforgettable inscription atop the gate states: “The Dead Shall Be Raised.”
The gate and the high stone wall surrounding the cemetery were built in 1845, Niederman said, “to prevent vandalism and keep out stray animals.”
At virtually any time when you pass under the gate, you will come upon William Cameron Jr., sitting in his office in a small brick building, originally a chapel. Cameron and his wife, Joan, are the cemetery superintendents, assisted by their son, William Cameron III.
Cameron Jr. told me that during his three decades there, he has usually logged 10 hours a day, seven days a week. “I’ve missed eight days in all those years. I like it here.”
He added, “The main thing we like about it is helping people. Some of them are so grief-stricken, so lost. It gives me great pleasure to help them.”
But they see many other people who are just strolling around the grounds, enjoying themselves or escaping city life.
“We get a lot of office people during lunchtime,” he said.
I asked him if Yale students sit there and study. “Not like they used to. They do come in and walk around. A lot of them are on their cell phones. They should put their phones in their pockets and look around at the beautiful trees, shrubs and stones. They don’t notice them.”
Cameron said he bought a plot there in 1977, when the cost was just $300. “I wanted to feel like I belong,” he said.
He used to dig the graves; now his son does it. Often, unlike in the old days, a backhoe is used.
“Years ago, we chopped through the frost, all by hand,” he said.
I decided to take a stroll. Choosing Magnolia Avenue — most of the “streets” are named for trees — I came upon the grave of Kingman Brewster Jr., Yale’s president from 1963-77. (There are 16 Yale presidents at this cemetery, including A. Bartlett Giamatti.) Brewster’s grave contains this inscription: “The presumption of innocence is not just a legal concept. It rests on that generosity of spirit which assumes the best, not the worst, of the stranger.”
Some of the headstones are so old and faded as to be unreadable. But I spotted this message on the grave of William N. Parker, a Yale professor of economics: “Of gratifying, yet heart-wrenching sorrow. That bit of dream I hate, yet feel its kiss! I tell the folks, ‘It’s I as well as you I miss.’ But not so much, since I know what’s tomorrow.”
And I saw this written on another stone: “Sacred to the memory of William Pilkington who fell asleep in Jesus on June 1, 1886, in the 43rd year of his age. The memory of the just is blessed.”
If you keep walking, you will find them: Eli Whitney, Noah Webster, Roger Sherman, Walter Camp (“the father of American football”), New Haven Mayor Richard C. Lee and a memorial stone for Glenn Miller, the bandleader whose plane went down and was never found.
Randall Beach can be reached at rbeach@nhregister.com or 789-5766.
More on manners
Register columnist Randall Beach shares responses from thoughtful readers who offered their own opinions on questions of common courtesy
TWO WEEKS AGO, after I wrote about three ethically challenging encounters, readers responded with a flurry of e-mail messages and phone calls, generally agreeing that common courtesy is becoming less and less common.
The incidents I recounted were going to the packed Criterion movie theater and being stuck next to a cell phone addict; agreeing to save a table at a crowded Willoughby’s Coffee Shop for a young woman in a Yale sweatshirt who left for 15-20 minutes rather than the promised five minutes; and my wife and her 86-year-old father being rushed by a restaurant’s co-owner to vacate their table on a Sunday morning because people were standing outside waiting to be seated.
The responses were loaded with attitude and insight. Here are excerpts from some of the best.
Bob Buchanan Jr. said he handles cell phone users in theaters or restaurants by referring to personal details mentioned during the conversation. For example, he will say, “I’m sorry your mom is ill, but did you really want to share that with a total stranger?”
As for being hurried in the restaurant where my wife and I are regulars, Buchanan said, “I would absolutely address the co-owner by name and then stay as long as I wanted.”
Buchanan added: “In the mid-1970s, I lived in Manhattan and my dad took my girlfriend and me out to lunch. We had a very pushy waiter who kept trying to clear our plates in order to turn the table.
Finally, my dad told him that if he tried to take his plate again, he would stab him with his fork.”
Buchanan said they were allowed “to finish at our leisure.”
Mary of Cheshire called to say she is 89 and “I appreciate a nice leisurely breakfast. On Sunday mornings people want to relax a little bit. I think the owner was very rude.”
But Bob Cole wrote, “Restaurant owners and wait staff depend on the turning of tables for their livelihood. People lingering excessively when there are customers waiting for seats not only inconvenience those waiting but interfere with the owner and staff making a living.”
Sue Swanson Reynolds said the restaurant co-owner “obviously puts more stock in the dollar than in his regular customers. The next time you and your wife decide where to eat, you are likely to not choose that establishment again. (She’s right). This will affect not only the restaurant’s success, but its wait staff.”
