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Talking Transportation: CDOT Thinks We’re Stupid

February 25, 2011 by

The CT Rail Commuter Council’s “Winter Crisis – Commuter Summit” last week was a big success.  Dozens of commuters turned out to share their horror stories about trying to ride Metro-North this winter… no heat, no information, no seats and in many cases, no trains!

Metro-North and the CT Dept of Transportation made the usual excuses and apologies, which placated few… “we’re doing the best we can”… ‘it’s not our fault the trains are so old”… and the classic, “be patient, the new M8 cars are coming.”

All of these are true.  But it was in trying to explain the many delays in the delivery and testing of the new M8 cars that things got heated.

As any reader of this column knows, we’ve been waiting since 2005 for new cars to replace our decrepit fleet.  Designed and built by Kawasaki, the new M8 cars look great.  But they’re 15 months late into service with no real explanation as to why… or when they’ll be ready for passengers.  It was time for answers.

The CT Rail Commuter Council, a creation of the legislature, has neither a budget nor much power.  But the one thing state statutes say is that we may request “and shall receive” any assistance we want from the CDOT in understanding what’s going wrong with Metro-North operations.

So, to get to the bottom of the M8 delays, we requested that CDOT bring to our meeting someone from Kawasaki and from LTK (the consultant that’s been paid $27 million to oversee the M8 testing program).  To our dismay, they refused.  No explanation, just a “no”.

We turned to Governor Malloy’s office for help, but they didn’t even return our phone calls.  So much for the first test of the Governor’s promise of open, transparent government.

Why the cover-up?  What do CDOT and the Governor know about the M8 delays that they wanted to keep the experts away from our questioning?  What are they hiding?

At our meeting on February 16th we submitted a list of 32 specific questions about the M8 program and got few replies.  But among the facts we did learn:

  • The testing program has been underway for a year.
  • The cars are showing not just “software problems” but hardware issues as well.
  • Kawasaki doesn’t get paid until the cars prove they can work.
  • The mandatory 4000-mile test run of the prototype cars has been started and restarted several times as new problems were identified.
  • Metro-North still thinks they can fix the M8 problems and get as many as 80 into service by the end of 2011, two years behind schedule.

When a commuter asked the Interim-Commissioner of the CDOT why he wasn’t speaking specifically about the identified engineering problems with the M8 he was told that “people wouldn’t understand” them.  In other words, because we’re not civil or electrical engineers (though many commuters are!), the CDOT thinks it better to just explain away this $866 million railcar as having “software problems”.

I told the Commissioner that I found his attitude insulting and condescending.  Commuters on Metro-North are not stupid and we don’t need to have things “dumbed down” to be understood.

The CT Rail Commuter Council has done what it can to find the truth about the M8 delays.  We’ve sent our questions along to the Transportation Committee of the state legislature.  Maybe they can get some straight answers.

JIM CAMERON has been a Darien resident for 20 years.  He is Chairman of the CT Metro-North / Shore Line East Rail Commuter Council, and a member of the Coastal Corridor TIA and the Darien RTM.  The opinions expressed in this column are only his own.  You can reach him at Cameron06820@gmail.com or www.trainweb.org/ct

Filed Under: Transportation

CT Watchdog: Beware Counterfeit $100 Bills

February 14, 2011 by

Most of us would gladly accept $100 bills, especially from banks.  Sasha Suto of Glastonbury is not sure after her experience with Bank of America’s West Hartford branch.

Suto went to the nation’s largest – and frequently criticized bank – on Jan. 31 to cash a $900 check that had been made out on a Bank of America account.  She received 9 $100 bills and promptly took them to her credit union, Franklin Trust, also in West Hartford, where she attempted to deposit them.

The clerk checked all 9 bills with a special pencil and found that when she drew a line across one of the bills it turned dark instead of yellow, a sign that its counterfeit.

The clerk refused to deposit the bill and suggested to Suto that she take it back to the Bank of America branch.

At Bank of America a clerk ran her pencil over the bill and also found that it turned dark. The manager told Suto that she would have to confiscate the money and turn it over to the Secret Service – as federal law requires. The clerk who told Suto to take the check to Bank of America was reprimanded.

That was fine, Suto said, “but can I have another $100 bill since I got the bill from there in the first place 15 minutes earlier?”

Absolutely not, Suto was told, since the bank had no way of knowing that Suto didn’t slip another bill in her pile.

That is when Suto contacted me and I contacted Bank of America, which claimed that it thoroughly checks all $100 bills and there is no way Suto could have gotten a counterfeit bill from them.

At that point I didn’t know who to believe. While normally banks don’t pass out fake bills, it does happen, as Chase was caught red handed last year trying to falsely blame a customer for a bad $100 bill.

So I figured I would test Suto and asked her to file a written complaint against Bank of America with the West Hartford police. If she did that I was going to assume that she was either a complete idiot or on the level.

Suto did file a written complaint and West Hartford police – who had not been told about the counterfeit bill from the bank – started their own investigation. At that point I was comfortable that Suto was telling the truth.

West Hartford Police Chief James Strillacci was not sure. He said that his department was investigating a rash of fake $100 bills being passed in West Hartford.

He said that on Jan. 30 a bad check was passed at a gas station and $900 in bogus bills were passed at Price Rite. Another case had also just came in. 

The tale does have a happy ending. Suto was called by Bank of America last week and was told that the Secret Service determined that the bill was legitimate, it just had some kind of coating on it.

She went back to the bank, refused a $100 bill and instead walked out with five $20 bills.

Suto says she doesn’t blame Bank of America, but she hopes the bank does not pass the $100 bill off again on someone else who will also have a problem with it.

Bank of America said its policy is not to inform local authorities when a counterfeit bill is received and only contacts the Secret Service, which she assumes contacts local police. I suggested that the policy be changed.

You can reach The Watchdog at George@connecticutwatchdog.com and he will answer as many emails as he can. Please check out his site, www.ctwatchdog.com for comprehensive consumer, health, finance, media, internet, computer, travel and education tips.

Filed Under: CT Watchdog, Towns

Career Column 8: The Manufacturing Sector

February 13, 2011 by

The number of people employed in manufacturing in Connecticut has declined consistently over many years.  But that’s not the whole story.   Manufacturing is the fourth largest of the ten employment sectors in Connecticut, employing over 166,000 people in 2010.  That’s a lot of jobs, more jobs than in construction, finance, or government.  Manufacturers in Connecticut make everything from airplane parts and medical devices to bread and soap.  They each employ a few to hundreds of people.

Today there were 348 manufacturing jobs in Connecticut listed with careerbuilder.com, more jobs than listed under the construction, banking, food service, or automotive categories.   What kinds of jobs in manufacturing are available and how can you get one?  A review of manufacturing jobs posted on careerbuilder indicates that there is work in shipping and receiving, assembly, and production at all levels.  A number of jobs are temporary and offered through staffing agencies.  Most, but not all, require experience. 

For those of you who are not knowledgeable about production work, here are some definitions:
Machinists are hired because of their knowledge, skills, and experience.  They use machines to produce precision metal parts.  Good machinists have a math background, good problem-solving skills, and the ability to do very accurate work.  They also have specialized training, which they get in technical high schools, community or technical colleges, or on the job.  They don’t need a college degree.  Although the number of jobs for machinists is likely to decline, there is not expected to be a lot of competition for those that remain.  According to the Occupational Outlook Handbook (OOH) job prospects for machinists are good.  Something to be aware of, however, is that experienced machinists are preferred by employers, and with the recent downsizing in manufacturing there is likely to be a surplus of experienced machinists who will get hired on first.  Machinists in Connecticut earn $40,000-60,000/year. 

Tool and die makers make precision tools and metal forms.  According to OOH these are the most highly skilled and highest paid production jobs.  Despite the decline of manufacturing, job prospects for tool and die makers are categorized as excellent.  Tool and die makers learn their trade through formal education and on the job training. They earn $50,000-65,000/year.

CNC programmers and operators use computer controlled machines to produce parts, often in large numbers with a great deal of precision.   There is projected to be a reasonably high demand for operators and low demand for programmers in coming years (because of technological advances).  Those with the skills to operate a variety of CNC machines will be most employable.  CNC operators are trained in high school or community college programs and on the job.  They earn on average $43,000/year. 

Assemblers usually work as part of a team.  They put together finished products.   Their jobs range from easy to quite complex.  They need good manual dexterity and to be able to work quickly and methodically.  Although for the most part assemblers learn on the job, almost all of the assembly jobs listed by CareerBuilder today ask for experience.  Job prospects for assemblers are categorized as good by the OOH.  Electronics assemblers earn on average $32,000- 43,000/year. 

Manufacturing and mechanical engineers and engineering technicians are also employed in manufacturing.  Engineers need to complete a Bachelor’s degree while engineering technicians complete an Associate’s degree.  Note that there were few jobs listed requiring training at the engineering technician level, and the OOH indicates that engineering technician jobs are likely to grow more slowly than average.  Job prospects for engineers, in contrast, are expected to be good.  A manufacturing engineer earns about $66,000 -94,000/year. 

(Note that all salary estimates are taken from www.salary.com and based on employment in Hartford, CT.) 

There are numerous other production jobs in manufacturing, in food, textile, and other areas.  Some of these jobs are low skilled and offer low wages and they can be unsafe, especially in the food manufacturing industry.  Others are in decline due to technological advances and the lower costs of production in other countries.

“Dream It-Do It” is a nationwide program offered regionally through the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM).  The purpose of the Dream It-Do It campaign is to attract people to manufacturing careers and promote an understanding of advanced manufacturing methods.  Connecticut signed on in December of 2010, through the Connecticut Center for Advanced Technology (CCAT), to “help create a new generation of highly-skilled workers”.  The program will work with community colleges, technical high schools, and business and industry to meet its goals.  For example, CCAT is offering summer programs to introduce students in grades 7 – 9 to advanced manufacturing methods, in the hopes of interesting them in pursuing a career in manufacturing.  Find out more at www.dreamit-doit.com/ or on the CCAT website. 

For information about training for production jobs, look into the Asnuntuck Community College Manufacturing Technology Center in Enfield  (www.acc.commnet.edu/manufacturingtechnologycenter/) or the Connecticut Community Colleges’ College of Technology Next Generation Manufacturing website (www.nextgenmfg.org/.)  When choosing a training program, research it carefully to make sure it offers the breadth and depth of experience and training needed for available jobs.  The Enfield program, for example, offers a wide variety of machines to train on, providing students with more of the experiences they need to land a job. 

Career Resource

Careerbuilder.com (www.careerbuilder.com) is a comprehensive job board published on line and in newspapers by the Gannett, Tribune, and McClatchey publishing companies and Microsoft.  It is very easy to navigate and lists millions of jobs nationwide and globally.  You can search job openings by location, category, and keywords and you can also post your resume.  Note, however, that not all job openings are posted on careerbuilder.com so it should be one part of a broader job search strategy.

Karen Goldfinger, Ph.D. is a psychologist in private practice in Essex, Connecticut.   She specializes in psychological assessment for clinical, educational, and forensic purposes and has a special interest in career assessment.  She and two partners recently established KSB Career Consultants, LLC to provide on line career consultation for clients in Connecticut and New York.   Contact her with questions,  comments, or suggestions for the column at karengoldfinger@comcast.net. 

Filed Under: Career Column, Towns

Career Column: The Teaching Profession

January 29, 2011 by

President Obama, in his recent State of the Union address, made the following pitch:   “….. to every young person listening tonight who’s contemplating their career choice: If you want to make a difference in the life of our nation; if you want to make a difference in the life of a child — become a teacher. Your country needs you.”

Do we need more teachers?  Is unemployment less of a problem for teachers than it is for other workers?  Today’s career column aims to answer these questions for would be teachers in Connecticut. 

In Connecticut there are a few paths to become certified to teach elementary or secondary education at a public school.  You can get an undergraduate degree, typically a Bachelor’s of Science in education, from a number of colleges.  Or, if you already have a college degree, you can complete a post-baccalaureate (post college) program leading to teacher certification at a university or an “alternative route to teacher certification” program through the state over the summer or on weekends (available for specific subject areas).    To become a special education teacher you need graduate level coursework or, if you already are a certified teacher in another area, you can complete an alternative certification program.    Everyone has to take some standardized tests, the Praxis exams.  None of these paths to certification are highly competitive or time consuming. 

However, once you are certified, finding a teaching job can be challenging, depending on where and what you hope to teach.   It is not too difficult to find openings for teachers in shortage areas.  Currently, in Connecticut, these include English, family and consumer science, math, music, science, technology, and world languages.  Special education also seems to be in demand.   There also tend to be openings for teachers in inner city school districts.  But getting hired on as a teacher in elementary education, social studies, art, or physical education in non inner city school districts is difficult, with many more applicants than openings. 

Once hired, new teachers face multiple challenges including a lot of paperwork, mandates, budgetary constraints, and managing a classroom of children.  They need to get along with other teachers, administrators, and parents.  They need to write lesson plans and grade papers after school and on weekends, and they need to complete a graduate degree within a certain time frame.    In addition, early career teachers are closely evaluated and not all have their contracts renewed.  

Good teachers like children and are motivated to help them learn.  They communicate well and have common sense and self-control.  They are patient, fair minded, optimistic, energetic, and creative.   They manage stress well and can cope with a challenging bureaucracy and multiple demands.  The best know intuitively that they want to teach, and many have wanted to teach since childhood.  

Teaching can be a great career choice for energetic adults who are looking for an “encore” career.  It can also be a great choice for young people coming out of college or parents returning to work after staying home with children of their own.   But would be teachers need to know what they are getting into.  They should be prepared for a challenging job search or plan to teach in a shortage area or in a difficult school environment.   As is true for most things worth doing, they will have to work hard at their chosen career.  

Job boards for teaching jobs in Connecticut can be found at www.cea.org and www.ctreap.net.  Note that job postings for teachers are to some extent seasonal.  Once a budget is passed and teachers give notification that they are retiring or resigning, school districts know which positions need to be filled for the coming school year.

Karen Goldfinger, Ph.D. is a psychologist in private practice in Essex, Connecticut.   She specializes in psychological assessment for clinical, educational, and forensic purposes and has a special interest in career assessment.  She and two partners recently established KSB Career Consultants, LLC to provide on line career consultation for clients in Connecticut and New York.   Contact her with questions,  comments, or suggestions for the column at karengoldfinger@comcast.net. 

Filed Under: Career Column, Towns

Talking Transportation: Where are the new M8 cars?

January 25, 2011 by

Interior of New M-8 Rail Cars

Almost daily, on train platforms and in town, a commuter stops me to ask, “So, where are the new M8 rail cars?”  I wish I knew!

It has been six years since then-Governor Jodi Rell announced that the state would finally be replacing its broken-down rail fleet… six years!  It’s taken that long for their design, bidding, construction and delivery.  The first car arrived Christmas Eve 2009, already a year late due to builder Kawasaki’s construction problems.

For 13 months those cars have undergone testing. But today we seem no closer to riding the M8s despite promises that they would be in service by now, and the testing process has been cloaked in mystery. (Ironically, there are dozens of videos of the M8s undergoing testing on YouTube, but that’s the closest I’ve been to seeing them running.)
Throughout 2010, we were told that prototype testing was going well.  But by November, we wondered why a date hadn’t been announced for the trains to go into service.  After all, even Governor Rell had been promised that the M8s would run before she left office at the end of December 2010.

So, in November the Commuter Council asked CDOT to bring us someone from Kawasaki to talk about the testing.  They refused.

Then, six weeks ago, there was a glitch:  an electromagnetic pulse from the cars was affecting the signal system.  This was a deal-breaker.  Testing was stopped.

But rather than advise legislators or the Commuter Council about this problem, CDOT and Metro-North gave the bad news “exclusive” to two reporters, who had to pledge they would not speak with any stakeholders with oversight. 
Those are questionable journalistic ethics and hardly “transparent”.  Since when do government agencies get away with spin-control on such bad news?

This past week, the Commuter Council asked CDOT for updates on the testing.  We received the same vague generalities as we’d been given for a year: “The testing is going along as planned.”  But this time, something new and disconcerting was added.

A senior CDOT official told us “We take out the M8s every night and run them, and every night a new issue comes up.”  A new issue?

Yup… every night of testing a new problem is found.  Among them, problems with the auxiliary power system, the automatic train control and the diagnostic computer monitoring.  And until they are all fixed, the final crucial test, 4,000 error-free miles, can’t begin.

And testing of the M8s on Shore Line East, under Amtrak’s power system and signaling, hasn’t even begun.  Until the M8s can run on Shore Line East there will be no equipment to run on the long-promised New Haven to Springfield commuter rail line.

But wait… there’s more.  It seems that Metro-North itself hasn’t been overseeing Kawasaki’s testing of the M8’s, but a consultant.  LTK Assoc. of Pennsylvania has been paid $15 million to monitor the tests.  And this week their contract will be extended seven months for another $12 million.

None of these details were shared with the legislature’s Transportation Committee or Commuter Council, despite our interest in this crucial testing stage.  It came out in a newspaper article.

If Metro-North feels it needs multi-million dollar consultants for another seven months after we’ve already had a year of testing, that sure sounds like they don’t believe the M8s will be in service anytime soon.

Nobody wants to rush these cars onto the tracks, however badly they are needed.  But given the $866 million cost of the project and the six years we’ve already waited, why can’t Metro-North and CDOT be open and honest about what’s going on?

The Commuter Council has been asking the questions but the answers have been curt and condescending.   Perhaps it’s time for the legislature’s Transportation Committee to get to the bottom of this story.  Commuters (and taxpayers) deserve an answer.

JIM CAMERON has been a Darien resident for 20 years.  He is Chairman of the CT Metro-North / Shore Line East Rail Commuter Council, and a member of the Coastal Corridor TIA and the Darien RTM.  The opinions expressed in this column are only his own.  You can reach him at Cameron06820@gmail.com  or www.trainweb.org/ct

Filed Under: Towns, Transportation

Career column: Working for Big Pharma

January 13, 2011 by

For this career column I planned to look into the kinds of jobs available in the pharmaceutical industry.  I thought I would have a look and report back, so readers could be better informed and get an idea about whether this would be a good direction to head in.  It seemed like it might be an exciting industry to work in, with its focus on developing new drugs and all of the news about recent developments in genetics and stem cell research.   

Hours later I can conclude that the employment picture for Big Pharma is a lot more complicated than one would think, and the news is gloomy.   I examined Pfizer as a local and representative example.  Pfizer lists 146 openings in the United States and about 80 internationally.   However, Pfizer reportedly cut 10,000 jobs in 2007 after failure of a new drug, 19,500 jobs in 2009 as a result of a buyout of Wyeth (which led to redundant jobs), and another 8,480 jobs in 2010, leaving a lot of angry former employees.  Hoover’s, a reliable source of industry information, lists Pfizer as having 116,500 employees in 2009.  So the 146 open positions listed in the United States are a trifle.  

Obviously there are other pharmaceutical companies that have openings, including Genentech, NovoNordisk, and Abbott Laboratories among Fortune 500 companies.  According to the Bureau of Labor statistics (BLS), pharmaceutical manufacturers altogether employed over 280,000 people in 2008.    Many of these people, perhaps 40%, were employed on the business or office support end of the industry, in jobs that involve financial planning, business analysis, marketing, sales (the number of sales representatives is diminishing at a high rate, however), contracting, outsourcing, corporate communications, and public affairs.  About 30% were scientists or other professionals and a smaller percentage worked in production. 

The most recent BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook (OOH) does not present a rosy picture for employment prospects in Big Pharma, concluding: 

Despite the increasing demand for drugs, several factors will limit employment growth in the industry. Drug producers and buyers are placing more emphasis on cost effectiveness, due to the extremely high costs of developing new drugs. Competition from the producers of generic drugs also will put pressure on many firms in this industry as more brand-name drug patents expire. On the manufacturing side, continuing improvements in manufacturing processes will improve productivity in pharmaceutical plants, while many companies are also manufacturing more of their products overseas.

In addition, industry insiders writing for Science Careers, a blog published by Science magazine, and BioJobs, an award winning blog about careers in the life sciences,  suggests troubling job prospects for early career life scientists who hold doctoral degrees.   They note there is little government grant funding for science and few jobs in academia (except for postdocs).  They also suggest that much research and development takes place in emerging markets, where foreign born scientists trained in the United States are available to do the work.   The OOH also points out: 

Doctoral degree holders are expected to face competition for basic research positions in academia. ….. In general, applied research positions in private industry are somewhat easier to obtain, but may become more competitive if increasing numbers of scientists seek jobs in private industry because of the difficulty finding positions in colleges and universities. (italics added)

Also noted in the OOH: “ an economic downturn could influence the amount of money allocated to new research and development efforts, particularly in areas of risky or innovative research. An economic downturn also could limit the possibility of extension or renewal of existing projects.”

It seems that those who have a science and business background will be best prepared to work in the pharmaceutical industry.  Mostly business with a science background would be a good bet.  Those seeking a life in research after obtaining a doctoral degree in the life sciences should plan carefully when they decide where and what to study and which lines of research to pursue.  There are exciting and rewarding research positions available in academia and in the pharmaceutical industry, but not enough for all who want them.  It’s hard to say what will allow production workers to get and keep a job with Big Pharma.  Production workers do not need to be highly educated and there are not many job openings, so there is a lot of competition.  Relying on friends and family already employed in a factory to pull someone in, the old fashioned kind of networking, could be key.

