Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

A few weeks ago, my wife Andree and I – and of course her guide dog Titan – visited my nephew who has just relocated from Connecticut to North Carolina. We had decided to make our 20 year pilgrimage to Washington D.C. and spent a full day there before pressing on to see David and his wife Corin. The very first time I had visited the nation’s capital was on November 24, 1963, two days after President John Kennedy had been assassinated. Four of us in Danbury, where I was attending college, had decided to hitch to Washington to attend the funeral and show our respect to a president we all loved.

First a confession: I have been trying for years to crawl back on bended knee to Holy Mother Church. The Catholic Mass is a celebration of the Eucharist, otherwise known as Communion. It is under the species of bread and wine that Catholics come together in union to profess the same communal faith, worship God and receive forgiveness for their sins, which in my case are legion. I have a thirty year unconfessed roll of sins, give or take ten years or so, that are, thank God, venial. Venial sins are not to be winked at. They still count and, taken together, I suppose – if they are weighty enough – might plunge you into everlasting torment. Hell, in the days of Dante, used to be an uncomfortable, stench ridden pit, full of faithless politicians and sinful prelates; but now, Hell is regarded as separation from God, the creative source of all felicity. In any case, it is the mortal sins that kill your spirit; venial, not so much. I have been telling myself for about ten of those ...

Andree in Malta “It’s not what you known that counts. It’s not even who you know that counts. It’s what you got on who you know that counts.” -- Sicilian saying It may be possible that there is a Sicilian crouching in the soul of every journalist worth his ink. My recommendation for people who travel is to allow for a bit of serendipity in their trip. Malta, for Andree and me, was the serendipitous part of our travels to Italy and beyond. Why, it may be asked, Malta? Because of Mary from Malta, of course. We met MFM while living in Bethel Connecticut some years ago, when the world was young and Europe was not on the point of economic collapse. Mary and her husband lived next door, and Andrée and she struck up a friendship that revolved around Malta, a mystery my wife had not yet penetrated. Andrée is a voracious reader of mysteries -- and people. When after several trips to Europe we became poorer and poorer – owing mostly to politicians on this side of the pond who do n...

Martha Dean, the Republican nominee for attorney general, made a fruitless plea to Courant reporter Mathew Kauffman at the end of his front page story, “Martha Dean Embroiled In Custody Battle: Experts In The Case Say It Has Taken A Toll On Martha Dean's Son,” a heartfelt cry into the belly of the beast: "’You're straying into territory that involves a 12-year-old boy and somebody who has lied profusely,’ she said, repeating a frequent assertion she has made in court about her ex-husband. ‘This is serious stuff. Do not go there. This is not appropriate for journalism. It has nothing to do with running for attorney general. It's just the luck that I got stuck with, in having married somebody like this, and we're trying to do the best we can to get through this.’" But go there Kauffman did. At the center of Kauffman’s story is a psychological evaluation of Dean plucked from Superior Court documents that trace a messy divorce. Messy divorces, almost always ...

Jake is – I will postpone speaking of him in the past tense for a moment– my wife Andree’s Fidelco guide dog. He came into our house fourteen years ago, as a two year old pup, at Christmas. And never was there such a Christmas. His markings are extraordinary. He is a Shepherd’s Shepherd, beloved of flight stewards, a magnet at the nation’s Capitol in Washington D.C. for young boys and girls obediently trailing a matronly teacher who, wide-eyed, watched her entire class descend on Jake as he moved under the rotunda, the much petted pup of San Francisco who, taking his morning constitutional from our hotel to the green, drew out from doorways and dark corners the lonely souls of the streets, the city’s unsmiling off-scourings, whose faces were transformed at his appearance. Perhaps they had a boyhood dog. And now here was Jake, a vehicle carrying them back to a time when they knew heaven must be full of dogs. And not just any dogs but their dogs. Jake transformed everything – first ...

The day after the great debate between Sen. Joe Biden and Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, everyone was prepared to pass judgment. I didn’t catch the debate. My wife Andrée had arranged for us to see at UConn the Bolt play, “A Man For All Seasons.” And so when the two bumped heads, we found ourselves in the sold out Nafe Katter Theatre's packed house watching Michael McKensie, playing St. Thomas More, scowling at Thomas Cromwell’s pragmatism: “ALICE: They say he's a very penetrating lawyer. “MORE: What, Cromwell? Pooh, he's a pragmatist-and that's the only resemblance he has to the Devil, son Roper; a pragmatist, the merest plumber.” McKensie spat the word “pragmatist” far out into the second row. It is an explosive line and ought to remind us, in this the age of pragmatism and cynicism, that once there was something more honorable than reasons of state. After viewing the debate, what strikes me most forcefully is how wrong everyone was about Palin, except of course the peo...

Liberals have always had a problem with Bill Buckley, though it is not what many suppose. He was a very engaging man. And I mean every word of that sentence. The first thing you noticed about him was his joy; it streamed from his eyes; it flashed in his smile. And joy, as C.S. Lewis reminds us, is the talisman of a sentient and grateful being. To be under the grace of God is to be joyful. That Bill was engaging no one will deny. And here was the problem that liberals fortunate enough to be counted among his friends struggled with for as long as God permitted him to remain among us: When he and his wife, Pat, invited you into their home, you partook of their friendship, and Bill's capacity for friendship was as large as his capacity for joy. His assault on the heart was irresistible. For liberals who wanted to preserve the pinata they treasured in their minds whenever they summoned up a conservative for flogging, this was a problem. Try to imagine a furnace in which all the pet...