Susan Woodall said of people using cell phones at public performances: “Foggedaboutit! If you can’t survive two-three hours without one, don’t go.”
Bev Francis noted the cell phoner next to me at the theater (who claimed to be a doctor) could have put his phone on vibrate and taken calls in the hallway.
Francis also said the woman at Willoughby’s should know better than to leave her things behind because it can make people nervous in the post-911 world.
Jim McEvoy, an assistant news editor in Washington, told me students in his college library left their things unattended in cubicles for extended periods so they could stake out a space.
“It is probably hard for her to realize that life goes on outside the academic world and the coffee shop is a place of business, not a study hall,” he wrote. “She might understand the inconvenience she’s creating for others, but ultimately she won’t care because she’s studying, and studying is incredibly important to her present and (hopefully bright) future life.”
Then there was the letter sent to the Register by an East Haven gentleman. He sympathized with the cell phone user for “being stared at by a total stranger next to him in a darkened theater, especially when the movie’s title is ‘There Will Be Blood.’ ”
“In my view,” the gentleman wrote, “Randall Beach suffers from ADD.” (That’s attention deficit disorder, folks).
As for the Willoughby’s episode, the gentleman wrote, “Apparently, the caffeine kicked in.” He theorized that after I advised her she shouldn’t leave things unattended for so long, “The woman was likely the second person in recent history to share a story with friends about an odd man wandering the local streets.”
Yep, that’s me, your local columnist, wandering those streets...
Randall Beach can be reached at rbeach@nhregister.com or 789-5766.
TWO WEEKS AGO, after I wrote about three ethically challenging encounters, readers responded with a flurry of e-mail messages and phone calls, generally agreeing that common courtesy is becoming less and less common.
The incidents I recounted were going to the packed Criterion movie theater and being stuck next to a cell phone addict; agreeing to save a table at a crowded Willoughby’s Coffee Shop for a young woman in a Yale sweatshirt who left for 15-20 minutes rather than the promised five minutes; and my wife and her 86-year-old father being rushed by a restaurant’s co-owner to vacate their table on a Sunday morning because people were standing outside waiting to be seated.
The responses were loaded with attitude and insight. Here are excerpts from some of the best.
Bob Buchanan Jr. said he handles cell phone users in theaters or restaurants by referring to personal details mentioned during the conversation. For example, he will say, “I’m sorry your mom is ill, but did you really want to share that with a total stranger?”
As for being hurried in the restaurant where my wife and I are regulars, Buchanan said, “I would absolutely address the co-owner by name and then stay as long as I wanted.”
Buchanan added: “In the mid-1970s, I lived in Manhattan and my dad took my girlfriend and me out to lunch. We had a very pushy waiter who kept trying to clear our plates in order to turn the table.
Finally, my dad told him that if he tried to take his plate again, he would stab him with his fork.”
Buchanan said they were allowed “to finish at our leisure.”
Mary of Cheshire called to say she is 89 and “I appreciate a nice leisurely breakfast. On Sunday mornings people want to relax a little bit. I think the owner was very rude.”
But Bob Cole wrote, “Restaurant owners and wait staff depend on the turning of tables for their livelihood. People lingering excessively when there are customers waiting for seats not only inconvenience those waiting but interfere with the owner and staff making a living.”
Sue Swanson Reynolds said the restaurant co-owner “obviously puts more stock in the dollar than in his regular customers. The next time you and your wife decide where to eat, you are likely to not choose that establishment again. (She’s right). This will affect not only the restaurant’s success, but its wait staff.”
Susan Woodall said of people using cell phones at public performances: “Foggedaboutit! If you can’t survive two-three hours without one, don’t go.”
Bev Francis noted the cell phoner next to me at the theater (who claimed to be a doctor) could have put his phone on vibrate and taken calls in the hallway.
Francis also said the woman at Willoughby’s should know better than to leave her things behind because it can make people nervous in the post-911 world.
Jim McEvoy, an assistant news editor in Washington, told me students in his college library left their things unattended in cubicles for extended periods so they could stake out a space.
“It is probably hard for her to realize that life goes on outside the academic world and the coffee shop is a place of business, not a study hall,” he wrote. “She might understand the inconvenience she’s creating for others, but ultimately she won’t care because she’s studying, and studying is incredibly important to her present and (hopefully bright) future life.”
Then there was the letter sent to the Register by an East Haven gentleman. He sympathized with the cell phone user for “being stared at by a total stranger next to him in a darkened theater, especially when the movie’s title is ‘There Will Be Blood.’ ”
“In my view,” the gentleman wrote, “Randall Beach suffers from ADD.” (That’s attention deficit disorder, folks).