Career Resource

In the course of learning about employment with Big Pharma, I stumbled across two good resources for science jobs:

www.sciencecareers.sciencemag.org is full of information and career advice for scientists and others looking for work, and it has a good science job board. 

www.biojobblog.com/ is more personal and has a lot of interesting observations and career advice, especially for life scientists.

Karen Goldfinger, Ph.D. is a psychologist in private practice in Essex, Connecticut.   She specializes in psychological assessment for clinical, educational, and forensic purposes and has a special interest in career assessment.  She and two partners recently established KSB Career Consultants, LLC to provide on line career consultation for clients in Connecticut and New York.   Contact her with questions,  comments, or suggestions for the column at karengoldfinger@comcast.net. 

Filed Under: Career Column, Towns

An Elephant for Deep River

January 7, 2011 by

Members of Deep River Rotary Club and representatives of Mt. St. John school looking on as the elephant statue is delivered

The news is that an elephant has come to Deep River. It has arrived from Thailand by way of Newport , Rhode Island , and it will be here to stay. And it’s all made possible by the Deep River Rotary Club.

But it is not a live elephant, which would have some difficulty in the winter weather of Connecticut . This one is bronze and will last at least a century, and probably much longer. It’s a statue–about one-sixth the actual size of the living African elephant it depicts. But it will be a reminder to visitors and residents of this river town of the important role played by elephants in the history of Deep River .

The Rotary Club believes that this bronze statue will help to educate young and old about the importance of the ivory trade to the development of industry, commerce, and culture in the Valley Shore area–and particularly Deep River . Here factories prospered, manufacturing piano keys and other ivory products, such as combs and buttons. Long before the development of plastics (of which these items are now made) these products depended on the importing of ivory tusks from Zanzibar and other ports in Africa .

Deep River resident, John LaPlante

The negative side of this story is that our industry depended on the hunting of elephants for their tusks and the use of slaves for the transportation of the tusks. As we remember with gratitude the role of this beautiful animal in the development of our community, we will also remember the price which was paid for our prosperity. The statue will continue to remind us of that story in all its dimensions.

John LaPlante, a resident of Deep River and a member of the Deep River Rotary Club, conceived the idea of bringing this statue to town when he stumbled upon it in the lot at Aardvark Antiques in Newport , R.I. He challenged the club to bring this iconic figure to a place of honor in our community, and he led the financial negotiations to acquire the elephant.

First Selectman Dick Smith and Doug DeCerbo, director of Mt. St. John admiring new elephant statue

First Selectman Dick Smith and members of the town crew traveled to Newport to bring her back, along with a granite block on which she will rest. A welcoming committee of Rotarians was on hand at the Town Hall, along with Marilyn Malcarne and a group of fifers and drummers to create a festive atmosphere.

Robert Johnson, who has been selling real estate in the area for more than 60 years, was on hand, too. He clapped his hands and announced that the would make the first contribution to what will be the Elephant Fund. “I love the statue!” he said. “What a great idea!”

The permanent location for the elephant has not yet been announced. Several locations are being considered, but a formal dedication and celebration will take place in the Spring. “It will be a lot of fund,” said John LaPlante, who recalled that the elephant is a reminder of the prosperous days when Deep River was known as the “Queen of the Valley.” “One thing is for sure. Deep River is becoming Queen of the Valley again. Everybody is noticing that. This is one more way to celebrate that!”

Filed Under: Business, Deep River, John Guy LaPlante

Career Column: Buying for Sephora (so the rest of us can buy from Sephora)

December 22, 2010 by

My daughter’s boss’s friend’s daughter has what many young women would consider to be “the best job ever.”  She is a buyer for Sephora, the high end cosmetics retailer with well stocked independent store locations in malls all across the United States, Canada, and Europe.  I made it my mission to find out how one goes about getting this job and what the job might entail.  Here’s what I discovered:

The headquarters for Sephora USA is in San Francisco and most corporate level positions are located there.   Posted openings on Sephora’s website include one for an assistant merchandise planner and another for a planning manager.  Although these are not buying jobs exactly, they are closely related.   The assistant planner’s responsibility is to help with the creation of SKU (stock keeping units) forecasts and the placement of orders and requires 1-2 years of corporate retail planning experience.

I also looked at openings for buyers for similar companies and found this list of qualifications for an accessories buyer for Juicy Couture, a brand well known to Sephora shoppers:

  • 8+ years of Buying experience, 2+ years of previous management experience
  • Keen understanding and interest in fashion industry and trends
  • Excellent Retail Math and Excel skills
  • Proven vision for building line plans and assortments(and other qualifications that are less specific to the position and industry). 

I also found out that an associate buyer of dress collections at Saks Fifth Avenue needs 3 – 4 years of business experience and “strong business and financial analysis skills,” among other requirements.  Nothing in the rather long list of requirements for the Saks position had anything to do with a vision or interest in beautiful clothes, but perhaps having such an interest goes without saying.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), “Buyers purchase merchandise for resale from wholesalers or manufacturers. Using historical records, market analysis, and their sense of consumer demand, they buy merchandise, keeping in mind their customers’ demand for style, quality, and a reasonable price range. Wrong decisions mean that the store will mark down slow-selling merchandise, thus losing profits.” 

An assistant buyer for natural skin care products for Sephora gave an interview to the website “I Want Her Job” (more about the website below).  She reports that she started out in an unrelated retail business and moved on to become an account coordinator and later an account executive for a manufacturer who sold products to Sephora.  She moved over to Sephora from there.  It is evident from her interview that she loves cosmetics and loves working for the company.  She describes what she does each day this way:  “I help determine the correct assortment of products to carry and how they will be merchandised. I am not just involved in skin care merchandising, but I also work closely with our marketing, education, operations and inventory teams.” 

In sum, to become a buyer in the fashion or cosmetics industries, it is vital to have a good head for numbers and to be motivated to achieve business goals.  A buyer might also work long and unpredictable hours and will need to be able to respond quickly and manage stress well.  For someone who has these qualities and loves the products the industry sells, a career as a buyer could be very exciting.  Like any other good job, it takes a lot of work, persistence, and drive to get there.  Relevant internships and retail sales experience would be a good first step.  A college degree is not always essential, but it is desirable, and a business or merchandising degree could be a requirement for some positions.  According to salary.com, the median annual salary for an experienced buyer in New York is $77,000. 

Career Resource

IWantHerJob.com (www.iwantherjob.com ) is an inspiring website that profiles women who love their jobs.   The site is a pleasure to view, interviews are informative, and women with all kinds of interesting jobs are profiled.  The site is fairly new so hopefully there will be a wider range of jobs profiled over time.  The interview with the assistant buyer for Sephora is here:  www.iwantherjob.com/cassie-cowman/ .

Karen Goldfinger, Ph.D. is a psychologist in private practice in Essex, Connecticut.   She specializes in psychological assessment for clinical, educational, and forensic purposes and has a special interest in career assessment.  She and two partners recently established KSB Career Consultants, LLC to provide on line career consultation for clients in Connecticut and New York.   Contact her with questions,  comments, or suggestions for the column at karengoldfinger@comcast.net. 

Filed Under: Career Column, Towns

Bob Johnson the Deep River Phenomenon

December 12, 2010 by

Bob and Marilyn Monroe after a performance of the “Legends in Concert Holiday Show” at Foxwoods recently. Impersonators did Dean Martin, Stevie Wonder, Neil Diamond, Elvis Presley, and Marilyn. Afterward they came out to mingle with the audience. Marilyn is really show star Gailyn Addis. A wonderful show. Photo by John LaPlante.

Why do I call Bob Johnson our Deep River phenomenon? Well, for one thing ‘Johnson’ and ‘phenomenon’ rhyme, and I like that. But he really is a phenomenon of sorts.

Bob is really Robert F. Johnson. He is 85. But I think you’d guess 75. Tall, lean, raring to go.  Like most of us octogenarians, he has some complaints…sore back, painful foot. He’s had an operation or two of late. But he’s out and about every day, and still a Dapper Dan. His hair is always slicked down. His sport jacket buttoned. 

Now here’s a startling thing. He has been selling real estate in Deep River and environs for 64 years. It’s a record. Nobody comes close. And he’s still at it. “I like to keep the phone ringing!” he says, chuckling. Bob chuckles a hundred times a day.

He gave a talk about his life at the Deep River Rotary Club not long ago, and he kept the men and women around the big table chuckling also.

But now let me tell you about him the way he told us about himself.

First, I must mention he is a widower. His wife, Rosa Krieger, died three years ago. Alzheimer’s. It’s her picture right away that you see when he opens his wallet—age 39 when it was taken. A beautiful lady. Truly so. He met her at her brother’s in Manchester. He was a friend of Bob’s.  She was German. Visiting from Bavaria.

“I was 40. A bachelor. She was 39.  A bachelorette,” He  chuckles, “I got to take her out only three times.  Before she flew home, she said to me, ‘If you ever come to Germany, Bob, please visit us. She was living with her parents.”

 “I didn’t waste any time.” Chuckles. “I flew over for three weeks and she met me at the airport. I brought an engagement ring with me and she said yes. We were married in her church, which was 800 years old, on Oct. 28. 1965. We flew to Switzerland for our honeymoon. I flew home alone, which I didn’t like. She had to wait two months—legal papers, you know. We were married for 41 years.”

 He brought her to Deep River to live. She managed to adjust. Got to like Deep River and its folks. But she missed home. “We went back nearly every year. I always loved to go visit with her. She had a wonderful family. In fact, I lived there for a year. Beautiful  town. Good people. But I just couldn’t take to it permanently.” No chuckle this time.

Their son is Robert Xaver.  He lives in Killingworth with his wife Janet and children, Emily, Katie, and Lindsey. And their dog, Max. Bob dogsits Max when they go away. Robert X. speaks German fluently. “His mother always spoke German to him. That was a good thing.”

Deep River has always been home, sweet home for Bob. “I was born in my homestead at 14 Lafayette Avenue. I still sleep in the bedroom where I was born and still have the same mattress. Ha-ha!” (Not so about the mattress.) That’s why he calls his agency Lafayette Realty. It’s right around the corner from Main Street, close to Adams Supermarket and the Town Hall. You know what they say in real estate…Location, Location, Location! Bob feels he has the perfect location.

“My father was a big builder. He built our 8-room house in 1914 and he had only one helper. He dug the cellar at night with a lantern. I had two brothers and a sister, but they are gone now.”

His brother Erwin was seven years older. He was born with a short left arm. “It never fazed him. Very clever. Hard worker. A real entrepreneur.” Bob bring him up often. He teamed up with Erwin on many projects.

Erwin had the food concession for the three Pratt Read factories. They made all the working parts for pianos and sold them to piano companies all over the country. At age 15, Bob began selling lunches at the Pratt Read factories. He would start with the big factory on Main Street—now Piano Works Condominium. “I had a cart with sandwiches and drinks. I’d go to each floor and blow my whistle. People would come and buy .A hot dog was 10 cents. A coffee five cents. A ham and cheese sandwich 20 cents. Then I would go to the next factory, which is now Silgan. That is here they built the big transport gliders for World War II.”

He loved selling. Dealing with people. “When I was 15 years old I delivered the Hartford Courant. A few years later, Christmas trees. Also fireworks. Also gravestones.” Chuckles. “I really did. I also drove a taxi in Essex for a while.”
 He went to Deep River Elementary School, then Deep River High School. “I quit in my junior year. I didn’t like school. I enjoyed working and making money.” A chuckle. “But you shouldn’t say that. It’s embarrassing.”

“I always loved horses. When I was 15, I bought my first horse. Learned to ride it. Then a year later my second horse. I loved to ride them. And I rented them out for $1 per hour. Finally I raffled off the second one. I sold tickets for $2 and took in $154. A man in Middletown won it. I owned seven horses in all.

 “Speaking of raffles, at the Chester Fair a couple of years ago I bought an Elks Club $10 ticket for a raffle on a red two-eater convertible. I won it! It was valued at $28,000. No way could I ride that around town! I sold it back to the dealer.

“Speaking of being lucky, here’s another story. In 1938 I was 13 years old. I and two friends—both a bit older–were over by the Baptist Church on River Street. They later became state troopers. It had a large barn around the corner on High Street. . Those two began tossing rotten apples at the barn. What a mess they made. I was blamed, too. But I was just looking. Well, the parents were going to have to paint that side over. Guess what–the 1938 hurricane blew the whole barn down! I was lucky again!”

Some years later he bought a monkey. Susie. Thirty inches tall. But she was not much fun. And she never took to diapers. The messes! Finally Bob took her to a pet store. It would find somebody to love her. The owner called Bob two days later. “Mister Johnson,” he said. “Come pick up your monkey! We do not want her! She is a big, big problem.”
 He first flew across the Atlantic in 1958. Flying to Europe was unusual back then. John Colbert, co-owner of the town’s New Era weekly newspaper, went along. 

 “Propeller planes in those days. Our destination was Copenhagen. A long trip—24 hours from New York. John was looking out the window. He turned and said to me, ‘Bob, the seagulls are passing us!” Chuckle. 

“Just one stop—Iceland for four hours. We were gone for one month. And with the round-trip air fare, the Mercedes Benz we rented, gas food, drinks, trains and buses, the Oktoberfest in Munich, and of course the women (chuckles!!), the total cost for each of us was only $1,000. Things have changed a little since then, haven’t they?” Chuckle.

I myself, your reporter, have lived in Deep River eleven years. One day Bob called. “John,” he said. “Let me show you Deep River.” He wasn’t talking about selling me a place. I already had one. He took it upon himself to take me on a walk up and down Main Street. He had a story to tell at every house.

“That was the movie theatre. That was the A&P store. That was a pharmacy. We had three of them. That was Dr. Devitt’s house. Where Walgreen’s is now. That Devitt Field is named for him. The Whistle Stop was the Bob-O-Lou Restaurant back then. I built it with a pal. We ran it. A soft-shell crab sandwich was 35 cents. We sold the restaurant and went to other ventures.” There have been many.

He took me for a ride down Kirtland Street to the Town Landing on the Connecticut. Then back up River Street to the center of town. He pointed to 18 houses he had sold along that two miles. Two of them twice.

“I took to real estate and devoted myself to it all these many years. My first sale was an eight-room house for $4,000 in 1946. The second one was a two-family with six rooms each for $6,000. Erwin and I developed Castle View Drive in Chester. It was what had been the Kirtland farm. We called it Castle View because you had a nice view of Gillette Castle across the river. Lots went from $1,000 to $2,500. Erwin built the first house to get things moving. A total of 26 houses went up there. Very nice.

“I was a partner with him in building the first motor hotel in Old Saybrook. What we call a motel now. We called it the Old Saybrook Motor Inn but now it’s the Knights Inn.”

When the movie, “It Happened to Jane”, was made in Chester, he rented homes to the stars, Doris Day, Jack Lemmon, Ernie Kovacs, and others. And I was an extra in the movie. Just one in a in a small background group. I did it for eight days. I had a nice Plymouth sedan. They also wanted it in the movie. I got $8 a day and another $8 a day for my car. It was a lot of fun.”

He is hard put to say how many houses and other buildings and lots and farms he has sold. He showed me a scrapbook. It was filled with newspaper clippings, some brown and fragile. His real estate ads. News stories about his ventures. Photographs. He shakes his head when he sees what real estate prices are nowadays. And is astonished when he sees how many buildings he knew well have been torn down and replaced. “It’s really unbelievable.” He’s phenomenal also in remembering names and dates and prices. They all pop right up.

He’s always up to doing something exciting. “When I was in Florida last winter, the local airport had on display B-24 and B-17 bombers. Those planes helped win World War II. They go all over the country. People go see them and can take a ride in them. I went up for a half hour. How those four engineers roared. That ride cost $400. But sure worth it.”

Many adventurous memories. Once, in Pennsylvania,  down 1,600 feet into a coal mine, then a two-mile trek under a river. Another time, a tour through the largest refinery in the world. In Canada, a visit to a huge pulp mill–trees being converted into rolls of toilet paper!

He and Rosa bought a house on a canal in Stuart, Florida,  near West Palm Beach, and went every year for 27 years. Now his son, Robert X., owns a condo there. Bob visits there. This year his car is being trucked down and he’s flying. “I just don’t like the snow and the ice any more.”

His travel fever was not limited to Europe. He has traveled all over the U.S and up into Canada and Mexico. Twelve islands in the Caribbean. Numerous cruises. Crossed the Panama Canal. “In Mexico I saw eight bulls killed in one afternoon. I never want to see a show like that again.”

He sold two houses last year. They were houses whose owners had died. He expects to handle a couple more like that. He would like some more listings. “I need the challenge,” he said. “And the fun of it. Yep, I like to keep going. Just like the Eveready Battery.”

Filed Under: Deep River, John Guy LaPlante

Career Column: Keeping Us Safe in a Hostile World

December 2, 2010 by

I just saw the movie “Fair Game” with Naomi Watts and Sean Penn.  It tells the story of Valerie Plame, the CIA operative who was outed in the course of the political craziness of the times.  Her story made me wonder about what it takes to become a covert agent for the CIA.   This career column will attempt to answer that question, for the CIA and for other government agencies that have a strong national security focus.  Given the state of the world, there will undoubtedly be good jobs in these agencies for years to come, and we need good people to fill them. 

CIA

According to her Wikipedia entry, Valerie Plame’s father was in the Air Force and worked for a period for the National Security Agency (NSA), so perhaps she was born into it.  She attended Penn State and obtained a degree in advertising before applying to the CIA, and the CIA sent her to graduate school. It seems that a specific educational background is less important than talent, personal qualities, and the ability to pass a thorough background check.   

For those who find the alphabet soup of agencies confusing, the CIA is the agency that collects intelligence information and conducts covert actions against adversaries of the United States; it hires and trains spies.   It turns out that the CIA website is extremely user-friendly for job applicants and those just wanting to learn more about its mission and history.   It is so effective that it could serve as a model for government and corporate websites of all types.  It has good explanations of positions it hires for, videos about them, and a fun “personality quiz” that dispels myths about CIA service.  Regarding working for the CIA it notes, among other things:

“there are some fundamental qualities common to most successful officers, including a strong record of academic and professional achievement, good writing skills, problem-solving abilities and highly developed interpersonal skills. Overseas experience and languages are important factors as well.” 

Anyone can apply and the on line application is easy enough.  However, the applicant must:

“be prepared to undergo a thorough background investigation examining your life’s history, your character, trustworthiness, reliability and soundness of judgment. We also examine your freedom from conflicting allegiances, potential to be coerced, and willingness and ability to abide by regulations governing the use, handling and the protection of sensitive information.” 

How they conduct this investigation and determine one’s “freedom from conflicting allegiances,” etc. is left unsaid. 
If a career in the CIA sounds appealing, and the thought of going through an extensive background investigation does not dissuade you, check out the job possibilities on the CIA website, www.cia.gov/careers/index.html. 

FBI

The FBI is concerned with law enforcement at the national level.  Among other things, the FBI gathers intelligence from domestic sources, so the CIA apparently goes through the FBI if they need information from within the United States.  The FBI website indicates that it is currently recruiting Special Agents with certain critical skills such as accounting, finance, engineering, and the hard sciences. Applicants need to be between 23-37 years old to be considered for these positions, and they also have to meet physical requirements and pass a background check.  The FBI is also recruiting to fill professional positions, some of which have to be filled by current FBI employees and many of which require the applicant to pass top level security clearances.  The FBI careers website is much less appealing and more difficult to navigate than the CIA website, but many positions are posted for FBI offices in different parts of the country.  For example, there are postings for administrative officers, biologists, and paralegals.  Note that most positions have very specific requirements for experience.  FBI jobs are listed here:  www.fbijobs.gov/index.asp. 

NSA

On its website, the NSA, or National Security Agency, indicates that its “core missions are to protect U.S. national security systems and to produce foreign signals intelligence information.”  That is, the NSA protects national intelligence information and gathers intelligence information (signal intelligence, or SIGNIT) to share with those who need it.  The NSA…” collects SIGINT from various sources, including foreign communications, radar, and other electronic systems. This information is frequently in foreign languages and dialects, is protected by codes and other security measures, and involves complex technical characteristics. NSA…needs to collect and understand the information, interpret it, and get it to our customers in time for them to take action.” 
The NSA hires very smart computer scientists and engineers but also those with a background in international relations or anthropology.  For example, with a Bachelor’s degree in one of these fields you can apply for entrance into an intelligence analyst development program.   The NSA also offers a number of internships and scholarships at all levels. You can find out more about careers with the NSA here:  www.nsa.gov/careers/index.shtml.  The NSA website is easy to navigate and interesting to explore, but the information it provides is complex as perhaps is appropriate for its mission.  

Career Resource

The Federal Government’s official job site, www.usajobs.opm.gov/, is big, well organized, and informative.  It is a good place to learn about the hiring process for federal jobs and browse for federal jobs, and it is the only place to apply for most federal jobs.  If you take the time to explore the site, you will also find valuable information on how federal jobs are filled and you might be surprised at what kinds of jobs are available. For example, I did a quick search for jobs for psychologists in Connecticut and I was surprised to discover that the department of agriculture hires counseling psychologists for the Job Corps program.

Karen Goldfinger, Ph.D. is a psychologist in private practice in Essex, Connecticut.   She specializes in psychological assessment for clinical, educational, and forensic purposes and has a special interest in career assessment.  She and two partners recently established KSB Career Consultants, LLC to provide on line career consultation for clients in Connecticut and New York.   Contact her with questions,  comments, or suggestions for the column at karengoldfinger@comcast.net. 

Filed Under: Career Column, Towns

River Reads: “Faithful Place” by Tana French

November 30, 2010 by

I really am getting behind here! I have a few books  you’d love but as I just closed this one I’ll get to it first. Good book. Dark and clever. Both in equal parts really which makes for a good mystery detective personal thriller angst ridden type book.

