Preserve Connecticut's History

Awesome architect, sometime radio star, and all-around nice guy Duo Dickinson has an important reminder in today's Hartford Courant.

"When budgets are stretched thin, as Connecticut's surely is, lawmakers will point their pencils at expenses they view as marginal. This year that includes historic preservation. Most funds from the Community Investment Act, which are supposed to be dedicated to historic preservation as well as open space and farmland preservation and affordable housing, are being swept into the general fund under proposals to help balance the current and coming budgets.

This shortsighted cut would have permanent costs. In Connecticut and New England, our history is anything but marginal..."

Read the rest here.

Review in the New London Day



John Ruddy of the New London Day has given me a very positive review. He could have mentioned that "Homegrown Terror" is similar or nearly identical to the term the people of the time used, "parricide," in order to show that I wasn't just pulling that concept from a hat. But otherwise this is a perfect reading of my book, with a complete understanding of what I was trying to do. The article was later picked up by Stars and Stripes and a couple other sites.

Elegy for Jodie Lane





Check out What Jodie Taught Me about Tattoos by Amy Nawrocki. I never knew Jodie, but my wife did, and whenever I visit friends in the East Village, I see the sign dedicated to her. Stray electricity kills millions of animals every year, and also a few people like Jodie. As the son of an electrical engineer, I am aware of its usefulness and beauty, but it is a dangerous human tool, and some pay the price.

New Website


My personal website has been down for a couple months while it was redesigned (by my friend and marketing/editing expert Ryan Rasmussen). But now it is up and running and looks great. Soon this blog may be integrated into the site, but don't hide in panic (like Maple is above). You'll still be able to come here to get your news and chews about Connecticut.

Literary Lion in Connecticut


From Nutmeg Chatter:

It is fair to say there’s a true love affair between Professor Eric D. Lehman and the nutmeg state. When he arrived from Pennsylvania two decades ago, Lehman began to hike and discovered Connecticut’s little hills, rivers and forests. He soon fell in love with the museums and the wine trail and most importantly, fell in love with and married his wife, poet and professor Amy Nawrocki. His literary work celebrates our state like no other author, taking on the topics from Tom Thumb to The History of Bridgeport to A History of Connecticut Wine and so much more.  In his recent work, Lehman takes on the legacy of our nation’s most notorious traitor, Benedict Arnold, in Homegrown Terror: Benedict Arnold and the Burning of New London.

Professor Lehman chose Benedict Arnold as his subject because his first experience learning about the figure failed to answer the questions he felt…

Read the rest at Nutmeg Chatter.

At the Riverview


Really enjoyed my talk at the Simsbury Land Trust - a huge organization with many committed members (about 140 that night). I talked about how I fell in love with Connecticut, and how we could work together to make it a better place for walkers, and in doing so make more people fall in love with it. Listening to what they had to say, I think the future of our state is bright!

Afoot in Simsbury

 
I'll be appearing at the annual Simsbury Land Trust meeting on April 9 at The Riverview in Simsbury.

 There will be great company, delicious food and drinks, and a presentation by yours truly on my book Afoot in Connecticut, and what we can do to make our state even better for walkers.

 $50.00 per person includes open bar, hors d’oeuvres, dinner, dessert and coffee. Hope to see you there!

Afoot in Roxbury


Had a great time talking about Afoot in Connecticut at Roxbury's Minor Memorial Library today. We also discussed a growing topic of interest - the connection of the state's hiking trails, greenways, land trusts, state parks, etc. We are closer than anywhere in America to having what Europe has today, and what we had once upon a time - a network of trails that allows us to walk from town to town, staying overnight at bed and breakfasts, and exploring our home one day at a time.

Fraunces Tavern


Finally got a chance to eat at Fraunces Tavern in lower Manhattan the other day. In my book Homegrown Terror I describe George Washington and Benjamin Tallmadge's farewell there in 1783. It was touching scene, of a sort that Benedict Arnold never knew. What I didn't know until a few weeks ago was that it was also the site of a terrorist attack in 1975, a bombing that killed four people and injured fifty others.

John Surowiecki


Recently saw poet John Surowiecki give a lecture and read at the University of Bridgeport. Afterwards I read his book, "The Hat City After Men Stopped Wearing Hats" and was suitably impressed. What a poet needs, I think, is a control of language, a different way of looking at things, and endless persistent variation. Surowiecki definitely has that. Yet another of Connecticut's cultural greats. Keep up the good work, John.

From The Hat City after Men Stopped Wearing Hats
 
 
The Hat City after Men Stopped Wearing Hats
 
At the inauguration no one wore hats, not even
the poet whose hair the wind shaped into a fin.
We sat at the kitchen table trying to figure out
how we would make a living now that the river
no longer flowed carrot-orange to the Sound.
 
We used to tell the children that its fish wore
fedoras and suffered from mercury shakes,
twitching, lurching, losing scales as we would hair.
Every street used to be a river of hats and when
a war was won a sea of hats would suddenly appear.
 
Every day we’d walk to work leaning into the wind,
hands on our hats, and never once did we think
the factory doors would close and never once
did we notice the frost late on the lawns
like an interlude in a slaughtering of moths.

Reading on Horseback


I don't recommend actually reading on horseback, or especially driving a motor vehicle. However, this statue at the Bethel Public Library is a great reminder that we need to fill our idle moments with input. And the best thing to do is to read a book. I keep books (letters, diaries, etc) in the bathroom. I keep books in the car. I keep a book in my briefcase, in my office, by my bedside, in every room in my house. Snatching the idle moments and turning them into reading opportunities is the way to make a life.