As for the Willoughby’s episode, the gentleman wrote, “Apparently, the caffeine kicked in.” He theorized that after I advised her she shouldn’t leave things unattended for so long, “The woman was likely the second person in recent history to share a story with friends about an odd man wandering the local streets.”
Yep, that’s me, your local columnist, wandering those streets...
Randall Beach can be reached at rbeach@nhregister.com or 789-5766.
Monday, February 4, 2008
We know where the first hamburger was made
The following is a column by Randall Beach
There they go again, trying to shoot down Louis’ Lunch and its proud claim of making the world’s first hamburger.
The latest naysayer is Josh Ozersky, food editor for New York Magazine. He has written a soon-to-be-published book “The Hamburger: A History.” The people at Yale University Press provided me with an advance copy, and its pages 17-18 are dynamite.
Clearly, the man has done a lot of research. Beginning on page 15 of his 140-page book, Ozersky tries to sort out who made the first hamburger.
“There are a number of rival claims,” he wrote, “but they’re all equally worthless, historically speaking. None can produce any real evidence.”
Among the earliest claimants to the burger throne was a teenager from Seymour, Wis. named Charlie Nagreen, who swore he put a meatball between two slices of bread and sold it from his ox-drawn cart at the Outagamie County Fair in 1885.
Ozersky then discussed the Menches brothers, Frank and Charles, who claimed to have sold a ground beef sandwich at the Erie County Fair in, coincidentally, Hamburg, N.Y., also in 1885. Ozersky said they served “some kind of debased meat loaf.”
Another aspirant was Fletcher Davis of Athens, Tex., who said his hamburger sandwiches were a hit at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair. Ozersky said this, too, lacks proof.
Then he turned to Louis’ Lunch, which he acknowledged to be “a venerable institution” that has operated continuously in New Haven since 1895.
“A nosegay of affidavits attest the place has been making hamburgers since the turn of the century,” he wrote. But he said these affidavits are “not irrefutable.”
After praising Louis’ for its “elevating” eating experience, Ozersky dropped the bombshell: “There is just one problem. The next hamburger Louis’ Lunch serves will be its first.”
He explained: “Louis’ serves a ground beef sandwich on sliced bread, in this case toast. And that is not a hamburger.”
He called serving the meat on toast “a stopgap measure.” He added, “No, there is no doubt: on any kind of semantic or platonic level, no bun = no burger.”
Ozersky concluded, “To admit ground beef on toast as a hamburger is to make the idea of a ‘hamburger’ so loose, so abstract, so semiotically promiscuous as to have no meaning.”
Well, that’s quite a mouthful. You can imagine how much I was looking forward to heading down to Crown Street and showing those passages to Jeff Lassen, great-grandson of Louis Lassen, the original owner.
After I ordered “a hamburger,” and was soon presented with what Lassen firmly believes to be indeed a hamburger, and after I greatly enjoyed whatever it was, I pulled out the scandalous pages and warily approached him.
Standing over the grill, Lassen read it with furrowed brow.
Then, lowering the pages, he demanded, “Which came first, the horse or the cart? Toast came before buns!
“We did it on toast because that’s all there was back then, back in the day,” Lassen said.
“We still stand by that we made the first hamburger in the United States,” he told me. “It’s a tradition we’re quite proud of and that we take rather seriously.”
“Rather” seriously?
“To try to shoot us down for whatever reason,” Lassen continued, “to say it’ll be ‘our first hamburger,’ is a little crazy. We have a lot of proof on our side: documentation, affidavits. We’re in the Library of Congress.”
It’s true. As Casey Stengel said, “You could look it up.”
As I departed, Lassen said, “Ask him if he’s really eaten here.”
And so I did. When I reached him at his New York office, Ozersky said he has dined at Louis’ 8 to 12 times.
“It’s great!” he raved. “It’s one of the best meat sandwiches in the world. If I could call it a hamburger, I’d say it’s one of the best hamburgers in the world.”
But he said he can’t do that.
“If you say it can be on toast,” he told me, “you’re essentially redefining the hamburger out of existence. The hamburger as the world knows it means a sandwich of ground beef on a bun.”
Ozersky said the bun “goes back hundreds of years,” so Louis Lassen could have used a bun on that fabled day in 1900.
Who, then, in Ozersky’s view, did make the world’s first hamburger?
Quoting his book: “The first great modern hamburger, on a bun and ready for business, was conceived ... in Wichita, Kansas” by a fry cook named Walter Anderson.