You really can’t go home again, or really shouldn’t, as undercover detective Frank Mackey discovers. Well, first he discovers the suitcase and subsequently the  body of his long lost love. THEN he discovers that running off all those years ago was an excellent idea.

The night that he and his Rosie were to elope, she doesn’t show. Assuming that he has been stood up he says screw it and leaves anyway.

He becomes a police officer. Marries, divorces and generally stays as far from Faithful Place in Dublin as he can.

His alcohol fueled family has many many issues and as they are seemingly unresolvable ( or un fixable) he saves himself at great cost to the other less self-reliant members of the family. Or was the cost due regardless?

It raises a good question. Are you duty bound to attempt to save your family if it can not or will not attempt to save itself? Does familial duty ( even if its guaranteed demise is self destructive and inevitable) trump personal obligation? Saving oneself at the cost of others is unacceptable but is it wasteful and defeatest to throw away your own potential to help people who don’t want your help? Indeed, resent you for offering?

Frank gets deeper and deeper into a mess that is more psychological and sociological than mysterious. I , had a fair guess who dunnnit fairly early on. ( yes, I know, pat pat on my back.)  The book goes beyond what you are expecting.

What I found most interesting is Tana French writing as Frank Mackey. A La Memoirs of A Geisha, it is impressive for an author to pull off the other sex’s point of view. She writes quite well as a man. ( Being a girl- one wonders how I would know this…good point but ignore it.)

Faithful Place is interesting on many levels and although a tad bleak it has quite positive energy about it. Love can close or open doors and Frank chooses to keep them open.

Jennifer Petty Mann grew up in New York City, moved to London, England, then back to Boston, and is now happily ensconced on the EightMile river in Lyme with three little ones.  A former teacher, window dresser for Saks, and designer, she is taking her love of books to the proverbial “street.” 

Filed Under: River Reads, Towns

Career Column: It’s All About the Money

November 19, 2010 by

Literally, the jobs described below are all about the money, exchanging it, managing it, and making it, without manufacturing anything at all.  If you work in banking or financial services, you probably already know about these jobs.  This column is for those who don’t work in banking or finance.  It should be of special interest to parents, spouses, friends, or siblings of people working in these fields, or readers who are considering them.  

 

Financial Analysts

These professionals assess the performance of investments by studying financial statements and analyzing other financial information to project earnings and determine a company’s value.  Financial analysts typically focus on specific industries or narrower subject areas.  They use spreadsheets and statistical software, and they are likely to work long hours, travel, and face stressful deadlines.  Financial analysts need strong math, analytical, and problem-solving skills, and they should be detail-oriented and highly motivated because they have to do intensive research and focus on minute details.  They need a good academic background and at least a bachelor’s degree in a related field.  These jobs pay very well and are highly competitive.   Students who are considering a career as a financial analyst should work hard in college, majoring in business, economics, finance, or a related field.  A strong background in math, good study habits, and good time management skills honed in high school would be an advantage.   

Stockbrokers, Financial Services Sales Agents, Investment Bankers

The Bureau of Labor Statistics includes stockbrokers, investment bankers, and financial services sales agents in one category, “Securities, Commodities, and Financial Services Sales Agents.”  These positions have in common the need to find customers and sell them financial products.  Stockbrokers advise clients on investments and conduct transactions, charging a commission on each one.  It is essential that they build a customer base.   Financial services sales agents sell a variety of financial products, such as insurance, banking services, or credit cards.     Investment bankers sell advisory services to companies and sell securities.  All of these jobs can be quite stressful.  Investment banking in particular requires very long hours and a very high level of motivation.  Only the top performers keep their jobs after the first couple of years.  Those who succeed, however, are rewarded by making quite a lot of money.    Excellent interpersonal and communication skills, self-confidence, and high levels of motivation are essential to success in all of these fields.  A college degree in business, finance, or a related field is usually required and sales experience is an advantage.  Young people considering these fields can prepare by honing their interpersonal and time management skills along with studying math, business, or finance. 

Personal Financial Advisors

Personal financial advisors assist individuals with investment, insurance and related decisions and help them plan to meet short and long term financial goals.   Some financial advisors also sell financial products.  All must do a lot of marketing to establish a client base, and they may conduct seminars or programs to engage clients.    Personal financial advisors usually have a college degree and often take courses in investments, estate planning, or related areas on their own.  They need good sales, math, and communication skills, and with experience and an exam they can obtain the Certified Financial Planner credential.  Good job growth is expected, but these jobs are competitive and those who have strong sales skills are likely to be most successful.  A career as a personal financial advisor can be a good choice for a career changer who has strong interpersonal and sales skills, an interest in the field, and a facility with numbers. 

The careers described above all require math skills, analytical ability, and a high level of motivation.  Financial analysts need a stronger finance background, while stockbrokers, investment bankers, financial services sales agents, and personal financial advisors need strong interpersonal and sales skills.  All of these can be challenging, stressful occupations requiring long hours and hard work, but for individuals with the right interests, talents, and temperament these fields can be tremendously rewarding, personally and financially.   One caveat, however, is that the demands and stress of these positions can, and often will, take a toll on family life.  That’s a topic for another column. 

Career Resource

The Riley Guide (www.rileyguide.com/), published online since 1994, is a comprehensive and easy to navigate directory of online job search and employment resources.  It provides straightforward information about careers and also provides links to helpful job search information.  For example, the Riley Guide offers a  directory of executive search firms for finance and accounting jobs as well as links to salary guides.   It also offers pages and websites that provide more general career advice, such as how to write a cover letter and how to network and interview.   In addition, it has a section on handling a job loss.    I highly recommend it as a place to start or continue a job search.

Karen Goldfinger, Ph.D. is a psychologist in private practice in Essex, Connecticut.   She specializes in psychological assessment for clinical, educational, and forensic purposes and has a special interest in career assessment.  She and two partners recently established KSB Career Consultants, LLC to provide on line career consultation for clients in Connecticut and New York.   Contact her with questions,  comments, or suggestions for the column at karengoldfinger@comcast.net. 

Filed Under: Career Column, Towns Tagged With: , ,

A Goldilocks Planet

November 16, 2010 by

Yes, I like to look at the moon or the North Star on a beautiful evening, but I’m really not into things astronomical. But I just heard of something way, way, way up there—much farther away than our moon and sun and all the stars that we see–that has left me marveling, and for completely personal reasons—I feel a strange connection to it.

Have you ever heard of a Goldilocks Planet? Well, I never had until a few days ago. But I really paid attention when I heard that a Goldilocks Planet has been found. It’s fantastic. You’ll agree when I explain. Its scientific name is Gliese 581g. Yes, Gliese 581g. What a strange name. Please don’t ask me to explain it. I can’t. What is important is that it is the very first Goldilocks Planet to be found.

Why did this wow me? Because many years ago I interviewed a great astronomer who said that such planets exist. The name Goldilocks Planet was coined later by somebody else. What was enormously significant about his prediction is that he said that Goldilocks Planets could support life–life as you and I know it. And might! And that there must be others out there.

The great astronomer’s name was Harlow Shapley of Harvard University. I interviewed him for an article for the magazine of the Worcester Sunday Telegram. I was a staff feature writer on the magazine.

That was in 1956, I believe—I do not have my scrapbooks handy as I write this. Prof. Shapley is the one who made that big news by coming out and boldly predicting in print that one day a Goldilocks Planet would be pinpointed somewhere in the infinity of the cosmos. We would know exactly where it is!

I’m sure you’re wondering about that name, Goldilocks Planet, which is so much more charming than Gliese 581g. It comes from the children’s  nursery story, “Goldilocks and the Three Bears.” Truth is, I never read that story, so I don’t know why this planet was dubbed “Goldilocks.” Enlighten me, please.

What is so dramatic about Gliese 581g? Let me tell you. In the million, billions, trillions, zillions of heavenly bodies, Gliese 581g is the first found that has the most important essential to support our kind of life. That essential is water.

Why is this so? Because Gliese 581g  has the right size and is the right distance from the star that it circles. Not too close, and not too far. This is how it was explained a few days ago by Dr. Steven Vogt, leader of the team that made the big find on Sept. 29. He is an astronomer at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Perhaps you read or saw this same story.

He said, “Gliese 581 g is the first rocky, roughly Earth-size alien planet found to orbit its star in the so-called ‘habitable zone’ — a just-right range that can allow liquid water to exist.”

Harlow Shapley made his startling prediction in a new book. He had written many. I tried to check its title this morning, but did not succeed. Sorry. Anyway, I read a review of it in the New York Times, I believe. Or maybe it was the Boston Globe.

He was known widely for his writings. He was gifted in a special way. He could write fully on abstruse subjects for scientific journals. Then he could switch to a plain and fascinating style understandable by an ordinary reader like me.

At Harvard he was not only the senior professor and chairman of the astronomy department but director of its Astronomical Observatory. He had spent hours beyond counting at the eyepiece of its telescope.  But later, he didn’t have to do that. A camera would do that work for him. He made the observatory world-famous.

In this latest book of his, I was startled by what he was proclaiming: there was a planet out there with characteristics like our Earth. He was not saying that he had found such a planet. He was stating that statistics—an important branch of mathematics—assured us that there would be planets out there that could sustain life. Not strange and startling life unrecognizable to us, but our kind of life. With creatures human and animal that we see every day

I don’t remember his mentioning it, but what this meant was that if we somehow could get to such a planet, we could live and thrive on it. That was a logical conclusion. Remember, he was writing before Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin made it to the moon!

Back then I was a feature writer for the Worcester Sunday Telegram.  I had been a reporter and then I landed this wonderful job as a feature writer. Which was to find and write up a good feature story every week—a story that would interest lots of people because of who or what it was about. It could be about anybody or anything, just about.

But it had to be true. Factual. Interesting, but not sensational in the way of some tabloid scandal sheets. And the idea of it had to be pre-okayed by my editor and the story I turned in checked by him.

I was only 27 or so at the time. I contacted Professor Shapley—I don’t recall exactly how—and explained what I had in mind. Got to tell you I knew zilch about astronomy. Had never read a book on it, never taken a course.

What strikes me today is why he ever said yes–why he would take the time for a country bumpkin like me. The Telegram was a fine newspaper, the second or third largest in New England, but not the New York Times (what is interesting, however, is that it is now owned by the New York Times).

I expected to go to his office in Cambridge. No. He told me that he would be at his summer home in Peterboro, N.H.  Asked me if I could visit him up there. Sure! I got started early on the appointed day and drove up. A modest frame house surrounded by trees. And when I pulled in, I found Professor Shapley out among the trees, a clipboard in hand. I wondered, What the heck is he doing?

I’d like to say that he was a tall man with a distinguished mane of white hair, but I have no recollection. Time has dimmed all such details. What I remember is that he was a genial man and easy to talk with. Totally unpretentious. Nothing about him to provide a clue about his true identity as a leading scholar and scientist who was very different in a remarkable way.

And what was that? Well, he had written papers and books intended for fellow astronomers. In an astronomer’s lingo, with mathematical equations and tables of data. Writings that had been read and studied by fellow astronomers around the world.

But as time went by, he had started to write also for ordinary folks like you and me. Well, maybe not you, but certainly ordinary like me. All to provide enlightenment and give us an idea of the immensity of our universe and what it is like. And in his latest book, to tell us why he was convinced that somewhere way, way out there would be a planet like ours. More than one. With people like you and me, or very much like us.

So, what was he doing our here in his baggy pants and old felt hat? And clipboard? Poking around at the foot of a big maple? Of course, I asked him.

He smiled. What he told me was so unusual that no wonder I remember it half a century later.
“I’m studying the chipmunks around here. It’s a hobby of mine.  There are many of them. They’re a lot of fun to study.”

He lifted his clipboard and pointed to a sheet on it. It was filled with notations. No idea what he was recording. Maybe what size the furry little creatures were, what they ate, how many babies they had, how they adapted to the various seasons, whether there were different kinds.   Maybe he wrote all that up for some wildlife journal on the side. I don’t know.

If so, I would have found all that interesting enough to write a separate feature about him: “Harlow Shapley—Great Astronomer, Weekend Chipmunk Whiz!”

He invited me into his house and we sat in a sunny corner. He put his clipboard aside. And in a relaxed way…which made me relax, too…I admit I was a bit uptight…explained why he believed what he believed about the assured probability of extra-terrestrial life. And he did it in words that anybody could understand.

No way can I recall his exact words now. I wish I had a copy of my published article in hand! But they went like this:
“Our earth  circles the sun. It’s the Polish astronomer Copernicus in the 15th Century who proved that our earth circles the sun. What extraordinary news. For eons people believed just the opposite–that the sun circles our earth, and there are still plenty of people around who believe that.

“And our earth supports life–supports us–because it circles the sun at the right distance and with the right temperature range on it to have hydrogen and oxygen under appropriate conditions to form water.  Water is all-important for life. In fact, we—you and I–are mostly water. No water, no life. No water, no food.

“Astronomers have concluded that our planet Earth may be the only one in our solar system (in plain words, circling the sun) under conditions which make it possible for us to be born, grow up, and live our lives.

“But—and it’s a great big but—our solar system is only one in the universe.  There are many, many solar systems. They vary in size. Some have more planets than others, and these planets make their loops around their sun at varying distances from it—which means they have different chemical make-ups and different temperatures cold and hot, and so on.”

He made it all understandable to me.

Now here is the dramatic part. Statisticians—mathematicians who specialize in calculating the probability of happenings—can safely conclude that out there in infinity there are one or more heavenly bodies that replicate our planet.  And this is exactly what Professor Shapley had calculated. And this is why he was so sure he was right. This is why he had published that book.

Of course I was greatly impressed. I knew I was sitting across from a great man. I was so grateful that he was taking the time to explain all this to me, and that he was doing it so generously and patiently. And all without making me feel like an ignoramus, which is what I was. My nervousness had long eased, and I felt enthralled as I asked and listened and scribbled in my pad.

I don’t remember whether he offered me a cup of tea or coffee, though he must have. I was there quite a while. I do remember that he asked a lot of questions about me…about what my job was like and why I had chosen it as my vocation. Things like that. I could see that he had a consuming curiosity. Stars and planets. Chipmunks.  Ordinary Joe’s like me.

A cordial goodbye, and then I was in my car heading south toward home. I was elated by my time with him. But also uptight. Uptight because my job was only half over. The harder half was coming up. How to write all this down accurately and interestingly.  Without blunders, and without exaggerations. In complete fairness to him.
And all well enough to be worth printing in our Sunday magazine. We published more than 100,000 copies every week, and statisticians of another kind estimated that some 150,000 readers would look at the magazine…and see my story.

How many would read it?  Well, that was anybody’s guess. But my concern every week was that my editor would think highly enough of what I turned in to justify using all that paper and ink to publish it.

Just before writing this piece today, I researched Harlow Shapley on line. Dead many years now. And I learned something new about him. I knew that he had grown up on a farm in Missouri. And wanted to get away from it. He enrolled at the  brand-new School of Journalism at the University of Missouri. But it was  a year late in opening. What to do?  He decided to pick another field.

He studied the university’s catalog, starting with the letter A. The first subject listed was Archaeology. Later he explained. “That was too hard to pronounce!” The next was Astronomy. He could pronounce that, and that’s what he signed up for! He never got to study Journalism formally but he got very good at explaining things well, which is what Journalism is all about.

Maybe that is why he said yes to me that day, a young journalist who was doing the type of work that had once fascinated him so much that he aspired to do it.  Maybe why he spent so much relaxed time with me in his country house, away from the pace and formality of the great university.

Well, now we know that our universe is billions of years old. What fascinates me as I write this is that in the span of one person’s adult life—mine—I got to meet the scientist who made the amazing prediction that he did: “There’s a planet like ours out there!” And some 50 years later I got to read that the first Goldilocks Planet has been discovered–Gliese 581g!

And we know where is. In fact, I suspect “Gliese 581g” is the way it is pinpointed on some huge astronomical chart.

And we know how far away it is. Dr. Vogt said about 20 light years away.

How far is that? Well, I had forgotten how big a light year is.  I checked. One light year is six trillion miles. Let me spell that out–6,000,000,000,000 miles (I rounded it off). Now multiply that by 20! Not around the corner, eh?

We have reached the moon, yes. And we have plans to reach Mars before many more years.  But it will be a while before we get to Gliese 581g, won’t it? And a while before some of its inhabitants reach us.  Unless they are already on their way.

Who knows?

Oh, excuse me.  Some people,  but not the scientific kind, believe some of those folks are with us now.

John Guy LaPlante is a veteran writer, journalist and resident of Deep River.  His award-winning columns and articles were most recently published in the Main Street News.  He is the author of two books, “Around the World at 75. Alone! Dammit!” and “Asia in 80 Days. Oops, 83! Dammit!”  He has just completed his service as a Peace Corps Volunteer (PCV) in the Ukraine where his 27-month tour of duty began last fall.  John always welcomes comments on his articles.  Email him at johnguylaplante@yahoo.com

Filed Under: John Guy LaPlante, Towns Tagged With:

Fit Focused: Starting from Scratch

November 14, 2010 by

In August 2009 my husband and I gave each other anniversary presents of entry fees to compete in Ironman Lake Placid (IMLP) to celebrate 20 years of marriage.  I had just completed my third half ironman and this was a natural progression.  For those of you who don’t know, an Ironman (or ironwoman!) is a 2.4 mile swim, followed immediately by a 112 mile bike ride and then straight into a full 26.2 mile marathon run.

The training commitment was huge and we wondered after a few months of training what we had got ourselves into.  The training was going to be a monumental task and everyone in the family had to buy into it including our three kids and the dog.

Our friend Jason, who had just completed the Providence Half Iron with me had given us lots of inspiration as he had not been in the best of shape yet had trained for, and completed, Ironman Arizona the year before.  The commitment was not just monetary; the $600 fee to sign each of us up was proving to be the easy part!

The race was at the end of July 2010.  After a long year of training and a few minor setbacks everything was going well, we were covering longer and longer distances and getting fitter by the day, but each having to train separately so the other could manage our kids, our businesses and our training. 

In that 10 months I learned so much that helped me to be where I wanted to be.  I felt like I was a great role model for my children when my youngest daughter, who was 10, decided to do her first kid’s triathlon.  The kids were excited for us and very supportive and I felt like I was living a better life for myself.  I felt great focusing on our lives and value for all – living every minute to the full.
 
In June a bombshell fell.  I was having age-related medical issues and after a routine check-up and some tests I was told I was going to need a total hysterectomy.  “There goes my Ironman”, I thought.

The disappointment was overwhelming as I was just peaking in physical fitness and my husband and I were doing this together.  Surgery would put me further back than when I started.  I was gutted that I had come so far and it was all going to be for nothing.  Rod continued training and although it was tough, I found that I was able to help him even more with those last few weeks and really make a difference.

Two days before surgery I went to watch all the athletes, who had trained all year just like I had, begin their race. Although it was mentally tough for me to watch rather than participate, I was so glad that I took that opportunity and was amazed by what I saw. 

There were blind people tethered together doing the 2.4 mile swim in Mirror Lake.  There were recovering cancer patients doing the 112-mile bike ride and participants with artificial limbs running the 26.2 mile full marathon.  This motivated me to start from scratch again — my situation was not so difficult.

That day I cheered my husband on who finished in 13 hours and 22 minutes and I went and signed up for IMLP 2011.  Two days later I was having my surgery and was not allowed to exercise properly for three months.
 
It is now Oct. 17, and a beautiful sunny afternoon and I just ran with my daughter.  I am training again and even though I have lots of hard work ahead of me, I feel I am living life to the full.

Setbacks happen and we have no control over them.  I had two choices – pick myself back up and get going or admit defeat. 

I chose the former.

I encourage everyone of you, who has had physical or mental setbacks, to have exercise as a major part of your lifestyle. My point is that you don’t have to be a personal trainer to be involved in exercise — anyone of any age or fitness level can do it.

It comes down to personal motivation and goal setting.  Lance Armstrong is a perfect example of someone who has overcome one of the worst illnesses and managed against all odds to do the impossible – win the Tour de France multiple times.  I know we are not all Lance Armstrong, but we all have the ability to set our own goals and succeed in whatever chosen level we decide.
 
Since my surgery, ball class has been the best medicine for me – starting over with core training on the ball to build back all those muscle and using light weights.  Anyone who wants to start with me is welcome as I am just crossing the start line.

I advise everyone to have a personal goal for themselves to exercise in some way.  The fall is a great time to start planning your exercise goals — don’t wait until winter when things get harder because of the weather.  People of all ages, shapes and sizes, disabilities or not, had the will to do the Ironman.  Inspire yourself by whatever exercise regime makes you feel great.
 
If you need to set an event goal, here are some great sites to pick upcoming events to get you started :
 
Active.Com has many choices  including the Turkey Trot on Nov. 25 sponsored by Sound Runner, Feb. 12 is the Cupid’s Chase 5K run or walk in Hartford.

The website Cool Running has a New Year’s Day run in Lowell, Mass., as well as many other events to choose from.

I hope that you get inspiration from these Ironman participants I have just told you about and that it inspires you to lead a better, healthier life.

Allison Duxbury is an AFFA qualified fitness professional with over 15 years experience in group and personal training.  After many years travelling the world with her husband Rod, an officer in the British Army, they returned to her roots in Connecticut to bring up their young family and start her business: FitFocused.  Three years later, the business is thriving and her clients range from 9-year-old competitive Irish Dancers to an octogenarian veteran

Filed Under: Fit Focussed, Towns

Talking Transportation: Thank You Governor Rell

November 14, 2010 by

Anyone who follows this column knows I’m bipartisan in my criticism.  Whoever is in power, Democrat or Republican, I’ve got “suggestions” on how they could improve our transportation mess.

Since she came to office in the midst of a scandal, no other politician has been the target of my commentary more often than Governor M. Jodi Rell.  Today, however, I want to give her the credit she’s due for all she’s done on the transportation front.

Watching the Governor ride the first of the new M8 rail cars this week, I was struck by how she had come full circle in only six years.  The irony is it took her entire tenure in office to order, design, build, test and finally deliver these new cars.

In Governor Rell’s first budget address to lawmakers in February 2005 she started to undo years of her predecessors’ neglect of our trains.  She told lawmakers we must order 300 new rail cars, and they did.  Mind you, she told us then the cars would be in service by 2008.  I predicted, accurately it turned out, that 2010 was a better guess.
The Governor said riders should pay a small part of their cost with a modest fare hike, and that too was passed by lawmakers.

But Governor Rell also said that commuters shouldn’t pay more until they were actually riding in the new cars… a promise she kept.  As manufacturing delays by Kawasaki slowed delivery of the M8’s, that planned 1.25% fare hike was deferred.   A politician who keeps a promise.  Imagine that.

More recently, Governor Rell also told the New York MTA, parent of Metro-North, there was no way she was going to raise fares in Connecticut to pay for the budget problems of New York’s own making.  That was a first in the troubled history of Connecticut / New York relations, but again the Governor deserves credit for doing the right thing.
But not every dream came true during the Rell administration. 

Grumblings about a lack of a voting seat on the MTA or Metro-North boards never amounted to more than that… grumbling.

And yes, Governor Rell did change Commissioners in the Dept. of Transportation at a pace that left many people wondering who was in charge:  five Commissioners in six years.  One was a former State Trooper, another had run Bradley airport.  The two most recent of them actually had experience in rail transportation.

Wracked by scandals, Governor Rell was embarrassed on several occasions by her DOT, eventually asking local businessman Michael Critelli to study the agency and issue recommendations for reform.  Of course, few of the group’s suggestions were ever embraced.

Long promised repairs to our dilapidated train stations took four years to happen, thanks mainly to Federal stimulus money.  If this work wasn’t “shovel ready”, nothing was.

We’re still not certain if the much-needed New Haven Rail facility will ever be fully built, as its price yo-yoed from $300 million in 2005 to $1.2 billion in 2008.  The Governor’s solution… pay consultants $630,000 for an audit.  Their report found only $11 million in potential cuts.

Still, Governor Rell was a big rail fan, realizing the importance not only of fixing Metro-North, but planning for the future.  Together with fellow lame-duck Senator Chris Dodd, she secured a serious down-payment on high-speed rail between New Haven and Springfield.  Well, maybe not true “high-speed”, but certainly higher speed than Amtrak currently offers.

I’m not sure how Governor-elect Malloy will do on transportation, though he clearly understands the problems from his years as mayor of Stamford.  His dreams for better mass transit will be most tempered by our economic crisis.

But to outgoing Governor Rell all commuters should give a loud “thank you” for all that she accomplished.  She’ll be a hard act to follow.

Jim Cameron has been a Darien resident for 19 years.  He is Chairman of the CT Metro-North / Shore Line East Rail Commuter Council, and a member of the Coastal Corridor TIA and the Darien RTM.  The opinions expressed in this column are only his own.  You can reach him at Cameron06820@gmail.com  or www.trainweb.org/ct

Filed Under: Towns, Transportation

Finance Matters: Estate Taxes and Your Government Absent From Work

November 9, 2010 by

Lots of people work hard all their life to put some money away for their retirement and leave behind some funds for the next generation.  If they’re prudent with their investments and live within their means, this can total a few million dollars. A few million dollars is nothing to scarf at, but it doesn’t put you in the same league as Bill Gates.  Owning a small business, having some real estate and a good retirement plan will often add up over time. The research and consulting firm, Spectrum Group, says that in 2009 there were 7.8 million families with a net worth of $1 million, excluding their primary residences. 

Some folks claim these people represent a “privileged” class of Americans, especially during these times of rampant foreclosures and high unemployment. Somehow, success in achieving the American  Dream has turned into a bad thing. I wonder what would happen if everyone felt this way and simply stopped working.  Then all the naysayers should be happy.  Of course, there wouldn’t be any tax money to pay for all the wonderful things that the government does for you, but that’s besides the point.

A part of being prudent with your money is the responsibility of doing some estate planning. Estate planning helps control what your heirs get, when, and on what terms.  It also helps in keeping down the taxes paid at death.  This isn’t evading taxes. It’s paying what you legally owe and no more.  In order to properly plan, it’s necessary that the government initiate regulations that the public can expect will be stable enough for plans to be projected into the future. After all, no one knows when they are going to die and people can’t be expected to change their estate planning every five minutes.

Under the Bush Administration, Congress passed a major tax bill entitled the Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001 (EGTRRA) that dealt with a number of estate planning issues. Many provisions of this bill were set to lapse in 2010. This would allow Congress to take up the matter again and decide what to do in for the future. Instead, Congress has let the Act lapse and thrown everything into turmoil. 

In 2009, the estate tax exemption was set at $3.5 million. Putting it another way, estates under that amount paid no federal estate taxes. In 2010, when EGTRRA lapsed, there was no estate tax regardless of the size. In 2011, the estate tax exemption returns to the pre-2001 level of $1 million.

Unfortunately most Americans think this issue has no direct impact on them. After all, only 1 in 160 people who die a year owe estate taxes. Perhaps these people should rethink their position.

Because of Congress fumbling the ball, the family of Yankee owner, George Steinbrenner, was able to escape estate taxes estimated up to $600 million. Combined with the deaths of three other billionaires in 2010, it cost the government $6.5 billion in taxes. In a time of economic recovery, letting this kind of revenue get away can not bode well for the popularity polls in Washington.

Secondly, if we return to the $1 million exemption in 2011, small businesses could suffer “liquidity” problems when trying to raise funds to pay the taxes. This can lead to the liquidation of many businesses along with the loss of jobs. I thought Congress said they were trying to create jobs. You don’t  do it by closing small businesses.

The likelihood is that Congress will act upon this mess and in all probability will simply extend the provisions of EGTTRA for a couple more years. Of course, they could have done this in the first place and avoided the problems caused by their screwup.

The opinions voiced in this material are for general information only and are not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual. To determine which investment(s) may be appropriate for you, consult your financial advisor prior to investing. All performance referenced is historical and is no guarantee of future results. All indices are unmanaged and cannot be invested into directly.

Glenn “Chip” Dahlke, a Senior Contributor to The Living Trust Network, has 30 years in the investment business. He is a Registered Representative with LPL Financial and a principal with Dahlke Financial Group. He is registered to transact securities business with persons who are residents of the following states: CA. CT, FL, GA, IL. MA, MD. ME, MI. NC, NH, NJ, NY.OR, PA, RI, VA, VT, WY. Securities offered through LPL Financial. Member FINRA/SIPC. Contact him at chipdahlke@dahlkefinancial.com or at his office on Ashlawn Farm in Lyme, CT (860) 434-4261.

Filed Under: Finance Matters, Towns

Career Column: A Good Hire

November 4, 2010 by

Long ago I was hired for a job that I thought would be perfect for me.  I had just graduated from college with a degree in psychology, and the job was to write summaries and test questions for psychology study guides.  It went well for about a half hour.  Then I was bored.   I didn’t want to stick to the straightforward answers required of me; I wanted to expand on the material and discuss the complexities.  In addition, the office environment was extremely still and quiet, and I wanted to move around and listen to the radio.  I didn’t do the work that was asked of me very well, I complained, and I distracted my colleagues.  Even though I had the right credentials I was not a good hire, and I didn’t last very long there. 

Now that years have passed and I have had to do some hiring of my own, I am better able to put myself in the shoes of my employer.    He didn’t hire me as a consultant to tell him how to improve his study guides.  He hired me to write them as they had always been written, quickly and without complaint.  The job turned out to be one I had no interest in doing, but it was the job that I was hired for.  It was my responsibility to get it done.

A “good hire” is someone who gets the job done.  He or she is also reliable and, at the very least, pleasant to be around.  The job that needs to be done, of course, is different in every circumstance.  It may require very specific skills, credentials, experiences, or talents, or more general qualities, such as quick thinking, good interpersonal skills, or a particular appearance.   For my study guide job, I was reliable and pleasant to be around, and I had the right skills and credentials, but I was not good at completing routine tasks in a quiet environment.  I was not a good hire. 

Why is being “a good hire” important to job seekers?  If Jane is looking for work, or expects to be looking for work, thinking through what it takes to be a good hire can help her get hired for the right job.  She can focus on the skills, credentials, and personal qualities that she “brings to the table,” that is, the strengths, interests, and all of the other characteristics that make her a good hire.    She might see areas that need improvement, and make the improvements, so that she is a better and more confident candidate.  Or she might choose a different focus for her job search, or move towards a different career altogether. 

Here are some suggestions to help you answer the “What makes me a good hire?” question.  Think about:

  • What did you do well at your last job (or at school, at home, or in a volunteer position)?
  • What aspects of the job were easy for you?  Perhaps you found it easy to run meetings, work with colleagues, or get tasks done quickly, for example.  
  • What did you enjoy most?
  • In what circumstances were you most productive?
  • What difficult things did you accomplish? 

Also ask yourself: 

  • What could you have done better?
  • What was difficult?
  • What was unappealing?

Finally, think about what you want to improve, that is, what would make you a better hire, not for any job but for a job you want. 

For my study guide job, I could have, with difficulty, settled down and become a good hire, and perhaps I might have been able to establish a career in publishing or business.   I took a different path, however, working towards a position that would be a better fit for me.   I went to work in a restaurant to earn money and volunteered as a research assistant so that I would be a more competitive applicant for graduate school. 

We are a varied lot, and each one of us brings different qualities to the workplace.    The more we understand ourselves and what work requires of us, that is, knowing what makes us a good hire, the better choices we can make and the better we can present ourselves to potential employers. 

Career Spotlight:  Cybersecurity Expert, Digital Forensic Scientist

Cybersecurity experts protect data on computer networks.  Digital forensic scientists examine digital data to solve crimes.   Jobs in these areas are often stressful and demanding and sometimes they can be tedious, but they can also be exciting and financially rewarding.  Some of these jobs provide the bonus of being able to work with the newest technologies.    Both careers should be of interest to people who like thinking through problems, hands-on work, and following routines. 

\These are “hot” careers.  There is such a high demand for cybersecurity experts that the federal government is trying to interest talented young people in the field while they are still in high school through high school cyber challenges (competitions).  A Bachelor’s degree in computer science provides a good background, but other science and engineering majors could also find a home in cybersecurity or digital forensics.  A strong interest in and ability to grasp computer and related technology is key.  There are internship opportunities and specialized training and certification programs, similar to other IT career paths, and there are also a few specialized master’s and doctoral programs.   Law enforcement agencies and law firms hire digital forensic specialists.   Government agencies and private corporations hire cyber security experts, and they don’t seem to be able to get enough of them. 

You can find information about careers in digital forensics at the American Academy of Forensic Sciences website, in the Resources section under Students :  www.aafs.org/choosing-career#Digital. 

For a description of careers in cybersecurity, the Wall Street Journal has a good write-up.  Click here to view article.

Karen Goldfinger, Ph.D. is a psychologist in private practice in Essex, Connecticut.   She specializes in psychological assessment for clinical, educational, and forensic purposes and has a special interest in career assessment.  She and two partners recently established KSB Career Consultants, LLC to provide on line career consultation for clients in Connecticut and New York.   Contact her with questions,  comments, or suggestions for the column at karengoldfinger@comcast.net. 

Filed Under: Career Column, Towns

CT Watchdog: Bank Charges

November 2, 2010 by

As banks are forced by regulators to curtail overdraft fees where they have made billions of dollars in profits, they are using the old checking account to boost their income by eliminating free services or requiring higher minimum cash held in accounts.

One of the first to feel the effect of this change is William Norton of West Hartford, who until recently had been a happy customer of Webster Bank.

He took out a mortgage from Webster because the Waterbury-based bank had promised him a .25 percent discount on his mortgage as long as he had the mortgage payments withdrawn automatically from his free checking account.

However, he was notified in early October that the bank was unilaterally changing its policies and would begin charging $8.95 a month for his checking account unless he kept at least $1,000 in it, or used his debit card monthly.

Webster Bank spokesman Ed Steadham said the bank has every legal right to change its checking account policy, and he said Norton is still getting a good deal.

No question about it, but that is not the way Norton sees it, and he says he will end his relationship with Webster.

“To sign people up for something as significant as a mortgage under the terms they did and then “change the plan” seems like a bait and switch to me.  As far as it being a good deal, that is absolutely ridiculous.  I agreed to keep the free checking account open for the mortgage and they’re now charging a fee,” he wrote me. “What’s to stop the bank from saying that free account now has a monthly fee of $20 or even $30?”

He said he will  refinance his mortgage with another lender and move all his business to a bank that doesn’t charge a fee for having a checking account.

It’s a tactic that many others are likely to take as the large banks look to make money off their smaller customers, who they used to hammer by charging $35 every time they overdrew their checking accounts.

That trend was backed up by a study made public recently by Bankrate.com, which found a “reversal of an industry wide, nearly decade-long trend toward widespread adoption of free noninterest checking.”

Besides federal regulators requiring banks to get customers’ permission before overdraft protection can start, banks are also being limited on the interchange fees that they charge for debit card protection.

“It’s no surprise we’re seeing higher balance requirements and higher monthly service fees on the heels of this legislation that is really working to crimp these two revenue streams that banks have come to rely on,” says Greg McBride, CFA, senior financial analyst for Bankrate.com.

Besides those in the low-income group, children’s and students’ account are being impacted.

“We received notice that my children’s free checking account is switching from a totally free checking to a Webster Value Checking effective Nov. 5,” another reader wrote me. “They now want a minimum balance of $1,000 in the account or they will charge $8.95 a month.  I do not understand why they do not institute the change for new accounts only. What student can keep a minimum of $1000.00 a month, plus my son is in the Army and how will he change this?”

Hopefully some banks will use free checking accounts as a way to increase the number of customers, especially among young people. A quick Internet check shows that even now there are at least two banks in Connecticut that are offering free checking: Citizens Bank and Windsor Federal Savings. Check your credit unions also.

Aldi Debit System Hacked

Scores of Aldi grocery store customers are reporting having hundreds of dollars or more illegally taken out of their checking accounts after using their debit cards at an Aldi store, including ones in Connecticut.

One reader from West Hartford told me his account was hit for $3,500.

Many reported that they only learned recently that their accounts were targeted.

Some only learned about it when they attempted to use their debit cards believing there was still money in their accounts, and their purchases were declined.

Federal investigators have said that Aldi was victimized by repair workers who planted devices inside card readers to steal customer information.

If you shopped at Aldi’s in the last few months it would be worth your while to check your account to make sure you weren’t victimized.

You can reach The Watchdog at George@connecticutwatchdog.com and he will answer as many emails as he can. Please check out his site, www.ctwatchdog.com for comprehensive consumer, health, finance, media, internet, computer, travel and education tips.

Filed Under: CT Watchdog, Towns

Between Us: Just Don’t Do It

October 25, 2010 by

The notion that simple solutions exist to knotty problems should trigger a host of red flags.

I have a bone to pick with “just,” because in at least one of its permutations, it lies.

My dictionary defines “just” in its adverbial sense as ”simply; no more than,” which, when you think about it, “just” seldom is.

Consider, for example,  Nike’s admonition to “Just do it,” and Nancy Reagan’s solution to the lure of recreational drugs: “Just say no.”

If it were as simple as Nike and Nancy would have us believe–if we’d “just” lace up our running shoes, and “just” decline the drug du jour—then the percentage of obese adults (34%) and obese kids (17%) would fall to zero, and zero drug use would mean we were all clean.

The point here, is that with campaign season upon us, and about as unavoidable as a 900-pound, halitosis-ridden gorilla on the coffee table, the notion that simple solutions exist to knotty problems should trigger a host of red flags.

Because in these days of financial uncertainties, social realignments, and toxic exchanges that pass for public discourse, chances are, if the solution to any problem were as simple and obvious as “just” doing it implies, whatever the “it” was, it would have been done, and we’d all be seeing its beneficial effects.

Unfortunately, there exist a number of office seekers this fall for whom the “just” admonition constitutes the entirety of their political platform, while any concrete, creative change that might result from their rhetoric is either immaterial or non-existent.

In New York, for example, gubernatorial candidate Carl Paladino has come up with the simple (or simplistic, depending on your views) notion of “taking a baseball bat” to Albany.  According to some polls, this “just” approach resonates with more than a few voters who note that Mr. Paladino’s campaign reflects their “anger” at political “insiders.”

But as columnist Clyde Haberman noted recently in the New York Times, if Mr. Paladino “believes that he can waltz into Albany with his baseball bat and, as he vows, pound it into cutting state taxes by 10 percent in his first six months and state spending by 20 percent in his first year, he better own a helmet that fits well.”

Leaving aside the question of whether anger represents a viable methodology to bring about constructive change, consider the impact on the public discourse of both public and private voices who lay claim to some sort of real Americanism by virtue of their “just”-ness—as in “just” being Every-day Joes and Josephines— while at the same time exhibiting little or no grasp of basic American democratic tenants.

It is apparently came as a news flash to Christine O’Donnell, a candidate for the U.S. Senate in Delaware, that the First Amendment to the Constitution forbids the establishment of any national religion, or the preference of one religion over any other.

And apparently neither Dred Scott v. Sandford— in which the Supreme Court ruled that people of African descent were, in effect, non-citizens—nor Brown v. Board of Education, which struck down separate public schooling for black and white children, were sufficient blips on Sarah Palin’s radar screen that she could cite them as pivotal moments of American history, despite her highly-touted image as a patriot and a representative of the American Everyperson.

Further, it seems that along with ratcheting up public rancor and attempting to pass off “Don’t Tread On Me” as the solution to convoluted national problems, some voices out there are equating ignorance with chic–or at least evidence of some sort of “real” patriotism.

The more a candidate demonstrates ignorance of basic English; the more a candidate dismisses educated, critical thinking as “elite,” the more, in the candidate’s own parlance, those gaffes qualify them as “real” Americans. (Or, as Ms. Palin put it in a recent tweet, “‘Refudiate,’ ‘misunderestimate,’ ‘wee-wee’d up.’  English is a living language.  Shakespeare liked to coin new words too. Got to celebrate it!”)

Fraught times can morph the most innocuous-seeming words into distinct threats to clear thinking, to informed public discourse, even to the basic understanding of who we are as citizens in a working democracy.

“Just” is one of those words.

Benjamin Franklin famously described the American experiment as “a republic—if we can keep it.”

That’s an admonition to informed debate and careful considerations, not “just” sloganeering; sloppy, uninformed rhetoric, and simplistic reasoning.

Come to think of it, let me tweak the title of this piece with the power of punctuation.  How about “Just: Don’t Do It.”

Trish Bennett’s award-winning column, “Between Us,” ran in the Main Street News for many years.  She holds a master of science degree in journalism and was adjunct professor of media history at Quinnipiac University before relocating Bryn Mawr, PA.  Her latest work appears in “This I Believe: On Love,” a collection of essays submitted for broadcast on National Public Radio, and on sale in stores nationwide beginning Nov. 9.  

Filed Under: Between Us, Towns Tagged With:

Talking Transportation: It’s All About Housing

October 20, 2010 by

Whether by car, by train or on a bike, the reason we must commute is that, most often, we don’t live where we work.  So any discussion of our transportation problems must include an understanding of our housing crisis in this area.
A recent report showed that housing in lower Fairfield County is the most expensive in the nation.  You need an income of $70,000 just to afford a two bedroom apartment in the Stamford – Norwalk corridor.

So, people who come to work here can only afford to live further afield.  Their daily drives / rides contribute to our congestion.  The solution?  More affordable housing!

A recent conference sponsored by Southwest Regional Planning Agency held some startling examples in that poster-boy of affluence, Greenwich.  This 67 square mile city of 61,000 has 5,545 town employees… teachers, cops, firefighters and the like.  However, 67% of those workers don’t live in Greenwich, but commute daily from Danbury, Bridgeport, Westchester and even Long Island.

They spend an average of 103 minutes per day just getting to and from work, paying more than $2,000 a year for gas.  Combined, they add 15,000 tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, just by their commuting.
In a city where the median home price is $2 million, the average Greenwich city worker makes $65,000.  And because these teachers, civil servants and such have to come so far, they have to be paid more.  The average teacher in Greenwich earns $12,338 a year more than their counterparts elsewhere in the state.  These higher wages cost city taxpayers almost $19 million a year.  But their larger paychecks come at the cost of lost time and expense on the road.

The Greenwich schools spend $10,000 to $15,000 recruiting and training each new teacher.  But after five years of commuting (75% of the 912 teachers don’t live in Greenwich), they burn out, leave and find jobs elsewhere.  Between 1998 and 2007, 581 teachers left Greenwich for reasons other than retirement and 81% of them had less than eight years on the job.

EMS workers in Greenwich have it even worse, averaging 151 minutes (2 ½ hours!) commute time.  Just how fresh and ready for life-saving work do you think you’d be with a commute like that?

Greenwich is not unique.  All of the towns on “the Gold Coast” rely on importing personnel from far afield.  Schools in Darien often announce “snow days” not because its roads are impassable, but because teachers can’t drive through the snows farther north from communities like Danbury where can afford to live.