The date was Nov. 16, 1916. Anderson’s real estate broker, Edgar Waldo “Billy” Ingram, became his partner and Ingram created the White Castle hamburger chain.
Did you ever eat a White Castle hamburger? Wouldn’t you rather eat at Louis’?
Case closed.
Randall Beach can be reached at rbeach@nhregister.com or 789-5766.
There they go again, trying to shoot down Louis’ Lunch and its proud claim of making the world’s first hamburger.
The latest naysayer is Josh Ozersky, food editor for New York Magazine. He has written a soon-to-be-published book “The Hamburger: A History.” The people at Yale University Press provided me with an advance copy, and its pages 17-18 are dynamite.
Clearly, the man has done a lot of research. Beginning on page 15 of his 140-page book, Ozersky tries to sort out who made the first hamburger.
“There are a number of rival claims,” he wrote, “but they’re all equally worthless, historically speaking. None can produce any real evidence.”
Among the earliest claimants to the burger throne was a teenager from Seymour, Wis. named Charlie Nagreen, who swore he put a meatball between two slices of bread and sold it from his ox-drawn cart at the Outagamie County Fair in 1885.
Ozersky then discussed the Menches brothers, Frank and Charles, who claimed to have sold a ground beef sandwich at the Erie County Fair in, coincidentally, Hamburg, N.Y., also in 1885. Ozersky said they served “some kind of debased meat loaf.”
Another aspirant was Fletcher Davis of Athens, Tex., who said his hamburger sandwiches were a hit at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair. Ozersky said this, too, lacks proof.
Then he turned to Louis’ Lunch, which he acknowledged to be “a venerable institution” that has operated continuously in New Haven since 1895.
“A nosegay of affidavits attest the place has been making hamburgers since the turn of the century,” he wrote. But he said these affidavits are “not irrefutable.”
After praising Louis’ for its “elevating” eating experience, Ozersky dropped the bombshell: “There is just one problem. The next hamburger Louis’ Lunch serves will be its first.”
He explained: “Louis’ serves a ground beef sandwich on sliced bread, in this case toast. And that is not a hamburger.”
He called serving the meat on toast “a stopgap measure.” He added, “No, there is no doubt: on any kind of semantic or platonic level, no bun = no burger.”
Ozersky concluded, “To admit ground beef on toast as a hamburger is to make the idea of a ‘hamburger’ so loose, so abstract, so semiotically promiscuous as to have no meaning.”
Well, that’s quite a mouthful. You can imagine how much I was looking forward to heading down to Crown Street and showing those passages to Jeff Lassen, great-grandson of Louis Lassen, the original owner.
After I ordered “a hamburger,” and was soon presented with what Lassen firmly believes to be indeed a hamburger, and after I greatly enjoyed whatever it was, I pulled out the scandalous pages and warily approached him.
Standing over the grill, Lassen read it with furrowed brow.
Then, lowering the pages, he demanded, “Which came first, the horse or the cart? Toast came before buns!
“We did it on toast because that’s all there was back then, back in the day,” Lassen said.
“We still stand by that we made the first hamburger in the United States,” he told me. “It’s a tradition we’re quite proud of and that we take rather seriously.”
“Rather” seriously?
“To try to shoot us down for whatever reason,” Lassen continued, “to say it’ll be ‘our first hamburger,’ is a little crazy. We have a lot of proof on our side: documentation, affidavits. We’re in the Library of Congress.”
It’s true. As Casey Stengel said, “You could look it up.”
As I departed, Lassen said, “Ask him if he’s really eaten here.”
And so I did. When I reached him at his New York office, Ozersky said he has dined at Louis’ 8 to 12 times.
“It’s great!” he raved. “It’s one of the best meat sandwiches in the world. If I could call it a hamburger, I’d say it’s one of the best hamburgers in the world.”
But he said he can’t do that.
“If you say it can be on toast,” he told me, “you’re essentially redefining the hamburger out of existence. The hamburger as the world knows it means a sandwich of ground beef on a bun.”
Ozersky said the bun “goes back hundreds of years,” so Louis Lassen could have used a bun on that fabled day in 1900.
Who, then, in Ozersky’s view, did make the world’s first hamburger?
Quoting his book: “The first great modern hamburger, on a bun and ready for business, was conceived ... in Wichita, Kansas” by a fry cook named Walter Anderson.
The date was Nov. 16, 1916. Anderson’s real estate broker, Edgar Waldo “Billy” Ingram, became his partner and Ingram created the White Castle hamburger chain.
Did you ever eat a White Castle hamburger? Wouldn’t you rather eat at Louis’?
Case closed.
Randall Beach can be reached at rbeach@nhregister.com or 789-5766.
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