And what about the people that bag your groceries, clean your home or pump your gas?  Where do you think they live?  Just drive the Boston Post Road some morning and you’ll see them waiting for the bus.

Fairfield County has its own “migrant workers”.  We couldn’t live without them, but apparently we don’t want to live with them.  Just listen to the local debates about adding “affordable housing” in these affluent towns.   Whether because of their nationality or economic status, the expressed aversion to “those people” living in “our” towns is clearly xenophobic if not racist.

So how do we solve our transportation problems?  Well, one solution is clearly related to affordable housing.  Allow folks to live closer to their jobs and they won’t have to be in that car in front of you on I-95 or the Merritt at rush hour.

JIM CAMERON has been a commuter out of Darien for 19 years.  He is Chairman of the CT Metro-North / Shore Line East Rail Commuter Council, and a member of the Coastal Corridor TIA and the Darien RTM.  Read his column on LymeLine every other Monday.  You can reach him at Cameron06820@gmail.com or www.trainweb.org/ct .

Filed Under: Towns, Transportation

Career Column: Green Jobs

October 20, 2010 by

We are pleased to welcome Dr. Karen Goldfinger as a regular columnist.  Karen’s biweekly columns will focus on the world of work.  Dr. Goldfinger is a psychologist in Essex.  She has a special interest in career development, and she and two partners recently established KSB Career Consultants, LLC to provide on-line career consultation to clients in Connecticut and New York.  In her private practice she specializes in psychological assessment for clinical, educational, or forensic purposes. 

Love and work are fundamental. This column is about work, leaving love for others to expound on. Most of us have concerns about work these days, either for ourselves, our children, or someone else we care about. The world is changing, the job market is unlikely to return to what it once was, and people need to take steps to ensure their employability over the long term. That’s a good thing, because if we do that we have more control over our work lives than ever before.

I am writing this column to help readers think about their work lives and solve their work problems, from choosing a career wisely to landing the right job and knowing when and how to move on. I bring the perspective of a clinical psychologist with a special interest in career development. This is a large subject, with historical, economic, sociological, technological, and practical elements, in addition to the psychological. I will try to cover them all, in bits and pieces if not comprehensively.

Each month the column will focus on a topic related to the world of work. I will also provide information about careers in specific industries and tips about career related resources. I will present information that will interest a wide range of readers, from those thinking about their first job after college to older workers looking for a second or third career following retirement, both professionals and non-professionals. I hope that readers find something interesting and useful in every column.

Green Jobs

Green jobs are where politics, science, and the economy collide. At least $50 billion dollars of the stimulus bill (ARRA) enacted in early 2009 was targeted for green jobs. Concretely, the money is meant to be used for the development of electric cars, wind energy, a “smart grid”, weatherization programs, training grants and a range of other sustainable energy and conservation oriented goals. But the focus on green jobs is not new to the Obama administration. A Green Jobs Act was passed by Congress in December of 2007 and signed by President Bush to fund job training programs to support green industries. Government funding for green jobs is also international in scope, with programs in Europe beginning in 1997 and international labor and United Nations programs initiated in 2007. Green industries are likely to be expanding in coming years, given the push for renewable sources of energy and concerns about climate change.

A formal definition of green jobs was announced last week by the United States Department of Labor (September 21, 2010). Green jobs, officially, are:

  • Jobs in businesses that produce goods or provide services that benefit the environment or conserve natural resources.
  • Jobs in which workers’ duties involve making their establishment’s production processes more environmentally friendly or use fewer natural resources.

These are jobs in renewable energy (wind, solar, biofuels, etc.), energy efficiency, pollution reduction and removal, conservation of natural resources, and environmental compliance and education. According to Department of Labor statistics, the largest percentage of green jobs are in the construction industry (38%, DOL, 2010) and in professional services/business (36%, DOL, 2010), but there are also green jobs in education, government, and other areas. Note that businesses and organizations of all types have sustainable energy initiatives and need staff to manage them.

Many people choose green jobs because of a sense of moral responsibility and the chance to have a positive impact on the world over the long term. Some choose green jobs because they are excited about finding solutions to challenging scientific and engineering problems with real world implications. For others, green jobs and green businesses are where the money is going for the foreseeable future, and they want to capture their share. An interest in the science and politics of green industries is relevant to all who pursue green careers, because opportunities in the field are evolving and those who are informed will be in the best position to make good career choices. Continually upgrading knowledge and skills will also be important, so if you pursue a green career, plan to keep on learning.

If you are interested in pursuing a green job for any or all of these reasons, there are a lot of resources to help you succeed.

From an education perspective, most states offer affordable training opportunities at the community college and university level. For example, at community colleges in Connecticut there are new grant-funded certification programs in sustainable and alternative energy that can be completed full-time in a year (or part-time over a longer period). More information is available at www.commnet.edu/soar/ChooseProgram.asp. At a more advanced level, students at Eastern Connecticut State University can minor in Sustainable Energy Studies in preparation for a career in energy policy. In New York, students can get a Bachelor’s degree in Alternative & Renewable Energy Systems at Canton College of Technology, a state college, or an Associate’s degree in Natural Conservation at Morrisville State College. These are representative of many examples. Every state has similar opportunities in state funded and private programs.

From a jobs perspective, you can search for green jobs at these and other websites: www.greenjobs.com/public/index.aspx and www.sustainablebusiness.com/index.cfm/go/greendreamjobs.main/?CFID=15371151&CFTOKEN=85027571.

Career Spotlight: Television Production

If you want to work in television production, start when you are young, plan to work really hard for long hours, especially early in your career, and be willing to relocate. Careers in television production are not for middle aged career changers or for the timid. But for young people who are energetic, ambitious, and talented, television production can offer an exciting career path with a lot of potential. Regardless of the state of the economy, a great deal of money is spent on creating entertainment, much of it for television (which does not seem to be going away as an entertainment medium), and television production is labor intensive. There are jobs for make-up artists, camera operators, sound technicians, casting agents, writers, producers, set and costume designers, directors, editors and other personnel. For all of these positions, workers have to learn their craft, whether at college, technical school, or elsewhere, and then they have to get their foot in the door, starting out as an assistant for a low wage. It is as viable a career path as any for young people with the right temperament and aspirations. If you are motivated enough, you will figure out how to get there on your own, but here are a few tips to get you started:

  • Find contacts in the industry through personal connections, faculty members, mentors or your school’s career office. These people can teach you about the industry and, if you are lucky, help open some doors.
  • Look for internship or entry level free lance production assistant opportunities, and while you are working at them, learn everything you can. Try these websites for internship and job possibilities: www.mandy.com, www.media-match.com/usa/.

Career Resource: Occupational Outlook Handbook

The Department of Labor’s Occupational Outlook Handbook for 2010-2011 is free and on line at www.bls.gov/oco/. This is a comprehensive resource that covers hundreds of occupations, providing detailed information about job responsibilities, training requirements, salaries, job titles, and job prospects. Some occupations are covered in more depth than others. For example, there is a good section on employment issues for lawyers. It is easy and worthwhile to explore the information available here whether you are thinking about a first career or a career change.

Karen Goldfinger, Ph.D. is a psychologist in private practice in Essex, Connecticut.   She specializes in psychological assessment for clinical, educational, and forensic purposes and has a special interest in career assessment.  She and two partners recently established KSB Career Consultants, LLC to provide on line career consultation for clients in Connecticut and New York.   Contact her with questions,  comments, or suggestions for the column at karengoldfinger@comcast.net. 

Filed Under: Career Column, Towns

Talking Transportation: A Victory for Commuters

October 7, 2010 by

Who says you can’t fight City Hall… or Metro-North?

Back in August I wrote in this column about Metro-North’s latest proposals to gouge commuters.  Today I can report they have been soundly defeated.

To close its $800 million budget deficit, the MTA (Metro-North’s parent), has in past months come forward with a series of fare hikes and service cuts, all of them soundly rejected by Governor Rell.  Because, although that NY State agency has never heeded our Governor’s requests for a voting seat on its board, Connecticut does have veto power over fare hikes in our state.

I’ve got to hand it to Governor Rell.  She’s kept her word since February of 2005 when, in her first budget address, she told the legislature we were long overdue in ordering new rail cars and promised no fare hikes until the cars arrived and went into service.  She’s also funneled millions in stimulus funds into fixing up our rail stations.

But this time the MTA was proposing something different… what I called a “stealth” fare hike.

The rail agency proposed cutting the discount on monthly “Mail & Ride” tickets as well as rail tickets bought on the web.  They also wanted to reduce the validity of ten-trip tickets from one year to 90 days.  And single trip tickets, now valid for six months, would expire in a week.

What were they thinking?  Short of having conductors spit at passengers, these changes were almost like yelling “screw you” to their customers?

Once again, the CT Rail Commuter Council had its work to do.  First, in publicizing the proposal through the media.  Then, in demanding public hearings (though none were originally planned in Connecticut).  And finally, in rallying commuters to attend and speak out against these proposals.

For the record, I should note that the Council has, in the past, supported small fare hikes… when they were tied to the cost of living and matched against improvements in service.  But these proposals were neither.

The MTA’s budget deficit is of its own creation, not Connecticut’s.  So New York taxpayers and commuters should pay for it, not us.  Connecticut has never been asked for input on the multi-billion dollar mega-projects undertaken by the MTA, like the $6 billion to build tunnels bringing the Long Island Railroad into Grand Central, so why stick us with the bill?

Isn’t reducing a discount equivalent to a fare increase?  You betcha!

And what possible reason could Metro-North offer for shortening the validity of ten-trip tickets?  Incredibly, they said it was to deal with the “problem of uncollected tickets.”

Amazing.  For about a decade the Commuter Council has been beating on Metro-North about conductors not doing their jobs, leaving tickets uncollected on crowded trains.  By its own calculations, Metro-North loses $2 million a year on uncollected tickets.  And their solution is to screw customers by selling them ten-trips but letting them only use two or three rides, then declare their ticket invalid?

And the icing on the cake, the final proposal from the MTA?  A $15 fee to cash in an unexpired ticket!

The Commuter Council was curious just how much money would be raised if these plans were approved, so we filed a formal written request for that data.  The answer:  about a half-million dollars a year in Connecticut.  That’s nothing… a rounding error… bupkis!   An $800 million budget deficit, and all these proposed changes will bring in $500,000?

Governor Rell heard our argument and agreed.  She quickly ordered the CDOT to reject the MTA / Metro-North proposal, a directive read aloud at the public hearings in Stamford and New Haven.

Commuters have won… for now.

JIM CAMERON has been a commuter out of Darien for 19 years.  He is Chairman of the CT Metro-North / Shore Line East Rail Commuter Council, and a member of the Coastal Corridor TIA and the Darien RTM.  Read his column on LymeLine every other Monday.  You can reach him at Cameron06820@gmail.com or www.trainweb.org/ct .

Filed Under: Towns, Transportation

Talking Transportation: Keeping the Ol’ Car Running

September 22, 2010 by

My constant harangue against traffic and in favor of trains aside, I do own a car:  a used ’97 Honda Accord with 130,000 miles on it.  It’s a great car (the interior infused with cigar smoke notwithstanding), and I hope to run it into the ground.

Used cars are hot these days.  Prices have climbed 10% in a year as more drivers decide to hold onto their cars longer.  And why not?

We don’t have to be suckers to Detroit’s game of staking our egos on each year’s new model, which immediately loses 20% of its value the day we drive it home.  Used cars can prove perfectly reliable, if you keep them in good shape.

So when I saw a TV infomercial for CarMD, a device that promised a simple way to keep my jalopy going, I was jazzed.  I love car tech and this sounded great!

Rather than popping the $99 for the gizmo myself, I suggested to the Darien Library that they purchase one.  Yes, I am truly blessed to live in a town with a tech-savvy library that offers patrons any number of gizmos on loan… GPS devices, digital cameras and Kill-A-Watt readers.  But now I’m feeling a bit guilty.

Here’s how Car MD is supposed to work.

You take the remote unit, about the size of a fat TV remote, and plug it into your car’s computer output.  There’s the first challenge:  finding that plug.  But the www.carmd.com website has a simple guide by make and model. My plug was behind the ashtray of my ’97 Honda Accord.  In my wife’s ’96 Volvo, it was under the coin holder.

Once you’ve turned on and plugged in the CarMD gizmo, you turn on the ignition but you do NOT start the car.  The handheld device talks to your car’s computer, downloads the information, beeps four times and you’re done.  Well, sort of.

If the handheld device shows a green light (as on my trusty Honda), you’re OK.  Your car’s computer has found no problems.  But if it’s a yellow light, as I saw on the Volvo, the fun begins.

Next you have to copy down your car’s VIN (vehicle identification number).  Good luck reading that, if you can find it.

You then load the CarMD software onto your computer, register online with name and address (no, I did not read their Privacy Policy!) and open the software.  Type in the VIN and the system should identify your car by year, make and model.  You can register three cars per device and they don’t all have to belong to you.

But here’s where I was disappointed.  When I clicked the “check health status” button, the software displayed umpteen TSB’s (Technical Service Bulletins) for the Volvo going back to 1992 (even though the car is a ’96) but to read the full details it’s $1.99 per report or $19.95 a year to read them all.

Worse yet, the software told me nothing about why the yellow light was showing on the handheld device.  A call to CarMD’s Customer Service (friendly and knowledgeable) got to the root of the problem:  the Volvo’s “check engine” light wasn’t on.

In other words, unless your car’s computer has already found a problem and turned on that ominous dashboard display, CarMD isn’t going to tell you much of anything.  But it will ask you for money.

CarMD is nothing but a big thumb drive, no smarter than your car’s computer.

Now, had my check engine light been on, Car MD would, in theory, have told me what’s wrong with the car and given me an estimate of how much it would cost to fix it:  valuable info to arm myself with before heading to the service station.

But until the “check engine” light shows up on your dashboard, save your money.  CarMD isn’t going to do more than frustrate you.  Save your dough… maybe to buy a new used car.

JIM CAMERON has been a commuter out of Darien for 19 years.  He is Chairman of the CT Metro-North / Shore Line East Rail Commuter Council, and a member of the Coastal Corridor TIA and the Darien RTM.  Read his column on LymeLine every other Monday.  You can reach him at Cameron06820@gmail.com or www.trainweb.org/ct .

Filed Under: Towns, Transportation

CT Watchdog: Propane Gas Supply

September 18, 2010 by

Mary Carnevalini is part of the 96 percent of Connecticut propane gas customers who are at the mercy of their propane suppliers because they don’t own their own tanks but instead rent them from the dealers.

While propane gas can be a great alternative to heating oil and electricity if natural gas lines are unavailable, Carnevalini and the estimated 200,000 other propane customers in Connecticut have learned or are learning that it’s easier to figure out how a nuclear plant works than whether or how much they are being ripped off.  Propane is used as fuel for stoves, water heaters, furnaces and other equipment. Carnevalini uses propane to heat a swimming pool.

Heating oil companies will quote you a price 24/7. Any firm that sells in your area will deliver to you. Comparison shopping is easy. Everyone owns their own tanks and anyone can fill them.

 Propane gas is the least transparent energy business in the country. Companies normally don’t list their prices, they frequently won’t give you a quote over the phone, and they all have different prices with different add-on charges, making comparisons impossible.

The biggest weapon propane gas companies have is a set of rules adopted in Connecticut and every state in the union that require the home or business owner to purchase the gas from the company that owns the tank at their home or business. The suppliers convinced the states to adopt the rule by claiming that the liability for filling a tank not owned by the dealer would be too great. So then why aren’t the four percent who own their tanks seeing those tanks explode every day?

 And propane gas companies do their best to discourage people from buying their own tanks by falsely claiming that their insurance will increase and that it’s less dangerous to rent than to buy your tank.

 Many also refuse to sell the tanks that customers have been renting from them, or charge what a new tank would cost.

Carnevalini, of Winsted, contacted me earlier in the month asking me what she should do about her propane supplier, Arrow Gas, which has offices in Connecticut, Massachusetts and Rhode Island. The company – which in Connecticut operates from Waterbury and Windsor Locks, tacked on an extra annual charge of $100 for her swimming pool propane tank because she did not use the minimum amount that the company requires. She said she complained to Arrow but the company would not bend.

I sent her complaint to state Consumer Protection Commissioner Jerry Farrell Jr., who agrees with my views about the propane business, and he turned it over to James Turner, supervisor of the Food & Standards division, who convinced Arrow to drop the charge, though Turner said he didn’t think they had to because Arrow followed state rules by claiming to have sent Carnevalini its “fee disclosure pamphlet.”

Arrow officials have not returned my phone call requesting comments, and I am not sure the company could have made its fee stick.

First of all Carnevalini never had a written contract with the company and she said she did not receive the fee disclosure pamphlet until this month. While the letter she received stating the firm will waive the fee states as long as she uses one tank of propane gas every year. The pamphlet it sent her does not specify how much gas is the minimum required. You can see the documents at www.ctwatchdog.com.

“It gets more confusing,” she said. If she waits to call the company after using the full tank she gets an extra charge because Arrow has to do extra work when a tank is empty. Normally firms require that 20 percent be kept in tanks as a minimum.

Second, the minimum order is 50 gallons for her 100 gallon tank, and even if she only needs 40, she says Arrow charges her for 50.

Despite all this, Connecticut consumer officials told her that Arrow’s prices were cheaper than other companies charge small users. Arrow only charged her $2.54 a gallon while some other propane gas companies are charging as much as $7 a gallon for small users.

Farrell has instituted rules requiring that propane companies be more up-front about their charges and provide customers with bill-of-rights statements. However, for those who rent their tanks, the propane companies still hold guns to customers’ heads.

My suggestion: Before buying any equipment that requires propane, check the real costs. If possible, buy your own tank and then shop around.

To get an idea on the level of propane costs, and for other tips from Consumer Protection, check out http://www.ct.gov/dcp/cwp/view.asp?a=1621&q=274434

You can reach The Watchdog at George@connecticutwatchdog.com and he will answer as many emails as he can. Please check out his site, www.ctwatchdog.com for comprehensive consumer, health, finance, media, internet, computer, travel and education tips

Filed Under: CT Watchdog, Towns

Senior Moments: WiFi at Libraries

September 16, 2010 by

Odd, the first time I noticed it.
 
It was a September evening just before I entered Peace Corps. I stopped by the Phoebe Griffin Noyes Library in Old Lyme. One of my favorites. Just one car in the parking lot. But the library was closed. I recognized the old car. Jack was behind the wheel—I’ll call him Jack.
 
I walked over to say Hi. He was hunched down. About 40. Walked to his own drummer. Worked at this and that, as he needed to. Fiercely independent. Sharp.

He was so intent that he didn’t notice me coming. 

The window was down. “Hi, Jack. What are you up to?” 
He had his fingers on a laptop keyboard. “Hi, John. I’m checking my emails.”
“Your emails? Out here?”
“Yeah. I’m tapping the library’s  wi-fi signal. Works fine. I do this often. No need to go inside.” 
 
It was all completely new to me. I had had no idea.  Wi-fi—Internet without wires. Without walls, so to speak.
 
I saw it again in Morro Bay, California. Was visiting my daughter Monique and her hubby David. I enjoy the little but very fine Morro Bay Library. It was late afternoon. Balmy day.  A VW Microbus was parked among the others, but close to the building.

I had a Microbus once. For about three years after I retired. Cruised the U.S. in it, even down into Mexico and up into northwest Canada. Sight-seeing, having fun, learning so much along the way.
 
One man in this Microbus. He had slid the broad side door open. Was sitting at the tiny table, working a computer. The radio was playing some Mozart. Was having a grand time.

I didn’t need any explanation now. I knew what he was doing. The library was open, but he was accessing its wi-fi. He preferred to be outside. His van had a Nebraska plate. I’ll bet he was looking up a library wherever he went on his travels.
 
I never saw anything like this in Ukraine during my 27 months of Peace Corps service. The technology just wasn’t up to snuff.  They had the Internet, but limited. I used public Internet shops, paying by the minute.

How happy I was when I discovered the huge downtown public library. It had only two Internet-connected computers, both thanks to uncle Sam. How delighted when I discovered them. Free! I kept it secret from my Peace Corps colleagues—didn’t want them in line competing with me for one. Finally my conscience bothered me and I told them. They reacted just as I expected, to my regret.
 
Well, I saw the same wi-fi behavior just last Sunday. Early morning. I went for  a walk down Main Street in my own Deep River. Our downtown is becoming so charming.  Deep River is really becoming the Queen of the Valley again.

Approaching our library, I noticed a man sitting in the sunshine on the stone wall in front of it. Right across from his gleaming parked Saab. His tee-shirt said Newport.  He was working a laptop. A tourist, I was sure. Again, I just knew–he was taking advantage of the free Internet. He had searched out our library to do this and was delighted to find it.
 
Wi-fi has become commonplace. When you buy that service, often you use a password to access it. Some people don’t bother. People like the three I have mentioned often troll for an un-protected service. Sometimes  they troll their neighbors do. Their computers indicate who is using wi-fi within a certain range, and what the relative strengths of the signals are. This way they get wi-fi free if they do sneak into somebody’s service. It doesn’t seem to be illegal.
 
I have come to believe that public libraries make the conscious decision to leave their wi-fi available this way. For anybody and everybody who wants it, even from outside. For them it’s just another way to serve the public. Libraries, how wonderful.  Few other countries approach us in the quality of their libraries. Take it from me. I’ve been to many.   How lucky we are.
 
I remember the first time I used a public computer in a public library outside the U.S. I was up in Quebec City. I discovered the big, splendid new library there. Ultra-modern in every way, including its architecture. I saw many public computers in one room. Many people using them.

I approached the librarian in charge. “I am a tourist from Connecticut,” I said in French.  French was my first language. Very comfortable using it…l enjoy using it. “May I use a computer.” 

“Oui. Of course,” she said with a smile. She wrote out a pass for me. “Here it is, with the compliments of Monsieur Gates!”

“Monsieur Bill Gates! What does he have to do with this.”

He gave us a grant that helped make all this possible,” she said. “I believe he has given such grants to libraries in other countries also.”

As it turns out, while I was in Ukraine I read that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation was making a grant of millions of dollars for many libraries throughout the country over a period of years. Yes, to make the marvels of the Internet available to Ukrainians.

I believe the first company to make wi-fi available to its customers was  Starbucks. Starbucks was already providing free newspapers for customers to enjoy with their coffee. Free wi-fi was the logical next step.
Back from Ukraine, I made a happy discovery. Guess what? McDonald’s now provides free wi-fi in more than 12,000 restaurants in the U.S.
 
No wonder it’s the industry leader. I have enjoyed McDonald’s and Burger King for coffee and a pit stop for years. But I haven’t yet been in a Burger King with wi-fi. I am sure they will make the big leap. Will have to.
 
Public free wi-fi has become a standard amenity in many places. Hotels, shopping centers, airports,  universities, hospitals, resorts, book stores,  brake and oil lube shops, on and on.
 
This is when I discovered the new tiny enetbooks.  First came the laptop, then he notebook, now the enetbook…each one smaller. Had to have one. Bought a beauty. Has the standard software programs plus many bells and whistles. Even a tiny video camera (but I don’t use it…don’t want people to see what I really look like at times). Weighs less than two pounds.  Has everything except CD and DVD capability. But I don’t need these because I also own a Mac.
 
For nearly five years now–since the first week it appeared on the market–I have owned an Apple MacMini. It’s a full desktop processor.  Just the size of a cigar box, if you are of age to know what that is. Cigar boxes are not common any more.  My MacMini is full-powered…mighty! I even took it to Ukraine with me, but it was months before I found a place to live with where I could connect it.
 
Well, got to tell you that on my long zigzag journey home from California, where I arrived from Ukraine, I used my wonderful enetbook every day here and there…all kinds of places. All because of free wi-fi.
 
Hard for me to believe that I have been using computers for more than 40 years. I remember when all of us on the editorial side of the Worcester Telegram & Gazette received a memo from upstairs. It said all of us would get computers and we would have to learn to use them. Mandatory. “We will train you. Don’t worry!” The idea was frightening.

I was the editor of its Sunday magazine, “Feature Parade.” It wasn’t one that we just bought from a syndicate, all pre-printed, and just put our name on. We edited and published our own, with our own magazine staff and some free-lancers. I felt so intimidated by the new technology. But I got the hang of it. (But I am still learning every day.)
 
I remember my first portable computer. It was a Smith-Corona.  Laptops had not yet appeared. I used it at home and on the road. A bulky thing. It weighed 10 times as much as my little e-book. Nevertheless, marvelous. I remember the first time I walked into a public library with it. I walked it with an extension cord in my other hand.
 
I approached a librarian at her desk. “May I use this?” I said, and explained.
“Gosh, I’m not sure. We don’t have a policy for that.”
It’ll be for just 20 for minutes. Very quiet. No click-clacking of typewriter keys. Won’t bother anybody.”
“Well, all right. But I’ll have to report this.”
 
I set up at a table and went to work. She kept glancing at me. Finally she came and stood at my side and looked on.  “That is very nice, isn’t it!” she said approvingly. 
“Yes, I love it. They’ll become common.”
How right I was. That Smith-Corona of mine has become an antique.
 
And know what? Just yesterday I read in a newspaper—a digital newspaper, by the way, like this one you are reading—that the huge outdoor National Mall in Washington has been equipped with wi-fi.

More than 200 “hot spots” have been set up on its vast acreage. They disperse the wi-fi signal. Yes, right there in front of our Capitol.  People out there in the fresh air will be able to open their computers and connect to the world.  Without wires!
 
But not only laptops and enetbooks now. With Blackberries and their kind. With the so-called smart telephones of many kinds.  Millions now own one. Even the three oldest of my five grandchildren—the other two are less than four years old! All three are texting. That’s a brand-new word to me—typing with two fingers on the tiniest of electronic keyboards, sacrificing grammar and spelling to brevity and expediency. Maybe to you also. I don’t now how to text. That’s too newfangled for me.
 
All this is the fantastic result of the first half century  of this, our civilization-changing Computer Age.  And this is just the beginning.  I see the certainty—though I may not live to enjoy it—that entire towns and cities will have  free wi-fi. In fact, our whole country will have free wi-fi.  Someday the whole world. This I believe truly. Having a computer device to connect to it will be as basic and commonplace as wearing shoes.
 
I remember reading Buck Rogers comics when I was a kid. Buck Rogers was far-fetched and wonderful. But even Buck Rogers was not futuristic enough to keep up with this!

John Guy LaPlante is a veteran writer, journalist and resident of Deep River.  His award-winning columns and articles were most recently published in the Main Street News.  He is the author of two books, “Around the World at 75. Alone! Dammit!” and “Asia in 80 Days. Oops, 83! Dammit!”  He has just completed his service as a Peace Corps Volunteer (PCV) in the Ukraine where his 27-month tour of duty began last fall.  John always welcomes comments on his articles.
Email him at johnguylaplante@yahoo.com

Filed Under: Deep River, John Guy LaPlante

Nibbles: Salmon Nicoise at Bee & Thistle

September 7, 2010 by

Bee & Thistle Inn
100 Lyme Street
Old Lyme, CT 06371
860-434-1667

I got a nice phone call from Linnea Rufo as few Fridays ago, asking if I’d come down to the Bee & Thistle to have dinner with her and her husband, David. So I took a shower and washed my hair, put on a little makeup, got just a little spiffed up and drove down to the inn.

These days I like to eat a salad, a small entrée and maybe a glass of wine. What to eat, I said rhetorically. Linnea suggested the salmon Nicoise from the Bantam Plates, about half the size of a regular entrée. We also shared an order of green eggs and ham (hard-boiled eggs deviled with fresh garden chile sauce topped with Parma prosciutto, which was delicious. But the entrée was more than a miniature: The perfectly salmon, crusted with fennel and served with roasted tomatoes and white balsamic vinaigrette, along with tiny slivers of hard-boiled eggs and great olives. The entree was plenty big enough and cost just $13. I’ll be back in just a few days to eat it again.

Lee White, a local resident, has been writing about restaurants and cooking since 1976 and has been extensively published in the Worcester (Mass.) Magazine, The Day, Norwich Bulletin, and Hartford Courant.  She currently writes Nibbles and a cooking column called A La Carte for the Times and Shore Publishing newspapers, and Elan, a quarterly magazine, all of which are now owned by The Day. 

Filed Under: Nibbles, Towns Tagged With: ,

Talking Transportation: Why Hartford Hates the Gold Coast

September 7, 2010 by

I was watching CT-N the other night (my favorite reality TV channel) as the members of the CPTC (Citizens Public Transportation Commission) were meeting for an incredibly boring discussion the state’s transit woes.  But toward the end of the meeting, my ears perked up as one of the 80+ year old members started on a rant.

“Our next Governor is going to be ‘gold plated,’” he said.  “He’ll come from Fairfield County, the Gold Coast, so heaven help us!”

Not even the lone member of the Commission from Fairfield County dared challenge this crazy assumption that a Governor from the ultra-affluent downstate region would do anything but spend to help Fairfield County while ignoring the rest of the state.

Which got me thinking:  Why does everyone upstate mistrust us, we who live on the Gold Coast?

Years ago, when I used to journey to Hartford for my annual appeal to the legislature’s Transportation Committee to invest in new rail cars for Metro-North, I could feel and hear the resentment.  Then-Committee Chairman, Senator Billy Ciotto ( D – Wethersfield) would excoriated my testimony, once saying “You people on the Gold Coast can buy your own damn trains!”

Even the CT Rail Commuter Council’s long-time member from Guilford (Shore Line East territory), an otherwise learned and reasonable man, says that Fairfield County isn’t the “real Connecticut.”  Oh, really?
Consider the facts:

WE PAY THE TAXES: Forty-plus percent of all the taxes collected in this state come from Fairfield County.  Something like 15% of the state’s total collections come from Greenwich, New Canaan and Darien alone.
Without Fairfield County taxes, upstate residents’ tax rates would soar.

BUT WE DON’T GET THE BENEFITS:      Though we pay most of the taxes, we get almost nothing back in return.  Towns like Darien get back 1 cent for every dollar sent to Hartford.  One cent!  Who’s gold plating the roads in Wethersfield?  We are.

WE’RE NOT ALL MILLIONAIRES: Sure, there are some affluent families living along the Gold Coast?  But our state’s most populous and poorest city, Bridgeport, is here too.   I’d guess there are far more people living in poverty in Norwalk, Stamford and Greenwich than in West Hartford or Farmington.

WE’RE THE VICTIMS OF TRANSIT NEGLECT: Who suffers more from traffic congestion than those who drive I-95 through Fairfield County?  And who pays the highest commuter rail fares in the US, but Metro-North riders?  Our rail cars are older than most passengers and our highways show the scars of decades of neglect.

So for those people who live north of the Merritt Parkway (the Mason – Dixon line of state politics), get over yourselves and stop portraying us as free-spending fat cats living not in Connecticut but some annex of New York City.

Connecticut’s next Governor will come from Fairfield County.  And that’s a good thing.  Who knows more about what happens when you don’t invest in your highways and trains?

Maybe the shiny new commuter rail from New Haven to Springfield (which we’ll all be heavily subsidizing) can learn from Metro-North’s mistakes.  Maybe a new Governor can extend Shore Line East from Old Saybrook beyond New London to Mystic, Stonington and even Rhode Island, turning local rail critics into passengers.

To her credit, Brookfield’s Jodi Rell has served our entire state’s interests as Governor, especially in funding improved mass transit state-wide, not just in her own home town.  And I have every confidence that Dan Malloy or Tom Foley will be Governor of all of Connecticut, upstate and down, from the Quiet Corner to, yes, even the Gold Coast.

JIM CAMERON has been a commuter out of Darien for 19 years.  He is Chairman of the CT Metro-North / Shore Line East Rail Commuter Council, and a member of the Coastal Corridor TIA and the Darien RTM.  Read his column on LymeLine every other Monday.  You can reach him at Cameron06820@gmail.com or www.trainweb.org/ct .

Filed Under: Transportation Tagged With: ,

CT Watchdog: Customer Service

September 4, 2010 by

When I judge a company’s customer service, I look not only at the number and kinds of complaints, but at how the firms respond.

 All companies make mistakes, employees have bad days, and there can be communication problems.

 But once someone at the top is made aware of a problem, it needs to be resolved real soon to get an A from me.

 The following are two examples of companies that deserve praise for the way they have handled complaints:

 Mike Bennett of Windsor Locks wrote to me about a beef he had with Puritan Furniture of West Hartford.

 Bennett  paid $2,000 for what the saleswoman promised was a large, well-built reclining sofa with a matching loveseat two years ago. A month later, a clip that had held a spring failed. Puritan sent a repairman out and fixed it. Sixteen months later the stitching began to unravel on one of the footrests, and then the recliner mechanism wouldn’t work.

 ”Unfortunately, the sofas have only a one-year warranty on labor. Puritan does not fix sofas, nor do they involve themselves in the process, instead they give you the phone number for someone that does,” Bennett wrote me in his complaint. “I called the repairman and I was told that it was going to cost us $40 just to have someone come look at it, we would then have to pay even more on top of that to have them fix it. I realize that this is not the repairman’s problem and that he surely deserves to be paid for his time, but we do not have hundreds of dollars to spend on fixing our new couch.”

 ”The people at Puritan were completely unbending when it came to offering any help. They are your best friend when selling you the furniture, but boy are things different when there is a problem! You’re on your own then,” he wrote asking for my advice.

 I looked up Puritan on the Better Business Bureau (bbb.org) site and saw that the company, which has been in business for more than 70 years, had only a few complaints filed against it and had the highest possible rating.

 I suggested to Bennett that he write to the president of the company, Bruce Singer, and to give him a chance to make amends.

 ”Well, as I expected, your advice was spot-on! I got a phone call from Mr. Singer and he was very pleasant with me. He apologized for my troubles and offered to replace the mechanisms on both sides of the couch, plus fix the stitching in the footrest, all at no charge,” Bennett wrote me.

 Town Fair Tire stores have an excellent reputation for customer service. My friend Denis Horgan recently had a relative visiting at his West Hartford home. The relative’s car had flat tire and Horgan, our travel blogger on CtWatchdog.com, took him to the West Hartford store. For $4.95, they fixed the flat; no charge for the two coffees Horgan had.

 But that is not the experience that Kevin and Melanie Logan of Colchester had at the Norwich store. The Logans, longtime customers, say they had a terrible encounter on July 30th when the two complained about wear on their tires.  They said they got into an argument with the staff and were treated rudely by an employee when they asked for a partial refund, which was denied.

 The couple wrote a letter to the company president:

 ”You need to seriously consider sending in someone qualified to re-train your staff, because this behavior is unacceptable and we simply cannot be the only ones to have been abused by him or others in this location before. I would not be able to rest if I did not bring this to your attention as I not only felt like I was being verbally abused, but his physical demeanor was threatening as well. If I were there alone, without my husband, I would have been not only shocked, but also scared for my own well being. He was menacing, simple as that. He would not provide us with his last name… however he did wear a ring with skulls on it if that helps,” the couple wrote.

 No one responded so the couple asked me for my advice. I contacted Rich Allen, customer service coordinator in East Haven, who conceded that the letter did not reach the president. But he quickly reacted, apologized to the Logans for their experience, and offered them a refund much larger than is provided by the firm’s warranty.

 Frankly, I think the Logans are still so furious that they won’t be back to Town Fair, but I would recommend the company to anyone that asked.

You can reach The Watchdog at George@connecticutwatchdog.com and he will answer as many emails as he can. Please check out his site, www.ctwatchdog.com for comprehensive consumer, health, finance, media, internet, computer, travel and education tips.

Filed Under: CT Watchdog Tagged With: , ,

Talking Transportation: The Lessons from Katrina

August 26, 2010 by

We were all awe-struck five years ago watching the coverage of the rescue efforts in the Gulf following hurricane Katrina.  But did we learn anything from that tragedy.

Remember:  our annual hurricane season is well underway and storm activity peaks around this time each year.  And we ready for “the big one”?

Consider the following:

1)  Transportation Means Survival: The difference between those who lived and died in New Orleans was based on access to transportation.  When told to evacuate, those with cars did.  Those without couldn’t and were stranded.  The lack of public transportation along the Gulf Coast left the “disadvantaged” as just that… dis-advantaged, and maybe dead.

How would those living along the Connecticut coast be evacuated if a category four hurricane were threatening us?  Join the crawl on I-95?  Take Metro-North?  Or hunker down at a local mall.  How many of our towns have adequate shelter or emergency supplies?

Is Amtrak ready, along with Metro-North, to deploy its fleet to evacuate the hundreds of thousands threatened by a hurricane?  Doubtful.

2)  Our Classless Society Isn’t:   The victims of Katrina weren’t characterized as much by race as by economic class.  Being able to afford to live away from the flood plain and have access to private transportation both cost money.  This isn’t about race:  you don’t have to be Black to be poor.

But after Katrina, then-President Bush’s mother, Barbara, was touring the Katrina refugee camps in Houston.  She commented that, given the squalor of their former New Orleans homes, these victims of Katrina were actually better off than before.  Then she added “it’s kind of scary that they might all want to stay in Texas.”

Where would Connecticut’s refugees flee after an evacuation?  And how long would they be gone pending recovery and rebuilding?   Gold Coasters perhaps could drive their SUV’s up to familiar ski country in New England. But where would the Hispanic, Haitian and Black populations of Stamford, Norwalk and Bridgeport go… and would they also be made to feel like so many dust bowl Oakies when they arrived at refugee camps?

3)  Our Government Is Incompetent: Katrina and 9/11 showed us that our government can’t do a damn thing to protect its citizens.  One might excuse a surprise terrorist attack, but a long anticipated, well-scenarioed hurricane?  Not a chance.

At the time of Katrina, 75 percent of FEMA’s budget was being spent on anti-terrorism efforts, even though acts of nature present the real danger to most Americans. Gobbled up into the Homeland Security Agency, FEMA had lost all clout, competence and most of its budget.  “Brownie” may have been doing a “helluva job”, but would his successor do any better five years on?

Ask any old-timer about the Hurricane of 1938 which devastated New England that September.  It still ranks as the worst natural disaster to ever hit our state.  True, the human toll was compounded because we had no notice of the coming storm.  But even with sufficient time to evacuate, a storm of that size would devastate this state, especially our most expensive homes built along the coast.  Santayana said: “Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” Have we really learned the lessons of Katrina?

JIM CAMERON has been a commuter out of Darien for 19 years.  He is Chairman of the CT Metro-North / Shore Line East Rail Commuter Council, and a member of the Coastal Corridor TIA and the Darien RTM.  Read his column on LymeLine every other Monday.  You can reach him at Cameron06820@gmail.com or www.trainweb.org/ct .  For a full collection of “Talking Transportation” columns, see www.talkingtransportation.blogspot.com

Filed Under: Towns, Transportation Tagged With: , ,

CT Watchdog: How to Protect Yourself Against ID Theft

August 21, 2010 by

The call from Tyler was scary. He had been in a car accident in a rental car in Montreal and needed money to pay an attorney and fly home.

Dorothy Cheo, 81, of Niantic, was so upset on hearing her grandson was in trouble that she couldn’t think straight.

She quickly went to a local grocery store and wired $935 to Montreal through Western Union.

It was only after receiving the second phone call asking for more money that she began to question whether she had really talked to her grandson.

Nope. According to East Lyme resident state police Sgt. Wilfred Blanchette, she was at least the second local victim of this type of scam in the past year.

Cheo contacted me, asking that I tell her story as a cautionary tale to other parents and relatives, and she had a suggestion that Sgt. Blanchette endorsed: create a secret word for the family to use only if they are in trouble.

Cheo said she fell for the scam because the boy identified himself as Tyler and was coughing so hard it was impossible for her to know that it wasn’t really him. And then, when a second person got on the phone explaining he was Tyler’s attorney, she knew she had to act fast.

“If he had said ‘this is your grandson’ I would have been suspicious,” Cheo told me. “But he said he was Tyler and he sounded sick.”

After wiring the money, Cheo said she called her son, but couldn’t reach him. And the more she thought about it, the less sense it made. Her grandson was only 16 and she wasn’t even aware that he had a driver’s license. And what was he doing in Montreal instead of being in Massachusetts.

So by the time the “lawyer” called back saying he received the $935 but needed more money, she said no.

“Somehow the caller knew my grandson’s name and relation to me, so pretended to be him with a bad cough and desperate sound. Then a so-called lawyer explained that he was in jail in Montreal due to an auto accident that was not his fault.”

She then got contacted her son, who reassured her that Tyler was safe at band camp and had never been in Montreal.

“It was dumb,” she said, “but I was so worried.”

She said if they had set up a secret code word, this would not have happened.

Cheo said she has no idea how the scammers knew her telephone number and her grandson’s name.

She filed a complaint with the East Lyme police, and Sgt. Blanchette said he wasn’t surprised.

With so much personal information on the Internet, he said, it’s easy for crooks to put family information together, especially using sites like Facebook.

But, he said, “so far, how they picked out this family is a mystery.”

He said the first complaint he saw was very similar, where the call also came from Montreal.

“This is the crime wave of the future,” he said, adding that similar scam take place with hijacked email accounts.

HOW TO PROTECT YOURSELF AGAINST ID THEFT

Thanks to Consumer Reports for its effective suggestions on how to diminish ID theft.

I will start with my personal recommendation, which may be counterintuitive for those who don’t trust the Internet to do on-line banking.

Use on-line banking to pay your bills. Its free (nothing is really free but most banks offer it as long as you meet other requirements like automatic deposits). Effective. You have all your documentation in one place.

And you can set up alerts – this is crucial – to tell you when a new payee is added or a payment is made. It’s a tremendous way to have instant knowledge of what is happening with your bank account.

Other suggestions from CR – the trusted place for consumer tips:

Do not fill out surveys on warranty cards beyond your name and address and product info.

Stop unsolicited pre-approved credit card offers at www.optoutprescreen.com or call 888-567-8688.

Put your name on the Federal Trade Commission’s Do Not Call registry at www.donotcall.gov or call 888.382-1222.

When you move only fill out a temporary change of address with the U.S. Postal Service that lasts for six month.

To get your name off mailing lists, go to the Direct Marketing Association’s consumer web site, www.dmachoice.org. Click on “Register for eMPS” to opt out of unsolicited junk email.

The Privacy Rights Clearinghouse lists data brokers that offer opt-out policies at www.privacyrights.org/ar/infobrokers.htm.

You can reach The Watchdog at George@connecticutwatchdog.com and he will answer as many emails as he can. Please check out his site, www.ctwatchdog.com for comprehensive consumer, health, finance, media, internet, computer, travel and education tips.

 

Filed Under: CT Watchdog Tagged With: , ,

Between Us: The $40K Binge

August 19, 2010 by

By Trish Bennett

Only 30% of students enrolled in liberal arts colleges graduate in four years.

Some years before the term “helicopter parent” insinuated itself into the lexicon of higher learning, a father and mother took to the road.

Among the flotsam and jetsam of “college necessities” crammed into the Ford Country Squire station wagon was their son and heir who, perhaps for the first time in his 18-year existence, had—at his father’s insistence—organized his own belongings without his mother’s aid.

Roughly an hour into the four-hour trek to school, dad squinted into the rear view mirror, scanned the hodge-podge of electronic and sports equipment and the vacuum cleaner (mother’s one allowed input), and dryly inquired, “Michael, where are your clothes?”

Having put in time a) as an undergrad; b) as a parent of undergrads; and c) as an undergrad professor, I’ve evolved the thesis that parents of college students often confuse the proverbial brake and the spur when dealing both with their students and the institutions they’re attending.

That is, the tendency can be to obsess over picayune details and to snooze at the helm when confronted with issues that may threaten their students’ success and wellbeing.

Reading Craig Brandon’s new book “The Five Year Party” well before the car departs for campus can be a helpful beginning. Subtitled, “How Colleges Have Given Up On Educating Your Child and What You Can Do About It,” Brandon’s book makes some bold and disturbing accusations.

Among them: That many universities fail to exact minimal standards of scholarship (as in read the material, complete the assignments, participate in discussion); dumb-down grade averaging; and, by becoming de-facto education-free zones, thus over charge parents for under-serving their students.

(The book’s title refers to studies noting that today, only 30% of students enrolled in liberal arts colleges graduate in four years.)

Further, Brandon, a former education reporter as well as a former college instructor, notes that many campuses are so awash in sex, drugs and alcohol that they make National Lampoon’s 1978 classic “Animal House” look like a nursery school romp.

Alas—and here’s where the spur/brake confusion comes in—many Class of 20-Something parents tacitly accept the idea that their kids’ “rites of passage” include such infantile behaviors, and that they’re powerless to do anything about it: as if pulling the purse strings closed was not an option.

At the same time, if parents do get wind of unacceptable or failing grades (it’s an “if” because the Federal Education Rights and Privacy Act passed in 1974 makes grade reports the property of all students over age 18)), the same people who turn the blind eye to their kids flagrant waste of tuition dollars often aim righteous indignation at professors who reward their students’ non-study habits with C’s or D’s rather than A’s or B’s.

Prior to setting off for campus, then, it might be useful if both parents and students examined closely their expectations for the university experience.

To expect hard-working adults to furnish unlimited sex, drugs and rock n’ roll to their progeny at the rate of $40,000-plus-a-year might, for example, be considered a tad excessive.

It’s also reasonable that parents are entitled to some evidence that, in return for hard-earned dollars spent on her behalf, their child is returning that enormous favor and working diligently toward the purpose of college, which is to learn to think.

To exact such minimal standards of a student is hardly helicoptering; it is responsible parenting.

So much for the spur.

As to the brake: It’s also responsible, as Brandon notes, for parents to hold universities to their stated purpose of education. A trenchant question parents might want answered, Brandon thinks, is how many of a given college’s professors send their children to their own institution.

If the term “responsibility” has cropped up several times in this piece, it’s because I think it’s time that the on-going bad behavior by  some universities, students and parents comes to a halt.

If universities, in the quest for enrollment dollars, decline to exact minimal scholastic standards and turn blind, deaf and dumb to outrageous, even dangerous undergraduate behaviors, then they should retool tuition and call it a cover charge, restyle themselves social clubs, and replace professors with professional bouncers.

If students actually confuse “trying hard” with producing decent scholarship, and regard gratification bingeing as a means to that end, then they should defer college until they can discern the difference.

If parents doff their roles as mentors and leave value instruction to high schools and colleges, then parents leave themselves little recourse to demand credible grades, much less adult behaviors, from their offspring.

“Responsibility,” after all, means accepting obligations and making good on them. It’s about owning our own actions. And finally—how novel when discussing education—
responsibility is about being smart.

Trish Bennett is an award-winning journalist and the former assistant editor of Main Street News.  She holds a master of science degree in journalism and was adjunct professor of media history at Quinnipiac University before relocating Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania.  Her latest work appears in the up-coming volume of “This I Believe: The Personal Philosophies of Remarkable Men and Women” slated for publication in association with National Public Radio this Fall.  She can be reached at pwbennett@verizon.net

Filed Under: Between Us, Columnists Tagged With: , ,

“Blast From The Past” by Kinky Friedman

August 18, 2010 by

Richard S. “Kinky” Friedman almost defies description. 

A renaissance man and possible hysterical realist* (think Tom Robbins Still Life With Woodpecker); he is a singer, writer, columnist and ocasional politician.  (He ran as an independent for Governor of Texas in 2006 and received 12.6% of the vote…)

He is primarily known, by me, as a member of Don Imus’ irreverent entourage.  In an effort to force my better half to read my columns I capitulated to reading/ reviewing the male coup de foudre that is Blast From The Past.

I admit to liking it and finding much of it to be enticing enough to read the other one I took out, but it is definitely male humor. Fart jokes are the least of it.  Jamieson Whisky, public sex, genitalia, drugs, and the other staples of male humor are accounted for in bulk.

Despite being a tad traumatized (I am truly a prudy girl no matter how much I try to overcome it ), Kinky captures the dark insightfulness I like so much in David Sedaris.  (10.10.08)

Looking closely at something is always going to provoke and subsequently educate, more than a glossing over can. Kinky is brave enough to look under the rug and face what he finds.

Kinky is obviously a smart man and I liked his casual usage of literary references, many of which he left to hang in the breeze rather than over-explain.  (Reichenbach Falls 12.20.08).

I wouldn’t liken Blast From The Past to L”Elegance du Herisson (9.5.09)  in its thoughtful asides, but it isn’t a horse of an entirely different color either.  There are many bits that give one pause and deserve closer attention.  Abbie Hoffman’s cultural detritus for one …

There are also small gems like his mention of an idiot drunk in the bar named Myers who thinks of opening a British food shop in the Village.  “Most ridiculous idea I ever heard … whole idea’s a pipe dream.  Never happen.” **

I also loved the bar they frequent called the EAR because two of the bars on the B burned out.

Actually, the more the think about it the more I realize how good it it.  Possibly my mamby-pamby attitude is altering?   Am I becoming more indulgent of bathroom humor and private parts?  Nah.

… but I am going to pick up A Case of Lone Star.  Let’s see how Kinky does with that …

*Hysterical Realism, also called recherche postmodernism and maximalism is a literary genre of strong contrast between elaborately absurd prose, plots or characters and precisely specific social phenomena.

 **Myers of Keswick
634 Hudson Street (between Horatio and Jane St.)
New York NY 10014
Phone: (212) 691-4194
Fax: (212) 691-7423
Mail: info@myersofkeswick.com
MON – FRI: 10am – 7pm
SAT: 10am – 6pm
SUN: 12noon – 5pm 
(One of the best little shops around. Truly.)

Jennifer Petty Mann grew up in New York City, moved to London, England, then back to Boston, and is now happily ensconced on the EightMile river in Lyme with three little ones.  A former teacher, window dresser for Saks, and designer, she is taking her love of books to the proverbial “street.” 

Filed Under: Columnists, River Reads

A Summer Reading List … for Grown-Ups!

August 9, 2010 by

By Jen Mann

Why do kids get to have all the fun?  Why can’t we have homework?

Well, my darlings, you can.  My lovely friend TS and I have decided I will do a Summer Reading List.

There will only be six books to read.  I will not review them so you can’t cheat. 

Actually I may do two to inspire you.

I will otherwise be reading them with you.  If you read the majority of them … you’re invited to the wine review that Shoreline Web  News will host at the end of the summer (contact editor@shorelinewebnews.com).

Wouldn’t that be fun?  You could have a drink with ME!  Really, what better incentive could there be?

None at all. 

Luckies. You will have the opportunity to speak with impunity to me about my choices.  You hate them, you love them, I want to hear all!  So buck up my friends, here’s the list.
 
In no particular order …

Filed Under: Arts, River Reads, Towns

Attention Knitters

August 9, 2010 by

By Ann Nyberg

There are knitters everywhere.  On Thursday evenings at Panera’s in North Haven, Conn. (see photo below left), you can find a whole table full of gals knitting and chatting away about their various projects, having dinner, solving the world’s problems and finding their zen all at the same time.

If you’re a knitter like I am, you find this kind of scenario just glorious.  Creating something handmade that is all your own.

Knitters are notorious for doing things for others.  Much of the time they are making something for others.  That’s how we roll.

Just to show you my knitting is very much alive and well, here’s a vase cover I did … yes, I know, a vase cover?

These artists have to find their yarn somewhere and one place to do that is at Saybrook Yarn, in yes, Old Saybrook, Conn.

It’s right down the street from the Katharine Hepburn Cultural Arts Center.  I serve on the theater’s board of trustees and don’t even get me started about how much I love that 250 seat venue … that’s for another post.

Anyway, at Saybrook Yarn you will find this to be a place that you will return to over and over.  The owner and her employees are so friendly and so helpful.  If you’ve dropped a stitch and it’s dropped down to who knows where, they’ll help you find it.  The place is huge.

As I continue on with my Annie Mame blog, I will post about other yarn shops that I love in Connecticut … they have to be friendly or forget about it.

There are pattern books and needles and metallic threads in this shop.  It’s just a great place to spend some time, hours really.  It’s a soft ,cozy spot.

When you’ve had your fill of knitting for the day, don’t forget to spill out onto the streets of Old Saybrook, there’s a lot going on there, and again don’t forget to check out The Kate and its museum to the four- time Academy Award winning actress.

Katharine Hepburn was a knitter (see photo at right)—she called Old Saybrook her paradise.

Oh, by the way, my favorite site on the web for finding thousands of knitting patterns for free is Knitting Pattern Central … it’s all right there for you, truly, you’ll find every pattern known to man or woman.  Just as many crochet patterns as well.

WTNH news anchor Ann Nyberg happens to believe the glass is half full and that there is magic in everything if you’re open to it.  She believes in doing good for others, in enlightening people’s lives and in showing them the way.  In Connecticut there are wondrous people and places to which she will introduce you in this column. This is a state rich in personality and in talent.  She will share it all here with you. Think of her as kind of a one-woman, living, breathing, CT Chamber of Commerce!  Read more from Ann on her blog at www.anniemame.com, where this article was first published.

Filed Under: Arts, Life with Annie Mame, Towns

Personal Finance: Long Term Care Insurance Can Help Protect Your Assets

August 2, 2010 by

By: Marc Sack, Northstar Wealth Partners

How will you pay for long term care? The sad fact is that most people don’t know the answer to that question. But a solution is available.

As baby boomers leave their careers behind, long term care insurance will become very important in their financial strategies. The reasons to get an LTC policy after age 50 are very compelling.

Your premium payments buy you access to a large pool of money which can be used to pay for long term care costs. By paying for LTC out of that pool of money, you can preserve your retirement savings and income.

The cost of assisted living or nursing home care alone could motivate you to pay the premiums. Genworth Financial conducts a respected annual Cost of Care Survey to gauge the price of long term care in the U.S. The 2010 report found that in 2010, the median annual cost of a private room in a nursing home is $75,190 or $206 per day – $14,965 more than it was in 2005.

A private one-bedroom unit in an assisted living facility has a median cost of $3,185 a month – which is 12% higher than it was in 2009.

The median payment to a non-Medicare certified, state-licensed home health aide is $19 in 2010, up 2.7% from 2009.[1]

Can you imagine spending an extra $30-80K out of your retirement savings in a year? What if you had to do it for more than one year?

AARP notes that approximately 60% of people over age 65 will require some kind of long term care during their lifetimes.[2]

Why procrastinate? The earlier you opt for LTC coverage, the cheaper the premiums. This is why many people purchase it before they retire. Those in poor health or over the age of 80 are frequently ineligible for coverage.

What it pays for. Some people think LTC coverage just pays for nursing home care. That’s inaccurate. It can pay for a wide variety of nursing, social, and rehabilitative services at home and away from home, for people with a chronic illness or disability or people who just need assistance bathing, eating or dressing.[3]

Choosing a DBA. That stands for Daily Benefit Amount – the maximum amount that your LTC plan will pay per day for care in a nursing home facility. You can choose a Daily Benefit Amount when you pay for your LTC coverage, and you can also choose the length of time that you may receive the full DBA on a daily basis. The DBA typically ranges from a few dozen dollars to hundreds of dollars. Some of these plans offer you “inflation protection” at enrollment, meaning that every few years, you will have the chance to buy additional coverage and get compounding – so your pool of money can grow.

The Medicare misconception. Too many people think Medicare will pick up the cost of long term care. Medicare is not long term care insurance. Medicare will only pay for the first 100 days of nursing home care, and only if 1) you are getting skilled care and 2) you go into the nursing home right after a hospital stay of at least 3 days. Medicare also covers limited home visits for skilled care, and some hospice services for the terminally ill. That’s all.[2]

Now, Medicaid can actually pay for long term care – if you are destitute. Are you willing to wait until you are broke for a way to fund long term care? Of course not. LTC insurance provides a way to do it.

Why not look into this? You may have heard that LTC insurance is expensive compared with some other forms of policies. But the annual premiums (about as much as you’d spend on a used car from the late 1990s) are nothing compared to real-world LTC costs.[4]

Ask your insurance advisor or financial advisor about some of the LTC choices you can explore – while many Americans have life, health and disability insurance, that’s not the same thing as long term care coverage.

1 genworth.com/content/etc/medialib/genworth_v2/pdf/ltc_cost_of_care.Par.85518.File.dat/Executive%20Summary_gnw.pdf [4/10]

2 - aarp.org/families/caregiving/caring_help/what_does_long_term_care_cost.html [11/11/08]

3 - pbs.org/nbr/site/features/special/article/long-term-care-insurance_SP/ [11/11/08]

4 - longtermcare.gov/LTC/Main_Site/Paying_LTC/Private_Programs/LTC_Insurance/index.aspx [6/25/09]

Marc Sack is a Representative with NorthStar Wealth Partners/LPL Financial and may be reached at www.NSTARWP.com, 860-665-7737 or msack@nstarwp.com.

Filed Under: Business, Departments, Finance Matters

Talking Transportation – The AC-DC Railroad

July 26, 2010 by

JIM CAMERON has been a commuter out of Darien for 19 years.  He is Chairman of the CT Metro-North / Shore Line East Rail Commuter Council, and a member of the Coastal Corridor TIA and the Darien RTM.  Read his column on LymeLine every other Monday.  You can reach him at Cameron06820@gmail.com or www.trainweb.org/ct .  For a full collection of “Talking Transportation” columns, seewww.talkingtransportation.blogspot.com

The AC-DC Railroad

A few weekends ago, service on Metro-North and Amtrak was thrown into chaos when two trains ripped down portions of the overhead caternary (power line).  Trains were cancelled, weekend riders stranded. Metro-North’s service in Connecticut is made all the more challenging by a technological quirk of fate.  Ours is the only commuter railroad in the U.S. that operates on three modes of power… AC, DC and diesel.

On a typical run from, say, New Haven to Grand Central, the first part of the journey is done “under the wire”, the trains being powered by 13,000 volt AC overhead wires, or catenaries.  Around Pelham, in Westchester County, the pantographs are lowered and the conversion is made to 660 volt DC third-rail power for the rest of the trip into New York.  Even diesel engines must convert to third-rail, as their smoky exhaust is banned in the Park Avenue tunnels. 

And there’s the rub:  Connecticut trains need both AC and DC, overhead and third-rail, power pick-ups and processors.  That means a lot more electronics, and added cost, for each car.  While the DC-only new M7 cars running in Westchester cost about $2 million each, the dual-mode M8 car designed for Connecticut will cost considerably more. 

So, some folks are asking… “Why not just use one power source? Just replace the overhead wires with third-rail and we can buy cheaper cars.”  Simple, yes.  Smart, no.  And here’s why. 

  • There’s not enough space to lay a third-rail along each of the four sets of tracks in the existing right of way. All four existing tracks would have to be ripped out and the space between them widened. Every bridge and tunnel would have to be widened, platforms moved and land acquired. Cost?  Probably hundreds of millions of dollars, years of construction and service disruptions.
  • Even with third-rail, the CDOT would still be required to provide overhead power lines for Amtrak.  That would mean maintaining two power systems at double the cost.  We’re currently spending billions just to upgrade the 80-year old catenary, so why then replace it with third-rail?
  • Third-rail AC power requires power substations every few miles, meaning further construction and real estate. The environmental lawsuits alone would kill this idea.
  • DC-powered third rail is less efficient.  Trains accelerate much faster using overhead AC voltage, the power source used by the fastest trains in the world… the TGV, Shinkansen, etc.  On third-rail speeds are limited to 75 miles an hour vs. 90 mph under the wire.  That means, mile for mile, commute time is longer using third rail.
  • Third-rail ices up in bad weather and can get buried in snow, causing short circuits.  Overhead wires have problems sometimes, but they are never buried in a blizzard.
  • Third-rail is dangerous to pedestrians and track workers.

The idea of conversion to third-rail was studied in the 1980’s by consultants to CDOT.  They concluded that, while cumbersome and costly, the current dual-power system is, in the long run, cheaper and more efficient than installing third-rail. This time, the engineers at CDOT got it right. 

Not satisfied, some of the third-rail fans tried pushing bills through the Legislature in 2005 to study the replacement scheme yet again. More studies would have meant years of delay in ordering already overdue car replacements. Fortunately, the Legislature dispensed with these nuisance proposals quickly. 

Doubtless, we’ll have further “wires down” problems in the years to come.  Ironically, Metro-North’s 97% on-time record has made us come to expect stellar service, despite our ancient infrastructure.  But in the long run, service will be faster and even more reliable by sticking with our dual-mode system.

Filed Under: Towns, Transportation Tagged With: , ,

Nibbles – Jack’s at Harbor One Marina

July 21, 2010 by

Lee White is a resident of Old Lyme in a section of town where she and her house are the oldest members.  She has been writing about restaurants and cooking since 1976 and has been extensively published in the Worcester (Mass.) Magazine, The Day, Norwich Bulletin, and Hartford Courant.  She currently writes Nibbles and a cooking column called A La Carte for the Times and Shore Publishing newspapers, and Elan, a quarterly magazine, all of which are now owned by The Day. 

Jack’s at Harbor One Marina
26 Bridge Street
Old Saybrook, CT 06475

I wasn’t sure that Jack Flaw would reopen Jack’s at Harbor One Marina, since his two Jack Rabbit’s, one on Main Street in Old Saybrook, and the other in Storrs, to say nothing of the ones he plans on opening, first in Burlington, Vermont. But I saw his pickup at the Old Saybrook Marina and decided to stop.

I always with Jack, he said of course the hot dog emporium would be open. It is open each day during the summer. It serves lots of egg sandwiches (one made with Spam—we may think Spam is silly, but Hawaii loves Spam and uses more than any other place in the world). And his dogs are amazingly delicious and most seem new and different. I pine for the Symba dog—chipotle ketchup and grilled mac and cheese—which I will try soon. I was also happy that his Doug Dog is still on the menu—my husband loved the sweet potato mustard, chili and hot slaw. I think I will have to get that one, too.

Filed Under: Nibbles

Nibbles – Café Flo

July 19, 2010 by

Lee White is a resident of Old Lyme in a section of town where she and her house are the oldest members.  She has been writing about restaurants and cooking since 1976 and has been extensively published in the Worcester (Mass.) Magazine, The Day, Norwich Bulletin, and Hartford Courant.  She currently writes Nibbles and a cooking column called A La Carte for the Times and Shore Publishing newspapers, and Elan, a quarterly magazine, all of which are now owned by The Day. 

Café Flo at the Florence Griswold Museum
Lyme Street, Old Lyme CT
Tel: 860-434-5542
Open daily

Jonathan Rapp’s River Tavern in Chester, a town that must indeed be Brigadoon—you remember Brigadoon, that special little town that only existed if you were actually there—has brought some of its best lunch dishes to the Florence Griswold Museum for the summer and through early fall of 2010.

Appetizers you can share include guacamole with homemade tortilla chips and hummus with pine nuts, spices, lemon and chilies.  I myself pine for Caesar salad (the best!), grilled summer veggies, Moroccan spiced chicken with chickpeas, raisins, almonds and yogurt dressing and Thai-style Stonington seafood.  Perhaps it’s a lobster salad or pulled pork sandwiches you’re in the mood for, or your children want hot dogs with chips or PB & J.

Finish with berry shortcake with whipped cream.
Everything is locally grown and fresh, fresh, fresh.  The goat cheese is from Beltane Farm and the cow-milk cheese hails from Cato Corner in Colchester.  Scott’s Orchard, Four Mile River Farm and White Gate are just a few of the other purveyors.

The ambience is gorgeous and—like Brigadoon—as long as you’re there, so will be summer.

Filed Under: Chester, Nibbles

Green Scene – Water, Water Everywhere…

July 19, 2010 by

Mariette Brown is an office manager at a law firm, a sculptor and a watercolor painter.  She lived in Old Lyme for 18 years, and three years ago moved to Old Saybrook, where she lives on a hill with her husband, two dogs, two cats, 4,357 voles and approximately 90,000 bees.  The daughter of our founding publisher, Jack Turner, she loves the woods, the ocean, rivers, clouds, animals, plants, bugs, chocolate and good French bread.  In short, she loves the world.  (She can take or leave humans as a species, but does enjoy a few individuals.)  At this point, to her, almost everything has environmental ramifications.

Water, Water Everywhere … and Not a Drop to Drink

The recent sudden summer storms bring home a situation I encountered this past February.  I had recently returned from a trip to El  Salvador, which—in my quest for eternal youth—I took with our teen group from the First Congregational Church of Old Lyme. 
 
We were there near the end of the dry season, and while it was dry and dusty, available water was not an issue.  It came gushing from the hose to water the lawn where we stayed, and to fill our pool.  It was spread on the roads to keep down the dust.  It was freely available from the relatively high water table on the coastal plain where we were working.  The plants in peoples’ gardens were lush, even in this dry season.
Only 25% of the population of El Salvador has safe drinking water, even though a lot of the country gets 6 feet of rain a year, mostly falling w/in their six-month rainy season.  Contrast that to here in Connecticut, where we get an average annual rainfall of 3.5 feet a year, and you get a sense of how soggy it must get.
The results of flooding showed in the washed-out bridges, the years-old detours around homes to a shallow place where a makeshift bridge serves one-way traffic.  Perpetual guards were stationed before the old bridges, to make sure no one mistook the roads as complete.  They had nice little set-ups, seats of overturned buckets, umbrellas for shade, a flashlight for night-time.  But everyone knew.  It had been that way for so long.
 
The water, abundant from the tap, the toilets, the showers, the pools, was a disaster to get in your mouth.  The group we worked with supplied water for our drinking (and toothbrushing, food rinsing, dishwashing – the list grew as we thought about the problem – and as more and more of us came down with some mysterious malady…) provided in ubiquitous five-gallon blue water bottles. 

We saw enormous trucks of blue water bottles out for delivery in San Salvador.  Some places had rows and rows of bottles lined up outside their doors.  We also saw trucks pumping water from the river – for what, I don’t want to know.  To fill our blue bottles?
Conveniently, waiting at home for me on my return was the new issue of National Geographic—devoted to water.  Polluted water for much of the world is not just an inconvenience, it’s a fact of life.  In many countries around the world, people just cannot afford to buy those blue bottles of clean water.  Dirty water causes many illnesses, resulting in time lost from school, from work, medical expenses and many times, death. 
 
El Salvador’s problem is very similar to the problems in other poor countries around the world.  Their infrastructure and planning are poor to non-existant, resulting in polluted wells from lack of engineering oversight.  Wells are contaminated by being put too close to latrines, to polluted rivers or from flooding.  The water table in El Salvador is so high that when the rains come, the resulting floods contaminate their shallow wells.  (We saw this here at home in the late March storm when wells in Rhode Island and parts of Southeastern Connecticut were contaminated by the floodwaters.)
 
The solutions all sound so simple—dig a well, or dig a deeper well, right?  Many NGOs and charitable aid groups are working hard on exactly this sort of thing.  All too often, though, aid groups come in and provide the materials for clean wells and water in a particular region, but fail to provide for maintenance.  Everything works fabulously until something breaks, and then the community doesn’t have the knowledge or the finances to fix the pump, the leak, whatever. 
 
Fortunately this is changing.  Aid organizations are now training and supporting people in establishing governing boards to manage their communal resource, teaching them to repair the equipment and to establish a budget for maintenance.
 
There are other solutions, and some of them seem so easy.  In some places in Africa, people sterilize their water by putting it in bottles, and laying it in the hot equatorial sun for a day.  The heat and the sunlight kill the harmful bacteria, making it safe to drink.  (Google the “SODIS” method, developed by a Swiss group)   Another group works with local potters to make ceramic filters to filter out impurities. (Google “Potters for Peace”.) 
 
As the water improves, so do the lives it affects.  Less time is spent down and out from illness, away from school or work. Incomes go up, kids manage to finish school, and less time is spent on the very act of obtaining water, freeing people (usually women and girls) up to do the rest of living.
 
Barbara Kingsolver wrote one of the essays in the water issue of National Geographic, and closed with this astute observation: While we may depend on water, all the harm we do to it we do to ourselves.  We need water.  But water does not need us.  It will carry on, with or without us.

Filed Under: Green Scene, Outdoors

Between Us – Porching It

July 19, 2010 by

Trish Bennett is an award-winning journalist and the former assistant editor of Main Street News.  She holds a master of science degree in journalism and was adjunct professor of media history at Quinnipiac University before relocating Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania.  Her latest work appears in the up-coming volume of “This I Believe: The Personal Philosophies of Remarkable Men and Women” slated for publication in association with National Public Radio this Fall.  She can be reached at pwbennett@verizon.net

American poet Robert Frost is famous for—among other things—penning the line, “One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.”

Frost’s lines concern a stand of birches observed in winter, bent down, as those trees tend to be, by snow and ice. It is as if, Frost observes, a small boy had shinnied up the trunk, and, with the bravado of the young, reached the end of the tree, and flung himself, clutching its topmost branches, feet-first into the blue winter sky and “ridden” the tree to the ground.

The image of the birch-swinger is a metaphor for the poet’s on-again, off-again relationship with the world: “It’s when I’m weary of considerations,” he writes, “and life is too much like a pathless wood…I’d like to get away from earth awhile, and then come back to it and begin over.”

Now given the fact that it’s July in New England, as opposed to January, I will make bold to offer a seasonal amendment to Mr. Frost and note that, fine as birches are, one could also do worse than be a sitter of porches.

Bear with me, and I may actually get you to believe that homely, un-“hot” objects like birches and porches can actually be the stuff of meaning, allowing us to revel in life rather than merely regarding it as a conquerable commodity or something to be endured.

Porches are ephemera to many modern home builders and largely to the 21st century mindset in which everything seems to require justification via a specific purpose.

Real porches–and here I exclude so-called “three-season rooms” which are made practicable,  and therefore justifiable, by insulation or infomercial awnings; and “decks” which many times dangle in space supported only by four by fours and which function as a grilling stations and occasionally collapse, sending bratwurst, steaks and grill person into the sump-pump bog some 18 feet below—are, like summer, short-lived, sloth-inducing, and community-inviting.

And to have one, especially a front porch, is to be blessed.

First, porches represent the once-upon-a-time in architecture. A time when folks strolled streets after dinner; a time when neighbors knew their community as faces and names met over day-to-day dealings; a time when social interaction was spontaneous rather than marked on an agenda three weeks in advance.

So once upon a time, after supper, you spied Fred and Mabel over your flower boxes and invited them up to your porch for ice cream and/or gossip.

Porch furniture, likewise, embodies a largely abandoned approach to existence: It does not warm, vibrate or advertise as orthopedically approved. Rather, it rocks, but back-and-forth; it swings, but in the wind.

So once upon a time, Junior de-camped to the porch and poured over Treasure Island, or Pop left the edging until tomorrow and expended his strength willing Ted Williams to first base while downing a lemonade.

“A good porch,” notes writer Garrison Keillor, gets you out of the parlor; lets you smoke, talk loud, eat with your fingers—without apology and without having to run away from home. No wonder that people with porches have hundreds of friends…Me and the missus float back and forth on the swing, Mark and Rhonda are collapsed at opposite ends of the couch. Marlene peruses her paperback novel in which an astounding event is about to occur…the cats lie on the floor listening to birdies, and I say, ‘It’s a heck of a deal, ain’t it, a heck of a deal.’ A golden creamy silence suffuses this happy scene, and only on a porch is it possible.”

As I said, one could do worse than be a sitter of porches.

Happy summer.

Filed Under: Between Us

A Feast of Nibbles – Part II

July 15, 2010 by

Lee White (left) is a resident of Old Lyme in a section of town where she and her house are the oldest members.  She has been writing about restaurants and cooking since 1976 and has been extensively published in the Worcester (Mass.) Magazine, The Day, Norwich Bulletin, and Hartford Courant.  She currently writes Nibbles and a cooking column called A La Carte for the Times and Shore Publishing newspapers, and Elan, a quarterly magazine, all of which are now owned by The Day. 

Chaplin’s
165 Bank Street New London, CT 06320
Tel: 860-443-0684

A couple of weeks ago, friends invited me to Chaplin’s in New London for dinner.  I arrived and saw friends from Norwich there, too.  I found my friends visiting with the owners of Muddy Waters who were dining, too.
 
Once we five were at our table, we ordered all the appetizers (five appetizers and two salads), four entrees and both of the desserts.  All were incredibly good, but the most amazing were the appetizers.

Before they arrived, we shared toasted bread with a zippy salsa.  Appetizers included calamari with hot peppers, lobster cakes, crab cakes, mussels, a Caesar and another I can’t remember.

Owner/chef Jack (who once owned a place in Bozrah called Daddy Jack) truly knows how to season fresh, fresh ingredients.  All menu items are reasonably priced and delicious.

By the way, I ate halibut amandine.  Never had a nicer piece of fish, ever.

Octagon at the Mystic Marriott Hotel and Spa
625 North Road Groton, CT
Tel: 860-326-0360

A few weeks I was invited to a wine dinner at Octagon, that gorgeous restaurant at the Mystic Marriott.  It was a lovely five-course dinner created by the hotel’s executive chef, Steve Rosen, to complement incredible wine from Stonington’s Jonathan Edwards Winery.

As the steak entrée was served, my friend Elise made a visit to the powder room.  I took my first taste of the truffled mashed potatoes, then my second and my third and my fourth.  When Elise returned, I asked if she wanted her potatoes (she rarely eats carbs).  I took hers and gave her my steak.  Those mashed potatoes are still in my taste memory.
 
After the dinner, I asked Steve how he makes them. “Black truffles and white truffle oil,” he said.  What, I asked, gave the potatoes a bit of a kick?  Just a tiny bit of Tabasco sauce, he replied. 

The mashed potatoes are not with all the restaurant’s entrees, but beg and whine and maybe you can get some, too.

Stella D’Oro
1231 Boston Post Road (Rte. 1) Old Saybrook, CT
Tel: 860-388-6590

We loved to go to Stella D’Oro even when we lived in northeastern Connecticut, when Nancy and Andy took us, although with a group of Morgan owners, back in the early 90s.  When they called last week and suggested we eat there before going to see “Crazy Heart” at the Madison cinema, I looked forward to it.

After dinner I was even happier.  I ordered the chicken piccata, and it was one of the best I tasted in years.  The three thin slices of chicken was sauced with white wine, capers and a little butter (or maybe a little more butter), along with sautéed spinach.  I ate every bit.

Today, a few days later, I pine for it.
 
I may have to make another trip this week.

Filed Under: Nibbles Tagged With: ,

A Feast of Nibbles – Part 1

July 15, 2010 by

 Lee White (left) is a resident of Old Lyme in a section of town where she and her house are the oldest members.  She has been writing about restaurants and cooking since 1976 and has been extensively published in the Worcester (Mass.) Magazine, The Day, Norwich Bulletin, and Hartford Courant.  She currently writes Nibbles and a cooking column called A La Carte for the Times and Shore Publishing newspapers, and Elan, a quarterly magazine, all of which are now owned by The Day. 

P.F. Chang’s Chinese Bistro,
West Farms Mall, Farmington CT 06032
Tel: 860-561-0097

I’ve read about P.F. Change’s China Bistro (there are 200 in all, but probably more by the time you read this), but I was happy to see that there is one of the restaurants at West Farms Mall in Connecticut (there is one in Stamford, too).  On a recent shopping excursion, a friend and I (she had been to many, she said—I had not) decided to have an early dinner there.

While I visited the ladies’ room, she ordered the Chang’s chicken lettuce wrap, explaining when I returned that everyone orders these and everybody likes them.  (Sure enough, our waitress said more then half of all the customers add them—I’m sure that percentage will rise once more locals visit the restaurant.)

This appetizer, which we shared, was as yummy as I had heard.  Chopped chicken is mixed in with lots of veggies and nestles atop tiny thin rice noodles.  What we do is take a leaf of iceberg lettuce, plop the chicken mixture, rice noodles and one of three different sauce on top  (Chinese mustard, a spicy chile oil, soy sauce, or a combination of all or none), wrap the package tight and chop away.  It was terrific.

Was the rest of the meal as good?  Not really, but the lettuce wraps are worth a trip anyway.

By the way, there is a recipe for the wraps on www.recipezaar.com if you want to try this at home.

Zinc
964 Chapel Street, New Haven CT 06510
Tel: 203-624-0507

A few weeks ago, my friend Elise and I went to Yale Repertory’s commedia dell’Arte “A Servant of Two Masters,” which I loved, but Elise and other friends also there that night did not think was so wonderful (I think it was the modern touches, maybe).

On the other hand, Elise and I had an incredible dinner at Zinc before the theater.  I hadn’t been to Zinc in a decade and I can’t really remember what I had, but that night I had two small plates (burrata mozzarella and house-cured salmon gravlax, dried like thin slices of pastrami) that I thought delicious, and the dessert sent me over the moon.

The dessert?  A parfait filled with house-made Tahitian vanilla ice cream, caramelized bananas and spiced rum-soaked raisins.  I think there was a little more than a little hot chili powder in there, too.  Not for everyone, maybe, but I can’t wait to have it again.

Muddy Waters Cafe
42 Bank Street, New London CT 06320
Tel: 860-444-2232

Not too long after we moved to Connecticut, we visited a restaurant called Hughie’s in New London.  As we alit from our car in the restaurant’s parking lot, the smell of garlic wafted under our noses.  While there was plenty of Italian food at Hughie’s, along with our genial host, Hughie Devlin, what we longed for was the Love Salad, created by Hughie’s mother who was the restaurant’s chef. 

Hughie’s was lost to us when New London acquiesced to Pfizer’s “request” that homes and businesses be razed for its corporate campus.  And we know how that worked out.

But the Love Salad, like the phoenix, rose from the ashes and twice in one week I had two of them.  The lettuce is fresh and bracingly cold, chunks of tomato tasted almost like summer, the slices of Genoa salami and provolone blanket the lettuce and the vinaigrette is perfect, simply perfect, under a snow of Parmesan.

Muddy Waters gives you two big slices of garlic bread on top of the salad, and a plate with some more.  There is superb coffee and also offered are other non-alcoholic drinks, muffins, cookies, H&H bagels and other breakfast treats and big sandwiches—plus music some evenings.

I will try the rest of the restaurant’s food, but, oh, that Love Salad … especially when Hughie Devlin sits and has lunch with me!

Filed Under: Nibbles Tagged With: ,

Between Us – “Fine, and You?” (Or maybe not so much)

June 15, 2010 by

Trish Bennett is an award-winning journalist and the former assistant editor of Main Street News.  She holds a master of science degree in journalism and was adjunct professor of media history at Quinnipiac University before relocating Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania.  Her latest work appears in the up-coming volume of “This I Believe: The Personal Philosophies of Remarkable Men and Women” slated for publication in association with National Public Radio this Fall.  She can be reached at pwbennett@verizon.net“

Fine, and You?” (Or maybe not so much)
 
It is the absence of the “fine” in our kids’ lives—deliberation and discernment skills—that worries me:
 
To the ever-expanding pile of words denuded of practically all meaning, I’d like to add “fine.”
 
Witness the range of synonyms offered, for example, by my Macbook onboard thesaurus: “very well,” “well,” “all right,” “okay”: which is a little like saying “thriving,” “healthy,” “so-so,” and “breathing, but little else” all mean the same thing.
 
Show me a med student who maintains that “thriving,” “healthy,” “so-so,” and “breathing but that’s all,” are interchangeable descriptions of a patient’s state, and I’ll show you next week’s road crew member.
 
What got me ruminating on “fine’s” decline is several recent examples that demonstrate how very absent from our children’s experiences are the word’s other uses.  That is, “fine” as in “subtle”; “delicate”; “refined.”
 
Now before I am accused of advocating that kids be inculcated with the rituals of high tea at four o’clock, and the care and feeding of Granny’s bone china, allow me to explain.  Or perhaps paint you some word pictures.
 
I volunteer in an inner-city Philadelphia school built in the 1920’s.  The library, where I help teach first, third and fourth graders is a relatively bright oasis of clean, sturdy tables and raspberry-hued upholstered chairs.  Outside the library, strong-armed, alarmed doors keep intruders out of the sunless halls where rusty pipes often leak into containers meant for recycled paper.
 
To many of my kids, the library can mean “fine” in the sense of an alternative: one of only a few places regularly available to them where nursery rhymes, biographies, and Harry Potter can offer beauty or delicacy in contrast to the gritty realities posed by poverty and absent parents.
 
Since school began, though, my volunteer friends and I have been alternately surprised, bemused and discouraged by our students’ choice of books.
 
Call it “elitist” if you will, but we can sigh when there are tug-of-wars over the “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” and “Captain Underpants” series while grade- and ability-friendly volumes featuring Martin Luther King, Albert Einstein and Anne Frank seldom get a glance.
 
Is this “fine” in the sense of just okay (“hey, at least they’re reading”)?  Perhaps.  Is a steady diet of only pop culture and familiarity helping these kids to develop finer qualities like critical thinking and subtle reasoning?  I think not.
 
And lest you think that disadvantaged kids are the only ones who lack for examples of higher aspirations, come west about nine miles to the quite advantaged Main Line where the children of privilege, like their 8- to 18-year-old counterparts country-wide spend—according to a new study from the Kaiser Family Foundation—more than seven and a half hours a day in front of a smart phone, computer, TV or other electronic device.
 
For the moment, leave aside concerns of rampant childhood obesity and the 47 percent of “heavy” media users who, according to the study, had mostly C grades or lower.
 
Instead consider the example of Baby Trey, who, the New York Times related, was parked by his well-meaning mother in front of Baby Einstein videos and “Dora the Explorer.”
 
“By the time he was 4, he had all these math and science DVDs…and he learned to read and do math early,” said Trey’s mother, Kim Calinan.  But now that Trey is 9, Calinan observes, video games have displaced after-school activities, and her son shows little interest in any social interaction or independent exploration—such as reading—that might cut into his gaming time.
 
“[Heavy media use has] changed young people’s assumptions about how to get an answer to a question,” says Donald F. Roberts, a Stamford communications professor emeritus who is one of the authors of the Kaiser Foundation study.  “People can put out a problem…and information pours in from all kinds of sources.”
 
And as a former communications professor myself, I can attest that even college age students, while they may be whizzes at harvesting factoids, are becoming less and less adapt at culling and discriminating between the finer points in that information avalanche.
 
To some degree my privileged former students are no further along in their ability to engage in refined, subtle thought than my challenged present charges.
 
So what we have here may be “fine,” in the sense of “okay” for many: Democracy is not yet threatened by many kids’ hampered ability to reason.
 
But it is the absence of the “fine” in our kids’ lives, represented by deliberation and discernment skills, that worries me: the impetus to be curious beyond the familiar; to be enlightened beyond the obvious; to consider rather than simply emote; to be educated rather than simply amused.
 
And absent those fine points of the human experience, we and our children are not fine at all.

Filed Under: Between Us

Ten Tips for a Healthy, Eco-friendly Lawn

May 15, 2010 by

We welcomed another new columnist George James.   

George, a  former Old Lyme Citizen of the Year and veteran environmentalist, pictured left, presents his inaugural Conservation Corner column about how to maintain a eco-friendly lawn.

Healthy lawns have been around long before the chemical industry convinced people that heavy doses of chemical fertilizer, weed killer, and insecticides were absolutely essential in order to have a decent looking lawn.  The end product is often sterile soil contaminated with herbicides and pesticides that may be harmful to birds, pets, and especially children.  Follow these 10 steps and have a healthy lawn and a better environment!

1. Save yourself time, work, and money by testing your soil’s pH – for forms and sampling kits, contact www.canr.uconn.edu/plsci/stlab.htm

2. Choose the right seed for reseeding the lawn in the spring and fall.  There are numerous varieties to suit your special lawn conditions- direct sun, partial shade, dense shade, sandy or moist soil.  Reduce the size of your lawn with plantings of perennials and shrubs.  Lawn mowers are notorious polluters.  The less time they are used the better for the environment.

3. Rake out the thatch in the spring and save it for soil building organic matter in a composting bin.  Very heavy thatch may indicate an unhealthy lack of active microbes in the soil.

4. Based on the soil test, add organic fertilizer and soil additives such as rock dust or lime but do so sparingly.  More is not better!  An insoluble organic fertilizer with a 3-1-2 ratio of nitrogen, potassium, and phosphorous is appropriate.  Avoid high nitrogen chemical fertilizers.

5. Add a thin layer of organic compost, available at most garden centers, if you haven’t made your own from thatch, grass clippings, leaves, wood chips, wood ashes, vegetable wastes, etc.

6. Mow the grass when it is three to four inches high and keep the cutting blade sharp.  Short cut grass requires much more water and is subject to more disease and drought.  Cut the grass short only in the late fall.  Grass clippings can be left on the lawn and will supply about half of the required nitrogen for the lawn at no cost to you.  Clippings do not cause thatch.

7. A dense healthy lawn is the best herbicide.  There is no such thing as a weed free lawn.  Clover is not a weed.  It is one of the few plants that restores nitrogen to the soil.  Wood ashes encourage the growth of clover, and clover doesn’t need as many cuttings.  It also self-seeds.

8. Use corn gluten products to control weeds before they emerge, but apply the corn gluten only on established lawns.  Weed patches can be covered with black plastic in the fall and reseeded after the weeds die.  Vinegar is a good spot weed killer.

9. August sun and heat cause the lawn to undergo a natural die back or rest each summer, especially if the lawn is cut very short.  Leaving grass clippings on the lawn helps to prevent excessive drying at this time.  Water deeply (two inches – one full tuna can) if you must water at this time.

10. Use beneficial nematodes and milky spore powder for effective grub control.  Plant shrubs that encourage birds to frequent your yard.

Filed Under: Conservation Corner, Outdoors Tagged With: , ,
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